Fight-or-Fl1ght
Fight-or-Fl1ght
Myles Levin
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.
S2E13 | The Man Who Designed Oakley — and Nobody Knew His Name | Peter Yee
For 25 years, one designer shaped the way the world looked — and almost no one knew his name.Peter Yee was Oakley's first trained industrial designer. Hired by founder Jim Jannard in 1993, he built the visual language of one of the most iconic brands in sports history — the Eye Jacket, the X-Metal Romeo, the Over the Top, the Time Bomb watch, and the Oakley "O" logo itself. Over 110 patents. $76M in revenue when he arrived. $1.6B when he left.This conversation is not a nostalgia tour.We talk about what great design actually looks like from the inside — and why most of what passes for innovation today is duplication dressed up in a press release. We talk about what Jim Jannard understood that almost no one else did. We talk about the designs that won, the ones that missed, and the lessons that came from both.And we talk about what comes next. AI. Meta smart glasses. Neuralink. XYE — Peter's own brand, finally, on his own terms.If you've ever worn a pair of Oakleys. If you've ever tried to build something original in a world that rewards copying. If you believe the best ideas start with a question nobody else thought to ask — this one is for you.Hosted by Myles Levin.Find the show on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Instagram.Follow Peter Yee at peteryeedesign.com and @peteryeedesign on Instagram.
Mar 17
57 min
S2E12 | Kim Campbell | Flying 300 Miles on Cables
April 7th, 2003. Baghdad. Col. Kim "K.C." Campbell's A-10 Warthog takes a direct hit. Hydraulics destroyed. Manual reversion. Flying on cables alone. Three hundred miles back to base in an aircraft that had no business staying airborne.She landed it.But this isn't a war story. It's a masterclass in the frameworks that work when your plan falls apart and everyone's looking at you to see what happens next.Most of us live in fight or flight. KC operates in a third space: mission clarity, end state focus, and ,world-classaircraft-damaged, still-flyingsingularity where the noise disappears. She doesn't bring problems to her frameworks. She meets every situation exactly where it is.In this conversation, we explore:How to prepare for what you can't predictThe difference between leadership and commandTrust-based teams vs. compliance-based teamsWhat courage actually means when you've faced itThe mental models that work before the fire, in the fire, and after the fireKC is world class. Not best in class. There's a distinction.She celebrates humanness without diluting intentionality. No ego. No judgment. Absolute focus on the mission. She's built a life leading people through chaos when failure costs lives.The frameworks that kept her alive matter to anyone navigating their own version of aircraft damaged, still flying.Fight or Fl1ght brings you voices from the edge. Lessons from the fire. Olympians, generals, philosophers, founders, poets. People doing the work that quietly reshapes worlds. Each arrives with something earned—a story formed under pressure, a decision made when nothing was guaranteed.These aren't performances. These are transmissions.Hosted by Myles Levin.
Mar 13
39 min
S2E11 | Suzanne "Xena" Lesko: The Duality of Resilience
"The sum is greater than the parts."We held this episode for a week. Some conversations need to breathe before they hit the air. This is one of them.Dropping on International Women's Day, S2E11 features Suzanne Xena Lesko. This isn't your standard influencer self-help chatter. This is an exploration of a presence that defies conventional stereotypes.Suzanne represents a striking contradiction: A combat veteran trained in SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) and primal survival, who is simultaneously a deep practitioner of Buckminster Fuller's systems thinking and Biomimicry.It is physicality meets mental resolve, packaged in a breathtaking aura of wholesomeness and operational rigor.IN THIS EPISODE:Self-Reliance vs. Team Play: How the individual "parts" evolve to create a superior "sum."The SERE Mindset: Navigating hostile environments without losing your humanity.Biomimicry in Leadership: Applying nature's frameworks to human systems and resiliency.Service In and Out of Uniform: A celebration of a career spent in the 1% of the 1%.This is a free-flowing conversation for those optimizing today for a BTR™ tomorrow. No vanity metrics. No noise. Just signal.Listen. Experience the presence. Understand the framework."Git Sum."CONNECT WITH SUZANNE LESKO:Website: https://www.suzannelesko.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzanneleskoLinktree: https://linktr.ee/suzanneleskoFIGHT OR FL1GHT — FIND US EVERYWHERE:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FightorFl1ght/videosApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fight-or-fl1ght/id1840181942Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4ZeDZf8ofdJ0g6tgTOX4CgInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/fightorfl1ght/CONNECT WITH YOUR HOST — MYLES JEFFREY:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mylesjeffreylevin/Stella I Am: https://www.stellaiam.com/
Mar 8
27 min
S2E10 | He Filmed Wars. Then He Uncovered a Massacre America Forgot. | Jim Fabio |
What does it mean to tell the truth when your camera is the only witness?Jim Fabio has spent 30 years answering that question—through war zones in Haiti, Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan as a U.S. Air Force Combat Camera Officer, behind the lens at the NFL Network, and as an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker who refuses to let forgotten stories die quietly.In this episode, Jim breaks down what it really takes to craft a story that moves people—why truth in documentary filmmaking is rarely as simple as pointing a camera and pressing record, what combat taught him about narrative under pressure, and why the Orangeburg Massacre is a chapter of American history that can no longer be ignored."Every story is about people." — Jim FabioVoices from the edge. Lessons from the fire.Fight-or-Fl1ght
Mar 2
2 hr 12 min
S2E9 | Ryan Garay — When the Plan Meets Contact
Nine years. U.S. Army Special Forces. 7th Group. Multiple global deployments in environments designed to kill the signal. Ryan Garay kept the team connected anyway.Then he took the beret off. Walked into rooms he wasn't supposed to be in yet. And figured it out.Since transitioning, he's driven over a billion dollars in defense technology impact and spent years quietly building something for the operators who come after him; Operator to Executive LLC.In this episode we go past the surface. What holds when the pressure is real and nothing in your toolkit is cutting it. What it costs to rebuild an identity in a world that doesn't speak your language. What you do when the wolves show up in your network dressed right. What carries you when the plan meets contact and everything goes sideways.Ryan answered all of it.Hosted by Myles Levin | Fight-or-Fl1ght drops new episodes regularly — follow the show so you never miss one.
Feb 25
48 min
S2E8 | Free Will is a Lie — Your Brain Decided Before you Did | Valerie Starratt, PhD
What if every decision you've ever made... was already made for you?In S2E8, Myles sits down with Dr. Valerie Starratt — biobehavioral scientist, statistician, and recovering academic turned real-world operator — and the conversation will mess with your head in the best possible way.Dr. Starratt spent nearly two decades as an experimental scientist, writer, and professor at Florida Atlantic University before taking her expertise off the page and into the field. Now she works where the stakes are real — military, sports, organizations — and what she's learned will fundamentally change how you see yourself.Your biology is running the show. Your "choices" are largely afterthoughts. And your phone? It's hijacking your dopamine system by design.In this episode:— Why free will is more myth than reality— How your blood sugar might be making your decisions— What genetics and environment are actually fighting over— Why elite performance can't be reduced to a test score— How variable reinforcement has you addicted and you don't even know it— What psilocybin might mean for trauma and PTSD— How to actually use behavioral science to perform at your ceilingThis isn't motivation. This isn't a hack. This is the raw science of human behavior — and once you hear it, you can't unhear it.Your brain was already going to make you press play.
Feb 24
57 min
TITLE: S2E7 | His Son Was Killed on Snapchat. The Company Knew. | Samuel Chapman
Sammy Chapman was 16. Curious. Industrious. Business-minded.Then he connected with a dealer on Snapchat. One pill. Fentanyl. Gone.What his father Samuel discovered afterward changed everything: Snapchat knew. They knew drugs were being sold. They knew kids were dying. They knew their design facilitated it. They chose not to warn anyone—because warning would hurt their bottom line.This isn't a "them" problem. This is us. We were all children once. We all live in communities where the young and vulnerable need our protection.Samuel Chapman calls himself an "accidental activist." He shouldn't have to be one at all.This conversation covers Sammy's life, the fentanyl epidemic, Snapchat's willful negligence, and the legislative fight for Sammy's Law.Connect with Samuel:The Parent CollectiveConnect with the Podcast:instagram.com/fightorfl1ghtyoutube.com/@FightorFl1ght
Feb 22
52 min
S2E6 | Dr. Allison Brager — The Neuroscience of Being Unbreakable
What separates those who perform under pressure from those who collapse? The answer lives inside your brain — and Dr. Allison Brager has spent her career proving it.Dr. Brager is a neuroscientist working at the intersection of military operations, sleep science, and elite human performance. She's studied soldiers in combat, humans pushed to the edge in Antarctic isolation, and the genetic code that determines who thrives when nothing is guaranteed. Next stop: space.In this episode she breaks down the science most people never hear — why your chronotype may be quietly costing you, how the brain rewires itself under sustained stress, what isolation research reveals about human adaptability, and why psychedelics are no longer fringe science in PTSD treatment.She also makes the case for the most underrated performance variable of all: humility.This is not a highlight reel. This is a transmission from someone doing the actual work.If this episode hits — share it. Rate us 5 stars. And subscribe so you never miss a voice from the edge.The Fight-or-Fl1ght Podcast | Voices from the edge. Lessons from the fire.
Feb 21
57 min
S2E5 | Bleeding on Ice for the Shot – FIELDBORN Creative on Real Storytelling
A Subaru-sized boulder breaks from the glacier. Kaare has 2 seconds to capture it—no safety net, just the shot. This is what separates real storytelling from manufactured content.Dan and Kaare from FIELDBORN Creative don't make "content." They document the moments most brands would never risk—because the story demands it.In this episode:→ Why Patagonia doesn't sell jackets (they sell refusal to compromise)→ How Sitka built a brand on earned wisdom, not algorithms→ What happens when you choose freezing over fabricatingNo frameworks. No funnels. Just the unvarnessed truth about storytelling that doesn't bend.FIELDBORN Creative: fieldborncreative.comMore episodes: Search "Fight-or-Flight Podcast" on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTubeIf this resonates, leave us a 5-star review and tell us what shot YOU took that others wouldn't.
Feb 16
52 min
S2E4 | He Almost Didn't Make It. Now He's Saving Others. | Zach Maddox
13 million Americans suffer from PTSD. 45% numb the pain with alcohol.Zach Maddox was one of them.A firefighter for seven years, Zach reached a point where he knew how he'd end it—he just hadn't set a date. Then he chose a different path. Now he runs Healing Heroes Guide Company, helping first responders find healing through movement, outdoors, and conversation.This episode covers trauma, vulnerability, and why asking for help is strength—not weakness.Connect with Zach:Healing Heroes Guide CompanyConnect with the Podcast:instagram.com/fightorfl1ghtyoutube.com/@FightorFl1ghtIf you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988.
Feb 14
33 min
Load more