#1820 - Jack Carr

[0] Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

[1] The Joe Rogan Experience.

[2] Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.

[3] And we're up.

[4] We are up.

[5] In the blood.

[6] In the blood.

[7] You are, without a doubt, within the last 20 years of my life, I've read more of your fiction than anybody else's.

[8] Dude, thank you.

[9] It's fact.

[10] I am honored.

[11] It's kind of a lie because I'm not reading it.

[12] I'm listening.

[13] I know, but it's kind of interchangeable today.

[14] Yes.

[15] It's sort of, but when I say, like, Donnell Rawlings give me a hard time.

[16] They do.

[17] He goes, how do you read it when you're just listening?

[18] Yeah.

[19] He's right.

[20] Yeah, it's listening.

[21] Reading is harder than listening.

[22] But I don't have that time.

[23] So, like, for me, it's like, I've finished your books in the sauna and on the commute to work.

[24] I'm going to try my best to get that out of my head.

[25] I'm wearing underwear.

[26] Still.

[27] You know, after training, it's very manly.

[28] Okay.

[29] It's very manly.

[30] Don't worry.

[31] People think of the sauna as, like, you know, like a leisure activity.

[32] Yeah.

[33] But the way I do it is pretty rough.

[34] I do it after training and I do it at 189 degrees and I do it for 25 minutes.

[35] It's hard.

[36] We're putting one of those in because of you and a bunch of other people that have talked about the benefits of doing that.

[37] So one's going in at the new house.

[38] It's a life change.

[39] Do you go between that and the cold thing?

[40] The cold bath?

[41] Yeah, I go back and forth.

[42] It's so easy once you go in the cold thing and then go back in 189 degrees.

[43] It's so easy.

[44] So I wind up doing, I usually do about 20 minutes in the hot until I can't.

[45] can't take it anymore and then I jump in the cold and then I do three minutes in the cold and then I could do another 15, 20 minutes easy in the hot before I start getting hot again just because your body is so cold.

[46] I know.

[47] It sounds not healthy though because it sounds like things are going like from open to closed and like I don't know.

[48] Bill's resilient.

[49] It seems like if I got one of those because we're definitely doing the hot one.

[50] It's going to have a nice view over the mountains and everything and then I'm thinking about putting in the cold tub and maybe, but I think it would just be almost for looks because I'd do it once and say that was horrible.

[51] I'm not doing that again.

[52] Why would one do that themselves?

[53] It's not that bad.

[54] It's not that bad.

[55] It's good.

[56] It's good for you.

[57] And you feel good.

[58] It wakes you up.

[59] Oh, yeah.

[60] I love it.

[61] I love it.

[62] I needed one this morning because my light got delayed last night.

[63] So I was in at like 3 .30 in the morning.

[64] And then up for interviews because the book just came out.

[65] And I was actually thinking about that.

[66] I was going to get in the cold shower.

[67] I'm going to turn it on.

[68] And when I got in that shower, there was no cold water now.

[69] It's hot out.

[70] Once it's hot out in Texas, the water's warm.

[71] But we're having one installed here.

[72] It'll be here at the end of the month.

[73] The cold or the hot?

[74] The cold and the hot.

[75] We'll have one back to back next to each other.

[76] I didn't take you next door.

[77] Let's check it out.

[78] Oh, I have a crazy.

[79] Afterwards, I'll show you the gym.

[80] Oh, nice.

[81] But we have, uh, at the house, I have a barrel sauna right next to the cold plunge, and it's the best.

[82] It's just going back and forth is, it's awesome.

[83] But Cam Hane says that the way to do the cold is you do the cold and then let your body heat up naturally.

[84] Okay.

[85] And that is the best way to get the most out of the cold.

[86] That sounds more healthy than just going like back and forth between the two.

[87] I don't know.

[88] It's hard to do.

[89] Last way I did last night.

[90] I went out last night.

[91] And so before me and the wife went out, I got in the cold plunge for like three minutes.

[92] And then it took hours before I felt warm.

[93] Oh, I was in the car freezing my ass off.

[94] And she's like, oh, my God, it's so hot.

[95] And she's turned the AC up.

[96] I'm like, shit.

[97] Because your body can, I mean, it's your hypothermic, essentially.

[98] I mean, you're on the verge of it because you can't, it's harder for you to warm your body back up.

[99] And that's what hypothermia is, you can't warm it back up on your own.

[100] So you're close if it's taking a while.

[101] I'm fine.

[102] I mean, three minutes, I'm fine.

[103] time it did 20 minutes that was that was hard that time it was in the summer and I was driving it was like in 90 degree weather and I was driving all the way to work with the windows rolled up and I was still freezing shivering no acion shivering yeah yeah I think there's I don't know that's not smart no I mean like I feel like I did that in buds and just like I'm good you've been there I think so I mean I feel like I don't need to keep doing it like somebody's thing the ocean on the Pacific is brutal it can be a little Oh, my God.

[104] People are used to the ocean on the Atlantic.

[105] The Atlantic Ocean is not bad, you know, especially from Florida.

[106] It's pretty nice.

[107] Yeah, and you get the warm water that comes up.

[108] Pacific just really stays cold the whole time.

[109] The whole time.

[110] And that's where most of the quitters come from in buds is because of that cold.

[111] Really?

[112] Yeah, yeah.

[113] That's interesting.

[114] I mean, the sleep deprivation part of it in Hell Week, I guess, plays in.

[115] But I think it plays in more because the cold's affecting your body more because you haven't slept in.

[116] For sure.

[117] Like Wednesday night and you're just freezing.

[118] But the worst part of it is when they put you a Wednesday.

[119] night.

[120] They let you sleep for a couple hours.

[121] So they put you in this tent on the beach.

[122] So you've been up since Sunday morning.

[123] You've been running.

[124] You're in and out of the water.

[125] So your body's like that cold, clammy sweat.

[126] And then they throw a bunch of dudes like age 18 to like 22 into a tent with no ventilation.

[127] And you're on these cots and you're just immediately going to REM sleep.

[128] And so you're just like shaking and your eyes rolling around.

[129] You're just like shaking in the bed there.

[130] And then it feels like one second.

[131] But it's really an hour and a half, two hours, something like that.

[132] And then they throw a flash crash grenade in and come shoot over the top of your head with M60 with blanks and you're like jolted out of this sleep and then right into the Pacific Ocean and you're in there locked arms with your buddies in the Pacific Ocean again and then you just get droves of quitters which is which great because I told me that the program was working yeah I did like that that is a thing that you can't soften up no if you want to make seals you have to make seals the way they make seals I think so I think so I mean obviously I've never done it but I can only imagine that there's only one way to do it correctly well I mean you're doing it every day, getting in and out of that barrel and then into the cold.

[133] Oh, please.

[134] It sounds like you're doing it to yourself.

[135] I sleep on nice sheets.

[136] I wake up, you know, 7 a .m. with alarm clock.

[137] Well, rest with you on.

[138] Yeah, no, it sounds like you're doing it each and every time.

[139] But I thought about this recently, and I thought that, hey, if you were today in today's day and age where we're all so comfortable and you were to come up with this program and say, hey, you know what, we should make these special operations guys in the Navy.

[140] And we'll call them seals and we'll have this hellweek thing where we keep them on the verge of hypothermia the whole time.

[141] A guy might die every now and again, but we'll find out through that if they have grit, if they have this intangible thing.

[142] And then they would take that up the chain of command and brief that to new admirals and captains up there.

[143] There's no way it would get approved.

[144] No way.

[145] The only reason that it's a program is because it's a legacy program.

[146] There's no way you create a program like that today.

[147] But that's the only way you're going to make the kind of people that are necessary to do those heavy -duty missions.

[148] Yeah.

[149] There's no other way because you've got to have someone who you know is not going to quit, is not going to fall apart.

[150] That's it.

[151] And is going to be able to be there for his fellow soldiers if shit goes sideways.

[152] That's right.

[153] You're not going to develop a person like that without some sort of extreme adversity, a test to see what you're made of.

[154] And also, I'd imagine, like, for a guy like you, you wanted to be a seal for a long time before you ever entered.

[155] So it was something that you built towards.

[156] You work towards.

[157] It was in your mind, and you had prepared yourself.

[158] You don't want someone who's like, maybe I'll try to be a seal.

[159] You know, I'm pretty badass.

[160] My mentality.

[161] Sometimes those guys do great.

[162] Like, I was always shocked how many people got to boot camp, and this is still days before the Internet, so late 90s, that hadn't heard of SEALs yet.

[163] And they are like, oh, I'll give that a shot, and they do great.

[164] And then you have guys like me that have been training their whole life for it, and then you have guys training their whole life for it that quit the first day type of a thing.

[165] God.

[166] And then you get people that find out about it in boot camp that also quit the first day.

[167] So you get everything in between as well.

[168] But it's really, you're testing for that thing you can't test for other than putting people through a crucible.

[169] And throughout history, there have been these different crucibles, these different tests, really, to allow men to be part of the tribe.

[170] And they have to pass these things.

[171] And today, it's a marine boot camp.

[172] It's seal training, Hell Week in particular.

[173] It's Robin Sage in the Q -Course for Special Forces.

[174] What is that?

[175] Robin Sage, it's a course as part of the Q -Corp.

[176] for Army Special Forces guys, where they go into a made -up country of Pineland and have to deal with a network of agents and tribes and that sort of thing, really based on counterinsurgency doctrine of the 50s and 60s and 70s.

[177] But it's a testing way that they test Special Forces soldiers as part of the last thing they do before they get that green beret.

[178] Wow.

[179] Yeah, it's very cool.

[180] So is Seals recognized as the most difficult path to go?

[181] Well, that's what I read when I was seven when I went down to the library with my mom and did some research into what seals were.

[182] That's when you first got into your head?

[183] Yep.

[184] Yeah, I saw a movie called The Frogman, which is a old black and white film that showed these guys coming up up at the beach.

[185] I forget the guy's name, and I'll remember it as soon as we're off, but it's an actor from like the 50s.

[186] Yeah, we can find out right now.

[187] Yeah, we have Jamie.

[188] Best one man at Googler on earth.

[189] He's the best.

[190] He's the best, but it's called the Frogman.

[191] And, yeah, Richard Woodmark.

[192] Wow, look how old that looks.

[193] Yeah, yeah, it's a old movie.

[194] This is from the 1950s?

[195] I think so, 51.

[196] There it is.

[197] So this was when it was, was it UDT back then?

[198] There was the Naval Combat Demolition Units in World War II, and I might have one of those letters slightly off, and then UDT, underwater demolition teams.

[199] Have you ever heard the Whiskey Myers song, Frogman?

[200] I don't think so.

[201] I can't believe I haven't heard that.

[202] Fuck.

[203] Really?

[204] It's great.

[205] I'll be listening to that shortly.

[206] Dude, Whiskey Myers is a shit.

[207] But look at this.

[208] So I saw this, so I was a remote control back in the 80s, you know, like we didn't have actual remote control.

[209] God, look at the scuba outfits.

[210] Yeah, check that out.

[211] Goofy looking.

[212] Look at that.

[213] He's carrying, hey.

[214] They fight like men from another world.

[215] Men from another world.

[216] Texas and Missouri written all over their hearts.

[217] You're a brave man, all of you are.

[218] You wouldn't be in this outfit.

[219] Nobody questions that.

[220] But your kind of bravery comes 10 cents a dozen and isn't worth a hoot more when the chips are done.

[221] Pause that for a second.

[222] One thing.

[223] You know, when people talk about the good old days, They don't make them like they used to.

[224] I'll tell you what, that doesn't apply to acting.

[225] I was a little different back then.

[226] We got some overacting going on.

[227] And it's terrible.

[228] They're all like that, too.

[229] They're all like that.

[230] Everybody, the best movie stars were terrible.

[231] I know.

[232] What is that?

[233] I don't know, but it changed.

[234] I don't know when it exactly changed, but I think 60s it started to change a little bit by late 60s, certainly.

[235] Then we have a period of time in the 70s where you had certain things going on.

[236] And so it's interesting how each decade, kind of like with music, has a different, almost style of acting.

[237] Yeah.

[238] Yeah.

[239] But it's just, I wonder, what do you think?

[240] what do you think it is jam what do you think what why were they bad it was just different it's subjective I think you just work off of what you heard before so they were all they had heard was like people acting on the radio maybe and these are the first things that they have to go off of and they're like I bet you just nailed it I bet that's exactly what it is because you had like those World War II reels the newsreels you know same thing right if you listen to those old newsreels about the attack on Pearl Harbor yeah way like they have that same kind of tone which is obviously different than what you had 10 years later, which is different than you had 10 years after that.

[241] So maybe it's all connected.

[242] Who knows?

[243] But there's a lot of that going on.

[244] Like if you listen to somebody on the radio and then that's the way you act, same thing.

[245] We're figuring out the way to have Chris Pratt in the show in the terminalist show break into a car.

[246] And what usually happens in Hollywood is someone like they break the window of the car or they get and then there's these two wires that are miraculously just underneath the dash and they just touch them and then it starts right up.

[247] And so because we wanted to root this in reality, the show, there's a part that got cut of Chris driving his land cruiser looking for another vehicle because he needs to get another one because the authorities know that the land cruiser is there.

[248] So he has to look for one that he knows how to break into.

[249] I went to a car stealing school a while back and learned all these different, what cars are easier to break into than others and that sort of thing.

[250] So we did it the exact way that you would break into that particular vehicle.

[251] So we had to find one, an older, I think it's an older pickup truck that he finds, and then he breaks into it the way that you would, and he starts the engine the way that you would.

[252] And unfortunately, some of that got cut out in the post -production.

[253] But point being, it was written into the script as goes into the car, touches the wires under the dash.

[254] Because I think that at one point in Hollywood, they're like, we need to break into this car, let's say, 1950 something.

[255] And that's what they did.

[256] And then every other movie from then on did essentially the same thing.

[257] Yes.

[258] Do you remember that movie?

[259] There was a movie with Charlie Sheen where he was a Porsche thief.

[260] All he did is steal Porsches?

[261] Yes.

[262] And who was in it with him?

[263] Somebody was in it with him.

[264] A guy that he'd been in a bunch of movies, but I don't know his name.

[265] And he was like an undercover cop that was like befriending Charlie Sheen.

[266] Here we go.

[267] D .B. Sweeney.

[268] That's who it was.

[269] Oh, wow.

[270] Geez.

[271] No man's land.

[272] That's like the first movie that got me really excited about Porsches.

[273] Nice.

[274] Because Charlie Sheen called Ferrari's Italian trash.

[275] All he would steal is Porsches.

[276] Nice.

[277] And they would steal Porsches and then, you know, the cops would try to trace them.

[278] But of course they couldn't catch him.

[279] Of course.

[280] Because a Porsche's handle so good.

[281] That's right.

[282] Going around corners and everything.

[283] And they're cool looking Porsche's.

[284] Like, look at those.

[285] Yeah, yeah.

[286] The 1980s.

[287] Oh, yeah.

[288] Yeah.

[289] There we go.

[290] Beautiful looking, looking, looking, little zippy cars.

[291] Man, I'm looking at that, like, a 9 -12.

[292] I've always wanted a 9 -12.

[293] Really?

[294] Why?

[295] Because it has the old engine, and it's like a old Volkswagen engine.

[296] Yeah, I just kind of like that.

[297] Because I have that FJ 40 now also that has original engine in it rebuilt, but it goes about top speed, about 40, 45.

[298] And there's just something about, like, 1960.

[299] 9 -12, maybe that slate gray they used to have back then or the British Racing Green or something like that.

[300] Look at that.

[301] There's one.

[302] There it is.

[303] Target top.

[304] Look at that.

[305] Sweet.

[306] So something cool like that.

[307] A little Sunday driver.

[308] Those cars are so light.

[309] It was like the affordable Porsche.

[310] Right.

[311] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[312] And so I don't know.

[313] I just always had a little affinity for those because everybody knows the 9 -11 and okay, that's wonderful, obviously.

[314] Well, it's basically the same look, right?

[315] Same look, but differentiation.

[316] Yeah, big difference.

[317] Somebody makes one that's, I think they put it on a Tesla body.

[318] Have you seen that?

[319] They dropped it.

[320] It was on, I think Jay Leno's garage showed it.

[321] I forget the name of the company, but they drop it on a Tesla body.

[322] So you have this thing that looks old.

[323] It looks like a 1968 Porsche 912, but it's really all Tesla'd out.

[324] Well, there is one company that makes an electric 964.

[325] I think it's a 964, and it fucking flies.

[326] But the problem is it's, oh, look at that.

[327] That's beautiful.

[328] God, that's beautiful.

[329] Look at that four is great.

[330] There it is.

[331] It's electric right there.

[332] Tesla swap.

[333] That must be so fast.

[334] Yeah.

[335] Because if you take that insane engine, but the problem with it is, for sure, the problem is that it's going to be an automatic.

[336] And it's one gear.

[337] And you miss...

[338] You miss all the working.

[339] So much of the fun of one of those cars is shifting the gears.

[340] Let me hear this.

[341] This is blasphemy.

[342] I don't know.

[343] I know.

[344] This should be outlawed.

[345] They should go to jail for this.

[346] Jesus.

[347] Yeah, it's fast, Jay Leno.

[348] But I like that it looks so clean and old.

[349] It looks like it's just right off the showroom floor in 68.

[350] And then it flies like a modern.

[351] I wonder if they're allowed to, or Abel, rather, to use anteloc brakes on something like that.

[352] I don't know.

[353] Probably the whole thing is, I don't know, whatever they have in Teslas.

[354] I don't know that Tesla.

[355] Well, Tesla's are pretty fucking amazing.

[356] I have the newest one, which you might as well be riding a roller coaster.

[357] I have the model S. Plaid.

[358] It's preposterous.

[359] Is there a new ludicrous mode, or is there something else?

[360] I don't know.

[361] I leave it on all the time.

[362] I leave it on.

[363] He goes zero to 60 in 1 .9 seconds.

[364] Dang.

[365] Really?

[366] A Ford door sedan that is very sedated looking.

[367] It's very family car looking.

[368] That thing is the fastest car I have.

[369] Really?

[370] I have race cars.

[371] You have a lot of...

[372] I have crazy fast cars.

[373] I have like muscle cars and I have a Porsche 9 -11 GT3.

[374] That's crazy.

[375] That car leaves that car in the dust.

[376] That Tesla buries them all.

[377] I know.

[378] If I had to choose one car, to drive, it would be that car.

[379] If I could only have to reduce it down to one car, because it's so effortless.

[380] Yeah.

[381] Like when you merge on the highway, it just goes, like all of a sudden, you're going 80 miles an hour.

[382] Like in a second.

[383] There's something to that, but I like that FJ40 that I have.

[384] It's, you know, four speed, but you're working it.

[385] I mean, you're in there.

[386] You can't be drinking coffee.

[387] You can't be doing anything else.

[388] You have to be.

[389] Oh, is this guy on the Nervegring?

[390] Oh, my God.

[391] Which one is this?

[392] This is what I have.

[393] This is the Model S Plaid.

[394] Oh, geez.

[395] Dude, this is a fucking preposterously fast car.

[396] That is crazy.

[397] It's so good.

[398] But I mean, it's not designed to handle like this, but it still handles better than, I had a Model S before this, like the, I think it's called the P100D, and that was pretty good, but this one handles a lot better.

[399] The new, the plaid handles better.

[400] But there's still a company called, I think it's called Unplugged.

[401] It's going to make them even faster?

[402] Yeah, they'd customize them.

[403] I don't know if they're, see if they're doing that with the Plaid, but they make them with carbon fiber brakes, a larger brake package.

[404] They put high -profile or low -profile tires, rather, that are wider.

[405] So I think they widened offenders a bit.

[406] They upgrade a platt, it says.

[407] Oh, Jesus.

[408] Well, I know we're yours.

[409] Ah, Jesus Christ, they turn into a goddamn race car.

[410] Look at that.

[411] Front splitter.

[412] Holy shit.

[413] That's crazy.

[414] Unplug performance aftermarket upgrades for the Tesla Model S. Platt.

[415] Long -range and improve your car.

[416] Suspension, brake system, aerodynamic capabilities, and others.

[417] We offer a range of track -oriented safety and performance upgrades, ensuring you both your track times.

[418] These sons of bitches They gotta make my car faster I don't need to work on my track time these days Look how beautiful that looks though Scroll down to that one right there Look at they do They widen the fenders I don't know if I can pull that off They put dope wheels on What you mean?

[419] I don't think it's me What?

[420] I don't like that FJ40 Like the FD62 Well you're an author And you like to fuck I bet you use a typewriter You son of a bitch I have a typewriter But it just sits behind me I should collect them now I collect these old typewriters And I love having them Near me But I don't use them There's a difference.

[421] You know, I do love, look, I'm saying all this, but I really love old cars.

[422] I love manual transmissions.

[423] I love, like, the gears and hearing the engine rev up and everything.

[424] I do love all that.

[425] There's something about the tactile, soulful experience.

[426] It's different.

[427] Yeah.

[428] It's different.

[429] And you really like it because you like them that are slow.

[430] I like them that are slow, but then I also like a couple sleepers.

[431] So the FJ62 has the LS3, and I didn't know that there was a different.

[432] version of the LS3 that's faster than the one I have.

[433] So you have, well, you have it.

[434] It's in your...

[435] Well, the supercharged one.

[436] But I don't know why Jonathan Ward didn't tell me that that existed.

[437] Because he never did it before mine.

[438] Well, but you had yours first.

[439] Yeah.

[440] So I was like, well, why didn't he try to upsell?

[441] I think he likes to keep things simple and functional.

[442] You know, and I think the way Jonathan, I'm speaking for him, obviously, I think his deal was he thinks that the regular eight cylinder is such a giant upgrade.

[443] from the four cylinder that comes, or is it six?

[444] That one had a six, in line six, yeah.

[445] Well, no, the 80 had, your 80 had an eight in it, I think.

[446] But I think so.

[447] I think it was an all -wheel drive, eight, I think anyway.

[448] But my six two had the in line six.

[449] Yeah, I had a 95 FJ 80, and then they converted it into what is now, like one of my favorite cars.

[450] Yeah.

[451] And it's got that, it's basically a supercharged Corvette engine.

[452] Yeah.

[453] So I have the LS3, but I didn't know that it was an option to have something else in there.

[454] So, dang it's still pretty slow.

[455] Yeah, well, comparatively, I guess.

[456] To me, that's as fast as I want to go.

[457] The all -time four -wheel drive system robs it of a lot of horsepower.

[458] So I think it has like 560.

[459] Well, that's not too chabby.

[460] But it gets it down to like 360 at the wheels.

[461] Oh, really?

[462] Somewhere around, a 380, something like that.

[463] Got it.

[464] I forget what he said.

[465] But it's plenty fast for that car, but what it is, man, is it's so capable.

[466] Like during the freeze last year, I was having the time of my life.

[467] Everybody was freaking out, because I have those, like, excellent off -road tires, huge clearance.

[468] Nice.

[469] So I'm driving through snow and everything, and it just handled everything like, oh, it was, you know what it was like, it was like the same, like, I have a golden retriever, and he never gets to see snow.

[470] But when he does get to see snow, he goes crazy, it runs around, circles in it, and dives in it, rolls around his back.

[471] That's what the car was doing.

[472] The truck was going like, yeah, this is time to party.

[473] It's in its element, yeah, rather than just perfect weather all the time, on the street.

[474] Yes, but we both love those old land cruisers Like your FJ 62 that you have, that's a God, that's a beautiful car It is, and it's a sleeper too You know, it doesn't look like it from the outside But if you know what to look for you, you do the double take So I like that And James Reese loves those two Yeah, and I think the one is coming from the show On the show So it's on its way to the house, I think I don't have it yet Oh, they're going to give it to you?

[475] Well, I have to purchase it, but yeah Really, they should just give it to you That would be nice You fucking wrote the show They had to rent it from somebody They had to convince to then sell it to them to give to me or to sell to me. So this is the fourth book?

[476] This is book number five.

[477] Number five.

[478] Book number five right here, the one that you're listening to, semi -naked in the sauna.

[479] Yeah, semi -naked.

[480] Fully clothed for the sauna.

[481] Read by Ray Porter.

[482] He's great.

[483] He is awesome.

[484] He is such a nice guy.

[485] Is he?

[486] Oh, such a good guy.

[487] He does a great job.

[488] He does a great job with different accents, too.

[489] Because he has to go one accent to the other.

[490] He's going like South African to Russian, back to America.

[491] He's doing it all.

[492] What does he sound like in real life?

[493] Gosh, he has a voice.

[494] He has like a traditionally, classically trained Shakespearean actor.

[495] So he's been, I think, 20 years up in Oregon at the Shakespeare Festival up there.

[496] He's been, he was in almost famous the movie.

[497] He's been on Sons of Anarchy.

[498] He's been on a ton of different shows.

[499] Oh, wow.

[500] He played Darkside in the new The Snyder Cut of Justice League.

[501] So that's him.

[502] That's him and his voice.

[503] But he's, yeah, now he does so much narration, but he's at the top of that pyramid as far as narrators go.

[504] No, he's such a good.

[505] good because it's it's rough when like somebody recommended a book to me recently and I started listening but the guy doing the narration just sucked it just was I didn't like his voice yeah that can be a yeah that can be a detriment but uh Simon & Schuster sent me because I've not really an audiobook listener I'm a reader have been my whole life and so they sent me a clip of somebody who they were recommending for the first novel and I listened to it I hit the button and I was like ah I wrote this guy sounded really old and I was like I don't think this is the right fit so I wrote back and no one's bought a single book yet no one even knows who I am not coming right politics not coming from sports I have no social media presence zero and I wrote back and I said can I pick somebody else this guy didn't sound right and they said yeah and I said well how much time do I have and they're like oh end of business today and I'm like look at my watch in Utah and I'm like I know how seriously they take their weekends and publishing in New York and I'm like oh geez so I just start listening to samples and I found Ray Porter and then I start listening to the more of those samples on audible of things that he'd done and I said this is the guy had no idea that he was like the top in the country and the world.

[506] And so I sent it to Simon & Schuster and said, hey, how about this guy?

[507] And they said, well, we can ask him.

[508] And then he said, yes.

[509] Oh, that's nice.

[510] And he brought a whole fan base to it.

[511] I didn't realize people follow narrators from project to project now.

[512] Oh, that's interesting.

[513] It makes sense because he's really good.

[514] It makes sense that you would assume that if he's also attached to a project that would have to be a good project.

[515] Yep, yep.

[516] Did he get a chance to read it before?

[517] Did you just send a few chapters?

[518] Like, how did he?

[519] I don't know how they did that.

[520] They must have sent, I think he just said yes.

[521] I think he just looked at the bio and was like, oh, that would be I think he just did it as to be a nice guy.

[522] And then he ended up being great friends.

[523] And the first one was up for audio book of the year next to Stephen King and Ruth Ware.

[524] And we went to New York and put on the tuxes for the audibles, which is like the Academy Awards of the Audible industry.

[525] Now, when you have a movie or a film version of these books, these books starring this gentleman that you've created, this James Reese guy, these books are insanely violent like there are there are wild moments in this book where I'm like ooh when when I first found out that you guys were going to do an Amazon series I was like how are they going to show this yeah like and how much are they going to show and how much are you going to leave to the imagination right because in the book it's super graphic there's some graphic shit yeah yeah so that was I mean it's an issue and but it was so interesting to to see it come to life and to see the Amazon make their notes because you do these scripts and then they get approved and then it's like planning something in a boardroom or planning something in a mission planning space in the military where it's air conditioned and you're talking through things and you're looking at the maps and you're saying okay we're going to put a blocking force here we'll have the predator over here the AC130's on station for this amount of time and you plan it out perfectly and then you leave the gate to the base in Iraq and Afghanistan and you get out there and then things change for whatever reason maybe you hit an IED or you get out there and you're like, wait a second, that mountain, even though it looks a little higher and may, oh, okay, this isn't exactly how we thought it was going to be.

[526] Same thing with the scripts in that you get out there to start filming and you're on set or you're in an area location and you look around and you're like, oh, this is not working with how we envisioned this.

[527] And you have to morph it on the fly right there.

[528] And then the actors bring something to it too.

[529] Like Chris Pratt brings something to the character.

[530] Gene Triplehorn is amazing.

[531] She brings something to it.

[532] They all bring these different elements that affect episode two, three, four, five, six, seven.

[533] So it snowballs and morphs for other episodes and affects those down the line.

[534] So you have to edit as you go.

[535] So things change throughout the whole process.

[536] But Amazon, every change, you have to send it up the chain, just like in the military.

[537] It goes up to the top, and then it comes back down.

[538] Does it go up to Bezos?

[539] I don't think so.

[540] Bezos looks like he's jacked lately.

[541] I think he's all hopped up on testosterone.

[542] I think he might have proved some radical shit now.

[543] You just get a hold of them, give him a shot of whiskey?

[544] It should, yeah.

[545] Come on, Jeff.

[546] Let's make some fucking history.

[547] Give this a thumbs up.

[548] buddy yeah yeah so it's uh it comes back down with their notes and there were some concerns there about the violence for sure and so yeah but they had to have read the book yeah i well i don't know how that works up there at those levels but uh i'm still shocked about a few things but they came down on the right side of it every single time really yeah so there's a couple scenes in there and people who have read the first book in particular will know the ones that we're talking about but the most of the the comment that i got the most when i said that this book is being turned into a film uh or to a series, people would say, oh, they're never, Amazon's never going to let this be shown or I hope they leave this scene in.

[549] Like, those are the two things that I got.

[550] And Amazon left this in.

[551] They had concerns about this one very graphic scene and it's in there.

[552] And now it's like one of the iconic scenes of the show.

[553] Wow.

[554] And it's in like all the average, it's going to be in the advertising and all the rest of it when that hits here shortly.

[555] But, but yeah, they left it and they came down on the right side of everything we wanted every single time, which is a little bit shocking because you hear about, hey, they're only making things for people in L .A. and New York and forgetting about the country in between that really has this hunger for a good content that's not just flooded with all these things that might not necessarily connect with a lot of the people in the middle of the country.

[556] And they kept it all in.

[557] The middle of the country.

[558] How weird is that?

[559] Isn't it?

[560] Yeah.

[561] So how is that real?

[562] Like what's going on?

[563] Like the whole, like this idea that like there's parts of the country that are so different than other parts of the country.

[564] It's almost like we have different countries wrapped.

[565] I mean, it's almost like Europe, right, where there's different parts of Europe.

[566] You travel a little bit and you're in a place that speaks a totally different language.

[567] But this idea that the middle of the country is different than the edges of the country.

[568] It's very strange.

[569] Yeah, yeah.

[570] It's more a, you know, a figurative way of putting it, but it's really, you know, talking about the first person that takes advantage of making content and having production levels at such a high level that isn't infused with all these things that people are kind of tired of.

[571] That person's gonna do well.

[572] I like how you're dancing around what it is, the woke shit.

[573] The woke shit.

[574] Yeah, the woke shit.

[575] I wonder how long that's gonna keep going for because it doesn't seem like it's abating.

[576] It seems like what's happening is the pushback against it is getting more loud and people getting more angry that it's being shoved down their throats.

[577] But it doesn't seem to be stopping the amount of woke stuff that's being put out.

[578] So it's interesting.

[579] It is.

[580] And there's, There's definitely an opportunity there for somebody who wants to buy a bunch of sound stages, maybe in Atlanta, and bring in people that can create things with this super high product.

[581] And make movies just kind of like we like to see without all this other political stuff in there.

[582] Isn't Daily Wire doing that?

[583] I don't know.

[584] They're trying to do like right wing versions of things.

[585] Like they hired Gina Carrano right after she got fired from the Mandalorian for, I mean, essentially she was just talking about how we, there's like a tendency in here.

[586] human beings to think of other people that think differently than you as being others.

[587] They're not us, they're others, and she equated it to the Holocaust, which is like, as soon as you do that, people are like, oh boy, don't fucking compare anything to the Holocaust, and then they fired her.

[588] But I don't think that what she said was outrageous or egregious or awful.

[589] I think she was just trying to say that this political divide, in this country that separates people and it's so polarizing is unhealthy and it's there's a natural tribal instinct that people have to look at people from other tribes as being the enemy and that we were doing this in this country but she unfortunately compared it to the Holocaust and they just fired her so the Daily Wire immediately hired her after that and then they just did a Western that looks wild they were yeah they showed the trailer for it at the last UFC nice and I was like oh my God it's a Donald Cowboy Soroni's in it Yeah, I saw them filming that.

[590] It looks wild.

[591] It looks wild.

[592] Like, I don't know if it's good.

[593] I haven't seen it.

[594] But, man, the trailer looks sick.

[595] Oh, I'm going to check that out for sure.

[596] I think Gina's, I think she's coming to the Sig Hunter Games this year.

[597] I'm not, maybe not supposed to say that.

[598] But last year I was Earth Bull at Valentina.

[599] And so we were out there.

[600] She's awesome.

[601] She is so great.

[602] And we were partners in this, we were sniper partners in this long -range shooting competition, me, her, and then a guide, an elk guide from Oregon.

[603] And so we went through, we got second place.

[604] You know, first.

[605] She has some serious guns.

[606] She does.

[607] She's down in Brazil.

[608] She was saying that she did IDPA stuff down there, so mostly handgun stuff.

[609] But when I met her, we went up to Oregon and we got to the range and I hadn't met her yet, but I see her.

[610] And she is focused.

[611] She's on the range and she is like learning.

[612] And she is, like, you can just tell that it is different than the other people who were on the range getting used to their rifles.

[613] And she is just, I mean, she is so focused on there.

[614] Nothing else was coming in.

[615] And then she got up and totally switched off and was like, oh, hey, nice to meet you.

[616] Hey, we're going to be partners.

[617] And she was so fantastic.

[618] And she cried.

[619] I mean, it was along, because you had 12 different stations, and you're shooting, I think, four different targets, three times each.

[620] And you have to find them, shoot them.

[621] You're at time limits and all that.

[622] But you're packing through this, you know, the high country in Wyoming.

[623] And, yeah, it was put out of evolution.

[624] She's a scary lady.

[625] Yeah.

[626] Well, yeah, in the ring, but she is, but in, you know, as we're just getting to know each other and hanging out around the campfire and she was so nice.

[627] Oh, she's wonderful.

[628] I mean, she's been on my podcast.

[629] She's a wonderful lady.

[630] But, I mean, she's scary in her competence and her abilities and her focus and her intensity.

[631] And she crushed it out there.

[632] She crushed it.

[633] But it was so cool to get second place.

[634] And interesting, we beat a bunch of other people that had some military background and stuff like that.

[635] But the people that beat us, it was like a bass fisherman and like a BMX racer.

[636] And they were way in front of us.

[637] Like, they really beat us.

[638] But it was still cool to get second because I've been doing a lot more typing recently than I've been doing shooting.

[639] She's an avid shooter.

[640] She's so good.

[641] Yeah, she went a lot.

[642] Oftentimes when she's in camp, when she goes to places, like she'll show up at a range, a local range, and get some practicing in.

[643] I think it helps her relax her and calms her down.

[644] But the people that I've talked to that have seen her shoot go, man, she's really skilled.

[645] Oh, yeah, she is focused.

[646] So, yeah.

[647] We had a great time together.

[648] I think she's going back this year.

[649] I couldn't have to do some filming stuff for Amazon here for some, like, behind -the -scenes interview stuff that week.

[650] But that's a great event out there.

[651] Sig really puts it on.

[652] The Cowboy was there too.

[653] So we got to hang out there and we're talking about the thing he was going to do with Gina.

[654] It was just super cool.

[655] But going back to that the Hollywood side of the house, it's not necessarily I don't think that someone needs to take advantage of there being a gap and go totally a right wing.

[656] It's just make a movie without, just make a good movie.

[657] Right.

[658] Don't make a great movie and try to force things down people's throats.

[659] Just make a good fiction movie.

[660] Yeah.

[661] Yeah, I mean, in the 80s, we go back, I'm trying to think there were some, I'm sure there are some with political bents and, you know, that's fine.

[662] But there were some great films, some great 80s action movies that didn't have, weren't infused with things from either side.

[663] It was just fun to sit down and experience.

[664] And then you could look up to those characters, too.

[665] Like Rocky films, obviously starting in the 70s, but continuing to go on today.

[666] I mean, those are so influential for an entire generation.

[667] And what a great message.

[668] I mean, underdog, you know, getting the shot, putting in the work, getting knocked down.

[669] You know, it's just so many great things.

[670] I mean, they're like mentors without having an actual mentor.

[671] Well, that's a movie that was written by Stallone.

[672] And, you know, they wanted other people to play him.

[673] Oh, yeah.

[674] And he held on.

[675] And he said, no. He held in there and it became an iconic character.

[676] Such a great story.

[677] Such a great story how all that came about and how he didn't let anybody do it.

[678] And it was just, and obviously it changed the course of his life.

[679] Did you bring the James Reese books to someone else first?

[680] Or did you just go straight to Amazon?

[681] and how did you know where to be?

[682] Because I would imagine with this particular character and these particular adventures that he goes on, they're so intense and it's so deeply connected to your past as a seal that it has to be very personal.

[683] And you can't, like if someone tried to inject wokeism into the James Reese books, you'd be like, oh, Jesus Christ, what are you doing?

[684] You can't do that.

[685] Yeah, and I didn't know how it was going to be when I got to New York publishing, you know, not known for being a bastion of conservatism.

[686] But it seems like at least in fictional books, you're allowed to, you know, because it's not, you can't take it out as a clip and put it out there for people to get angry at.

[687] Right.

[688] You have to read.

[689] You have to put in the work.

[690] And it's also, it's like you're taking into consideration the fact that there's good characters and bad characters and you have to show the evil side of man. You have to show the character.

[691] and good nature.

[692] There's so much going on there that you can't monkey with that too much.

[693] Yeah, no, I've had complete creative control.

[694] That was the, because I didn't know.

[695] I didn't have any touch points with publishing or with Hollywood before this.

[696] And I was kind of wondering when I first started down this path and Simon & Schuster first read it, I was wondering, hey, are they going to say, hey, take, lighten up on the Second Amendment stuff or, hey, do you really have to talk about the freedom so much as your character have to have these opinions?

[697] And they never even mentioned that.

[698] I've never even hinted at having to do that.

[699] So I've had complete creative control.

[700] the entire time.

[701] What kind of notes did they give you?

[702] Almost zero other than, and I think a lot of that has to do with this podcast because I heard Stephen Pressfield on this podcast, and I misinterpreted something that he said.

[703] He was talking about a playwright that used to write a sentence or two that would keep him on theme for a play.

[704] And in my mind, somehow that translated into Stephen Pressfield, used a yellow sticky note and put one word on it, and that kept him on theme for his books.

[705] And so I wrote Revenge and had that on a yellow sticky, just kept me on theme, whether it was directly or indirectly, more importantly, tied to that theme.

[706] So I think by the time it got to New York and they read it, I had stayed on theme that their only content edits from Emily Bessler at Emily Bessler Books, who is just amazing.

[707] She's the only person I wanted to be my publisher editor because I saw her thanked in the back in the acknowledgement section of Brad Thor's books and Vince Flynn's books.

[708] So I just decided as I was writing and had no connections anywhere to decide that she would be my publisher and editor.

[709] And And then she ended up being my publisher editor.

[710] But she said, hey, would he really do this here?

[711] Would he really say this here?

[712] And one other thing that I can't remember.

[713] So those are like the three notes.

[714] And that's it.

[715] Wow.

[716] So I've had complete creative control there.

[717] It's been amazing the whole journey.

[718] But then the Hollywood side of the house is I got a call from my friend Jared Shaw a few months before the book came out.

[719] And he was a seal with me and hadn't talked to him in five years.

[720] And he calls me and he says, hey, man, do you remember me?

[721] And I did.

[722] And he said, you remember what you did for me in the seal teams?

[723] And I did not.

[724] And he said, all right, you sat me down in your office.

[725] You're the only person that talked to me about getting out of the military.

[726] You introduce me to people in the private sector.

[727] You're the only person that cared to do that.

[728] And I've always wanted to thank you.

[729] And I said, no problem, man. How's it going?

[730] And he said, it's going great, but I heard you have a book coming out.

[731] And I said, yeah, it's coming out in a few months.

[732] I can give you a galley copy, which is like a rough draft.

[733] And he said, I'd like that, but I like to give it to a friend of mine.

[734] And I'm like, no problem.

[735] Who's that?

[736] And he said, Chris Pratt.

[737] So, and Chris Pratt was the person that I thought of playing the role as I was typing.

[738] So as I started, it's just as a child of the 80s, it's very natural to think of some Hollywood star that's going to bring your story to life.

[739] And I thought of Chris Brad, because he had done nothing like this before.

[740] He'd been, most of the things had been, it was only really guardians, not even Guardians of the Galaxy, not Avengers, not Jurassic World yet.

[741] It was only Andy Dwyer on Parks and Rec.

[742] And then he played a seal in Zero Dark 30.

[743] So I saw the transformation from Andy Dwyer to Seal, and I thought this is the guy.

[744] He's inherently likable.

[745] I just have this connection with him already.

[746] I don't know how but this is the guy that's going to do it and so for jared then to be to be best friends with chris to give him the book and then chris read it in the last week of december of 2017 called the next week and wanted to option it wow fate is a weird thing because everybody wants to poo -poo fate you know yeah and it's uh me too i poo -poo it's too i'm like eh come on it's just random events but sometimes i wonder sometimes i wonder if stuff like meant to be like sometimes i wonder that if you write something and put it out there and you really focus and really dedicate yourself to creating the best work that you can like you have done with your books, that it'll attract the right person to play the role if it ever becomes a theatrical representation of it.

[747] It's crazy.

[748] And then as I was writing it also without any sort of touch points with Hollywood or New York, I thought of Antoine Fuqua directing.

[749] Oh, wow.

[750] And now, and he got it at the same time Chris did through another buddy, gave it to Antoine, He wanted it.

[751] I forgot he was directing it.

[752] He is so fantastic.

[753] He is, I can't even, like before this, before I knew him, I thought, oh, amazing director.

[754] That was my.

[755] What is he done?

[756] What are the - So it was Training Day with Denzel Washington.

[757] That's the one who did replacement killers before that, training day with Denzel Washington, which obviously is incredible.

[758] Incredible.

[759] And then he did Tears of the Sun.

[760] He's done Magnificent Seven.

[761] Oh, yeah.

[762] A shooter, which is based on Stephen Hunter's book, Point of Impact.

[763] And I just love everything that he's done.

[764] But now that I know him, now he is much more than a great director.

[765] I mean, he is a visionary, and he is...

[766] He did Southpaw, too, huh?

[767] He is such a great person.

[768] That's the best, like, just salt of the earth, amazing guy, could not be in better hands.

[769] Because when you give something like this to someone, there's a lot of trust involved, because they can butcher it.

[770] Of sure.

[771] And for Antoine and for Chris, and now we're all three executive producers on this.

[772] So, Antoine called Chris, and was like, hey, I know we both have this thing, but let's just partner up and do it together.

[773] And Chris was like, let's do it.

[774] Wow.

[775] And so, yeah, for them, they wanted this series to be rooted in the dark, gritty, primal, violent nature of the novel.

[776] So any changes had to be rooted in that foundation.

[777] And then David DeGilio, who's the showrunner, who is like a, there's eight parts to this.

[778] So there's multiple directors.

[779] Antoine is the first director.

[780] And then he stayed involved in doing all the editing throughout.

[781] So, yeah, there we are right there.

[782] Look at that.

[783] Look at that.

[784] Yep.

[785] And look at this.

[786] And most of these guys are seals.

[787] There's a Marine in the back there somewhere with the dog.

[788] Yep, right there.

[789] Yep, Call of Duty Rex right there.

[790] Jared Shaw on the left.

[791] That's my buddy who gave it.

[792] Patrick Schwarzenegger is right behind me right there.

[793] So I think the only two non -military are Chris Bratt in the middle and Patrick Schwarzenegger right there.

[794] Wait, Patrick Schwarzenegger, like Arnold Schwarzenegger's son?

[795] Yep, right there.

[796] Shut the fuck up.

[797] The hacks now?

[798] Oh, yeah.

[799] Oh, yeah, he's great.

[800] And he was so awesome.

[801] He was so great in this.

[802] All these guys are.

[803] So I serve the guy to Chris's left right there.

[804] That's Ryan Sanxter, and he does some stunt doubling on SEAL Team CBS.

[805] and just another great guy.

[806] We were in Iraq together.

[807] Kenny Sheard right behind him right there.

[808] He writes in Hollywood now, writes for SEAL Team CBS.

[809] But all these guys are just fantastic.

[810] And obviously me and Antoine right there.

[811] Have you, because of these, sorry, because of these books, do you think it's open doors for other SEALs to start writing and making things into, you know, these sort of stories of similar things to what they've experienced?

[812] They realize this is kind of a path, out, once you're, you know, you've retired from the SEALs or you've decided that you've, you've done your time and to pursue other things in life that sort of using those life experiences to create these realistic interpretations, realistic versions of that.

[813] Does that like a new sort of pathway now?

[814] I don't know.

[815] I think it's more, hey, identifying that passion.

[816] So mine happened to be writing.

[817] I happen to know that this is exactly what I wanted to do, but it's not what everybody wants to do.

[818] But being able to listen to the call.

[819] So my call was to service in the military and then to write these thrillers.

[820] I listen to the call, both of those.

[821] But a lot of people don't listen to that call or they get discouraged or something along the way.

[822] But what I hope anyway is that if anybody takes anything from this journey, whether it's the military or transitioning from anything in life, whether it's the job transition, death of a loved one, divorce, can be any sort of transition in life, is identifying that passion and figuring out your mission and putting those two together to give you purpose.

[823] going forward.

[824] So if there's anything that people can take from this or from my journey, that's it, I think.

[825] But there's a lot of seals and Army Rangers.

[826] Max Adams is Army Ranger.

[827] So Max Adams, Army Ranger, wrote on the show.

[828] Jared Shaw was there every day and Raymond Doza, who has War Office productions.

[829] Those three guys, military, were on set every single day with the actors, with the showrunner, with the directors.

[830] And without them, this would be a very different show.

[831] but they were there every single day and they were so invested because we're all so close and I went out there like five times for a week each and so I got to be there intermittently but they were there every single day and that we're so close they wanted to do such a good job with it so I'm so indebted to those guys for being there and for David Adjillo the showrunner for trusting us for trusting them with every single decision that came down to tactics or reality and authenticity there's no product placement in this no one paid what I think is unusual no company's paid for product placement because that's unusual i think so i think they usually have like a you know if you pick something up like hey coca cola yeah exactly so i think that's usually some sort of a deal in there but nothing like that for this it was all um based on the gear that we actually use gear that i talk about in the books things that are so personal to me other seals other operators um so all that stuff is in there because i think amazon realized how important that was to that fan base and how it would just take somebody out of it if you if a police officer or first responder or military and you're like we'd never do that i'd never carry that thing i'd never right it just takes you out of it for a little bit so there's none of no no no company could pay for product placement in this it was was was was that a decision that was made before the film was started before the filming rather than started yeah yeah i think it was uh the showrunner knew how important that was and antoine and chris were just all about authenticity and all about veterans watching this and not being taken out of it like by rolling their eyes and saying oh hollywood screwed it up again is that when when things like that happen when they're are product placements in a show.

[832] Is that initiated by the producers of the show, the network?

[833] Is it initiated by the right?

[834] I mean, are they trying to generate income to offset the cost of the production?

[835] Probably.

[836] I have no idea because it wasn't a part of this show.

[837] So from the beginning, you decided no commercial.

[838] Yeah, I think that was, I'm guessing it was David DeGilio and the senior executives at Amazon, I'm guessing.

[839] But they just knew how important it was.

[840] And, I mean, I think it's very unusual.

[841] so those uh couldn't be more couldn't be more thrilled with how how this turned out he's just just was such a good team and how'd you guys wind up at amazon well chris so uh in december of 2019 uh chris and antoine um linked me up with the showrunner david agilio and usually they like to get rid of the author right away because the author could be on set saying you ruin my vision it just becomes the issue so they usually like to get rid of the author um but uh chris and antoine wanted me involved so they connected me with the showrunner uh the first week that he got hired and he kind of we kind of felt each other out, him really feeling me out and seeing if I'm going to just be a pain this whole time.

[842] And we hit it off right away.

[843] And we've talked every day since to include this morning.

[844] And we wrote, well, he wrote the pilot episode.

[845] And I was just learning.

[846] And he really mentored me along, taught me about screenwriting.

[847] And I get to advise on that pilot episode, advise on all the scripts, but primarily that pilot episode we worked together on.

[848] But then he took it with Chris and Antoine and they shopped it around and went to Netflix and Amazon and Showtime and HBO and Hulu and Apple and it got into some sort of a bit of a bidding war at some point and Amazon ended up with it.

[849] Wow.

[850] So they wanted it the most, which is perfect.

[851] Nice.

[852] Wow, that's amazing.

[853] I think they're the best place for it anyway because it's like they have some great shows and they're kind of under the radar and they have Reacher now, which they did a boy, the difference between the Reacher from the Tom Cruise books and this guy, this guy's perfect.

[854] What is his name?

[855] He's a big boy.

[856] I forget his name.

[857] I forget his name.

[858] He's doing a great job.

[859] You saw it and he needs to test that guy immediately.

[860] Move in on him and check his pee.

[861] Yeah, yeah.

[862] But he does a great job.

[863] He's perfect.

[864] Perfect for that role.

[865] Yeah, Amazon, I mean, they were so great.

[866] I can't say enough.

[867] That, Jesus Christ, besides that fucker.

[868] Yeah.

[869] What's his name?

[870] Alan Richmond.

[871] Richson.

[872] And he seems like such a good guy.

[873] I've seen some interviews with him.

[874] He seems like such a nice guy.

[875] Yeah, seems like a sweetheart.

[876] But man, he's fucking, that's the perfect guy for that role.

[877] I think so.

[878] Because that was the big complaint about.

[879] I never read the Reacher books.

[880] Yeah, the child.

[881] Yeah, the complaint was that the Jack Reacher in the books is this hulking man. And Tom Cruise is basically my size.

[882] Everybody's like, hey, this is not...

[883] Except not as yoked, maybe.

[884] Yeah, that's even worse.

[885] Like, at least you could believe a short yoke guy could fuck people up.

[886] But Tom Cruise is just out there.

[887] Yeah, the guy looks like the guy in the books.

[888] I don't know.

[889] It's making me feel inadequate.

[890] We're not to change.

[891] A little bit.

[892] Go back to that 1951 show, that in 1951 series.

[893] Yeah, back when guys...

[894] Barely your push -ups.

[895] Exactly.

[896] You had what you had.

[897] You know, that was it.

[898] That was it.

[899] But, yeah, I heard Lee Child in an interview once because the fan base of the books was a little upset with Tom Cruise getting that role.

[900] But I heard Lee Child say something, and he's such an amazing guy.

[901] Lee Child has been so nice to me. But he said, hey, there are worse things in the world than having Tom Cruise play your hero from your novels.

[902] Well, he's pulled it off before when people complained, like LaStat, when he played an interview with the vampire.

[903] Anne Rice's book had this like very intense like brooding romantic evil character who was the vampire when they were like Tom Cruise people like the fucking risky business guy no Maverick yeah no and that one's coming out too so Maverick's coming out soon I saw as I got here last night it was playing on the big screen when I got off the plane in Austin Airport and so that's coming out that's skydance David Ellison does that one so it's going to be I can't wait to see that In interview with the vampire, though, he fucking nailed it.

[904] I mean, Tom Cruise is weird as a guy as he is.

[905] He's a very weird guy.

[906] But I think you have to be weird to be that good.

[907] And maybe we have that level of stardom, too.

[908] It's tough.

[909] I don't mean, I don't know.

[910] Well, from the time he was a teenager.

[911] All the whole life.

[912] You know, he was in that outsiders with Johnny Depp.

[913] Those pictures are so fantastic.

[914] It's wild.

[915] It's wild.

[916] The book is great, too.

[917] For people who haven't read the book, outsiders and rumblefish also.

[918] But all that whole crew back then, when you see those pictures of them from the early 80s, It's fantastic.

[919] And then Taps, and he's done an amazing job.

[920] Those people who have staying power in Hollywood over decades, because if you look at a lot of actors' careers, it's like a 10 -year period where they have this success and then, you know, they do things still, but maybe not at that level they had for this 10 -year period.

[921] Well, he's 60 years old, and he's still in great shape and he still looks really good.

[922] He looks like he's 40.

[923] There's a couple guys out there that look very similar to they did 30 years ago.

[924] Like, he's one of them.

[925] Who else?

[926] I don't know.

[927] Who else?

[928] Rob Lowe looks pretty Yeah, he looks great He looks great Some of those guys Tom Cruise keeps it up Better than anybody I don't know what he's doing He's doing some weird Scientology shit They got some fucking Made some sort of a deal Maybe they got hyperbaric chambers He sleeps in or something Yeah, maybe he did some sort of a deal I don't know I don't think so I don't think Scientologists Believe into the devil Well, I don't know He's doing all right though He's doing alright But yeah he crushes everything He does his own stunts And yeah Yeah he still does all his own stunts He does everything Including flies helicopters It's amazing.

[929] Yeah, I mean, what film was it?

[930] One of the Mission Impossible films, he learned how to fly helicopters so that he could do one of these scenes because you can't fake it.

[931] Who does that?

[932] So he's literally cutting through these canyons in a fucking helicopter that he's piloting.

[933] That's wild.

[934] Wild!

[935] Remember Patrick Swayze jumping out of the planes for point break?

[936] Like it was a big thing back then.

[937] Yeah.

[938] What if you burn in?

[939] We invested all this money and he would go out and do it on his own anyway.

[940] Yeah.

[941] What a great.

[942] I love that movie.

[943] I'm sure you've seen the Tom Cruise Mission Impossible when he jumps between buildings and shatters his ankle.

[944] Oh, yeah.

[945] Oh, yeah.

[946] And it keeps the scene going.

[947] Hits the wall, jumps off and, like, clearly he's got a broken ankle and he's running away.

[948] Yeah, that happened on the set of the terminal list with Taylor Kitch, who was Friday Night Lights for, like, all my wife's friends are like, Taylor Kitch.

[949] He's in, he's in, uh, pull up Taylor Kitch.

[950] So, girls like him, huh?

[951] So what you're saying?

[952] Yeah, yeah, they really do.

[953] They do.

[954] More than that other guy, that Adam Richardson guy?

[955] I don't know.

[956] They'd be, there you go.

[957] There we go.

[958] Oh, he's a handsome fellow, too.

[959] Yeah.

[960] So he got hurt?

[961] Well, yeah, but he pushed through.

[962] I mean, tough.

[963] You know, people think that a lot of times Hollywood, oh, you're going to, you know, they're going to baby you around.

[964] But he got in this one scene, this gunfight that he's in with Chris, he came off these steps and tripped on something that wasn't supposed to be there.

[965] And you can tell, like, you can see that he's, like, hurt, not just like, oh, I rolled my ankle a little bit.

[966] Like, it was serious.

[967] And he got up and just did it.

[968] And then we did more takes.

[969] Wow.

[970] Yeah, super tough.

[971] He was so devoted.

[972] And he worked that shotgun.

[973] Ray Mendoza was out there with him working the shotgun.

[974] So when you see him work the shotgun in the film, it's him really working the shotgun.

[975] And they'd have spent weekend time off.

[976] You don't know if they're supposed to be doing that or whatever.

[977] But they were out there training on that thing in the desert.

[978] And it shows.

[979] It's amazing how hard it is to look competent when you're shooting guns.

[980] Especially with camera angles and that can mess things up.

[981] And there's a lot.

[982] So one of my takeaways from this whole experience was how easy it is for productions to go off the rail when it comes.

[983] Like, it's a shock that anything gets made in Hollywood and two anything good gets made because you have so many people involved.

[984] There are so many opportunities to jack these things up.

[985] You really have to have this core group that is invested and that was Chris Pratt, that was Antoine Fuqua, that was David DeGilio, it was this core group of us and they were so invested in it.

[986] They weren't going to get distracted by anything else and not pay attention to any part of this production.

[987] They were in it and they made sure that it didn't go off the rails and having those seals there and Max Adams Army Ranger there each and every day like that kept this thing.

[988] on the rails.

[989] But I can see I was always forgiving when I saw things in movies like someone's thumbs in aren't in the right position on that pistol or finger on the trigger type of a thing.

[990] Very forgiving.

[991] But now I'm even more forgiving because I see just how easy it is to mess these things up.

[992] And even if you film something and you're like, oh, let's do it again.

[993] Well, in post -production, someone that doesn't know weapons might be like, oh, let's just use this one.

[994] It looks way better.

[995] But it's the one where something was on backwards because they gave it to the actor or whatever else.

[996] But yeah, I think we accomplished what we set out to do.

[997] It keep this thing rooted in authenticity, and that's because Antoine and Chris and David DeGilio.

[998] So when all those got, does Antoine have any military experience or any?

[999] His first touch point with the military that really stands out to him is working with Bruce Willis and Tears of the Sun.

[1000] And there was a seal -centric movie and they had advisors on set and they had seals there.

[1001] Typically with Vietnam type of tactics, because that's what we had really until up until September 11th was Vietnam.

[1002] tactics because we hadn't been in sustained combat operations since Vietnam.

[1003] We had flashpoints in like Mogadishu and Desert One in Panama, Grenada, but those were flashpoints.

[1004] That wasn't sustained combat operations.

[1005] Now obviously we have 20 years of that.

[1006] But the tactics in that movie were Vietnam Air tactics, which were what I came into the SEAL teams of what we were doing.

[1007] And he had this experience with SEALs.

[1008] And he was like, wow, these guys are just saying, yes, let me move that.

[1009] Let me move that barrier.

[1010] What do we need done?

[1011] Let's do it.

[1012] Instead of having to like asked somebody and worry about unions and all the rest who's allowed to do what and these guys just got it done so after that Antoine was like wow these guys there's something a little different about these guys and he's been a been a supporter with military and he's probably a military supporter before that but that was his real experience getting to know team guys getting to no seals when you're saying Vietnam era tactics what's the difference so it was in the jungle and so what we would if you can if you watch that movie in particular I'm sure there's some other ones out there But the way that you would move in the jungle and just lay down suppressive fire and having two elements leapfrogging back or to get out of that contact, it was just a little different that you could take that.

[1013] And what we did for training after Vietnam was we'd take those tactics and we dropped them into an urban environment in training or we dropped them into a mountain environment in training.

[1014] And then after September 11th, we got to over 10 ,000 feet in Afghanistan and realized, hey, some things are a little different here.

[1015] Like the enemy is going to be shooting.

[1016] there's not all this jungle around, they're going to shoot at the muzzle flash.

[1017] And what we have initially out of the gate, we had M4s with suppressors, but the automatic weapons didn't have suppressors yet.

[1018] And so where does that mean the enemy fire goes to those guys on the automatic weapons?

[1019] So the suppressor hards the muzzle fire?

[1020] So does the muzzle fire go off inside the suppressor?

[1021] Is that what happens?

[1022] Yeah, just masks it.

[1023] Right.

[1024] And so you can just see that AW just lighten it up.

[1025] And so that's where the enemy fire was went.

[1026] So after that, we realized, hey, how important it is to.

[1027] to suppress that muzzle flash on the automatic weapon as well.

[1028] So just little things like that shifted and changed a little bit.

[1029] Do they develop body armor, that sort of a thing?

[1030] Do they develop the tactics?

[1031] Like, how do they sit down?

[1032] Like, say if you're going to take Vietnam -era jungle tactics and apply them to Afghanistan at 10 ,000 feet, is this something that they sit down and discuss with people?

[1033] Like, how do they, or do they just work it in the field?

[1034] Like, how do they do that?

[1035] Yeah, those guys are adapting in the field right away, and then they're getting back And they're doing a hot wash right away, what went right, what went wrong, how we can do it better next time.

[1036] And then they put together an after action review and AAR and then send that out to the force.

[1037] So you're going to be back in Coronado, California, Virginia Beach, Virginia, and read this and say, oh, geez, okay, we need to adapt this, this, this and this, let's get to work.

[1038] What are the next guys going downrange need?

[1039] Or what are the guys downrange need right now, whether it's suppressors, whether it's the next generation of night vision or whatever it is, now we have to start adapting.

[1040] Hey, in training here, we've been training for a number of years just to rush in to a building doing hostage rescue techniques when there might not be a hostage inside, when we might just be going into somebody's house to grab them out of their bed in the middle of the night, let's say in Ramadi, in Iraq, and then grab them and take them back for questioning and then go do it again.

[1041] Well, there's no hostage in there.

[1042] Maybe we should do this little differently.

[1043] And so we started adapting tactics around that.

[1044] So do you do this in training?

[1045] Do you adapt it in training?

[1046] Yep.

[1047] Then it comes back into training.

[1048] And then the enemy is adapting too.

[1049] So they're noticing what you're doing and they're adapting.

[1050] So warfare is this constant.

[1051] I mean, not really, I hate using the word game, but it's a game of adaptation, constant adaptation.

[1052] So you can't just say, oh, now we're in the mountains or now we're in the urban environment.

[1053] This is what we're going to do.

[1054] Well, guess what?

[1055] The enemy is taking notes as well.

[1056] Is it one of those situations, though, sometimes where there's an impediment to success in that when you do have situations go sideways, people are reluctant to take the blame so maybe they don't describe what happened as accurately as possible.

[1057] Sort of like, you know, like if you're going to do something in Hollywood, you have so many people involved, it's very difficult to get what you really want out of it because, you know, everybody wants to have their say.

[1058] Everybody wants to kind of manipulate things.

[1059] Is that the case in warfare where if a mission goes sideways, maybe you want to blame it on the operators and maybe someone wants to blame it on the plan initially?

[1060] Like, how do they hash that out and figure out what's the right way or wrong way to handle something?

[1061] Right.

[1062] So I'm sure there's some of that one on.

[1063] I just, that was not my experience.

[1064] My experience was when someone failed in the field, they wanted to pass those lessons along to the force because it makes us a stronger force as a whole, make stronger country as a whole if we pass those lessons on.

[1065] So it's so important to pass those failures on as well as the successes, what's working, what's not working.

[1066] And that means you got to, yeah, that ego has to be subverted.

[1067] And you have to share those failures.

[1068] Like Jocco says extreme ownership.

[1069] That's it.

[1070] You take ownership of it.

[1071] I'm sure there are instances here and there of something going sideways.

[1072] And I mean, I'm sure that exists.

[1073] It's just human nature maybe to cover up something you did wrong.

[1074] I don't know.

[1075] But that wasn't my experience.

[1076] I saw everybody really being completely honest.

[1077] We get back, hey, I did this wrong.

[1078] I screwed this up.

[1079] And this is how we're going to change it for next time.

[1080] Like just owning it right away to make us all a better way.

[1081] And it increases trust, both up and down the chain of command.

[1082] So you're telling your senior leaders, hey, we mess this up.

[1083] And the guys below you in the chain of command, A lot of the reason, hey, my leaders want us all to be stronger next time so this doesn't happen again.

[1084] So if you don't do that, it can really erode that trust.

[1085] So it's so important to be honest, especially about the failures.

[1086] One of the reasons I'm bringing this up is one of the recurring themes in your books with James Reese is these people that are, they're in the military, but they're either corrupt or they're egomaniacs or their pencil pushers who, because of their whatever.

[1087] whatever's going on, whether it's corruption or whatever's happening, they'll come up with ideas that benefit them and put the soldiers' lives in danger.

[1088] And it seems like that's a kind of a recurring theme that there's people that you have to listen to that are assholes.

[1089] Oh, yeah.

[1090] And I get a lot of that from real world.

[1091] Certainly our senior level generals and politicians are giving me a lot to work with when it comes to that side of the house.

[1092] Let me just look at Afghanistan.

[1093] We had 20 years to prepare to leave Afghanistan.

[1094] And the best we could do is what we saw last August.

[1095] And you didn't need a background in the military.

[1096] You didn't need to have a read a book on military history, on strategy, on tactics.

[1097] You could just apply common sense to that problem set.

[1098] And that's what Carl von Klauschwitz, who wrote on war, he described as the most important attribute of a battlefield leader is common sense.

[1099] George Marshall, the same thing.

[1100] He would fire, he fired so many people to get to those generals we all know today who won World War II.

[1101] They didn't start in those positions.

[1102] So they made it to those positions because the person before them didn't measure up.

[1103] And George Marshall, who we know for the Marshall plan after World War II primarily, but what was really important is the people that he fired in the lead up to World War II that he held accountable and during World War II that could not perform.

[1104] And so he gave him a chance, gave him a second chance, boom, they were gone.

[1105] Someone else moved in them.

[1106] And they didn't fail forward either.

[1107] They were gone.

[1108] and that made us a stronger military put those people in place that we all know today and then something shifted after World War II and I don't know what it is but there's a lack of accountability that got attached to senior level leadership and we've seen that time and time again we had 20 years in Afghanistan we could you there's a great book called the Afghanistan Papers by Craig Whitlock and there were these interviews that were done with these senior level generals leaving Afghanistan in particular and they thought that these interviews and questions were going to remain classified There were Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, two of them, that got these released.

[1109] And he juxtaposes what they said in these private classified interviews with what they were saying to Congress, the American people, their troops, and they're 180 out from one another.

[1110] And if you go back and look at testimony to Congress, you can take the person's name off there, take the date off there, and they say essentially the same things.

[1111] The Afghan military, we're making progress.

[1112] All we need is we're meeting our milestones, just need more resources, more funding, more.

[1113] troops, whatever it is they're asking for, for 20 years, the same things.

[1114] And the one guy, I think it was in 2009, people couldn't go back and check me, the guy that said one thing that wasn't a party line, and he didn't even saying bad.

[1115] He said something along the lines of things aren't going as well in Afghanistan as we think they are.

[1116] He was removed a couple months later.

[1117] The only person held accountable over that 20 -year period.

[1118] And then we get to Afghanistan and look what we have.

[1119] That's why anybody can look at the situation and say, why are we giving up this tactically advantageous position at Bogger?

[1120] and we're putting America's sons and daughters in a tactically disadvantageous position at this airfield in Kabul.

[1121] And then what we have, we have 13 Americans dead, numerous others with traumatic brain injury, post -traumatic stress, missing arms, legs, in wheelchairs.

[1122] There's a Marine female who is in a wheelchair now, and a friend's mine at Rescue 22 Foundation have trained up a dog for her.

[1123] She's an inspiration, just incredible.

[1124] But why was she there?

[1125] Why did we give up Bogram?

[1126] And you don't need a military background to look at that situation.

[1127] and say, hey, if we're leaving, why don't we leave from this position that's tactically advantageous?

[1128] And a lot of that falls on politicians.

[1129] But still, we have senior level military leaders for a reason, and their responsibility is to the troops.

[1130] And I don't know why none of them have been held accountable over this last 20 years, particularly for Afghanistan, for that debacle and that way we left that country.

[1131] 20 years to prepare.

[1132] You didn't have to go back to the Soviets in 79, 89, 89.

[1133] You didn't have to go back to three British incursions in the 1800s and early 1900s.

[1134] Certainly didn't need to go back to Genghis Khan or Alexander the Great to pull out certain lessons.

[1135] We felt prey, I think, to imperial hubris.

[1136] And we thought that we could do this.

[1137] And we took the wrong lessons from the Soviet experience.

[1138] What we needed to do in 2001 is flood that country and flood Torobora in particular.

[1139] We had 100 special operators, CIA guys on the ground in Toribora.

[1140] That's where bin Laden was.

[1141] They asked for rangers.

[1142] They ask for Marines.

[1143] They asked for 10th Mountain.

[1144] division, those requests were denied and bin Laden escaped.

[1145] And that was that moment right there, more than any other moment, really defined the next 20 years.

[1146] Now, when you say they requested all these people and those requests were denied, was there a reason given as to why those requests were denied?

[1147] I don't know if there's a reason, but in looking back at it, it is that the senior level leaders didn't want that Soviet experience, they didn't want to have, which we eventually had.

[1148] They wanted to keep the troop levels to a minimum and do the job with a minimum amount of people on the ground.

[1149] And of course, after that, we ballooned way past what their initial.

[1150] We had more people, I think, at the Salt Lake City Olympics than we had in Afghanistan, which is crazy to think about.

[1151] But, hey, lessons learned.

[1152] And, you know, what I would hope is that we take those lessons and apply them going forward as a wisdom.

[1153] And we neglect to do that in this country.

[1154] We think of things in terms of four -year election cycles, eight -year election cycles for the real deep thinkers among us.

[1155] But what we owe those people who sacrifice their lives, and it's not just their lives, people coming home with this post -traumatic stress, and it's a generational type of deal because it's going to affect their children.

[1156] It's going to affect their spouse.

[1157] So it's a multi -generational thing that people come home with.

[1158] But we owe them our best efforts going forward to take those lessons and apply them to the next conflict, apply them going forward as wisdom.

[1159] And I'm not hopeful that we're going to do that because we don't have ever a good track record of that.

[1160] So bringing it back to what happened post -World War II, what do you think is the cause of that?

[1161] I mean, there's two wars, the Korean War and then the Vietnam War that are not thought of favorably.

[1162] The World War II, the people that came home were heroes.

[1163] In World War II, we were fighting against this evil empire, the Third Reich, and the Japanese and the Russians.

[1164] There was so much chaos going on during World War II.

[1165] It was, you know, there was so much happening.

[1166] And then afterwards there's the Cold War.

[1167] There's us and the Russians, right?

[1168] And then you have this thing that happens in Korea, which is, it's not publicized.

[1169] It's not like a big part of American history.

[1170] A lot of people sort of, they go World War II, Vietnam.

[1171] And they kind of forget about Korea.

[1172] But Korea was a very fucked up war, and the ramifications of it were very fucked up.

[1173] And then Vietnam was way more fucked up.

[1174] Vietnam, no one thinks we should have ever done it in the first place.

[1175] The pretense for going into Vietnam was fake.

[1176] The whole Gulf of Tonkin incident never happened.

[1177] And there was a false flag event that led us to lose untold American lives.

[1178] 50 over 58 ,000.

[1179] Yeah, and then on top of that, just the fucking generations, as you said, of families and loved ones that have to deal with the stress and the chaos and having lost people over there, there seems to be a direct connection between the loss of faith in the military in those conflicts, the Korean conflict and then the Vietnam conflict, whereas we don't think about it that way when we think about World War II.

[1180] When we think about World War II, we think about it as the good guys versus the bad guys.

[1181] And, you know, we won and we came back and there's the famous kiss on, you know, on V -Day where, you know, in the middle of the street.

[1182] You know, there's like, there's all these romantic notions attached to World War II that aren't attached to Korea and aren't attached to Vietnam.

[1183] Yeah.

[1184] Yeah, I mean, Eisenhower speech, people pull out that military industrial complex line, but people should listen to the whole speech.

[1185] Listen to it and watch it.

[1186] Yeah.

[1187] Because it's fascinating.

[1188] But something shifted, and I don't know exactly what it is.

[1189] I can't put my finger on it.

[1190] but it keeps coming back to accountability.

[1191] But my question is, why do we lose that sense of accountability?

[1192] Why did we lose the importance of accountability following World War II, particularly in 1947 when we reorganized, really, our defense intelligence agencies and the military got reorganized in 1947.

[1193] We changed the name of the War Department to the Department of Defense.

[1194] So we have precision in language, precision in thought.

[1195] There's a shift there.

[1196] We used to have a Secretary of War.

[1197] What do we have after 1947?

[1198] We have a Secretary of Defense.

[1199] So there's that little thing, little thing, but language is important.

[1200] And then for some reason, we stopped holding our senior level leaders accountable.

[1201] And I don't know why you could point to this essentially a triad of politicians, of think tanks, of the defense industry, and kind of how people float between all those things.

[1202] So it became big business.

[1203] NATO became big business.

[1204] So there's a lot of things that came into play that weren't at all.

[1205] play before World War II, that become reality after World War II.

[1206] So I don't know what it is.

[1207] I can't put my finger on it.

[1208] But then we have that same generation that came home and what did they do?

[1209] They got to work.

[1210] They didn't whine about what they'd been involved in.

[1211] They got to work and they built this country into what it is today.

[1212] And it's so hard to see what we're doing to ourselves really in this country.

[1213] That last book in the devil's hand, I put myself in the enemy's shoes and I thought, hey, what did they learn from us on the field of battle over the last years at war.

[1214] And during the time I was writing that, COVID hit, summer of civil unrest, very contentious political season, an election cycle.

[1215] The enemy is learning from all those things.

[1216] And the sad part of my takeaway from that research was that, hey, if I'm the enemy, I might just watch, we're doing a pretty good job of destroying ourselves from the inside right now.

[1217] I might just wait and watch and see what happens.

[1218] But, of course, I had to figure out in a fictional sense how to deal with that.

[1219] And I did in a very creative way that it was fun to figure out.

[1220] But it's sad to think that we've lost this appreciation, I think, for what was sacrificed so we could have these freedoms and options and opportunities that we do today.

[1221] So from the inception of this country up until today, people have sacrificed everything or they've risked everything so that we can have these freedoms.

[1222] And now we have a segment of society that wants to undercut those freedoms because I don't think they appreciate what was sacrificed so we could have them.

[1223] And that part's sad.

[1224] I took my daughter to Pearl Harbor for the 80th anniversary commemoration events this last December.

[1225] and we volunteered with an organization called the Best Defense Foundation, Donnie Edwards Foundation, that takes people back to the World War II battlefields primarily so they can say goodbye.

[1226] They can make peace with what they did there.

[1227] And a lot of them, it's their last trips to these places.

[1228] A lot of them, it's their second trip.

[1229] The first one was actually going over the beach in Normandy or going to Iwo Jima and fighting.

[1230] And now they're getting to go there in the last years of their lives and say goodbye.

[1231] But we went to Pearl Harbor, and so my daughter is 16, and she sat at, we volunteered.

[1232] We took 64 veterans, age of 96, to 104.

[1233] And in wheelchairs were getting them on and off the buses, taking them to the events, getting the dinners, making sure they're taking their medications, all that stuff.

[1234] And it was a turning point in her life because she got to sit down across the table from this generation that, yeah, she's heard me talk about and she's read about, but to hear them tell their stories.

[1235] And a lot of them haven't even told their stories until just a few years ago.

[1236] There's one guy, Jack Holder, who was on the airfield at Pearl Harbor.

[1237] He watched the planes, Japanese planes, come over the mountains, drop down, strafe the runway.

[1238] He jumps into this, what was then a sewage ditch.

[1239] And he showed us the bullet holes in the runway, still there, in the hangar, still there.

[1240] And so he jumps into this sewage desk.

[1241] He watches the planes, take this left -hand turn, bank, and he jumps up, runs to the edge of Pearl Harbor right there on the water, and watches them and watches the first torpedoes get dropped in Pearl Harbor.

[1242] And then he went back.

[1243] He flew a PBY, which was a seaplane.

[1244] And then he went on to fight in the Pacific, and he sunk a Japanese submarine and helped sink a Japanese aircraft.

[1245] craft carrier and then he goes to the metafranian and sinks a uh a german uh submarine i mean incredible incredible that's what this generation did for us and so she got to to see that but i so she appreciates point being is that she appreciates what those generation gave us and then by default what previous generations have given us so uh we're going to go to d day here um this june taking her out of school we're going to go do that and go to uh normandy and uh take the same group of veterans back to Normandy and a lot of them it'll be their last trip but she'll get to help again get them to the events get them to dinners get them on and off the buses in and out of the wheelchairs and experience that place with them I can't imagine what it must be like for them to go back to Normandy and to be on that beach and I mean I've seen the photographs and you know I think probably one of the best theatrical representations of it is saving private Ryan right which is horrific horrific that.

[1246] They nailed that scene.

[1247] Oh, yeah.

[1248] Oh, yeah.

[1249] I mean, it's it puts things in relative terms.

[1250] And for me, it was in buds on the beach in Hell Week, you know, doing push -ups, getting yelled at, you're freezing, you're on the verge of hypothermia.

[1251] People are quitting.

[1252] And I thought, hey, you know what?

[1253] I'm not coming off of a boat onto a beach in Normandy where I'm running through a hail of machine gun fire that's set up in an elevated position with no covering concealment between me and that position.

[1254] I'm like, I can do a few more push -ups here on the beach.

[1255] You know, I can shiver here in the water a little longer here.

[1256] Those guys, sacrifice that so I could follow my dream and I could be here on this beach in Coronado, California, testing myself in this crucible of buds.

[1257] So I think about that generation in particular quite a bit and what they gave us.

[1258] Tactically, when they review storming the beach at Normandy, is there alternative methods of approaching that situation that people have proposed that would have been caused less casualties?

[1259] Because it's such a crazy thing to just dump everybody off at the beach and run towards the gunfire I mean, I will always wonder, like, why didn't they do something differently?

[1260] Why didn't they shoot at them with planes and soften them up first?

[1261] I mean, it seems...

[1262] Well, we had some of that, so we did drop people behind the lines.

[1263] We had gliders going in.

[1264] We bombarded the shore first.

[1265] And gliders is because no sound?

[1266] You know, that is a good...

[1267] I mean, that must be a part of it.

[1268] I can't remember exactly why, but that must be it.

[1269] But they have the gliders going in, and oh, my gosh, what I mean, a crazy thing to be involved in just especially back then.

[1270] in the 1940s being in the back of a glider going essentially crashing and then getting out and then having to figure out where you are and then to figure out without radios who the good guys are, who the bad guys are, which direction are we going, like all of that so we get dropped off in the right place some were shot down and then they, you know, a lot of them were shot down.

[1271] But so they did do things.

[1272] They did do things to soften up those beaches and all of that, but you know, we're dealing with 1940s technology coming off of lessons of World War I which was even more horrific Did they have missiles back then that are capable of, like, being precise?

[1273] Or did they just sort of launch them in the general direction?

[1274] No, the Germans had some missile technology.

[1275] I believe they had missile technology that was rocket technology that was far superior to ours.

[1276] I think people can check me on that.

[1277] But no, it was mostly like a gigantic bullet coming out of a battleship.

[1278] Wow.

[1279] And hitting something or not.

[1280] So, yeah, it's an amazing place to go.

[1281] For people who haven't been, to go to these memorials, especially to take kids to these memorials.

[1282] And to go to Pearl Harbor and to go to Normandy and to go stand up on Pointe to Hawk and look down and see, hey, where the Rangers had to climb up ropes and ladders.

[1283] And the Germans are firing right down on them from these positions.

[1284] And they just kept climbing.

[1285] The longest day, that old movie, it shows that as well.

[1286] And I grew up with that film.

[1287] It's an old black and white movie that people should watch.

[1288] They should watch that end, saving Private Ryan.

[1289] And that's the power of popular culture.

[1290] Like, these movies play an important part in our popular culture and in our history because you can show these things.

[1291] create this appreciation and we're just losing that i think i mean hollywood used to be our most uh most prolific and valuable asset that we would export and so people from all over the world would see these movies and see this opportunity that was the united states and i think that's shifted that's shifted over time but uh that's why those war films i think are so important because you can watch that and say oh my gosh i am so appreciative of what those guys did and you know what my life here maybe i should uh may i can make what they did for us so that I can make my own decisions and I can have these freedoms and opportunities rather than just complain about it because really, you know what I'm not doing?

[1292] Running into a hail of machine gun bullets as I cross this beach.

[1293] So there's a lot to be in appreciation to appreciate the previous generations and what they did for us.

[1294] This is what I was getting at by saying, trying to figure out what weren't wrong and did it go wrong because after that, the Korean conflict and the Vietnam conflict, we're not thought of as victories for America in the same way, especially Vietnam, I mean, I've talked to people that came back and the things that they endured and the abuse that they took, people calling them baby killers and people saying horrible.

[1295] And then some of them, some of it was accurate, you know, like, I don't remember who the senator was, but there was a senator, there was someone who was a politician, it may not have been a senator, but he was being, they were calling him a hero and they had this depiction.

[1296] of his past and you know about what a war hero was do you know what I'm talking about it wasn't true and he he came clean and he said listen I he's still there I killed women I killed children I did some horrible things when I was there I don't know who this guy is because I'm thinking of the person just lied in general and didn't really even serve those guys this is a different story this is a story where the guy said they look I got I can't do this anymore this is not what happened and what we were involved in was essentially war crimes and we did some horrible horrible, horrible things, which was also a part of the Vietnam War, what happened in those jungles, and the way the war was playing out and the frustration that the soldiers had and the just the evil potential that men have for evil.

[1297] Oh, yeah, you see it.

[1298] I mean, you see that potential for evil, and that's why you have to take such pains to maintain the moral high ground, because oftentimes that's all we have that differentiates us from the enemy is that moral high ground.

[1299] and when you lose it, you've lost.

[1300] But there was a giant shift in the difference between the way people thought of war.

[1301] Yeah.

[1302] Well, it's televised, so that was another thing.

[1303] There's so many factors that come into play.

[1304] The world's changing military industrial complex, becoming an actual business and televised war in Vietnam, But the unnecessary aspect of Vietnam, too.

[1305] And you're seeing it every day.

[1306] So a lot less people killed in Vietnam, but you're seeing it every day.

[1307] It's on the TV every single night.

[1308] And it's televised.

[1309] The body counts are coming in.

[1310] So the protests start And so you're seeing that It becomes a part of everyday life Rather than in World War II Hey you know what we need to do now Anybody that has vehicles that have tires We need that rubber for the war effort Take it downtown If you're on the coast Make sure you have those blackout curtains In your house Like everybody was involved in it somehow When it was that blackout curtains So that you wouldn't see a light on at night So they're worried about another attack Let's see on the Pacific coast from the Japanese So everybody had to have blackout curtains In their house on the coasts So did they shut off the street lights and everything?

[1311] Probably.

[1312] I don't know about the street lights, but yeah, I would assume that all the lights went off and you had these.

[1313] I never heard this before.

[1314] Yeah, yeah.

[1315] So that was the thing.

[1316] That was the thing.

[1317] My grandparents had to do it, and everybody was a part of it.

[1318] It affected everybody.

[1319] You know, Vietnam affected everybody because you're seeing it.

[1320] And so you're seeing it right there.

[1321] It's on TV.

[1322] Those body counts are coming in.

[1323] So you have that part of it.

[1324] And for some reason, once again, this imperial hubris, tight of stars.

[1325] Blackout means black.

[1326] American poster from World War II reminding citizens of, blackouts for civil defense.

[1327] Wow.

[1328] Wow.

[1329] Minimizing outdoor light.

[1330] Yeah.

[1331] So everybody's a part of this and there's a threat of invasion, a very real threat of invasion.

[1332] Yeah.

[1333] And yeah and we got we did there were there were I think it was I'm going to get this exact numbers wrong.

[1334] There was a small number less than 10 of German saboteurs.

[1335] I think there were two of U .S. citizens that were involved in it on the east coast.

[1336] They came out of a submarine.

[1337] I think there's an old black and white movie about it.

[1338] But they were tried in like a month, military tribunals on U .S. soil, and I think two were executed.

[1339] I think the rest were, went to prison.

[1340] But what do we have now?

[1341] We still have people attached to 9 -11 that are still in Guantanamo that we really don't know what to do with.

[1342] They're caught up in this legal stuff.

[1343] We didn't mess around back in the Ford.

[1344] That generation did not mess around.

[1345] You know, you're a German saboteur on U .S. soil and you get caught, guess what's happening?

[1346] You're going to a military tribunal.

[1347] You're going to be tried so legally and executed but is in the guantanamo base situation isn't there some confusion as to whether or not some of the people that were arrested were even involved there are so many different different uh i've read so much about it it's so confusing it's kind of like uh like i know you've had oliver stone on here talking about jfk yeah it's just there's so much out there and there's so much information and there's some there's just so much time is past now and there so it's confusing about all that stuff i hate was this stuff taken under dress you know did any of this yes i don't know I don't know but I know that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is in there still and we're still waiting on on his final what's going to happen to him so I don't know it's just a different different time so once again all these things come into play so we have 20 years now compared to World War II one month to deal with with someone is that better or worse I don't know I mean it's I don't know I guess you can debate that as well but something certainly shifted after World War II but the main thing I can point to is that accountability or lack of accountability I should say They're still accountability for the people at the tactical level who mess up, not so much at that strategic level.

[1348] There are very few senior level of generals who have been held accountable for any missteps strategically over the last 20 years.

[1349] So that's a shift.

[1350] That is a difference.

[1351] How much of a part does it play in the general public's confidence that the war is just and that these actions are just?

[1352] Like there's a lot of lack of confidence after the weapons of mass destruction debacle.

[1353] I mean, it was promoted by the mainstream media.

[1354] It was promoted by politicians and military industrial complex wanted us to get into Iraq.

[1355] And they were claiming that there was unquestionably weapons of mass destruction.

[1356] We had to get in there.

[1357] We had to stop this before it became another disaster.

[1358] Yeah.

[1359] Yeah, that's a tough one because when you see these authoritarian regimes and you see, like, just like with Putin today, they don't necessarily get the best information from their senior level generals and advisors.

[1360] Because if you bring bad news to, let's say, the leader of North Korea or Iran or Russia, well, guess what?

[1361] you might not be long for this world.

[1362] So it doesn't encourage people to step up and say, hey, you know this nuclear program that we've been talking about?

[1363] We don't really have it, if you're telling Saddam, who's saying that.

[1364] So there are plenty of people who thought that they actually had that.

[1365] And why did they do that?

[1366] Well, they wanted to deter their neighbors, or they looked at it as a deterrence, probably.

[1367] So that comes into play, too.

[1368] So it's very hard for me to think that even though I write about in the book, in my books in general, all sorts of nefarious things at senior levels of government, it's so hard for me to believe that they actually took steps deliberately that they knew were wrong based on faulty intel.

[1369] I have to think that they assumed that they were getting good intel and these things were, although later on in the war, I would not have been able to launch a mission based off the kind of intel that we used to actually go to war.

[1370] I would not be able to launch a mission off of single source intelligence that wasn't corroborated by technical means and another human source, meaning another human, on the ground disassociated from the network that's giving me my information on said bad guy.

[1371] Well, I'm not just going to launch based on him because, well, he just might have some sort of a feud with that guy.

[1372] I want me to use the military to take that person out.

[1373] So we saw that a lot in the beginning.

[1374] So you have to corroborate that with another totally disassociated network and then technical means as well.

[1375] So you really know you're going after the right person for the right reasons and you're not just settling some centuries -old feud, which is, but like going into.

[1376] And the war, I wouldn't have been able to launch a mission 10 years later based on that kind of intel.

[1377] I had a conversation with a guy once.

[1378] We were talking about weapons of mass destruction, the way it was promoted, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

[1379] And they were saying that it was this, obviously, that it was not true, but that it was this massive hoax and that it was all designed to get us to enter into the war.

[1380] And I'm like, man, I don't know if people would be willing to.

[1381] accept a coordinated lie that easily.

[1382] I have to think that at least there was some concern that this was real.

[1383] And is that the case that when you're getting military intel on a situation that's ongoing, oftentimes it's cloudy, and you're not exactly sure, and you have to err on the side of caution.

[1384] And if you decided to ignore whatever intel was saying that they have weapons of mass destruction, it turned out to be true, that would be even more disastrous.

[1385] And the atmosphere in this country was we had just been hit 9 -11 had just happened we can't take that chance again we have to be proactive and even though it turned out to be a gigantic horrific disaster I'm reluctant to believe that it was this large -scale conspiracy involving everyone that CNN knew it was a lie that you know Colin Powell knew it was a lie yeah I have to think that at least some of them thought that it was real I would think the same thing I mean you'd have to be very so cynical not just cynical, but to the extreme.

[1386] You'd have to be evil.

[1387] To think that that amount of, that number of people had to want us to go to war so that their stock could do better or something.

[1388] Right.

[1389] And then they had a coordinated lie.

[1390] I mean, obviously it turns out to not be true.

[1391] And obviously there was lies to support the initial assertions.

[1392] There was obviously some coordinated effort to cover up the initial assertions and to make it seem like they, you know, were more accurate than they were.

[1393] Or painting a rosy picture.

[1394] Or you have, you have this outcome.

[1395] that you want and so what do we need to support that and looking at those things that support that rather than the things that don't support it.

[1396] So I have to think that they're acting off the best intel that they had at the time and making decisions that they thought were in the best interest of the American people and protecting this nation.

[1397] I have to think that and it just ended up not to be the case.

[1398] And there are many reasons why it's why it's not the case that we just talked about with Saddam thinking that he might have had a more robust capability because people are telling them that possibly.

[1399] So and that's a distinct possibility as well so I always wonder and then so you take that and you extrapolate 20 years later right when you you follow up 20 years later and you look at the kind of confidence that people have and the military's ability to make the correct decisions and then you fuck that sideways with the extraction from Afghanistan because that now everybody's like Jesus Christ why would you do it that why why did anybody do it that way you know I've had conversations with people on this podcast that were military people, high -level people that were involved in this.

[1400] And they said, there's nothing about that extraction that was right.

[1401] No. And no one held accountable.

[1402] Once again, goes back to that accountability piece, which what confidence does that give you as the taxpayer that we're going to do something right in the next theater of war?

[1403] Not very much confidence there.

[1404] We have proven that we are unable to take the lessons of the past and apply them to the future in a way that is meaningful.

[1405] But really, it's the responsibility of those leaders to do that for that E1, E2, E3, lower enlisted person who's going to be standing the gate guard who's going to be going out there into these streets or out there into the mountains and taking fire and dealing with a car that's coming up that looks like oh maybe is it bad suspension or is there a family in there or is it packed with explosives right and they're 18 years old and they're out there looking at this thing and have to make a decision and then it pulls up and it detonates or they shoot and guess what it's full of a family like these things are so difficult and then they have to live with that for the rest of their lives.

[1406] And they're put in that position by senior level leaders who should have known better on a few things.

[1407] It's specifically to Iraq disbanding the Iraqi army.

[1408] Okay.

[1409] So now you have this entirely trained up military that's essentially now an insurgency.

[1410] Okay.

[1411] We have that debathification.

[1412] So anyone who had any job in Iraq was a bathist.

[1413] So the person that emptied the garbage, the people that kept the lights on now debathification, those people don't have jobs.

[1414] So now we're fighting an insurgency and we're figuring out how to get the trash picked up, how to keep the power on for building up an entirely new government so and those those lessons and those those senior level leaders they are responsible for making those decisions just like we would be at the tactical level and they made the wrong decision there and that one those two things right there looking back at those two things like I don't I it's it's almost unforgivable that they would make those decisions and not correct it immediately now created that insurgency because of those two due decisions the hindsight is always 2020 but we're looking back on the uh afghanistan situation what is the consensus of what would have been the correct approach so we essentially it's not lost on many people that we essentially spent 20 years replacing the taliban with the taliban and well armed yeah yeah yeah now why did they do that why do they leave behind all of our shit uh i don't know i mean i know when we left Iraq, I was at a lower level, tactical level, so you just kind of hear things.

[1415] I don't know how true it is, but how much it costs to bring certain things back rather than leave it there.

[1416] Like the gyms that went up all over the place.

[1417] So there's all these gyms all over Iraq, and you've seen the videos on YouTube of the Iraqis trying to work out.

[1418] They're pretty funny.

[1419] I think there's quite a few out there.

[1420] But, you know, rather than pack all that up and take it home, just leave it.

[1421] Well, the gyms are the least concerned.

[1422] I know.

[1423] I'd use that as the most basic level, but then you apply that to how much does it take to get this helicopter back and that helicopter back and this and that, and hey, did we think that we were going to turn those over to the Afghans and leave those with them?

[1424] Why didn't we blow them up?

[1425] Well, I think we thought they were going to remain in place as the army that we trained up for the last 20 years.

[1426] But nobody on the side of the people that were over there believed that was possible.

[1427] They thought that everyone was going to fold the moment the United States left.

[1428] Well, you didn't even have to think that.

[1429] You could see it.

[1430] You can see the provinces falling from January, February, March, April, May, June.

[1431] July into August.

[1432] I mean, you could watch it.

[1433] If you put it on the screen and show the provinces that fall, I mean, yeah, you don't have to be Nostradamus to figure out that, hey, this isn't looking so good.

[1434] And everything is converging here.

[1435] And you could extrapolate that, oh, probably every province is going to fall.

[1436] But once again.

[1437] So what should they have done?

[1438] In that particular situation?

[1439] Yes.

[1440] So you have a couple options.

[1441] One being, hey, maybe you could leave a small force at Bogram perhaps to try to keep this military, keep this intelligence service, keep this government running maybe after 20 years.

[1442] I don't know how long you can sustain that, but you could have done that.

[1443] And then if things aren't working out, they're the last people to leave.

[1444] So that's one.

[1445] So you could have done, could have done that, or you get everyone out and leave Boggerman.

[1446] It ends up being the same thing.

[1447] You see, watch the whole government fall, the leader left, of course, but now you're not leaving from a tactically disadvantageous position.

[1448] So you had essentially those two options to draw down to something, a very small force left there, trying to keep that government going, trying to keep that military going, trying to keep that intelligence service going, and then you could see how that works out or get everybody out in a way that makes sense.

[1449] What would be a way that makes sense?

[1450] How do you get everybody out in a way that makes sense?

[1451] So Bogram is, there's a lot of standoff distance at Bogram Airfield.

[1452] It's, you can be there, you can look out, you can see people coming from a long way off.

[1453] We control that whole area.

[1454] You control the airfield.

[1455] It's not that chaos that we saw people.

[1456] hanging on the side of these planes as they're taken off, you control that thing rather than the way we left at the airfield, essentially in town.

[1457] So, yeah, I don't know why we did that.

[1458] But not just that, but also leave behind people that work with the U .S. forces to be tortured and murdered.

[1459] Yeah, and that happens.

[1460] It's probably still happening right now as we're speaking here.

[1461] What do we think was going to happen?

[1462] And I thought I talked to somebody about that in 2003 in the back of a high -lux pickup truck in Afghanistan and asking him about what is he think going to happen when we eventually leave here.

[1463] And, you know, I didn't get a good answer.

[1464] You're trying to figure out the language barrier and all that.

[1465] But I did ask that because I was thinking about that because what's our track record?

[1466] Well, we have Vietnam to look at.

[1467] And at the time, we had the Kurds at the first Gulf War.

[1468] We had that, leaving them, kind of hanging them out to dry.

[1469] So we don't have a very good track record of supporting people that allie with us, in foreign countries when we're doing, particularly expeditionary counterinsurgency, meaning a counterinsurgency campaign in another country.

[1470] So I was asking about that.

[1471] I was thinking about it back then, and I was like, oh, man, I hope this guy's going to be okay when we leave here eventually.

[1472] And I didn't know if it was going to be a year or two years, 20 years.

[1473] I didn't know when it was going to be, but I was fairly certain that at some point in time we're going to leave this place and what's going to happen to all these people that helped us.

[1474] It doesn't look good.

[1475] And then you have, there's talks of China aiding the Taliban.

[1476] and moving in and supplying them and sort of working with them the moment they realize the United States is no longer going to be in power.

[1477] Yep, yep.

[1478] Essentially, maybe taken over Boggham.

[1479] Yeah, and working with them.

[1480] Yeah.

[1481] Like, they don't seem to have the same qualms that we have about human rights.

[1482] No, they're not known for that.

[1483] No. And trying to be overly concerned with human rights.

[1484] I mean, just look at the lockdowns.

[1485] You've seen those lockdowns of people or what they do with the Uyghurs.

[1486] Yeah, there's that.

[1487] Yep.

[1488] And that once again, that's a lot.

[1489] interesting one right there when we talk about big business and their associations with China.

[1490] Yeah.

[1491] But when we look at this, the things that, when I look at the country and I just look at what's happening today, and I see a few things that you could apply common sense to, just like Carl von Klauschwitz and George Marshall talked about.

[1492] Well, if you look at our position in the world today and say, huh, why are we outsourcing our energy to our enemy?

[1493] Okay, the energy, that essentially runs our national security apparatus.

[1494] Okay, and we're outsourcing that to our enemy.

[1495] We need to oil from what countries?

[1496] How, and we could be energy independent here?

[1497] Okay, that's one.

[1498] The kind ofability we talked about, obviously.

[1499] And hey, where are all these chips coming from that also run our defense establishment and run all our phones?

[1500] And where are our pharmaceuticals coming from and the precursor drugs for a lot of those pharmaceuticals coming from?

[1501] Oh, China?

[1502] Wait a sec. We're dependent on China, Iran.

[1503] All these people that are essentially our enemies, we're dependent upon them.

[1504] And we have a porous southern border at the same time, like some very basic things that you would think we could address as a nation.

[1505] Would there be an argument that it's good to work with them and that if our energy systems and our chips and all these other things are dependent upon them that they wouldn't want the demise of America because it's crucial to their economy and that we could have some sort of a cooperative effort that would at least in some way ensure some level of peace?

[1506] I don't know.

[1507] I think that as companies used to be, first, these different companies.

[1508] And now when you become these global conglomerates and dependent upon China for a lot of that revenue and to shareholders and to everything else, well, now you're dependent on an enemy.

[1509] So now you have this company that's an American -based company.

[1510] You had the opportunity to create something and create untold wealth.

[1511] But now we're dependent on China.

[1512] So who are we now, who are we now loyal to?

[1513] Are we loyal more to these shareholders and our company or to the United United States of America.

[1514] What's most beneficial to us?

[1515] And what conditions can create here in this country to not be reliant on our enemies for those things that keep us safe, that run our defense establishment, our intelligence establishment, and some of the things that we rely on to run mom and pop businesses across the country.

[1516] Do you think it's also a function of the fact that the United States essentially, like you were talking about before, we're dealing with four -year time periods or eight -year time periods where that's the time someone's in office as a president?

[1517] Whereas in China, they have full control and they can play this long game.

[1518] And also, the government and big business are completely entangled in China.

[1519] There is no separation between business and government, and the business always acts in the best interests of the government.

[1520] Oh, yeah.

[1521] If you're dealing with a company in China, you're dealing with the government of China.

[1522] You're dealing with the defense establishment of China.

[1523] You're dealing with the intelligence community of China.

[1524] So these lines are blurred now, and they weren't always blurred, and they're getting more blurry.

[1525] as we continue to go forward.

[1526] And I don't know what the solution is, but I know that we're on a path right now, that the outcome is not hopeful.

[1527] And I try to remain as hopeful as I can publicly.

[1528] My wife and I sit down at the end of the night and have a glass of wine on the couch and talk about what world that our kids are inheriting.

[1529] It's a tough one.

[1530] Yeah.

[1531] Tough position.

[1532] I don't like it.

[1533] I know.

[1534] It scares the shit out.

[1535] I know.

[1536] It's crazy.

[1537] And I went deep into it in this one, too, looking into quantum computer.

[1538] computing, looking into artificial intelligence, looking into data storage and surveillance of U .S. citizens and the Internet of Things and how all this is connected, that part is scary.

[1539] It was scarier than the bio -weapons research that I did for the last book.

[1540] No doubt about it.

[1541] And the picture that I paint in this thing, I think it is close because the people that I talked to that were involved, involved in quantum computing.

[1542] And for people who haven't seen a quantum computer, look that up and hit images.

[1543] I thought it was just a big computer.

[1544] It's not.

[1545] It is this like Medusa of wires that's suspended in a vacuum.

[1546] It is a crazy -looking thing.

[1547] And so people should check out what those even look like.

[1548] Do they have a functional quantum computing?

[1549] Oh, yeah.

[1550] So this is it right here?

[1551] Isn't that crazy?

[1552] The quantum computer that you described, how much of that is based on your own creative imagination, how much of that is based on what is actually possible right now?

[1553] Yeah, well, I looked at these exact pictures right here.

[1554] That's the Google guy.

[1555] Should be scared of that guy Exactly But yeah Look at these pictures Look at them Hmm With this I will run Every little His fingers class together I will run everything From here Right there And some of the things I saw In interviews with people Isn't that crazy Like that's a computer Very sci -fi Yep And I wanted to keep this book Out of the sci -fi section So I even toned it down a bit To what's probably happening out there Yep So what is the woman You have the name for the class Alice Alice yes How much access do you have for what's possible?

[1556] It seems like that would be very, very classified.

[1557] How much are you guessing?

[1558] Well, I did a lot of research in reading, but once you read something about quantum computing or artificial intelligence, it's way dated by the time you read it.

[1559] So you read those things so you can ask questions of people that are more current because it gives you the foundation from which to ask these questions.

[1560] So same thing like I did with the bio -weapons research in the last one.

[1561] I talked to a lot of people that are involved in that space and you get a little sliver, just like a journalist would do.

[1562] And I take a little bit from each and every one of them to paint that picture and figure out that puzzle.

[1563] Same thing with this.

[1564] And the people that I talk to, they all told me that, hey, we could tell you more, but that would for sure put this book in the science fiction category.

[1565] And that's scary.

[1566] Jesus Christ.

[1567] So they could tell you more, meaning what, first of all, what Alice does in the book is insane.

[1568] Yeah.

[1569] But that's not even the full capability of what these quantum computers and AI can do now.

[1570] That's right.

[1571] That's right.

[1572] And I was worried because I saw some people talking when I was doing my research, talking about quantum computing on different news channels.

[1573] And they were talking about China having this edge.

[1574] And when I did my full, when I went deep down the rabbit hole, my take is that we still have the edge in quantum computing right now.

[1575] I don't know if we will tomorrow, but right now we do.

[1576] Would you just pull up, Jamie?

[1577] I saw this a few weeks ago.

[1578] This company, called Anomily 6, they were showing what they could do.

[1579] So in this demonstration, they showed tracing cell phones, you know, anonymous cell phones.

[1580] And they unveiled two people that were watching this at that event.

[1581] Like they worked for the CIA or FBI or something.

[1582] They kind of like, look, we'll tell you who in this building we followed specifically to show you what we can do.

[1583] So they spied on the CIA and the NSA.

[1584] So American phone tracking firm demoed their surveillance powers by spying on the spies and saying, hey, we can spy on you.

[1585] So if this is an American company, so this is what I was getting at before when I was talking about China and the government, is that reluctantly I say this, but I think I might be right.

[1586] The only way to compete with a country that has the government and the businesses inexorably entangled, where the government, and the businesses work hand in hand is for the governments and the business of this country to work hand in hand.

[1587] That scares a shit out of me because what's involved in that is full compliance by the population.

[1588] The only way you get full compliance by the population is you have to be able to control everything they do, including money.

[1589] So some sort of a centralized digital currency where they have in China where they can tell you what you can and cannot buy based on your social credit score, which is something that everybody was very terrified of during this COVID thing when they were starting to at least suggest the possibility of implementing a passport, some sort of a passport of what you can and can't do.

[1590] And the initial suspicion was that if you started off by saying, you know, you have a vaccine passport.

[1591] And if you do not comply, you will not be able to do these things.

[1592] You will not be able to have access to goods and services and transportation and all these different things based on your compliance with some government regulation that's implemented.

[1593] reluctantly, but necessarily, because of a crisis.

[1594] Now, once that's in play, then that becomes the norm.

[1595] We get accustomed to it.

[1596] It becomes a way of life, and then they can implement that and keep pushing that envelope further and further down.

[1597] Yep, yep.

[1598] You don't get rights back once you give them up to the government.

[1599] They're not in a rush to give them back to you once they take that power.

[1600] We know this, right?

[1601] Everyone knows this.

[1602] We know this.

[1603] So why is it so, why are people so reluctant to not, just admit that but why do they push back on it so hard civilians what is it because they don't want to believe that it's true I think we're comfortable but is that is but is that it though they were scared of COVID and they felt like this is the only way to keep people safe and because of that because of people are scared and they felt like this is the only way to keep people safe we got to get everybody vaccinated we got to get everybody safe we got to get back to normal we have to but they're reluctant to look at the the general history of what happens when people do this yeah yeah and I mean that's Every chance I get, I like to talk about going back into the pages of history and reading about why we have these freedoms what we have today.

[1604] Why were they in place from the beginning?

[1605] And why are they so important?

[1606] Why do they give us this opportunity?

[1607] Why do they allow us to build this into the greatest country on the face of the earth?

[1608] And this marketplace of ideas and this debate and letting the best ideas rise to the surface.

[1609] And now that's all going away.

[1610] These rights are slowly being eroded over time.

[1611] And we have these crises where we then take a little more.

[1612] It takes a little more power.

[1613] And you have career politicians in there now.

[1614] So they're not, I keep going back to Eisenhower, but he had a great quote about farming.

[1615] And he said, hey, farming looks mighty easy when or plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from a cornfield.

[1616] So you have people in Washington who, you know, they're called to service as politicians.

[1617] And they also happen to be very savvy investors, if you haven't noticed that.

[1618] They're very savvy investors somehow.

[1619] They make a lot of money in politics as politicians.

[1620] Their family members make a lot of wise investments.

[1621] They make a lot of wise investments, very interesting, but they're career politicians, and that's not how this was set up.

[1622] I had a great conversation with Bill Barr, former attorney general.

[1623] He was on my podcast a couple weeks ago, and it'll come out here in a little bit.

[1624] But he's so in tune with that side of the house of these career politicians because he was in government, he was in private practice, got called back to service, did it, and what he saw were careerists, and people that aren't going to Washington just for a year or two and then going back to the farm.

[1625] I mean, I think we'd be a lot better off if we had some more farmers rather than some attorneys who maybe never even really practiced law in Congress.

[1626] And it's just career politician.

[1627] So it's a business, essentially.

[1628] And this is that term that people don't like because it's kind of like almost like fictional, but the deep state.

[1629] People don't like that term.

[1630] Oh, come on with this deep state talk.

[1631] Because it was kind of connected to what Trump was saying when he got into office and that the deep state is after Trump.

[1632] and people go, oh, shut the fuck up with all this.

[1633] But it seems like that's what the deep state is, right?

[1634] It's career politicians that are inexorably intertwined with business.

[1635] And they have as much, look, in today, this is what my fear was during the election.

[1636] When I was talking about Biden, I was like, do you really think that that guy's in charge of anything or going to be in charge of anything?

[1637] Without any, no judgment about who he is as a politician.

[1638] but just as a biological entity.

[1639] That's, he's not going to last.

[1640] He's not competent.

[1641] He's not aware of a lot of things.

[1642] It's clear he's not good at forming sentences.

[1643] It's clear, right?

[1644] It's clear he's not aware when he starts, when he starts rattling off numbers, I clench up.

[1645] I go, oh, Jesus, he's going to fuck this up.

[1646] The numbers is rough.

[1647] It's horrible.

[1648] It's clearly he's compromised.

[1649] So it's obvious that he's not the guy that's the puppet master.

[1650] So who the fuck is?

[1651] Who's controlling all the strings?

[1652] And if this quantum computer stuff is real, and obviously it is, and is Google going to be the master of our domain?

[1653] Who's going to be responsible for controlling the access to that?

[1654] Who gets to decide what gets spied on, what gets controlled, what doesn't?

[1655] And how do you turn this back?

[1656] It seems like you can't.

[1657] Because it seems like technology always moves further and further forward at an exponentially increasing rate.

[1658] Yeah, and it's worse than that almost, in that now they can control behaviors.

[1659] And I don't think that was the goal right off the bag.

[1660] You know, the goal right off the bat is to sell some advertising and get people to take a, hey, ho, look at that.

[1661] Jamie threw me a perfect pass and I bobbled it.

[1662] So now you're controlling behaviors.

[1663] And even worse than that, the next step is you're controlling thoughts based off what you're fed on these social media platforms that we're all tied to.

[1664] And now a lot of us are tied to them for business.

[1665] And then they switch it up on you.

[1666] And now they're controlling your thoughts.

[1667] And that is scarier than anything.

[1668] And they're censoring stuff for weird.

[1669] I mean, I don't even understand why they censor some of the stuff they censor.

[1670] It's like, it's almost like they're trying to get you accustomed to censorship, like random censorship.

[1671] That is the craziest part of all of this is that our stalwart defenders of the First Amendment used to be lawyers, used to be publishing houses, used to be magazine editors, used to be newspapers.

[1672] It used to be politicians.

[1673] They were in defense of that First Amendment.

[1674] And all of us as citizens, we would say, growing up, hey, I will fight and die for your right to say something, especially if I disagree with you because we're Americans.

[1675] Yes.

[1676] That used to be, no matter what you thought of the Second Amendment or what you thought of anything else, like that First Amendment bound us all together.

[1677] And now we have those same people that used to defend the First Amendment now actively calling for censorship.

[1678] So instead of having that debate and having the best ideas rise to the top in this marketplace of ideas, now if I disagree with you, I just want to censor you and cancel you.

[1679] How did we get so short -sighted?

[1680] Like, what caused that in your eyes?

[1681] I think we lost that appreciation for why we have that free, why we have that for a day.

[1682] Well, how did we lose it?

[1683] Like, what?

[1684] Comfort.

[1685] I think we got so comfortable.

[1686] Really, society's fragile.

[1687] And we had a glimpse of it at the beginning of COVID where people were like, oh, my gosh, is there going to be some food on the shelves of the grocery store?

[1688] Hey, if I call 911, will someone show up?

[1689] And then we got back to normal -ish as far as that stuff goes.

[1690] But that was a little, so we had a little bit of a scare.

[1691] But even if you saw some of the interviews on the streets, of Odessa, of Gev, you saw people not thinking that the Russians were gonna invade.

[1692] And they had these on the street, and then the next day, boom, society is fragile.

[1693] For most of human history, society has been fragile.

[1694] And you used to have to be good at the fighting and good at the hunting if you were gonna survive.

[1695] So we all have ancestors that were good at those two things or we would not be here today.

[1696] And society can collapse pretty dang quickly.

[1697] And if you've been to Iraq and been to Afghanistan, you can see that.

[1698] I know you have a little glimpse here and there, but we have had so, from the end of World War II, up to today, we've had relative peace in our country.

[1699] It's been relatively stable in our country.

[1700] We've got very comfortable and we've lost this sense of why we have these freedoms and instead we have this entitlement culture that plays into it and we have this comfort that hey, if I call 911 someone's going to show up.

[1701] Well, guess what?

[1702] Probably not.

[1703] They're going to come up after most of the time.

[1704] There'll be a few minutes late to save the day unless you're a politician with taxpayer -funded security surrounding you at all times.

[1705] But But you have to be good at defending yourself, your family, your community, and it'd be good at putting meat on that table.

[1706] Otherwise, your lineage is not going to be around that much longer.

[1707] Isn't there also a thing that happens with people where the way things are now, we just assume they're going to stay this way?

[1708] Yeah.

[1709] And that it's too complicated to think about all the possibilities for the average person.

[1710] The average person's plate is so full with job, family, business, all the stuff that you you're obligated to, bills, all the problems you have, there's so much going on, so many activities that for you to stop and say, hey, you know, we have to really concentrate on the First Amendment, we have to concentrate on freedom of speech, and the ability to communicate and express yourself, and we have to be concerned with other countries that aren't concentrating on those things.

[1711] We have to be concerned with the fact that we could get evaded.

[1712] We have to be concerned that someone can kill our power grid.

[1713] We have to be concerned with all these different things, and it's too much for people, so they just choose to dismiss it.

[1714] And we're so distracted.

[1715] We have our work with us constantly.

[1716] It's in our hand, constantly, Tick to Tick to -Tock and 15 -second.

[1717] Wall Street Journal had a thing called Tick -Dock Brain the other day, and I actually printed it out for our 11 -year -old.

[1718] And I took out the ads, took out everything that was in there when I printed it and I gave it to them.

[1719] And it's a read because Tick -Tock Brain, 15 seconds, and then you're ready for the next one.

[1720] You're ready for that next distraction.

[1721] And you're getting all these inputs all the time and most of them maybe are not that healthy.

[1722] And what are you not doing when you're distracted by those things?

[1723] You're not focused on what you need to do to move forward, to be a prepared, a good citizen of this country moving that ball forward being a good inheritor of these freedoms and then defending them for that next generation so they can then move the ball forward for the following generation and I don't know if we get this back I'm not sure I don't know either and it scares a shit out of me because I'm not I mean I'm not sure how it ever how we get rational how we get object how we stop this and say we have to preserve some aspects and even if we did how it ever how we get rational how we get objective how we stop this and say we have to preserve some aspects and even if we did how we do have the inclination to do so, when you see something like quantum computing, when you see this AI that can spy on anyone at any time, and when people do tell you that if we told you everything, it would essentially be science fiction.

[1724] So what is science fiction today, and what is it like in five years?

[1725] Because it's going to be way more invasive.

[1726] Oh, yeah.

[1727] I mean, this next decade, I think, is a pivotal decade for the country when it comes to freedoms and what it's like going forward and what opportunities our kids are going to have going forward.

[1728] What's not controlled by the government?

[1729] What thoughts and behaviors aren't controlled by a government business tech type of an entity out there?

[1730] What's encouraged by the government, what's encouraged as far as censorship goes, by these tech platforms that have so much power concentrated in such a small number of people.

[1731] So these are real decisions and real issues that they need to be contented with, and we haven't had to deal with them.

[1732] And it's such a perfect storm.

[1733] It is.

[1734] That's the other part.

[1735] Like, especially like the tech companies, right?

[1736] Tech companies are like overwhelmingly run by ideologically driven left -wing people who believe in a very specific way of thinking and behaving and living.

[1737] And they're diametrically opposed to people that have a different perspective.

[1738] And they don't welcome free debate and speech and will actively censor and shadow ban and do all sorts of things to people, even if these people are.

[1739] highly intelligent, articulate, conservative people that aren't outrageous, don't say wild things.

[1740] They're not, you know, Q &On folks.

[1741] They're regular human beings who happen to have a conservative perspective, and those people are demonized.

[1742] Yep, we're normalizing censorship, and rather than having a debate and being open to, hey, yeah, well, interesting.

[1743] I had not thought about that before.

[1744] That is really, and making friends and having a drink or having coffee.

[1745] I mean, there's a picture of what Ronald Reagan.

[1746] and going out with the leader of the other party and they're out there with their tuxitos and they're at a show and they're laughing with their wives and all that stuff with Tip O 'Neill and would you see that today?

[1747] No. No. Well, you kind of see it at the White House press conference or the correspondence dinner with Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

[1748] That's probably the last time where they're joking around.

[1749] Remember those things?

[1750] I'm not to go back.

[1751] I know those things but I'm going to go back to that one in particular but going out to dinner just with them together as a couple to enjoy an evening on the town.

[1752] and having a nice steak dinner and then watching a show, like, that doesn't happen.

[1753] No, it doesn't happen.

[1754] No chance.

[1755] So, yeah, sitting down to have a beer with somebody?

[1756] Yeah.

[1757] I mean, yeah, that's normal.

[1758] I mean, look, I have a lot of friends that think very differently than I do.

[1759] Very good friends that oppose a lot of the things that I think are important.

[1760] But we can talk, you know, and I don't know how much that's going to be in the younger generations.

[1761] The younger generations seem to think of people that are ideologically, that differ from them ideologically as the enemy.

[1762] Yeah.

[1763] Which is crazy.

[1764] It's because, like, that's Civil War talk.

[1765] That's like you're looking at it like this sort of absolutist mentality, that it's my way or there's no other way.

[1766] And it's also, it's tech companies have power that's never been wielded by any individual company that is a civilian -based company before.

[1767] There's never been the kind of power that tech companies have to shape.

[1768] narratives and to get people elected or not elected or just to shape how elections run based on what kind of information is distributed or allowed to be distributed or curated.

[1769] Yep, yep.

[1770] What's up?

[1771] Did newspapers have that power?

[1772] Yes, they did.

[1773] Yeah, they definitely did.

[1774] But back in the day, you used to have to either bribe a newspaper reporter or you had to get blackmail on them or blackmail a spouse or a child or something like that.

[1775] No, it's a good point, Jamie, they did, but they were, look, if you go back and read like the New York Times from like the 1960s, it was very objective news.

[1776] It wasn't opinion -based.

[1777] The difference between what's now is like it's so much editorial and opinion, including like television news.

[1778] Like the predominant television news today, especially on the left wing and the left side rather is, well, no, that's not true, the right side too.

[1779] It's so opinion -based.

[1780] It's so, it's so editorialized.

[1781] It's like who's like the number one guy on the right?

[1782] It's Tucker Carlson.

[1783] Who's the number one people on the left?

[1784] It's like Rachel Maddow.

[1785] These are very opinion.

[1786] It's not like this is what's happening.

[1787] These are the casualties in Kiev.

[1788] This is why it happened.

[1789] This is the strategic reason why they want to control that aspect of the world.

[1790] These are the natural resources they seek to possess.

[1791] This is their fears about NATO.

[1792] This is, you know, there's none of that.

[1793] It's everything is from an ideological perspective and there's so much opinion -based like commentary on this stuff.

[1794] Well, sometimes just asking the question gets you I mean gets people crazy like Tucker ask questions and then just just just destroyed for asking the questions that he asked that's why this is so important because when you go on the show like that as you as you know it's like two minutes and you have two minutes to make a point and you could ask a question and if you're a politician you're pretty much going to ignore that question just say get your two minutes in there get your two and a half minutes in there because that's your sound bite and you get who benefits from a divisive populace well politicians certainly do.

[1795] So is there an incentive for them not to keep dividing us?

[1796] I don't know.

[1797] Because they're staying in power.

[1798] They're staying elected.

[1799] It gets them, gets them another term and gets their fair families being able to make some wise investments at the same time.

[1800] So that all that plays in there.

[1801] Oh, I just sort of snuck that in there.

[1802] Well, it's a thing.

[1803] It's a thing.

[1804] It's a crazy thing, but it's also a crazy thing being done by people that are almost dead.

[1805] Like, what are I know.

[1806] Why are you even trying to make more money now?

[1807] You're fucking 80 years old.

[1808] I think a lot of that stuff is keeping them alive, maybe.

[1809] Yes, it's the fun of the game.

[1810] I think so.

[1811] I always thought about that in terms of, like, big business people.

[1812] Like, I always just say that about guys like Bill Gates, like, why would you even bother trying to make more money?

[1813] Like, why wouldn't you just enjoy yourself?

[1814] If I had that kind of money, I would just be, I'd be living like Jeff Bezos.

[1815] He steps down, he's got this fucking banging hot girlfriend, gets jacked.

[1816] Yeah.

[1817] Gets jacked.

[1818] It's going around the world, bawling out of control.

[1819] Yeah.

[1820] We're wearing tight underwear.

[1821] Hey, you know, having a good time.

[1822] Hey, why not?

[1823] Yeah, but that's not what some people are doing.

[1824] Some people are, they're just trying to make more money and they're doing it at the expense of the general public.

[1825] It's strange.

[1826] They're making decisions that directly impact the population and they're doing it for their own benefit.

[1827] Right.

[1828] They're simply they're vampires, though, because they're not producing anything.

[1829] There's not a product I can point to that any one of them created that makes our society better.

[1830] Right.

[1831] Like Larry Ellison of Oracle.

[1832] And I love what he says.

[1833] He says he had all the disadvantages necessary for success.

[1834] And so he came from nothing and became one of the richest men in the world.

[1835] And people have no idea all the things that he does that cancer research and all the things that he funds that are like helping society.

[1836] He just does it all kind of behind the scenes, doesn't need the celebrity status side of things.

[1837] But he's doing so much.

[1838] But he came from nothing.

[1839] And I love that he says I had all the disadvantages necessary for success.

[1840] never complained about it.

[1841] He just worked and he built this amazing thing called Oracle that we all used today, whether we know it or not, essentially created cloud -based computing and so many things that we used today.

[1842] He created something.

[1843] He created something that we all use.

[1844] What did the politicians create?

[1845] Not much.

[1846] Just divisiveness.

[1847] Well, yeah, especially the politicians that are heavily invested into insider trading in the stock market.

[1848] What do you think that Larry Ellison thinks about all this quantum computing stuff?

[1849] When a guy has his whole business is based on cloud computing and the use of technology, what I wonder what his perspective is.

[1850] Oh, yeah.

[1851] Yeah, no, he's a, I mean, he's genius.

[1852] You know, he meets certain people, and you're like, that person is different.

[1853] He's one of those guys that's thinking at another level.

[1854] I wonder if he's terrified.

[1855] Doesn't seem like it, but, yeah.

[1856] He'll be protected.

[1857] He's one of the elites.

[1858] Yeah, I'm going to ask.

[1859] He's got an island.

[1860] He does.

[1861] It does.

[1862] Very nice island.

[1863] We should go there and hunt I love it there It's a great place Yeah we were just there actually Got the kids out there a couple weeks ago Got to go hang out with Bob the butcher again My daughter and little guy We should tell everybody you're a part of that That's right hunting operation Yeah pineapple brothers Yeah pineapple brothers My buddy John Dubin Invited me to be a part of it Yeah yeah such a great guy But beautiful island out there It was so nice to get out there And just take a breath It's one of my favorite places to go It's so relaxed So relaxing So relaxing I heard there's a large diet off of the access deer out there.

[1864] Ooh, you know, I'm going to have to ask about that because I heard it from a hunter, so I'm not sure the accuracy of the information.

[1865] I'm going to get, I'm going to get back to you.

[1866] They said the population was reduced quite a bit from drought and from quite a few other things, but I'm like, how much?

[1867] Exactly, we needed it.

[1868] There's so many.

[1869] Yeah, we kind of needed that.

[1870] What they really need is predators.

[1871] Yeah.

[1872] But then you have another what do?

[1873] Yeah.

[1874] You got wolves running around.

[1875] Introduce the lion.

[1876] Yeah, exactly.

[1877] Put some mountain lions out there.

[1878] It would have to be a cat because nothing else is a catch.

[1879] Those are pretty fast.

[1880] Yeah, those things are pretty fast.

[1881] Access to you are the fastest thing I've ever seen in my life.

[1882] Yeah.

[1883] For a mammal, when they get away from an arrow that's going 290 feet per second and it's within like 10 yards of them and they're like, chum, they're out of there.

[1884] They move like they're defying time.

[1885] Yep.

[1886] Yeah, they're pretty quick.

[1887] And yeah, no, but great meat, obviously.

[1888] And you get out there and you can practice because there are so many, so you can take that shot.

[1889] And if you mess it up or mess up that stalk or the wound changes, guess what?

[1890] Well, you can do it again in 10 minutes.

[1891] Yeah.

[1892] I'd start another stock.

[1893] Well, we always loved it in June.

[1894] We would go there to get ready for hunting season for elk.

[1895] Yeah.

[1896] Because, you know, elk would just hang out a lot more.

[1897] I mean, you've got to, obviously, you've got to climb mountains to get to them.

[1898] And that's not easy by any stretch of the imagination.

[1899] But in terms of, like, getting close to them, it's so much easier than an animal that evolved to get away from tigers.

[1900] Oh, yeah.

[1901] Those things are alert.

[1902] They're switched on out there for sure.

[1903] there can be a lot of pressure depending on what's going to COVID they got to they took a little break though because there was a lockdown so they got to take a little breath so that was kind of interesting to see them a little more relaxed than they have been in the past when people are just out there constantly because you can do it all all year because it's exotic but a fantastic spot to go and have the kids have that experience and then bring home the meat and man we're eating it right now and it's amazing meat too it's so delicious And isn't it interesting that the animals that are the most difficult to get are the most delicious?

[1904] I'm trying to think of some that aren't.

[1905] I mean, I love it all.

[1906] I love elk.

[1907] I love moose.

[1908] I love the axis, of course, love white tail.

[1909] But even like fish, like salmon.

[1910] Hard to get.

[1911] Very delicious.

[1912] Delicious.

[1913] Hall of it up there.

[1914] I love going up to Northern British Columbia, going to Alaska and bringing all that down.

[1915] There's something about that.

[1916] So I just love doing that.

[1917] Wild food.

[1918] There's something about it.

[1919] We ate wild game for, gosh, so many years in a row.

[1920] Now, there's a bunch of different companies out there that do, and there's some veteran -owned ones as well that send out tenderloin or whatever else from their farm raised and all that stuff that have social media presence.

[1921] So you can see how they're running things, and which is kind of cool.

[1922] So we eat more beef these days than we did for a number of years where it was just all all access, all moose, all elk, and that's all the kids ate as well.

[1923] It was just normal, normal for them.

[1924] Unless the healthiest food you can get.

[1925] It is.

[1926] It is, man. Yeah.

[1927] How did you get involved in that Pineapple Brothers organization?

[1928] Yeah, so John Dubin, a former FBI agent, and so we got to be a friend, had a mutual friend.

[1929] And when he got it out of the FBI, he was, he's connected to Larry Ellison, and that's what he wanted to do is he wanted to run the hunting operation out there on Lanai, so put together that, that business.

[1930] Does Larry hunt?

[1931] No. No?

[1932] He does not.

[1933] He does not.

[1934] No. He's too busy.

[1935] He's got a lot going on.

[1936] Yeah.

[1937] A lot going on.

[1938] But he's got things going on that are, I don't even know if I'm allowed to talk about too much of it, But, like, next level stuff.

[1939] Like, hey, wanted to move this world forward in a better way.

[1940] And he's thinking on other levels.

[1941] Anyway, it'd be fascinating to sit down with him and Elon Musk.

[1942] Does he ever do interviews?

[1943] Could you have more on a podcast?

[1944] He does very few, very few interviews.

[1945] Would he do one with you?

[1946] I don't know.

[1947] I don't know.

[1948] You never thought about asking him?

[1949] Oh, I thought about it.

[1950] Yeah?

[1951] I don't know.

[1952] But, you know, sometimes you don't ask.

[1953] Right, right, right.

[1954] Yeah, you don't ask.

[1955] You want almost him to bring it up.

[1956] Yeah.

[1957] So a lot of things.

[1958] Like, you know, you know how that goes.

[1959] I do.

[1960] Yeah.

[1961] Yeah, I've got a little taste of it, which is great.

[1962] It's a great problem to have.

[1963] But, yeah, he did interviews for a number of years, and then I think I remember that there was some point where someone's like, why are you doing these interviews?

[1964] They're not, you know, and he's like, oh, yeah, why am I doing these interviews?

[1965] But he'll do one every now and again, and that's where I heard him say about that the disadvantage is necessary for success.

[1966] But there's a great book called The Billionaire and the Mechanic about how he got the America's Cup.

[1967] And it's so fun, so fantastic to read.

[1968] but he has this, he's playing tennis and part of this story with Raphael Nadal and they're playing tennis and they're talking.

[1969] He asks, hey, Rafa, do you like to win?

[1970] And Rafa says, I love the game.

[1971] And if you love the game, then you're going to win.

[1972] You're going to love it.

[1973] Got to love what you're doing.

[1974] And I thought that was pretty cool.

[1975] Yeah, because Rafa's obviously amazing and so is Larry.

[1976] That's pretty simplistic, though.

[1977] What if you love the game, your knees are bad?

[1978] You're not going to win.

[1979] Yeah, that's a good point.

[1980] So, yeah, work on those knees.

[1981] Yeah, it takes some aspirin.

[1982] There's a lot going on.

[1983] That's not, that's a funny way of saying it.

[1984] I mean, I'm sure it's accurate if everything else is equal and your genetics and all the other, you know.

[1985] You've got to put in the work.

[1986] I mean, those guys put in some work, especially now these athletes are working from like day one.

[1987] That's why it's always so interesting when someone's like, ah, I just found this sport two years ago.

[1988] And now you're crushing it.

[1989] Like, it's some obscure sport like biathlon.

[1990] Like you have people in Europe that are just growing up and they're doing the biathlon.

[1991] So the cross country skiing and the shooting.

[1992] And that's amazing.

[1993] incredible athletes, and then someone in this country, like, finds it a couple years ago and just puts in the work, and now they're up there, you know, near the top.

[1994] So I love stories like that.

[1995] That's kind of cool, too.

[1996] Because so many people are, like, growing up with tennis balls in the crib type of a thing and kind of just bred for it almost, which is a crazy way to think about it.

[1997] But look at that.

[1998] It is crazy.

[1999] But look at the difference in performance.

[2000] Like, look at a rugby team in the 60s and 70s compared to today.

[2001] Different group.

[2002] Well, mixed martial artists is, I mean, that's obviously my focus is, like, looking at the difference between fighters from the 1990s when the UFC first came around versus guys like Charles Olivera of today, which is like they're on such a different level.

[2003] Remember the Tough Man contest before UFC?

[2004] Remember those guys in there?

[2005] That was awesome.

[2006] It was on some sort of pay -per -view -ish type thing I remember in the early 90s and seeing those guys get in there and just like bang it.

[2007] Oh man, that was kind of cool and then of course things evolved.

[2008] But yeah, I think I'm going to my first UFC I think on June 2nd.

[2009] Are you going to be on that one?

[2010] Which one is that?

[2011] Vegas.

[2012] July 2nd.

[2013] Yeah, I'm there for sure.

[2014] Yeah, 100%.

[2015] Hey, brother, any time you want to go to the UFC, you got an open invitation.

[2016] Oh, I appreciate that.

[2017] You just reach out.

[2018] Thank you.

[2019] I'll hook it up.

[2020] I appreciate that.

[2021] That's a good one, though.

[2022] The July 4th weekend one is always madness.

[2023] Oh, nice.

[2024] And that's Israel Adesanya.

[2025] Nice.

[2026] Who's the last style, but he's one of the greatest of all time.

[2027] And he's fighting, one of the absolute greatest mental weights of all time.

[2028] And he's fighting Jared Cannoneer, who's a bad motherfucker.

[2029] That's a great fight.

[2030] Awesome.

[2031] The whole card is great.

[2032] Cool.

[2033] That is that fight, right?

[2034] That is the July fight.

[2035] Who else is?

[2036] Oh, that's also Alex Pereira.

[2037] There it is.

[2038] There's a card.

[2039] Yeah.

[2040] Volcanowski versus Max Holloway 3.

[2041] Woo!

[2042] And Sean Strickland versus Alex Pereira.

[2043] That is a fucking phenomenal fight.

[2044] Pedro Munoz and Sean O'Malley.

[2045] Giant fight.

[2046] Uriah Hall and Andre Munez.

[2047] Andre Monez is one of the scariest fucking submission artists in the game.

[2048] This is a great card.

[2049] Nice.

[2050] Great card.

[2051] Oh, I'm fired up.

[2052] I'm fired up.

[2053] A lot of action.

[2054] Yeah.

[2055] But that'll be good.

[2056] So that's 4th of July weekend, and that's a day after the terminal list comes out on.

[2057] Is that the whole fight card, Jamie?

[2058] Did they have the undercard and everything?

[2059] That's all that's announced so far?

[2060] Nice.

[2061] That's a very good fight.

[2062] Cannon Neer actually started off his career as a heavyweight.

[2063] And then he got down the light heavyweight, and now he's a middleweight.

[2064] And he's a big middleweight.

[2065] He's a big middleweight and strong as fuck.

[2066] Nice.

[2067] Nice.

[2068] And stylebender is probably the most sophisticated striker that's ever fought in the sport.

[2069] Nice.

[2070] Oh, man. Oh, man, this is good cards.

[2071] Those are a future cards.

[2072] Those are different cards, too.

[2073] It's Glover and Eura Prohaska.

[2074] Yeah, man. A lot of great fights.

[2075] That would be cool.

[2076] The U .OFC is awesome.

[2077] It's just on so often.

[2078] Like, it's so, there's so much, so much talent, and there's so many events.

[2079] How crazy was it to do with no audience when you, was it?

[2080] I loved it.

[2081] Oh, you did?

[2082] I loved it.

[2083] Yeah.

[2084] It was, yeah, because you could hear everything.

[2085] Oh, wow.

[2086] hear all the impact of the shots.

[2087] You could hear the breathing heavy.

[2088] You could hear the shit talking.

[2089] You could hear the coaches cornering.

[2090] You know, because the first ones we did were literally no audiences.

[2091] And then the UFC, as time went on, they allowed more people into the APEC center as the, you know, everything sort of relaxed a little bit.

[2092] But the initial days, like everybody had to be tested.

[2093] Everybody was in a COVID bubble.

[2094] And we would get to the events.

[2095] And it was just like, you know, me, Daniel Cormier, John Anick, we would sit there.

[2096] to wear a mask whenever we got up and then when we sit down we took our masks off it was all weirdness right but it was just like that was the rules and then when the fights went on you were essentially so fortunate to be in this room where there's only 30 or 40 other people in the whole room watching these world -class world championship fights it was incredible it was like it was like if you were like some sultan and you had your own private arena and you paid the best fighters to come and fight for you yeah that's a little freaky what what do the fighters think what Did most of them like it or not?

[2097] Some loved it.

[2098] Some hated it.

[2099] Some guys fight off the crowd.

[2100] They feel the vibe of the crowd.

[2101] But when we first came back and we had the first events with a full crowd, I believe the first one we had was Jacksonville.

[2102] I think that's the case.

[2103] The first one we did that was live, of course it's Florida.

[2104] They don't give a fuck.

[2105] They're like, go ahead.

[2106] Yeah.

[2107] But, you know, it was an amazing event because it was like everyone was so enthusiastic and happy.

[2108] And then I was like, okay, I love this better.

[2109] But I don't.

[2110] I love them both.

[2111] Yeah.

[2112] It's different.

[2113] I loved the ones where there was no crowd, like when Francis and Gano beat Steve Miochich, no crowd.

[2114] You know, won the heavyweight title with no crowd.

[2115] You know, I mean, a very small amount of people in the crowd.

[2116] A few, me, maybe at that point was like 100.

[2117] But cool to hear that.

[2118] You could have both experiences and to have that were all quiet around you and hear that, oh, hear that fight going on with no distractions out there.

[2119] Yeah.

[2120] That's why, like, fighting in a vacuum almost.

[2121] I felt very, very fortunate.

[2122] That's one thing that I thought of.

[2123] Because also it's like it almost kind of went away, like almost everything went away, and then it's back.

[2124] And then it's, at those times, it was back for a very small amount of people.

[2125] I mean, people got to watch it at home.

[2126] And credit to Dana White and the UFC for having the courage to put on those events in the middle of such extreme criticism.

[2127] Like, there was a lot of people that didn't want anybody to do anything.

[2128] Oh, wow.

[2129] They wanted everybody to just hide.

[2130] And with a respiratory virus that's spreading, like if you talk to virologists, you talk to people that are, especially if they weren't on camera.

[2131] or especially they would tell you like there is no way to stop this they were like the best thing you can do is stay healthy take care of yourself and that's actually initially what even Fauci said is like don't drink take care of yourself exercise you know like this is what you really have to concentrate on with the things you can control I don't think so maybe if you poured it on it but I don't think you can get it yeah imagine whiskey did kill it that was the way to get better that's what I've been going with yeah people ask me the secret to writing and I say you know coffee in the morning and whiskey at night just don't mix those two up you know when you start doing the whiskey in the morning at coffee at night, there's an issue.

[2132] How does the whiskey at night help?

[2133] Because, well, you get to take a breath.

[2134] Kids are in bed.

[2135] You have quiet, uninterrupted time, and you just get to sit there and think and just kind of sip something nice, and maybe it's worked into the story, like a veteran -known whiskey, like horse soldier, I put in this last one.

[2136] We put Hootin Young by these Delta guys that's in the show.

[2137] And it's just, you just kind of sip and type in and alone in your world.

[2138] What is your process?

[2139] Like, do you wake up in the morning and write immediately, or do you have like a root that you follow?

[2140] I wish I did, and I'm getting, I hope that I can get to a routine at some point, but with all the chaos, it's just crazy working on scripts and juggling the kids and then all the other projects that are going on, the podcast, reading people's books for the podcast, like all those things, it's just constant chaos.

[2141] So what I did this last time was I rented Airbnbs around Park City, and I found this amazing cabin, I probably should even say it, but this really cool cabin, super small, wood wood outside.

[2142] I go chop wood, throw it in the woodburning stove, and everything was right there, the whole thing was about as big as this room, and I had a couch.