In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the comedian and podcaster joins me to talk about the new Snyder Cut of Justice League, Tarantino's new movie "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," and why he doesn't like going to the movie theater. We also talk about what it's like being in a movie theater with kids and how to deal with the anxiety that comes with going to a movie theatre with kids. And we talk about why you should never go to the movies with your kids, unless it's to see a movie with your own kids. Joe also talks about his new book, "The Dark Side Of" and how he's going to take his kids to see it in a theater with his wife and kids, and why it's a good idea to have a home theater in your own home. And he talks about how much he loves going to movie theaters and why you shouldn't be scared of going to movies with kids in the first place. If you're not a fan of movies, you should definitely check out this episode, because it's worth the drive-thru movie theater experience, because you'll get a whole lot of laughs along the way. I'm sure you'll agree that it's one of the most fun things I've ever done and it'll be worth the price of admission! I hope you enjoy it! -Joe Rogan - Thank you for listening and tweet me if you have a question or would like to ask me a question, I'll answer it or have me answer it in the next week! Love ya, bye! Timestamps: 1:00 - 2: What's your favorite movie theater? 3:30 - What do you think of a movie you've ever gone to? 4:00 5:00 | What movie you went to see with your kid? 6:30 | What are you scared of? 7:30 8:15 | What would you like to see at a movie or theater experience? 9: What are your kids do you're most excited about? 11:15 - What kind of movie you're going to go to watch with your family? 12:15 13: What movie should you go to next? 14:40 - What movie do you re going to see in your next movie? 15:40 16:20 - How do you feel about it?
00:00:43.000For those people that have like four and a half, five hours on your hands to watch that, apparently it's incredible and he's such a great guy.
00:00:48.000Is the new cut four and a half, five hours?
00:01:14.000If I sat down for like an hour and a half in my house and watched some old movie from the 80s or something like that, I can only imagine...
00:01:20.000The looks I'll get from the rest of the family.
00:01:22.000Sitting there, having a beer, watching First Blood or something that I enjoyed watching as a kid.
00:01:38.000Tarantino, I don't know what his deal is in terms of his financial situation, like who has ownership or how it would do it, but if they could sell it to Netflix or HBO Max or whatever and just put it as a series.
00:01:54.000Probably the only time a 20-hour movie was ever made into 20 different episodes to make a season.
00:02:01.000Right, and then you could compare it to the...
00:02:03.000I saw the first one, the first cut, rather, with Dave Chappelle, Donnell Rawlings, and all the other people that opened up for Dave and Ian Edwards.
00:03:22.000You know, the chances of something happening are so slim, but I get in there, you know, I look where the exits are.
00:03:26.000Okay, if something goes off in here, if there's a fire or a bomb or something like that, okay, we're going to move down this aisle, put your hand on the wall, and move down so you can find that exit rather than just, like, chaos.
00:03:35.000So I identify those things, I talk to the kids about that stuff, and then I'm ready.
00:03:39.000So if someone strange walks in, like, I'm like, mm-hmm.
00:03:41.000Yeah, well, that's the Navy sealing you.
00:03:43.000I guess, but even before that, so I went to, growing up, they did a Apocalypse Now, like 10-year anniversary or maybe like 15-year anniversary.
00:04:54.000But the thing is, I really think that with HBO Max showing first cut, like King Kong vs.
00:05:01.000Godzilla was on HBO Max, Wonder Woman was on HBO Max, they're going to start doing that.
00:05:05.000And when they start doing that and people have the option of staying home, if you have a nice television, you don't have to deal with people on their phone, man.
00:05:13.000I don't have to deal with that crazy person coming in, just getting all written ready to go.
00:05:17.000It's also just so many people are on their goddamn phone.
00:06:24.000And now we have to think about bombs going off, people being crazy, and just looking at your phone being annoying.
00:06:29.000Yeah, you gotta think of so many different things now.
00:06:32.000And the other thing is, like, people are watching movies on their phones now.
00:06:36.000If I was Quentin Tarantino and I made a masterpiece, like, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and I knew someone was watching on a six-inch screen, I'd be like, ugh.
00:07:46.000When you're reading it, it's not just that you're getting enthralled with this story and you're being taken on this journey, but it's also, for me at least...
00:07:56.000I know that as a guy who wrote this, or a woman who wrote this, I know that I'm being...
00:08:11.000I know you're sitting there typing away, and as I'm getting this experience out of your books, it's like...
00:08:18.000There's something about it still fuels the imagination.
00:08:24.000There's something great about movies where you see it all and it's wild and you know it's creative, but there's also something great about having your imagination fill it all in for you.
00:08:47.000You know what the water looks like as you're seeing it.
00:08:49.000But in a book, when you're describing a mountain range or someone walking into an office, you're plugging in all these little pieces from your own experience through your own filters and biases and all the rest of it.
00:08:58.000So you're actually an active participant in that creation, which is kind of cool.
00:09:53.000Which they did because it tested very poorly with audiences when they just rooted for this guy for this whole movie and then all of a sudden he gets killed at the end.
00:10:01.000Oh, so they did do it in the first movie.
00:10:17.000Joey Diaz told me he went to see The Last Rambo, and he did it on Edibles, and he said it was one of the funniest movies he's ever seen in his life.
00:10:24.000He goes, first of all, he goes, the guy is still, he's still in great shape, but he's, it's like, it's kind of almost like cheesy now.
00:10:32.000Like, they've turned it, like, they know what they're doing, so there's a scene where he, like, rips some guy's throat out of his throat.
00:11:15.000But point being, I was like, I love those movies.
00:11:17.000And then when I sat down to talk to the producers and all the people that were involved in making The Terminalist into this series, usually they like to get rid of the author right away because they don't want him saying, like, You ruined my vision and all this.
00:11:27.000So I got to talk to them about growing up and reading all these books and watching the movie adaptations of these different books or the TV adaptations or whatever it was.
00:11:35.000And they realized, okay, I've been thinking about this for a long time.
00:11:38.000I understand telling a story visually is different than writing it on the written page.
00:12:26.000So they're doing, yeah, they're starting with the first one, and then depending on Chris's schedule and Antoine's schedule and how everything looks, then maybe they do another season.
00:13:18.000And then you have Jack Reacher character, you have Jack Ryan, you know, he's really John Ryan from the Clancy stuff, so it's, yeah, James Reese, the main character, former Navy SEAL sniper, background similar to mine, but right now...
00:13:29.000It's so hard to get an audience to connect with your character.
00:13:32.000And I didn't even think about that as I started.
00:13:34.000But since that's happened, since he is resonating with people and the stories are resonating with people, that I think I'm going to continue on with the same character, the same storyline, building on it, building along his journey, because we're all on this journey and people can relate to that as well, to transitions and different struggles and all that.
00:13:50.000So I'm going to continue with this character for as long as people want to continue to read about him.
00:13:54.000So do you feel like you just hit gold?
00:13:56.000So you're in a nice fucking vein of gold in this map and you might as well just keep running?
00:14:20.000She had this amazing success with Harry Potter, and then she wrote another book.
00:14:24.000And, you know, I mean, I'm sure it's probably pretty successful just because she's J.K. Rawlings and everybody loves her, but I haven't heard shit about it.
00:14:33.000No, and sometimes it's hard to move over.
00:15:45.000So Chris optioned it right out of the gate, Chris Pratt.
00:15:47.000So January of 2018, before it even hits shelves, Chris Pratt options it because my dear friend Jared Shaw gives him a copy and says, this is your next project, which is just crazy.
00:15:55.000By the way, who's better than Chris Pratt?
00:16:09.000He had a small role in Zero Dark Thirty where he plays a Navy SEAL and a very small part, but his other stuff hasn't been as violent, hasn't been as visceral, hasn't been as primal, and so people are going to be surprised.
00:16:59.000So having Chris and Antoine at the top of this thing, so many people came up to me on set and just told me, hey, this feels different than other movies we've worked on.
00:17:07.000Like everybody from, you know, in craft services to whatever else, technical advisors, you know, all coming in saying, this is different.
00:17:12.000And plus we had like 12 SEALs on set, guys that I knew in the teams that are there playing SEALs or acting in it or doing stunt coordination or technical advising or whatever it is.
00:17:21.000So we were all on, so it was like a reunion.
00:17:40.000Especially me, if you're not J.K. Rowling or you're not Stephen King and you're not maintaining creative control, you hand that to somebody else and you cross your fingers.
00:17:49.000And there's no two better people to be in charge of this than Chris Pratt and Antoine Fuqua.
00:18:34.000Bang, and then he put him over, while it's in the dude's mouth, he took it out of his mouth, put it on the dude's neck, and slammed him over a table.
00:19:39.000Yeah, I actually stopped at Taron Tactical on the way out of town, leaving L.A. the other day, and I met the stunt double for Keanu Reeves for these movies.
00:19:48.000Yeah, John Ninja, I think, is his thing.
00:20:49.000And when you see someone who's at a world championship level, and I've been there, I've been fortunate to be there too, where some other guys who've won really big championships were there as well too, and you get to see them shoot.
00:21:27.000I didn't know what to expect out there because it was my first time down this path and my experience was so great knowing Chris and spending some time with him out in Utah and with you and all that stuff.
00:22:13.000They're trying to figure out how to do that because he's a fan favorite.
00:22:16.000They want to try to get somebody in there that maybe is a little mysterious or can definitely do the accent, like the Rhodesian accent, which is different than the South African accent.
00:22:24.000So they want to get all this stuff right, which is really cool.
00:22:27.000They want to get all these details right.
00:22:28.000Chris wants to get it right, so all the gear is right.
00:22:31.000I'm trying to help out my friends that I've mentioned in the book.
00:22:33.000Do you have an actor that you would want to do it?
00:23:01.000You know, I got all these, like, trying to incorporate my friends' knives and Winkler tomahawks and half-faced blades and, like, stuff that I actually use.
00:23:09.000So they don't want to just, like, get a knife from the prop house that, like, looks cool, but they have no idea of his actual utility or if SEALs actually use it or if it makes sense for the character.
00:27:25.000I don't know, but when I thought about it, I was like, yeah, you know, I haven't really seen too many white vehicles in TV shows or movies before.
00:27:30.000Well, you're very detail-oriented in your writing.
00:27:33.000Everything, you talk about all the various gear and the different aspects of it and what's great about these different things.
00:27:41.000You could tell that this is coming from not just...
00:27:44.000You're not doing research on this stuff.
00:27:47.000This is shit that you're already really familiar with, very intimate with.
00:28:17.000But that's very detail-oriented because when you're dealing with really high-tech, really well-made backpacks, that is where the rubber meets the road, right?
00:28:46.000Yeah, and there's some like that that are actually really good, obviously, for carrying out weight.
00:28:49.000You know, that external frame is probably, I mean, it is very good for carrying out weight out of the backcountry.
00:28:54.000But if you're just going in trying to be lighter, faster, further, like that sort of thing, it's a little bit different.
00:28:59.000But what I didn't realize, just because I've used all this stuff because I'm so passionate about it and it's such a part of me and it tells a story about these characters, What I didn't realize is that other people have that passion, too.
00:29:08.000And when you mention, hey, like Dana designs packs, and he's now at Mystery Ranch, but he's a super innovator, just amazing.
00:29:16.000His life has been about making these things better, tweaking them.
00:29:19.000And when you mention that, other people are like, oh, I remember my first pack.
00:32:59.000Yeah, but some of those ads, same thing with the Land Cruiser ads.
00:33:01.000They have these ads that are talking about how they're used in Africa on hunting expeditions and stuff like that.
00:33:05.000And Toyota probably wishes and Rolex probably wishes that these would go away because now, you know, it's more, hey, tennis and golf and sponsorships like that sailing.
00:34:38.000Now you've got a fucking line of people trying to climb up that thing.
00:34:42.000And part of his sponsorship included providing Hillary with this watch.
00:34:46.000It was not a gift, but rather a watch for Hillary to wear during the expedition, and then to return to Rolex for extensive testing after the descent.
00:34:55.000So you've got to think, in 1950, man, just the ability to make something so complex that was an automatic movement that was on your wrist, was that an automatic?
00:37:15.000And this morning I woke up and it was like, boom!
00:37:18.000And I tried to repost people's things and stories just as a thank you to them because I sincerely appreciate them taking a risk on me and telling a friend.
00:37:24.000But I woke up this morning and it was like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
00:37:28.000I have a 20 minute time limit for Instagram.
00:37:31.000So if I have to do stuff or respond to things, I give myself 20 minutes and allow myself to, but if I fuck off and just look at nonsense for 20 minutes, my time's up.
00:37:54.000But I was like, okay, I got to get up and I got a 6 o'clock interview for the East Coast first and then I'm going to see Joe and I got to be awake.
00:38:01.000I think people will recognize that you can't...
00:38:04.000They know you're very, very, very busy right now.
00:38:08.000I mean, with launching a television series with Chris Pratt, I mean, how the fuck do you have any time for anything?
00:38:15.000And I definitely have to get better in...
00:38:16.000This is the year to get smarter about things.
00:38:19.000Because up to now, it's been this full-on sprint, just leaving the military, following this next passion in life, getting this door cracked open, kicking it in, having this book resonate with people, having Chris get on board.
00:38:57.000It happened so quickly with you, from getting out of the military to starting this book, and then having this book take off, and then writing the second, the third, and now the fourth.
00:39:09.000So I got out in 2016, got the book to Simon& Schuster in the fall of 2016. They called me in December, wanted to publish it, and then started that process, and then it came out in 2018. So four books, five years, boom, and killing it.
00:39:33.000And this one, actually, each one has a distinctly different theme, and I wanted to make sure that I stayed on theme for each book, which actually helped out a ton, because when it got to Simon& Schuster, I thought they were going to change it big time.
00:39:42.000I was like, oh, it's at the big leagues now.
00:39:45.000If they want to put Exploding Robots from Outer Space in, guess what's going in?
00:40:35.000So for the third one, it's really exploring the dark side of man to the dynamic of hunter and hunted.
00:40:39.000And then this one, much more than a single sentence.
00:40:43.000This one really is something I've thought about.
00:40:45.000I thought about it in the teams because going back and forth to and from Iraq and Afghanistan, but I continue to think of it as a citizen and as an author today.
00:40:54.000And that's what has the enemy learned by watching us on the field of battle for the last 20 years of war?
00:40:58.000Because we've been playing poker, and they've been circling.
00:41:00.000So if you're Iran, if you're China, if you're Russia, if you're North Korea, a super-empowered individual, a terrorist organization, they've been watching us play poker, look at our cards, see how we play them, and then they've been applying those lessons to future battle plans.
00:41:11.000So that formed the basis of this thing, and that's what I came up with in August of 2019 on the way to and from Kamchatka Peninsula.
00:41:17.000I went over there for that bear hunt, and I left my computer behind, left my phone behind, so Russian intelligence wouldn't Pull out all these emails and who knows what people have sent me over the years.
00:41:25.000So I outlined this thing in my notebook and got back, wrote that down, started doing research into infectious diseases, the weaponization of infectious diseases in the fall of 2019, and then COVID hits.
00:41:37.000I want to get to that, and I want to get to that bear hunt too, but it's crazy the synchronicity of you writing this book about a pandemic while a pandemic hit.
00:41:49.000Like you wrote the book, you were way deep into the book, and then COVID-19 hits towards the end of your writing.
00:42:07.000When I talked to you last time, when we were here in early May of last year, I was in the middle of it.
00:42:12.000And, you know, some authors I heard talking about how they didn't want to incorporate COVID-19 into their writing because they want people to have an escape and that sort of thing.
00:42:19.000But for me, the book is about what the enemy is learning from us.
00:42:22.000And they're watching our response to COVID-19.
00:42:24.000They're watching our response to this virus.
00:42:26.000And they're watching our response to the civil unrest of the summer.
00:42:29.000They're watching our response to a very contentious political season and election cycle.
00:43:22.000It's a very strange time, because we haven't done this before, and then it's being accentuated by social media.
00:43:31.000You know, there was the civil rights unrest in the 1960s, but what we're in now is different, because there's opportunists now, and not just at home, but also abroad, that are engaging with these social media thought bubbles.
00:43:47.000Poisoning the water, and so you're aware of the internet research agency from Russia.
00:43:56.000There's this woman named Renee DiResta, and she came on the podcast a little over a year ago, and she outlined what she learned from watching the social media use from Russia from the 2016 election, and what they do is they have Untold numbers of accounts that are coming from this company called the Internet Research Agency.
00:44:45.000And these memes, one of the things they do is they write funny memes.
00:44:49.000She reviewed thousands and thousands and thousands of memes, and she said, some of them are really funny, and they're really well made, and they're done by these Russian agents, and their job is to sow unrest.
00:46:17.000You can get recruited by the government.
00:46:18.000I feel like if you were thinking about doing that, you could really manipulate people really well by just creating two opposing pages and getting them popular and then having people duke it out with each other.
00:46:32.000No, it's the weaponization of social media.
00:46:40.000There's a book called Three Felonies a Day by Harvey Silverglate.
00:46:44.000And he writes about how you wake up in the morning.
00:46:47.000Average person wakes up in the morning.
00:46:48.000Goes to work, comes home, has dinner, goes to bed, and in the course of that day has committed three felonies because the laws are written in such a way that they are so broad they can be interpreted to go after whoever they want.
00:47:16.000And we're very close to being able to do that with almost anybody in this country.
00:47:20.000But yeah, social media is just something that the enemy can look at and figure out, hey, how do we weaponize this against our enemy, so against the United States?
00:47:41.000It's a little sad, but it's also fascinating.
00:47:43.000It is fascinating, and I get to use it in the stories.
00:47:45.000There's still all things that I can weave into future storylines, but growing up, we grew up roughly in the same time, and it seemed like in the 80s, in the late 70s, 80s, into the early 90s, we were still a group of people as a country that would stand up for your right to say whatever you wanted, especially if I disagreed with you.
00:48:01.000That was the one thing we could all rally around.
00:48:04.000I mean, there's other certain things out there that, yeah, we couldn't, okay.
00:48:07.000But the First Amendment, we could rally around that, and we could stand up for one another.
00:48:12.000Like, sticking up, like, I'm the only person that can beat up my little brother, type thing.
00:48:19.000And private companies acted in the spirit of that First Amendment.
00:48:23.000And today, we see private companies, we see those people that used to be guardians of the First Amendment, lawyers, politicians, newspaper editors.
00:48:53.000Obviously, that is something that is—and it's something I thought about because my mom was a librarian, so I kind of grew up with it, knowing about banned books and the history of banned books and censorship and what that means.
00:49:02.000And as you just talked about, you talked about civil unrest of the 60s.
00:49:05.000Like, a lot of that was to give people freedom.
00:49:08.000And now we're having civil unrest and all these other cancel culture and all these other things that are kind of associated— Rather directly or indirectly, and it's all about restricting freedoms, restricting those freedoms.
00:49:20.000Well, they think restricting freedoms is what's going to save us from these bad things.
00:49:25.000So the bad things get highlighted, and they say, we have to stop these bad things.
00:49:43.000And these companies that you're talking about that are engaging in this, they're doing it because they're worried if they don't that they're going to get canceled themselves and it's going to hurt their bottom line.
00:49:54.000So they're doing it like they're acting in this sort of woke way, but they're only doing it because it's a good financial move.
00:50:04.000Yeah, but if you take it another step further and think of like AT&T. So if someone's talking on AT&T line, AT&T doesn't try to censor that conversation between us or a group call.
00:50:14.000Or maybe the Telegraph back in the day was that censored.
00:50:17.000So it seems financially, I don't know, it's a tough thing to figure out in this next 10 years.
00:50:21.000The thing about AT&T though is it's private.
00:50:24.000See, if it's private, if you and me are having a private conversation and you're saying some horrible shit to me, no one's going to know.
00:50:30.000But if you put it online, then everyone can see it.
00:50:35.000Then it gets weird because then you're saying, well, freedom of speech is important.
00:50:38.000Yeah, but this is a different kind of speech than we've ever had to deal with before because now you're dealing with something that can actively affect and influence the way other people think and behave.
00:50:49.000And when you have something like the Internet Research Agency where they're actively trying to manipulate the way people think and behave, you realize, oh, wow, this is a complex spider web we're kind of caught up in.
00:51:01.000It's not as easy as many would make it seem.
00:51:03.000There are complexities to it, and this next 10 years is going to be pivotal for the history of our country when we're talking specifically about the First Amendment and free speech and these companies that have more wealth and control of information than any other country or person in the history of the world.
00:51:17.000So I worry about our kids growing up during this time and then going to college during this time and moving forward into the private sector during this time and what freedoms they're going to have as they move forward.
00:51:26.000What options and opportunities are they going to have in a country that looks like it's continually infringing upon multiple rights?
00:51:48.000What's going to happen is they're just going to apply that to all kinds of other things.
00:51:52.000Once you have a passport that says you need something in order to go here, you need to make sure that you have a vaccination in order to go here, in order to move around you have to have something, that means they're going to be tracking you.
00:52:05.000So if they're tracking you, if they're not just tracking you like they are because of your cell phone, like if you go in tower to tower they can track you no matter what, but what if it's required that they track you?
00:52:15.000Because right now it's not required that you have a phone.
00:52:18.000If you have a driver's license and you go to the airport, you don't have to have a phone on you, but what if you do?
00:52:23.000And that could happen if you need a COVID passport.
00:52:27.000We could get to a point where everyone needs to have some sort of a smartphone with a GPS in order to be able to travel freely and you have to be able to do the right thing.
00:53:04.000You guys need to read history because you can't put people on a fucking list and you can't make people held responsible for a political decision that may or may not have been correct or wise.
00:53:16.000But then you can change your mind in the future.
00:53:19.000What you should be doing is trying to influence people's opinions by giving them better information, not putting them on a fucking list and telling them, you know, like, you're never going to work again because you were an enemy, and now we won, so we're going to do this, we're going to do that.
00:53:33.000It's all being weaponized, and it's the marketplace of ideas and being able to express your opinions in this marketplace of ideas.
00:53:40.000That's What really is part of the foundation of this country is having those best ideas, then gravitate to the top because that's where it's competition.
00:53:59.000Well, very soon thereafter, it starts to become something else in a way to weaponize and restrict your political opponents because it's always about power.
00:55:56.000Her response was incredibly underwhelming, to say the very least.
00:56:06.000I'm sure this is some sort of a supporter of AOC that contacted the Capitol Hill Police and probably lied.
00:56:14.000But the fact that they could just come to your fucking house without any proof, it's not like he's saying this lady deserves to die, she must be stopped, we have to stop.
00:57:12.000I think it's a crazy person that thinks that this is just my opinion.
00:57:16.000I think it's most likely a crazy person that is angry at this guy for not towing the liberal line because he's a liberal journalist or a podcaster.
00:57:27.000Growing up when we grew up, when you talk about liberalism, it means something different than it does today.
00:57:32.000And there's a difference between a classical liberal and a leftist.
00:57:35.000And what we're seeing more of in this country is those terms intertwined, and they're very different things.
00:57:39.000And leftists are kind of what we're seeing more of, which is grabbing this control, restrictions on freedom of speech, restrictions on owning firearms.
00:57:48.000Restrictions on whatever they think might be quote-unquote dangerous, especially when they throw in dangerous to the children.
00:57:53.000That's the other key when talking about it.
00:57:56.000And guess who's buying all the expensive houses and has the power and the control?
00:58:00.000Oh, those same people that were fighting for the little guy a little while ago and talking about all these restrictions that we needed to place on some of these more natural rights that are inherent at birth, namely to be able to defend ourselves and our family, defend that gift of life.
00:58:14.000Yeah, like when a Marxist starts making money and buys million-dollar houses.
00:58:27.000That's why I talk as often as I possibly can.
00:58:30.000I talk about the importance of studying our history, putting that requisite time, energy, and effort into studying the past so we can make decisions that...
00:58:39.000Because we have this responsibility to make decisions for future generations.
00:58:42.000And if we haven't put that time into studying our history and if what you know about a certain event or a certain issue is based on someone else's tweet that you just retweeted and all of a sudden that's your opinion of something that's going to affect multiple generations down the line, particularly...
00:58:58.000Their abilities to defend themselves and their families or to start a business or whatever it might be.
00:59:03.000Well, you owe it to put down the phone, to get into these books, realize, hey, why are these amendments in place?
00:59:10.000And from the inception of this country up until today, people have died to give you the right to be able to make these decisions, to follow your dreams, to have these options and opportunities.
00:59:19.000Not only that, people have died supporting these things that you support.
00:59:26.000When people are really into Marxism, you need to learn what happened when that was the rule of law, because it's a terrible, terrible history.
00:59:36.000It's horrible, but it seems good, like the idea that everybody should have something.
00:59:42.000It should be equal for all, and all the workers should be even, and everybody should have equal things.
00:59:50.000You don't have the same amount of effort because there's a reason why some people work harder than others because they realize you can actually get further ahead.
00:59:59.000There's a competition and that competition fuels innovation.
01:00:23.000And when have you ever read a book, whether fiction or non, or studied history where the people that put names on lists, the people that restrict rights, the people that confiscate firearms are the good guys?
01:00:39.000But it seems like when you say it the right way, if you restrict the rights of these people to have guns, then there'll not be any mass shootings because there'll be no guns.
01:00:50.000That becomes their opinion rather than, hold on, let me look at the, if this was even the issue, let me take at the FBI crime statistics, the actual ones, and be like, oh, why are they going after this one thing that causes almost nothing?
01:01:01.000They should be going after hammers and baseball bats.
01:01:03.000Or if they really wanted to save lives, you should make sure that every single phone just turned off when you got in your car.
01:01:32.000And then make your decision rather than just seeing a tweet and retweeting it.
01:01:35.000Young people that have these good ideals, their heart's in the right place, their mind's in the right place.
01:01:43.000They just want things to be better for people.
01:01:45.000They're sensitive, kind, compassionate people, and that's what they want.
01:01:49.000But they just don't understand that this is not how you do it, because if you do it that way, someone's going to take advantage of that, and they're going to control everyone.
01:01:57.000And this is what's happened, that's what happened, that's what Stalin did.
01:02:44.000Well, we're just going to take all those people that have been working extra hard and making more money and we're going to decide that they did something wrong and we're going to punish them.
01:03:20.000It's everything from, and it's like these, all the different aspects of it, the foundation was set before COVID. It was the over-regulation, there's so many problems with California already.
01:04:58.000Have you ever seen what's going on in Venice now?
01:05:00.000Yeah, I drove not through Venice, but I drove through some other areas when all the tents are out on the sides of the streets and all that stuff.
01:05:14.000Well, one thing that we can do is continue to fight for these freedoms that allow us to make decisions that, whether they're good or bad, they're on us as individuals rather than restrict them.
01:05:26.000So, I mean, I don't know what else you can do.
01:05:29.000That's absolutely true, but my problem with it is that I feel like this is the beginning.
01:05:36.000I don't think this is where it's going to end.
01:05:40.000I'm legitimately worried about an apocalyptic movie scene, like a Mad Max-style scene that is LA. Because LA's so fucked now, my friend was explaining this to me, that people just go into stores and steal things, because if it's less than X amount of dollars,
01:05:58.000I think it's like, what is it, like 900 bucks?
01:06:07.000Yeah, but he was explaining to me about stores, that they have a real problem with stores, because people are just stealing things, and as long as it's below a certain amount, they won't do anything about it.
01:06:18.000And then they have this crazy new district attorney in Los Angeles who's George Soros funded, which freaks people out because they go, wait a minute, is that real?
01:06:27.000Are those fucking conspiracy theories real?
01:06:29.000Should I get a tinfoil hat and put it on right now?
01:06:32.000They make everybody seem like they're crazy when some of these things are absolutely provable.
01:06:36.000Because this guy doesn't want—he's defunding the gang unit.
01:06:47.000And so you have—people are getting out of jail for murder, and they're getting out of jail way earlier than they would normally have gotten out.
01:06:58.000And I think we even forget, even if we went through this pandemic, we went through a summer of civil unrest.
01:07:03.000We had some craziness happen around the election.
01:07:06.000People don't realize how fragile society is unless they've been to some of these countries where they've actually witnessed it or they've been in those riots or they've been in a natural disaster when a hurricane hits and there's no law and order anywhere and it's just chaos and you don't have water, you don't have food, you have a medical emergency, there's no one to call.
01:07:35.000We call 9-1-1, and we think we can call 9-1-1, because that's what we've been told, that the police are there to protect.
01:07:39.000Really, they're coming after the fact, unless you're a politician and you have them to your right and left, taxpayer-funded with the same weapons that they want to take from the rest of us.
01:09:02.000So when tasers first came out, I don't know the exact date, but they had this issue back then and people can fact check or look it up somewhere.
01:09:08.000I haven't thought about this in about 25 years, so I'm a little off.
01:09:11.000But the taser was so similar to a pistol, there was an incident, and I forget where it was, where somebody turned around in their seat, someone's being crazy in the back of the police car, and they tased them, but guess what?
01:09:47.000Yeah, there's no way it should be shaped like a pistol, and there's no way whoever that person was should be a cop.
01:09:54.000Because if you can't figure out that your gun is on this side and your taser's on that side, so if you go like that and you pull this out and you hope it's a taser, You're fucking looking at a black gun.
01:10:28.000So she should have so much time on that taser, so much time on that pistol.
01:10:31.000So she is competent and knows, hey, this one is for the taser, this is the escalation of force, but you can't just do it once.
01:10:36.000You just can't have somebody come in and give you a half-hour class, and here's your taser, and now you're on the street, and now you're in this situation that's the most stressful of your life.
01:11:16.000You get so angry that this piece of shit is a cop.
01:11:19.000These situations are so goddamn aggravating, not just because you see a person who's victimized, but also because you realize now it's going to be harder.
01:11:29.000Now it's going to be harder for the good cops.
01:11:31.000It's going to be harder for people to get law enforcement to help them.
01:11:36.000And then with less applicants or as you get a pool of applicants that isn't as qualified, well, you only have certain people to choose from.
01:12:11.000And if there's no way that they're going to go to jail now, if they just steal $900 worth of shit, they're just going to steal $900 worth of shit all day long.
01:13:14.000It's just you need people to stay within the lines of polite society and obey rules because if they don't, then they just keep pushing that and pushing it.
01:13:24.000Next thing you know, they're camping on your fucking front lawn and you can't do anything about it because you're infringing on their right to have shelter.
01:13:31.000And you're like, oh my god, is this real?
01:13:34.000And if you kick them out, then they arrest you.
01:14:03.000And then we also have, you add to this, there's just so much more tension because of social media.
01:14:08.000And what we have in the military, we talk about online or L, like ambush online or L. And right now we seem to have this ambush happening with big tech over here.
01:14:16.000What does that mean, online or L? So coming up online, boom, so you have, let's say, bad guys walking along the trail.
01:14:56.000There's also this weird feeling that no one is competent that's in charge.
01:15:01.000When you see Biden on TV talking about the AFT and appointing someone to the head of the AFT... You're like, hey man, why don't you redo this?
01:15:36.000You've been doing it for 50 years now, maybe a little too long.
01:15:40.000But then we get people in those positions of power that have these platforms that say, hey, no right is absolute.
01:15:48.000No amendment to the Constitution is absolute.
01:15:51.000Okay, there's some discussions about certain things.
01:15:53.000There's advocacy versus incitement when we're talking about the First Amendment, which is a very clear thing that the Supreme Court has ruled on when it was a very liberal court, by the way.
01:16:01.000But so what about the 19th Amendment, which I think is women's right to vote?
01:16:23.000Like that one was thought out ahead of time and in the speech and on the teleprompter.
01:16:26.000And if you are a law-abiding citizen, the idea that in this country, where we have had the Second Amendment for the entire time, for you to come along and say now, there's no reason for you to have a gun.
01:16:39.000And there's a lot of people that have said that.
01:16:40.000I know Biden hasn't said that, but there's a lot of people that say, we need to take guns away.
01:16:44.000I've had that discussion with liberals.
01:16:46.000I'm like, okay, take crime away first, please.
01:16:51.000Okay, so how are you going to take guns away?
01:16:53.000Like, if you ever had someone try to do something, break into your home, why don't you go talk to someone who's defended their family, who used a lawfully acquired firearm to defend their family?
01:17:04.000And if you haven't, you probably should shut the fuck up, because you're just talking nonsense.
01:17:07.000You're talking like you're on Twitter.
01:17:32.000So when I got out of the military, I gave my kids a gift.
01:17:35.000I gave them each copy of the Constitution, a leather-bound one, so it's not just something that they look up online, like if they want to look up, you know, some, you know, Kardashian-type thing.
01:17:49.000I gave them a Bible with their name on it.
01:17:50.000I gave them an old compass to help guide their way, and then I gave them a tomahawk.
01:17:54.000I gave them this Winkler tomahawk, and then here's the means to defend it.
01:17:58.000And as a citizenry, that is our responsibility, to ensure that our kids and grandkids can have those same freedoms and options and opportunities that we have.
01:18:07.000That's what we owe the people that gave their lives from the inception of this country up to today.
01:18:13.000Not just studying history, but having history taught to you by someone who has a real understanding of the consequences of each individual action and what happened and how this led to an erosion of rights, how this led to chaos.
01:19:17.000And somewhere along the way, like, you learned how to think and how to think logically and how to be a critical thinker and how to ask questions and how to have these conversations.
01:19:24.000And we don't do that in school anymore.
01:19:26.000You're just on receive mode for the most part unless you go to maybe a law school where maybe you have a professor who maybe wants to use the Socratic method to teach you and teach you to think logically through his questioning and through his class.
01:19:37.000But you're going to have 10 others that aren't doing that.
01:19:39.000So I think that's why this resonates with people because there's something about us that wanted to think logically because that gives us control.
01:19:46.000That gives us control of our own destiny being able to do that.
01:19:48.000And it's lost on most people in this country today.
01:19:51.000Most people in the world today, I'd say.
01:19:53.000Well, it's just too easy to follow a predetermined pattern of behavior.
01:19:59.000It's too easy to line yourself with either the left or the right and just adopt a conglomeration of ideas that these people have already set out for you, and then this is how I feel about this, and we need to do that.
01:20:22.000You haven't given this any deep thought, but you're talking about really important subjects.
01:20:26.000That affect not just you and your kids, but their kids and their grandkids.
01:20:30.000That affect the future of this country.
01:20:32.000And you're putting more thought into, I don't know, what you're going to have for dinner than you're putting into these decisions that will affect future generations.
01:20:38.000There's people out there just flippantly saying that the freedom of speech is not that important.
01:21:01.000Depending upon whatever subject it is that's being debated and discussed, if you say that freedom of speech is not an absolute right, there's some people that are going to agree with you because you're talking in reference about something that they support.
01:21:16.000Like, yeah, it is true that that one is not absolute and that there's incitement and there's advocacy.
01:21:21.000And the Supreme Court in Brandenburg, actually, that was their decision, that the Liberal Court standing on the side of people that disagree with you vehemently.
01:21:28.000And that was the whole point of the Brandenburg decision.
01:21:59.000You have to figure out what you think, especially if you've just been told a bunch of stuff for your whole life and you've been following these people on Twitter and Instagram who also have not put in the requisite time into studying these things.
01:22:07.000So your opinions are being formed by people who are not informed themselves.
01:22:35.000Civil unrest, pandemic, hurricane, earthquake, whatever it might be.
01:22:39.000Maybe I need to take a little personal responsibility here.
01:22:41.000Yeah, well, that was one of the more fascinating things about the pandemic was watching my more liberal friends start to ask questions about guns.
01:23:04.000But also, a lot of them didn't take that next step to then realize, oh, I voted people into power that put all these restrictions in place that do nothing but make it harder for me to defend myself and my family.
01:23:14.000It doesn't do anything for the person that's not paying attention to these laws.
01:23:46.000And we talk about background checks, they throw that around so easily, which it sounds really good, but then you realize, oh, what is a universal background check?
01:23:53.000We already have background checks in place, okay?
01:23:56.000I go in, I fill out this paperwork, they call the ATF, they get an approval that I'm not a felon and all these things.
01:25:19.000But yet we're willing to discuss putting a fucking thing on your phone that allows you to go somewhere or not go somewhere based on whether or not you've allowed them to vaccinate you.
01:26:10.000When you created this guy and you're putting him in these scenarios, you're creating this ideal version of what a soldier is and should be.
01:26:22.000And there's a lot of horrific aspects to this guy, but you also realize he's a good person, but if you're a piece of shit, that's the wrong guy to be looking at.
01:26:34.000He's the last guy you want to face if you are worthy of his rage.
01:26:39.000Yeah, actually, it goes back to a lot of the stuff we were just talking about, about this due process, about the right to a fair trial.
01:26:46.000Things that he raised his hand to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, just like we all did.
01:26:52.000And in that first book, I needed a free...
01:26:54.000That's what I wanted to explore in that first book.
01:26:56.000It was all about revenge without constraint.
01:26:57.000So somebody that has come up in this way, in that he has stepped up to defend his country.
01:27:05.000He's gone downrange in Iraq and Afghanistan, so he has a real-life experience.
01:27:09.000And then he comes home and his family's killed, his troops killed as part of this government conspiracy.
01:27:13.000And now he has to question all those things that we just talked about, all those things that he swore to uphold and defend.
01:27:18.000Well, now he thinks he's dying, which frees him up to then become that terrorist, become that insurgent that he's been fighting in the book for the first 16 years of war.
01:27:29.000So that's really what I wanted to explore in there, which was fascinating for me to explore because I thought about it for a long time.
01:27:34.000It was very therapeutic to write the novel, by the way.
01:27:37.000And if it's at a deeper level, it's really also about someone who is bringing the wars from Iraq and Afghanistan home to the front doors of people who have been sending young men and women to their death now for what was 20 years.
01:27:49.000So yes, he's an ideal soldier in that he is very good at his job.
01:27:53.000He is a He has a background similar to mine, but he's much better at everything than I am.
01:27:57.000He's a better shot, he's stronger, he's faster, he's better at jiu-jitsu, he's better at boxing.
01:28:01.000All these things he's better at, but he's not perfect.
01:28:03.000He doesn't understand the surveillance side of things.
01:28:09.000Because in the SEAL teams, we didn't do that.
01:28:10.000Now we have guys that do that and are very good at it, but when I came up, we didn't do that.
01:28:14.000So I try to humanize him in that respect, try to humanize him Through his relationships, through the way he likes his coffee, likes his black rifle coffee with some honey and some cream in there, which people made fun of me for in the military.
01:28:25.000So he's a character that people can relate to.
01:28:27.000He's the person you want to have a beer with, want to sit down and have a coffee with.
01:28:30.000He believes in this Second Amendment, this First Amendment.
01:28:54.000But there's also people in your books that are supposedly on the right side, whether they're politicians, whether they're people in the military, that...
01:29:10.000They're corrupt and they're evil and they're doing terrible things.
01:29:15.000When you're writing these things, is it difficult for you to write about those kind of people?
01:29:21.000Are you doing it based on your understanding of The realities of some of these people that are either senators or military people, I mean, is it based on your actual knowledge or are you just using your imagination,
01:29:37.000creativity and creating worst case scenario for a politician?
01:30:09.000And, I mean, he was warning about those generals, those admirals that get up to these senior levels of power that all of a sudden get that contract across their desk and they're going to be out of the military in two years and all of a sudden they have this contract from Boeing or Raytheon or General Dynamics or whatever it is and they see their buddy that got out a couple years ahead of time at the three-star mark or the four-star mark that's now sitting on a board for We're good to
01:30:55.000But for me, when you're making an antagonist, when you're designing a character who's supposed to be a bad guy that you want the reader to cheer for when James Reese takes him out, while some of those senior-level policymakers, both in uniform and out, Are essentially politicians in uniform.
01:31:14.000And I use that to create some of these characters in the novels.
01:31:18.000And when you're a ground level combat guy, tactical level leader, tactical level operator, and you're seeing decisions made at higher levels that aren't necessarily made in the best You start asking questions and you notice it.
01:32:31.000Well, somebody probably read the book and was like, wait, he blows up this admiral in his office with an S-vest?
01:32:37.000Like, no, we're not going to support this.
01:32:38.000You have all these bad guys that are senior-level politicians and senior-level officers that this guy is going around and gutting and making them walk around trees and blowing them up in their offices.
01:32:46.000Yeah, we're not supporting this, which is fine.
01:32:59.000When you're writing a bad guy like that and you're making him like a senior level officer or a politician, do you hesitate?
01:33:08.000When you're constructing your books and you're putting in these things that these guys have done and in every book there's a piece of shit.
01:33:52.000And like I said, very therapeutic because there were some senior level people as I was in the military that you looked up to and said, how did this guy, not looked up to, I mean, like saw them at senior levels and were like, how on earth is this person in this position of power?
01:34:24.000And I think it's in most gigantic bureaucracies, I would guess.
01:34:28.000Probably a little harder to do today, I can only imagine.
01:34:30.000The political games that are going on at senior level is in the military right now and we're talking about all sorts of different social experiments and whatever else going on.
01:34:38.000I'm glad I'm watching that stuff from the outside.
01:34:40.000But then we have just people that get up to these levels and they're just inept.
01:34:44.000And an example of that would be, you know, people all know who I'm talking about, but when we disbanded the Iraqi army.
01:34:53.000When we have this policy of de-Bathification in Iraq.
01:34:57.000It means that we essentially made an insurgency because now everyone in the military is out of a job.
01:35:02.000And we also guaranteed it that people aren't there to pick up the trash to keep the power grid going because everyone was a Ba'athist.
01:35:09.000So these two decisions, like if any of us made that a tactical level decision as horrible as that, we probably would have gotten our platoons and troops killed.
01:35:16.000We would have been court-martialed, sent home, kicked out of the military.
01:35:19.000But yet we have senior level policymakers who don't study the nature of the conflict in which they're engaged.
01:35:25.000That is our only job is to understand the nature of the conflict in which we're engaged and make strategic level decisions.
01:35:33.000And some of these seem like they did not do that, particularly with those two.
01:35:37.000We fueled an insurgency, we created that insurgency, and we made it so we had to start a society from essentially zero and build up everyone in every single job.
01:35:45.000Imagine Austin not having power tomorrow, not having water tomorrow, no garbage coming, no stores open, because everyone was a certain political party.
01:35:53.000And they can't be in a position like that anymore because a force came in and said so.
01:35:59.000So did they just hope that they would figure it out amongst themselves?
01:36:21.000You know, young men and women into the ground that stepped up to serve their country and trusted our senior-level leaders to make those good strategic-level decisions, which did not happen.
01:36:41.000I think it's a combination of all those things.
01:36:43.000I mean, it's kind of a new—not necessarily new.
01:36:45.000I mean, we— We have been involved in different insurgencies for a while, particularly from the end of World War II up to today.
01:36:52.000So there is some history to look back on, but it's also about understanding the society in which you're moving into.
01:36:58.000And if you're going in at one of these senior levels where you are making these decisions, where the politicians are then trusting you, that's the other side of this.
01:37:05.000So in the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln fired a ton of generals until he got to Grant.
01:37:10.000In World War II, George Marshall, he's best known for the Marshall Plan after World War II, but really what he did during World War II and in the lead up was fire people that did not perform.
01:37:20.000And after World War II, we saw a shift in that dynamic.
01:37:23.000We saw it in Korean War a little bit, but by the time we get to Vietnam and through today, we don't punish people.
01:37:28.000We don't fire people for performance at those higher levels.
01:37:30.000People fail up from Vietnam up to today, unless there's some scandal like with...
01:37:35.000You know, McChrystal talking, you know, with his reporter.
01:37:39.000You talked about it the other day with Glenn Greenwald.
01:38:54.000You've been with this guy for a while.
01:38:55.000Totally natural thing to do because you're building up trust with this person and you think he's a buddy, but really he's there getting information.
01:40:47.000And they think, look, the conspiracy theory is that it was a bomb.
01:40:52.000And that, you know, on impact it detonated.
01:40:55.000And that this guy going 100 and whatever miles and hours because they had taken control of his vehicle.
01:41:01.000I mean, if I was to write that in a story, it would sound like it was possible.
01:41:05.000If I wrote that into the story, hey, high-level general in charge of this Jason secretive commands in the military, all of a sudden gets fired because of this guy, whether it's him, supporters, whatever it might be in this shadowy world between intelligence and military special operations where there's a lot of overlap,
01:43:32.000But if you were like a low-key guy, like really boring, and then you came in here and you're talking like the way you talk right now, I'd be like, oh...
01:43:54.000Because sometimes people are wound up when they come here anyway, just because whenever you're doing something that you know millions of people are going to see, you get weird.
01:44:20.000I'm part of this group called Gen Next, which is really about figuring out how to make decisions and put people in positions of authority that are making decisions based on the best interests of the country and for future generations.
01:44:36.000In academics, in border security, national security, that sort of thing.
01:44:40.000But I met Michael Hastings through them right before he died.
01:44:55.000And I asked him, I said, hey, is there anything as a journalist that if you ever, if you found out and you It was not just a Snowden type thing, you know, not just something like that, which actually informs the public.
01:45:06.000But if you found out something that would be beneficial for you to publish, but would have drastic consequences for the United States, for the citizenry, for the military, would you ever not publish something?
01:46:49.000It was so great hearing you, because Glenn Greenwald is one of my favorite people to hear speak, whether he has three minutes on the news or three hours with you.
01:47:45.000She has a book called Fast and Furious when we're talking about gun control type thing.
01:47:49.000So Fast and Furious was the nickname of a program where the government let weapons go into Mexico just to prove- Wound up killing officers.
01:48:37.000She was getting these guys who were trafficking these guns down into Mexico, explaining how they get them.
01:48:45.000And they got them from the LAPD. She was like, we're buying them from the LAPD. They put them in their trunk and they drive them to Mexico because there's no border patrol that lets you into Mexico.
01:48:57.000If you're in the United States, driving into Mexico is a breeze.
01:49:00.000So this guy would fill his trunk up on a regular basis with guns that he got from the LAPD. Some bad person in the LAPD is getting him these guns and he's selling them to Mexico to the cartels.
01:49:28.000And then Obama administration opens it back up.
01:49:30.000And they put tracking devices on like two of thousands of firearms.
01:49:36.000So they tracked two, and they're trying to prove a narrative that, hey, all these gun sales in the United States are ending up in Mexico.
01:49:42.000Well, yeah, because you're talking to these gun store owners, you're putting pressure on them, making them do things they would not ordinarily do otherwise, and letting 50 AK-47s go out the door and then sift their way into Mexico so you can track them to get into these cartels and take down those cartels.
01:49:56.000And prove this narrative that the violence in Mexico is our fault, so now we need to over-regulate these firearms.
01:50:03.000And what ends up happening, they lose control of everything because they only put two tracking devices, I think, on all of those thousands of firearms, and one ends up killing a Border Patrol agent.
01:50:12.000One of the ones they put a tracking device on.
01:50:23.000That would have been a total conspiracy.
01:50:24.000And people would think it was fiction unless the story was broken and unless Katie wrote this book and unless people talked about it.
01:50:30.000But people hardly talk about it at all anymore.
01:50:32.000It's just like, oh, it's the federal government going in and creating some crazy scheme to prove a narrative that's not even real so that they can infringe on our rights as Americans in this country.
01:52:11.000So going back to your book, this guy, James Reese, is essentially a vehicle for you to...
01:52:21.000In some ways tell your version like what you understand to be possible in terms of incompetence and corruption and just straight-up evil people that really do exist.
01:52:35.000So you've made these kind of fictional narratives that sort of highlight All the things you highlight, they're not impossible.
01:52:44.000They could happen that way, even though it is fiction and you have created these characters and created these corrupt senators and all these evil folks behind the scenes.
01:52:54.000This is all inside the realm of possibility.
01:53:25.000A lot of it, especially in this one, a ton of research into this book right here in the devil's hand.
01:53:30.000Usually, well, for the other ones, I'd been to Iraq and Afghanistan for the first book.
01:53:33.000For the second, I went to Mozambique, put boots on the ground.
01:53:36.000For that third one, I went to South Africa, helped train up an anti-poaching unit out there, protecting some of the last rhino on Earth so I could talk to these guys in those units and talk to them about man tracking and that sort of thing, getting their heads about that tactic and the tactics they used in the bush wars and in urban centers, and now out there protecting some of these rhino.
01:53:52.000And then I went to To Siberia, just south of Siberia, to Kamchatka Peninsula.
01:54:30.000That was my investigation, talking to one person.
01:54:33.000No, I talked to multiple people that have been involved in all sorts of different aspects of bioweapons, bioweapon containment, bioweapon research, that sort of thing.
01:54:42.000I mean, I don't want to give away too much of the book, but there's moments where things are being contemplated that would have horrific consequences if they're incorrect.
01:54:51.000I would be shocked if that is not true.
01:54:53.000Out of all my research that I did, whether it was reading articles, whether it was reading books, whether it was talking to people involved, connecting certain dots, overlapping some of these conversations with the research that I've done.
01:55:03.000Because when you talk to people that have backgrounds in bioweapons research...
01:55:07.000They're not really that open to talking all about it.
01:55:12.000When you talk to five, six, seven, eight different people that are involved in it, every one of them leaves something out, but you can start weaving it together.
01:55:17.000And then when you do your research, that baseline foundation, then you can start connecting the dots.
01:55:22.000So I would be shocked if there is not something in place similar to what I describe in the novel.
01:55:27.000Well, during horrific moments where terrible decisions have to be made for the greater good, those are decisions like when people hear about like when Flight 93 is a good example.
01:55:43.000The conspiracy theory about Flight 93 that was shot out of the sky, right?
01:55:57.000Well, the wreckage was spread over miles.
01:56:04.000I would imagine that if they really did know that a jet was coming into the Pentagon, and they had to stop that jet, those people are dead already.
01:56:12.000And if they scrambled a jet, a fighter jet, to meet that plane, that hijacked plane in the air, there was no other way.
01:56:19.000Well, I talk about that as a contingency in the novel here.
01:56:23.000And the only thing that keeps me from believing a lot of these conspiracies is that, or just ideas, not even conspiracies necessarily, is that I've worked just 20 years in the government, and I know how hard it is to keep a secret, especially today.
01:56:39.000So Ben Franklin had that thing where he said, hey, three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead.
01:56:43.000That was what he would say about that.
01:56:45.000And so just knowing how incompetent the federal government is anyway, just keeping a lid on some of these things and actually swearing everyone to secrecy and so many people would know about something like that.
01:56:56.000So that makes me in my head think, just knowing these people, you know, that makes me skeptical.
01:57:01.000If I was on the outside and didn't have that experience, I'd probably be like, oh, this could be.
01:57:05.000Yeah, but I think people keep secrets.
01:57:47.000Yeah, there's a lot of crazy ideas like that.
01:57:48.000The Castro Beard thing that people know about.
01:57:50.000There's all sorts of things, especially back during that time frame.
01:57:53.000Before you get to the church hearings in the 70s when Frank Church of Idaho holds this, and that's where I got inspiration for the terminal list for this testing of drugs on our nation's most elite soldiers who end up with these tumors.
01:58:03.000That's where I got the inspiration is from Frank Church holding these hearings and really bringing to light some abuses by certain elements of the federal government.
01:58:12.000Well, in the case that I was looking in, they're testing drugs on people in mental institutions, on people in the military, people in prisons, universities, without really the knowledge of what's going to – particularly people in mental institutions because they couldn't make those decisions for themselves if they're going to actually allow themselves to be tested with certain things.
01:58:39.000When you hear those kind of evil tests on people, you just go, what the fuck, man?
01:58:46.000Yes, there's another one that just got reported recently, and this one was about mosquitoes, that they had released an enormous amount of mosquitoes in a predominantly black community in the 1950s,
02:01:24.000I have a preface that kind of sets the tone for the books in all of them, but there was so much research involved in this novel that I put an author's note in the back so people wouldn't be wondering, hey, what's real, what's not?
02:01:35.000And just to make it kind of easier for them, be like, oh, no way, that's real, or okay, this is not real, or this is an assumption.
02:01:42.000So I spell all that out in the author's note.
02:01:45.000Dr. Ustinov, and I'm probably messing up, butchering his name because I've only read it, haven't said it out loud, but he injected himself with Marburg, which was a...
02:03:29.000Okay, they have this Marburg variant U. Okay, well, either we have to develop this on our own, or we have to get a sample here, and that's the intelligence side of the house, trying to figure out how to turn people and get this thing out so we can then study it and then develop a weapon so that we can then...
02:03:47.000Yeah, it's a crazy world to work in for these people that get into it.
02:03:51.000But it was fascinating to me because I didn't know anything in the military other than putting on my little biohazard suit thing we had to put on and take off if we ever went into an environment like that.
02:04:27.000I'm kind of like, you know, I've heard a bunch of things coming out of, you know, swine flu and avian flu and kind of I've heard of these things, you know, over the years.
02:04:34.000Then we get into late December or January.
02:04:36.000I hear a little more still hypersensitive to it because I'm in the midst of this study.
02:04:50.000I mean, when I came out here to see you last time, you know, at the gas station, I'm getting out putting on the rubber gloves and putting my mask on outside because we didn't know, you know.
02:04:56.000We still don't know who to trust at that point in early May of 2020 when I drove out.
02:05:41.000And that's what scares me about some unscrupulous members of our society, that the people that do wish that this country was a dictatorship, because there are some politicians that would be very happy if they could run this country the same way other countries are run,
02:06:00.000with an iron fist, and punish people for any deviation outside of the right way of thinking.
02:08:22.000Who knows what protocols and processes are in place?
02:08:24.000And obviously, there's a control missing.
02:08:27.000There's a control level missing right there.
02:08:29.000My fear is the same protocols are in place that hired that lady who shot that kid who doesn't know the difference between a fucking taser and a pistol.
02:10:10.000He just lied about what—he was bragging about what this amazing student he was, and then he had to say, oh, well, I was misinformed about my own record.
02:11:17.000But he has a podcast on that where he talks about memory.
02:11:21.000And he uses the Brian Williams example, saying that he was in a helicopter in Iraq and it was shot down and all these things and it didn't really happen.
02:11:29.000And he talks about the psychology behind that.
02:11:47.000Fascinating guy who actually loves reading thrillers and such a smart guy.
02:11:51.000And someone who I think is on the opposite side of like, you know, political spectrum, but one of those guys that I can sit down and have a drink with.
02:11:58.000I want to sit down and have a beer with, have a coffee with and talk because he's so smart and so thoughtful.
02:12:02.000Most importantly, more thoughtful about his positions.
02:12:19.000Well, eventually you get to this point, hey, tipping point, where there's so many lies that it's like, ah, is this person...
02:12:25.000Is there something wrong with this person?
02:12:26.000Should we be electing them to anything?
02:12:29.000Well, there's a difference between making mistakes and not remembering things correctly and clearly exaggerating your own accomplishments to make yourself look more competent or qualified or more...
02:12:42.000Just make it look like you're a better person than you are.
02:12:46.000But how do you not think you're going to get caught on that one?
02:13:18.000But now if you say the truth, here's the difference now.
02:13:20.000Well, now you can say the truth and try to get canceled because it doesn't align with the powers that be.
02:13:25.000Yeah, well, that's a different kind of canceling.
02:13:26.000But I ran into a guy when I was in Park City that had this guy working for him that was telling these stories about being a SEAL. And there were these heavy-duty, detailed stories about operations and Courageous moments and gunfights and all this crazy detailed shit.
02:13:54.000And somehow or another, he got wind that this guy might be full of shit.
02:14:00.000And Goggins somehow became a part of it as well.
02:14:03.000And Goggins found out that this guy was full of shit and informed him that he was not a SEAL. The guy was never a SEAL. And apparently he was a nurse.
02:14:14.000The story was just total concocted heroics.
02:14:20.000You hear about a lot of guys saying they came back from Vietnam being special forces guys or SEALs or whatever, when they didn't think you could really check on these things.
02:14:35.000And yeah, sure enough, eventually busted.
02:14:37.000But after years, and everybody believed it, because when you're talking about a top-secret operation from You know, Vietnam or something, how are you going to check that in 1978, 1985, 86, 92, whatever?
02:14:47.000But today, you can check on that sort of thing.
02:14:49.000Have you ever met a guy that's like a full-on liar?
02:14:51.000No, but there's some guys that were out at a bar in Tennessee, and somebody walked in with a, in their blues, with like a wife-girlfriend type person, with a trident, with this stack of medals, and he walks into this bar.
02:16:49.000Yeah, I told this story before, but there was a guy that we knew that was a fake Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, and he tricked a bunch of people and was actually writing for Abu Dhabi Combat News.
02:17:01.000That is crazy, because they just think that you're not going to...
02:17:04.000He killed this woman's husband, and he was fucking her, and he was banging this guy's wife, and he wound up killing him and driving his car around, and he's in jail right now.
02:17:18.000You're saying you're a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt.
02:17:21.000You could check that, especially back when there was a couple.
02:17:25.000You'd count them on one hand, say 92 or something.
02:17:27.000Yeah, this was in the 2000s, like early, early 2000s.
02:17:32.000I want to say like 2001-ish, something like that.
02:17:35.000Well, I was on Fear Factor at the time, and I know this because my friend who knew the guy was talking to me about it, and his phone was tapped, and then the cops wound up calling me while I'm in my trailer.
02:18:28.000Yeah, but the cops luckily believe me.
02:18:31.000Luckily, I was telling the truth, because I wasn't close with the guy, but one of my best friends, Eddie Bravo, knew him because Eddie had done some stuff for Abu Dhabi as well, and he was telling Eddie that he was a black belt, and Eddie rolled with him.
02:18:47.000They sparred, and Eddie was like, man, something's wrong.
02:19:10.000There was a lot of fake martial artists, because I could show you how to throw a kick or two, and if you're reasonably athletic, you could throw some kicks, and I could show you how to throw a punch or two, and then you could go and tell people you're a black belt.
02:19:27.000Kicking, in particular, and punching, you could pretend you're doing some karate.
02:19:34.000If I teach you how to do this, you could do that in a few seconds.
02:19:37.000If I could teach a little kid, like when I used to teach Taekwondo, I would get someone doing this in just a few seconds.
02:19:44.000So all you would have to do is get some reasonably athletic person, you teach them how to throw a couple of kicks, and they could say they're a grand champion.
02:19:51.000Well, this guy was so crazy, he had his friends drop him off in the woods.
02:21:00.000It's hard to set up because it's very specific.
02:21:02.000You have to be inside control or have someone's back.
02:21:06.000And if you're inside control, this is like, say if a guy's laid out like this and his head is here, his feet are here.
02:21:12.000If I'm inside control, I have to grab his left leg, I have to pull it, I have to hook it with my left leg, and then I have to triangle it with my right, so I have his leg isolated.
02:21:23.000Then I have to dive forward on my left shoulder and roll so I'm behind him.
02:21:28.000So I turn his whole body and flip him over.
02:21:31.000Then I have to take his arm and I have to pull it behind my neck.
02:21:35.000This is a series of complicated control moves.
02:23:06.000Yeah, he had a guy that he knew that was his friend, and he paid the guy to take a dive so he could have a real, legit mixed martial arts fight.
02:23:39.000Yeah, but I mean before, to roll, you know, to get in and say that you're this black belt and then actually get on the mat with someone who is?
02:23:46.000There's been a few guys that have been called out.
02:23:48.000Like, there's another video, I don't know who the black belt is, the actual black belt is a black belt screaming at a guy, take that fucking belt off, you know you're not a...
02:25:02.000So a lot of these guys, they're just tough, tough people that have an opportunity in front of them, whatever, a karate tournament, a fucking tough man contest, bare-knuckle fight in the woods.
02:26:11.000So Eddie and I, Eddie was one of the commentators of King of the Cage back then.
02:26:14.000And we would go to these Indian reservations to watch these fights.
02:26:18.000This is like the early days of the Tap Out crew and all these martial artists, whether they're jiu-jitsu people or a lot of like...
02:26:26.000A lot of these top shelf guys started off in King of the Cage fighting in these Indian reservations.
02:26:32.000And so we would go travel out to the middle of nowhere to these places to watch these events because that was the only way you could see live events in California.
02:26:40.000And so this dude talked one of his students into taking a dive.
02:27:21.000I don't want to throw anybody under the bus, but there was one where there was a prominent mixed martial artist from the United States who got tapped by a heel hook.
02:31:16.000In San Diego, I don't think they realized what they had in San Diego when we were there because they're learning to shoot from Navy SEAL snipers.
02:31:22.000They're doing jujitsu with Navy SEAL black belt jujitsu people.
02:31:25.000Like, they're learning all this stuff.
02:32:25.000And then I also, at the same time, I'd take that next leap and be like, you know what?
02:32:28.000I am not storming the beaches at Normandy.
02:32:31.000I am not going across this beach with no cover, no concealment, running into enemy machine gun fire who are in an elevated position, or Iwo Jima.
02:32:52.000I'm like, hey, these guys died so that I could be here and I could take my turn, get standing in the breach and just stepping up to put on the uniform of this country.
02:32:59.000So I thought about jujitsu, I thought about boxing, and I thought about those guys that sacrificed everything so I could be there doing that job.
02:33:05.000Yeah, Andy told me that the thing is to keep your world small and to think in terms of if I could just get to the next meal and just keep doing that.
02:33:13.000Don't think in terms of like, oh my god, I have all these days left.
02:33:59.000Yeah, you have people that roll back, like did a couple days of Hell Week, and then they got hurt, and they're back in your class now going through it again.
02:34:05.000So you have all these people with all sorts of advice for you as you start.
02:34:09.000And usually those are the people that quit right away again.
02:34:12.000Yeah, it's typical that, like, the fastest person, the strongest person, the most outgoing person that's trying to motivate the class, they quit, like, that first couple hours.
02:34:31.000It's those silent motherfuckers that just keep going.
02:34:35.000And remember, the class, we're in the, you know, Andy and I are in the surf zone, and we're watching these people get up to quit, and some people would be like, Come back.
02:35:36.000Like, you're taught to do these things.
02:35:38.000So as a combat leader, and this is, you know, this is just how I am.
02:35:42.000So going into battle, I am 100% going to be more concerned about her than I am the other guys, just because that's how we're taught growing up.
02:35:48.000You're taught to, you know, stand up, to be the protector, to stand up, to open that door.
02:35:54.000Maybe now we're not doing that anymore.
02:35:55.000So maybe going forward, it's just fine.
02:35:58.000But for me, I would definitely care about the female more than the male, just because that's How I am.
02:36:04.000But when there's all guys in there and you're going forward and you're doing the job, that variable isn't there.
02:36:09.000And maybe that's on me, but going forward, maybe they're not going to teach kids growing up that you respect females and you open the door for them and you pull up the chair for them and when they sit down and do all these things, maybe they're not going to teach that anymore and everybody's going to be the same and you won't care more about a female than you would a male and vice versa.
02:36:29.000I don't know how it works, vice versa.
02:36:30.000I've never really put much thought into that, but I'm glad I'm looking at it from the outside.
02:36:35.000I'm glad that I was there in 9-11 and could do those combat deployments.
02:36:39.000And then now I'm glad to be out taking care of my family and writing these novels.
02:36:43.000And so you don't have to think about how it would impact your life.
02:36:46.000That's why you're saying you're glad that you're out.
02:36:48.000Because it's a tough thing to grapple with.
02:36:49.000Because all of a sudden you have someone there and now I'm going down range and we're going to take down this target and I just can't not...
02:36:55.000Care more about this one person that's in my platoon.
02:36:58.000The concept that men and women are the same thing is just so stupid.
02:37:05.000And it doesn't mean that a woman can't do what a man can do, because there are outliers.
02:37:10.000But when we're looking at the average woman versus the average man, if you're selecting for the elite of the elite, if there is a woman that can appeal to those standards, how many women have gone through SEAL training?
02:37:25.000I don't think anybody yet, but I'm dated now.
02:37:27.000I think someone tried to do the pre-Buds and didn't make it, but I don't think anybody yet, but I might be.
02:37:34.000I think if you get one of those crazy CrossFit ladies, it's all juice to the tits.
02:37:39.000Physically, you can make it through this program, and any average high school athlete can make it through this program.
02:37:44.000You're going to get in shape while you're there, and it's all mental.
02:37:47.000It's that team ability we're looking for.
02:37:50.000It's that moral courage, that physical courage.
02:37:52.000You're looking for these certain things.
02:39:33.000They were comfortable enough in the water to do this swim in whatever time that was.
02:39:37.000They were a good enough runner to make it around the track, however many times that was, a mile, two miles, I forget what it was, and to do some pull-ups and sit-ups and that sort of thing.
02:39:45.000But it's timed, and it's regulated, and there's only a certain amount of time between those different events.
02:39:48.000So, you know, you have a base, and then you go to the next stage where you go to BUDS, and then you have another test when you get there.
02:39:57.000So maybe you got out of shape between these two or maybe you made this one just barely and now you didn't make it here.
02:40:03.000So then there's another gate and then you start your training and then you have tests every single week.
02:40:09.000So there's different gates that you have to get through.
02:40:12.000So I'm not sure how many have started here.
02:40:14.000Gotten to here and then gone forward, but the last time that I checked was probably a few months ago where somebody told me it was one person that had gotten to this last stage as an officer, I think she was, and didn't make it through this pre-BUDS training they do for officers just to make sure, like, hey,
02:40:31.000Some more options as far as preparing for SEAL training.
02:40:35.000So one of them is called MiniBuds, and you show up in this MiniBuds thing.
02:40:38.000You go through a week just to make sure that you've made the right choice and you didn't really want to be an aviator or somebody on a ship or in Intel or whatever else.
02:40:46.000And so she was in that, from what I understand, and then didn't make it through.
02:40:50.000Now, when you're writing about someone like James Reese and you're writing this story, do you feel like you have an obligation to represent the SEALs through this character?
02:41:01.000Are there things that you would never have this guy do?
02:41:06.000When you think about it, do you think of it as not just a fictional character, but he's also a representative of something that you hold sacred?
02:42:05.000Vigilante Justice is a very popular thing.
02:42:09.000So for him, and when you write a character that is going to have more than one novel, or even if it is just one, people are trusting you with their time for that.
02:42:17.000So whether it's three days they're reading this, one week, two weeks, or they're listening to 13 hours of Ray Porter do that narration.
02:42:23.000They've trusted you with the time, and no one wants to spend time with someone they don't like.
02:42:27.000You get to choose all these books out there, all these movies out there, all these audiobooks out there, and you get to choose who you're going to spend 12 hours that you're not getting back with.
02:42:36.000So I take that very seriously, and I want to provide something of value.
02:42:40.000So whether I'm writing that book and James Reese, The protagonist, former Navy SEAL sniper, is the catalyst, is the protagonist, is the guy that moves the story forward.
02:42:50.000And we see the world through his eyes for the most part.
02:42:55.000And I put a lot of thought into everything that he does.
02:42:58.000into how I personally interact with people online and things that I post every day because once again people have trusted me whether they're gonna read that post for 10 seconds or they're gonna look at that picture for two seconds or whatever it is I don't want to waste their time because you are not getting that time back you only have a certain amount of time on this planet And,
02:43:14.000you know, you might not make it through tomorrow.
02:43:20.000That's why it's so important who you follow, why you follow them.
02:43:24.000And so I take my posts on social media just as seriously as I do writing a paragraph in the novel.
02:43:29.000I like to put that thought into there, add value to people's lives because they're trusting me.
02:43:33.000And as a way to thank them for trusting me, that's what I owe them in return, is putting that requisite time, energy, effort, and thought Into how I explain something in a post or how I read a paragraph in the novel.
02:43:45.000Is this surreal for you to be this successful with these books?
02:43:50.000I mean, it's not that quickly in that it's five years, but right away, you know?
02:43:57.000I mean, you knocked it out of the park with the first book, man.
02:44:09.000I guess it sounds strange to say, but I thought about this for so long growing up, knowing that I wanted to be a SEAL since I was seven years old.
02:44:16.000Everything that I did was focused on that goal, whether I was playing soccer or lacrosse or running cross-country or whatever it was, I was thinking about it in terms of how does this prepare me to be a SEAL later in life at an early age.
02:44:33.000Yeah, so my grandfather was killed in World War II. He was a Corsair pilot, which was the planes that had the gull wings that folded up like this.
02:44:39.000There was a show on at the time called Black Chief Squadron with Robert Conrad, and he played Pappy Boynton, who was the commanding officer of this squadron in the Pacific.
02:44:48.000Which was also the same plane that my grandfather flew.
02:45:17.000I didn't watch the whole thing because in our house, there was four channels back then, ABC, CBS, NBC, and this outlier that always had some war movie playing on Sunday, opposite Sunday football.
02:45:26.000And I didn't really care about the football, but I cared about that war movie that was on.
02:45:31.000And when we hit a commercial break, my dad would look at his watch and say, two minutes, and I'd run up because I was in remote control back then.
02:45:36.000And I'd turn it to that Outlier channel and I'd get to watch for a few minutes.
02:45:57.000Because she was a librarian at the time.
02:45:59.000And we went down to the local library, looked into frogmen, found out about underwater demolition teams, found out about SEALs.
02:46:04.000And my takeaway from that research was that, hey, these are some of the toughest, the training's some of the toughest ever devised by a modern military, and these are some of the most elite fighting forces on the planet.
02:46:14.000And so I was like, age seven, okay, this is what I'm doing.
02:46:17.000And then when I got to about age 10, I started to read the things my parents were reading.
02:46:21.000So Hunt for Red October came out when I was in fifth grade, started reading that.
02:46:24.000Then I found David Murrell, who created Rambo.
02:46:27.000I found A.J. Quinnell, J.C. Pollock, Mark Olden, all these guys in the 80s who had protagonists with Vietnam experience, typically in special operations.
02:46:35.000So I find this world of reading in thrillers, and I just love it.
02:47:34.000I just thought that's how it worked because that's how when you have this dream when you're seven years old and then 10 years old, that's what you think happens.
02:47:44.000Of course, you have some other people tell you how hard it is along the way and you have to discount that and stay focused because you only have so much bandwidth.
02:47:50.000You can't be worried about not making it.
02:48:11.000So I just never thought that that wasn't how it went.
02:48:14.000And so I just focused on making the best book I possibly could, getting it to the exact publisher, the exact editor that I wanted to read it, Emily Bessler at Emily Bessler Books.
02:48:21.000Because I looked in the acknowledgements of other people's books, and I kept seeing this name, Emily Bessler.
02:48:25.000And I'm like, ah, Vince Flynn, Kyle Mills, Brad Thor, this is who I want.
02:48:52.000No, I read those things at a very pivotal time, very impactful time in my life.
02:48:57.000And it would be different reading them today.
02:48:59.000And some of them I'm hesitant to reread because they were just so magical to me back then.
02:49:04.000But I did all that work reading those books and then doing all that academic study of warfare, then getting the SEAL teams, then that experience downrange in Iraq and Afghanistan, so that when that door got cracked for me by Brad Thor, who said, when I talked to him, he's like, hey, I'll let my publisher know it's coming because a friend of mine told me some things you did in the SEAL teams.
02:51:43.000I'm not getting eaten by a shark if I don't go in the water.
02:51:45.000But same thing, if you don't put in that work or if you get discouraged along the way or you're worried too much about everybody that says that you can't do it or how hard it is, guess what?
02:52:30.000So I always thought, okay, if the first one doesn't hit, I'm definitely writing a second.
02:52:34.000Maybe the second one doesn't hit, I'll do that reevaluation of life choices and take a breath here.
02:52:38.000But I thought about that John Grisham story.
02:52:40.000So I started writing and I went to Mozambique to do the research for the second novel before I had even submitted the first one to Simon& Schuster.
02:53:25.000And so I get to do both of those on this path.
02:53:28.000And I feel so fortunate that the book's resonating with people and that people took a risk on me as a new author, told a friend, and that's what allowed all this to happen.
02:53:56.000So I feel extremely fortunate to everybody, especially in the beginning, before you've been vetted by multiple people, and they take a risk on you with their time more important than how much the book costs.
02:54:05.000But that time, that's really what they took a risk on me with.
02:54:08.000And so I just want to do the best job I can for them, always.
02:54:11.000Well, I feel very fortunate that you're out there, and I feel very fortunate that you've been on the show and get to talk to people, and I'm very fortunate that you mentioned the podcast in your book, too.