The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 44 ｜ Brad Thor ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

00:00:00.000 I have to convince Brad Thor to come with me on our cruise through history.

00:00:04.160 When they asked me to do it, I got really excited because I wanted to build an amazing experience for my family and you.

00:00:10.020 I mean, this is something that I really wanted to do with my kids.

00:00:14.120 All my kids are coming with me.

00:00:16.120 I hope your kids could come with you as well.

00:00:18.380 I wanted to really show them the places and then show them why this place, why this time period mattered.

00:00:27.220 Seeing the birthplace of the republic, seeing the birthplace of commerce, seeing the birthplace of our faith.

00:00:33.260 Those things are so important because those inspired our founders to come up with the idea that man could rule himself and that all men are created equal and create this incredible experiment called America.

00:00:45.100 I want you to come with us.

00:00:46.520 Walk where Jesus and the prophets walked in the Holy Land, Italy, Greece, Croatia.

00:00:51.200 Bill O'Reilly is going to be there.

00:00:52.540 David Barton is going to be there.

00:00:53.580 Rabbi Lappin, Stu, myself.

00:00:55.140 All paired with the amazing amenities of this cruise.

00:00:58.300 A fantastic way to make it a lifetime adventure and a memory that will last the rest of your family's life.

00:01:04.940 It's all inclusive, which means all airfare, all gratuities, everything.

00:01:09.540 That comes out to about $360 a day.

00:01:12.760 That is a really good deal for what you're going to see.

00:01:16.860 You just need to put down the deposit and you can pay over time.

00:01:20.200 And they're still offering the early bird discount of $400.

00:01:23.200 So, cabins are going fast.

00:01:25.640 Check it out now.

00:01:26.660 Visit Cruise Through History.

00:01:28.460 Come with us.

00:01:29.240 3,000 people just like you.

00:01:31.860 Come sail away and learn.

00:01:33.680 ComeSailAway.com

00:01:35.640 My guest today has been called the master of thrillers.

00:02:00.260 His very first book was dubbed by Barnes & Noble as one of the best political thrillers ever.

00:02:05.880 That was back in 2002.

00:02:07.520 For 17 straight years, he's released a book every single year.

00:02:12.300 And to read one of his books, it's really like looking into a time machine.

00:02:15.620 It's giving you a sneak peek of what is coming.

00:02:18.160 If you read his books, it's as if you're getting copies of every major world newspaper a full year before it was published.

00:02:25.400 He's a fascinating guy.

00:02:26.960 The question on my mind right now is, with his new book out, how does an author who has never attempted writing before succeed in writing one of the best political thrillers of our generation on his first try?

00:02:39.140 And then follow that up every single year for 17 straight years with another bestseller.

00:02:44.960 If you've read his latest book, it might provide some answers.

00:02:48.660 It might not.

00:02:49.540 Brad and I are friends.

00:02:50.480 I've never had this conversation before, but reading Backlash, it follows his main character as he's forced to use all of his past experiences and training and sheer determination to survive.

00:03:02.220 It's part spy novel, part survival manual.

00:03:05.080 And like this character, he had to draw on everything he knew for the ultimate test.

00:03:10.920 I'm wondering if that isn't exactly what Brad Thor does.

00:03:15.200 Did he endure a crucible of his own to create the author that we know today?

00:03:19.840 On today's episode, this author like you've never heard him before, the master of thrillers.

00:03:39.300 This is a different book than what you've written before.

00:03:44.320 What's changed?

00:03:45.420 What's happened?

00:03:46.300 It's hard to put my finger on it.

00:03:50.380 I turned in last summer's book, Spymaster, with an ending that my editor didn't like.

00:03:56.240 And she said, you need something bigger for the end.

00:03:59.720 So I went back to my office and I said, okay, give the reader something bigger.

00:04:05.660 And I put in a big cliffhanger.

00:04:07.320 I had a character yell to Scott Harvath, my protagonist, run.

00:04:12.660 He had just stepped outside and this woman yells, run. 1.00

00:04:15.040 And that's where we ended it.

00:04:16.120 Now, wait.

00:04:16.700 When you did that, were you just like, I'll come up with something?

00:04:20.880 We'll fix it in post.

00:04:22.680 I'll do something next year.

00:04:23.920 Yeah, right.

00:04:24.220 And there were a million possibilities.

00:04:25.840 It could have been a team was coming in to kill him.

00:04:28.760 And then the cavalry got that team.

00:04:30.380 I didn't know what it was going to be until this year.

00:04:32.200 And I started talking with my editor.

00:04:33.460 And I said, you know, she asked me a lot of really good questions about what do I like in my reading and also my television viewing?

00:04:39.800 What is good storytelling, period, to me?

00:04:42.540 And I talked about some of the shows that I enjoy, Ray Donovan being one of them on Showtime.

00:04:48.140 And she said, well, what do you like about that?

00:04:50.220 And I said, well, the protagonist never catches an easy break and nobody is safe.

00:04:54.680 You don't know that this character is going to be there the next show.

00:04:58.440 And she said, okay, we'll play with that and see what you come up with.

00:05:00.900 And that started leading me down the road to Backlash, the current thriller.

00:05:05.500 This is getting rave reviews.

00:05:07.840 You always do.

00:05:09.140 Rave reviews.

00:05:09.660 This has been exceptional.

00:05:11.440 Yeah.

00:05:11.660 This has been, I have heard from people.

00:05:14.480 The book's been out not very long, but within 24 hours of the book coming out, people were hitting me up on Facebook and on Twitter saying,

00:05:22.740 I picked it up just to read a couple chapters and I stayed up all night.

00:05:27.180 And that sounds like a hooky author thing to say, right?

00:05:30.120 Oh, you can't put it down.

00:05:31.380 It's a page turner.

00:05:32.420 But I've had more people come out.

00:05:34.120 I've always had people say, oh, I read it in one sitting, my other books.

00:05:36.940 So many people have come out.

00:05:38.820 I mean, even somebody from your own team said to me, best book.

00:05:42.940 Yeah.

00:05:43.160 Couldn't put it down.

00:05:44.400 He told me.

00:05:45.160 I retweeted him.

00:05:46.360 It was one of the most wonderful tweets I've gotten.

00:05:49.780 So, yeah, there's something about this.

00:05:54.000 It's funny because I had a couple of influences that I wanted to weave in there.

00:05:58.040 I've always been a big fan of the Western.

00:06:01.680 And I like the idea of a man with a code and he is going to abide by that code, even if it's difficult for him personally.

00:06:08.140 And I also read a translation in English of the Odyssey, a more recent translation where the person got rid of all the repeats and stuff.

00:06:17.660 And what hooked me on that was a review of that book in the New York Times that said men and women leaving for war should read the Iliad because that will tell them what from their civilized lives need to stay needs to stay behind in civilization.

00:06:31.320 But when you return from war, they need to first read the Odyssey because that will tell them what needs to be left on the battlefield for them to successfully reintegrate into civilization.

00:06:41.400 So this is a little bit Clint Eastwood, Magnificent Seven with Scott Harvath and also Odysseus in the Odyssey.

00:06:48.440 This book, he's he's taken by the Russians.

00:07:04.660 So let me start with a couple of obvious questions that.

00:07:09.980 Leave your audience with something bigger that would have been unbelievable just a few years ago that the Russians would come in here. 0.93

00:07:18.440 And risk an act.

00:07:20.320 Yeah.

00:07:20.660 Act of war.

00:07:21.640 Grab an American operative on U.S. 0.77

00:07:23.440 Right.

00:07:24.300 Did the did what happened with the GRU in England play a role in your thinking?

00:07:29.560 Absolutely.

00:07:30.180 So there are a couple of things the Russians have done that played a played a role.

00:07:33.360 One of it.

00:07:34.140 One of them is what the GRU did with the poisoning, but also the other poisoning with the polonium with the journalist that they were willing to go into.

00:07:41.000 The fact that they would go back into the UK and commit another assassination told me they don't care. 0.90

00:07:48.020 They'll do whatever they feel like doing.

00:07:49.640 So that that spooked me.

00:07:51.820 There was also a story that my guys, some of my guys who have been in Iraq told me about a Russian diplomat who was kidnapped by a faction in Iraq.

00:08:01.060 And the Russians sent over a special team of intelligence operatives.

00:08:05.140 They found a relative of the kidnappers, took that person and started like it was in a deli, slicing parts of his body off and mailing it, dropping it off for the kidnappers and saying, OK, it's near today.

00:08:18.000 It's a nose tomorrow.

00:08:18.960 If he's not back by midnight of tomorrow, you're going to get a leg.

00:08:22.040 And they wrap this diplomat in a baby blanket and put him right back on the steps of the of a Russian facility.

00:08:28.120 So they're they have been emboldened.

00:08:30.800 They are fearless.

00:08:31.680 The fact that under George W. Bush, they went into Georgia under Barack Obama.

00:08:36.740 They took Crimea. 0.81

00:08:38.480 And I have a lot of concerns that Putin's territorial ambitions are not going to stop.

00:08:43.380 And that's why I did Spymaster, because I was concerned what happens when you have an American population that's tired of going to war would be in it.

00:08:54.180 And rightly so.

00:08:54.880 I get it.

00:08:55.400 I don't like war.

00:08:56.240 I don't want to go back to war.

00:08:57.260 But with Afghanistan under our belts and still going on with Iraq, if the Russians came in and tried to take back Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, three three NATO member countries, most Americans can't find on the map.

00:09:11.280 They're not going to.

00:09:11.980 We're not going to have the stomach to put our people in.

00:09:14.180 But it's our it's our it's our duty.

00:09:16.620 Article five in the NATO treaty is an attack on one is an attack on all.

00:09:20.180 And so I had this idea.

00:09:21.480 What would a president be willing to do to prevent that?

00:09:23.700 Would he be willing to send somebody like my guy, Scott Harvath, over to prevent it from happening?

00:09:28.860 So that was last summer's book.

00:09:30.860 And in this summer's book, as you said, the Russians, they've had enough of Scott Harvath.

00:09:34.860 He has ruined so many of their operations that they said, you know what?

00:09:38.280 We're going to get them.

00:09:39.340 We're going to put them in our own version of a black site, ring them out. 0.86

00:09:42.220 And then we are going to reserve the honor of putting a bullet between his eyes for the Russian president.

00:09:48.300 So at the end of the book, the Russian president could come in and put a bullet in him.

00:09:52.800 But Harvath thinks otherwise.

00:09:54.100 So you this is like a survival guide.

00:09:58.020 It is.

00:09:58.760 It is a lot like that.

00:09:59.940 Yeah.

00:10:02.200 And he's he has to take everything he's learned in his whole life and use absolutely everything, all the good, all the bad, everything to be able to survive.

00:10:13.740 I told people, well, I make a lot of movie comparisons.

00:10:19.040 One thing I've told people, it's my 19th novel, but it's like the James Bond franchise.

00:10:23.200 You can go see a James Bond movie.

00:10:24.640 It doesn't mean if it doesn't matter if you've seen one, none.

00:10:27.660 You've seen them all.

00:10:28.420 It doesn't matter.

00:10:28.900 You can you can pick up any of my books at any point.

00:10:31.320 I was telling people, imagine if you had the predator, that's a great science fiction character.

00:10:38.840 And but the batteries on a suit were dead and you drop him in Russia and the Russians are chasing him, trying to get a hold of him.

00:10:46.420 And that's I always refer to Scott Harvath as an apex predator, somebody that's at the top of the food chain.

00:10:52.280 But I kind of want a little bit of Jack London, Call of the Wild.

00:10:56.160 I wanted to put him in a situation he'd never been in before.

00:10:59.440 And so this idea of the Russians being able to put a bag over his head in the U.S. 0.74

00:11:04.020 and drag him back to Russia. 0.53

00:11:05.700 But when they're moving him within Russia, the plane goes down and this is his one chance for escape.

00:11:11.380 And this is something that when we teach what's called SEER school here to our military, it's an acronym for survive, evade, resist, escape.

00:11:20.000 One of the things they're told to be prepared for is you may only get one chance to escape.

00:11:24.520 And when it comes, you have to take it.

00:11:26.620 You've got to make the decision.

00:11:27.820 You've got to be you've got to be ready ahead of time that if it presents itself, you're going to run with it.

00:11:32.860 And so that presents itself for Harvath.

00:11:35.060 And so he's not only got the Russians chasing him, but he's in one of the most remote, most isolated, dangerous parts of Russia.

00:11:43.360 And it's it's freezing outside.

00:11:44.900 So I spent time with a legend in the Navy SEAL community who teaches this stuff, cold weather warfare and survival in Alaska for the SEALs.

00:11:55.420 In the flip side of it is I also spent time.

00:11:58.320 I was interested what happens in Washington, D.C. if we lose a high level spy like this.

00:12:04.000 How do we get them back?

00:12:05.240 And I learned that under Barack Obama, when James Foley, the journalist, was taken by ISIS and beheaded, that there were a lot of agencies going, well, who's in charge of getting them back?

00:12:16.780 Is it the State Department?

00:12:17.960 Is it the CIA?

00:12:19.320 Is it the Defense Department?

00:12:20.940 And in the aftermath of that, Barack Obama put something together called the hostage recovery fusion cell.

00:12:26.880 And he set it up.

00:12:27.680 It was a State Department program run out of the FBI where they could bring people in from all the agencies.

00:12:33.360 There's a desk for Treasury.

00:12:34.480 There's a desk for the NSA.

00:12:35.980 There's a desk for the CIA, FBI.

00:12:37.720 And they sit them around here so that they all talk to each other and they share information and they try to figure out how to get how to get the the American back. 0.55

00:12:46.360 And President Trump, I think, very wisely chose to keep this program and he pumped more resources and things into it.

00:12:53.240 In fact, my book, it's a friend of mine from college that President Trump tapped to be the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs.

00:13:01.300 And I dedicated this book to him because I think what he's doing, helping to free the Christian pastor, pastor in Iran, all of these things.

00:13:09.320 He is constantly on planes going around the world trying to get Americans back.

00:13:12.740 And there's a lot of different levers they they pull on.

00:13:16.140 But with this book, I took a lot of license.

00:13:18.020 It isn't like the Russians could read this book.

00:13:19.640 They're not going to learn how we get our guys back.

00:13:21.620 It's not going to happen.

00:13:22.500 So let me let me take it back to somebody who's taking everything in their life and then applying it.

00:13:29.800 Because one of the questions I want to talk to you about is how Scott was born.

00:13:34.860 But before I get there.

00:13:38.980 How how what experiences what tough things in your life?

00:13:43.860 What were the tools of your life that you put together to be able to create what you've done?

00:13:50.480 I mean, this is your 20th book, 19th, 19th, 19th.

00:13:54.120 Yeah. And aren't they they're all bestsellers, if not all number one bestsellers?

00:13:58.080 Yeah, they haven't all been number ones.

00:13:59.580 They've they've we started out by my first book, making it onto a regional bestseller list.

00:14:05.260 And we built from there, ended up then having repeated number ones on the New York Times list.

00:14:11.120 So I've been very fortunate and built a wonderful audience.

00:14:14.180 I grew up in Chicago.

00:14:17.040 My dad is a no longer active Marine who went to school on the GI Bill and became a real estate developer.

00:14:23.480 My mom was a flight attendant.

00:14:24.920 I always think of the movie Boeing Boeing with Tony Curtis when the jets got introduced to international travel.

00:14:32.020 My mom flew for TWA in the 60s from New York to Paris, Paris, New York.

00:14:36.920 And she had to be beautiful.

00:14:38.300 Oh, she was stunning.

00:14:39.740 Yeah, that was a prerequisite day.

00:14:41.640 And that little pillbox hat and white gloves.

00:14:44.600 And you had to know how to carve a roast in flight and all of this stuff.

00:14:48.620 And it was really neat.

00:14:49.760 My dad saw the world with the Marine Corps.

00:14:52.120 He was in the Philippines.

00:14:53.080 He was in Japan.

00:14:54.040 My mom saw the world with TWA.

00:14:55.600 I had a travel bug growing up.

00:14:58.760 But the arts in our house were something to make you better rounded.

00:15:02.180 They were not a career path.

00:15:03.860 And I ended up going to the University of Southern California.

00:15:07.080 My dad wanted me to study.

00:15:08.300 Stop.

00:15:08.800 Yes.

00:15:09.180 Before we get there.

00:15:11.220 Back up.

00:15:11.800 I jumped too far ahead.

00:15:13.220 Back up.

00:15:14.300 Your folks got divorced.

00:15:15.500 Yes, they did.

00:15:16.340 How much of a role did that play on you?

00:15:18.360 I was always a big reader.

00:15:20.500 And I think my folks got divorced when I was nine.

00:15:23.640 And that was, it was naughty.

00:15:24.860 Yeah, it was not easy.

00:15:27.700 So I think I became an even bigger reader.

00:15:31.400 I think I retreated into books.

00:15:32.940 And I think that's really where the writing started.

00:15:35.460 Because my grandmother had encouraged me to write down what I was feeling, what I was thinking.

00:15:40.420 So it became a way of dealing with, how does a nine-year-old find the words to talk to adults about why aren't you staying together and that kind of a thing.

00:15:49.880 So I'd always love to read.

00:15:53.160 My favorite book when you were reading.

00:15:54.860 As a kid.

00:15:56.040 At that time, the Black Stallion novels.

00:15:58.420 I loved those.

00:15:59.420 Those and the Hardy Boy books.

00:16:00.720 I absolutely loved when I was in grade school.

00:16:02.860 Love Hardy Boy books.

00:16:03.560 Yeah, they were great.

00:16:04.680 They were great.

00:16:05.280 Yeah.

00:16:05.520 They were great.

00:16:06.040 All right.

00:16:07.460 So you start this, you always had read, but now writing is starting.

00:16:13.640 Yeah, I started writing.

00:16:15.360 So, and I'd known I wanted to write even earlier than that, but it started to take off.

00:16:21.060 So we'd go to my grandmother's house in Wisconsin for weekends and I'd write plays and things like this and short stories.

00:16:27.400 So it's almost as if my parents, in that divorce, that opened up something for me.

00:16:33.540 I turned my attention inward because my world was changing so rapidly and so in such a difficult way for me as a nine-year-old that I turned in and I found this part of my self-war.

00:16:46.900 It's where I could control things.

00:16:48.980 I couldn't control things outside, but any world I was writing about was a world that I was in complete control over.

00:16:55.120 It's fascinating.

00:16:56.040 We have very similar.

00:16:57.780 I mean, that's really what got me to talk to a microphone.

00:17:01.380 Wow.

00:17:02.220 So you go to a high school or junior high school that's very left.

00:17:07.560 It's in Chicago.

00:17:08.660 It's high school.

00:17:09.760 And you're with stars, right?

00:17:10.420 Right.

00:17:10.780 So this was a very progressive liberal arts school.

00:17:13.200 My dad was freaking out because he wanted me to continue my Jesuit education in Catholic school because I'd gone to a Jesuit education is not necessarily conservative either.

00:17:25.460 No.

00:17:26.200 Yes.

00:17:26.800 Yeah.

00:17:27.080 That's very true.

00:17:29.000 Yeah.

00:17:29.200 So he wanted me to go to a particular Catholic high school and continue that education.

00:17:33.140 I didn't.

00:17:34.000 I really liked this school, Francis Parker in Chicago.

00:17:37.840 And Daryl Hannah had come out of there, the actress.

00:17:40.600 Jennifer Beals, the actress.

00:17:42.000 A couple of years older than me is Billy Zane.

00:17:45.480 And Billy was what?

00:17:46.800 The Phantom.

00:17:47.380 And he was in Titanic.

00:17:48.360 He's done a ton of stuff.

00:17:49.420 And in my class was actress Anne H.

00:17:53.120 And the Mamets, Tony and David Mamet had been there.

00:17:56.240 So we had a lot of.

00:17:57.540 And then some of my classmates have been on jailbreak like Paul Edelstein and just really neat people.

00:18:02.860 And in fact, Adam Scheer, who was I think Adam's a year younger than I am, now runs Ryan Seacrest Company.

00:18:09.280 He had been at William Morris Endeavor and now runs Ryan Seacrest Company.

00:18:12.500 So that school has turned out a lot of successful people in the entertainment business.

00:18:17.640 I liked it because you go from Catholic school to a progressive liberal arts school where it's like you don't do your homework.

00:18:22.640 You just get a zero.

00:18:23.500 You don't get the.

00:18:24.180 You don't get the ruler.

00:18:25.480 OK, so you're there.

00:18:29.300 Did that play a role in shaping your worldview of seeing things differently, being able to relate to more people later in life?

00:18:39.280 Did that play a role in anything?

00:18:40.760 A little bit.

00:18:41.700 I remember the watch words above the above the stage were a school should be a complete community, an embryonic democracy, something else.

00:18:50.880 I've forgotten it.

00:18:51.460 I knew it forever.

00:18:52.240 But the the emphasis on personal responsibility, I thought, was very, very interesting.

00:18:57.340 And they said, you know, when you get to college, you don't do your homework.

00:19:00.260 You also get a zero.

00:19:01.100 But I think I had the school record for going in front of the disciplinary committee committee because I would get I would push on the rules in the handbook because I want them to walk the walk.

00:19:12.220 And I won every single time I went to the disciplinary committee based on I said, here's what the handbook says.

00:19:17.500 I was like a little lawyer.

00:19:18.540 I'm sure I I'm sure I annoyed the heck out of the teachers that dragged me in front of that committee.

00:19:22.940 But it was good.

00:19:24.760 I really came into my own because I had people watching on the edges, the teachers.

00:19:29.280 But they really left you to your own development to a certain degree, if that makes it makes sense.

00:19:34.920 So you're then now let's get to your dad, your dad.

00:19:37.740 When it comes time for college, he gets to pick.

00:19:41.260 He's paying.

00:19:42.040 That was part of the divorce thing. 0.96

00:19:43.260 And I had applied for college.

00:19:45.320 He gets to pick.

00:19:46.360 I so I had a girlfriend in St. 0.97

00:19:48.600 Louis.

00:19:48.900 So I applied to go to Mizzou.

00:19:50.640 I thought I'd go into the journalism program there.

00:19:52.640 It's fantastic down in Missouri.

00:19:54.500 In fact, I was the first senior in my school to get into college.

00:19:57.780 And I didn't even use the college counselor.

00:19:59.420 So there's another teacher that didn't like me.

00:20:01.000 I was messing with his rice bowl because he gets paid extra.

00:20:03.520 He was the math teacher and he got paid extra to be the college counselor.

00:20:06.680 But my dad said no.

00:20:07.840 He said, listen, I'm paying and I want you guys, you know, you'll go out to school in California.

00:20:12.420 You're going to work, too, while you're in school.

00:20:14.120 It's not a full float thing.

00:20:16.000 So I ended up leasing apartments out there.

00:20:17.720 But he was building office buildings and hotels in Southern California.

00:20:23.000 And he really liked the network of people that went to USC.

00:20:27.040 There's a real reputation that if you're interviewing me and someone else and you went to SC and I went to SC and this person, God forbid, went to UCLA or someplace else.

00:20:35.620 The legend was is that I would get hired because we have that in common.

00:20:40.280 It's called an old boys club.

00:20:41.460 Yeah.

00:20:41.860 So we call it the Cosa Nostra of Southern California.

00:20:44.820 But yeah.

00:20:46.100 So I went to USC and studied business administration because my dad wanted me to get my get my degree in that and then come out and go into business with him.

00:20:57.040 I hated it.

00:20:58.600 I hated it.

00:20:59.940 We had we had an econ class.

00:21:02.040 It was like an introduction to economics.

00:21:04.520 And it was Valentine's Day was coming up and we had this teacher that was so excited.

00:21:09.160 And he was sweating and he said, I got the perfect.

00:21:11.560 We're going to work on this.

00:21:12.640 You've got X amount of flowers, red roses that have been ordered, but not enough faces.

00:21:17.080 And how do we keep the customers?

00:21:18.420 And I closed my books and my friends were looking at this.

00:21:21.120 What are you doing?

00:21:21.520 I said, I'd rather take a bullet between the eyes than be a middle manager in a flower store chain.

00:21:26.720 I'm out of here.

00:21:27.740 And they said, it's just that, you know, it's just an example.

00:21:30.380 You don't have to do this.

00:21:31.420 And I moped in my in my room for two days, my dorm room.

00:21:34.880 And somebody suggested I go see the college counselor, the career counselor, I should say, at USC.

00:21:40.520 And I took a test, which they've changed the name.

00:21:42.960 But at the time, it was called the Strong Campbell personality test.

00:21:45.860 And I scored off the charts for writing and publishing.

00:21:48.920 And I said, OK, this I've wanted to do it since I was a little boy.

00:21:51.820 I'm not going to tell my dad.

00:21:53.100 And I went into the registrar's office and I said, can I take can I switch over to creative writing and film and television production while it still says business administration on my report cards going home?

00:22:04.520 And they said, yeah, you just within 24 hours of graduation, you have to declare that major and you better make sure you've taken all the classes.

00:22:11.080 And that's what I did.

00:22:12.040 My dad figured it out well before graduation.

00:22:14.500 What was his response?

00:22:15.460 It was interesting because it was the late 80s, early 90s, and a lot of the bond traders were leaving New York to go out and do financing in Hollywood.

00:22:24.560 And that those stories were making it into the mainstream business magazines that he read for Forbes and Fortune.

00:22:30.660 And it was in The Wall Street Journal.

00:22:31.940 So he just said, wow, that's great.

00:22:33.600 You can go into the movie business and get in on the finance side.

00:22:36.080 Maybe we'll do master's at USC in finance.

00:22:38.200 And I was just as long as I can just graduate without him, you know, trying to steer me, I'll deal with it then.

00:22:43.980 But he's very proud of what I've done now.

00:22:45.960 I don't think he would have ever said, yeah, that's a great career path.

00:22:49.240 Go do it.

00:22:49.780 But he's very proud of what I've accomplished.

00:22:51.700 This isn't this isn't when you started.

00:22:53.520 I mean, you didn't start.

00:22:54.940 No, start writing.

00:22:56.080 No.

00:22:56.620 What did you do?

00:22:57.680 So I got out and I decided to do something.

00:23:01.420 I saved money while I was working at USC leasing apartments.

00:23:04.580 And I decided I would do something no American had ever done.

00:23:07.200 It's going to be the first move to Paris and write a novel.

00:23:10.280 Oh, that's never happened before.

00:23:12.380 Those North Koreans always thinking, always thinking. 1.00

00:23:15.800 All right.

00:23:16.100 So I went and I went and got about three chapters into writing a thriller.

00:23:19.900 I didn't know what I was going to write.

00:23:20.980 I sat down and I got three chapters in.

00:23:23.440 And then that voice that we all have in the back of our minds started talking to me saying, this might not be good.

00:23:29.960 This could be embarrassing for you.

00:23:31.640 What if you take this time and nobody likes the book?

00:23:34.620 You don't get it published.

00:23:35.480 It's not even worth the risk.

00:23:37.680 Why don't you just ship the laptop back home?

00:23:39.980 You've saved some money.

00:23:41.120 You can travel on a Eurail pass and stay in hostels.

00:23:43.960 Why don't you see a bit of the world?

00:23:45.380 And, you know, put this silly idea to bed.

00:23:47.020 And I gave into that.

00:23:48.400 I gave into it.

00:23:49.680 And so I did some traveling.

00:23:51.380 I came back to interview with William Morris to go into their agent training program.

00:23:55.380 And it was a bunch of interviews over several months.

00:23:57.540 But while I've been in Europe, I got an idea for a TV show.

00:24:00.800 I thought traveling made me a better American.

00:24:04.040 I realized how lucky we are to live in this country.

00:24:07.500 It's true.

00:24:08.220 It's very true.

00:24:09.480 And I wanted to encourage young Americans to travel while they're young, not when they're retired.

00:24:15.320 Don't wait till you're retired.

00:24:16.600 Go now.

00:24:17.720 So I had this idea.

00:24:18.900 I came back.

00:24:19.700 I ended up going to work in my dad's business because his assistant had been on a leave of absence.

00:24:25.200 And I knew the business from growing up in it.

00:24:27.060 And I could help him.

00:24:28.080 And he said, here's the deal.

00:24:29.400 I'll let you run your little production company. 0.95

00:24:32.100 I was pitching public television on my idea.

00:24:35.100 But I still want you to go and do these interviews with William Morris because I'd like to see you.

00:24:38.840 That would be a great rocket ship into doing movies.

00:24:42.860 So I was based in Chicago doing this.

00:24:44.920 And public television bit.

00:24:46.260 But they liked the idea of a travel show for young people.

00:24:49.560 And I had the day they said yes was the day I had my final interview at William Morris.

00:24:55.740 And the head of the television department at that time was a gentleman by the name of Bob Crestani.

00:25:00.480 I've looked for him ever since.

00:25:02.080 I don't know where he is, if he's even still in the business.

00:25:04.860 But I sat down with him and we talked and I told him.

00:25:08.180 PBS bit.

00:25:08.840 They said they're interested in this.

00:25:09.980 And he said, Brett, I'm going to give you a piece of advice.

00:25:11.460 You don't strike me as an agent.

00:25:13.260 You strike me as a creative person.

00:25:14.780 You're the kind of person we would represent here.

00:25:17.660 And he said, I'm going to give you a piece of advice.

00:25:20.000 You decide to take it, not take it.

00:25:21.320 He said, but if you've got a chance to be the writer, the star of your own show on public television, he said, grab it with both hands.

00:25:29.140 Grab it.

00:25:29.500 You'll regret not doing it.

00:25:30.620 It was one of the best pieces of advice I ever got.

00:25:32.320 I did it and I did 23 episodes, 10 episodes the first season, 13 the next season.

00:25:38.540 And that's that was Traveling Light, my travel show.

00:25:41.740 It's too bad somebody didn't have an archive to be able to show those embarrassing.

00:25:47.480 I've still got some.

00:25:48.760 I've still got some.

00:25:49.540 I just don't travel around.

00:25:50.480 So do we.

00:25:51.300 Oh, shoot.

00:25:54.860 OK, so when do you when do you meet your wife?

00:25:58.180 So I am home from filming the the first season.

00:26:04.860 I'm I had come home.

00:26:07.000 I've been working in Europe.

00:26:08.700 I just wrapped the first season of shows.

00:26:10.920 I had a little bit more left to go back and shoot.

00:26:13.340 But I had I had a plane ticket I had to use.

00:26:14.980 So I came home.

00:26:15.600 I always have a rule.

00:26:17.200 I don't go out the first two nights I'm home because I'm falling asleep with the jet lag

00:26:21.580 and it's rude and I just can't help it.

00:26:23.660 I hit five o'clock and my eyes do this.

00:26:25.660 So I'm out having lunch with my with my godfather and we're on sitting outdoors in Chicago and

00:26:30.760 a friend walks by that our family's known forever.

00:26:33.560 And he says to me, he says, hey, Brad, good to see you.

00:26:36.500 We're throwing a wine tasting party at our house tomorrow night.

00:26:39.860 Would you like to come?

00:26:41.140 We're just inviting a bunch of friends and everything.

00:26:42.820 Uh, and something told me some force said, don't say no, you have to go.

00:26:49.800 And this was my number one rule.

00:26:51.460 I never broke.

00:26:52.100 And I said, yes, I'll go.

00:26:54.000 And it turned out that this friend of ours, he and his wife were trying to get all their

00:26:58.200 single friends together for a wine test tasting.

00:27:00.720 I walked into this thing.

00:27:01.980 I saw my wife across the room. 1.00

00:27:04.000 I had been in love with Meg Ryan forever and that had been my picture of the perfect woman.

00:27:07.740 And I found better than Meg Ryan and I saw her and I, I just knew that was the woman I was

00:27:13.260 going to marry.

00:27:13.640 And I did.

00:27:14.080 We've been together 23 years now.

00:27:16.000 Wow.

00:27:16.900 She is wonderful.

00:27:18.300 Yeah.

00:27:19.040 Very lucky too.

00:27:20.640 Oh, I don't know.

00:27:22.820 She says I'm great at everything but humility.

00:27:25.120 So, so you are, she's the reason you are a writer.

00:27:30.820 Yes.

00:27:31.520 Nothing else.

00:27:32.320 You gave up on yourself.

00:27:34.000 I did.

00:27:34.360 And you're on your honeymoon.

00:27:35.680 And she looked at me.

00:27:37.680 We were in a piazza in Italy one night and she said, what would you regret on your deathbed

00:27:41.660 never having done?

00:27:43.060 That's a good question to ask maybe before you get married.

00:27:45.240 It's a good, it really tells you a lot about the person you're considering spending your

00:27:48.940 life with.

00:27:49.360 But she asked me there and I said, writing a book and getting it published.

00:27:52.940 I didn't even know I'd said it.

00:27:54.440 It just came out.

00:27:56.440 And she said, fine.

00:27:57.420 When we get home, you start taking two hours a day, no phone, no, no TV, no internet going

00:28:03.980 in that you focus on this and you make that dream come true.

00:28:06.880 And that's how I got started writing.

00:28:10.060 I don't hear a lot of Scott in this story, except for perhaps your dad's experience.

00:28:36.460 Where does Scott come from?

00:28:37.960 When you're looking for a character and you need to develop a character, especially one

00:28:42.720 that's run this many books, you have to know him inside and out.

00:28:47.000 Where did he come from?

00:28:49.620 It came from people that I knew.

00:28:52.340 So I had a really good friend of my dad's who was in the FBI.

00:28:56.140 One of my neighbors in college had been part of a top secret U.S. program that placed operatives

00:29:06.100 in Berlin while the wall was still up in case the Russians ever overran the wall.

00:29:11.100 Their job was to create guerrilla warfare.

00:29:13.680 They had hidden weapons caches and radio sets and money all over Berlin.

00:29:18.040 Fascinating group.

00:29:18.720 But for me, Harvath, I think Bond was part Ian Fleming, just like I think Jack Ryan was

00:29:27.680 part Clancy, kind of that alter ego.

00:29:30.000 I think Harvath was that for me.

00:29:33.220 He's the ultimate Boy Scout.

00:29:34.980 He's somebody that loves his country.

00:29:37.180 And I knew, based on what my parents had taught us growing up, that there is no American dream

00:29:43.000 without those willing to protect it.

00:29:45.880 And so we were raised with a very informed sense of patriotism.

00:29:49.880 We were very appreciative of law enforcement, the military, what the members of the intelligence

00:29:54.020 community do.

00:29:55.260 So I had been steeped in those areas growing up, hearing stories, knowing friends of my

00:30:01.160 parents and things like this growing up.

00:30:03.040 And I understood what courage and what dedication it took to stand on a wall, to put yourself

00:30:10.120 into hostile territory.

00:30:11.760 So for me, it was a way of honoring those people.

00:30:15.620 But also Stephen King had said that, number one, a writer is someone who's trained their

00:30:21.500 mind to misbehave, see things differently, think differently, but that you should write what

00:30:26.180 you love to read because that's where your passion is.

00:30:29.000 So as I graduated from the Hardy Boys books, I started picking up my dad's Freddie Forsythe

00:30:35.660 books, the Le Carré books, the Clancy books, and I couldn't read them fast enough.

00:30:40.580 I loved those books.

00:30:41.720 So I was introduced to all of these different characters like Jason Bourne and Jack Ryan

00:30:47.080 and all of this stuff.

00:30:48.420 So that was really the world that I was living in with books.

00:30:52.800 Let me go back to you.

00:31:00.120 You've talked about something inside of me said, I just knew, I felt this was, you are a divine

00:31:10.360 providence kind of guy.

00:31:11.540 How many days after your wife said, you have to go and write books, was it between that

00:31:19.940 conversation and you on the train with your wife and somebody sitting across from you?

00:31:26.780 So it was probably, I don't know, a week later.

00:31:31.920 So a week later.

00:31:32.920 So when I was doing the show for public television, our sponsor was Rail Europe Group, the people

00:31:40.300 that do the rail passes.

00:31:41.460 And as a wedding present, they gave us first class passes in as many overnight train compartments

00:31:46.880 as we want.

00:31:47.920 And the joke in my family is in addition to being Swedish and Norwegian, we have a little

00:31:51.460 bit of Scottish, so we wouldn't cough up a buck if we were choking on it.

00:31:54.480 And it was a great way, and I knew this from doing a budget travel TV show, that overnighting

00:32:00.440 on the trains is a great way to spend money.

00:32:02.520 And I thought, oh, North by Northwest with Cary Grant and the train and the Orient Express,

00:32:07.160 what a romantic thing.

00:32:08.480 I didn't know my wife gets motion sick. 1.00

00:32:10.720 So it wasn't as romantic as I thought it would be for a honeymoon, but we found some

00:32:14.800 Dramamine at some point and she was good.

00:32:17.400 But our very last overnight was going to be from Munich in Oktoberfest to Amsterdam.

00:32:24.480 That was the only train compartment we would have to share and sleep with strangers.

00:32:29.600 And every town we were in throughout Europe on our honeymoon that had a train station,

00:32:34.180 I would walk in and say, have there been any cancellations?

00:32:36.800 Can we get a private on this last leg of our trip?

00:32:39.560 And my wife said, eventually, you know, we're spending more time in train stations than we

00:32:44.460 are seeing the sites.

00:32:45.340 And you're the one that always says, Brad, everything happens for a reason and it always

00:32:49.760 works out for the best.

00:32:51.060 I said, well, that's what I tell friends of mine when they won't take my advice and they

00:32:53.860 keep repeating this is their problem.

00:32:55.580 And she said, you're fired.

00:32:56.920 No more travel agents.

00:32:58.580 Let's just go.

00:32:59.200 And whatever happens, happens.

00:33:00.820 When we boarded the train that late afternoon in Munich for the ride or early evening to

00:33:05.980 Amsterdam, there was a lovely brother and sister from Atlanta, Georgia on board.

00:33:10.240 They recognized me from my TV shows.

00:33:13.520 And the sister and I had this shared love of books.

00:33:16.320 It's one of the things I love about reading.

00:33:17.640 It doesn't matter if you're Democrat, Republican, rich, poor, black, white. 0.51

00:33:22.060 If you love books, you have a shared love language.

00:33:25.240 And we spent all night talking about books.

00:33:29.680 In fact, she introduced me to Vince Flynn.

00:33:31.720 She had said, oh, there's this great new book guy named Vince Flynn.

00:33:35.020 It's called Term Limits.

00:33:36.280 You've got to read it.

00:33:37.060 I said, I'll look for it when we get near an English bookstore.

00:33:40.300 But anyway, we talk all night.

00:33:41.280 She said, well, you know, I love your TV show.

00:33:43.220 Are you going to film more episodes?

00:33:44.440 And I said, because I figured if I told my secret again, that it would be easier.

00:33:48.620 I said, well, I'm actually going to write a book when I get home.

00:33:52.240 And she said, wow, that's really neat.

00:33:53.800 We get off the train.

00:33:55.240 We would get very little sleep that night because we stayed up talking all night.

00:33:57.840 But when we get off on the platform in the morning and we go to exchange contact information,

00:34:02.640 she hands me her business card.

00:34:03.940 And she's a sales rep for Simon & Schuster.

00:34:06.300 And she said, if you write that book and I can help you at Simon & Schuster, let me know.

00:34:10.300 So divine providence, God saying, you know, my wife asked me that question and it just all came together.

00:34:19.500 And as we left the train station, it was pouring down rain.

00:34:22.120 There were no cabs.

00:34:23.020 We had to drag our bags to the hotel.

00:34:24.940 The room was not ready.

00:34:26.240 So they said, go to this cafe around the corner and have a coffee, have a sandwich.

00:34:30.580 When you come back, it'll be all set.

00:34:32.960 We sat down at the table.

00:34:34.200 My wife's like Louis L'Amour, the great Western writer in that she always has a book with her

00:34:38.400 and she's always reading something.

00:34:40.360 I found a newspaper and I opened it up.

00:34:42.640 It was an International Herald Tribune.

00:34:44.560 And in it was a story about a Swiss intelligence officer who embezzled all this money from the

00:34:49.680 Swiss government and was training his own shadow militia high in the Alps with high-tech

00:34:53.420 weapons from his own private arsenal.

00:34:54.960 That became my first novel, The Lions of Lucerne.

00:34:57.760 So all that stuff happened within like a week on my honeymoon.

00:35:01.320 If I remember right, let me see if I can get the exact quote.

00:35:04.440 Um, the first book that you wrote, I think was called, I believe by the New York Times,

00:35:12.920 one of the best political thrillers ever.

00:35:16.380 I believe that was Barnes and Noble.

00:35:18.240 Barnes and Noble.

00:35:18.920 Yes.

00:35:18.940 Barnes and Noble.

00:35:19.600 And that's my very first book.

00:35:21.600 Yes.

00:35:22.040 So when you wrote it, here's a guy who was in Paris who stopped writing.

00:35:30.820 Did you use any of that?

00:35:32.180 No.

00:35:32.400 Do you still have it?

00:35:33.660 I had lost it.

00:35:35.120 I found it four days ago before leaving on tour.

00:35:38.280 I found those first three chapters.

00:35:40.060 You have to.

00:35:40.580 I've talked about them for 20 years.

00:35:42.380 You at least have to put them online.

00:35:43.720 I have to do something with them.

00:35:44.780 Yes.

00:35:45.980 So you, you know, didn't have a lot of self-confidence.

00:35:51.720 Your wife kind of walked you through that.

00:35:54.600 When you submitted it, how were you feeling?

00:35:58.000 Well, I'll tell you what felt fantastic was finishing it because when I finished it, I sensed this must be what it's like for someone who runs their first marathon, climbs their first mountain.

00:36:08.560 And no matter what happened to me for the rest of my life, I knew I could do it again and that I would not go to my grave wondering what would my life have looked like had I just sat down and tried.

00:36:18.860 And it felt fantastic.

00:36:21.200 So I submitted it, not knowing what was going to happen.

00:36:23.860 My friend, Cindy Jackson, the lovely young lady from the train, she read it, made some suggestions.

00:36:29.120 And she was slowly trying to work it through Simon & Schuster because she had one editor in mind for it.

00:36:35.300 And in the meantime, I'm querying agents.

00:36:37.820 I'm trying to get an agent.

00:36:38.680 I'm getting rejection after rejection after rejection.

00:36:40.940 I found one agent that said, I like this, but it needs a little work.

00:36:44.080 And if you'll do X, Y, and Z, I'll read it again.

00:36:47.080 So I said, OK.

00:36:48.340 And about that time, my friend, Cindy, called me and said, Emily Bessler at Simon & Schuster, a fantastic editor.

00:36:55.140 You know, Emily.

00:36:55.760 And still your editor.

00:36:58.600 Still my editor.

00:36:59.300 She was Vince Flynn's editor.

00:37:01.660 Cindy said, Emily Bessler is going to call you.

00:37:04.460 And Emily Bessler called me and said, you've given me the best two days of reading.

00:37:09.100 I don't know.

00:37:10.360 It's been so long since I've read something I've loved and have been so excited about as the lines of Lucerne.

00:37:15.880 She said, do you have an agent?

00:37:17.140 And I said, can I call you back in five minutes?

00:37:20.560 And I called the agent, Heidi Lang, who I have now and I've had ever since.

00:37:24.100 And I told her the story and she said, well, I guess you don't need to make my changes then to that manuscript.

00:37:28.680 And it's lovely because I would tell anybody who would listen how much I love my agent, Heidi Lang.

00:37:34.080 And I would say it, newspaper articles and all that kind of stuff.

00:37:37.460 Dan Brown ended up going over to Heidi.

00:37:41.200 And he said, I've got this new book.

00:37:43.380 I want a new agent.

00:37:44.260 And let me tell you what it's all about.

00:37:45.680 And she goes, oh, it's pretty interesting.

00:37:47.300 What are you going to call it?

00:37:48.000 And he says, I think I'm going to call it The Da Vinci Code.

00:37:49.680 So it's for me, I'm always happy when people who are meant to be together, when they come together and good things happen.

00:37:57.680 And that's exciting for me.

00:37:59.120 So if you get good reviews, it's regional.

00:38:04.040 Yeah, we make regional bestseller.

00:38:05.980 Yeah.

00:38:08.360 Is writing what you thought it was going to be?

00:38:11.960 Is the life of a writer?

00:38:15.420 What's it like?

00:38:17.180 What do you think it was going to be like?

00:38:19.600 Oh, I'll tell you what I thought.

00:38:20.940 There was a great movie with Tom Selleck and Paulina Portskova called Her Alibi.

00:38:26.980 He's a writer that has writer's block.

00:38:28.820 So he goes down to the criminal court building, leaves his place in Martha's Vineyard or Connecticut, goes in.

00:38:33.600 And here's this beautiful woman who's been accused of murder. 1.00

00:38:35.680 She doesn't speak English.

00:38:37.160 But he's got writer's block.

00:38:38.700 And people are bringing him casseroles.

00:38:40.240 His editor's coming out to help him.

00:38:42.320 And his agent and all this kind of stuff.

00:38:43.700 I thought it was very romantic and all the misconceptions I had about Hemingway and all this stuff.

00:38:50.200 It's work.

00:38:51.080 It's hard.

00:38:51.980 But it's hard because of who I am vis-a-vis my parents who told me every day on the job, treat it like it's your first day on the job.

00:38:59.340 Don't ever phone it in.

00:39:00.420 That's why you raise the bar each time.

00:39:03.820 You'd think it gets easier.

00:39:05.200 It doesn't.

00:39:05.620 It gets harder.

00:39:06.600 But I don't work for Simon & Schuster.

00:39:08.780 I work for the readers.

00:39:10.200 And when they leave a review online, that's my annual performance review.

00:39:14.340 And I want five stars.

00:39:15.680 I want them to say, your job is safe for another year.

00:39:18.720 You know, we've got you.

00:39:19.740 You're great.

00:39:20.160 Keep doing what you're doing.

00:39:21.800 And do they see all of the sweat and all the tweaks and all the angst and teeth pulling that go into it some nights in my office?

00:39:30.640 No.

00:39:30.880 And they're not supposed to.

00:39:31.720 They're supposed to get a great white-knuckle thrill ride.

00:39:34.060 And if you close the book a little bit smarter, we've talked for years about faction, where you don't know where the facts end and the fiction begins, then I've done my job.

00:39:41.940 And that's what I work for, is to make people happy, to entertain people.

00:39:46.440 Those are my favorite books of yours, are the ones that I spend with the laptop.

00:39:51.700 Right.

00:39:52.500 Side by side.

00:39:53.720 That can't be true.

00:39:54.780 Is that really true?

00:39:55.640 Is that really happening?

00:39:57.120 Which I think you're the best at.

00:39:59.480 Thank you.

00:39:59.800 Do you ever, do you ever, my kids said to me, hide my success.

00:40:07.860 I'm very positive, you know, on everything, you know, as you think it will become.

00:40:14.220 But I've said to my kids, ever since we were successful at all, enjoy it while it lasts.

00:40:22.320 Because nothing is forever.

00:40:26.820 And my daughter asked me one time, why do you say that?

00:40:29.860 And I said, well, because I've been through it before.

00:40:31.920 Not at this scale, but I've been through it before.

00:40:34.820 And it's, success is meaningless.

00:40:39.780 It shouldn't change you.

00:40:41.720 This is just an extra little perk of life.

00:40:44.280 It's what you do and who you are and how you express yourself.

00:40:49.120 That's what means something.

00:40:51.840 Not all of the gifts that come with it.

00:40:55.540 And what good can you do with it?

00:40:57.220 What can you do outside yourself?

00:40:59.040 How can you take the blessings that you've enjoyed and make other people's lives better?

00:41:04.460 Not make their lives easier necessarily, but make other people's lives better.

00:41:08.400 So, yeah, I talk to my children about this all the time because it's important for them.

00:41:12.960 But do you ever sit down and think, I don't know if I have it anymore.

00:41:17.740 I don't know if I, man, I.

00:41:21.200 Well, you top your, like, I'm, this book.

00:41:23.980 When they said, when you came back and said, run, did you have any time that you were like,

00:41:31.320 Oh, the whole time.

00:41:32.880 The whole time.

00:41:34.200 I was not in because Scott Harvath, my character goes through some incredible loss.

00:41:40.700 And I'm looking for that balance.

00:41:43.160 It's a high wire act.

00:41:44.140 How do I keep this an exciting thriller, but reveal him as a human being?

00:41:47.380 Am I, is he going to keep things completely compartmentalized and be only focused on survival?

00:41:52.580 Or is he going to have these down moments where the horrible things that happened that the Russians did to be able to put a bag over his head,

00:41:59.200 the people he cares about who died, that's got to bleed in at some point.

00:42:03.100 Even if you're trudging through the snow, you've got to say, those people are dead because of me.

00:42:07.780 They, they're gone.

00:42:08.880 And it's my fault.

00:42:09.780 I couldn't protect them.

00:42:11.120 Somebody who sees himself as a defender of the defenseless.

00:42:14.520 So let me ask you this.

00:42:15.620 Who's your favorite Bond?

00:42:19.020 My watch bond.

00:42:19.980 Oh yeah.

00:42:20.300 I've seen them all.

00:42:21.080 And I've read the books and everything.

00:42:23.380 In the movies.

00:42:24.360 In the movies.

00:42:25.060 Are you still, are you still watching the Bond series?

00:42:27.280 Oh yeah.

00:42:27.900 I've seen all of the movies, but I keep, I watched the launch for 25 that they did.

00:42:31.760 My wife surprised me one year with a trip to Ian Fleming's home in Jamaica before we had kids.

00:42:36.300 And I got to sit at Ian Fleming's desk and write.

00:42:39.380 Fascinating.

00:42:40.340 Fascinating.

00:42:40.740 He was a wild guy.

00:42:42.040 A wild guy.

00:42:43.300 But people don't, he, that is him.

00:42:45.840 In many ways, that is him.

00:42:47.740 I have to show you out before you leave.

00:42:49.460 I'll take you to our vault.

00:42:50.960 I have an actual Ian Fleming exploding rat from World War II from Paris.

00:42:58.920 It's unbelievable.

00:43:00.080 He was the guy who said, why don't we put, why don't we get real dead rats, fill them

00:43:05.960 with explosives.

00:43:06.680 And when the Germans are, we have to slow down their war machine. 0.99

00:43:10.420 They're shoveling coal.

00:43:11.780 Yeah.

00:43:12.180 Uh, and I mean, people don't know, he was really clever, really clever.

00:43:17.260 Very devious.

00:43:17.880 So who's your favorite bond?

00:43:19.360 So I think probably Sean Connery is always going to be my favorite.

00:43:23.360 I love Sean Connery, but I think Daniel Craig and the reboot they did with Daniel Craig was

00:43:28.220 absolutely fantastic.

00:43:29.620 I mean, here's a guy who's 51 years old.

00:43:31.260 He looks fantastic.

00:43:32.680 I know.

00:43:33.160 And he, I got, he's Scott.

00:43:35.740 Yeah.

00:43:36.180 He's Scott.

00:43:36.820 You see you, unlike Sean Connery, there's never a scratch on his outside or his inside.

00:43:46.080 Yeah.

00:43:46.480 Where Daniel Craig, you see the scars inside as well, which I think adds such depth to the

00:43:54.900 character.

00:43:56.540 From a writing standpoint, if you study what happened in Casino Royale, how they had that

00:44:02.420 double beat ending where it ends, he's rescued from getting tortured and all that kind of

00:44:07.580 stuff.

00:44:07.820 And then he's sailing with Vesper.

00:44:09.800 And then there's that whole other thing in the building collapses on the Grand Canal

00:44:13.100 in Venice.

00:44:14.360 That from a writing standpoint is fantastic, but they really revealed his inner scars while

00:44:19.680 showing the outer ones as well.

00:44:21.200 The most important line in that is why the bitch is dead. 1.00

00:44:26.620 Do you remember when he's coming home and she's talking to M M?

00:44:30.040 Yeah.

00:44:30.300 Yeah.

00:44:30.600 I remember that.

00:44:31.100 You see him just wall up.

00:44:33.520 Cold.

00:44:33.820 Yep.

00:44:33.960 Just wall up.

00:44:34.580 Yep.

00:44:37.280 Let's go back to the book now.

00:44:38.700 Okay.

00:44:39.180 Talk a little bit about, there's a couple of places.

00:44:45.340 For instance, there's, Scott talks about vengeance and the importance of vengeance.

00:44:53.200 And I thought that was an interesting word to choose.

00:44:58.100 Can you tell the story a bit without wrecking anything?

00:45:01.580 Yeah, I think I can.

00:45:04.720 I have a big thing about Putin.

00:45:06.780 I do not like Putin.

00:45:08.340 So Putin was on my mind a lot when I was writing this book.

00:45:11.080 And one of the things that I'm most concerned about is when the Soviet Union broke up, a third 0.98

00:45:17.060 of their nuclear arsenal was in Ukraine.

00:45:19.520 And we wanted Ukraine to part with it, to get rid of it. 1.00

00:45:22.860 We made Ukraine a promise.

00:45:24.100 And we said, you will never be invaded.

00:45:26.940 You will never lose any of your sovereign territory.

00:45:29.020 We guarantee it as the United States of America.

00:45:31.380 And they said, okay, get Russia to sign it too.

00:45:34.220 And the Russians did. 0.99

00:45:36.380 It wasn't even worth the ink on paper.

00:45:38.440 But then under the Obama administration, Putin did it.

00:45:41.520 He sent his little green men in there, a lot from what's called the Wagner Group, which

00:45:45.600 is, you and I talked on the radio about them.

00:45:48.720 Richard Wagner.

00:45:49.160 Yeah.

00:45:49.660 Yeah.

00:45:50.100 And so they, this private military corporation.

00:45:52.700 Wait, wait.

00:45:52.960 Let's explain that because I think it's in the book.

00:45:55.040 But I think it's really, I didn't even know this.

00:45:57.700 I mean, I know, I know the history of Wagner with Hitler and, and it's a fascinating.

00:46:06.860 So it's like a Russian version of Blackwater. 0.95

00:46:09.760 So they take former special operations, Russian military people called Spetsnaz and they hire

00:46:15.200 them and they come to work for this private company.

00:46:17.320 By the way, these things are illegal in Russia.

00:46:20.240 You're not allowed to have a private military corporation.

00:46:22.980 This one exists.

00:46:23.960 And this is the one that does Putin's bidding.

00:46:25.560 So as Maduro was starting, they, they, I don't think the money comes directly from the Kremlin.

00:46:33.980 I think they funnel it around so that there's no direct, but it's, it's the Russians are 1.00

00:46:37.380 funding these guys because they're doing all of what Putin once done.

00:46:40.000 They're going into Syria, backing up Assad.

00:46:43.100 These are the guys we killed in that bombing in Syria.

00:46:45.760 About 150 to 200 of them.

00:46:48.540 Right.

00:46:48.740 And it was like, no big deal.

00:46:50.680 You know what I mean?

00:46:51.720 It was the Russians were kind of like, what soldiers killed what?

00:46:54.960 And that's why they exist to give them the plausible deniability.

00:46:58.180 And as Maduro was starting to topple, these are the guys that went into Venezuela to back

00:47:01.700 them up and make sure that if there was a military coup, he'd be protected.

00:47:05.560 Why are they called the Wagner group?

00:47:07.220 So they're called the Wagner group because the colonel who runs them, his call sign in

00:47:11.660 the Russian special forces was Wagner.

00:47:13.780 He chose it for himself because they are obsessed with the SS and Nazi ideology.

00:47:18.780 And Wagner was one of Hitler's favorite composers.

00:47:21.460 So he chose Wagner as his call sign.

00:47:24.400 He named his company Wagner.

00:47:26.200 And these do you mean he's obsessed and they are obsessed with the SS and they're there

00:47:31.820 is a and it's a it's a difficult word for me.

00:47:35.520 I should have written it and had it on a card here.

00:47:37.220 But there is a hybrid religion slash cult that grew up around paganism and Nazi ideology at

00:47:46.640 the collapse of the Soviet Union.

00:47:48.080 You know, what's his name?

00:47:50.480 Kurt Launder, Kurt Lander.

00:47:52.620 He's just written a new book.

00:47:54.220 I'll remind you, it's very scholarly, but it is all on this.

00:47:59.240 And he wanted to write the quintessential basic text on the religion of the SS and the religion

00:48:13.220 of the German people and how how it came apart.

00:48:16.820 It's not a commercial book.

00:48:18.580 It's really scholarly, but you would love it.

00:48:23.220 I totally love it because it goes into all of that.

00:48:27.440 It's fascinating.

00:48:28.540 So there's there's there's people in Russia.

00:48:30.620 I know that the what's his name?

00:48:34.460 The guy who wrote the fourth political theory.

00:48:37.920 He's a Putin advisor.

00:48:40.560 He is he is also fascinated.

00:48:43.940 There's there's a lot of people in the former Soviet Union that are they buy into this religious

00:48:51.060 nightmare.

00:48:52.500 Yeah.

00:48:53.020 Yeah.

00:48:53.240 And there's a lot of kind of ethno ideology that can be wrapped into that.

00:48:58.520 And you see Putin is there.

00:49:01.060 Even now, we he's been making comments about, you know, immigration and all this kind of stuff.

00:49:06.120 So there's a lot that works for them.

00:49:07.980 Master race stuff. 0.98

00:49:08.720 It is master race stuff. 0.98

00:49:09.680 So as an author looking for bad guys for a novel, I couldn't this is I guarantee you,

00:49:15.200 this is one of the things that readers will go search and say, this group can't be real.

00:49:19.360 Number one.

00:49:19.820 And this ideology, Thor, it's so over the top and it's real.

00:49:23.880 And people are going to search it reading, reading backlash and they're going to see it.

00:49:27.520 So do they is that like, for instance, the essay at the SS had, you know, he I can't remember

00:49:36.580 which one it was, but had the castle or the SS where they were performing rituals and everything

00:49:43.100 else.

00:49:43.980 Is this just the lead guy or is or are they indoctrinating these people into that kind of

00:49:51.600 cult?

00:49:52.540 I think there's a certain amount of them that are hardcore believers.

00:49:56.400 And then there's some others that say this is a good paycheck in a crummy country where

00:50:01.000 it's tough.

00:50:01.560 I don't want to be a security guard for a gas station.

00:50:03.320 I want to use my skills.

00:50:04.220 And so I think there's a lot of wink, wink, oh, yeah, the Nazis. 0.68

00:50:07.680 So I don't think they're all they all follow this.

00:50:10.400 But the elite around Wagner, the head guy, they are.

00:50:15.100 It is it is like a circle of these people.

00:50:17.280 Why are they so dangerous?

00:50:19.600 I think they are incredibly dangerous, number one, because of the ideology and anything goes.

00:50:24.600 So this is all about serving the state and it's all about serving Putin.

00:50:27.680 So it's almost like a Putin worship in place of Hitler. 0.58

00:50:30.780 It is Putin now.

00:50:31.700 Are they the ones who sliced? 0.74

00:50:34.900 No, that sliced up the missing that sliced up one of the family members of the terrorists

00:50:40.340 who took the Russian diplomat.

00:50:41.520 No, I don't know that that I was.

00:50:43.480 I was led to believe that this was more kind of the on the intelligence side of stuff mixed

00:50:48.280 with a little bit of special forces, but not the Wagner guys.

00:50:50.880 So I wasn't there.

00:50:52.040 Slice them up in a meat slicer.

00:50:53.880 Yeah.

00:50:54.140 What will these guys do?

00:50:55.660 What won't these guys do that they will?

00:50:58.840 Well, there isn't much we've seen.

00:51:01.720 It's because of these guys that Putin was able to take Crimea.

00:51:04.800 They come in.

00:51:05.820 They're very smart.

00:51:06.980 They foment revolution.

00:51:08.680 So this is that this is the plan.

00:51:10.000 And this is why last summer's book, Spymaster, and my concern about Putin grabbing one of 0.52

00:51:14.780 the smaller NATO states on the Baltic, like Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia.

00:51:18.540 What these guys do is they come in where there's native Russian speakers, much the way Hitler 0.99

00:51:22.780 did in Czechoslovakia.

00:51:24.640 You rile everybody up and then you come in saying, well, we're here to protect the ethnic

00:51:28.800 Germans or we're here to.

00:51:29.820 Studentenland.

00:51:30.720 That's what it was.

00:51:31.820 Exactly.

00:51:32.500 Except Putin's on the Russia's on the Security Council at the United Nations.

00:51:36.700 So if they can go in and stir enough of this stuff up and then United Nations wants to

00:51:40.920 send in peacekeepers, Putin can veto it, but say, here's what we will do.

00:51:45.020 We don't think this is a UN problem.

00:51:46.940 This is essentially a Russian problem. 0.96

00:51:48.620 We'll send our own troops to keep peace there.

00:51:51.160 It's a de facto invasion.

00:51:52.120 And that's what I'm really worried about happening, because if Putin gets away with

00:51:55.460 that, that's the end of NATO.

00:51:57.020 If the US does not go in and I don't think we have the stomach to go in and back up smaller

00:52:01.280 NATO, I just don't think it's going to I don't think it would happen.

00:52:04.920 I don't think we'd honor the Article five would have done it.

00:52:07.320 He didn't move very quickly with with Georgia and the Russians changed the borders there.

00:52:12.960 So, yeah, not a and they weren't sufficiently scared off from from the United States when

00:52:18.780 Barack Obama came on the scene because they went even further and they took the entire

00:52:21.840 Crimean Peninsula.

00:52:22.780 So can we can we change subjects?

00:52:24.460 Sure.

00:52:24.920 Let's just talk about let's just talk about news of the day.

00:52:28.200 Yeah.

00:52:28.500 OK.

00:52:31.280 Donald Trump.

00:52:33.100 I've always said I want a president with a twitchy eye.

00:52:40.800 I want a president that keeps guessing our enemies always go.

00:52:47.540 I don't know.

00:52:48.440 I think that SOB will do it like they thought of Reagan. 1.00

00:52:51.600 Yeah.

00:52:51.940 Yeah.

00:52:52.240 Yeah.

00:52:52.540 You have to be that cowboy that is like reaching for your gun and you're like, he'd be stupid

00:52:58.380 to pull that gun out.

00:53:00.080 Right.

00:53:00.660 But he might just might do it.

00:53:02.480 We should sit down and talk.

00:53:04.060 You know what I mean?

00:53:04.600 Yeah.

00:53:05.280 That's what we have.

00:53:07.280 I never expected to get one with a twitchy eye where even the Americans were like, I

00:53:11.800 don't know.

00:53:12.500 He just might do that.

00:53:14.000 What do you what do you take away from Trump, the administration and his relationship with

00:53:23.980 Putin?

00:53:24.920 What do you what's what do you think is happening there?

00:53:28.660 And I'm not talking about conspiracy stuff.

00:53:30.620 I'm not talking about the election.

00:53:31.760 I'm just talking about.

00:53:33.900 What do you think is happening?

00:53:35.500 So, first of all, Donald Trump got elected to go and be Donald Trump, even though he said

00:53:40.780 I can be more presidential, but it would be boring and all this kind of stuff.

00:53:43.740 He was elected by our fellow citizens to be president.

00:53:46.500 So he is president, fair and square.

00:53:48.480 No cheating.

00:53:49.460 Democratically elected.

00:53:50.740 Boom.

00:53:51.680 I think he has a way that he does business.

00:53:55.320 I think he has a comfortable.

00:53:56.940 He is very much.

00:53:58.300 Do I like it?

00:53:59.020 Do I not like it?

00:53:59.900 I'm going to get I'm not going to read those briefing papers.

00:54:02.080 I don't want to know about this.

00:54:03.460 And I'm going to see I'm going to look him in the eye and see, you know, Bush said that

00:54:07.000 about Putin.

00:54:07.540 I looked into his eyes and saw his soul kind of a thing.

00:54:10.080 Bush tried to do the, you know, you know, the let my heart lead me how we're going to

00:54:14.360 do this stuff.

00:54:16.440 I think that can be OK, but I think it needs to be.

00:54:21.580 Let's not pretend like this is 40 chess that's going on here.

00:54:25.440 Trump goes with his gut.

00:54:26.400 It's what he does.

00:54:28.040 This isn't some grand plan.

00:54:29.700 And I think that we lose out a little bit by not having a more coordinated strategy.

00:54:33.380 Behind the scenes.

00:54:35.020 But we're we were doing the same thing over and over again, for instance, with North

00:54:38.620 Korea, which is sanctions, more sanctions, sanctions, more sanctions.

00:54:41.300 Didn't get us anywhere.

00:54:42.560 He's talking to him.

00:54:44.020 And if that does make a difference, it was Churchill that said, jaw jaw is better than

00:54:48.480 war war.

00:54:49.700 So and that was the one thing Barack Obama apparently said to Donald Trump when they passed, you

00:54:54.400 know, when the moving trucks passed at the at the White House.

00:54:57.520 He was most concerned with North Korea in their program.

00:55:00.140 So Putin, though, is not a dummy.

00:55:02.720 He's super, super, super smart.

00:55:05.300 And if you see anyone on the world stage that is as smart and strategic as as Putin as smart,

00:55:14.220 but not as strategic.

00:55:15.540 No, no.

00:55:16.720 He wants things.

00:55:17.780 This is something I mentioned in Backlash is that he wants all the benefits of civilized

00:55:22.840 Western democracy, but he doesn't want to play by any of the rules.

00:55:25.620 Correct.

00:55:25.820 So he wants to do things his own way.

00:55:27.520 And he I mean, it's a kleptocracy over there. 0.93

00:55:29.960 And it's a bunch of oligarchs that are raping that country. 1.00

00:55:32.600 The Russian think about Russia's history, pre communism.

00:55:35.380 Think of the artists that came from there, the composers, the writers.

00:55:38.660 These are people who love to read, that still love to go to the ballet, that love music.

00:55:42.200 And Russia is an incredible country, but for its terrible government, the Russian people. 1.00

00:55:47.580 But you get the government you deserve if they don't have the stomach to overthrow these

00:55:50.840 people.

00:55:51.280 It's not our problem.

00:55:52.380 We shouldn't be going around the world handing democracy on a silver platter to countries,

00:55:56.280 because if you don't fight for it, you won't be able to keep it.

00:55:58.600 You don't value it.

00:55:59.920 But Putin's dangerous.

00:56:01.280 Putin's dangerous.

00:56:02.700 I'm glad that there's certain foreign policy people around the president so that when Donald

00:56:07.380 Trump goes and gladly shakes his hand, they can quickly count Trump's fingers and

00:56:10.760 make sure he got all of his fingers back.

00:56:12.200 But I am concerned.

00:56:16.820 I think they've been way too soft with Putin, way too soft with the Saudis, particularly 0.95

00:56:21.500 with the whole Khashoggi thing.

00:56:22.840 I think that's dangerous with the crown prince.

00:56:25.440 Is it any different than the usual?

00:56:29.320 I don't like being friends with the Saudis. 1.00

00:56:31.200 I think they're despicable.

00:56:32.620 What they stand for, yada, yada.

00:56:34.940 I don't believe the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

00:56:38.180 It just doesn't.

00:56:39.220 It never works out.

00:56:40.980 But we should show some moral condemnation for things like this.

00:56:44.540 We shouldn't just say, well, he said maybe it's rogue people that did it.

00:56:47.740 He doesn't know what happened.

00:56:49.360 That kind of stuff of taking these people.

00:56:51.120 Putin says he didn't interfere with the election.

00:56:52.740 I buy that.

00:56:53.580 Even though my intelligence agencies.

00:56:55.240 We need to stand for more than just a great economy.

00:56:58.100 America is more than just its economy.

00:57:01.280 America is a set of ideas and principles.

00:57:03.200 This is what's great about America.

00:57:04.320 You can come from anywhere in the world and be an American.

00:57:06.880 You can't come from anywhere in the world and be a Frenchman. 1.00

00:57:08.980 You can't come from anywhere in the world and be Japanese. 1.00

00:57:11.360 But here we subscribe to a set of ideas and values.

00:57:14.640 And those are important.

00:57:15.740 But do we I mean, I think I think our government hasn't subscribed to those values off and on throughout our history.

00:57:25.100 But really, since the progressive era, we have just been sliding.

00:57:30.920 I remember when they took and the American way out of Superman.

00:57:35.360 Yeah, true justice in the American way.

00:57:36.700 So it's just truth, justice.

00:57:37.800 And we're like and the American way.

00:57:40.380 But wait, we have also now taken away truth.

00:57:44.100 There is no truth.

00:57:45.120 That's true.

00:57:46.120 And justice is social justice.

00:57:48.660 There is no Superman is America anymore.

00:57:52.180 They're all gone.

00:57:53.220 All three of those are gone.

00:57:54.640 If fine, you want to be out of the fight.

00:57:57.160 You want to just give up.

00:57:58.380 We can still fight.

00:57:59.740 And we need to have a set of principles in values that we're willing to fight for.

00:58:04.520 If you have not read George Will's new book on conservatism, I didn't know this story about Woodrow Wilson.

00:58:11.320 Did you know that Woodrow Wilson, while he was the you're talking to me?

00:58:15.500 I forget who I'm talking to.

00:58:17.040 I didn't know about the fight that Woodrow Wilson had at Princeton over where the graduate school should go.

00:58:22.680 And he lost that fight.

00:58:24.640 He wanted it on campus.

00:58:26.020 He wanted the graduate students with the undergrads.

00:58:28.140 And the person who headed the graduate school at Princeton said, no, there's this beautiful hill.

00:58:31.860 It's a 15 minute walk away.

00:58:33.180 That's where it should be.

00:58:34.700 Woodrow Wilson was so ticked off.

00:58:36.540 He resigned.

00:58:37.480 That's why he left Princeton.

00:58:39.240 He ran for governor of New Jersey that year.

00:58:42.300 That started his.

00:58:44.700 It was that marked his entry into politics.

00:58:46.900 And he's the guy that really took on Madisonian democracy.

00:58:50.380 Had he won that fight, had Princeton put the graduate school where it was, he might not have ever left.

00:58:55.700 We might have been a more Madisonian republic, Madisonian democracy.

00:58:59.440 If not for that happening at Princeton, I thought that was a fat.

00:59:03.240 That's what George will opens his book on conservatism about.

00:59:05.980 And it's fascinating.

00:59:07.120 I'd say it's a great book.

00:59:08.020 And I know you're a big reader.

00:59:09.040 And I just got it for Father's Day.

00:59:11.440 And I have loved it.

00:59:12.820 But that was all the times I've listened to you and Woodrow Wilson.

00:59:16.300 I never knew that story.

00:59:17.440 Why he went into politics.

00:59:18.820 Yeah, I didn't know that story.

00:59:19.840 I didn't know that story either.

00:59:23.000 But while we're here, speaking of Woodrow Wilson, one of the things he said was the job of education is to make a son the most unlike his father as possible.

00:59:40.800 That's not good.

00:59:41.760 We're there.

00:59:42.820 We're there.

00:59:43.840 So what are the principles that you think we still hold?

00:59:47.060 I want to clarify something.

00:59:49.460 I think the coasts and not all of the coasts, the media centers.

00:59:54.600 I think that kind of poison, that toxic hatred stuff, I think that's real.

01:00:01.460 And it's there.

01:00:02.300 I travel the country.

01:00:03.760 I talk to people.

01:00:05.020 Nobody's talking about this stuff in their real life.

01:00:07.620 Right.

01:00:07.800 They talk about it when they're watching television.

01:00:10.080 Right.

01:00:10.460 Or you're talking about a politician.

01:00:12.740 But nobody is talking about a hundred some genders.

01:00:17.160 They're not.

01:00:18.280 They're not doing it.

01:00:19.320 They're not.

01:00:19.560 OK.

01:00:19.700 So I'm not convinced we're as divided as we think we are.

01:00:24.200 However, the universities are pumping out these these kids now that don't have any idea at all what the American Republic really is and what the American idea and the American experiment was all about.

01:00:41.220 Have we lost that?

01:00:46.860 I don't think so.

01:00:48.180 I don't think so.

01:00:49.120 I think we are finally starting to see the beginnings of a correction in the marketplace of higher education.

01:00:56.960 I think the scandal of all these people buying their kids into school has is put out there.

01:01:02.740 What's the value of an education?

01:01:04.660 I have you know, I'm a big fan of Mike Rowe.

01:01:06.580 And I really think that one of the one of the bad things the American dream turned into was this idea that everybody's got to go to a four year college.

01:01:14.280 I agree.

01:01:14.700 You get people that spend a year or two there realize it's not for them.

01:01:17.620 They leave with a tremendous amount of debt.

01:01:19.760 Vocational training is huge.

01:01:21.580 We've we've we've been handing out visas for nurses in the Philippines because we can't get enough people here. 0.99

01:01:26.300 We're looking in Eastern European countries for electricians because we didn't have enough electricians here.

01:01:31.040 So I think America is is a place where there's going to always be the constant battle of ideas.

01:01:39.260 You've got the progressive and it should be.

01:01:41.540 This is why we have checks and balances within within our republic.

01:01:44.580 And it exists in the cultural space as well.

01:01:46.940 So I will never say die.

01:01:49.400 I will never say we've lost this fight because the fight continues.

01:01:53.460 I mean, I'm a Sonny Reagan optimist and I really believe America's best days are ahead of her, that we haven't hit our full potential, that there's so much coming.

01:02:01.280 Jonah Goldberg's book, A Suicide of the West, was fantastic.

01:02:04.500 And Jonah talks about us being at the peak of the mountain right now.

01:02:08.000 And we have to be really careful because if we lean too far one way or the other, we're going to topple off.

01:02:12.760 This is the best moment in history, in the best country in the history of the world to be alive.

01:02:17.500 We are so blessed to be here right now.

01:02:20.440 And that's worth fighting for.

01:02:22.100 And I want to fight for more than just a robust economy.

01:02:24.820 I want to fight for those ideas and what it means to be a good neighbor.

01:02:30.440 There's Robert.

01:02:32.060 I'm just completely throwing out all my favorite books.

01:02:34.560 But Putnam's book, Bowling Alone, is a fascinating book.

01:02:38.960 And he has a cocktail party gag or question he likes to ask.

01:02:42.580 And I do it every time I'm out with people.

01:02:45.000 What do you think was the invention of the 20th century that most served to isolate us from each other?

01:02:52.020 The 20th century, I would say that it is the Internet.

01:02:55.160 You know what he says it is?

01:02:56.620 Air conditioning.

01:02:57.240 He said we used to sit on the front stoop trying to catch a breeze.

01:03:01.920 People would walk their babies.

01:03:03.560 You would talk to your neighbors because it was too hot to sit inside.

01:03:06.400 So do you know about EBCOT, what EBCOT was supposed to be?

01:03:11.260 The experimental prototype, city of tomorrow.

01:03:14.620 Every front yard was facing a park.

01:03:18.960 There was no street.

01:03:21.060 There was no sidewalk.

01:03:22.340 Your front stoop opened up into the park.

01:03:25.800 I didn't know that.

01:03:27.300 Every home was built around the park.

01:03:29.260 And your backyards were very small.

01:03:33.120 It was you couldn't barbecue.

01:03:35.220 You weren't having picnics there.

01:03:36.600 You had nothing.

01:03:37.340 So he was trying to bring back that spirit of community where you would sit on the front porch.

01:03:46.040 You would have the kids play, but you would be playing with your neighbors in the big backyard, whatever.

01:03:50.420 And in the center, you would climb stairs and it would be a monorail system right directly into the city.

01:03:56.680 So there was no there was no traffic, no cars, nothing.

01:04:00.880 That is what we've missed.

01:04:03.600 We don't.

01:04:04.420 I talked to a taxi driver one time in New York City and he said, I said, and he was 70 maybe at the time.

01:04:17.380 And he had been driving since the 1950s.

01:04:20.560 And it was, he was an amazing guy.

01:04:23.460 Uh, and I said, how have, what changes have you seen in this city and in people?

01:04:32.040 He said, the change came in the late sixties.

01:04:34.600 He said, we used to all just, it would be hot.

01:04:37.460 We'd all bring our mattresses out and we'd sleep in the park.

01:04:41.700 Wow.

01:04:42.100 And he said, we would either sleep on the fire escapes or many of us would go down and we would sleep in the park because it was too hot.

01:04:49.540 We'd go out.

01:04:50.600 Everybody was there.

01:04:51.800 Everybody knew each other.

01:04:53.240 He said, and that all ended in the sixties and the violence that started and the, and the, um, the, the serial killings and everything else.

01:05:04.000 He said, and we all kind of went in back into our homes.

01:05:07.540 He said, it hadn't been the same since.

01:05:10.140 I agree.

01:05:11.200 I agree.

01:05:11.880 And we've now progressed from what will the neighbors think to not even knowing our neighbor's names.

01:05:17.000 And that's a big difference too, because those breaks on personal, uh, behavior have come off.

01:05:23.180 Uh, I have someone I work with and she said, if there was one thing from America's past, she'd bring back.

01:05:27.980 It'd be shame.

01:05:29.340 This idea that shame on you.

01:05:31.060 I remember that was the worst thing that an adult could say to me on public tarant interpretation.

01:05:35.440 I, it was such a horrible thing to have thought you've brought shame on yourself or your family.

01:05:40.700 Um, but these aren't irreversible problems that America has.

01:05:46.260 It really isn't, but I don't think there are solutions without first plugging back into what the values and principles of America.

01:05:53.940 You read Rudyard, you read Rudyard Kipling's, the gods of the copy book headings.

01:05:57.700 No, and I should have, because you did that great commercial that freaked everybody out.

01:06:04.340 I think it was for the Overton window, wasn't it?

01:06:06.160 Yeah.

01:06:06.320 Yeah.

01:06:06.460 That was such a powerful commercial.

01:06:07.920 I remember seeing that going.

01:06:08.740 I wish I'd thought of that.

01:06:09.660 It's from Rudyard Kipling and he saw exactly what we're going through right now.

01:06:16.120 He saw it in his time and he wrote this poem.

01:06:19.060 It's hard to find because it's, it's, you know, they, I mean, it's in one book that I found.

01:06:23.940 Uh, and I think that's intentional burying him.

01:06:28.100 Um, but he warns and he says, when all of these things happen, when you see them again, the gods of the copy book headings will limp back and say it once more.

01:06:38.660 It was in the beginning, it'll be in the end.

01:06:41.760 The dog returns to its vomit and the gods of the copy book headings with terror and slaughter will return.

01:06:49.780 He says that he feels that once you go to a certain point where you are no longer recognizing truth, you won't be able to even understand truth or even know how to find truth until truth reinstates itself.

01:07:07.760 And says, sorry, these things are always universally true. 1.00

01:07:13.680 And because you deny them, you're in trouble and trouble happens, you know, real trouble happens.

01:07:20.500 World War one in his case.

01:07:21.920 I like what Ben Shapiro says.

01:07:23.680 Facts don't care about your feelings.

01:07:25.460 Truth is truth.

01:07:26.660 And, uh, I used to be a, I used to make lots of jokes on Twitter.

01:07:31.780 It's one of the things that I enjoyed about social media was the, the intelligence of people you could interact with.

01:07:36.800 There's a lot of garbage on there, but I don't do it anymore.

01:07:40.100 And I have a little, uh, software program that deletes my tweets after two weeks.

01:07:43.920 Cause I don't want somebody coming back and saying three years from now out of context that I made some joke that if I had said it, like if I bumped into Stu in the hallway and I gave him a big hug and somebody said, you two ought to get a room or some silly thing.

01:07:56.780 And you didn't know the background.

01:07:57.800 And I said, Hey, Stu, I'm looking for rooms for you.

01:07:59.640 You know, on Twitter, it is.

01:08:02.040 So my own free speech, I feel has succumbed to a, uh, there's been a chill.

01:08:07.700 There's been a chilling effect on my, my free speech because it is a, it is a slash and burn kind of a thing.

01:08:14.220 And it is very dangerous.

01:08:16.060 And that is part of the war on truth as well.

01:08:18.520 People want to say black is white and they, I understand now as an adult and as an author, why, uh, movements come for the academics and the poets and the writers and the artists first.

01:08:30.720 Cause we have a way of boiling things down and making it easy to understand.

01:08:34.860 I mean, you do it every day in all your programs and that makes you a threat to the storytellers and those with those with, uh, a fixed star field on truth that is demanding evidence.

01:08:49.480 If you say that's not the North pole, show me the evidence, right.

01:08:54.680 You know, those people and the storytellers are the first to go and, uh, they are doing it.

01:09:01.380 And not only are they doing it, but people are turning their backs on storytellers because they're allowing themselves to be siloed in Facebook, people getting all their news there.

01:09:09.780 So they're not even listening to those storytellers.

01:09:12.220 They found people that will lie to them 24 seven and tell them what they want to hear.

01:09:16.320 So they found a way to kind of put wax in their ears so they're not even hearing truth anymore.

01:09:21.160 And that is one of the dangers of the internet.

01:09:23.360 Are you following on the stuff that's happening with Google and their algorithms?

01:09:27.580 Little, little bit.

01:09:28.400 I actually sent you a message and I don't think you saw it.

01:09:30.740 I sent it, uh, late last night because we had talked about what books we would want to see preserved because of digital and what's happening.

01:09:38.820 Microsoft is now shutting down.

01:09:40.700 It's e-reader service.

01:09:42.260 You get your books until the end of 2019 and then it's just, they're gone.

01:09:46.260 And I thought you'd really like reading that article, but it's, you were really onto something is, is what I wanted to say.

01:09:52.160 It only makes sense.

01:09:54.480 I mean, if we have all of our books digitally stored, I have all my Brad Thor books, you fall out of favor.

01:10:01.500 Gone.

01:10:02.140 They're gone.

01:10:03.060 Well, where are the little rascals?

01:10:04.280 I always heard this rumor that somebody had bought the rights to the little rascals programs because I never see them on TV anymore.

01:10:09.120 I had heard this thing and I never dug into it.

01:10:11.460 I don't know.

01:10:11.860 Maybe I, because I grew up with them.

01:10:13.540 I thought they were funny, but apparently somebody decided they weren't and those are now gone and we can have the discussion.

01:10:18.980 And I would, I saw him as a kid, so I can't argue for or against the little rascals.

01:10:23.920 And I don't want this to explode into a little rascals thing.

01:10:26.880 Thor's pro, pro Spanky.

01:10:29.460 And everybody knows Spanky was a monster.

01:10:31.840 He treated Darla like she was a piece of meat. 0.79

01:10:34.400 Alfalfa was blah, blah, blah.

01:10:36.720 I don't want to have that fight.

01:10:38.320 How is it?

01:10:39.220 How appropriate would it be that you would flush your career down over a little rascals? 0.97

01:10:45.900 Just a throwaway.

01:10:47.220 Controversy, yeah.

01:10:47.640 Cultural. 0.79

01:10:48.320 You'd be like, and I was going to be someone and then I talked about those damn little rascals.

01:10:57.740 But it is scary that you could have your entire body of work just turned off.

01:11:03.560 Just turned off.

01:11:04.140 I mean, I, you could erase me easily.

01:11:09.400 You'd take me off of radio.

01:11:11.740 You could take me off of YouTube.

01:11:15.080 You could ban me from the internet.

01:11:18.320 Make me just an absolute pariah.

01:11:21.000 De-platform you, yeah.

01:11:22.140 De-platform me.

01:11:23.100 Get rid of my books digitally.

01:11:25.500 Overnight, all of my work could be gone.

01:11:29.140 And would anyone know that I even lived five years from now?

01:11:34.740 Well, we've seen this and I'm going to, I'm going to jump right into Godwin's law, which

01:11:39.040 is never a good idea.

01:11:40.480 But what are the Nazis like burning?

01:11:42.640 They burn books for the same reason.

01:11:44.580 They were trying to expunge certain ideas, certain people from society.

01:11:48.840 So do you think, Brad, that there is a, there is a fundamental flaw in humans?

01:11:54.880 I mean, when you look at the Holocaust, the Holocaust happened, like, I think it's 25 times 0.89

01:11:59.620 throughout history.

01:12:01.080 It's been going on forever.

01:12:02.180 And, you know, the star sewn to your clothes, that's not the first time that happened.

01:12:07.920 That happened in Persia 700 years ago.

01:12:11.620 And little things just keep carrying on.

01:12:14.720 And you make the same mistake.

01:12:17.660 We look at the Gestapo and we see the Gestapo uniform and you're like, holy cow.

01:12:24.060 Well, that was designed by Hugo Boss.

01:12:27.540 He was the designer of that uniform.

01:12:29.900 It wasn't designed to look scary.

01:12:33.140 It was designed to look classy and snappy and buttoned up.

01:12:37.340 OK, it was if you take away what you know about the Nazis, I think most people would still

01:12:42.920 say that's a sharp uniform.

01:12:45.280 But once you know what that uniform stands for, then you're like, oh, boy.

01:12:50.420 So we have this part of us that doesn't recognize.

01:12:56.240 We just assume that evil is going to come with big black boots and a red armband.

01:13:02.100 Wasn't that Jonah Goldberg's book, Liberal Fascism?

01:13:04.740 And I think he was quoting George Carlin, saying that fascism will come with a smiley face.

01:13:08.480 Correct.

01:13:09.060 Correct.

01:13:09.800 And so we're not we're not seeing things where we refuse to to recognize.

01:13:15.580 Yeah, I I know that it's unlikely that this is going to happen, you know, in America.

01:13:26.000 But now in America, it's not so unlikely and it's not going to come looking the same way.

01:13:31.500 They're burning books right now.

01:13:33.540 So every time they take somebody off line and put them in a digital ghetto, it is Francis

01:13:39.920 Fukuyama, who said history does not repeat, but it does rhyme.

01:13:44.460 So it means you have to be looking.

01:13:46.120 You have to be willing to have the intellectual curiosity to say, is this is this similar?

01:13:51.900 And I grew up I went to a largely Jewish high school in Chicago.

01:13:55.880 So my progressive liberal arts school, I can't remember the breakdown, but the the friends

01:14:01.680 that I have now from high school that I know who are of the Jewish faith, I joke I've been

01:14:05.980 to more high holidays than I have to Christian holidays.

01:14:09.060 But I remember talking to parents and grandparents and how important it was not to forget, never

01:14:14.620 forget.

01:14:15.160 Right.

01:14:15.380 We talk about that all the time with the Holocaust, because it can repeat. 1.00

01:14:19.320 And Jewish people understand that it can come again.

01:14:22.140 And that's why it is so important to preserve that piece of history.

01:14:24.920 But it's also just as important not to forget.

01:14:27.760 It's also important not to let it happen, not to let those seeds grow.

01:14:31.460 And that's what I am concerned with.

01:14:33.060 If we can silence certain speech, then we're on a slippery slope.

01:14:54.920 You're a fiction writer.

01:14:57.380 Yes.

01:14:59.260 Write the fictional story from where we are.

01:15:05.460 The the the the high points of how this ends in a good way and a bad way.

01:15:12.980 And which one's more believable?

01:15:14.360 So particularly because of my friends growing up who are Jewish, I always wondered, how was

01:15:20.920 it that the German population in the 1930s could be so physically and intellectually and

01:15:26.780 economically intimidated into not necessarily supporting?

01:15:31.500 They weren't all Nazis in Germany.

01:15:32.760 But boy, I think very quickly people shut up.

01:15:35.660 There were some people that feel like Bonhoeffer and things like this that didn't.

01:15:38.640 Have you read Defying Hitler?

01:15:40.320 No, you have to read this book.

01:15:42.660 It's actually a journal, a diary of a guy that lived in in Germany during the Weimar Republic

01:15:51.980 and saw Hitler come to power and was actually writing something to warn the West.

01:15:58.860 OK, you don't know what you're dealing with.

01:16:00.700 You don't know what's happened to the German people.

01:16:02.920 And he goes through it and you see it in a completely different way.

01:16:07.660 You all of a sudden answer that question, because I've wondered that my whole life.

01:16:11.960 How did that happen?

01:16:14.100 Yeah.

01:16:14.420 And Brad, when you read it, put World War Two instead of World War One instead of World War

01:16:21.020 One, just replace that with the World Trade Center. 0.87

01:16:24.900 Yeah.

01:16:25.320 And it's all coming this way.

01:16:28.940 It's it's there.

01:16:30.160 Well, then.

01:16:30.980 So what we see is there were very likely everyday Germans in the streets saying these

01:16:35.740 Nazis are idiots.

01:16:36.980 We don't want this.

01:16:38.160 And then all of a sudden there's bricks through their windows.

01:16:40.480 There are burning stores and they don't hire these people like you see on Twitter.

01:16:44.700 Right.

01:16:44.960 It's not enough to disagree with someone on social media anymore.

01:16:47.540 You have to destroy them.

01:16:47.840 You have to destroy them.

01:16:48.740 I've had people get pissed with me and they always want to tag my publisher in everything.

01:16:52.880 Right.

01:16:53.640 What do you care?

01:16:54.380 Just ignore me.

01:16:55.260 Right.

01:16:55.460 I'm one voice.

01:16:56.220 Ignore me.

01:16:56.600 You don't like what I have to say.

01:16:57.620 Right.

01:16:57.900 But you're supposed to I'm supposed to lose everything and you salt the earth.

01:17:00.880 If you would, they they did do the bricks through the windows.

01:17:04.620 But the more effective thing was the essay and the essay, the brown shirts marching down. 0.58

01:17:10.760 And at the beginning, people didn't say Heil Hitler because they chose to. 0.79

01:17:16.080 It's because the essay was in public and they would beat.

01:17:20.360 They would go down.

01:17:21.160 If you didn't.

01:17:21.740 Yeah.

01:17:21.920 They'd take over a street.

01:17:23.160 Yep.

01:17:23.420 And if you didn't, they would stop and they would beat that person until everybody did.

01:17:28.360 And the U.S. media kept it secret.

01:17:31.340 They refused to report on it.

01:17:32.960 If you read Eric Larson's fabulous book in the Garden of Beasts.

01:17:35.960 Oh, it's great.

01:17:36.840 It is one of the most perfect books.

01:17:39.280 There isn't a single.

01:17:40.500 There's no typos.

01:17:41.660 There's no grammatical.

01:17:42.560 It is so and I've become friends with Eric and I've told him I love that book.

01:17:46.980 Please tell him I talked about that book every day for almost two years trying to get this

01:17:51.980 the people on my staff to read that.

01:17:53.640 It is fantastic.

01:17:55.620 And it reads like a thriller.

01:17:56.800 Yeah.

01:17:57.480 How he puts things together.

01:17:59.460 But in that's exactly you're right.

01:18:01.400 I didn't know about that until I'd read his book about how there were people that wouldn't.

01:18:05.860 One of my favorite pictures on the Internet is all of these all these Germans. 1.00

01:18:09.880 The one guy's like this and they got a circle saying, be this guy.

01:18:13.320 Be this guy.

01:18:15.060 And I love that.

01:18:16.120 That's who I want to be.

01:18:17.720 But yeah, the story.

01:18:18.660 Yeah.

01:18:19.400 But I want to change the ending.

01:18:21.680 Yeah.

01:18:21.860 Be that guy alive.

01:18:22.600 Be that guy alive.

01:18:23.400 Yeah.

01:18:23.500 Yeah.

01:18:23.740 Yeah.

01:18:25.040 It is is great to see you again.

01:18:27.760 It's great to see you, too.

01:18:28.800 What is what is the next book?

01:18:32.520 What are you going to take on next?

01:18:33.980 I don't know.

01:18:35.160 I really don't know.

01:18:36.460 It's having just gotten back from visiting Hemingway's house.

01:18:39.520 This is such an arrogant thing to say, to compare yourself to even say I walked in the

01:18:43.820 rooms of Hemingway's house.

01:18:45.240 I looked at what drove his style, what he learned in newspaper work for short, powerful

01:18:50.460 sentences.

01:18:52.420 I never read to have and have not.

01:18:54.660 And I'm reading it now.

01:18:55.820 And it's fascinating about a man who kind of is losing everything and has to turn to

01:18:59.320 crime to support his family and run smuggling back and forth with Cuba.

01:19:03.300 So I don't know.

01:19:05.340 I have a deep, deep desire as an artist to to maybe do a couple of one offs that are a

01:19:11.420 little different.

01:19:12.460 I'm going to turn I'm going to turn 50 in.

01:19:14.960 I think it's two months from today.

01:19:16.420 We're getting really close.

01:19:17.780 So I have a major milestone in my life and I want to spend at least the next two years

01:19:23.540 adding to what I've already done with the Scott Harvest stuff, continuing to make my

01:19:27.700 fans happy, but to stretch myself and go further with different things.

01:19:31.260 And so can you write two books and I did it one year when I did my all female Delta Force

01:19:36.120 team, the Athena project, I did two books, but walking around Hemingway's and I joked

01:19:40.760 with you earlier that, you know, we talk about how much we write in a day and Hemingway did

01:19:45.120 five to 700 words.

01:19:46.360 If I'm doing it just for myself, maybe I don't even consider it for publication.

01:19:50.240 It doesn't have to be a hundred thousand word book.

01:19:52.440 There may be another way I do.

01:19:54.200 I've got friends that have been begging me to do graphic novels with them.

01:19:57.180 They love graphic novels.

01:19:58.500 There's lots of little things we can potentially do, but I want to stretch myself as a, as a

01:20:03.040 writer.

01:20:03.340 I want to do more.

01:20:04.400 I love Scott Harvest.

01:20:05.260 He's not going anywhere.

01:20:06.140 I promise he's, he's going to be around for a long time, but I'd love to do some more

01:20:10.460 stuff in the genre.

01:20:12.100 I've got a really cool idea that actually takes one of the stories from the Bible and

01:20:17.000 puts a major spin on it, drops it in the CIA that I think would be so current.

01:20:22.080 And you'd read this and not have any idea until the end.

01:20:24.720 Oh my gosh, I know that story, but it's told in such a way that it's all of the same things

01:20:30.020 play out.

01:20:30.440 That's the one I'm most excited about.

01:20:31.980 And I feel like I have to do it.

01:20:33.620 I have to do it.

01:20:34.460 Not because I want to promote the Bible or anything, but I just think it's one of the

01:20:37.620 greatest stories ever told.

01:20:39.780 And I think dropping it into the CIA with spies and all this stuff could be so cool.

01:20:44.680 That's great.

01:20:45.380 That's really neat.

01:20:46.240 That's your cliffhanger.

01:20:47.440 Yeah.

01:20:47.720 There you go.

01:20:48.680 Thanks, Brent.

01:20:49.260 Thanks, Glenn.

01:20:49.680 Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend

01:21:01.000 so it can be discovered by other people.

The Glenn Beck Program - July 13, 2019

Ep 44 ｜ Brad Thor ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

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