What I Talked About with Jack Carr on the Danger Close Podcast: The Warrior's Garden, the Attention Economy and Taking Back Your Time
I recently had the honor of sitting down with Jack Carr — former Navy SEAL, New York Times #1 bestselling author, and host of the Danger Close podcast — to talk about my new book, The Warrior's Garden. It was one of the most wide-ranging, honest conversations I've had about social media, the attention economy, AI, and what it really means to take control of your time and your mind.
If you haven't listened yet, I'd encourage you to watch the full episode. But here's a breakdown of everything we covered — and why I think this conversation matters.
The Book That Started as "Slave Traders"
I'll admit it: the original title of The Warrior's Garden was going to be Slave Traders. I'd envisioned a cover with an auction gavel in the color palette of Google. Because that's essentially what the attention economy is — a marketplace where your time and focus are bought and sold without your full awareness or consent.
I ended up going a different direction, inspired by the world of regenerative agriculture. There's a saying in farming: it's not how much rain you get, it's how much you keep. Healthy soil with deep root systems absorbs every drop. Barren soil sheds it all into the gutters. That felt like a perfect metaphor for the mind. If your inputs are constant negativity, outrage, and dopamine hits engineered by the most profitable companies in human history, your baseline is quietly being destroyed. The book is about building better soil — mentally, emotionally, and practically.
The book opens with a quote from Prince: "There's a war going on. The battlefield is in the mind, and the prize is the soul." I can't think of a more accurate description of what's happening in our world right now.
You Are Being Manipulated — And That's Step One to Admitting It
One of the most important points Jack and I landed on early in the conversation is this: the moment you open anything on your phone, some form of manipulation has begun. That's not a conspiracy theory. That's the business model.
It used to be that electronic devices manipulated you into buying something. Then the internet arrived. Then the smartphone. Then the apps. Now we've reached a place where the manipulation has shifted from purchasing behavior to something far more consequential — your thoughts, your emotions, and your sense of reality.
Social media platforms are engineered using the same psychological mechanics as gambling. Variable reward systems. The uncertainty of whether your post will go viral or be ignored. The dopamine hit of watching likes roll in. Researchers like Dr. Anna Lembke at Stanford have documented what this does to the dopaminergic system — and it isn't pretty.
The awareness that you're being manipulated is Step One. Step Two is deciding what you're going to do about it.
What I Learned Building 200 AI Influencer Accounts Nobody Knew Were Fake
I've spent years studying the inner workings of social media algorithms — going back to 2011 when I built a YouTube app four years before YouTube had one in the app store. I've co-founded brands, launched media companies, and spent an enormous amount of time understanding how algorithmic weight actually functions.
Over the last two years, I ran an experiment: I created over 200 AI-generated social media influencer accounts using my own diffusion model built on Flux. I have released the app to the public called Pose Ai. Male, female, various demographics — all PG or PG-13, all designed to grow organically and quietly. Nobody knew they were AI. Some accumulated hundreds of thousands of followers.
Why? Not to profit. To force the conversation. Because I don't think most people understand how distorted our online reality already is — and how much more distorted it's about to become. I talked about Dead Internet Theory with Jack: the idea that after 2016, more internet communication was being generated artificially than by real humans. Whether or not that's literally true, the trajectory is clear.
We need to be talking about how to validate authentic human behavior online. We need the equivalent of an "explicit lyrics" label for AI-generated content, so consumers can make informed choices.
Time Is the Only Commodity Billionaires Can't Buy Back
Here's the thing I keep coming back to: every billionaire on earth is trying to buy back their time. It's the one thing that's truly non-renewable. And yet we hand it over by the hour — to platforms designed specifically to extract it from us.
The original framework for social media was actually a fair trade. Hosting a viral video in 2005 could cost you $50,000 in bandwidth fees. Uploading to YouTube made sense. But when the creator economy took off around 2012, the incentives shifted. Suddenly the platforms weren't just hosting your content — they were monetizing your attention at scale, and the interests of users and platforms began to seriously diverge.
That misalignment is where we are today. And most people are living inside it without realizing it.
Gratitude: The Biggest Needle-Mover I Found
For all the big-picture analysis in The Warrior's Garden, the most personally meaningful chapter for me is the one on gratitude. It sounds simple. It isn't.
I started injecting gratitude into the smallest, most ordinary moments — getting in my truck in the morning, sitting in construction traffic. That guy working the orange cone on the side of the road? He has a job. He's providing for his family. He's improving my community. When I started seeing it that way, the 30-second inconvenience stopped being something to rage about and started being something to appreciate.
Ounces equal pounds. Small shifts in perception compound into a fundamentally different baseline for your day — and your life.
The research backs this up too. Creating a written plan increases your probability of achieving a goal by roughly 50%. Discussing that plan with someone you're accountable to pushes it closer to 65%. Having a scheduled appointment around it? One peer-reviewed study puts that number at 95%.
Practical Tools to Start Taking Back Your Time
Jack and I talked about some practical steps I've taken and recommend in the book — none of which require spending money:
The Brick App — a tool to lock yourself out of your phone during focused time
Grayscale mode — making your screen look like an e-ink device reduces its visual pull significantly
Hiring someone to post for you — so you're not feeding your content to the algorithm and then immediately being dragged into its current
The Light Phone — a minimalist phone for people ready to go further
Community and accountability — churches, local clubs, small groups. Real-world connection is an underrated antidote to digital isolation.
Why I'm Still Optimistic
Jack asked me at the end whether I'm hopeful. The answer is yes — and it has to be.
I've never wanted to bet against humanity. I believe the human spirit shines brightest in the face of adversity. And I genuinely believe that most people aren't choosing these patterns willfully — they just don't know what's happening to them. If we can name the battlefield, lay out what we're actually dealing with, and give people tools that work, the collective impact could be enormous.
We don't need everyone to quit social media. We just need people to be honest with themselves about whether their consumption is aligned with the things they actually care about in life. Define your goalposts. Assess your inputs. Make small changes. Those ounces add up to pounds.
Get The Warrior's Garden — and Join the Conversation
The Warrior's Garden is available now. Jack Carr bought copies for his wife, his kids, and everyone on his team. I don't say that to brag — I say it because that reaction is exactly why I wrote this book. It's for parents and their kids. It's for entrepreneurs who feel like they're winning online and losing somewhere else. It's for anyone who's ever put their phone down and felt the pull to pick it back up 90 seconds later.
The audiobook (Available now) — recorded in my own voice.
And if the book gives you tools that make a real difference, please leave a review. Constructive voices in this conversation are how we move the needle together.
Watch the full Danger Close episode with Jack Carr here: