#1986 - Jack Carr

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Joe Rogan podcast check it out the Joe Rogan experience train by day Joe Rogan

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podcast by

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night all day all right we're up and we are up good to see you man great to see

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you how does it

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feel to have another one done oh it feels great but there's another one in the

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works so it doesn't

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really doesn't really stop I mean I hear some guys like John Grisham talk about

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they do six

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months of work and six months off and that's kind of that the routine that they've

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gotten on

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but uh but for me it's go go go this the next one scripts although do you ever

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anticipate doing

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like a six month on six month off thing or maybe when the kids are out of the

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house maybe someday

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way later on but right now it's still building it's just like any

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entrepreneurial type of venture you

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gotta just go and keep building and take advantage of momentum and look for

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gaps in the enemy's

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defenses and adapt and just go go go go so it's uh it's a constant thing from

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the second I wake up

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till everybody else is in bed and I'm working for a few more hours yeah you

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gotta make hay while the

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sun's shining yeah I think about that too with the podcast I'm like one day

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would do you know I do so

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many things sometimes I'm like one day maybe I'll just do one thing I don't

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know you'd be able to do

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that I don't know I don't think I'm ill have you ever been bored I don't even

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know what that means

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you do I no I never people talk about being bored like I'm gonna hear that from

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one of our kids I'm

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like that's like the one thing that that gets me yeah but it's because I've

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never been bored

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in my life I'm bored at things like if someone takes me to a gala I have to

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dress like a monkey

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sit there and wait how many of those have you you don't do those anymore do you

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I had to do one

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recently yeah a friend yeah there's an art thing that was going on here so I

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had to dress up and

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like Jesus Christ every now and again it's okay maybe but maybe it was okay

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because I was next to

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my friend yeah his wife and my wife and it was fun but it's for the most part

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it's like that's the

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the only time I get bored yeah then I get hostile then I have a couple of

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drinks I get a little

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hostile are people nervous when you're there no they get weird weird man just

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looking at you that

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you're there people stare at me really yeah it's it's gotten exponentially weirder

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over the last like

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three years that I used to be able to blend in yeah five years ago I could

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blend in anywhere yeah just

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people say hi but that would be it okay no but now it changes the dynamic of

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the room type of thing yeah

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that's weird I'm not changing the dynamic of any room I don't think but uh but

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people definitely

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in the airport stop and say hi and I feel so just fortunate that people are

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interested enough in the

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books or the podcast or the tv show or whatever to actually recognize me and

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say hi one guy recognized

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me by my sitka backpack last night oh wow flying out here and he's like the

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backpack gave you away

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because I was in the corner calling my wife on mother's day and my mom on

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mother's day both and uh

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it's all the optifade he said well no it was the gray one it's the drifter so

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it just blends but

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it has a little sitka symbol and uh he said the backpack gave you away I turned

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around and so

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said hi and but that's it but it's uh you know I feel extremely fortunate yeah

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I do too we're very

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lucky guys to be able to do what we love to do yeah you know when someone meets

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you too that also it's

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like your writing is so brutal this one in particular he's such a nice guy and

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it's it's like when someone

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meets you they're like what the is going on behind those eyes uh-huh I worry

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about that with them I

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don't spend too much time worrying about it but like uh our kids uh parents his

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friends parents you

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know that sort of thing like did you read his book it was a little disturbing

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maybe our kids shouldn't

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play over there type of a thing so oh really well I don't know but that's kind

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of what I think about

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like if I was someone else's parent was to read this and not know me never

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having met me yeah all of

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a sudden you read this thing like oh maybe our son or daughter should find

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another friend I would worry

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about that more in California yeah in California so what are we drinking here

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what is this all right

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so right here cheers thank you so much for everything amazing amazing look at

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this the official jack car

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leather colored there it is whiskey glasses there it is the whiskey glasses

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people are very fond of their

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whiskey and who made this whiskey it's not bad so it's very good here we go so

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this is hooten young

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right there okay so uh some veterans car edition yep jack car edition right

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here and uh so there's uh both

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veterans but uh norm hooten was played by eric bannon blackhawk down so he was

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a delta operator who's now

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out makes these make cigars that i'll show you here in a second cigars too yep

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cigars and this this

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whiskey and i put them in the show in the terminal list so when chris pratt's

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uh there drinking with

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boozer in that first episode put a little hooten young on there and there's no

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product placement

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like in the show in the books people think that that's a huge thing and in a

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lot of hollywood i i think

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it is if someone's like let me open this tab you know back in 1985 or whatever

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but there's none of that it's

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all just character development tools and so i want to try to hook up some

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whoever i can and these guys

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put in so much time uh in service to this nation so it's right on the right on

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the counter there in

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that first episode but uh that's the best kind of product placement yeah and it

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helps develop the yeah

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exactly there's no no one pays to get in in any of these which is quite i didn't

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know how it's gonna

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work with hollywood it was my first time down that road yeah i didn't think

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they were gonna say hey

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you know what you have this and i know it's important and i know who the guys

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are but how about this

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company they're paying us so let's put that in there instead it wasn't like

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that at all which was

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pretty cool and i think it's all because chris antoine fuqua and the showrunner

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uh just held the

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line and said hey no we're just gonna use these things and make it organic and

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authentic and root

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this whole thing in this foundation of operator culture it also probably helps

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that you guys are on

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amazon too which is like a fairly new platform yeah and in terms of like

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streaming and things it's

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only like the last decade or so right netflix had a little head start yeah as

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opposed to something like

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nbc or cbs or abc which is like probably standard operational procedure right

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to like have people

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pay to put coca-cola on right because they need to make money however they can

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because now they're in

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competition with amazon and with netflix they're gonna come to you with bud

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light there you go you guys

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can fix bud light i saw a new one today did you see the miller light one today

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yeah like just no one

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learn does no one learn i mean and they were taking all those ads that we love

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from the 80s

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and they're putting them in shredders yeah that was their campaign today i saw

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it this morning so

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stupid i mean i don't know but once again like there's something wrong also it's

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making there's

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something wrong with women wearing bikinis those women wear bikinis because

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they look great they like

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to look great they take photos of them looking great the girls see those photos

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of them in bikinis they

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get excited look i look great people buy it wow she looks great it's not bad to

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look great it's

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just like it's not bad for a guy to have a shirt off chris pratt has his shirt

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off and he's looking

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ripped it's not objectifying i mean i guess it is but it's not negative it's

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not selling movie tickets

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right there that that ad is so weird isn't it strange you want to watch it let's

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watch it let's

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watch it oh boy here we go i couldn't believe it this morning they could they

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don't learn no one

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learns well it's just in general i think it's kind of those taking lessons from

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the past and applying

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them going forward as wisdom lessons from a week ago i know it's not even the

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past it's like a couple

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days ago the only thing that saves is like maybe they spent a lot of money on

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it and they filmed

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it six months ago but is that possible i've already seen it yet there's an

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article from

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two months but still you could put a pause on that oh it came out two months

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ago at least two

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months ago okay so it came out before the right was that about the same time as

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the

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with miller it was this says it was in honor of women's history month is when i

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put it out so i'm like

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i was i saw today i was like maybe there's a reason they made this and we just

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started seeing it's also

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crazy they want to shred all the good looking pictures from the 80s and they're

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buying it back

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that was part of the thing they're buying back all those old ads that people

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have i guess in their

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garage malls that's what it said in the this thing that i saw this morning oh

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god and they're

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going to turn it into mulch yeah that's it first to brew beer ever from mesopotamia

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to the middle

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ages they're saying women brewed beer they said they were the first were the

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ones doing the brewing

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centuries later how did the industry pay homage to the founding mothers of beer

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they put us in

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bikinis with awesome pictures like that is how she looks hot yeah i mean look

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at that those are great

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ads those are great ads it's time beer made it up to women so today miller

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light is on a mission to

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make sure no one buys their stuff oh my goodness they're scouring the internet

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and buying it back

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yeah ladies because that's easy to do once you get an image up there on the

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internet so what is she

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saying to compost to worms push out beautiful fertilizer that helps farmers

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grow quality hops

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yeah which has been donated to women brewers to make their own really good but

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there's definitely

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more out there in your attic in the garage in your parents basement send any

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you got into miller light

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and they'll turn that into good too oh oh so here's to women because without us

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there would be no beer

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wow oh god i hate identity politics with a passion i really do it's pretty

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interesting it's so stupid

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it's it's human beings made beer okay and some human beings look good in bikinis

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it's like what are we

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doing it's crazy women do it women do it women do it like what i'd like to see

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a pie chart of how many

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women are actually involved in making beer or drinking beer well now i'm going

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to hold on to all those

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posters from miller light that i have from the 80s in my garage i'm not turning

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that stuff in it's gonna be

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worth a lot more now do you have some no imagine i wish i did all those years

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miller light ads with

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their shit yeah no i mean that was crazy to wake up i need to see that this

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morning can you does paper

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turn into compost is that how it works i mean there's a bunch of chemicals and

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shit why are they

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lying to us why would something like that just get resurfaced on like a monday

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and now everyone's

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talking because people are angry they're looking to be angry two months that's

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what i mean like it's been

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out for two months we didn't see it before that i think the bud light thing was

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probably so overwhelming

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that no one paid attention to anything else yeah and now that that's kind of

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died down

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yeah oh it's all so stupid since we're on alcohol and we're on all that stuff

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let me do this so i

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don't uh don't forget because this is pretty pretty amazing here i know you

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like cigars and and uh as

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do i and uh this right here so these cigars right here hooting young the guys

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that we just talked to

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about this uh this whiskey that jack car edition right there oh wow look at the

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label this is pretty

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cool so what they did it's they called me and and i was kind of like a million

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things going on and and

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i pick up and they started to talk to me about this and it gave me goosebumps

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and um it's this right

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here is world trade center steel whoa yeah world trade center steel the guys

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that put this together

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aren't just uh hooten young aren't just norm hooten there's some i'm gonna call

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them two army rangers

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and a special forces guy but we can talk more about them just incredible human

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beings who have

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sacrificed so much for this nation and so they they did this and then he kept

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talking to me and he said

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under these cigars under each one right here so if i pull one of these out you

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can see that there is

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some dirt under each one of these right here and it's laminated in there over

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the top so there's dirt

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and there's a little laminate over it and each one of these comes from a

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special place and uh right here

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d-day invasion sacred sand recovered from omaha beach in normandy right there

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largest amphibious invasion

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in history so they have that there iranian hostage crisis april 24th 1980

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operation eagle claw so that's

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when they went in to try to rescue the american hostages in iran tehran and

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they landed at a place

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called desert one uh one of the refueling um uh birds hit one of the or one of

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the refueling c-130s

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hit one of the helicopters and there was an explosion and uh people died and

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they had to abort the mission

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they didn't have enough helicopters to keep going so they brought dirt back

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from that there is not much

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dirt that they brought back but there is some in here and a battle of mogadishu

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october 3rd to 4th

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1993 operation gothic serpent uh sand smuggled from the black hawk down crash

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site in mogadishu somalia

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world trade center attack operation enduring freedom the steel um right here

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and uh saddam hussein

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operation iraqi freedom from march 20th 2003 uh so there is dirt from some

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amazing um

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dates in special operations and military history in here and uh each one of

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these cigars you can

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tell right here has there you go right here you right there so wow yeah that's

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incredible amazing

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yeah hooting young and then some guys that are that are out there at the at the

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tip of the spear that

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have uh have access to this dirt from places like operation eagle claw uh at

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desert one outside of

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turan iran is uh is in here so wow put that back in we're gonna save these for

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some special occasion

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there we go that's that's amazing yeah so i was blown away so they made one for

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you made one for me

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and so we're the only two people to uh to have these that's very cool yeah yeah

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operator cigars right there

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and there you are wow young across tomahawk's right there um yeah pretty

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amazing very cool

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yeah have you smoked one of these yet not yet not yet just uh it arrived just

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hours before i got here

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so pretty cool pretty cool that's very so thank you guys who young and the guys

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at the tip of the spear

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who put this together yeah thank you yeah that's incredible yeah wow absolutely

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amazing and this stuff

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launches i think today you have to wait for the government there's all sorts of

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things you have to hop

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through you know before they yeah before they approve it and so this stuff i

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think it's launching

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tomorrow or today when this thing launches but um so that'll be out there and

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what's crazy is you have

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to go through these patent things so not like uh trademark stuff you know with

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attorneys and things

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and there's different um uh little categories so you have to have subcategories

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if you want to

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patent the truck across tomahawks so i have lawyers doing all that and part of

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that's whiskey

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and uh and so they did the whiskey one and like right away the jack daniels

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lawyers boom right on it

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like they are very aggressive when it comes to any whiskey that has jack in it

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even though it's

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obviously a different label a different style bottle different you know no

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connection they get upset at

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the name jack yeah jack car yep yeah don't they just look at it go oh that's

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the author that well

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well come on jack daniels seriously jack daniels has done so much for america's

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we love you jack

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daniels i know seriously but it's uh but they're very good they did something

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with uh uh they had like a dog

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poop uh thing that was out there with jack daniels on it or something like that

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you can look that up but

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it was a big thing i think it went to the supreme court recently so point being

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they're very aggressive

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we do love jack daniels um but their lawyers get a little aggressive and juxtapose

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that because while

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you're doing this yeah there it is right there whiskey and poop thing dog is

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that weird meeting a

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trademark clash oh boy that's lawyers that's just lawyers got a bunch of people

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that probably work for

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the firm and they're like oh this is an opportunity to get on the board yeah

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they get very aggressive

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but you juxtapose that so there's also car wine and uh so we happen to drink a

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lot of that in our

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household just you know my dog has one of those really yes marshall has one of

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those he's got a fake

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jack daniels as a matter of fact there might be a photo of him with it on his

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instagram page my dog's

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instagram has like 750 000 followers blowing up he's so handsome that is

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awesome adorable that is

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awesome but i'm pretty sure in one of his photos he's got one of those a rubber

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bottle of jack daniels

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that might have spurred this whole lawsuit you know i wonder but point being it's

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uh there's also car

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wine there he is there it is right there look at that oh look at that that is a

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great shot so they

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should be excited that's his best position yeah that's his uh his favorite

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position is cuddling

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he's the one you when you watch tv he hops on board and just puts his head on

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your chest he's the

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best oh we do love jack daniels they do so much for the military i know it's

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not them it's some

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lawyers yeah some dipshits i mean but also jack daniels has been around for

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like what 100 years

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plus how long they've been around so it's not really jack daniels it's people

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that assume

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a position at jack daniels and go after dog toys yeah and anything with jack in

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the title anyways

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hopefully we can work through that but uh but different than the lawyers for

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car wine so same

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situation you have to do wine is separate than liquor and that sort of a thing

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with trademarks and

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all that and so car wine reaches out but they're like uh hey come excuse us um

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uh we're big fans but

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uh i love love what jack's doing but uh what do you guys plan on doing with

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this wine it's really just

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kind of a series of things you just do when you apply for a trademark just to

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cover things and uh

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and they were awesome and i was like these guys are so fun we drink their wine

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anyway been drinking

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it for years and uh i was like hey just tell them if they are if i ever do a

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wine that if they were

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uncomfortable with it i'll just change it up just whatever they wanted you know

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it'll be totally

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different anyway but i'll show it to them first so i told the attorneys like

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just tell them all

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whatever well let's have some wine together so is the company named car one

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yeah yeah so there's car

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wine car vineyards maybe oh in northern california i think and and uh you know

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they're they're out

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there in all the grocery stores and they're pretty big but they're good you

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know good solid wine and

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but they were cool about it yeah super cool super cool yeah their lawyers

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reached out but it's the

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same situation but you can be cool or you cannot be cool yeah be cool like fonzie

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you know just be

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cool like fonzie like how hard is this ah well it's lawyers i mean it's also

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that's their job yeah you

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know i mean it's like the scorpion and the frog it's in my nature yeah and they're

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there to protect so i

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do i do i do get it but yeah you know that's okay we still be nice about it

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yeah well hopefully this

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podcast will maybe lube the gears a little bit yeah maybe be cool you know so

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are you guys uh is season

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two it's on hold now because of the writer's strike well working on the scripts

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so it's uh are you allowed

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to work on the scripts no i mean i'm not part of the guild yet i would be after

17:31

this one because i'm

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writing the finale but um out of respect for what they have going on i'm not i'm

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pencils down on it too so

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all the writers that are part of the the wga uh pencils down on all their

17:41

projects right now and so

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the writers guild is only television and film it has nothing to do with authors

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nothing to do with

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the publishing industry as far as uh the books and thammon schuster and all

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that stuff and same thing

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with video games i learned video games because there are writers for these

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video games yeah and so that's

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not part of it either um so people can work on that stuff but it's the it's the

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television and film

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and is the main dispute streaming is that what's going on streaming was though

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has been a long time

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coming uh so that was coming to a head anyway and they probably should have

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negotiated or not they

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should have um it's been a long time in the works just because things have

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changed so much since the

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last writer's strike when it comes to streaming and uh but then right when they

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that comes to a head

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ai hits the news this january for us ai with chat gpt and all that stuff and

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people are putting it as

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you've seen um people can just say hey write a show about x y or z and pops out

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not bad do a little

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editing off it goes and you don't have to pay a writer's room so if you're an

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executive and you're beholden to i

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guess shareholders or whatever it is um maybe that's attractive but not so

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attractive to those

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people who make their living uh coming up with these ideas in a writer's room

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and uh and then

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making all this money essentially the ground the foundation of everything that

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we see in film and

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television happens in those writers rooms and happens from these creators uh

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and they know they

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make a lot of them it's not huge money uh they're making anyway but it's just

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uh how do you deal

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with streaming and how do we deal with ai and we'll see what is the solution to

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the ai problem because we're

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we're dealing with chat gpt 4 now and as chat gpt 5 6 and 7 roll out i i would

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imagine they're going

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to be able to write in the style of jack carr and write a perfect james reese

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novel maybe eventually

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somebody did that right when it came out i think in january i got a text and i

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said check your email

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this is what i just just screenshotted chat gpt i said write the first novel or

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first chapter in the

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next jack carr james reese terminalist thing and it was wasn't great but in

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five years it probably will be

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right so and even if it's not great it maybe is a scaffolding for an actual

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writer to go in and put

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some real flair to it exactly this new book is really good oh thank you i'm in

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like i said i think

19:38

i'm on chapter 24 or 25 and um you're writing i liked how your shift your

19:44

switch your styles up a

19:46

little bit yeah you know like there's like new elements to the way you do

19:50

things like i don't

19:51

want to give anything away but when reese is uh uh incarcerated yeah yeah there's

19:58

like there's

19:59

something to the way you're doing it differently it's interesting because you

20:02

don't have the same

20:03

novel every time yeah you pick some up somebody up and he's a carbon cut out

20:06

and you drop him now

20:07

in europe now he's getting revenge now he's in africa getting revenge now he's

20:10

in china so

20:12

you know i wanted to avoid that and that was uh right out of the gate i was uh

20:15

i was cognizant of

20:16

that being something that that could be an issue if you have a success just

20:19

kind of trying to copy

20:20

that and i never wanted to do that i always want to evolve just like anything

20:23

else in life like in

20:24

the seal teams my uh my whole mission was to be a better operator and a better

20:28

leader today than

20:28

i was yesterday uh personal front be a better husband and father than i was

20:32

yesterday and for

20:33

writing be a better author for the next book than i was for this one i want my

20:36

next sentence to be

20:37

better than uh than the sentence before so it's um so this one james reaches on

20:42

a journey and

20:42

that's one of the one things that we have in common just with everyone else on

20:46

this planet

20:47

we're all on a journey there's no no matter your race your religion your socioeconomic

20:51

background

20:52

you're on a journey and you don't know how much time you have on this planet uh

20:55

you get one ride

20:56

and so got to make it count so people are trusting me with that time which is

20:59

something i take extremely

21:01

seriously so as much thought goes into any instagram post or blog or question

21:05

for a guest on my podcast

21:06

or whatever it is as goes into any sentence in the novel and i want to always

21:09

improve on that craft

21:10

every single time so james reese is on this journey he's not the same guy he

21:13

was in the first book not

21:14

the same guy was in the third and he's not the same guy he is in the sixth one

21:18

he's evolving he's

21:19

learning uh taking those past successes and failures and taking those lessons

21:23

and applying them forward

21:24

hopefully as wisdom hopefully we're all doing that um except for bud light and

21:27

miller led apparently

21:28

but uh they'll learn to they need to read these novels perhaps and uh they're

21:33

only down 21 no big deal

21:37

and that's more than roundinger i think that's more than a rounding that's a

21:40

real number that's

21:41

tough to come back from yeah well what's interesting now is gay bars are now

21:45

boycotting them because

21:47

they didn't back up dylan mulvaney i saw they can't kick they can't win they

21:51

just waded into this thing

21:52

it's like an l ambush you walk in and you're getting hit from all sides and you're

21:55

kind of cover up and

21:56

and then they did that one post they put like their first one after that it was

21:59

uh they put the bud light

22:00

they can and they said uh uh tgif question mark but what they should have done

22:06

this is you know

22:07

hindsight should have laid low well they could lay low and hope that somebody

22:09

else messes up like

22:10

mike miller light here a few weeks later um even though it was before we just

22:14

the miller light one

22:14

is very mild it's pretty mild but it's kind of a it's just silly it's just like

22:18

you're you're

22:19

you're also attacking women you're attacking these girls that are fitness

22:24

models there's nothing wrong

22:26

of being a fitness fitness model just like there's nothing wrong with being a

22:29

male fitness influencer

22:30

one of those guys that does like a lot of posts on lifting weights and

22:34

technique and they're

22:35

shirtless they look jacked there's nothing wrong with that there's nothing

22:38

wrong with being

22:39

a beautiful woman who makes a living taking photographs with beer no guys that

22:44

drink miller

22:45

light like that but it's idea this like narrow view of what a woman is supposed

22:49

to be that a woman

22:50

is only supposed to be a lady who's succeeding and killing it in the corporate

22:55

world and like why

22:57

this is why i saw another one that was similar to that so they said why are we

23:00

vilifying

23:01

women that stay home and raise kids and handle the household and that sort of

23:06

thing but celebrating

23:07

the men pretending to be women who stay home and do the same thing so it's kind

23:12

of like that

23:12

juxtaposition uh those dichotomies are interesting but well particularly in the

23:15

way they dress

23:16

right because one of the things about trans people is that like you'll

23:21

celebrate the most stereotypical

23:24

like image of what a woman is like short skirts and a lot of makeup and fake

23:30

eyelashes and like

23:32

elbow high gloves and the whole deal it's like it's a caricature of what it's

23:36

drag like what is drag

23:38

right it's like the most ridiculous version of what a woman is and it's

23:43

celebrated but an actual woman

23:46

like that is disparaged we live in interesting times and i think if bud light

23:50

remember that scene from

23:51

the hangover where uh bradley cooper they pull over to the side and he's on the

23:53

road they're all beat

23:55

up and he's covered in dust and everything and he takes that phone call and he's

23:57

like man we

23:59

fucked up like if they just played that clip like that like a 10 second clip

24:04

yeah just people would

24:05

have been like yeah just put that up just put it up and people would have been

24:08

like okay all right

24:09

everybody screws up everybody messes up you know we're all trying to navigate

24:13

this kind of new world

24:14

and we're all trying to do the best we can and i went on a bud light tour back

24:18

back in 2007 me and

24:19

charlie murphy and john heffron we went on a real men of comedy bud light tour

24:24

nice like real men of

24:25

genius or whatever that was the guy from survivor was with us jeff probes the

24:30

guy that uh no no no

24:31

no the the band like it's the eye of the tiger nice because those were the guys

24:35

that would sing

24:36

the song real men of genius oh no i do remember those i did not know that was

24:40

really funny those were

24:41

funny ads and those guys did those ads in front of the audience so it was like

24:47

yeah it was a fun tour

24:48

and uh that gentleman has passed away the survivor guy i believe so as an elite

24:53

singer survivor didn't

24:54

he passed away super cool guy though what a hell hell of a voice too yeah so we

24:58

get to hang out with

24:59

those guys and travel the country with them for a month awesome yeah we did

25:02

like 22 dates and i got

25:04

to become friends with charlie and heffron and we traveled around and that was

25:09

when bud light embraced

25:10

this humorous like sort of dopey man version of you know beer which is like

25:17

yeah what everybody likes

25:19

yeah like it's a do you know shane gillis one of the best comics in the country

25:23

well he's

25:23

fucking top top shelf if i saw it i'd know it but he's a new guy coming up but

25:28

anyway he drinks bud light

25:29

and he's in a dilemma oh because he'll drink bud light on the podcast and we've

25:32

had podcasts where he

25:33

drank 16 bud lights 16 in three hours he's a big boy wow big fella it's all

25:38

relative he can put him

25:40

down yeah it's all right yeah that's amazing though even how big you that's

25:45

that's pretty serious i don't

25:47

even know how many did you do fluid were you joining him i just can't keep up

25:50

with that i'm i'm six

25:51

seven in i'm done i can't stop that's pretty good though three hours yeah the

25:55

peanut bud light is a

25:56

light beer it's only like what is the percentage of alcohol five percent yeah

26:01

it's light it's a lot like

26:02

yeah it's like it's for people who like to drink all day long you can hydrate

26:06

with it yeah it's actually

26:07

not to worry with it yeah yeah you don't worry about nice little buzz you hydrate

26:11

it's not offensive

26:13

tasting no now it's just offensive yeah well it's just one ad campaign it's

26:18

just so dumb and the lady

26:19

behind it was her oh just like talking about the fratty sense of humor like

26:24

what are you going to do

26:26

you going to replace it with this mentally ill person i know it's it's tough

26:30

they had a winning

26:30

needs attention constantly i mean they had a winning uh campaign going for

26:35

decades it worked yeah they

26:36

should have gone back to another real men of genius you know listen you can

26:41

make fun of men hardcore in

26:43

those ads and we'll laugh along with you absolutely you know it's like it would

26:47

have been fine yeah but

26:48

and they would have got people to buy bud light which you got the opposite you

26:53

got now the gay folks

26:54

don't want it the trans folks don't want it nobody's mad at you it's tough they're

26:58

saying i've read

26:59

this story where this bar owner was saying that he had to stop carrying it

27:03

because people were attacking

27:05

people that were drinking it oh my gosh so people that were like ah it i don't

27:08

care i'm not involved

27:09

in this what are you communist people just beating people's asses for having

27:13

bud light they were having

27:14

fights at the bars it's so sad and who are they owned by now aren't they owned

27:18

by some international

27:19

corporation at this point i believe so yeah yeah are they owned by a chinese

27:23

corporation

27:25

i wouldn't be who owns bud light i think somebody in europe yeah who owns an anheuser-busch

27:29

let's

27:30

find out who owns a nice european company isn't it maybe but uh whatever

27:33

something's bad i blame it

27:34

on china yeah those headlights like those lights that you got you know oh the

27:39

ones for my land cruiser

27:40

those actually were from china yeah they would look cool they just died they

27:44

got water in them

27:45

somehow or another like how are you fucking it's a fucking land cruiser i mean

27:48

come on how are they

27:49

not sealed yes a company called inbev bought it i've never heard and what's inbev

27:54

oh i don't know

27:56

it's tied to the communist i want to short them right now i want to call my

28:00

broker i got a feeling

28:03

this is going to keep going belgian multinational belgium yeah let's manipulate

28:06

some markets right now

28:07

yeah i think you could let's take a break though let me yeah make a couple

28:11

calls so we have this

28:12

podcast that we do called protect our parks that i do with shane gillis and shafir

28:16

and mark normand and we get hammered like most of the times yeah and we're

28:20

trying to figure out

28:21

what's the least woke beer to drink and uh mark norman said colt 45 and i think

28:27

he's right is he

28:28

well who owns it we gotta look it up you don't know but colt 45 like you don't

28:32

know that is the least

28:33

woke advertising campaign it was i remember growing up those commercials were

28:37

fantastic malt

28:38

liquor yeah i mean that stuff is what is the the alcohol percentage of that

28:42

that stuff is more than

28:43

bud light yeah a lot more that stuff's rough that's not even real beer it's no

28:49

malt liquor 5.6 malt

28:51

liquor is well cult 45 is according to uh really wikipedia what about old

28:56

english it's an old ultimately

28:58

it's a psyop psychological operation you just think it is something else in

29:01

there but they're saving

29:02

maybe that's 800 is just slightly well it raises it ranges from 5.9 to 8. maybe

29:08

we need well i would

29:09

say canada is the wokest fucking place on earth right now i would have said go

29:12

with canadian beer

29:13

because canadian beer is like nine percent yeah they have like double x stuff

29:16

yeah they get hammered up

29:17

oh nice they go hard it gets cold it gets really cold you gotta do something

29:21

gotta do something up

29:22

there they locked themselves in and get fucking blastered you gotta do

29:24

something up there who's

29:25

someone was talking about canada and food the other day you don't hear about

29:28

somebody saying they

29:29

want to go out and have a nice canadian andrew schultz was that it oh my god

29:32

let's play that bit

29:33

andrew schultz's did i see that on yours where did i see that maybe we played

29:36

it here oh did you

29:38

fucking genius he does it a bit about uh countries that suppress their women

29:42

that's it how horrible it is to

29:44

suppress women that's it yeah it's a great bit see if you can find it okay so i

29:47

do that yeah yeah

29:48

this is such a good bit it's pretty clever such a bit there's a lot of

29:54

countries in the world that

29:55

treat women like that's up but they got the best food

29:59

that's undeniable right the more countries like stay in the kitchen the better

30:08

the food comes out of the

30:10

kitchen right because it comes out more delicious that way have you ever eaten

30:17

food from a country

30:18

where the women are equal oh get the get it away get away what is that equality

30:26

cuisine move it

30:27

move nobody in this room has ever said you know what we should do for dinner

30:34

tonight canadian never been

30:36

said that's it canada treats their women equally their food is dog it's

30:44

disgusting canadian bacon

30:47

kill yourself if you like canadian bacon what is this coaster of ham what am i

30:53

looking at i actually

30:54

like canadian bacon yeah can you make it that maybe wasn't been the best uh

30:57

analogy i know what he was

30:58

doing yeah but it's a funny joke it is it's a great joke but no one has said

31:03

let's go eat canadian no

31:05

i mean i don't even know what that means i don't know what it means either i

31:07

think it's all poutine's

31:08

good i think that's french though yeah that's over from that that's more east

31:11

yeah yeah that's montreal

31:13

yeah and there are some good restaurants pretty bomb diggity they got smoked

31:16

meat actually canada

31:18

has some good food and who's the uh the hunter that has his uh place up is it

31:21

montreal hunter yeah yeah

31:22

no it's uh toronto toronto okay yeah antler yeah yeah that's the guy that when

31:28

the vegans were

31:29

angry he butchered a deer in front of the window and was he on the podcast yes

31:35

and so i've met him

31:36

before as well super nice guy very nice so you don't think that he would do

31:38

like just having talked to

31:40

him like you wouldn't think that his mind would just go there to do that um but

31:43

that was yeah it was

31:44

pretty legit well it was a smart move got him on the podcast got him famous i

31:48

mean like take advantage

31:49

i mean these people are like making it uncomfortable for people to go to his

31:52

business yeah just because

31:54

they have an idea of what you should and shouldn't eat and if someone

31:58

confronted them like if you unless

32:00

you are growing your own vegetables and you know exactly what happens you are

32:05

responsible for animal

32:07

death 100 every i mean there's a crazy video of this um this this uh combine

32:13

going through a field and

32:15

it goes this patch of uh of of of like uh i guess probably corn or something

32:21

like that and 13 deer

32:23

run out of there wow like you know how many those fawns get chewed up you know

32:26

how many rabbits rabbits

32:28

and you know like if it is a life a life because i'll tell you what you lose a

32:33

lot of life for a pound

32:34

of grain no matter what poisoning pesticides herbicides like this idea that you're

32:40

going to have some zero karma

32:43

no worry at all vegetable dinner like fuck off you're not or again just getting

32:48

the things to

32:49

getting your uh like the or the organic paper towels or whatever they have you

32:52

know they have those

32:52

things um just getting those to the store uh you know could grab the cost of

32:56

the country the amount

32:58

of insects that hit the windshield yeah it depends and who is steve runella has

33:01

that thing right doesn't

33:02

have the pyramid of uh things like fish nobody cares that whole deal i had a

33:06

post that i did on

33:07

instagram way back in the day called the hierarchy of dead animals on social

33:10

media that's it so i said like

33:12

if you catch a fish no one's upset at you yeah and then i showed a picture of

33:15

me with a dead turkey

33:17

like we're crossing into a weird area but nobody cares and then i had a package

33:21

of bear meat right

33:23

just a package just meat it just said bear meat it's like you can get away with

33:27

a lot you do it in

33:28

a sneaky way yeah there's bear meat and that's okay that was okay right not not

33:32

too many people hating

33:33

yeah hierarchy of dead animals on social media yeah yeah that yeah when did you

33:39

put my first 2015.

33:41

yeah eight years ago eight years ago amazing yeah that was probably the last

33:45

time i hunted bears

33:47

was it yeah i haven't been up there in a while well there was the pandemic and

33:51

you know and then you

33:52

know you couldn't get up there for a while yeah now i'm just angry yeah they

33:55

invite yeah it's uh rivets

33:57

and they've been in touch and want to try to get me up there and it's a crazy

34:00

spot they have so many

34:01

bears up there and anyone that thinks that somehow or another bears like they're

34:05

a protected species

34:06

listen go to canada go to alberta and go wander around the woods there are so

34:12

many goddamn bears

34:13

yeah they have to kill bears like their their deer population their moose

34:17

population all depends

34:19

on it they are overrun with bears yeah no absolutely when we were up there

34:22

there's bear cannibalism

34:24

yeah john one of the one of the guys that was uh this jonathan one of the sons

34:29

of uh the rivets

34:29

is he saw a bear a male bear the boar attacked a female and uh was trying to

34:37

get to her cubs

34:38

killed one of her cubs the female chased the bear off and then the female ate

34:44

her own cub wow

34:45

yeah you know this aren't these aren't teddy bears yeah they're edible monsters

34:51

yeah did you post a

34:52

picture of your did you post a picture of your bear at one point and that's

34:54

where the hatred there's a lot

34:56

a lot of a lot of heat oh i got a lot of yeah yeah yeah they posted it that's

34:58

the alaska monsters

35:01

bears go at it what is the longest most intense grizzly bear fight he's seen oh

35:05

geez no i'm guessing my

35:07

reaction you did not see this this is a few days ago a crazy fight just a few

35:10

days ago here this is an

35:12

intense fight is this new yeah i haven't seen this one may 11th i mean we could

35:16

go into i don't look at that

35:17

thing oh my gosh that is incredible that's nature's cleanup crew ladies and

35:22

gentlemen anything that

35:24

fucks up gets eaten by this 2 000 pound monster and here comes this guy this is

35:29

going to happen

35:29

dangerously close to us oh boy here we go how beautiful they are look at those

35:37

things gosh look at that

35:40

backdrop yeah people will say it's cgi

35:43

that's incredible weird life they have look at that i mean that looks pretty

35:52

evenly matched

35:52

at this point yeah they're both the same size i mean it's they just biting each

35:57

other's faces he's

35:57

been training harder oh they do a lot of jujitsu though look look right there

36:01

there's a little

36:02

grabby roll there it is oh oh going for the back he's got the back he's been

36:07

watching ufc oh look at

36:08

that yeah he's just biting chunks oh my gosh and that guy's trying to get away

36:12

now he's trying to

36:13

they're sick too late their skin is so thick and they're covered in fat he was

36:16

like oh that's just

36:17

annoying like broke it off me wow i will say this goes on and on and on how

36:21

long do you want to watch

36:22

wow this is a good fight this is pretty good oh look at this oh really good

36:26

attention

36:27

oh my gosh i like how the other bear just keeps moving though that's good oh he's

36:32

trying like his

36:32

technique oh there you guys still got his back but he's trying to reverse oh he's

36:36

pulled guard

36:37

trying to get him off of him oh my gosh that is crazy that one better run that

36:43

one better just

36:44

get on those getaway sticks i don't know i feel like he's gonna the other guy's

36:48

gonna gas out yeah we're

36:49

good we're good i'm watching oh my god because they get the guy's wasting all

36:52

his time biting him in the

36:53

back yeah maybe he's going for like a spine or like no it's not really gonna

36:58

happen no no i mean no one

37:00

i don't think anyone dies no oh really it's just it's an intense fight it's a

37:04

crazy fight well you

37:05

know who got the best bear fight footage before this was grizzly man oh which

37:10

is one of my favorite

37:11

all-time comedies i haven't it's the best you haven't watched it no i keep

37:15

meaning to and i haven't

37:16

watched it but i know oh my god have a cocktail and watch grizzly man it is the

37:20

best unintentional

37:22

comedy that's ever been made and i wonder if it's unintentional because werner

37:26

herzog is a genius

37:27

yeah yeah you know and he's made so many amazing films and that to me is his

37:31

favorite my favorite of

37:33

his films and there's so many moments that just are laugh out loud funny like

37:37

there's one where

37:39

there's a sheriff and he's talking about like finding the body and the fact

37:42

this guy was camping

37:42

with him oh man and the sheriff looks at the camera i thought he was retarded

37:47

it's like the way he says it you know that there's a smash cut and like the the

37:53

bear guy always gets

37:54

eaten by the bear the shark guy ends up getting eaten by the shark the rattlesnake

37:57

guy gets it end

37:58

up getting bit by the rattlesnake what's happening with these the trailer oh

38:02

for grizzly man yeah that

38:04

poor guy well that guy was very very sad he was a sad guy and he had this idea

38:10

that he was protecting

38:12

them oh but he just doesn't even understand he doesn't understand wildlife

38:16

conservation and

38:17

that's so brutal if a lion guy gets eaten by the lion yeah that's it's always

38:23

the way but this one's

38:24

this is an amazing brilliant tale of adventure and potential madness and

38:28

hilarious well i think i feel

38:31

like genuinely this story was suicide by bear yeah because he stayed long after

38:36

you're supposed to be

38:38

there yeah he stayed after the animals were in hibernation he was very

38:42

depressed and i think

38:43

he kind of wanted to die yeah i really do i just think this guy just was very

38:48

sad that's tough and

38:49

he very much seemed like an in the closet gay guy because like he said a lot of

38:54

crazy like he was

38:55

walking around with the camera he goes i wish i was gay if i was gay it'd be so

38:58

easy i just find a guy

38:59

and hook up but i'm not gay i'm like are you sure like it's like there's so

39:03

many layers to that film oh

39:05

really i'm gonna have to watch it at some point it's great it's a great

39:08

documentary and it also it

39:10

highlights how majestic these animals are they're so amazing and delicious too

39:13

if you get the right

39:14

ones eating the right stuff i've never eaten a brown bear no i have not eaten

39:17

but black bears are very

39:19

good if they're eating the blueberries just munching on those blueberries it's

39:21

uh i haven't had that

39:23

but but rinella says it's some of the best meat he's ever eaten it is what's

39:27

what's interesting is that

39:28

settlers in america in the pioneer days they preferred bear meat and they shot

39:34

deer for

39:34

their skins oh interesting that's why like a buck do you know what a buck yeah

39:39

deer it's a dollar

39:40

because that was what it what it was worth yeah one of those deer skins was

39:44

worth a dollar so they

39:45

called it a buck yeah yeah which is kind of crazy that back then that's a lot

39:49

of money oh my god back

39:51

then a dollar is a lot of 20 of those 30 of those 50 of those 100 of those you're

39:54

balling yeah you

39:55

know the richest guy in the world at one point in time was a beaver pelt salesman

40:00

i believe it in

40:01

america i believe it yeah there's a time and it's just like the stock market

40:04

the ups and downs in the

40:05

markets for those things uh did you see that recent uh i think it was in kenya

40:09

i just saw it maybe

40:09

yesterday the day before but uh the villagers out there killed killed a lion

40:14

but an old lion and it made the

40:16

news but not so much in the way that some of the others have because this lion

40:20

uh was eating some of

40:21

their livestock and they're like oh guess what this is killing our livestock

40:25

that's how we survive

40:27

so we're going to kill it so they did um and of course you know you know and

40:31

ask more questions

40:32

about well well why and why is uh why is there not hunting here and if there

40:36

was hunting with that

40:37

animal have had value and then would there be incentive to keep those

40:41

populations uh at a certain

40:42

level and apply the science to it and make sure but there's none of that they

40:45

just kill it and that's

40:46

how it goes because these things are killing your livestock that you feed your

40:49

family with

40:50

uh so it wasn't long for this earth that happens with elephants with crops yeah

40:54

oh they destroy the

40:55

a bunch of crops over there so what do they do they kill them no idea what a

40:59

farm is no they're not

41:00

worried they're not worried they just go through i've seen those those videos

41:04

those pictures and but

41:06

uh it's that's that's the problem about not putting the requisite time energy

41:08

and effort into studying

41:09

an issue no matter what that issue is and just making a snap decision based on

41:13

something that

41:13

someone with a lot of followers puts out there all of a sudden that is your uh

41:16

that's your position

41:18

as well rather than let me just do some study here let me think about this a

41:21

little more yeah now i'll

41:23

make my what's sort of like a woman attacking women for wearing bikinis it's

41:28

like like let's talk about

41:30

this okay you're ruining it for everyone something wrong with that and also the

41:34

there's the thing about

41:35

wildlife conservation that's very uncomfortable and what's uncomfortable is

41:39

that it really bothers us

41:41

that the only way animals really have value in terms of these uh wild

41:47

populations of antelope and

41:49

gazelles and all these different things they hunt in africa the way they've

41:53

made them thrive is by putting

41:56

value on them to hunt them and that bothers people a lot it does and i get it

42:00

yeah i get why it would i mean

42:02

it would be nice if all these people that were animal conservationists spent as

42:07

much money as hunters

42:08

yeah but it doesn't happen they don't nope they just especially in america with

42:14

the pitman robertson

42:15

act where a percentage of all ammunition sales of all gear all hunting gear and

42:22

it turns into all that

42:24

goes towards wildlife conservation and it's it's the tune of billions of

42:28

dollars yeah and sportsmen

42:29

uh voted that in yeah voted that in that was a tax self-imposed tax yes and a

42:33

beautiful one really

42:35

it's one of the wildlife conservation in this country and the preservation of

42:39

public land for

42:40

recreational use and hunting and fishing and camping is one of the greatest

42:44

things this country has ever

42:46

pioneered oh yeah because it really doesn't exist or hadn't exist until we did

42:51

it in this country out of

42:52

necessity because all those bucks added up to a lot of dead deer and a lot of

42:56

population decline and so

42:58

but now now we have thriving populations of these of these animals and turkeys

43:01

also uh same thing and

43:03

now they're all over the place we have about 200 essentially that go between a

43:07

ridge from our house

43:08

they come through every day up to this other ridge and then work their way back

43:11

and i was heading up to

43:12

see steve runella in montana a lot two weeks ago and i took a video he'd been

43:15

out turkey hunting didn't

43:16

see anything and i took about 200 uh turkeys just standing there like in the

43:19

road as i'm leaving

43:20

the house and uh yeah right there yeah but you're in park cities and always

43:24

blasting shotguns in park

43:25

city no no they're town turkeys they're very safe they're very comfortable

43:28

hanging out in the backyard

43:30

but i thought they were going to die this winter because there was uh last

43:32

winter they were here the

43:33

whole time because we had a very mild winter last year this year it was not

43:37

mild it was like the

43:38

largest recorded snowfall in utah history or park city history anyway and so i

43:43

they disappeared and i

43:44

thought oh they're gone because it's the first time they've seen this kind of

43:47

snow as well but uh they

43:48

came back about three weeks ago they came back in force 200 of them right back

43:51

like they never left

43:52

but uh do they migrate i think they found a barn somewhere with some heat and

43:57

some feed i'm thinking

43:58

i don't know i don't know but it has to be because they i don't know if they

44:00

can just hunker down

44:01

for all those months that we got all that snow don't fly very far no but they

44:05

fly it's pretty cool

44:06

to see them fly for the for the first time when you're not uh when you think

44:09

that uh maybe they don't and

44:11

then you see them go up to roost and or come down and that's that's pretty cool

44:15

and that's pretty

44:15

cool but yeah i've um how far can they fly i don't know 100 yards or something

44:21

maybe i don't know

44:22

that's all i've seen them flies in and out of these trees so not very far but

44:25

but who knows maybe they

44:26

maybe they do what a weird bird could kind of fly but not much it kind of glides

44:31

you know and they

44:31

get up there and fly let's find out let's find out right now right it says wild

44:34

turkeys can fly at

44:35

speeds of up to 40 miles an hour 50 miles an hour but only for short distances

44:39

usually limit their

44:40

flight distance to about 100 yards or less nice i nailed it you did that right

44:44

on it wasn't 101 or 99

44:46

like you were on it that's amazing well i've seen them i've seen them fly i

44:51

took a guess how many how

44:52

much have uh somebody spent turkey hunting only once yeah yeah i only went once

44:56

with rinella yeah it's good

44:59

but my time is very valuable and if i'm just hunting for one meal that bothers

45:05

me yeah i want to hunt

45:06

where if i shoot like um i went with rinella we went down to south texas i got

45:11

two white tail and a

45:12

neil guy so i'm you're good and good yeah yeah you know it's like oh that's

45:17

that to me i like to eat

45:18

those animals for months yeah yeah like i've got neil guy uh liver and my in my

45:23

uh refrigerator for

45:25

breakfast nice it's like i like that that's what i like it was good if you had

45:29

moose heart did you

45:30

guys eat the moose heart when you went i did good good in bc yeah really good

45:34

like slice it real thin

45:36

and fry it mm-hmm yeah delicious oh yeah well i'm a big fan of liver for its

45:41

performance like just

45:43

as a food as a superfood it's so good for you well then the liver guy what was

45:48

the liver guy the liver

45:49

king yeah yeah steroids that was the deal because i was doing it it didn't work

45:54

just kidding no i

45:56

wasn't uh i'm not even working out anymore it's like the the uh the workouts

46:00

the nutrition and the

46:01

sleep have fallen to the bottom of the priority list with everything going on

46:04

because of work because

46:05

yeah there's books to write and scripts to write well not right now but you reprioritize

46:08

and focus on

46:10

book seven and then i have this non-fiction coming out which is taking a lot

46:13

more research than i

46:14

anticipated which uh the first one is on the 1983 beirut barracks bombing so it's

46:18

uh when it's my

46:19

first foray into the non-fiction side of the house so working on that right now

46:22

with an amazing guy

46:23

a historian pulitzer prize finalist james scott and there's really not the seminal

46:27

work on that event

46:28

yet but as a kid i remember just how impactful that was to me seeing the news

46:33

news week and time and

46:35

come across our dining room table and seeing those photos and uh knowing that i

46:38

was going to go in the

46:39

military even at that young age so i was always interested in insurgencies and

46:42

counterinsurgencies

46:43

and terrorism and special operations like i was focused on that from a very i'm

46:46

not aware of that

46:48

story yeah so october of uh 1983 um there was a uh two actual car car bombs one

46:54

with the french

46:55

paratroopers and one with the marine barracks in beirut lebanon and uh there

46:59

were some some lead-up

47:00

events uh first one in or the first large one that really people noticed uh the

47:05

uh bombing of the

47:06

american embassy in beirut in april 1983 and then there's some newly declassified

47:10

documents from the

47:11

reagan administration that talk about what was going on behind the scenes and

47:14

who was advocating

47:15

to put marines ashore who wanted to keep them on amphib ships so a little

47:19

smaller than an aircraft

47:20

carrier but take marines around uh who wanted to keep them on those ships in a

47:24

little safer area out

47:26

on the on the water in the med and um and then who made that is said well the

47:30

president made the final

47:32

decision and i talked to michael reagan about it he said that decision haunted

47:35

his father until the day

47:36

he died and uh so they put marines ashore in beirut lebanon and then there was

47:41

a uh a bomb that that uh

47:42

that took out those barracks and it was the largest marine loss of life since iwo

47:46

jima in world war ii

47:48

and uh so i'm doing this research right now how many people died there were 300

47:54

we can look it up

47:55

exactly so i don't mess i don't mess it up by one or two but uh it's so

47:59

impactful and looms over u.s

48:01

foreign policy to this day and there's a there's an ending to it too 307 yeah

48:06

there it is 241 u.s

48:09

military personnel personnel 58 french six civilians two suicide bombers yeah

48:14

what is your take on

48:16

what's going on in ukraine are you up on it and up on it i mean i'm not upon it

48:21

in uh because i know

48:22

you're writing i'm writing about it i'm writing about it i wrote about in the

48:25

second novel in uh

48:26

in um in true believer and i got that from someone who's also been on this

48:29

podcast peter zeehan wrote

48:31

a book back in uh 2014 and so i used that i read that on my flight to mozambique

48:37

where i was doing

48:37

research for the second novel even though i didn't have a deal for the first

48:40

novel yet i didn't even

48:41

turn that in but i always knew i was gonna write two um because john grisham he

48:44

wrote his first book

48:45

a time to kill and couldn't give that book away and then he writes the firm and

48:48

that one takes

48:49

off tom cruise is in the movie then they republish a time to kill and matthew mcconaughey

48:53

stars in that

48:53

one and we've had a john grisham novel every year so i thought back to that and

48:57

thought i'll at least

48:58

write two and if both of them don't take off then i'll maybe reevaluate my

49:02

choices so uh so i knew

49:03

i was always going to write right two but on the flight over there i read uh

49:07

his book accidental

49:08

superpower and uh that one very clearly predicts a russian invasion of ukraine

49:14

by the year 2022 and that

49:16

was back in 2014 he wrote that so there were signs peter zion was that on the

49:20

ball to the year

49:21

wow to the exact he's a weirdly smart guy he's amazing yeah he's been on my

49:25

podcast and he's been

49:27

on your podcast and i've read all his books he's so sure of what he's saying

49:30

too that's what's

49:31

uncomfortable he's very you're you're not even hedging your bets no no and he's

49:36

not he doesn't

49:37

hedge the bets at all and but he but he also that's his thing that is 100 his

49:42

area of expertise and

49:44

study he lives it he breathes it it's not something he just dabbles in so read

49:48

that book amazing amazing

49:49

book so i incorporated that into my into my second novel but now russia

49:52

actually did invade ukraine

49:54

so now when we work on these scripts for the second season of the terminal list

49:57

well we have to figure

49:58

that out it's going to change obviously because they actually invaded instead

50:01

of like in the book um the

50:02

the hero of course wins the day but um but when he talks about that and talks

50:06

about population decline

50:08

very steep population decline in russia and gives the reasons behind it and uh

50:12

talks about the

50:13

ethnic russian population in ukraine being the largest outside of russia and he

50:17

looked at how long

50:19

you can field an army uh before you can't feel that army anymore and 2022 was

50:25

that year so in order to

50:27

field the army at current levels they had to invade by that time and we really

50:31

i mean this is going back to

50:32

to uh learning lessons from the past and applying them going forward as wisdom

50:37

because we really

50:38

made that invasion inevitable by some of our decisions at the end of the cold

50:41

war in the early 90s

50:42

all the way through the 90s and really set things up to uh to make that

50:47

invasion a uh inevitability

50:50

nato expansion nato expansion promises uh it's just so so i like to look at

50:55

things through the enemy's

50:57

eyes which i did in the devil's hand my fourth book but i think it's important

51:00

to look at things through

51:00

the enemy's eyes because it allows you to then make decisions taking that into

51:04

account and so with

51:06

russia certainly knowing what our response would be to an invasion of ukraine

51:10

that's what i incorporated

51:11

into this one so if you knew what we would do if they invaded ukraine what

51:16

should you do now as russia

51:18

to set yourself up um success is the wrong word but uh but financially so with

51:23

gas and oil sales

51:24

and contracts and futures with india and with china so i work all that into

51:29

this book so it was

51:30

quite it was quite the education what did you think about the blowing up of the

51:34

pipeline oh my goodness

51:36

there's a seymour hirsch that has a few uh articles out there on substack yeah

51:40

amazing people should

51:41

read those before they just retweet something but he is i mean he is detailed

51:46

in those accounts of yeah

51:48

where people are what what military exercises are going on that would cover a

51:52

cover for action we

51:53

call it uh to allow uh the u.s to go in and blow up those pipelines um so it's

51:58

it's very and now it's

51:59

it's i think fairly established that uh what he writes in there is actually

52:03

true uh so it's uh it's

52:05

incredible so people there's a video of biden saying that they were going to

52:08

put a stop to the

52:09

nordstrom pipeline uh there was an assistant secretary of state i think she was

52:13

saying similar things out

52:14

there and it's yeah so when we go back and look at these things and uh don't

52:18

apply any political bias

52:19

to it and just apply common sense that's the other thing we don't do and uh it's

52:23

carl and klaus who

52:24

wrote on war said the most important attribute of a battlefield leader is

52:28

common sense george marshall

52:29

world war ii said the same thing and we neglect to apply common sense to a lot

52:33

of these things whether

52:34

it's as a populace or our elected officials or military leaders so there's a

52:39

lack of common sense in the end

52:41

and a stark uh lack of accountability as well so it's very therapeutic for me

52:46

to write some of these

52:47

novels because i get to hold people accountable in a fictional sense that you

52:50

couldn't do in real life

52:52

is it a lack of common sense or is it a willingness to ignore consequences

52:58

because of the financial

53:00

interest or the the political interest in what you're trying to accomplish that's

53:05

a huge part of it and we

53:06

can see a change in 1947 so when the defense establishment and the intelligence

53:11

agencies were

53:11

all reorganized in 1947 when we changed the uh department of war to the

53:16

department of defense

53:17

it became an industry and uh it stopped being a profession of arms and started

53:21

becoming a career

53:22

of arms for senior level uh officers in particular and at the same time we

53:27

start seeing a lack of

53:28

accountability because up to that point we go back to the civil war and see lincoln

53:32

go through general

53:33

after general until he got to grant and same thing in world war ii george marshall

53:36

went through general

53:37

after general after general admiral after admiral after admiral until he got to

53:41

those names that we

53:41

all know today who led us to victory in world war ii and then for some reason

53:45

and then that means that

53:47

there were people in those positions before who didn't measure up so george

53:49

marshall would give

53:50

them a chance and maybe a second one but not a third and then they'd put

53:54

somebody in place regardless

53:55

regardless of rank essentially um he'd promote people into the rank they needed

53:59

to be for those

54:00

positions if they showed promise and uh that's how we got to these leaders that

54:04

we all know the last

54:05

names of and we lost that after world war ii particularly in vietnam now we

54:09

start seeing

54:09

people not held accountable for mistakes we certainly see it with afghanistan

54:13

20 years they

54:15

had to prepare for this eventuality 20 years and then the best they can do is

54:19

what we saw in august of

54:20

2021 and someone who has no touch points with the military who never read a

54:24

book on military history

54:26

strategy tactics doesn't know anyone in the military maybe even never seen a

54:29

military film can apply

54:30

common sense to that situation and say look wait it looks like bagram here

54:34

would be the tactically

54:35

advantageous position which it was why are we putting our junior level enlisted

54:40

people at this gate

54:42

at this essentially a public airport in kabul putting them in a tactically

54:45

disadvantageous position to get

54:46

out of there after we had 20 years to prepare to leave and once again no one

54:52

held accountable and

54:53

there's a great book it's called the afghanistan papers by craig whitlock and

54:56

after two freedom of

54:58

information act lawsuits by the washington post they got access to these

55:01

classified histories of the war

55:03

and so they took these generals and admirals coming back and they interviewed

55:07

them and they thought

55:08

these interviews were going to stay classified and so he what craig whitlock

55:11

does once he got access to

55:13

this is he juxtaposes what they said in private that they thought was going to

55:16

stay classified to what

55:17

they said in front of congress and they are 180 out from each other and once

55:21

again no one held accountable

55:22

all those guys make rank they fail up and then sit on boards of defense

55:26

industry companies going forward

55:28

and yeah we saw that change 1947 onward you cover some of these problems in

55:35

your books yeah and but how

55:38

frustrating is it for you and how infuriating infuriating is it as a man who's

55:44

a veteran who served

55:45

who's been deployed overseas has been in these conflicts to to see this

55:50

happening and to see no

55:52

accountability and to see these poor choices being made over and over again

55:56

that put veterans lives at

55:57

risk put our lives at risk and put the entire world in this state right now

56:03

where we're we're genuinely

56:05

concerned about nuclear war yeah which we haven't been since the 80s right the

56:10

fall of the soviet union was

56:12

this great moment in history we're like oh jesus we're done yeah oh my god soviet

56:17

union is now russia

56:19

it's like it's they're they have elected leaders everything's going to be great

56:22

and yeah yeah no it's

56:24

tough because you lose friends over there people lose arms legs uh in wheelchairs

56:28

they sacrifice so much and

56:30

they're trusting those senior level leaders to make good decisions politicians

56:33

and military leaders and

56:35

then they see what happens over there and so it's very natural to ask that

56:38

question was it all was it

56:39

all worth it what were we doing over there for all these years for 20 years um

56:42

so it's very natural to

56:44

ask that question and you know for for my own sanity i just go back to taking

56:48

those lessons learned and

56:49

applying them going forward in a way that honors the sacrifice of those who did

56:53

lose their lives who didn't

56:54

come home or who came home changed forever because of post-traumatic stress or

56:57

traumatic brain injury

56:58

missing arms and legs and um my hope my i hate to say hope is that uh we can

57:03

take those lessons and

57:04

apply them to the next generation so they don't have to learn those same

57:07

lessons in blood

57:08

but i guess i'm not hopeful because we have shown time and time again that we

57:12

uh have a very difficult

57:13

time doing that for some reason and i don't know why that is but it's extremely

57:17

disheartening it also

57:19

sets a it also sets a uh sets up that next generation for failure because you

57:22

have these

57:23

people coming up the ranks and they see these uh these generals sit in front of

57:26

congress say certain

57:27

things you can go back to every single testimony from these guys and it all

57:31

said they all say pretty

57:32

much the same thing we're making progress we just need more money we need more

57:35

time um that they're

57:37

privately what were they saying they were saying that this is a disaster yeah

57:41

and you can go back

57:42

and look at these then and craig willock spells it all out he has the

57:45

transcripts in there

57:46

and there's one and i forget who it is right now an exact time but it's around

57:48

the 2009 2010 time frame

57:51

where there's one senior level official who's in charge of afghanistan he doesn't

57:54

even say anything

57:54

bad he's just kind of like you know it's not going as great as we may have led

57:58

you to believe

57:59

and then a few months later he has quietly moved aside and somebody else is put

58:03

in so that tells

58:04

everybody else coming up behind them that hey if they want to get this next

58:07

star and they want to sit

58:08

on the board of company x y or z they better tow this line and it's it's an

58:11

industry is that an issue

58:14

where the amount of money that's involved in it now because of the military

58:18

industrial complex is

58:19

almost it's it's like you can't turn that back now because you've turned on

58:24

that spigot the the

58:26

amount of money is continuing to flow these coffers are filling these people

58:30

are making so much money

58:32

to stop it now and to hold people accountable and to try not like put it into

58:37

this chain of failure

58:38

mm-hmm i mean it's a huge bureaucracy it's a it's a ecosystem that includes

58:43

politicians it includes

58:45

military leaders both in uniform and just out sitting on these boards lobbyists

58:49

permanent washington

58:50

it's all a part of this huge infrastructure that is moving forward and just

58:54

like any company got to

58:55

show profits it's just crazy that you know less than 100 years ago eisenhower

59:00

warned us about this at

59:02

the end of world war ii when he's leaving office he warned us about it in the

59:05

50s and said there is a

59:08

military industrial complex and the crazy thing is that speech at that time

59:13

aired on television and

59:16

people you know remember it they had a sense of it but it wasn't until the

59:19

internet where you could pull

59:21

up that speech at any moment you wanted to on youtube and just play his words

59:25

which is such an incredible

59:27

resource i mean we have access to history instantaneously in a way that's never

59:32

existed

59:33

before and we seem to be learning less i know it's one of those dichotomies

59:37

that is uh it's very odd

59:39

and we all thought when that when you could carry the internet around in your

59:42

pocket with that first

59:42

iphone yeah i mean you thought oh when we have a discussion and someone says no

59:45

it's this you know

59:46

it's this guess what we don't have to argue about it we can look it up right

59:49

here and it's going to be

59:49

great because we can solve all these arguments immediately and what did it do

59:52

well it just

59:53

snowballed into this thing where it divides us even further rather than someone

59:56

saying oh look oh i was

59:58

wrong oh yeah it says it right here yeah no it just divides us even further and

1:00:01

of course advent of

1:00:02

social media it's a web it's a tool and any tool can be used for for productive

1:00:06

purposes or as a weapon

1:00:08

and we have weaponized social media for sure to divide and who benefits well

1:00:12

politicians that need

1:00:13

to galvanize bases of course and the social media companies themselves who have

1:00:16

lobbyists in washington

1:00:18

uh who pay a lot of money to these politicians and it's a it's a whole

1:00:21

ecosystem and so being aware of it

1:00:23

i think is the first step so for our kids i talk about it with them and i

1:00:26

always ask the question

1:00:27

how am i being manipulated here which is kind of a cynical way to look at

1:00:31

things but you kind of have

1:00:32

to today and then with the advent of ai that's a whole another another side of

1:00:35

it like figuring out

1:00:36

what is truth and what is not and what's been made up and what podcast is real

1:00:40

and what's not it's uh

1:00:41

it's a crazy situation but i want the kids to know that even if they're

1:00:43

following somebody on social

1:00:44

media like a person that's an advertisement for that person and their life and

1:00:49

you can see

1:00:49

time and time again beautiful families out there and they're showing here we

1:00:53

are in aruba or whatever

1:00:54

and here we are with our easter photo together and then the next week there's

1:00:57

their divorce and

1:00:58

there's abuse and there's all you know it's like this whole thing was all a farce

1:01:02

um crazy yeah so

1:01:03

that's an advertising just like a company when i see someone doing something

1:01:06

like that i always assume

1:01:08

that you're trying to like you're trying to sell me something yeah exactly come

1:01:11

on why are you trying

1:01:12

to sell me your relationship so good exactly exactly how am i being manipulated

1:01:16

right here it's one thing

1:01:17

it's mother's day you know she's such a great mom okay okay but how many days a

1:01:21

week are you doing

1:01:22

that right right you have the perfect family of the perfect life you're the

1:01:25

perfect this it's like

1:01:27

you're trying to sell it to people instead of just living it and it's it's a

1:01:31

very weird thing that

1:01:32

we're doing that never existed before so there's no real road map right of how

1:01:37

to navigate it correctly

1:01:38

exactly it's kind of like the when you have a psychologist or a psychiatrist on

1:01:41

and you know

1:01:42

they're they're really getting into your life maybe or they're out there giving

1:01:45

advice giving all this

1:01:46

advice and then you find out that in the background there they're a total

1:01:49

disaster right they're a crazy

1:01:50

person uh that happens more often than i'm not sorry to psychologists and

1:01:54

psychologists out there but

1:01:55

you know it's true oh it's very true i mean there's a lot of doctors out there

1:01:59

that are extremely

1:01:59

unhealthy so there's a lot of weird stuff going on in this world where there's

1:02:02

people that are experts

1:02:03

and giving advice and i know it's tough i think about that a lot when i talk i'm

1:02:08

like man better

1:02:09

better not be full of i know it's tough and how you're supposed to check all

1:02:12

this it's a full-time

1:02:13

job checking on this stuff and it's wild but for the kids it's the toughest our

1:02:17

daughter just missed

1:02:18

it she's 17 so she got a little bit of it but i think she was the internet if

1:02:21

she grew up with the

1:02:22

internet but she didn't grow up with the amount of input that these kids are

1:02:25

getting now at age 9 10 11

1:02:27

the tick tock exactly yeah she just missed that yeah um so our little guy who

1:02:31

is uh who is 12 is

1:02:32

hitting that that side and you know they're pretty sly our little guy out there

1:02:36

he's a smart one so he

1:02:38

can uh you can figure out ways around the blocks and all these other sorts of

1:02:41

things so it's a it's

1:02:42

interesting time for parents tough time i think for parents and tough time for

1:02:45

kids i think it's for

1:02:46

kids oh i think it's always been a tough time for parents and always been a

1:02:50

tough time for kids and

1:02:51

these are just unique challenges that exist but every era has unique challenges

1:02:57

yeah what i'm worried

1:02:58

about is this this stuff that we're talking about in terms of accountability

1:03:03

with uh the military

1:03:04

industrial complex and i don't know how that turns around i don't know other

1:03:09

than some catastrophic

1:03:11

disaster right and the catastrophic disasters that we're talking about are

1:03:15

nuclear and if there's a

1:03:16

nuclear disaster you know it's that einstein quote i don't know what weapons

1:03:20

world war three will be

1:03:21

fought with but world war four will be fought with rocks and sticks oh

1:03:25

interesting yeah i don't know

1:03:27

i've never heard that quote before yeah i might have paraphrased i'm sure i did

1:03:30

yeah but it's basically

1:03:31

what he said yeah and that's what scares the out of me is that you know you got

1:03:36

a guy like putin who

1:03:37

may or may not have cancer you know who's backed into a corner and what does he

1:03:42

do if he thinks he's

1:03:43

going to lose and he thinks he's going to die right so the only thing i think

1:03:47

about in that point is

1:03:48

what what who who benefits if you use even tactical nuclear weapons in a place

1:03:52

like ukraine that's the

1:03:53

area that they want so it doesn't when you look at it logically uh maybe they

1:03:57

can move some things

1:03:58

around on a board and move move nuclear weapons closer or farther away or that

1:04:01

sort of a thing is

1:04:02

kind of pieces on a chessboard but if you want to invade a country because you

1:04:06

want its population and

1:04:07

because you want its food sources um then to nuke it doesn't really play in um

1:04:13

unless they think they're

1:04:14

going to lose russia and that's that's what the population decline there are

1:04:17

essentially a few

1:04:18

according to peter zeehan is uh they're a few generations away from the same

1:04:22

thing with china

1:04:23

with the one trial policy they're in a similar situation there japan has a

1:04:27

giant population collapse

1:04:29

issue as well yeah yeah so it's tough it's nuts it's a there's so many i mean

1:04:34

who the

1:04:34

would want to be president i seriously that's the whole thing just a politician

1:04:38

in general

1:04:39

yeah who's drawn to that i mean i'm sure there's i mean they're there i'm sure

1:04:42

there are people that

1:04:42

are drawn to it for fewer reasons and want to serve and they made they've

1:04:45

started businesses and made

1:04:47

money and want to give back and they're concerned about the future of the

1:04:49

country i'm sure they exist

1:04:50

but man people get into those positions and they sure do pick stocks a lot

1:04:53

better than they did before

1:04:55

it's across the board and that's not just nancy pelosi no it's a whole thing

1:05:01

that's part of that

1:05:02

established part of that permanent washington it's part of the ecosystem and it's

1:05:06

uh it's how it is

1:05:07

that's the motivation is that the access to information that allows you to pick

1:05:11

stocks so

1:05:11

good it's incredible and in that in my first book i talk about hey you show me

1:05:14

a politician in washington

1:05:16

and i'm going to show you a family member who has some sort of a lobbying firm

1:05:19

or this or that and then

1:05:21

what are we seeing with uh the biden administration you're seeing some of that

1:05:24

right now on the front

1:05:25

page is they are just holding on to that as long as they can because it seems

1:05:30

like that is a crazy

1:05:33

mountain of corruption yeah and i don't think it's i don't think it is only

1:05:36

them i want you to imagine

1:05:37

if that was trump imagine if donald trump jr was hunter biden yeah smoking

1:05:43

street crack with vietnamese

1:05:45

hookers and and just and all of it documented it's not like rumors like the

1:05:51

steel dossier where they're

1:05:53

like trump likes to get peed on no like this guy's getting foot jobs and

1:05:57

putting it on his laptop and

1:05:58

then dropping it off in maryland yeah but i'm skeptical about everything i mean

1:06:02

he's skeptical about

1:06:02

the laptop story like all i mean it's it's sort of it's burned into our brains

1:06:08

like that's what happened but

1:06:09

i think like 10 years from now we'll probably feel to find out that that's

1:06:13

horseshit too i mean who

1:06:14

fucking knows i don't know i might have stole his laptop just put stuff so i

1:06:18

know a couple people that

1:06:19

saw it right off the bat and uh and what it has been kept to in the news from

1:06:23

my understanding is the

1:06:25

professional side so the people who saw it are people who didn't have a vested

1:06:29

interest in showing

1:06:30

any of the personal stuff which some of is out there but um and this is secondhand

1:06:34

information so um but

1:06:37

there's there's stuff out there that is personally a lot more i guess damaging

1:06:41

you would say that's

1:06:42

horrible but what they tried to stay to for the most part is the ties to the

1:06:46

corruption exactly

1:06:47

the corruption is undeniable i mean just the the the fact that he's just

1:06:52

completely unqualified to be

1:06:54

in those positions that he's at making the kind of money that he was making and

1:06:59

doing it for russia and china

1:07:00

it's just it's so and ukraine yeah the the you know i mean what's crazy is that

1:07:06

ukraine was thought to be

1:07:08

one of the most corrupt countries up until russia invaded them and now they're

1:07:13

the darling you get

1:07:14

sean penn's giving his oscar to zelensky and it's like we are so lost well that's

1:07:20

what goes back to

1:07:20

doing the research and really before you take that step going back and you know

1:07:24

making sure you're taking

1:07:25

the right one um but for the american people it's almost like there's too much

1:07:30

research to do you

1:07:31

don't have the time for the average person that wants to if you have a

1:07:35

conservative position or or

1:07:37

a liberal position it's like boy you have to trust in these jackasses that are

1:07:42

running the country to be

1:07:44

steering you correctly and they never are no they never are it's so tough they

1:07:50

lie about anything that's

1:07:51

going to damage their party they lie about anything that's going to damage

1:07:55

their positions or anything

1:07:56

that's going to contradict what what they've said in the past it's it's crazy

1:08:00

it's great and i talk

1:08:02

about it in most of the books i weave it i weave it in there that uh that it is

1:08:06

so it's not i don't

1:08:07

think it is just reserved for one party but we're divided along these lines and

1:08:11

uh but who does it

1:08:12

benefit certainly not the citizen really certainly not us uh it doesn't benefit

1:08:15

us to say just side with

1:08:17

your side because it's your side without even thinking and that's the kind of

1:08:20

that's the position

1:08:21

we're in right now unfortunately but benefits the people who make the most

1:08:24

money which is so terrifying

1:08:26

and then you see these politicians that just they they benefit from benefiting

1:08:30

those people that make

1:08:31

the most money it's it's an ecosystem it is it's so huge right now then then

1:08:37

you lose you undercut

1:08:38

confidence in in voting systems so there so that's in there now um and then you

1:08:43

have let's say going

1:08:44

back to 100 biden laptop you have 50 what 51 52 intelligence officials who

1:08:48

signed some letter

1:08:49

that's now shown that it's that uh they were coerced into sign not coerced into

1:08:53

signing this thing

1:08:54

but they uh they they signed it for a reason to give their candidate the

1:08:58

establishment candidate yeah

1:09:00

a uh talking point in uh in a debate and that undercuts everyone's confidence

1:09:04

in those institutions

1:09:05

anyway and it was always a little shaky uh your confidence in an intelligence

1:09:09

service just in general

1:09:10

yeah well particularly after the trump administration attacked them for four

1:09:15

years the trump administration

1:09:16

attacked the intelligence community and then what does the intelligence

1:09:19

community do they come out

1:09:20

and lie about the hunter biden laptop it's like hey guys like and that just

1:09:23

undermines all of

1:09:24

our confidence in these institutions yeah and the fbi same thing just huge huge

1:09:29

issues there and then

1:09:30

it goes down to the local level um and local level politics as well police

1:09:34

departments and mayors

1:09:36

and all the rest of it so it's you know it's endemic throughout the whole

1:09:40

system unfortunately how does

1:09:41

that ever get corrected i mean i don't want i mean when i have conversations

1:09:45

with my kids about politics

1:09:46

and life and stuff it's like you know my young kids i'm talking not my my

1:09:51

oldest is 26 i don't i don't

1:09:52

my my when i'm talking to my 12 well now 13 and 14 year olds or and 15 year

1:09:58

olds when i'm talking to

1:09:59

them like they're at this point where they're going to be graduating from high

1:10:03

school in a few years

1:10:04

they're going to be going to college they're going to be entering to the

1:10:06

workforce and doing stuff

1:10:08

what what do you tell them about this insanely corrupt system that's supposed

1:10:14

to be the the

1:10:16

controlling operating system of this greatest country the world has ever known

1:10:22

this experiment and

1:10:23

self-government and it's just deeply corrupt it is and so what we do is we go

1:10:28

back and talk about all

1:10:30

those sacrifices that were made so we can have these options and opportunities

1:10:33

in the hopes that uh that

1:10:34

our kids take a pause and actually become part of the the solution and respect

1:10:38

what has happened in the

1:10:39

past so that we can be this country we are today even though it seems to be we

1:10:43

seem to be pretty good

1:10:44

at destroying ourselves from the inside out right now we did have a civil war

1:10:48

and at the end of that

1:10:49

civil war we did manage to come back together so that gives me hope right there

1:10:53

took a long ass time

1:10:54

it took some time there are people that didn't want it to happen murder in the

1:10:57

appalachians and we

1:10:59

didn't have social media we didn't have this tool that you could use to

1:11:02

continue to divide so i often

1:11:04

wonder after the civil war if we had iphones in our pockets um and two sides or

1:11:09

even some other factions

1:11:10

that wanted to continue to divide and either prolong or whatever it was would

1:11:14

we still have come back

1:11:16

together i think social media is a problem but at least social media has this

1:11:21

at least with elon on

1:11:23

board elon being in control of twitter has this self-correcting option that's

1:11:28

built in with community

1:11:29

notes where say if you are a politician and you tweet something and a bunch of

1:11:35

people say that is not

1:11:36

correct at all twitter will put a community note on okay and show all the real

1:11:41

facts and the biden

1:11:43

administration has deleted tweets because they've been really i haven't seen it

1:11:47

yet so you've seen

1:11:48

it out there oh yeah i haven't seen it yet i tried to follow politicians is

1:11:51

they have deleted at least

1:11:52

one that i'm aware of i think it's more than one really yeah it's like that's

1:11:56

the good thing about

1:11:58

social media as it exists but that's why you know that all these people that

1:12:02

are mad that elon took over

1:12:04

all you're just letting in these jackasses that were banned in the past like

1:12:07

the only answer to bad speech is better speech the only answer to bad

1:12:15

information is correct

1:12:16

information and if you ban that information then they just find some echo

1:12:22

chamber and spit it out

1:12:23

amongst each other and that's how you get q anon that's how you get flat earthers

1:12:27

that's how you get

1:12:29

all these fucking loons out there so if you want to maintain hope for the

1:12:32

nation don't go into the

1:12:33

comment section of instagram twitter or youtube because very quickly you will

1:12:38

come to the conclusion

1:12:39

that all is lost i don't know about twitter anymore i'm i'm you know i don't

1:12:43

read anything about myself

1:12:44

and it's it's given me great sanity over the last few years it's a giant it's a

1:12:50

giant factor and i try to

1:12:52

drill it into all these comedians heads yeah like please don't read the

1:12:55

comments just don't do it

1:12:57

because first of all you're with when especially if they do a podcast if you're

1:13:01

doing this like uh

1:13:02

i had um my friends uh sarah uh wineshank and king kim congdon on and after the

1:13:08

podcast was over i was

1:13:09

like please don't read the comments just please we had a great time it was a

1:13:12

lot of fun i enjoyed it i

1:13:14

think it was really funny yeah don't read the comments but these girls are of

1:13:17

course they did

1:13:18

they're used to small podcasts that might get a thousand downloads or a couple

1:13:25

thousand downloads

1:13:26

now you got 11 million people that are commenting on every fucking thing you've

1:13:30

said and the only

1:13:32

thing you're going to think of is the negatives yeah and these girls suck and

1:13:34

they're fucking losers

1:13:35

and how funny they're this to that like those are just unhappy bitter people

1:13:40

you know who's it was

1:13:41

it michael jordan who said i don't i don't remember who said it i've never met

1:13:44

a hater doing better

1:13:44

than me right i don't remember who said but it's the perfect the perfect quote

1:13:48

yeah you've got people

1:13:50

that are allowed to have their opinions they're allowed to be angry they're

1:13:53

allowed to be bitter

1:13:54

they're allowed to say you suck they're allowed to say you're a liar they're

1:13:56

allowed to say you're

1:13:57

stupid let them talk it's okay let them talk but just don't read it it's even

1:14:03

yeah even if you have

1:14:04

thick skin it still gets in there it gets in there it gets in there it gets in

1:14:07

there you know that's

1:14:08

why i don't read it i don't it's not i don't not read it because uh well it's

1:14:13

not like i'm immune

1:14:15

right i read it because like it's natural human nature to look for threats and

1:14:20

if you read a hundred

1:14:22

quotes that are great and then one that sucks and that one person says this

1:14:26

person should kill

1:14:27

themselves and they're they're you know they're a this and a that and a that

1:14:30

and this and like oh my

1:14:31

god am i that person and you can't engage you can't go back and it just you

1:14:34

know i see people that do

1:14:36

and i'm like jesus christ you're just you're just throwing gasoline on it

1:14:39

exactly get the

1:14:40

out of there how long did you look at comments before when did you stop years

1:14:43

for years i looked

1:14:44

at comments yeah and it would make me feel bad i didn't like it i didn't like i

1:14:48

didn't like getting

1:14:48

mad and like like that's not true them i'm gonna come back i'm gonna look at

1:14:54

your instagram look

1:14:55

at you you're a fat loser but it's that's that's just what yeah the way i try

1:14:59

to explain to people

1:15:02

is look at your mind and your attention like it is bandwidth and let's let's

1:15:07

assume that you have

1:15:08

units you have a hundred units of bandwidth if you spend 13 units of bandwidth

1:15:14

paying attention to

1:15:15

social media critics and comments that's 13 less now you only have 87 units

1:15:21

right so to to i i sam harris

1:15:24

told me once that he was on a trip in hawaii with his family and he read

1:15:30

something negative

1:15:32

about him and it tanked his whole trip because he spent his entire time

1:15:36

crafting a response

1:15:37

i'm like god damn no and he's brilliant yeah he's a very smart man so for him

1:15:43

to fall into that trap

1:15:45

yeah it can we're all human yeah and uh and no matter if you're a special

1:15:48

operator people think you have

1:15:49

this thick skin yeah if you went to iraq and afghanistan and made through buds

1:15:52

and all that

1:15:53

stuff you know for me anyway you know it definitely hurts but i try to get on

1:15:56

there still and say thank

1:15:58

you to people because i'm not quite i can still do it at the end of the night i'm

1:16:00

exhausted but i

1:16:01

want to say thank you but it also means i see the craziness yeah and so i see

1:16:04

that i never respond to

1:16:05

it but i want to say thank you to all those people who grassroots like before i

1:16:09

you know for

1:16:09

you invite me on here before i before chris pratt texted about the show or

1:16:13

posted about the show

1:16:14

before i was on tucker it was all grassroots it was all somebody taking a risk

1:16:18

on me as a new author

1:16:19

telling a friend and so people get on and say hey i love your book i gave it to

1:16:22

my dad now he's a fan

1:16:23

i want to say thank you to that person so i'm up late doing that but it also

1:16:26

means that i see yeah

1:16:28

that's there's there comes a point in time where you just have to post things

1:16:32

and then say thank

1:16:33

you in the post but you can't respond to people individually just because it's

1:16:37

just bad for your brain

1:16:38

yeah it's not healthy no and you know i mean you're saying with special

1:16:41

operators but i see it with

1:16:43

fighters i try to tell fighters all the time don't read that shit man this is

1:16:47

and some guys love it

1:16:49

really david goggins loves it does he get in there after people he reads all

1:16:53

the comments out to

1:16:54

he reads haters to himself and he plays it when he runs oh wow yeah he's a

1:16:59

different kind of psycho

1:17:00

wow that's interesting is that cheating then if he can't listen to music then

1:17:04

that's cheating

1:17:05

he just needs to listen oh yeah that's right that guy has no knees and he runs

1:17:10

a thousand miles a

1:17:10

day i mean whatever the he has to do to do what he does that's interesting i do

1:17:14

so i do i haven't

1:17:15

done it in a while but i used to read going to the negative reviews on amazon

1:17:18

and and then read those

1:17:19

and kind of have a little fun with them and when i went on tucker i read the

1:17:22

negative reviews from

1:17:22

the show and that was fun because the daily beast was oh they were just mean

1:17:25

there were some mean ones

1:17:26

out there like the audience on rotten tomatoes was crazy high for a show i mean

1:17:30

it was in the high 90s

1:17:31

yeah and then uh but then the audio the uh critics didn't weren't big fans but

1:17:35

every single day we

1:17:36

realized and we're making that show that we're not making it for critics we're

1:17:39

making it for that

1:17:39

person who went downrange to iraq and afghanistan over the last 20 years so

1:17:42

when they sit down

1:17:43

and crack a beer and sit on the couch and turn this thing on that they at least

1:17:46

know we put in the

1:17:47

effort to make a show for them that paid tribute to them that was rooted in the

1:17:50

realities of modern combat

1:17:52

and uh we put in the work you nailed it no doubt and you nailed it on the show

1:17:57

though they made that

1:17:59

show so gritty and whenever someone makes an adaptation of a very brutal novel

1:18:05

or multiple

1:18:06

novels like yours you always wonder like oh god are they gonna be able to

1:18:10

really do and they did man

1:18:11

they did yeah that's a tribute to chris pratt and antoine fuqua who were from

1:18:15

the get-go they wanted

1:18:16

this thing they wanted to make it for the people who went downrange yes and

1:18:19

every single day we talked

1:18:20

about that knowing that there's going to be like there's going to be hollywood

1:18:23

hot sauce in anything

1:18:24

you gotta gotta do that but anywhere we could anywhere we could root this in

1:18:27

the realities of

1:18:28

modern combat we were going to do that if we had to reshoot something or change

1:18:31

something in the

1:18:32

script on the fly we were going to do that and that's that's chris and antoine

1:18:35

and the showrunner

1:18:35

david agilio and max adams former army ranger who's in that writer's room every

1:18:39

day and

1:18:40

and uh jared shah my buddy who was there every day who gave the book to to chris

1:18:44

pratt and uh ray

1:18:45

mendoza another seal buddy out there doing the technical advising i mean they

1:18:48

were all in and you had chris

1:18:49

and antoine and david digilio trusting those guys on set every day so if one of

1:18:53

them said this is not

1:18:54

going to play to that person who went to iraq and afghanistan we'd change it

1:18:58

right there that's pretty

1:18:59

cool that is very cool and you know at the end of the day those people that

1:19:02

were critics they were

1:19:03

never going to like it they don't like that subject matter it's not you really

1:19:07

you really there's room

1:19:10

for criticism and the criticism should be reserved for people that actually

1:19:13

understand what they're talking

1:19:14

about and you look something like the daily beast that exists it's okay that's

1:19:19

cool too it's cool to

1:19:21

on yeah and it was fun to read it and have a good time with it on uh on tucker

1:19:24

i got so many uh people

1:19:26

reaching out to me saying they love that and we just had a little fun on a friday

1:19:28

reading those things

1:19:29

and you know just reading their own words back to them and having a little fun

1:19:32

with it so yeah so that's

1:19:34

kind of a healthy way to deal with it rather than than looking at it and just

1:19:36

trying to craft that

1:19:37

response or like getting mad about it like they're gonna hate it anyway and

1:19:40

that's okay that's not

1:19:42

not their thing there's plenty of other things out there that they can love and

1:19:44

that's that's okay

1:19:45

we're gonna make something something for us here and then that's what we're

1:19:48

doing we're taking that

1:19:49

guiding principle because i don't think amazon will ever none of those

1:19:52

streaming companies will

1:19:53

ever share their their data but they know exactly how many people watched every

1:19:57

single show when

1:19:58

they changed the channel when they got to an end of episode and didn't go to

1:20:01

the next one they have all

1:20:02

that data and uh that's the reason that we're doing a spin-off and a second

1:20:06

season um is because what's

1:20:08

the spin-off so spin-off is uh there's a character ben edwards and uh so

1:20:11

spoiler alert for those who

1:20:13

have not seen it we'll just give you two seconds to to uh put the earmuffs on

1:20:17

um so he's killed at the

1:20:18

end and uh so it's a prequel that goes back to show how he went from the seal

1:20:23

teams to the cia

1:20:24

essentially how he turns bad it's played by taylor kitch who was just awesome

1:20:27

and that's one of the

1:20:28

characters i thought was more fully developed than the character in my novel

1:20:31

and uh on the page and

1:20:32

then what taylor kitsch brought to it was just next level so uh when we did the

1:20:36

premiere in la in

1:20:38

june and it debuted on uh july 1st but we did the premiere in june i came home

1:20:43

and for some reason

1:20:44

i had a day without interruption i don't know where my wife and kids were but i

1:20:47

was sitting in a chair

1:20:48

that i would never sit in if i didn't want to be interrupted and i wrote from

1:20:51

uh the second i woke up

1:20:53

all the way through the night until uh until they got back and i wrote a spin-off

1:20:56

and uh and i sent

1:20:58

it to the the showrunner david agilio and he loved it and then a couple days

1:21:01

later chris pratt called

1:21:02

and he's like hey i have this idea for a spin-off and he pitched me on it and

1:21:05

it wasn't mine it was

1:21:06

not my spin-off mine was totally different and his was this taylor kitsch spitch

1:21:09

off of a spin-off

1:21:10

a prequel going back in time a little bit and i said chris that's amazing let's

1:21:14

do that that's a great idea

1:21:16

and uh so he pitched it to taylor taylor was all on board and then we put a

1:21:19

package together and

1:21:20

pitched it to amazon and they loved it and so off we go to the races with this

1:21:23

spin-off which

1:21:24

is more of an international espionage type of a show rather than revenge

1:21:27

thriller action

1:21:28

thriller conspiracy thriller like the first one and it is awesome and also

1:21:31

nobody can compare it to a

1:21:33

book so even fans of the book that look at it and say this is different this is

1:21:35

different this is

1:21:36

different i hate it because there's no prequel and then that leads right into

1:21:40

the second season

1:21:41

true believer starring chris pratt so we'll roll right into that um and things

1:21:44

in hollywood as you

1:21:45

know can go off the rails at any time so i always have you know that's just how

1:21:48

it goes but right now

1:21:49

we're working on those scripts or well we put the pencils down about five days

1:21:52

ago now six days ago

1:21:53

seven days ago for the writer's strike but we were about at episode five and it's

1:21:57

good oh man it's

1:21:58

awesome it's awesome yeah yeah and so when was that supposed to go into

1:22:02

production uh we're supposed to

1:22:03

do it sometime in the in the fall and um early fall and start filming then and

1:22:07

then post-production and

1:22:08

you know who knows when they get it out after that but um international this

1:22:12

time have they made

1:22:13

progress with this strike are they i don't know i think they're picketing right

1:22:16

now so i think it's

1:22:17

the early stages still and there's so much to negotiate i mean i don't i don't

1:22:21

know but i would

1:22:22

think it might take a little bit with this one i don't know yeah when someone

1:22:25

crosses the writer's

1:22:26

strike that's that's some dirty yeah across the picket line yeah i don't think

1:22:30

i haven't seen anybody

1:22:31

doing that yet i think ellen did oh really yeah i had a buddy of mine who was

1:22:35

writing on ellen oh back

1:22:37

in the day oh well that's tough because then i'll be going forward everybody

1:22:41

know everybody's like hey

1:22:42

you're the one that didn't stand up well also oh yeah everybody kind of knows

1:22:46

now yeah yeah what

1:22:47

she's really all about and that's another one of those like i'm so nice and i'm

1:22:52

so sweet interesting

1:22:53

yeah very interesting so that's the yeah mean behind the scenes that's tough

1:22:57

that's weird when that

1:22:58

happens like it happens a lot because people ask me about you people ask me and

1:23:01

people give me things

1:23:02

to as you know people probably send you things all the time people send me

1:23:05

stuff can you get this to

1:23:06

chris can you get this to joe can you get this to tucker type things and you're

1:23:09

like um but uh it's so that

1:23:12

part is is kind of strange but people always ask you know what those people are

1:23:15

like you know and

1:23:17

you know you are you you know how could you fake this five days a week up on

1:23:21

stage there's no way

1:23:22

you can fake a talk show though i guess because you're an hour because you have

1:23:25

an hour right

1:23:26

not only that you don't know the people you're not having these uncensored

1:23:29

conversations hours yeah it's

1:23:31

very edited and it's also like there's an audience there so you're playing to

1:23:34

the audience you're well

1:23:36

aware and there's stuff that's filmed stuff that's not filmed yeah you know chris

1:23:41

is the same thing

1:23:41

man chris is so you know me and my wife were having a conversation about like

1:23:46

actors you know and she

1:23:47

she was talking about someone that was very annoying that and i said yeah i go

1:23:52

it's rare

1:23:53

but it makes you cherish the ones that are cool like scott eastwood scott eastwood

1:23:58

if you didn't know that he was clint eastwood's son if you didn't know he's a

1:24:03

big movie star he's

1:24:04

like the nicest most normal no ego having guy just friendly yeah normal you

1:24:12

talk to him he's

1:24:13

not needy he's just like yeah right there he's a great guy ah then but unless

1:24:18

you put two pictures

1:24:19

of him and his dad like from the 70s right now then that's that's amazing

1:24:21

resemblance yeah he seems

1:24:23

like an awesome strong jeans that is that's yeah those are good ones right

1:24:27

there those outlaw josey

1:24:28

wales jeans exactly that's the picture that's the picture great jeans though

1:24:32

not bad you know if

1:24:33

you had to choose good looking guy not bad but yeah chris so nice they're the

1:24:37

nicest guy i ran into

1:24:38

chris once uh accidentally just randomly in hawaii with my family he was on i

1:24:43

believe he was on his

1:24:44

honeymoon yeah at four seasons out there yeah yeah we were setting that uh

1:24:49

setting some stuff up for him

1:24:51

we're just gonna get him a little house there they decided to go with the in

1:24:54

the actual hotel but um

1:24:55

and we'd spend some time together in utah you and chris out there yeah yeah

1:24:59

that was the first time

1:24:59

that i got to sit there so he'd optioned it in before the book came out so january

1:25:03

of 2018 and

1:25:03

we all met up in utah and what was it august of 2018 was the book out when i

1:25:08

met you

1:25:08

the book was out for a few months yep the book was out for a few months but uh

1:25:12

but yeah chris saw

1:25:13

it early because jared shaw my buddy gave him up gave him a copy because of a

1:25:16

favor i did for jared

1:25:17

and the seal teams uh which i just did because once again you want to help good

1:25:20

guys

1:25:21

and he was getting out of the seal team so i introduced him to some people in

1:25:23

the private

1:25:24

sector and followed up and i forgot all about it and he never did so he called

1:25:27

me when the book was

1:25:28

when he heard that i had a book coming out so a few months before it came out

1:25:31

in november of 2017

1:25:33

he called me and said hey man i always wanted to thank you for what you did for

1:25:36

me and i couldn't

1:25:36

remember what it was and uh and he told me what it was and i said oh man great

1:25:40

how's it going

1:25:41

and he said uh it's going great but i heard you have a book coming out and i

1:25:43

said yeah i can send you

1:25:44

an early copy if you'd like and he said well i'd like to give it to a friend of

1:25:47

mine if that's okay and i said

1:25:48

yeah no problem who's that and chris pratt so and that's who i thought about

1:25:52

playing the role when

1:25:53

i was writing it before he'd been in guardians before he'd been in jurassic

1:25:56

really so he'd been

1:25:57

in uh parks and recreation you thought about him in chubby chris pratt chubby

1:26:03

chris pratt

1:26:04

and really wreck and then but i saw him make the transformation to seal

1:26:07

operator in zero dark 30

1:26:08

where he had a very small role so i thought okay i see this guy right here look

1:26:12

at that transformation

1:26:13

and he seems like an inherently likable person on and off screen so and then i

1:26:17

thought back then i'm

1:26:18

gonna give chris a chance here i'm gonna i'm gonna help his career along

1:26:21

because it looks like he needs

1:26:22

this is me uh writing my first sentence of the book in coronado california

1:26:25

still in the seal teams

1:26:26

uh in a little office off our bedroom but i thought of chris pratt and that's

1:26:30

because back in the day

1:26:31

everybody loved magnum pi in the 80s and because he was he was funny but he

1:26:34

could flip that switch yeah and

1:26:36

he could get it done in one episode we talked about this once before uh there's

1:26:39

an episode where it's the

1:26:40

first time on network television where a protagonist kills a bad guy who's unarmed

1:26:45

and it's an amazing

1:26:46

episode they had to fight for it and they got it and now it's a classic episode

1:26:50

of 80s television

1:26:51

and so i thought about that flipping that switch i thought about my background

1:26:53

in the seal teams and

1:26:54

coming home to wife and kids and all that stuff and having to flip that switch

1:26:58

and i thought chris is

1:26:59

the guy who can pull this off he hasn't done something like this hasn't been in

1:27:02

action films yet

1:27:03

and uh so i thought of chris and i thought antoine uh being the director and

1:27:06

because i love what he

1:27:07

did with training day and tears of the sun and uh and a movie called shooter

1:27:10

based on point of impact

1:27:12

by stephen hunter and i just loved antoine's work so i thought this is this is

1:27:15

the guy and now we're

1:27:16

all three executive producers on it and that's doing it so do you ever wonder

1:27:19

if you made that happen

1:27:20

with your brain like how much how much do you think you manifest things with

1:27:25

your mind well it

1:27:26

certainly didn't take up any of that bandwidth worried about it not happening

1:27:30

and i think a lot of

1:27:30

that comes from just knowing what i wanted to do from a very early age serve my

1:27:33

country specifically as a

1:27:34

seal and then write thrillers back from my my earliest days so i set this i

1:27:38

started building

1:27:39

this foundation at age 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 reading all these guys like tom clancy

1:27:43

and nelson

1:27:44

de mill and aj quennell and jc pollock and mark olden and louis lemore and stephen

1:27:47

hunter all these

1:27:48

guys back in the 80s who had protagonists with backgrounds i wanted in real

1:27:51

life one day so i read

1:27:52

all those and i just loved the magic in those pages and knew that one day i'd

1:27:55

write those but that

1:27:56

wasn't like machiavellian i wasn't like i'm going to read these today at age 12

1:28:00

so that one day i can write

1:28:02

them at age 45. um no i wanted to i just loved those books and i was studying

1:28:07

warfare and insurgencies

1:28:08

and counterinsurgencies and terrorism and special operations so i had this

1:28:11

academic study of warfare

1:28:12

that's never stopped and then i had the practical application on the field of

1:28:15

battle in iraq and

1:28:16

afghanistan it all came together at the right time and place so i never worried

1:28:20

about not making it i

1:28:21

only saw number one new york times bestseller on all those books i read growing

1:28:25

up i only saw those books

1:28:26

like first blood made into a film and so that was what was always in my mind so

1:28:31

if i write this book

1:28:32

it's going to be a number one new york times bestseller and it's going to be

1:28:34

optioned by

1:28:35

whoever i want uh to make it a number one film and that stuff happened um but i

1:28:39

didn't worry about it

1:28:40

not happening if that makes sense maybe it's a little naivete which is uh which

1:28:44

seems to sometimes

1:28:45

helps yes yeah exactly i didn't worry about the odds i didn't think people love

1:28:49

to tell you the odds

1:28:50

they're going to tell you how hard it is what's your backup plan you want to be

1:28:52

an author what are you

1:28:53

really going to do when that fails or you want to be a seal what are you going

1:28:55

to do when you don't

1:28:56

make it through buds anybody says that to you stop talking exactly exactly

1:29:00

there's there's no benefit

1:29:02

in thinking that way negative yeah gotta get rid of those people and if you do

1:29:06

have a safety net you

1:29:07

might fall yeah you know you might you might make it but you might fall and

1:29:11

there's there's something to

1:29:13

that and i don't know why yeah i don't understand it i don't understand the way

1:29:17

reality works yeah it's

1:29:18

that bandwidth because you're worried you're thinking about those other things

1:29:21

um where for me all my heart

1:29:22

and soul went into the book continue to go into the books every single sentence

1:29:26

uh and and for me

1:29:27

writing these kind of books i don't have to go out there and find a sniper from

1:29:30

ramadi in 2006 i don't

1:29:32

have to go find somebody who was in an ambush i can remember what it was like

1:29:35

to be a sniper in ramadi

1:29:36

or what it was like to be ambushed in baghdad in 2006 and then my protagonist

1:29:40

gets in an ambush in

1:29:41

los angeles california so i go back and think of the feelings and emotions

1:29:44

associated with that event that

1:29:45

i was in and then i apply those completely to a fictional narrative without any

1:29:48

filters so i don't have to

1:29:50

interview somebody and then have those answers get filtered through other

1:29:52

interviews that i've done or

1:29:54

other movies i've seen or research that i've done and then go into the page of

1:29:57

the book it goes right

1:29:58

from my heart and soul right into that page that's pretty amazing so i think

1:30:01

that helped as well and

1:30:02

made it stand out to simon and schuster and makes it resonate with readers and

1:30:05

resonate to chris and

1:30:05

antoine because they both loved it and wanted to be wanted to be a part of it

1:30:08

and now they're leading

1:30:10

the charge on it and don't want to be involved from the get-go all the way

1:30:13

through from from writing it

1:30:14

to the the being a part of the writer's room and as an advisor and then

1:30:17

learning that how that went

1:30:19

down doing the casting seeing everybody that came through wanting to be in it

1:30:22

and then through

1:30:23

production and post-production and then marketing and advertising into the

1:30:26

premiere and then

1:30:27

negotiations for a second season and a spin-off and being a part of all that

1:30:30

from the inside was i

1:30:31

learned so much over the last couple years it's really cool have you thought

1:30:34

about writing new

1:30:36

characters have you thought about making a new james reese or some something

1:30:40

similar or some

1:30:41

complete different ecosystem some complete different universe yes yes so i love

1:30:47

doing this i absolutely

1:30:48

love every part of the process writing this so i'm going to write james reese

1:30:51

for as long as i possibly

1:30:52

can uh do that and have the non-fiction that i'm so passionate about with

1:30:55

history so that'll be coming

1:30:57

out here in a year and a half and then uh there's another thing in the works

1:30:59

that got put on a little

1:31:00

bit of hold because the writer's strike but um i'll text you about it when it

1:31:04

uh when it comes through

1:31:05

but there's some other things in the works um that uh that i thought would be

1:31:08

done by now but yeah

1:31:09

writer's strike everything goes on hold for that but there's some other things

1:31:12

that uh will allow

1:31:13

me to write some other characters and work on some other productions i guess is

1:31:17

the best way to

1:31:17

put it so it would be productions or the novels or yeah some other some other

1:31:22

exactly both both yeah

1:31:24

yeah yeah so we'll see there is like there's a thing about getting trapped in

1:31:28

the success

1:31:31

like you have the and also you have to have chris pratt on board you can't you

1:31:34

can't recast

1:31:35

no i don't think so i don't think so he's the guy he's yeah i mean they do how

1:31:39

many uh jack ryan's

1:31:40

have we had we've had uh one two three four like five um jack ryan's up to this

1:31:45

point so that one's

1:31:46

that one survived and people accepted that yeah it's so close you know so close

1:31:49

to the time that a book

1:31:50

came out maybe not but uh yeah alec baldwin and harrison ford were pretty close

1:31:55

to those movies in

1:31:56

the 80s yeah yeah really in the early 90s um so there's so there is that but

1:32:00

you never yeah you

1:32:00

never know how things are going to go it's like how many james bonds have there

1:32:03

been yep exactly

1:32:04

that continues and uh so so there is so so there is that there is precedent

1:32:09

there but uh but the casting

1:32:11

was was really interesting because you see these people who you have you've

1:32:14

grown up watching who

1:32:15

during the time it's kind of coveted well it is coveted time so they're doing

1:32:18

screen testing you're

1:32:19

seeing these people that everyone knows the name of like doing a screen test

1:32:22

wanting to be in the

1:32:22

show and i'm like part of that it's crazy it was crazy and then taylor of

1:32:26

course just knocked out of

1:32:27

the park when we saw the screen test with him and chris like there was no

1:32:30

question like taylor is ben

1:32:32

edwards and taylor is just an awesome dude he's so fired up to get to where we're

1:32:34

just texting on the

1:32:35

way over here and he was uh he's so excited to get to work on this next one and

1:32:39

i'm yeah he just

1:32:40

elevated that character to a new level and such a good dude playing a bad guy

1:32:44

though yeah but now he gets

1:32:45

to go back and kind of like play around with it a little bit yeah we have to

1:32:47

get great action

1:32:48

sequences that are just next level and and taylor's just such a good he's one

1:32:52

of those guys also

1:32:53

totally normal totally cool you want to sit down have a beer with them have a

1:32:55

whiskey with them

1:32:56

have a coffee with them yeah they exist just an awesome dude it's just in that

1:33:00

world it almost

1:33:01

celebrates people that aren't aren't genuine it's strange yeah it's strange it's

1:33:06

a pretend

1:33:07

business it's a business of pretending yeah well everybody in that everybody in

1:33:10

the show that i

1:33:11

can think of gene triple horn amazing um she paid the secretary of defense uh lorraine

1:33:16

hartley and

1:33:16

she's been around that lady's done some great movies amazing movie and so nice

1:33:20

and so kind and so

1:33:21

normal um but everybody uh la monica garrett amazing who's in 1883 uh right

1:33:26

after our show he

1:33:27

left and went to do 1883 and uh huh such a good dude just a normal dude that

1:33:31

you just want to hang out

1:33:33

with we went to ufc together oh yeah we saw you at ufc in uh in january july 2nd

1:33:37

when we went up there

1:33:38

for the the terminal list thing and chris now has the blood splattered terminal

1:33:42

list thing from the

1:33:43

octagon oh wow framed yeah oh that's awesome i got a piece of it i got a piece

1:33:46

of the blood from that

1:33:47

night oh that's right the terminalist sponsored the uh the actual event and it

1:33:51

was on the canvas yep

1:33:52

yep he's got the whole thing and it's all covered in blood and i have a square

1:33:55

from it it's covered in

1:33:56

blood but yeah he's got the whole banner the whole middle part of the cage

1:33:59

which is pretty cool

1:34:00

yeah we shared elk camp together and hung out he's a fucking as normal as can

1:34:05

be if you didn't know

1:34:06

that that guy was a movie star you would never guess it yep yep he's a big dude

1:34:09

too so he's you

1:34:10

know it's hard for him to blend in i think yes big dude yeah he's tall he's a

1:34:13

wrestler yeah good solid

1:34:15

guy but he had everybody on that set was so cool but you know it comes down to

1:34:18

chris and antoine

1:34:19

to the leadership and it comes down to them setting the tone at that like antoine

1:34:22

at that strategic

1:34:23

level so up there as the uh as the director executive producer right there at

1:34:26

the top setting that

1:34:27

tone strategically and then chris right there also as the tactical level

1:34:32

inspiration for everybody on

1:34:33

set so everybody wanted to be there and they're the top of their games and so

1:34:37

many people came up

1:34:38

to me on set and they didn't have to and they said they'd been on hundreds of

1:34:41

sets in hollywood

1:34:41

and they've never felt like this on a set before and it was just something

1:34:44

about it it was inspiring

1:34:46

they wanted to be there do their best work and crush it um because it was fun

1:34:49

it was fun to go to

1:34:50

work well there's also there's not a lot of guys like you that wind up being

1:34:54

successful authors it's

1:34:55

a very small tiny group of people that have had the kind of real world

1:34:59

experience that you've had and

1:35:01

then conveyed that into fiction yeah yeah for me it's just a very very natural

1:35:06

and very therapeutic

1:35:08

but uh but also i knew what i wanted to wake up at age 45 and say hey can you

1:35:11

make money at writing

1:35:12

what should i have been reading for the last 30 years in preparation for this

1:35:16

uh that's what's crazy it's

1:35:18

like your life was like sort of ordained like it's almost like destiny well i

1:35:21

think it's my parents

1:35:23

made uh made reading a natural part of my life it wasn't something that was

1:35:26

forced upon me it was

1:35:28

just as natural as anything else and just reading is what we did my mom's a

1:35:31

librarian so grew up with

1:35:32

the love of books and reading so it's been as normal as having a phone i guess

1:35:36

for a lot of kids

1:35:36

today it was normal for me to have books i've never been without a book i've

1:35:40

never been not in the

1:35:41

middle of a book and when i finished one i'd start the next one i've never had

1:35:44

like a week wondering

1:35:44

what i should read next i've never had that my entire life do you read uh do

1:35:48

you listen rather

1:35:50

to audiobooks nope always read yep always read since that's how i how i grew up

1:35:54

that i love turning

1:35:55

the pages um uh but audiobooks are the fastest growing segment of publishing

1:35:58

and i'm so fortunate

1:36:00

to have ray porter who's also an awesome guy by the shakespearean trained actor

1:36:03

uh he's been in tons

1:36:04

of shows if you look up ray porter you can see just a list of shows that he's

1:36:07

been in he's great

1:36:08

he's great as a voiceover guy too he's like he does so many different accents

1:36:13

that's tough i think about

1:36:15

him now as i'm writing i think about well maybe i should say that this person

1:36:19

has some crazy accent

1:36:20

in the first sentence so that ray doesn't read and get halfway down the page

1:36:23

and have to go back

1:36:24

and then start with it again so i do think about ray as i'm writing and trying

1:36:28

to make it right things

1:36:29

that make make sense for him so just to just to be to be kind so i don't get to

1:36:34

the end and uh and all

1:36:35

of a sudden say this person had some you know rhodesian accent has anybody ever

1:36:39

come up to you

1:36:40

and said uh hey uh are you writing about me nope nope not yet not yet but for

1:36:46

the people that i write

1:36:48

about that could be bad guys uh i don't have contact with any of them oh that's

1:36:52

good yeah yeah so not let

1:36:54

them hear about it not yet there's some and it's uh you know we're all products

1:36:58

of our experience and uh

1:36:59

you know what we what we decided to study and so there are maybe some

1:37:02

characters in these books that

1:37:04

might seem similar to some people at uh higher levels of government or uh or

1:37:08

military and i kind

1:37:09

of morph some things together and maybe make them worse or sometimes better

1:37:13

than they actually are

1:37:14

um so yeah we're a product of our of our environments and uh and then and the

1:37:18

education we choose to give

1:37:19

ourselves these days and what we pay attention to and our life experience so

1:37:23

all that ends up in these

1:37:24

pages so yeah no one's come up yet though and been upset about it what about

1:37:27

you know one of the things

1:37:28

that you you deal with is like some very very corrupt and evil people that are

1:37:33

involved in military yeah

1:37:35

that are in management positions and executive positions that fuck over

1:37:41

soldiers yeah like that's

1:37:43

have you encountered that in real life or is that just your knowledge of that

1:37:47

well we all saw it with

1:37:48

afghanistan so we so there is that um you see the process of people sitting on

1:37:52

these boards after their

1:37:53

time in uniform and then approving gigantic contracts for these companies uh

1:37:58

that's uh in positions that

1:37:59

they were just in prior where they had that chance to approve and now they're

1:38:02

on this board so that's

1:38:03

just a part of it um and then i saw people get uh get scapegoated for certain

1:38:09

things in the military

1:38:10

to protect others higher up the chain and you know that's just kind of how it

1:38:13

goes i think it's any big

1:38:14

bureaucracy really but um i think it's been a part of just the human experience

1:38:18

from the beginning of

1:38:19

time just like violence what i do hear from people is uh is that the violence

1:38:22

part some people

1:38:23

like that and like is probably the wrong word but um they uh they recognize

1:38:29

that violence has been a

1:38:30

part of the human condition from the beginning of time and they like that i don't

1:38:32

pull any punches

1:38:33

in the pages of these things some people hate it they like a sanitized version

1:38:37

of violence and

1:38:38

there's plenty of that out there and that's not me so uh for me it's all about

1:38:41

the story and i never look at

1:38:42

uh say reviews talking about negative comments before i never think about oh

1:38:46

what's what's selling

1:38:47

right now or i've never had even my publisher and i didn't know going in like

1:38:50

what was going to happen

1:38:51

with agents and publishers and if they were going to say okay we have this next

1:38:55

time can you lay off

1:38:56

on this or can you can you do this a little more because this is selling right

1:39:00

now or never never even

1:39:01

a hint they have had complete creative control on that side which is different

1:39:04

than screenwriting

1:39:05

because in screenwriting you have a team and then all those scripts and

1:39:08

outlines they go all the way up

1:39:09

to the top of amazon and back down with notes and then you incorporate those or

1:39:12

you argue

1:39:13

and uh and come to some sort of an agreement or whatever it might be but team-oriented

1:39:17

on this

1:39:17

side only me on this side and i love that my publisher and agent have never

1:39:21

hinted at doing anything

1:39:23

differently because if it fails it's all on me i can't say man i knew i shouldn't

1:39:26

listen to my agent

1:39:27

or i shouldn't and my only vision of agents is uh it was californication and

1:39:30

entourage like i had no

1:39:31

idea i didn't know any so that's what i thought agents were and that's not my

1:39:34

that's not my agent and she

1:39:36

doesn't give any input into uh into what i do that's very fortunate is it is it

1:39:40

different than

1:39:40

that from in most people's experience like how many agents have you had over

1:39:43

the years uh i've had a

1:39:45

few agents but i've had the same manager since i was open micro do you have to

1:39:48

have an agent now

1:39:49

or is it just a manager yeah i mean i don't have to i guess i probably could do

1:39:52

everything with a

1:39:52

manager but i've i've had the same agent since 2007 and i've had the same

1:39:57

manager since 1991. oh wow yeah no

1:40:00

kidding yeah wow yeah my manager found me when i was a beginner no when did you

1:40:05

get to l.a 94. 94. oh geez

1:40:09

before yeah that's wild yeah no are they an l.a based person or new york based

1:40:15

okay and still with

1:40:16

well one of them's l.a based one of them is new york based um but yeah i've had

1:40:20

the same people forever

1:40:21

and fortunately they get me but that's the thing that you know you can run into

1:40:26

the wrong like in

1:40:27

hollywood they're notorious for taking things that are very successful and them

1:40:32

up because they have

1:40:32

their input on it i mean that's what they did with the chapelle show when dave

1:40:36

chapelle was on top of

1:40:37

the world yeah the executives at comedy central that whole thing up really yeah

1:40:41

they were telling him

1:40:42

do this and do that and you can do this and stop saying this and stop doing

1:40:46

that and he was like

1:40:47

this and he went to africa and quit the show i remember it was famous and didn't

1:40:51

do stand-up for years

1:40:54

for money like literally would show up in seattle he would bring a microphone

1:41:00

and like a little

1:41:01

a portable speaker really just do stand-up in the park no way i didn't know

1:41:06

that part i remember when

1:41:07

he quit the show and went to africa and yeah and came back and it seemed like

1:41:10

he was gone for a decade

1:41:11

almost he was gone for a long time and and he just was thinking about things

1:41:15

and yeah trying to figure

1:41:17

out what he was doing and just didn't i mean the the kind of integrity that he

1:41:22

had to walk away from

1:41:24

i think it was like 50 million dollars crazy yeah time was was it like a record

1:41:28

setting type of a

1:41:29

record setting giant it was the biggest show on cable it was huge and it only

1:41:33

did two seasons it's

1:41:34

to this day i think the best sketch comedy show that's ever been made and he

1:41:38

walked away from

1:41:39

him because they it up man if they just left him alone if they were smart they're

1:41:43

like have fun

1:41:44

right like what they do at south park just we'll leave you alone yeah have a

1:41:48

good time you know what

1:41:49

you're doing there'll be some controversy every now and again but of course

1:41:51

that's just how it goes

1:41:53

but controversy with who people that weren't fans anyway right i mean it was so

1:41:57

funny the bottom line

1:41:58

was it was really really really funny and they came in and they made it no fun

1:42:03

yeah our little guy

1:42:03

just got into it he's watching them all right now so good clayton bigsby the

1:42:08

the blind white

1:42:09

supremacist that doesn't know he's black the whole thing is genius i mean the

1:42:12

whole thing yeah and it's

1:42:14

so different also it's also so different it's not so good no no no no no it's

1:42:18

so good which is but

1:42:19

they wanted to safen it up a little bit and they they started with him and

1:42:24

talking to him about and

1:42:25

he just felt awful and you know he's a man of integrity and he just said this

1:42:30

man but they ruined

1:42:32

the executives ruined the greatest sketch comedy show of all time and they got

1:42:36

one of the greatest

1:42:37

comedians that's ever walked the face of the earth to walk away from his own

1:42:41

show wow yeah amazing

1:42:42

they can fuck it up yeah they can get in there you know and what a genius i

1:42:46

mean his stuff oh my gosh

1:42:48

it's just so great it's no he's he's awesome he was out here week one the the

1:42:52

second week that we

1:42:54

were open at the mothership he came by awesome and he christened the little

1:42:57

room oh it's so awesome

1:42:59

that mother oh it looks so amazing i mean everybody listening to this has

1:43:02

obviously watched the video

1:43:04

and seen that drone go in those doors and take the tour of that whole place

1:43:07

right before the day you

1:43:09

opened i think it was with that rant the bill burr rant which is like the

1:43:12

perfect rant to have over it

1:43:13

so great perfect that guy i love listening to that guy it's so funny yeah and

1:43:17

that rant was just so

1:43:19

perfect for that video and what what we're trying to do yeah you guys are

1:43:22

crushing it's turned austin

1:43:24

into like the comedy capital of the country it's amazing i remember you telling

1:43:27

me about it beforehand

1:43:28

you know and i was like oh yeah you came to the right place when you left la i

1:43:31

remember you're

1:43:32

looking at a couple different places and i think you chose well i know you

1:43:35

chose the right spot to

1:43:36

come and then to build this what you built here is so inspiring and so cool um

1:43:40

but that one when i

1:43:41

saw that video i was like oh because i you told me about like a year in advance

1:43:45

a year and a half

1:43:46

whatever it was and i was so excited when i saw that video and i texted you

1:43:49

about it and that was just

1:43:50

awesome i'm just so fired up that that is here i mean it's a destination you

1:43:53

made this a destination

1:43:54

for comedy yeah it's pretty cool it's pretty cool it's almost surreal yeah when

1:43:58

we're there tony and

1:44:00

i tony inchcliffe and i were there sometimes we just go how the fuck did we do

1:44:03

this seriously i can't

1:44:04

believe we did this yeah it really worked and it were and it was such a weird

1:44:08

gamble because you had a

1:44:09

lead i left la in the middle of this spotify deal this enormous deal and they

1:44:13

were like what the

1:44:14

fuck are you doing you're going to go to texas how are you going to get guests

1:44:18

how are you going to do

1:44:18

that you know it was like there's so much to it like okay how do you do this

1:44:22

but i was like

1:44:23

i just like i i have a compass like it's like that way go that way and you

1:44:29

always had that yeah

1:44:30

yeah yeah yeah yeah i'm a i'm a risk taker like when i feel like something is

1:44:36

the thing to do you

1:44:38

should take a risk yeah you have to yeah i think that that's uh that's a giant

1:44:42

component for success

1:44:44

you cannot play safe no and there's sometimes where it seems counterintuitive

1:44:49

and other people

1:44:49

are going to think it's a terrible idea and you got to not listen to them yeah

1:44:53

you got to be able to

1:44:54

just jump on it yeah we call it in sniper school a bold adjustment so you have

1:44:57

a certain amount of

1:44:58

time on that line and you have especially if you're doing something with like a

1:45:02

an old m14 type of a

1:45:04

thing where you're starting out and doing these clicks on your on your scope

1:45:08

and on your uh on your

1:45:09

elevation and like bold adjustments gentlemen i remember them walking down the

1:45:12

line saying that

1:45:13

so you're not like taking a tiny click because they've got to get people

1:45:15

through this course or

1:45:16

get them out of the course or whatever it is so bold adjustment okay went there

1:45:20

boom halfway back

1:45:21

bang you're on instead of these little tiny very safe tiny little adjustments

1:45:25

that keep you on that

1:45:26

line for another hour yeah bold adjustments is what they told us so that's what

1:45:30

uh that's what it

1:45:30

sounds like here and uh yeah man it's awesome i can't wait to go and check it

1:45:34

out it's uh

1:45:34

it's uh i think it sounds crazy but i think the universe rewards that yeah i

1:45:39

mean you have to

1:45:39

otherwise you just have a safe i mean you get one shot yeah one shot at life

1:45:43

yeah and uh and one

1:45:45

shot to well you can learn from successes and failures so why not learn from

1:45:48

them and take some

1:45:49

risks and do it because you're not coming back well maybe we don't know yeah

1:45:53

who knows yeah who knows

1:45:54

maybe you're just doing it over and over and over and over and over again and

1:45:57

that's one of the reasons

1:45:58

why i'm willing to take these chances maybe it's because i've it up before and

1:46:02

i know nope it's now's the

1:46:04

time to get moving this is your 500th time yeah going through this remember

1:46:07

when you stayed in la

1:46:08

let's get the out of there time to go let's not be depressed yeah it's the

1:46:13

first time i came out

1:46:14

was la and that was a crazy time to come out because that was covid so the book

1:46:16

hit the new york times

1:46:17

list and uh then you texted and i jumped in the car and drove on out there was

1:46:21

nobody on the roads that

1:46:22

was crazy that was april of uh early late april and may of 2020 yeah yeah

1:46:27

nobody on the roads nobody on

1:46:29

the 405 like that was super weird yeah and then we got to talk about covet on

1:46:33

the on the uh the thing

1:46:35

and i remember it was still a time when when uh the wuhan lab was conspiracy

1:46:38

theory stuff oh yeah and

1:46:39

i remember just that we talked about it i didn't put it as eloquently as uh as

1:46:42

john stewart did when

1:46:43

he talked about the wuhan lab coronavirus thing and the hershey the bit where

1:46:47

he does on uh hey if

1:46:48

there's a outbreak of chocolatey goodness in hershey pennsylvania you might

1:46:51

want to look at the chocolate

1:46:52

factory like that was genius but we did talk about it and at the time you know

1:46:55

that was conspiracy theory

1:46:57

craziness and i was like well there is a lab there so if i was a detective in

1:47:01

any big city in the united

1:47:02

states uh i'd probably call that a clue well you'd want to look into it you

1:47:05

should look into it and

1:47:06

also how did that become a conspiracy theory i mean how what what fantastic

1:47:11

level of manipulation and

1:47:13

propaganda did they impart on the united states that that was a conspiracy

1:47:18

theory that a respiratory

1:47:20

coronavirus lab in wuhan china definitely couldn't be this the place it's like

1:47:24

a block away yeah it's

1:47:26

certainly not that place it could be anything else we're not sure but it's

1:47:28

certainly not the coronavirus

1:47:30

lab a block away from the outbreak like looking back on it what at the time i

1:47:34

had been very fortunate

1:47:36

to be friends with people that actually understood viruses and actually

1:47:40

understood you know the fear and

1:47:42

cleavage sites and the the way that viruses normally jump from uh an animal

1:47:47

host to a human the natural

1:47:49

spillover yeah there's so many different factors that pointed to the the idea

1:47:55

that this is a gain of

1:47:57

function research project that went wrong and that's what it was and there's

1:48:02

still people out there that

1:48:03

deny that that one little guy that little fella that little guy yeah there is

1:48:10

no evidence that little

1:48:12

fucker but that's the that's the manipulation part we're as a populist we have

1:48:15

to realize that we are

1:48:16

being manipulated by in many instances and not only that but that one guy's

1:48:21

been manipulating people that

1:48:23

way his entire career did you ever read the robert kennedy book no it's on my

1:48:27

list but i have not holy

1:48:29

shit pretty good i need to read that so these days i read uh for people coming

1:48:34

on the podcast i've read

1:48:36

every book for people that have come on thus far i don't know if i'll always be

1:48:38

able to um but uh i

1:48:40

think some of those books would have fallen to lower on the priority list if

1:48:43

they weren't coming on the

1:48:44

podcast but some of those conversations that i've had in the books i've read

1:48:47

have made it into the pages

1:48:48

of the novel so there's all this this overlap to include this one uh brian mora

1:48:52

has a book called the

1:48:53

able archers and it talks about a nuclear exchange that almost happened between

1:48:56

the united states and the

1:48:57

the soviet union in 1983 and there was one guy in the soviet union an officer

1:49:02

on watch that night

1:49:03

who was not supposed to be there the guy was supposed to be there got sick so

1:49:06

this one guy

1:49:07

steps up goes in for the person who's sick and he's the one guy who studied the

1:49:10

united states and

1:49:11

he's he's uh i'm an intellectual and he's put in this time and effort into

1:49:14

understanding the strategic

1:49:16

uh kind of aspects of this conflict in the cold war and there's a launch from

1:49:20

the united states

1:49:21

icbm's heading towards the soviet union that's what shows up on their screen

1:49:25

and what he's supposed to

1:49:27

do is launch back and he has pressure from above to launch uh it's the protocol

1:49:32

and he doesn't

1:49:34

because he's like this isn't right and it was a glitch in their system that

1:49:37

showed yeah and there's

1:49:38

all these other things that play to um a korean airlines flight 007 that was

1:49:42

shot down earlier there's

1:49:43

all these things happening that uh would lend themselves exactly exactly so we

1:49:48

and those those

1:49:49

documents were just i think it was it might be i might be off by a year or two

1:49:52

but i think it was

1:49:53

1999 when these documents were finally uh declassified um so well after the end

1:49:57

of the cold war

1:49:58

and uh but stuff things like that so i read that book and had that conversation

1:50:02

with this guy and

1:50:04

he's a really nice guy great guy within the intelligence world his whole career

1:50:07

and that made it into the pages

1:50:09

of this novel so there's overlap but uh but robert kennedy has not been on the

1:50:12

podcast yet so i have

1:50:13

not read that book but i've been meaning to read it it sounds fascinating he

1:50:16

was just on russell brand's

1:50:17

podcast and he talked about um his uh uncle and his father's assassination holy

1:50:24

he his recall is amazing

1:50:28

his ability to just remember all these different pieces that were in play

1:50:32

particularly with uh the jfk

1:50:35

assassination and lee harvey oswald and the fact that lee harvey oswald was a cia

1:50:39

asset and that he had

1:50:40

defected to russia but it was a fake defection and all the the different pieces

1:50:44

that were in place that

1:50:46

you could point to there's there's so much evidence he's like if we went into

1:50:49

this just he said to um

1:50:52

to russell that if we just wanted to cover the evidence that the cia killed jfk

1:51:00

he goes this would be

1:51:01

a 10-hour podcast yeah no it's uh it's fascinating and it makes it you haven't

1:51:05

gotten to the stage in

1:51:06

the book yet but i don't give too much away don't give it yeah no no but uh you'll

1:51:10

like when you get

1:51:10

to the certain part you'll be like no way because i think nobody is going to

1:51:14

expect this part of the

1:51:15

book to uh to go the way it does but uh point being it takes us back to that

1:51:19

assassination and so crazy

1:51:20

early 90s remember maybe you had oliver north on on here which is his oliver

1:51:24

north books fascinating um but

1:51:26

uh you have congress mandating mandate law that the united states has to declassify

1:51:32

these documents

1:51:33

by a certain date yep and two administrations after a visit from the cia

1:51:36

neglect to do that or they let

1:51:38