Optimizing Human Performance in Combat with Allison Brager

Bonnie Evangelista [00:00:03]:
All right. Good morning. I'm Bonnie Evangelista with the chief digital and artificial intelligence office, joined by Alison Brager. Did I get that right?

Allison Brager [00:00:11]:
Yes, you did.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:00:11]:
All right, give us a 32nd rundown. Who are you? Where do you sit? In government or not? And what do you care about?

Allison Brager [00:00:17]:
Sure. So, I'm actually a major in the US army, one of few neuroscientists. I am a former CrossFit games athlete and an aspiring astronaut. So because of that, I care about human performance. How can we continue to push ourselves psychologically and physiologically to our upper limits? And then how we can leverage science and technology to continue pushing those limits every day, you know, weeks, months, years on end.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:00:47]:
How long have you been in the army?

Allison Brager [00:00:49]:
I actually hit seven years this week.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:00:51]:
Yeah?

Allison Brager [00:00:51]:
Yeah. It was a direct commission. So I joined the army when I was 33.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:00:55]:
Wow. How did that intersection happen?

Allison Brager [00:00:58]:
So my call to service was actually 911. I was a senior when 911 happened. I actually was getting recruited at the time by west point and the naval Academy, but when it came time to choose a college, our country just went to war. So my parents were like, no, I'm sorry. You can't go to a service academy. So I ended up going to pretty much the antithesis of West Point, not in spite of them, but because I really liked it, which was brown. But that. That call to service is always in the back of my mind.

Allison Brager [00:01:30]:
So, years later, I was doing a postdoctoral fellowship through the national Academies of Sciences, which brought me to the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Maryland. And my very first day there, the department chair of the center for Military Psychiatry and Neuroscience, he sat me down, and he's like, hey, have you ever thought about serving? And I told him this backstory, and he's like, okay, I'm going to call up the recruiter in DC right now. And so he called him up, and he's like, I want to. In four months.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:02:00]:
Oh, wow.

Allison Brager [00:02:00]:
So I probably had the fastest commissioning ever because I had now retired Colonel Sipos vouching for me and vetting me, like, right from the get go.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:02:10]:
How has your army career? What has that been like for you?

Allison Brager [00:02:14]:
Oh, it's been amazing. You know, I was in academia. Did, like that whole ivory tower, you know, fight to get research grants before the army. Before the army, yeah. So I was research faculty at Morehouse School of Medicine, and then I used to teach the neuroscience course at Morehouse College, which is part of the historically black university system where Martin Luther King went in Atlanta. And what I love about the army is the selfless service. Right. As everything we do, the intent is to give back to the warfighter and to help the army's mission in some way.

Allison Brager [00:02:50]:
I love the breadth and depth of collaboration with academia and industry. Always going after these high risk, high reward ideas and systems. Yeah. I am a science and technology acquisitions officer, and I'm actually probably one of the few people who actually enjoys acquisitions. It's truly how I think. I love that systems engineering approach to a problem. So I've been having a great time. And then I actually also took an operational pause from science.

Allison Brager [00:03:24]:
I shouldn't say science. I took an operational pause from traditional army duties for two years and competed professionally in CrossFit for the army as well.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:03:34]:
Let's segue to that, because I heard there was two interesting things when you said you competed in CrossFit, but also you're an aspiring astronaut, so we'll put astronaut to the side for a second. When did you start competing in CrossFit?

Allison Brager [00:03:47]:
So, I'm a Crossfit OG. I started in 2011, my last year of graduate school, when CrossFit was finally up and around. So I grew up and went to high school and ran track and field with Dan Bailey, like one of the early CrossFit games ogs, he moved back to northeastern Ohio. I was there doing my PhD at the time at Kent State.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:04:11]:
Yeah.

Allison Brager [00:04:12]:
So I, you know, I'm lucky and that I started doing CrossFit in 2011 with already games athletes. So Dan was competing at the time, Lisa Hsu. That whole group in northeast Ohio was getting after it, and so I really enjoyed just every day I'd get beaten. The gym.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:04:30]:
Yeah.

Allison Brager [00:04:31]:
And pretty much my whole career after that, I would just surround myself with athletes who are better than me.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:04:36]:
We were talking earlier off mic about the resiliency of humans. That is definitely a sport where I believe you have to have a certain resiliency to take your body to not just the edge, but past the edge to compete the way they do in CrossFit. Can you talk a little bit more about that? What was that like for you? Did you see that? Did you observe that? Did you feel that?

Allison Brager [00:04:59]:
Yeah. I mean, honestly, I think with my own research, I really. That's why I fell in love with CrossFit, is because a lot of my own research is about this idea of reaching new homeostasis. So it's this principle called allostasis, where basically you keep establishing a new set point, whether it's like a fitness standpoint, a set point, a psychological set point, and how you do that is through constant exposure to mild stress and oftentimes extreme stress. The human body in the brain is just so incredible in how it's able to adapt. And, you know, that's what I love about CrossFit, even still today, as a retired games athlete, is the adaptations that still take place. I might not be as strong as I used to be, but I'm more efficient now, and I move better than even when I was competing and at the height of my career.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:05:51]:
What's the thing you're most proud of from your CrossFit days?

Allison Brager [00:05:57]:
I would say the first time we went to the CrossFit Games, we were the bad news bears. Like, going into regionals, we had a little bit of team conflict. We weren't quite sure who we were going to choose. And then after regionals, one of our girls, she was talented, but she just wasn't a good teammate. So we had to make the hard decision and go with somebody else and sort of rebuild the team, rebuild morale and all that. And then that year at the games, we were ranked, like, almost dead last coming in, and we ended up finishing in, like, the top 15 that year.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:06:32]:
This is while you're on the army team?

Allison Brager [00:06:34]:
Well, no, this is different. This is before 2013. Okay. Yeah. So I did the army team. I was pretty much a masters athlete then, so I did the army team from 2019 up until 2022.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:06:47]:
So, in that 2013, uh, beginnings, between your army competition days, were you still competing?

Allison Brager [00:06:55]:
I was, yeah. So I've, um. I've never missed a crossfit open. This is my 14th. There's been 14 opens, and this is my 14th open. Um.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:07:04]:
You're still competing?

Allison Brager [00:07:05]:
Yeah, I still compete. I mean, it's different now. I'm a masters athlete. You know, if I make it to quarterfinals, um, it looks like I should. If I do well in this net, I mean, I will. If I do even decent on this next workout, I will. But, you know, if I don't make the games as a masters, it's okay. I've been there before on the big stage on a team.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:07:25]:
So, were you invited to join the army team because they knew you had all that experience, and, well, I tried.

Allison Brager [00:07:31]:
Out for it, so, basically, they thought CrossFit would be great for recruiting. So, in 2019, General Muth, he was the commanding general of the recruiting command, he basically wanted to bring CrossFit into the recruiting realm and have it align with the world class athlete program at the Olympic Training center. So there was a call for tryouts. 450 people applied, and then they invited about 35 athletes to CrossFit hard knocks, which is right off base of Fort Knox, Kentucky, for a tryout. And then from that, they selected twelve crossfitters. So I was one of the people selected. Honestly, most of us were already competing or had competed in the games and regionals in the past. Smith was part of this original team, Deanna Clegg.

Allison Brager [00:08:19]:
Folks who had competed as individuals and in regionals and games.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:08:24]:
Yeah, yeah. How was that doing competing with an army team versus, like, what, your journey before that?

Allison Brager [00:08:32]:
I mean, it definitely was easier in that that was my sole focus. Like, that was my only job, you know, is like, we train five or 6 hours a day, which for me as a master's athlete was already a lot. But, you know, I wasn't going to be like, oh, I'm a master's athlete. Like, you know, most of my teammates were about ten years younger than me. I'm just going to trust the process. So that's all we did. Had a huge focus on recovery. We had a lot of great local businesses around us who were willing to help us with recovery.

Allison Brager [00:09:03]:
And then we would also, like, recruit in high schools, too. So before our competitions, we would strategically go to high schools, be like an honorary gym teacher, sort of like at Kenny powers for the day.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:09:18]:
Yeah.

Allison Brager [00:09:19]:
And then talk to high schoolers about why we joined the army. Unfortunately, most of my time on the team was during COVID but we were strategic in that a lot of army operations did continue during COVID and recruiting and went to states where COVID was not as prevalent or was more suppressed than New York City and those hotspots.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:09:47]:
And you said you did that for two years.

Allison Brager [00:09:49]:
Yeah, so I did that for two years. And then my third year, you know, I'm an officer, so I had the opportunity to take command and it ended up being a really good command and a really good life lesson. So I'm a medical officer by trade and I was asked to command a transportation unit. So the army has a fleet of truck drivers who spend eleven months a year on the road doing recruiting for the army. So basically they go to high schools, fairs, festivals, major sporting events. It's a really challenging job because essentially they're gone from January up until almost close to Thanksgiving. And so if they have a family, they can't see their family, so they, they miss all their family important events, birthdays, anniversaries, kids birthdays. They're like, essentially not allowed to come home unless it's an emergency.

Allison Brager [00:10:45]:
So being their commander, I mean, pretty much my job was to protect their morale, health, and welfare, and keep them safe, because, let's be real, they're driving this 18 wheeler truck that can kill anyone and anything on the road. So I actually took that as an opportunity, given my background in sleep physiology, that's my area of expertise, to develop fatigue management policies to make sure that they stopped driving close after sunset, that they were getting sufficient recovery days to just decompress from the stress of the road. It was kind of an uphill battle at first to get this done, because I was working for people who are combat arms officers at the time. So once we got over the initial hump of me being an entitled medical officer, we came to terms that this was the right way ahead. And actually, those policies are still in place today. But it did take time, dedication, and sort of a reevaluation of myself and how I present ideas to people. So I really took that as an opportunity of personal growth in many regards.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:11:57]:
So you said there was an appearance or an expression of you being an entitled medical officer. Where do you think that was coming from?

Allison Brager [00:12:07]:
Well, because the army for years, right. The constant messaging is I'll sleep when I'm dead. It's almost as if there's a competition to who sleeps less, who is acting the most ridiculous during a national training center exercise, and who does stupid things while they're sleep deprived.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:12:29]:
Is it like a sign of weakness?

Allison Brager [00:12:31]:
Exactly. It's a sign of weakness and vulnerability. But I come from a different area of research that the army promotes. Like, when I was at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, that is the bulk of our research, is how sleep provides that resiliency, emotionally, physically, psychologically, that you cannot get from anything else but sleep. So for me to come in and be like, hey, I'm going to give these guys more rest and more sleep, and they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. They're not going to be able to meet their missions. And I'm like, no, yes, they will.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:13:02]:
And they'll probably do it better.

Allison Brager [00:13:03]:
Yeah. And they did. So at the end of my command, we had no accidents. So I was the first commander in ten years where we didn't have an accident on the road. Maybe it's luck, but I do think the fatigue policies help the morale of the company was far better than what I started with. That was part of the reason why I took the command is because I'm a generally positive, high energy person, and they needed somebody like that to sort of rescue the morale of the company. And I think it was a good learning lesson for the combat arms officers that were in charge and higher up in terms of, like, wow, you know, I think I was doing it wrong my whole career. Like, maybe I should have been focused on this sleep thing after all.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:13:45]:
That's powerful.

Allison Brager [00:13:46]:
Yeah, no, it was. It was a good, it was a hard eight months, but it was a great eight months.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:13:51]:
Do you feel like you changed their culture with that?

Allison Brager [00:13:54]:
I do. I think I do feel like I changed their mindset.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:13:58]:
You know, the soldiers, the belief structure, maybe?

Allison Brager [00:14:00]:
Exactly. Even with the soldiers, like, the soldiers, to me, what they saw is I was protecting them, because ultimately that's your job as commanders, to protect your soldiers at all costs. And then for the leaders, I think going on to other assignments, and I know this is true, they actually have structured bedtime routines now. They actually take time during the day to just sort of decompress and maybe engage in mindfulness or some five minute nap, something like that. So I do think they're indirect effects, but they're indirect. 2nd, 3rd, 4th order effects.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:14:38]:
Yeah. What are you doing now?

Allison Brager [00:14:41]:
So I am the deputy chief science officer for the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare center and school. I was brought there after my time with the recruiting command to set up a system to do human subjects research and transition research tech into operations and training. My background, again, is in science and technology acquisitions, and so they wanted somebody in my skillset to do that. And so I spent my first year sort of creating the policies, creating a framework, forming connections across special operations, but also academia and industry to look at, you know, how we can leverage tech and the best discovery based science out there to improve and optimize our training and to increase selection at special forces. And then this year, now that I have a chief science officer, hired, Doctor Ken Hutchinson, I can focus more on these tech developments that we're doing through, through the help of special operations command.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:15:54]:
And how are you bridging? I'll say the gap. I don't know if you see it as a gap, the academic community and the operator community to do what you're talking about.

Allison Brager [00:16:05]:
So I am fortunate in that I've spent most of my career working with academia to get stuff done in government. We can't act as a silo. I mean, we drive the process, we drive the ideas. I mean, we drive the money, right. We provide the vehicles through money and the resources to get the job done. But the academics, I mean, they are your creative, out of the box big thinkers that we need, especially in the world of modernization and innovation, to get the job done. So we create a lot of partnerships through cooperative research agreements with academia and some of the best academics in a particular area to get the job done.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:16:46]:
Hmm. What. What's something you're working on right now that you. Where you see that as an example, maybe not an exemplar, but just a. An example for us to how you're doing that? Like, what's a great partnership where maybe groups are talking together now where they weren't before, and that's spurring the innovation you're talking about or something like that.

Allison Brager [00:17:08]:
So, a lot of my background is actually in genetics and physiology, so doing, like, large scale genomic sequencing of DNA, looking at protein expression through rna, it's a very unique skillset, and while there are some DoD facilities that have those types of equipment and training, there aren't many. So I've, in the past, created these cooperative research agreements with high level academic computing labs to essentially do our genome sequencing in our screening at a much reduced cost than paying one of our defense contractors to do the same. And it's been great because from this, we've learned that some people are just more genetically resilient than others. There are what we call genetic trade offs in that, because there's so much uniqueness in human DNA and the human genome, that some people, through naturally occurring mutations, are more resilient to stress and sleep deprivation than other people are.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:18:17]:
And are you taking that type of research to inform how we do, or. I'm imagining. I don't know what that looks like in your community, but how you assess, maybe.

Allison Brager [00:18:31]:
Yeah. So, not so much how we assess, but just sort of further credence for why we need inter individualized programming sometimes. So, like, during actual assessment and selection. Right. There is a method behind the madness. Like, there is a specific reason why we have these certain tasks that you're doing, because they translate onto warrior battle tasks that you would do in combat and can contribute to mission success in combat. But on the back end or the front end, how people train can be very different. Perfect example.

Allison Brager [00:19:06]:
Men and women should not train the same. I always like to joke that testosterone is one hell of a drug, but it's absolutely true, and that men are capable of just building strength over time and time again, like, they can constantly work up to a new max effort, max load, and rarely see consequences of injury. Women can't do that. We are like the ultimate endurance athlete, where we can sustain at maybe 80% to 85%, but as soon as we get past that 85%, then we're really presenting ourselves at risk for injury.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:19:42]:
Yeah.

Allison Brager [00:19:43]:
So that. And that's just one example. All driven by genetics, which is then driven by hormones, which is then driven by performance and behavior, I'm imagining there's.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:19:52]:
Some type of technology behind all of this to help you get those data points, those data markers that you're talking about, and make those individualized either programs or ways in which how you treat the individual, the human, essentially, is, what kind of tech are you looking at? Or is helping you create what you're talking about.

Allison Brager [00:20:16]:
So there is tech that's coming out there now to help us with this. I was just at a women's military symposium on Friday hosted by the Valkyrie Project, which is a nonprofit helping women, particularly in special forces, feel inclusive and to get the most out of their careers. And there's this woman who actually introduced this new inter individualized strength and conditioning program, specific. Specific for women. So, taking into account, like, even things like your menstrual cycle and how during different phases of the menstrual cycle, you are stronger or you are weaker than others, and it's actually the reverse of what you think, like, during your. When you're actually menstruating. Like, you're actually pretty strong because of just the different hormones that are favored during that time. So just, again, just using AI in different real time data collection, biometrics, to determine, like, how intensely somebody should train every day, you know, whether they should take a day off or maybe do, like, active recovery, whether they should go hard that day, that technology is being developed and it is being deployed, you know, at short scale level, but hopefully long term, long scale level in the future.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:21:38]:
What's something you maybe want to see differently or where maybe we pivot? I don't know if this is culturally or from a policy perspective that helps people in your community be more resilient. And you gave an example when you took command of the group that was driving for long periods of time. You created policy that made sure they rested so that they were more resilient when they were doing their job and whatnot. What are you looking at from a more strategic perspective, where maybe you want to see more of something happen?

Allison Brager [00:22:14]:
So, honestly, that's it, right? There is policies around rest and recovery, because we know when it comes to resiliency, it goes back to Newton's second law. For every reaction, there's an equal, opposing reaction. So for every moment of activity, especially if you're doing high intensity, high up operational tempo, you need that equivalent amount of rest to recover and reset.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:22:40]:
Right?

Allison Brager [00:22:40]:
Like that is at the level of cells and behavior. That is what resiliency is, is the ability to rebuild and bounce back. Um, and as many rest, you know, I don't even call them fatigue management protocols, but just as many times as we can take small operational pauses that are intentional and help to rebuild, that's what's going to maximize and further increase our combat power and everything else.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:23:10]:
You also mentioned the S and T acquisition officer. What does that job look like for you? Because I'm not sure if I'm imagining the same thing. Based on what you're telling me, I'm not sure if you're doing the same thing I would imagine as an acquisition professional in the DoD.

Allison Brager [00:23:27]:
So essentially, most of the phds in uniform have to become science and technology acquisition certified at some point. Especially, you know, when you get to feel great officer status like that really does help with your promotion.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:23:42]:
Okay.

Allison Brager [00:23:42]:
So for our community, it can range anything from being a program manager to just engaging in like, 6162 or six three science.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:23:49]:
Okay.

Allison Brager [00:23:50]:
Essentially that's what I do is like, 6263. I rarely go beyond that. Sometimes I do six seven. So, like, when we get the product and we're trying to do like, human factors testing to get user feedback to see if it truly is fit operations, especially in like, extreme environments, then I do that as well.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:24:11]:
So how are you, we talked about how you're connecting with academia to bridge some gaps between, like what, what you research to have meaningful impact to the humans that are doing the job. How are you connecting to, let's say, the more the acquisition officers who are not doing R and D, so who are delivering capabilities against requirements, how are you making sure your research is going to tie into what they're doing?

Allison Brager [00:24:41]:
So I always meet with them first because, you know, I think I learned I didn't have to learn any hard lessons early on in my career. I think I just got enough exposure to what the process is like beyond the, like, online DAU courses. Just like even before I was in uniform and I was a contractor for the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, as a postdoc, I used to get invited to the annual portfolio review where we would have the program managers there from the military Operational Medicine research program and all the people in uniform that are acquisition professionals, but not tied to research to talk about. These are the capability gaps and these are how we fill them. So I've always, with any project I've ever been a part of, and who from academia I want to recruit, or who from industry I want to leverage, I always have that strategic vision first, you know, going from that, and then. So a top down approach instead of a bottom up, because the bottom up never works. I shouldn't say never works. It's.

Allison Brager [00:25:45]:
It's less likely to work.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:25:46]:
Right. Right. All right, I want to pivot to where you started. Aspiring astronaut.

Allison Brager [00:25:52]:
Yeah.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:25:54]:
What are you doing? You want to go to space?

Allison Brager [00:25:56]:
Yeah. So I actually. I was a semi finalist for the last class of 2020 astronauts. So I made it through the round of 120. So I spent about a week and a half at Johnson Space center going through assessment and selection there. Got to meet 21 of the astronauts. They basically sat me in the center of a room and drilled me with questions for an hour. So it was really cool to meet, like, three of the four people who will be on the moon very soon.

Allison Brager [00:26:25]:
And. Yeah, so I reapplied just last week. So the pipeline reopened last week. It's every four years, and I'll hear maybe about a year from now, like, if I made it to the next round. But this has been a goal of mine since I was seven years old.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:26:40]:
I was gonna ask, because you've already had such a depth of experience in your career going in different sectors, and where did space come from? It sounds like.

Allison Brager [00:26:53]:
So I grew up in Ohio. Right. So I grew up in Ohio. When I was in second grade.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:26:58]:
Was it Dayton, Ohio?

Allison Brager [00:26:59]:
No. So I grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, northeast Ohio. And, you know, everyone does a report on Neil Armstrong, John Glenn. Honestly, if I could be, like, the female version of John Glenn, where I become an astronaut and then serve in Congress later, that's actually what I want to do in my career. But there's that. And then my great uncle Carl Lexoff, he was a program manager for the Apollo program.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:27:25]:
Wow.

Allison Brager [00:27:26]:
So he lived in Langley, Virginia, and he spent his whole career working on the Apollo missions, which was really cool.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:27:34]:
That impacted you?

Allison Brager [00:27:35]:
Yeah, it definitely did. Yeah. So he got his degree in aerospace engineering from Youngstown State University and went on to be a hometown hero.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:27:46]:
So. Wow. What was it like being in the room with the. You said there was, like, 20 or so astronauts just filling you with questions. What was that like?

Allison Brager [00:27:57]:
I mean, it's one of those things that's so. Yeah, it was, like, inside, I was nervous. Right. I was talking, and I remember, like, clenching my hands. Cause I didn't. I'm a hand talker, and I didn't want to, like, be overly superfluous just because, you know, I was nervous. But I don't think I realized how surreal it was until afterwards. And then when they selected the four people for the moon mission, I'm like, oh, my God.

Allison Brager [00:28:20]:
Like, I literally. And not just.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:28:22]:
You were that close.

Allison Brager [00:28:23]:
Yeah. But the whole week, you. They have different happy hours and stuff at night where you meet all the different big players at NASA, all the astronauts who are there and not training or on mission, they come do, like, just meet with you at this hotel that they had us at. And I just think if you're present in the moment, you're not appreciating, like, how rare and real of an experience this is. But, like, after the fact, years later, you're like, oh, my gosh. Like, I was a part of that. And I think, like, one of the coolest things for me, at least my first time around, was the two people from my cohort, Jack and Jess, who were selected. So my cohort is the first to start training for, potentially, Mars.

Allison Brager [00:29:13]:
So while we were there, there was this styrofoam cooler that we all signed our names on, and then we told jack and Jess, they got to bring this cooler to space with them one day. So hopefully they'll be this cooler hanging out in the space station, and one day maybe I can go and get a beer from it or something like that.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:29:34]:
What a dream. That's amazing. I have a feeling I haven't known you for very long. I feel space is probably one of the biggest dreams a person can have, but I feel like you're going to take it further. You just keep going, oh, yeah, I know. You're just going to. You're going to get to space, and then there's going to be another big thing right behind it.

Allison Brager [00:29:54]:
Yeah. I mean, that's just how I live my career. I mean, people think I'm crazy, but I would do the one way mission to Mars. Like, if there was, like, okay, you're going to go on Mars, try to colonize it, and you're not coming home. Like, I I would do that. You know, it's just. That's just. Just who I am, you know, just always looking for the next physiological, psychological challenge.

Allison Brager [00:30:15]:
Just always trying to be 1% better every day.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:30:17]:
Wow. So one of my new favorite questions to ask guests like yourself. Uh, you, you. This may not be unfamiliar to you. Apparently this is a Midwest thing, but would you dip your grilled cheese in hot chocolate?

Allison Brager [00:30:33]:
You know what I mean? Yes, 100%. I've never done it before.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:30:37]:
Have you heard of that before?

Allison Brager [00:30:38]:
I have not.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:30:39]:
Okay, so, apparently it's a Midwest thing, and I was so intrigued by it, I ask everybody now.

Allison Brager [00:30:44]:
Oh, I know. Because you grew up with those county fairs, right? Like, I like sweet, savory things. Like my wife likes to say I have the, the palate of an eight year old. Like, I, I love.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:30:57]:
Yeah. Because you, you were, you were committed. I can tell. You're like, I would totally do that.

Allison Brager [00:30:59]:
Yeah. Like chocolate covered gummy bears. Like, I know that seemed really gross and nasty, but I love them.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:31:04]:
Um, but what's another eight year old thing you like to eat? Um, let's see.

Allison Brager [00:31:10]:
Now and laters.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:31:11]:
Uh.

Allison Brager [00:31:11]:
Laughs those are terrible.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:31:13]:
Now and laters.

Allison Brager [00:31:14]:
Yes. I go to, like, the shady gas station, and by now and laters, I just, I always.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:31:21]:
Are they stale? You know, they get stuck in your teeth. The funeral thing.

Allison Brager [00:31:28]:
Oh, my God. So love those.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:31:29]:
It's such an eight year old thing.

Allison Brager [00:31:31]:
It is an eight year old thing. Yes, I have. Yeah. Maybe that's good for space, though, because. Oh, yeah, you know, you're gonna get.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:31:37]:
A lot of that. You get a lot of that.

Allison Brager [00:31:38]:
I mean, I remember those fond memories of, like, going to the air and space museum in DC and having the frozen strawberries or ice cream, dippin dots.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:31:50]:
Ice cream of the future.

Allison Brager [00:31:51]:
So. I never liked dippin dots. There's something about the texture and, like, how frozen they were that it always just numbed my, my mouth.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:31:58]:
So rather than enjoy it.

Allison Brager [00:31:59]:
Yeah. But true story. So I actually, when I was going through selection the first time, my soldiers at the time were giving me, like, different packets of astronaut food. So I have a packet of, you know, the classic Napoleon ice cream, the pizza and the strawberries in a, in a cupboard, and I haven't opened them because my plan is, like, if and when I get selected, like, I want to, that's going to be my first meal, like, after, you know, I. Oh, man, you know.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:32:30]:
You've got a plan.

Allison Brager [00:32:32]:
Yeah, you're just manifesting.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:32:33]:
Oh, you were totally manifesting this. Well, I want to give you the last word. Anything else you want to tell people in terms of what you do, maybe encourage them or inspire them or anything you want them to be aware of?

Allison Brager [00:32:46]:
Well, I think, you know, I really wanted to talk about, like, the special operations truth, which is humans are more important than hardware. You know, technology is wonderful and it can be beautiful to help accomplish anything, whether something in your personal life or something like a combat operation. But it's not the be all, end all. The human user has to be engaged and has to be at his or her best in order for the whole process to be at its best. So I always like to say humans are more important than hardware.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:33:18]:
Humans first.

Allison Brager [00:33:18]:
Yep. Humans first.

Bonnie Evangelista [00:33:20]:
Thank you so much. This was truly a pleasure. I had a lot of fun.