This one’s heavy fam – strap in.

Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men tells the true story of the Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Police Order and their role in Poland in the early 1940’s. It’s a damning encapsulation of what atrocities can become justifiable to reasonable men, when the journey to evil is broken down into small steps.

As men, it’s easy to think we would make better decisions in other people’s shoes, that we would be the hero, not the villain. We assume this ignorant both to the small innocuous decisions along their path which compounded into an unimaginable broader outcome, and also ignorant to the statistical probability of such. That is to say that if you were a German, born in the early 20th century, it’s 99.9% likely you became a Nazi, rather than became a hero hiding Anne Frank in your ceiling. We all know it’s wrong, but not many know that we would likely have been as wrong if we wore their shoes.

If you adequately understand the above, it’s confronting.

Once you understand the worst you are capable of, your judgement will usually be replaced by empathy for those who have taken a rougher path than you.

So, how does a handsome, tall, athletic, well-raised private schoolboy & politics graduate, end up being arrested naked when customs raid his parents' house with a drug warrant?

By in moments of weakness giving the wrong answer to a series of innocuous questions, across over a decade or so of life. By taking small misjudged steps, without the foresight to see the culmination of those steps was the road to hell. If you’ve read Ordinary Men, or if you’ve lived a rough life yourself, you know the answer is exactly that, and seemingly benign.

That’s explainable.

What we want to know, and what is hard to explain, is how in the fuck do you rebuild your life after that?

Michael Claydon tells us how he found a way to the surface, and how he's now starting to thrive.