The Joe Rogan Experience - April 14, 2021


Joe Rogan Experience #1634 - Jack Carr

Topics
FJ40 subculture Rolex hunting ads weaponization of social media cancel culture freedom of speech complexities power comes from the barrel of a gun Great California Exodus homelessness in LA society fragility chaos big tech ambush L vaccine passport Eisenhower military-industrial complex speech anthrax vaccinations leg kicks and martial arts
Hosted by
Joe Rogan
Guests
Jack Carr
Mentioned
Chris Pratt Rolex Explorer James Reese Eddie Bravo Joe Biden Night Michael Hastings Edmund Hillary Andy Stumpf Antoine Fuqua Jack Reacher John F. Kennedy Glenn Greenwald Furious Details Dave Chappelle Jonathan Ward Katie Pavlich John Grisham John Hunt McChrystal Adderall and 112 more
Joe Rogan Experience #1633 - Ali Macofsky Joe Rogan Experience #1635 - Katie Spotz

Episode Stats


Length

2 hours and 55 minutes

Words per minute

216.45

Word count

37,922

Sentence count

3,831

Harmful content

Misogyny

34

sentences flagged

Toxicity

369

sentences flagged

Hate speech

29

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the comedian and podcaster joins me to talk about the new Snyder Cut of Justice League, Tarantino's new movie "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," and why he doesn't like going to the movie theater. We also talk about what it's like being in a movie theater with kids and how to deal with the anxiety that comes with going to a movie theatre with kids. And we talk about why you should never go to the movies with your kids, unless it's to see a movie with your own kids. Joe also talks about his new book, "The Dark Side Of" and how he's going to take his kids to see it in a theater with his wife and kids, and why it's a good idea to have a home theater in your own home. And he talks about how much he loves going to movie theaters and why you shouldn't be scared of going to movies with kids in the first place. If you're not a fan of movies, you should definitely check out this episode, because it's worth the drive-thru movie theater experience, because you'll get a whole lot of laughs along the way. I'm sure you'll agree that it's one of the most fun things I've ever done and it'll be worth the price of admission! I hope you enjoy it! -Joe Rogan - Thank you for listening and tweet me if you have a question or would like to ask me a question, I'll answer it or have me answer it in the next week! Love ya, bye! Timestamps: 1:00 - 2: What's your favorite movie theater? 3:30 - What do you think of a movie you've ever gone to? 4:00 5:00 | What movie you went to see with your kid? 6:30 | What are you scared of? 7:30 8:15 | What would you like to see at a movie or theater experience? 9: What are your kids do you're most excited about? 11:15 - What kind of movie you're going to go to watch with your family? 12:15 13: What movie should you go to next? 14:40 - What movie do you re going to see in your next movie? 15:40 16:20 - How do you feel about it?

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Joe Rogan Experience" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:01.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!
00:00:04.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.
00:00:06.000 Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
00:00:14.000 Good to go.
00:00:14.000 All right.
00:00:15.000 I have officially read more fiction from you than any...
00:00:19.000 There's two other people.
00:00:21.000 J.R.R. Tolkien and Stephen King.
00:00:24.000 Those are the only other two people.
00:00:25.000 That's rare air right there to be in.
00:00:29.000 They're great, though.
00:00:30.000 Thank you, man.
00:00:30.000 Thank you so much.
00:00:32.000 I've been listening to the audiobook, I won't lie, which is odd because the guy does the girl voices and the guy voices.
00:00:37.000 Yeah, Ray Porter.
00:00:38.000 He plays Darkseid in the new Snyder Cut of Justice League.
00:00:42.000 Oh, really?
00:00:43.000 For those people that have like four and a half, five hours on your hands to watch that, apparently it's incredible and he's such a great guy.
00:00:48.000 Is the new cut four and a half, five hours?
00:00:50.000 Something like that.
00:00:51.000 At least four.
00:00:52.000 Because I went to watch it because he's a friend of mine.
00:00:53.000 So I went to watch it because I'm in the middle of all these interviews and doing stuff for the book launch and I saw how long it was.
00:00:58.000 I'm like...
00:00:58.000 All right, Ray, I'm going to watch this in a couple weeks for you because it looks wonderful, but I just can't sit down for four hours.
00:01:04.000 Well, supposedly Tarantino made a 20-hour cut of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
00:01:08.000 Oh, my gosh.
00:01:10.000 People will watch it, too. 0.99
00:01:12.000 Oh, fuck yeah, I'll watch it. 1.00
00:01:12.000 People will watch it 20 hours. 1.00
00:01:14.000 If I sat down for like an hour and a half in my house and watched some old movie from the 80s or something like that, I can only imagine...
00:01:20.000 The looks I'll get from the rest of the family.
00:01:22.000 Sitting there, having a beer, watching First Blood or something that I enjoyed watching as a kid.
00:01:26.000 That's not happening.
00:01:27.000 20 hours?
00:01:28.000 That's rough.
00:01:30.000 I think the move to do, if they wanted to do, is to release it on Netflix as a series.
00:01:35.000 Totally.
00:01:35.000 That's a great idea.
00:01:38.000 Tarantino, I don't know what his deal is in terms of his financial situation, like who has ownership or how it would do it, but if they could sell it to Netflix or HBO Max or whatever and just put it as a series.
00:01:50.000 Oh, totally. 0.99
00:01:51.000 Fuck yeah. 1.00
00:01:51.000 It'd be amazing. 1.00
00:01:52.000 Yeah, people will tune in.
00:01:53.000 It'll be a big thing.
00:01:54.000 Probably the only time a 20-hour movie was ever made into 20 different episodes to make a season.
00:02:01.000 Right, and then you could compare it to the...
00:02:03.000 I saw the first one, the first cut, rather, with Dave Chappelle, Donnell Rawlings, and all the other people that opened up for Dave and Ian Edwards.
00:02:13.000 We were in a movie theater.
00:02:15.000 Dave rented out an entire movie theater.
00:02:17.000 So we did a show.
00:02:18.000 We did this arena show in Tacoma.
00:02:21.000 At the Tacoma Dome.
00:02:22.000 This 25,000 seat show. 0.99
00:02:25.000 It was fucking bananas. 0.99
00:02:26.000 And then afterwards, we all went out and went to this movie theater. 0.99
00:02:30.000 And they had rented out the entire theater for just us.
00:02:33.000 That's perfect.
00:02:34.000 So we're just lounging this movie theater watching that movie.
00:02:37.000 It was probably like 2 o'clock in the morning or something crazy.
00:02:39.000 Yeah, that's the way to do it.
00:02:40.000 I think it's one of the last movies I saw in the theater before COVID hit.
00:02:44.000 Because with kids, we just don't get out that often anyway.
00:02:47.000 But that was one of the last ones that we sat down and actually had that experience.
00:02:50.000 But it was great.
00:02:51.000 Especially the end.
00:02:52.000 I love the end of that movie.
00:02:53.000 It's so crazy.
00:02:54.000 It's a great movie.
00:02:55.000 It's a really fun movie.
00:02:56.000 Flamethrower at the end.
00:02:57.000 It's fantastic.
00:02:58.000 The thing about movies is if you go to the movies, you have to trust that your fellow humans are not going to be retarded. 1.00
00:03:05.000 I know.
00:03:05.000 It's tough.
00:03:06.000 You've got to trust that they're not going to look at their phones.
00:03:09.000 You've got to trust that they're not going to talk to each other, be loud. 0.94
00:03:14.000 People are so goofy.
00:03:15.000 The home theater is the way to go. 0.91
00:03:18.000 If things continue on this track, we're having a home theater.
00:03:20.000 And I get nervous now, of course.
00:03:22.000 There's probably...
00:03:22.000 You know, the chances of something happening are so slim, but I get in there, you know, I look where the exits are.
00:03:26.000 Okay, if something goes off in here, if there's a fire or a bomb or something like that, okay, we're going to move down this aisle, put your hand on the wall, and move down so you can find that exit rather than just, like, chaos.
00:03:35.000 So I identify those things, I talk to the kids about that stuff, and then I'm ready.
00:03:39.000 So if someone strange walks in, like, I'm like, mm-hmm.
00:03:41.000 Yeah, well, that's the Navy sealing you.
00:03:43.000 I guess, but even before that, so I went to, growing up, they did a Apocalypse Now, like 10-year anniversary or maybe like 15-year anniversary.
00:03:50.000 I went to see Apocalypse Now.
00:03:52.000 No one in the theater except me.
00:03:54.000 I'm like, oh my gosh, huge theater.
00:03:55.000 And I'm sitting there watching and somebody walks in.
00:03:58.000 Some crazy person walks in.
00:03:59.000 So it's like two rows ahead of me.
00:04:00.000 So my experience watching Apocalypse Now for the first time is just looking like this at the back of this guy's head.
00:04:06.000 It's like all jittery and crazy.
00:04:07.000 And I thought, you know, who knows?
00:04:08.000 You know, 17-year-old kid, you know, 16, whatever I was at the time.
00:04:11.000 I'm like, I'm like, ready.
00:04:12.000 Because I'm training.
00:04:13.000 I'm boxing.
00:04:14.000 I'm doing all my stuff.
00:04:14.000 I know I'm going to the SEAL teams.
00:04:16.000 I'm like, this is it.
00:04:17.000 This is it.
00:04:17.000 I'm going to get tested right here.
00:04:19.000 So it was a horrible experience.
00:04:20.000 So even today when I see that movie, which we watched before going into Hell Week.
00:04:24.000 Oh, really?
00:04:25.000 So me and Andy Stumpf, that was our class movie.
00:04:27.000 Now they show, after that, they show Braveheart to get you fired up before you go into Hell Week.
00:04:31.000 We watched Apocalypse Now.
00:04:32.000 That is not the movie to watch before going into Hell Week.
00:04:35.000 That's a movie that makes you reconsider.
00:04:37.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:04:37.000 That's why we had so many people quit, probably, is because they made us watch that movie.
00:04:41.000 But anyway, point B in movie theaters.
00:04:43.000 I heard Arclight closed down in LA. Yes.
00:04:46.000 Like today or something.
00:04:47.000 Today, right?
00:04:48.000 Yesterday, something?
00:04:48.000 They announced it yesterday, yeah, but people are hoping some other company comes and buys those properties or whatever.
00:04:53.000 Well, of course.
00:04:54.000 But the thing is, I really think that with HBO Max showing first cut, like King Kong vs.
00:05:01.000 Godzilla was on HBO Max, Wonder Woman was on HBO Max, they're going to start doing that.
00:05:05.000 And when they start doing that and people have the option of staying home, if you have a nice television, you don't have to deal with people on their phone, man.
00:05:13.000 I don't have to deal with that crazy person coming in, just getting all written ready to go. 0.99
00:05:17.000 It's also just so many people are on their goddamn phone. 0.99
00:05:21.000 It's just so goofy. 0.99
00:05:22.000 They just can't put the thing down and you see them texting.
00:05:25.000 The light lights up and you hear them talking.
00:05:29.000 It totally disrupts the whole experience.
00:05:32.000 Even for me, it's hard to put that thing down.
00:05:34.000 It's like we're programmed.
00:05:35.000 So that's why I love getting away to a place where that's not even an option.
00:05:39.000 But on the other hand, if you go to a movie and everybody's cool, it's a nice experience because you're all experiencing it together.
00:05:46.000 It really is fun.
00:05:47.000 So you just have to take that risk of going and unfortunately running into knuckleheads. 0.88
00:05:54.000 Yeah.
00:05:54.000 No, it's sad that we have to think about that.
00:05:56.000 Going as a kid, I never thought about that.
00:05:58.000 I always thought, oh, it's going to be so awesome.
00:05:59.000 I'm going to see Predator.
00:06:00.000 I'm going to see Delta Force with my dad.
00:06:02.000 I'm going to see Running Man, whatever it was at the time.
00:06:04.000 You had no options.
00:06:05.000 Loved it.
00:06:05.000 Yeah.
00:06:06.000 There was no place else.
00:06:06.000 You had to wait six, seven months, a year for it to come out on VHS, then ride your bike to the VHS store and hope it was in there.
00:06:12.000 It wouldn't be there for the first week because you're going to get in line, a waiting list to get these things.
00:06:17.000 And you look at that return bin, see if it's in the return bin.
00:06:20.000 But yeah, it's crazy.
00:06:22.000 But yeah, it was totally different.
00:06:24.000 It was such a fun experience.
00:06:24.000 And now we have to think about bombs going off, people being crazy, and just looking at your phone being annoying.
00:06:29.000 Yeah, you gotta think of so many different things now.
00:06:32.000 And the other thing is, like, people are watching movies on their phones now.
00:06:36.000 If I was Quentin Tarantino and I made a masterpiece, like, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and I knew someone was watching on a six-inch screen, I'd be like, ugh.
00:06:44.000 No, brutal.
00:06:45.000 Come on, man.
00:06:45.000 But the kids are doing that.
00:06:46.000 My kids are on their little device, and that's why they're watching their shows on this thing.
00:06:50.000 I can't even believe it.
00:06:52.000 Rarely do we watch the big screen together.
00:06:53.000 It's just crazy.
00:06:55.000 But yeah, it's a bummer, that's for sure.
00:06:57.000 Because I love it.
00:06:58.000 It was such a great experience growing up.
00:06:59.000 I remember those movies.
00:07:00.000 I remember all those different ones.
00:07:02.000 Back to the Future, I remember all those and having such a great time.
00:07:04.000 And now we don't really do that anymore.
00:07:06.000 Well, there's something about the written word that seems to have a life outside of this digital world.
00:07:16.000 You have to have someone write these things out, right?
00:07:20.000 Even if it's going to be a film, you have to write the script.
00:07:24.000 And if you're modifying a script from a book, like your books, someone has to...
00:07:29.000 So it gives me hope that the written word is still valuable, that fiction...
00:07:36.000 You can get caught up in a man's or a woman's ideas, and they take you on this journey of creativity.
00:07:44.000 There's something to it, man.
00:07:46.000 When you're reading it, it's not just that you're getting enthralled with this story and you're being taken on this journey, but it's also, for me at least...
00:07:56.000 I know that as a guy who wrote this, or a woman who wrote this, I know that I'm being...
00:08:01.000 This is someone's labor.
00:08:04.000 I know they sat down.
00:08:05.000 With you, we're friends, so it's cool.
00:08:07.000 I know you.
00:08:10.000 I've seen pictures of your office.
00:08:11.000 I know you're sitting there typing away, and as I'm getting this experience out of your books, it's like...
00:08:18.000 There's something about it still fuels the imagination.
00:08:24.000 There's something great about movies where you see it all and it's wild and you know it's creative, but there's also something great about having your imagination fill it all in for you.
00:08:34.000 Some of that, it takes effort.
00:08:36.000 Growing up, it was effort.
00:08:37.000 You sit down, you read these books.
00:08:39.000 In movies, more passive.
00:08:40.000 You're there.
00:08:40.000 You're enjoying it.
00:08:41.000 You're part of this experience.
00:08:43.000 But your imagination, some of those things are filled in.
00:08:45.000 You know what the trees look like.
00:08:46.000 You know what the cliff looks like.
00:08:47.000 You know what the water looks like as you're seeing it.
00:08:49.000 But in a book, when you're describing a mountain range or someone walking into an office, you're plugging in all these little pieces from your own experience through your own filters and biases and all the rest of it.
00:08:58.000 So you're actually an active participant in that creation, which is kind of cool.
00:09:03.000 And I loved that.
00:09:04.000 I loved that growing up.
00:09:06.000 I loved being a part of the magic of these books, and that's what I'm trying to recreate today with these.
00:09:11.000 But also going to movies has helped huge.
00:09:13.000 And growing up, I thought it was just fun.
00:09:14.000 I just loved going to these movies, especially the ones that had main characters that had backgrounds that I wanted in real life one day.
00:09:20.000 So I just naturally gravitated to all those movies.
00:09:23.000 But it helped in that it helped me with my storytelling.
00:09:26.000 It helped me read a book like First Blood, created in 1972 by David Morell.
00:09:31.000 Then we have the Stallone movie.
00:09:32.000 Two very different things.
00:09:34.000 Both fantastic.
00:09:35.000 How different is the book than the movie?
00:09:37.000 It is very different.
00:09:38.000 I feel like we should be able to talk about it because it came out in 1972 without spoilers.
00:09:42.000 Yeah, we can get that.
00:09:43.000 Yeah, so at the end of the novel, Rambo dies.
00:09:48.000 We can't have that!
00:09:49.000 That's right.
00:09:50.000 He's not even named. 0.99
00:09:50.000 There's no fucking way! 0.99
00:09:51.000 Yeah, and Hollywood gave him. 0.99
00:09:52.000 Chase the script! 0.78
00:09:53.000 Which they did because it tested very poorly with audiences when they just rooted for this guy for this whole movie and then all of a sudden he gets killed at the end.
00:10:01.000 Oh, so they did do it in the first movie.
00:10:03.000 They had him die.
00:10:04.000 Then they filmed it again.
00:10:06.000 They filmed a different ending, which is much better and allowed them to continue on.
00:10:09.000 But now he's like 80. He's still getting after it, though.
00:10:13.000 Still getting after it.
00:10:14.000 It's awesome.
00:10:15.000 You're going to be like that.
00:10:17.000 Yeah!
00:10:17.000 Joey Diaz told me he went to see The Last Rambo, and he did it on Edibles, and he said it was one of the funniest movies he's ever seen in his life.
00:10:24.000 He goes, first of all, he goes, the guy is still, he's still in great shape, but he's, it's like, it's kind of almost like cheesy now.
00:10:32.000 Like, they've turned it, like, they know what they're doing, so there's a scene where he, like, rips some guy's throat out of his throat.
00:10:37.000 So great.
00:10:38.000 Cuts his heart out.
00:10:39.000 It's amazing.
00:10:40.000 Yeah?
00:10:40.000 I love it.
00:10:40.000 Yeah.
00:10:41.000 There's no way I wasn't going to love the movie.
00:10:42.000 I just grow up.
00:10:43.000 I'm rooting for him.
00:10:44.000 That's the whole point.
00:10:44.000 I'm rooting for that movie to do well.
00:10:46.000 I want it to do well.
00:10:47.000 I want him to do well just because I have such a connection.
00:10:49.000 How old is he?
00:10:50.000 Gosh, he's got to be 70-something.
00:10:51.000 70-something.
00:10:52.000 Yeah.
00:10:53.000 Well, I just found out yesterday that Robert Redford's almost 90. Wow.
00:10:56.000 So what do you think?
00:10:57.000 He's 84. I checked yesterday.
00:10:59.000 Yesterday?
00:10:59.000 Robert Redford?
00:11:00.000 Yeah, it's almost 90. Well, it's kind of almost 90. Why did you check yesterday?
00:11:03.000 That's like 14 is almost 20. 14 is not almost 20. Sly is 74. 74. Look at that.
00:11:11.000 And still crushing.
00:11:12.000 Wow.
00:11:13.000 Yeah, it's amazing.
00:11:13.000 74 years old.
00:11:15.000 But point being, I was like, I love those movies.
00:11:17.000 And then when I sat down to talk to the producers and all the people that were involved in making The Terminalist into this series, usually they like to get rid of the author right away because they don't want him saying, like, You ruined my vision and all this.
00:11:27.000 So I got to talk to them about growing up and reading all these books and watching the movie adaptations of these different books or the TV adaptations or whatever it was.
00:11:35.000 And they realized, okay, I've been thinking about this for a long time.
00:11:38.000 I understand telling a story visually is different than writing it on the written page.
00:11:41.000 And they're creative people.
00:11:42.000 They're going to take this thing and they're going to tell it in a way that is more...
00:11:48.000 Palatable?
00:11:50.000 Yeah, for a visual.
00:11:51.000 For 90 minutes?
00:11:52.000 Yeah, for people to sit there.
00:11:53.000 And it's going to be eight, so it's eight hours.
00:11:54.000 So it's going to be eight, which isn't far away from a 20-hour...
00:11:58.000 I mean, it's only 12 hours away from Tarangino's thing.
00:12:00.000 So, yeah, eight hours.
00:12:01.000 So eight episodes for Amazon Prime.
00:12:04.000 And so is it all four books?
00:12:06.000 It's just the first one.
00:12:07.000 Just the first one.
00:12:07.000 So you could conceivably do this for all four books.
00:12:10.000 Yep, they're talking about the second one already, which is pretty cool, but I guess it all depends on how the first one does.
00:12:14.000 If it just bombs, then probably not.
00:12:16.000 I started your books out of order.
00:12:18.000 What did I start with?
00:12:19.000 You started with Savage Son?
00:12:20.000 I think I started with the third one.
00:12:23.000 Yeah, you started with the third, Savage Son.
00:12:24.000 And then I went backwards.
00:12:25.000 Then you went back.
00:12:26.000 Yeah.
00:12:26.000 So they're doing, yeah, they're starting with the first one, and then depending on Chris's schedule and Antoine's schedule and how everything looks, then maybe they do another season.
00:12:34.000 So we'll see.
00:12:35.000 That's the goal anyway.
00:12:36.000 Even though I started with the third one, it works.
00:12:39.000 You could just pick it up from the third one.
00:12:40.000 But when I went back to the first one, I was like, hmm, maybe I should have started this way.
00:12:44.000 Yeah.
00:12:44.000 Much better, I think, to start with the first one because you understand the characters.
00:12:47.000 You have this relationship built with them, that sort of thing.
00:12:49.000 So I think it works better that way.
00:12:51.000 It works either way.
00:12:52.000 And it works since I enjoyed the third one so much.
00:12:55.000 Going back and listening to the first two were great, too.
00:12:57.000 So cool.
00:12:58.000 And it filled it in.
00:12:59.000 But do you anticipate writing with new characters?
00:13:04.000 Are you going to keep Jack Reese?
00:13:06.000 Like, how are you going to do this?
00:13:07.000 Yeah, so James Reese.
00:13:08.000 James Reese.
00:13:09.000 Yeah, for this season.
00:13:09.000 Why is Jack...
00:13:10.000 Jack is John.
00:13:12.000 Sometimes.
00:13:13.000 Sometimes.
00:13:14.000 John F. Kennedy, Jack, you know, that sort of thing. 0.99
00:13:17.000 I fucked up all the time. 0.99
00:13:17.000 Yep, no, it's easy to do. 0.99
00:13:18.000 And then you have Jack Reacher character, you have Jack Ryan, you know, he's really John Ryan from the Clancy stuff, so it's, yeah, James Reese, the main character, former Navy SEAL sniper, background similar to mine, but right now...
00:13:29.000 It's so hard to get an audience to connect with your character.
00:13:32.000 And I didn't even think about that as I started.
00:13:34.000 But since that's happened, since he is resonating with people and the stories are resonating with people, that I think I'm going to continue on with the same character, the same storyline, building on it, building along his journey, because we're all on this journey and people can relate to that as well, to transitions and different struggles and all that.
00:13:50.000 So I'm going to continue with this character for as long as people want to continue to read about him.
00:13:54.000 So do you feel like you just hit gold? 0.95
00:13:56.000 So you're in a nice fucking vein of gold in this map and you might as well just keep running? 0.98
00:14:02.000 I think so. 0.98
00:14:04.000 I heard a story from my editor and she has another author that had kind of the same thing.
00:14:10.000 His character was resonating and he said, I think I'm going to do something different.
00:14:14.000 And she's like, what?
00:14:15.000 No, you're not.
00:14:16.000 You know how rare this is?
00:14:18.000 Right, like J.K. Rawlings.
00:14:20.000 She had this amazing success with Harry Potter, and then she wrote another book.
00:14:24.000 And, you know, I mean, I'm sure it's probably pretty successful just because she's J.K. Rawlings and everybody loves her, but I haven't heard shit about it.
00:14:33.000 No, and sometimes it's hard to move over.
00:14:35.000 What's the new book about?
00:14:38.000 Magic.
00:14:38.000 No.
00:14:39.000 Well, maybe not.
00:14:39.000 I don't know.
00:14:40.000 I feel like I knew something.
00:14:41.000 I couldn't tell you what it is.
00:14:42.000 I have no idea.
00:14:42.000 I'm sure it sold a million copies.
00:14:44.000 Because everything she does. 0.85
00:14:45.000 Yeah.
00:14:46.000 But we all know Harry Potter.
00:14:47.000 Like that is part of the culture now.
00:14:49.000 Yeah.
00:14:49.000 That is a part of the culture.
00:14:51.000 But yeah, I'm continuing on with this for a while.
00:14:53.000 But I'll do other projects as well.
00:14:55.000 Like I learned a ton working on these scripts.
00:14:56.000 And I didn't know anything about screenwriting going into it.
00:14:59.000 And the screenwriter, David Agilio, awesome guy out there in L.A., he really just kind of mentored me along.
00:15:04.000 And we worked on these things together.
00:15:05.000 And I got to advise on each of them.
00:15:06.000 So I got to see how that process went.
00:15:08.000 Got to see what it looks like when you bring a writer's room in that I knew you have experience with.
00:15:12.000 Now you have 15 people in that are all giving their different ideas to how to adapt your work.
00:15:17.000 So it's really interesting.
00:15:18.000 Were you there while that was happening?
00:15:18.000 Not physically.
00:15:19.000 So they sent me the...
00:15:20.000 So COVID hit pretty soon into it.
00:15:23.000 So they were all virtual too.
00:15:24.000 So they're all doing that virtual.
00:15:26.000 The room was virtual.
00:15:27.000 So you did a virtual meeting though.
00:15:29.000 So you were at least digitally in presence.
00:15:32.000 So was it weird having people talk about your creation and sort of move it around and...
00:15:38.000 Do they keep all the main characters, like Katie and his ex-wife and his daughter and all that stuff?
00:15:44.000 Yeah, so Chris wanted to keep it.
00:15:45.000 So Chris optioned it right out of the gate, Chris Pratt.
00:15:47.000 So January of 2018, before it even hits shelves, Chris Pratt options it because my dear friend Jared Shaw gives him a copy and says, this is your next project, which is just crazy.
00:15:55.000 By the way, who's better than Chris Pratt?
00:15:57.000 I can't think of anybody.
00:15:59.000 He's my favorite Chris.
00:16:00.000 Pfft! 0.63
00:16:01.000 He's great.
00:16:02.000 He's just such a great guy.
00:16:04.000 He is.
00:16:04.000 He's so nice.
00:16:05.000 And for him, he's perfect for that role.
00:16:07.000 So perfect.
00:16:08.000 Perfect.
00:16:09.000 He had a small role in Zero Dark Thirty where he plays a Navy SEAL and a very small part, but his other stuff hasn't been as violent, hasn't been as visceral, hasn't been as primal, and so people are going to be surprised.
00:16:20.000 How graphic is this going to be?
00:16:22.000 Pretty graphic.
00:16:23.000 Well, the books are so graphic.
00:16:26.000 There we are.
00:16:26.000 There we are right there.
00:16:28.000 Yep.
00:16:29.000 I think Antoine wasn't supposed to post that, so I'm so glad that he did, though. 1.00
00:16:33.000 Oh, Antoine, you fucked up. 0.97
00:16:34.000 It's on Chris's page, actually. 0.99
00:16:35.000 Yeah, Chris did it, too.
00:16:36.000 Chris reposted it, which is great.
00:16:38.000 Wow.
00:16:39.000 And Antoine Fuqua right there, man, he is such an amazing guy.
00:16:43.000 So I did Training Day, did Tears of the Sun, Magnificent Seven, Shooter, Equalizer.
00:16:48.000 And it's one of those guys, like, when you meet him and you're in his presence, like, something's different.
00:16:52.000 You know, you have this, like, you meet a lot of people that come through here.
00:16:55.000 And maybe a couple of them have had that sort of presence.
00:16:58.000 Incredible.
00:16:58.000 Such a nice guy.
00:16:59.000 So having Chris and Antoine at the top of this thing, so many people came up to me on set and just told me, hey, this feels different than other movies we've worked on.
00:17:07.000 Like everybody from, you know, in craft services to whatever else, technical advisors, you know, all coming in saying, this is different.
00:17:12.000 And plus we had like 12 SEALs on set, guys that I knew in the teams that are there playing SEALs or acting in it or doing stunt coordination or technical advising or whatever it is.
00:17:21.000 So we were all on, so it was like a reunion.
00:17:23.000 That's awesome.
00:17:23.000 So we had a blast.
00:17:24.000 Yeah, so all those guys there, it was a huge reunion for a week on set and we had a blast.
00:17:28.000 But yeah, it could not be, and you trust, a lot of this is trust.
00:17:31.000 So when you hand something over to somebody to take your work And change it into something and adapt it to film.
00:17:36.000 Or it can be anything.
00:17:38.000 But there's a lot of trust involved.
00:17:40.000 Especially me, if you're not J.K. Rowling or you're not Stephen King and you're not maintaining creative control, you hand that to somebody else and you cross your fingers.
00:17:49.000 And there's no two better people to be in charge of this than Chris Pratt and Antoine Fuqua.
00:17:53.000 They're incredible people.
00:17:54.000 Yeah, you knocked it out of the park with those guys.
00:17:57.000 And it's just also, like, the idea of doing it the way you're doing it as a series is so brilliant.
00:18:03.000 I love, like, Ozark and all these.
00:18:07.000 These series are almost better than movies because you get to follow it along.
00:18:13.000 And, like, realistically, you're not going to read this book in an hour and a half or two hours or even three hours.
00:18:19.000 Yeah.
00:18:20.000 This is a long one.
00:18:22.000 This is longer.
00:18:22.000 So you can use it as a blunt force object weapon if you need to, or a doorstop.
00:18:27.000 It's the longest one.
00:18:28.000 Yeah, exactly.
00:18:28.000 John Wick 3 killed that guy with a book.
00:18:30.000 Did he really?
00:18:31.000 In 3?
00:18:31.000 Yeah.
00:18:31.000 I've got to go back and watch that part.
00:18:33.000 He shoved it in the dude's mouth.
00:18:33.000 Oh, nice.
00:18:34.000 Bang, and then he put him over, while it's in the dude's mouth, he took it out of his mouth, put it on the dude's neck, and slammed him over a table.
00:18:45.000 Nice.
00:18:46.000 Oh, I love it. 0.76
00:18:46.000 Snapped his neck. 0.76
00:18:47.000 It was pretty ridiculous. 0.99
00:18:49.000 Jamie, how do you do that? 0.93
00:18:51.000 Jamie's the best.
00:18:52.000 How does he do that so fast?
00:18:53.000 Incredible.
00:18:54.000 Just go to the end because it's a long-ass scene.
00:18:56.000 Oh, nice.
00:18:57.000 This might be my new favorite scene in a movie.
00:18:59.000 It's great.
00:19:00.000 Well, this is in John Wick 3 where all of the bad guys are trying to kill him because he's been excommunicado.
00:19:08.000 So at the end of this, here's when he shoves it in this dude's mouth. 0.61
00:19:12.000 Get some. 0.78
00:19:13.000 Bam.
00:19:13.000 Love it.
00:19:14.000 He kills him with a book.
00:19:16.000 So great. 1.00
00:19:17.000 Bang, bang, bang, and then he stuffs it in his mouth.
00:19:20.000 Here it goes. 0.67
00:19:21.000 Boom, right there.
00:19:22.000 Boom, boom, boom. 0.99
00:19:25.000 And then afterwards, hits the guy, throws him against the table, puts his neck down there, and boom, kills him with a book. 0.99
00:19:32.000 Ah, love it! 1.00
00:19:33.000 It's perfect for you.
00:19:34.000 Yeah, it's on me.
00:19:36.000 Exactly, I love it.
00:19:37.000 Boom, I have to use that.
00:19:39.000 Yeah, I actually stopped at Taron Tactical on the way out of town, leaving L.A. the other day, and I met the stunt double for Keanu Reeves for these movies.
00:19:48.000 Yeah, John Ninja, I think, is his thing.
00:19:50.000 So nice.
00:19:51.000 So nice.
00:19:52.000 We got pictures together, and I'm like, oh man, I gotta start working out.
00:19:54.000 I've met Chad, the director, Stileski.
00:19:57.000 Did I say it right?
00:19:59.000 I think so.
00:20:00.000 I think I might have nailed it.
00:20:01.000 He was a stuntman, too.
00:20:02.000 That's how he came up, I think, right?
00:20:04.000 I believe so.
00:20:05.000 He's a very good shooter, though.
00:20:06.000 He really knows his guns.
00:20:08.000 Oh, nice.
00:20:08.000 Yeah, so it made sense that he would make a movie like that because, you know, we get to shoot together.
00:20:14.000 He knows his shit. 0.99
00:20:15.000 Yeah, you've been out there a bunch of times. 1.00
00:20:17.000 I love those videos.
00:20:17.000 Oh, yeah, yeah.
00:20:17.000 That's where I learned to shoot, really.
00:20:18.000 And it's fun.
00:20:19.000 It's fun.
00:20:19.000 You never know who you're going to run into out there.
00:20:20.000 No, Kevin Hart's been there a bunch of times, a bunch of my friends come out there, Bert Kreischer goes down there, Tom Segura.
00:20:27.000 He's great.
00:20:28.000 Taron is so, first of all, when you watch him shoot, it's so inspiring.
00:20:33.000 I mean, multiple time world champion.
00:20:35.000 He's incredible.
00:20:37.000 Next level.
00:20:38.000 Yeah, next level.
00:20:39.000 And so fast. 1.00
00:20:40.000 And you're like, what the fuck? 1.00
00:20:43.000 It's amazing to watch. 0.99
00:20:45.000 It's a skill, like everything else.
00:20:47.000 And there's levels.
00:20:49.000 And when you see someone who's at a world championship level, and I've been there, I've been fortunate to be there too, where some other guys who've won really big championships were there as well too, and you get to see them shoot.
00:21:00.000 Yeah, no, very cool.
00:21:01.000 I think Antoine was out there just the other day.
00:21:03.000 But yeah, super fun out there.
00:21:05.000 It's like a little playland.
00:21:06.000 I can't believe how close it is to the Reagan Library.
00:21:08.000 Maybe I'm not supposed to say that.
00:21:09.000 Really close.
00:21:09.000 Really close.
00:21:10.000 Yeah, I can't believe that that's how it goes out there.
00:21:12.000 And then you can't believe it's California.
00:21:14.000 I know.
00:21:14.000 Well, it's Ventura County.
00:21:16.000 A little different.
00:21:16.000 Ventura County is a much more sane version of California.
00:21:20.000 Just more regular people.
00:21:22.000 The further you get away from the radiation that is Hollywood, the less sick people are.
00:21:26.000 Interesting.
00:21:26.000 You know what's crazy?
00:21:27.000 I didn't know what to expect out there because it was my first time down this path and my experience was so great knowing Chris and spending some time with him out in Utah and with you and all that stuff.
00:21:36.000 We had such a great time.
00:21:38.000 So I didn't really know when they started bringing other actors in.
00:21:41.000 What are they going to be like?
00:21:42.000 Yeah, I didn't quite know.
00:21:43.000 Everybody was so normal.
00:21:45.000 You can get lucky.
00:21:46.000 There's some normal actors.
00:21:47.000 You can get lucky.
00:21:48.000 Taylor Kitsch is in it.
00:21:49.000 He's awesome.
00:21:50.000 He plays Ben Edwards, such a nice guy.
00:21:52.000 Texted me, Jean Triplehorn, who was in The Firm and in Waterworld and in Basic Instinct.
00:21:58.000 And she's texting me saying, oh, just totally normal.
00:22:01.000 Like asking questions about the book.
00:22:02.000 Who plays the South African character?
00:22:03.000 What's that guy's name?
00:22:04.000 We don't know yet.
00:22:07.000 That's Rafe.
00:22:08.000 He comes in at the end of the first book, so they have a little time to cast him.
00:22:11.000 You haven't cast him yet?
00:22:12.000 No.
00:22:13.000 They're trying to figure out how to do that because he's a fan favorite.
00:22:16.000 They want to try to get somebody in there that maybe is a little mysterious or can definitely do the accent, like the Rhodesian accent, which is different than the South African accent.
00:22:24.000 So they want to get all this stuff right, which is really cool.
00:22:27.000 They want to get all these details right.
00:22:28.000 Chris wants to get it right, so all the gear is right.
00:22:31.000 I'm trying to help out my friends that I've mentioned in the book.
00:22:33.000 Do you have an actor that you would want to do it?
00:22:36.000 There's a few that could pull it off.
00:22:38.000 And I have another idea that I'm debating, floating to them about.
00:22:42.000 Anyway, we might talk that one off.
00:22:44.000 No, no.
00:22:45.000 Because then if it doesn't happen, they're like, well, you didn't get the right...
00:22:48.000 Secrets.
00:22:50.000 Exactly.
00:22:50.000 But it's so fun to be a part of it and to be brought into it because usually, like I said, they get rid of the author right away.
00:22:54.000 But it's cool.
00:22:55.000 I got a Josh Hall surfboard in James Reese's garage.
00:22:59.000 You know, he makes Jocko's.
00:23:00.000 I put some Jocko Go on the counter.
00:23:01.000 You know, I got all these, like, trying to incorporate my friends' knives and Winkler tomahawks and half-faced blades and, like, stuff that I actually use.
00:23:07.000 But they want to do it right.
00:23:09.000 So they don't want to just, like, get a knife from the prop house that, like, looks cool, but they have no idea of his actual utility or if SEALs actually use it or if it makes sense for the character.
00:23:17.000 Yeah.
00:23:18.000 All this gear tells a story.
00:23:20.000 Like what you wear, your boots, your belt, your pistol.
00:23:22.000 All those things tell me a story about you.
00:23:24.000 So I use that as character development tools.
00:23:26.000 And they want to stay true to that for the film.
00:23:28.000 So they've gone to some extreme lengths to track down.
00:23:30.000 Like they had a Night Force scope that Night Force doesn't even make anymore.
00:23:33.000 And Night Force made them this scope that they don't even make anymore for the film.
00:23:37.000 Which is pretty cool.
00:23:38.000 Yeah.
00:23:39.000 So they're getting really, really into it.
00:23:40.000 And the prop house guys are amazing and they love all the gun stuff.
00:23:43.000 The car guys, awesome.
00:23:46.000 Yeah, so cool.
00:23:47.000 They sent me pictures of the Land Cruiser.
00:23:51.000 And they're like, is this right?
00:23:52.000 And I'm like, you know, it's an 88. It's their FJ62. It's the right one.
00:23:57.000 But the wheels.
00:23:57.000 Somebody put some modern wheels on this thing, and it's just not quite right.
00:24:00.000 And so they're like, okay.
00:24:01.000 So they went and switched it out.
00:24:02.000 So Antoine had them switch it out and put on these wheels that are kind of like the one that I have from Jonathan Ward.
00:24:07.000 And it's awesome.
00:24:08.000 And they have three of them.
00:24:09.000 And I think I'm going to try to get one after the show, after they film.
00:24:12.000 Yeah, you need one of those.
00:24:14.000 Well, you already have one.
00:24:15.000 I have one, but it's tough to drive that to the ski resort when people are banging doors and skis and kids going by with poles.
00:24:22.000 That one doesn't really come out in the winter.
00:24:25.000 I got that one under lock and key.
00:24:27.000 This one from the set, it looks awesome and I have no problem just getting that thing out.
00:24:33.000 Don't you feel funny about cars like that?
00:24:35.000 They're like velvet prisons.
00:24:37.000 It's kind of weird.
00:24:37.000 I mean, it's awesome because you can just hammer it.
00:24:39.000 You have that one that has 100 or 200 more horsepower than mine does, but you push on that LS3 and, man, it just rocks.
00:24:47.000 I got a couple little dings in that car.
00:24:48.000 Oh, did you?
00:24:49.000 Yeah.
00:24:49.000 I want to keep them there.
00:24:51.000 I thought about cleaning it up.
00:24:52.000 I'm like, no.
00:24:54.000 No.
00:24:55.000 Resist.
00:24:55.000 Yeah.
00:24:55.000 Well, it's like an expensive rifle you take on a hunt or something like that.
00:24:58.000 You have this rifle, this handcrafted rifle that someone made.
00:25:01.000 Maybe it's a wood stock, hand fitted, everything, and you get a scratch on it somewhere.
00:25:04.000 You're kind of like, ah.
00:25:05.000 Oh, but it's character.
00:25:06.000 Yes.
00:25:07.000 And you pass it on to your kids.
00:25:08.000 Yeah.
00:25:08.000 And then you tell them a story about the hunt you were on where you got that ding in it or whatever else.
00:25:12.000 So all these things tell a story.
00:25:13.000 But I'd rather not ding up the icon.
00:25:17.000 I know.
00:25:19.000 They're so beautiful.
00:25:20.000 So nice.
00:25:20.000 There's something about that design, too, that FJ-62.
00:25:24.000 It's one of those things that everybody doesn't appreciate.
00:25:28.000 Yeah.
00:25:29.000 Like, I pointed out to my wife once, and she's like, it looks like a station wagon.
00:25:32.000 Yeah.
00:25:32.000 I go, what?
00:25:33.000 What the fuck are you saying? 1.00
00:25:34.000 Get out of the car. 1.00
00:25:35.000 How dare you?
00:25:35.000 Exactly.
00:25:36.000 How dare you, woman? 1.00
00:25:37.000 That's an FJ. That's a 62. My wife's the same way. 1.00
00:25:40.000 Four headlights. 1.00
00:25:41.000 You don't know shit. 1.00
00:25:42.000 I know. 1.00
00:25:43.000 My wife says the same thing.
00:25:44.000 She's like, which kind do you have again?
00:25:45.000 I'm like, no!
00:25:47.000 FJ62. I know.
00:25:48.000 But that's specifically one because regular people don't think they look cool.
00:25:52.000 Like if you see an FJ40, regular people think they look cool.
00:25:55.000 Yeah.
00:25:55.000 It's like Jeep looking one for those listening.
00:25:57.000 It's like for not people that aren't like totally into those communities.
00:26:00.000 Aficionados.
00:26:00.000 Like that.
00:26:00.000 There we go.
00:26:01.000 So that's a 6.2 right there. 1.00
00:26:02.000 Like if I see that right there, even with the stupid shit on the side of it, I go, ah, look at that. 1.00
00:26:05.000 Exactly. 1.00
00:26:06.000 Even with that shitty bumper, I'm like, ah, look at that. 0.66
00:26:08.000 Look at that. 0.89
00:26:08.000 Yep. 0.89
00:26:09.000 But I'm doing another.
00:26:10.000 Look at that one.
00:26:11.000 Come on.
00:26:12.000 That's nice right there.
00:26:13.000 That's tight.
00:26:13.000 Yep.
00:26:14.000 So that's a 6.2 right there.
00:26:15.000 So those wheels are a little modern though, right?
00:26:16.000 Yeah, so I couldn't do that.
00:26:17.000 I would ask Antoine if he would mind having the prop people switch those out. 0.98
00:26:21.000 That fucking paint scheme's got to go. 0.99
00:26:23.000 I know. 1.00
00:26:23.000 It's so great. 1.00
00:26:24.000 Old school, 80s.
00:26:25.000 Well, Jonathan doesn't do these anymore, you know.
00:26:28.000 I heard that.
00:26:29.000 Is that true?
00:26:29.000 Yes.
00:26:30.000 I tried to get him to do one for me and they're done.
00:26:32.000 Really?
00:26:33.000 They stopped.
00:26:33.000 Yeah.
00:26:34.000 No way.
00:26:34.000 So you've got to get them on.
00:26:35.000 It's like, hey, there's mine, I think.
00:26:37.000 Oh, is that yours?
00:26:37.000 Bottom left.
00:26:38.000 Yeah, that is.
00:26:39.000 There it is.
00:26:39.000 That is it.
00:26:40.000 That is it right there.
00:26:41.000 Boom! 0.99
00:26:42.000 That's the Jack Car Land Cruiser right there.
00:26:43.000 That's tight.
00:26:44.000 That is the one.
00:26:45.000 But the one they made for the show looks similar to that, but more beat up.
00:26:50.000 And it's awesome.
00:26:52.000 Because they made three.
00:26:53.000 They changed the script a little bit.
00:26:55.000 So they have like three of them for the show.
00:26:56.000 They have to do different things.
00:26:58.000 And in the book, it's a white one.
00:26:59.000 Because I wanted to have it fairly symbolic to the pale horse coming.
00:27:04.000 Like, you know, behold the pale horse.
00:27:05.000 So I wrote that.
00:27:06.000 That's why it was white in the first novel.
00:27:07.000 But those look better.
00:27:08.000 Antoine was like, hey, you know, white vehicles doesn't work well on screen.
00:27:12.000 So now when you notice a movie, you won't notice too many white vehicles.
00:27:15.000 So they're different colors.
00:27:16.000 So...
00:27:17.000 So they have a sweet color, and it's just, yeah, they have three of them because it has to do different things.
00:27:21.000 They have to put them on pulleys and do all sorts of cool stuff.
00:27:23.000 Why doesn't white look good on screen?
00:27:24.000 I don't know.
00:27:25.000 I don't know, but when I thought about it, I was like, yeah, you know, I haven't really seen too many white vehicles in TV shows or movies before.
00:27:30.000 Well, you're very detail-oriented in your writing.
00:27:33.000 Everything, you talk about all the various gear and the different aspects of it and what's great about these different things.
00:27:41.000 You could tell that this is coming from not just...
00:27:44.000 You're not doing research on this stuff. 0.99
00:27:47.000 This is shit that you're already really familiar with, very intimate with. 0.99
00:27:51.000 Oh, yeah. 0.99
00:27:52.000 I was that way before the military, into gear, during the military, of course, and today it's just a part of who I am.
00:27:58.000 I always wanted to Go farther and faster in the backcountry growing up.
00:28:01.000 So external frame packs became internal.
00:28:03.000 And I remember my first one in like 1988 or something like that.
00:28:05.000 So I've always been about that.
00:28:07.000 And I didn't really know how much it was going to help.
00:28:09.000 See what you just did there.
00:28:10.000 External frames versus internal frames for backpacks. 0.99
00:28:13.000 Most people are like, what the fuck did you just say? 0.99
00:28:15.000 What the hell is he talking about? 0.99
00:28:15.000 Go back to the Land Cruiser stuff. 0.99
00:28:17.000 But that's very detail-oriented because when you're dealing with really high-tech, really well-made backpacks, that is where the rubber meets the road, right?
00:28:31.000 Yeah.
00:28:31.000 I mean, showing up in the military, we still have these Alice Frame packs that they gave us.
00:28:34.000 I was like, what on earth?
00:28:35.000 You guys are like 20 years out of date on these things. 1.00
00:28:37.000 Ridiculous. 0.83
00:28:38.000 There's a lot of these guys that you hunt with some guides, and they have these old-school packs, real old-school packs. 0.91
00:28:44.000 Yeah, that's it.
00:28:45.000 That's it.
00:28:46.000 Yeah, and there's some like that that are actually really good, obviously, for carrying out weight.
00:28:49.000 You know, that external frame is probably, I mean, it is very good for carrying out weight out of the backcountry.
00:28:54.000 But if you're just going in trying to be lighter, faster, further, like that sort of thing, it's a little bit different.
00:28:59.000 But what I didn't realize, just because I've used all this stuff because I'm so passionate about it and it's such a part of me and it tells a story about these characters, What I didn't realize is that other people have that passion, too.
00:29:08.000 And when you mention, hey, like Dana designs packs, and he's now at Mystery Ranch, but he's a super innovator, just amazing.
00:29:16.000 His life has been about making these things better, tweaking them.
00:29:19.000 And when you mention that, other people are like, oh, I remember my first pack.
00:29:22.000 And it resonates with them.
00:29:23.000 So they have a touch point, a data point.
00:29:25.000 Rather than just a story when you say, oh, I picked up a backpack.
00:29:28.000 You know, okay, that can be anything.
00:29:29.000 But when you say, like, Dana Designs or whatever else, people are like, oh, I remember that one.
00:29:32.000 I got 1993 and I took on this trip.
00:29:34.000 And all of a sudden, you know, they're a part of the story, more in that respect.
00:29:37.000 Like, I'm doing an FJ40. So with Brian Corsetti at Corsetti Cruisers in L.A. I don't know who that guy is.
00:29:43.000 So Jonathan Ward has tutored him along, mentored him along.
00:29:45.000 He's been on Jay Leno's Garage a couple times, I think.
00:29:47.000 And he's doing a similar deal to the way...
00:29:49.000 Similar deal, but more one that I can beat up.
00:29:51.000 So not quite Icon.
00:29:52.000 So if I get a ding, I won't be like...
00:29:54.000 But we're going to drop the LS3 in there, I think.
00:29:57.000 Standard or automatic?
00:30:00.000 It is a standard right now, but I think it's going to switch out to an automatic.
00:30:04.000 I still have to go through the details.
00:30:05.000 I'm not sure exactly.
00:30:06.000 We've identified it.
00:30:07.000 We got it.
00:30:07.000 It's in LA right now.
00:30:08.000 I found it in Denver.
00:30:10.000 I remember in Revenge with Kevin Costner.
00:30:12.000 Remember that?
00:30:13.000 Yeah, I do remember that movie.
00:30:14.000 He's driving an FJ40. He's got a green FJ40 in that thing.
00:30:17.000 I had a friend who had an FJ40 when I was like 16 years old.
00:30:22.000 There was this guy named Skip Hakala.
00:30:24.000 He was a black belt at this Taekwondo place that I went to.
00:30:27.000 And he was like this sort of rugged older dude.
00:30:30.000 And he had this car. 0.99
00:30:32.000 I was like, what the fuck is that? 0.99
00:30:34.000 Yeah, you didn't realize how cool it was. 0.99
00:30:36.000 Well, it looked cool, but I'd never seen one before.
00:30:39.000 I was like, what is this thing?
00:30:41.000 But it was that kind of a deal.
00:30:42.000 I never forgot it.
00:30:43.000 Yeah.
00:30:43.000 And then when I saw one later, I recognized, like, oh, that's what Skip used to have.
00:30:47.000 Yep.
00:30:47.000 And now there's this whole subculture of people.
00:30:49.000 There it is.
00:30:49.000 There it is right there.
00:30:50.000 Yep.
00:30:51.000 Nice.
00:30:51.000 Nice.
00:30:51.000 He was a lawyer, too.
00:30:53.000 He was like this really interesting character.
00:30:55.000 Nice.
00:30:56.000 This rugged, interesting character.
00:30:58.000 Yep.
00:30:59.000 Yep.
00:30:59.000 There it is.
00:31:00.000 So, yeah, I saw that in- They're so dope. 0.84
00:31:02.000 That's such a- There's such a classic shape.
00:31:05.000 Exactly.
00:31:05.000 Exactly.
00:31:06.000 And back in the day, you know, people were kind of like, ah, it's a beater.
00:31:08.000 It's a, you know, if you bought one of those in 1973, like, ah, it looks like a mail truck maybe.
00:31:12.000 But some of the advertisements, have you seen the advertisements from the 60s and 70s for these things?
00:31:16.000 No.
00:31:16.000 It's kind of like some of the old Rolex ads.
00:31:18.000 Same thing.
00:31:19.000 Oh, yeah?
00:31:20.000 You know, Big Game Hunter with his thing, like, in Africa with the dead animal right there posing with the trophy.
00:31:24.000 And Rolex is sponsoring it.
00:31:26.000 Really?
00:31:27.000 Yeah.
00:31:27.000 Amazing.
00:31:28.000 Rolex sponsored hunting pictures?
00:31:30.000 Back in the day.
00:31:31.000 Wow.
00:31:31.000 Yep.
00:31:31.000 Back in the day.
00:31:32.000 I'll send it to you.
00:31:33.000 You can go online.
00:31:34.000 There's all sorts of cool old retro ads like that.
00:31:36.000 But same thing with this.
00:31:37.000 Rolex was a tool watch.
00:31:39.000 When people think of Rolexes today, they think of Rolexes being this luxury thing that you're flossing.
00:31:46.000 You're showing everybody you got a Rolex.
00:31:48.000 But Rolexes originally were tool watches.
00:31:51.000 It was a watch that you wore because you wanted to go to 300 meters under the sea.
00:31:56.000 You wore Submariners.
00:31:59.000 And Jacques Cousteau, I think, wore one.
00:32:01.000 I'm sure he did.
00:32:02.000 I'm sure he did.
00:32:03.000 Pretty sure he did.
00:32:04.000 I think he wore one of the first.
00:32:06.000 And between them and the Omega Seamasters, those watches were tool watches.
00:32:11.000 Yep.
00:32:12.000 And when you go look at the prices for them back in the day, oh my gosh.
00:32:15.000 Yeah, there is.
00:32:15.000 Look at that.
00:32:15.000 There we go.
00:32:16.000 Yeah, there's one out there that if you put in Rolex ad plus hunting or something like that, it should pop up.
00:32:21.000 See, that's the classic.
00:32:22.000 That's the Explorer.
00:32:24.000 There you go.
00:32:24.000 We built the Rolex Explorer because there isn't any watch repair shop at the top of the Matterhorn.
00:32:29.000 Yep.
00:32:30.000 They made that watch to...
00:32:33.000 It was sort of an homage to the guy who climbed Everest the first time.
00:32:38.000 Ah.
00:32:39.000 They did it, but he didn't do it with an Explorer.
00:32:44.000 They did it with a different watch.
00:32:46.000 Oh, really?
00:32:47.000 Yeah, and then they made the Explorer afterwards for that.
00:32:51.000 So they brand it Rolex and not say which exact one it was?
00:32:54.000 Yeah, Sir John Hunt.
00:32:55.000 Sir John Hunt.
00:32:56.000 There we are.
00:32:57.000 I love it.
00:32:59.000 I love it.
00:32:59.000 Yeah, but some of those ads, same thing with the Land Cruiser ads.
00:33:01.000 They have these ads that are talking about how they're used in Africa on hunting expeditions and stuff like that.
00:33:05.000 And Toyota probably wishes and Rolex probably wishes that these would go away because now, you know, it's more, hey, tennis and golf and sponsorships like that sailing.
00:33:13.000 That sort of thing.
00:33:14.000 But back in the day, it's tough.
00:33:16.000 I don't think that's the guy who they made it about.
00:33:18.000 I think he said that and so they quoted him.
00:33:21.000 I think the guy who climbed...
00:33:23.000 Who's the guy who climbed Everest the first time?
00:33:24.000 Sir Edmund Hillary?
00:33:26.000 I think Sir Edmund Hillary and the other guy who was with wore Rolexes.
00:33:31.000 I think that's the legend behind the creation of the Explorer.
00:33:36.000 Of course there are people out there saying, no they didn't.
00:33:37.000 Is that right?
00:33:38.000 There it is.
00:33:39.000 I think.
00:33:39.000 I mean, there's a...
00:33:40.000 Ah, look at that!
00:33:41.000 There it is.
00:33:42.000 Found!
00:33:42.000 The Rolex Sir Edmund Hillary wore to the peak of Mount Everest.
00:33:45.000 No way! 0.99
00:33:46.000 Oh my god, that's got to be worth a fucking million dollars. 0.99
00:33:48.000 Oh yeah, that is definitely a price. 0.99
00:33:50.000 Maybe even more.
00:33:51.000 Probably more.
00:33:51.000 Yeah.
00:33:52.000 Wow, how dope is that?
00:33:53.000 That's a beautiful watch.
00:33:55.000 That is beautiful.
00:33:55.000 Can I see that again?
00:33:56.000 What is that called?
00:33:57.000 Which one's that called?
00:33:58.000 Oh, Sir Edmund Hillary's Rolex Explorer.
00:34:01.000 Wow.
00:34:01.000 Is it called Explorer there?
00:34:02.000 Just Rolex.
00:34:03.000 I didn't even say...
00:34:04.000 Oh, original?
00:34:05.000 On Oyster Perpetual.
00:34:07.000 Yeah, I'd say that.
00:34:08.000 Okay, so the Oyster Perpetual, and then they created the Explorer from that, but that didn't have any numbers on it.
00:34:15.000 The Explorer has, I think, a 369. I think that's what the Explorer has.
00:34:20.000 That's amazing.
00:34:20.000 These ones just go up in price.
00:34:22.000 These are the ones that really maintain their value over time.
00:34:25.000 This watch was produced in 1950 and was never purchased commercially.
00:34:29.000 Rolex is one of the sponsors of the 1953 Everest Expedition.
00:34:33.000 Only one expedition was allowed each year by the Nepalese government.
00:34:37.000 Isn't that amazing? 0.99
00:34:38.000 Now you've got a fucking line of people trying to climb up that thing. 0.99
00:34:42.000 And part of his sponsorship included providing Hillary with this watch. 0.98
00:34:46.000 It was not a gift, but rather a watch for Hillary to wear during the expedition, and then to return to Rolex for extensive testing after the descent.
00:34:54.000 And that was exactly what happened.
00:34:55.000 So you've got to think, in 1950, man, just the ability to make something so complex that was an automatic movement that was on your wrist, was that an automatic?
00:35:05.000 I'm assuming it was, right?
00:35:06.000 It wasn't a wind-up.
00:35:07.000 Even if it was a wind-up, I mean, that's... 1.00
00:35:09.000 Crazy shit. 0.99
00:35:10.000 Yeah, that's amazing. 0.99
00:35:11.000 I love that craftsmanship, that old school craftsmanship, and I'm really getting into some of those older watches like that.
00:35:15.000 Oh, yeah.
00:35:15.000 Because it's pretty cool.
00:35:17.000 I can't do the newer ones.
00:35:19.000 I can't do an Apple Watch.
00:35:20.000 I can't do that sort of thing.
00:35:20.000 Just things that are monitoring me.
00:35:22.000 I have enough things monitoring me and beeping at me and telling me to stand up and exercise.
00:35:26.000 I've got it.
00:35:27.000 I had an Apple Watch for a day, and while I was doing a podcast, it was vibrating and telling me I was getting text messages and emails. 0.99
00:35:33.000 I was like, get the fuck off with me. 0.99
00:35:34.000 Yeah, no. 0.99
00:35:35.000 I took it off on the podcast and set it aside.
00:35:37.000 I'd never put it on my wrist again.
00:35:38.000 Yeah.
00:35:39.000 No, you can't do that.
00:35:40.000 I love working those things, man.
00:35:41.000 What is that?
00:35:41.000 This is the Rolex Sea-Dweller.
00:35:43.000 Oh, that's a thick one.
00:35:44.000 This is a thick one, but the new one is a lot thicker.
00:35:46.000 But this is one from 1981, I think.
00:35:49.000 So it's a little older, but...
00:35:50.000 But yeah, weave that into the storyline as well.
00:35:53.000 There's a little Rolex in there.
00:35:54.000 Well, the Rolex from his dad.
00:35:57.000 That's a gift from my dad when I graduated from Bud.
00:35:59.000 Oh, really?
00:35:59.000 Yeah, so it's a special watch.
00:36:01.000 Oh, that's awesome.
00:36:02.000 Rolex also, they had Frederick Forsyth, an author.
00:36:05.000 He has his book called The Outsider, which is his autobiography that came out, I think, a year ago.
00:36:09.000 But they sponsored him.
00:36:11.000 So Rolex-sponsored authors back in the day.
00:36:13.000 This seems like a Rolex-sponsored podcast.
00:36:15.000 It does.
00:36:15.000 Because I'm wearing a Rolex, too.
00:36:16.000 And I very rarely wear one.
00:36:18.000 Nice.
00:36:18.000 I saw that when you walked in.
00:36:19.000 See?
00:36:20.000 It's that thing.
00:36:20.000 It tells you something about the person.
00:36:22.000 It tells you that, hey, he doesn't like this Apple Watch thing.
00:36:24.000 Probably appreciates fine craftsmanship.
00:36:26.000 It tells you a story.
00:36:27.000 As time goes on, I'm trying to get more...
00:36:29.000 I appreciate technology, but I want its grip to be more and more away from me.
00:36:34.000 I have no apps on this phone.
00:36:36.000 This is my main phone.
00:36:38.000 I occasionally have Instagram and Twitter on it, but I also delete them.
00:36:43.000 Oh, do you?
00:36:43.000 But I don't have anything else other than that.
00:36:45.000 This thing is just...
00:36:47.000 I can get my email on it, but I rarely do.
00:36:50.000 Nice. 0.98
00:36:50.000 And I have another phone that has fucking everything on it. 0.98
00:36:53.000 Okay. 0.98
00:36:54.000 Yeah, I've got the two phones after we talked last time about that.
00:36:56.000 So I have the two phones going now, trying to figure all that out.
00:36:59.000 Gotta cop people out, man.
00:37:00.000 It's crazy.
00:37:01.000 It's crazy.
00:37:02.000 I was talking to you about it, talking to Chris.
00:37:03.000 I mean, what a great problem to have, though.
00:37:04.000 I mean, I feel so fortunate.
00:37:06.000 And I was thinking about you last night because so many people were reaching out because the book launches.
00:37:11.000 And so many people were reaching out.
00:37:13.000 And I try to get back to everybody normally.
00:37:15.000 And there was just no way.
00:37:15.000 And this morning I woke up and it was like, boom!
00:37:18.000 And I tried to repost people's things and stories just as a thank you to them because I sincerely appreciate them taking a risk on me and telling a friend.
00:37:24.000 But I woke up this morning and it was like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
00:37:26.000 It was just, it was insane.
00:37:28.000 You know what I do?
00:37:28.000 I have a 20 minute time limit for Instagram.
00:37:31.000 So if I have to do stuff or respond to things, I give myself 20 minutes and allow myself to, but if I fuck off and just look at nonsense for 20 minutes, my time's up. 0.97
00:37:40.000 That's it. 0.98
00:37:40.000 That's your time. 0.98
00:37:40.000 That's it. 0.98
00:37:41.000 I like that. 0.97
00:37:42.000 So sometimes I go to my Instagram and I look in the inbox and there's fucking 185 messages. 0.95
00:37:47.000 I'm like, I can't. 0.93
00:37:48.000 There's nothing I can do.
00:37:49.000 No, I was up like 2 in the morning, 2.30 in the morning last night just saying thank you.
00:37:53.000 Because it's all sincere.
00:37:54.000 But I was like, okay, I got to get up and I got a 6 o'clock interview for the East Coast first and then I'm going to see Joe and I got to be awake.
00:38:01.000 I think people will recognize that you can't...
00:38:04.000 They know you're very, very, very busy right now. 0.98
00:38:08.000 I mean, with launching a television series with Chris Pratt, I mean, how the fuck do you have any time for anything? 0.98
00:38:14.000 It's wild. 0.99
00:38:14.000 No, it's crazy. 0.99
00:38:15.000 And I definitely have to get better in...
00:38:16.000 This is the year to get smarter about things.
00:38:19.000 Because up to now, it's been this full-on sprint, just leaving the military, following this next passion in life, getting this door cracked open, kicking it in, having this book resonate with people, having Chris get on board.
00:38:29.000 Like, crazy.
00:38:29.000 But now it's time to, I think, take a breath, put some processes in place, get more effective and efficient.
00:38:36.000 My wife is packaging up merch stuff.
00:38:38.000 It's in her bedroom.
00:38:39.000 It's in the living room.
00:38:40.000 It's all over the place.
00:38:41.000 In the house, boxes everywhere.
00:38:43.000 She's customer service.
00:38:44.000 We're finally like, at Christmas, she's like, okay, stop.
00:38:46.000 We can't do this anymore.
00:38:47.000 This is just too crazy.
00:38:49.000 So we're going to get that out to a fulfillment center, I think.
00:38:53.000 Yeah, you have to.
00:38:54.000 It's insane.
00:38:55.000 But it's a good problem to have.
00:38:57.000 It happened so quickly with you, from getting out of the military to starting this book, and then having this book take off, and then writing the second, the third, and now the fourth.
00:39:07.000 What is the entire timeline?
00:39:09.000 So I got out in 2016, got the book to Simon& Schuster in the fall of 2016. They called me in December, wanted to publish it, and then started that process, and then it came out in 2018. So four books, five years, boom, and killing it.
00:39:24.000 There we go.
00:39:24.000 Pretty wild.
00:39:25.000 It's crazy.
00:39:26.000 But they're great, man.
00:39:27.000 They're great.
00:39:28.000 They lock you in.
00:39:31.000 They're gripping.
00:39:32.000 Thank you.
00:39:33.000 And this one, actually, each one has a distinctly different theme, and I wanted to make sure that I stayed on theme for each book, which actually helped out a ton, because when it got to Simon& Schuster, I thought they were going to change it big time.
00:39:42.000 I was like, oh, it's at the big leagues now.
00:39:45.000 If they want to put Exploding Robots from Outer Space in, guess what's going in?
00:39:47.000 Exploding Robots from Outer Space.
00:39:48.000 Do they actually give you those kind of suggestions of what No.
00:39:51.000 Nothing.
00:39:51.000 Nothing.
00:39:52.000 So I've had no...
00:39:53.000 Yeah, they asked me to change almost nothing.
00:39:56.000 And I think that's because I had that theme.
00:39:57.000 I had it on a yellow sticky pad because I heard Steven Pressfield on your podcast talking about...
00:40:02.000 And I misinterpreted him.
00:40:04.000 What I thought he said was that he took a yellow sticky and put it on his typewriter with a one-word theme for his novels.
00:40:09.000 That's what I... So I was like, yes.
00:40:11.000 So that's what he actually did.
00:40:12.000 He told you a story about a playwright who wrote a one-sentence theme for his plays.
00:40:17.000 Yeah.
00:40:18.000 And somehow I translated that through whatever filters I have going to one word.
00:40:22.000 So it was revenge.
00:40:23.000 So that was right there.
00:40:24.000 So everything had to go back to that theme of revenge for that first one.
00:40:27.000 Second one, redemption.
00:40:28.000 And then by the third one, I got to know Steven Pressfield.
00:40:31.000 And he's like, that's not what I said on this podcast.
00:40:34.000 So give me a little more leeway.
00:40:35.000 So for the third one, it's really exploring the dark side of man to the dynamic of hunter and hunted.
00:40:39.000 And then this one, much more than a single sentence.
00:40:43.000 This one really is something I've thought about.
00:40:45.000 I thought about it in the teams because going back and forth to and from Iraq and Afghanistan, but I continue to think of it as a citizen and as an author today.
00:40:54.000 And that's what has the enemy learned by watching us on the field of battle for the last 20 years of war?
00:40:58.000 Because we've been playing poker, and they've been circling.
00:41:00.000 So if you're Iran, if you're China, if you're Russia, if you're North Korea, a super-empowered individual, a terrorist organization, they've been watching us play poker, look at our cards, see how we play them, and then they've been applying those lessons to future battle plans. 0.50
00:41:11.000 So that formed the basis of this thing, and that's what I came up with in August of 2019 on the way to and from Kamchatka Peninsula.
00:41:17.000 I went over there for that bear hunt, and I left my computer behind, left my phone behind, so Russian intelligence wouldn't Pull out all these emails and who knows what people have sent me over the years.
00:41:25.000 So I outlined this thing in my notebook and got back, wrote that down, started doing research into infectious diseases, the weaponization of infectious diseases in the fall of 2019, and then COVID hits.
00:41:37.000 I want to get to that, and I want to get to that bear hunt too, but it's crazy the synchronicity of you writing this book about a pandemic while a pandemic hit.
00:41:49.000 Like you wrote the book, you were way deep into the book, and then COVID-19 hits towards the end of your writing.
00:41:57.000 Well, like middle, yeah.
00:41:59.000 Middle, yeah, yeah.
00:42:00.000 But you had already had the concept, you had already outlined it, you started the writing, you're in the middle of the book...
00:42:07.000 Yep.
00:42:07.000 When I talked to you last time, when we were here in early May of last year, I was in the middle of it.
00:42:12.000 And, you know, some authors I heard talking about how they didn't want to incorporate COVID-19 into their writing because they want people to have an escape and that sort of thing.
00:42:19.000 But for me, the book is about what the enemy is learning from us.
00:42:22.000 And they're watching our response to COVID-19.
00:42:24.000 They're watching our response to this virus.
00:42:26.000 And they're watching our response to the civil unrest of the summer.
00:42:29.000 They're watching our response to a very contentious political season and election cycle.
00:42:35.000 Yeah.
00:42:35.000 And they're taking those lessons and they're applying them to those future battle plans.
00:42:38.000 And I ran into a problem.
00:42:39.000 This is the problem I ran into in October or November.
00:42:42.000 I've had myself in the enemy's shoes for over a year as I'm writing this thing, looking at things from their perspective.
00:42:47.000 And I'm like, you know what?
00:42:49.000 If I was the enemy, I might just sit back and watch.
00:42:51.000 We're doing a pretty good job of destroying ourselves from the inside out.
00:42:54.000 We're doing a pretty good job of tearing ourselves apart.
00:42:56.000 Right now with all these what seem like irreconcilable political differences, all this cancel culture, all this violence.
00:43:02.000 Like, we're doing a pretty good job of messing up this amazing thing that we have here in the United States.
00:43:06.000 So I had to figure out a tool that would allow the enemy to actually need to strike while we're kind of on our knees right now.
00:43:13.000 But you have to solve those problems as you're writing.
00:43:15.000 But it was a serious problem because we're in some dire straits right now, I think.
00:43:19.000 It's a very strange time.
00:43:22.000 It's a very strange time, because we haven't done this before, and then it's being accentuated by social media.
00:43:31.000 You know, there was the civil rights unrest in the 1960s, but what we're in now is different, because there's opportunists now, and not just at home, but also abroad, that are engaging with these social media thought bubbles.
00:43:47.000 Poisoning the water, and so you're aware of the internet research agency from Russia.
00:43:52.000 Do you know about all that?
00:43:53.000 No, I don't.
00:43:54.000 It's really fascinating, right?
00:43:56.000 There's this woman named Renee DiResta, and she came on the podcast a little over a year ago, and she outlined what she learned from watching the social media use from Russia from the 2016 election, and what they do is they have Untold numbers of accounts that are coming from this company called the Internet Research Agency.
00:44:20.000 It's Russia-funded.
00:44:21.000 And it's a state thing where they basically are trying to get people in America to argue with each other.
00:44:28.000 Oh, okay. 1.00
00:44:29.000 And they do crazy shit. 1.00
00:44:30.000 One, they had a pro-Texas secession meeting, and they scheduled it across from a pro-Islam meeting on the same block. 1.00
00:44:43.000 They do it on purpose.
00:44:45.000 And these memes, one of the things they do is they write funny memes.
00:44:49.000 She reviewed thousands and thousands and thousands of memes, and she said, some of them are really funny, and they're really well made, and they're done by these Russian agents, and their job is to sow unrest. 0.71
00:45:03.000 So their job is to start...
00:45:06.000 She also outlined how they would start one page and they would build it up and get a bunch of followers.
00:45:13.000 And then once they got followers, they'd get like 20,000, 30,000 followers.
00:45:16.000 Then they would switch to theme and make it a Black Lives Matter page or make it a pro-trans page or whatever it is.
00:45:25.000 Anything to try to get people upset.
00:45:27.000 A pro-Christian page, a pro-atheist page.
00:45:30.000 Whatever it is.
00:45:31.000 And then have people duke it out, and then have other dummies that don't know what's going on, don't know that they're being set up.
00:45:38.000 Yeah, manipulated.
00:45:39.000 They jump in, and then they engage in it, whether it's on Facebook or Instagram or whatever it is.
00:45:44.000 And you realize, like, these fires can be fanned.
00:45:48.000 They can be stoked.
00:45:50.000 It's really kind of fascinating when you see how they've done this and I'm sure we're doing that as well.
00:45:57.000 I'm sure the United States is doing that overseas.
00:45:59.000 Yeah, I don't know.
00:46:00.000 I think there's more controls in some of those other societies that we don't have here.
00:46:03.000 I think we both know some good people that would be really good at that job though.
00:46:07.000 Some people would be great at sowing the seeds of discontent. 0.99
00:46:10.000 I would be fucking great at it. 0.99
00:46:11.000 Exactly. 0.98
00:46:12.000 I was thinking comedians would be really good at it.
00:46:13.000 For sure.
00:46:14.000 If there was a reason to do that.
00:46:16.000 There might be.
00:46:17.000 You can get recruited by the government.
00:46:18.000 I feel like if you were thinking about doing that, you could really manipulate people really well by just creating two opposing pages and getting them popular and then having people duke it out with each other.
00:46:32.000 No, it's the weaponization of social media.
00:46:34.000 No doubt about it.
00:46:35.000 We see the weaponization of the law, lawfare.
00:46:38.000 It actually has a name to it.
00:46:40.000 There's a book called Three Felonies a Day by Harvey Silverglate.
00:46:44.000 And he writes about how you wake up in the morning.
00:46:47.000 Average person wakes up in the morning.
00:46:48.000 Goes to work, comes home, has dinner, goes to bed, and in the course of that day has committed three felonies because the laws are written in such a way that they are so broad they can be interpreted to go after whoever they want.
00:46:59.000 Is that real?
00:47:00.000 It is real.
00:47:01.000 Yep.
00:47:02.000 Three felonies a day.
00:47:03.000 Three felonies?
00:47:03.000 Three felonies.
00:47:04.000 Because there's so many laws that can be targeted, can be interpreted all these different ways.
00:47:08.000 It's like what Stalin did in The Great Purge when his head of secret police said, show me the man, I'll find you the crime.
00:47:15.000 They can do that.
00:47:16.000 And we're very close to being able to do that with almost anybody in this country.
00:47:20.000 But yeah, social media is just something that the enemy can look at and figure out, hey, how do we weaponize this against our enemy, so against the United States? 0.86
00:47:29.000 And we're just suckers for it. 0.92
00:47:31.000 We're the perfect environment. 0.87
00:47:33.000 We're the perfect group of people to get turned against one another on social media.
00:47:37.000 It's sad.
00:47:38.000 It's sad.
00:47:39.000 It makes you worried for the future.
00:47:41.000 It's a little sad, but it's also fascinating.
00:47:43.000 It is fascinating, and I get to use it in the stories.
00:47:45.000 There's still all things that I can weave into future storylines, but growing up, we grew up roughly in the same time, and it seemed like in the 80s, in the late 70s, 80s, into the early 90s, we were still a group of people as a country that would stand up for your right to say whatever you wanted, especially if I disagreed with you.
00:48:01.000 That was the one thing we could all rally around.
00:48:04.000 I mean, there's other certain things out there that, yeah, we couldn't, okay.
00:48:07.000 But the First Amendment, we could rally around that, and we could stand up for one another.
00:48:12.000 Like, sticking up, like, I'm the only person that can beat up my little brother, type thing.
00:48:15.000 You know, you can't.
00:48:16.000 I'm sticking up.
00:48:16.000 And we could all do that.
00:48:19.000 And private companies acted in the spirit of that First Amendment.
00:48:23.000 And today, we see private companies, we see those people that used to be guardians of the First Amendment, lawyers, politicians, newspaper editors.
00:48:31.000 Yeah.
00:48:53.000 Obviously, that is something that is—and it's something I thought about because my mom was a librarian, so I kind of grew up with it, knowing about banned books and the history of banned books and censorship and what that means.
00:49:02.000 And as you just talked about, you talked about civil unrest of the 60s.
00:49:05.000 Like, a lot of that was to give people freedom.
00:49:08.000 And now we're having civil unrest and all these other cancel culture and all these other things that are kind of associated— Rather directly or indirectly, and it's all about restricting freedoms, restricting those freedoms.
00:49:20.000 Well, they think restricting freedoms is what's going to save us from these bad things.
00:49:25.000 So the bad things get highlighted, and they say, we have to stop these bad things.
00:49:29.000 How do we stop that?
00:49:30.000 Well, we're going to have to restrict freedoms. 0.55
00:49:32.000 But it's just a confusing time, and this is...
00:49:37.000 It's really new territory.
00:49:39.000 It is.
00:49:40.000 Because of the social media aspect of it.
00:49:42.000 It's new territory.
00:49:43.000 And these companies that you're talking about that are engaging in this, they're doing it because they're worried if they don't that they're going to get canceled themselves and it's going to hurt their bottom line.
00:49:54.000 So they're doing it like they're acting in this sort of woke way, but they're only doing it because it's a good financial move.
00:50:02.000 Maybe.
00:50:03.000 It's why it's weird.
00:50:04.000 Yeah, but if you take it another step further and think of like AT&T. So if someone's talking on AT&T line, AT&T doesn't try to censor that conversation between us or a group call.
00:50:14.000 Or maybe the Telegraph back in the day was that censored.
00:50:17.000 So it seems financially, I don't know, it's a tough thing to figure out in this next 10 years.
00:50:21.000 The thing about AT&T though is it's private. 0.99
00:50:24.000 See, if it's private, if you and me are having a private conversation and you're saying some horrible shit to me, no one's going to know.
00:50:30.000 But if you put it online, then everyone can see it.
00:50:33.000 Then things get weird.
00:50:34.000 It does get weird.
00:50:35.000 Yeah.
00:50:35.000 Then it gets weird because then you're saying, well, freedom of speech is important.
00:50:38.000 Yeah, but this is a different kind of speech than we've ever had to deal with before because now you're dealing with something that can actively affect and influence the way other people think and behave.
00:50:48.000 Yeah.
00:50:49.000 And when you have something like the Internet Research Agency where they're actively trying to manipulate the way people think and behave, you realize, oh, wow, this is a complex spider web we're kind of caught up in.
00:51:00.000 Yep.
00:51:01.000 It's not as easy as many would make it seem.
00:51:03.000 There are complexities to it, and this next 10 years is going to be pivotal for the history of our country when we're talking specifically about the First Amendment and free speech and these companies that have more wealth and control of information than any other country or person in the history of the world.
00:51:17.000 So I worry about our kids growing up during this time and then going to college during this time and moving forward into the private sector during this time and what freedoms they're going to have as they move forward.
00:51:26.000 What options and opportunities are they going to have in a country that looks like it's continually infringing upon multiple rights?
00:51:32.000 Yeah.
00:51:48.000 What's going to happen is they're just going to apply that to all kinds of other things.
00:51:52.000 Once you have a passport that says you need something in order to go here, you need to make sure that you have a vaccination in order to go here, in order to move around you have to have something, that means they're going to be tracking you.
00:52:05.000 So if they're tracking you, if they're not just tracking you like they are because of your cell phone, like if you go in tower to tower they can track you no matter what, but what if it's required that they track you?
00:52:15.000 Because right now it's not required that you have a phone.
00:52:18.000 If you have a driver's license and you go to the airport, you don't have to have a phone on you, but what if you do?
00:52:23.000 And that could happen if you need a COVID passport.
00:52:27.000 We could get to a point where everyone needs to have some sort of a smartphone with a GPS in order to be able to travel freely and you have to be able to do the right thing.
00:52:39.000 Yeah.
00:52:50.000 Yeah.
00:52:55.000 Blacklist those people and keep those people from working, make sure those people are punished.
00:52:59.000 Like, Jesus Christ, folks, do you remember history?
00:53:02.000 This has all been done before. 0.91
00:53:04.000 You guys need to read history because you can't put people on a fucking list and you can't make people held responsible for a political decision that may or may not have been correct or wise. 0.78
00:53:16.000 But then you can change your mind in the future. 0.94
00:53:19.000 What you should be doing is trying to influence people's opinions by giving them better information, not putting them on a fucking list and telling them, you know, like, you're never going to work again because you were an enemy, and now we won, so we're going to do this, we're going to do that. 0.65
00:53:33.000 Oh, yeah.
00:53:33.000 It's all being weaponized, and it's the marketplace of ideas and being able to express your opinions in this marketplace of ideas.
00:53:40.000 That's What really is part of the foundation of this country is having those best ideas, then gravitate to the top because that's where it's competition.
00:53:48.000 It's out there.
00:53:48.000 And now when you have one side able to restrict something they don't agree with, so maybe it does start off with a good intent.
00:53:57.000 Let's just say that that's true.
00:53:59.000 Well, very soon thereafter, it starts to become something else in a way to weaponize and restrict your political opponents because it's always about power.
00:54:07.000 Exactly.
00:54:07.000 And control.
00:54:08.000 Always got power control.
00:54:09.000 Do you know the story about this guy who is a liberal journalist?
00:54:14.000 What did he do?
00:54:15.000 He agreed with someone that said something.
00:54:17.000 He liked something about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
00:54:21.000 And the police came to his house.
00:54:24.000 Did you hear this story?
00:54:25.000 I did.
00:54:25.000 Pull this story up because it's so crazy.
00:54:28.000 Crazy.
00:54:28.000 That you go, this can't be real.
00:54:30.000 And here we are.
00:54:31.000 I don't think that it's AOC who's doing this. 0.99
00:54:34.000 It's probably some fucking nutty AOC reporter, or supporter rather. 0.97
00:54:38.000 Police visit the home of podcaster after he criticized AOC on Twitter. 0.99
00:54:43.000 So pull up the story because this is so crazy. 1.00
00:54:46.000 This is like Communist China type shit. 0.99
00:54:49.000 It's so crazy that I feel like there has to be more to it when I heard about it the other night. 1.00
00:54:52.000 No, it's not.
00:54:54.000 Please scroll down so I can read this.
00:54:56.000 Here it goes.
00:54:57.000 No, no, no, so I can read that tweet.
00:54:58.000 Oh, yeah, it's about that interview that she had, which was... 1.00
00:55:00.000 See, yeah, the interview was fucking insane and so ridiculous. 0.96
00:55:05.000 On April 1st, AOC did a live stream with Michael Miller, the head of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. 0.99
00:55:10.000 She was asked about peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
00:55:13.000 Her response was incredibly underwhelming, to say the very least.
00:55:17.000 Now, if you listen to her response...
00:55:19.000 She's unprepared.
00:55:20.000 She doesn't really have a thing to say about this, so she basically just sort of uses word salad, and it's a nonsense answer.
00:55:27.000 Go back down.
00:55:29.000 Go back right there.
00:55:30.000 I'm really shaken up right now.
00:55:32.000 So the guy puts this thing saying it's underwhelming.
00:55:36.000 He puts it up on Twitter.
00:55:37.000 I'm really shaken right now.
00:55:38.000 This is the next tweet.
00:55:39.000 I was just visited by two plainclothes police officers from California Highway Patrol at my home.
00:55:44.000 They said they came here on behalf of the Capitol Police and accused me of threatening AOC on Twitter yesterday.
00:55:51.000 This is provably false.
00:55:53.000 So go back up to what we just saw.
00:55:55.000 So this is all he said.
00:55:56.000 Her response was incredibly underwhelming, to say the very least.
00:56:06.000 I'm sure this is some sort of a supporter of AOC that contacted the Capitol Hill Police and probably lied. 0.99
00:56:14.000 But the fact that they could just come to your fucking house without any proof, it's not like he's saying this lady deserves to die, she must be stopped, we have to stop. 0.99
00:56:23.000 None of that! 1.00
00:56:24.000 None of that!
00:56:24.000 None of that!
00:56:26.000 Underwhelming, to say the least.
00:56:27.000 Which is a very mild criticism.
00:56:29.000 It is, especially if you watch that interview.
00:56:31.000 The guy's face is classic, though.
00:56:32.000 The guy interviewing, it's just like, he can't believe what she's saying.
00:56:35.000 It's classic if you watch his facial expressions.
00:56:37.000 It is.
00:56:37.000 But this is what happens.
00:56:38.000 We should play it, just so people understand how... 0.96
00:56:41.000 Because it's really a ridiculous answer. 0.95
00:56:44.000 It is. 0.96
00:56:44.000 But it's the kind of answer you give when you're in seventh grade, and you're doing a... 0.96
00:56:49.000 Like, the teacher asked you a question about a book report, and you didn't really read the book.
00:56:53.000 Exactly what it was.
00:56:54.000 The book is about Columbus.
00:56:55.000 It was so important that Columbus was here because without Columbus, there were so many things that would not have happened.
00:57:02.000 What Columbus did was brave and amazing.
00:57:05.000 That's exactly what it is.
00:57:06.000 Now you have to be careful.
00:57:07.000 They might be showing up at your house tonight.
00:57:08.000 They might be at the studio when we walk out again.
00:57:10.000 I don't think AOC does.
00:57:11.000 I really don't.
00:57:12.000 I think it's a crazy person that thinks that this is just my opinion.
00:57:16.000 I think it's most likely a crazy person that is angry at this guy for not towing the liberal line because he's a liberal journalist or a podcaster. 0.51
00:57:25.000 That's the interesting thing, too.
00:57:27.000 Growing up when we grew up, when you talk about liberalism, it means something different than it does today.
00:57:32.000 And there's a difference between a classical liberal and a leftist.
00:57:35.000 And what we're seeing more of in this country is those terms intertwined, and they're very different things.
00:57:39.000 And leftists are kind of what we're seeing more of, which is grabbing this control, restrictions on freedom of speech, restrictions on owning firearms.
00:57:48.000 Restrictions on whatever they think might be quote-unquote dangerous, especially when they throw in dangerous to the children.
00:57:53.000 That's the other key when talking about it.
00:57:55.000 But then they take power.
00:57:56.000 And guess who's buying all the expensive houses and has the power and the control?
00:58:00.000 Oh, those same people that were fighting for the little guy a little while ago and talking about all these restrictions that we needed to place on some of these more natural rights that are inherent at birth, namely to be able to defend ourselves and our family, defend that gift of life.
00:58:14.000 Yeah, like when a Marxist starts making money and buys million-dollar houses.
00:58:17.000 Did that happen recently?
00:58:18.000 Yeah, it did.
00:58:18.000 Yeah, that's what happens.
00:58:20.000 You're a Marxist.
00:58:21.000 If you're a Marxist, you're not buying million-dollar houses. 1.00
00:58:23.000 You're not on a fucking real estate market. 0.99
00:58:25.000 That's not Marxism. 0.99
00:58:27.000 That's why I talk as often as I possibly can.
00:58:30.000 I talk about the importance of studying our history, putting that requisite time, energy, and effort into studying the past so we can make decisions that...
00:58:39.000 Because we have this responsibility to make decisions for future generations.
00:58:42.000 And if we haven't put that time into studying our history and if what you know about a certain event or a certain issue is based on someone else's tweet that you just retweeted and all of a sudden that's your opinion of something that's going to affect multiple generations down the line, particularly...
00:58:58.000 Their abilities to defend themselves and their families or to start a business or whatever it might be.
00:59:03.000 Well, you owe it to put down the phone, to get into these books, realize, hey, why are these amendments in place?
00:59:09.000 Why is this important?
00:59:10.000 And from the inception of this country up until today, people have died to give you the right to be able to make these decisions, to follow your dreams, to have these options and opportunities.
00:59:19.000 Not only that, people have died supporting these things that you support.
00:59:26.000 When people are really into Marxism, you need to learn what happened when that was the rule of law, because it's a terrible, terrible history.
00:59:36.000 It's horrible, but it seems good, like the idea that everybody should have something.
00:59:42.000 It should be equal for all, and all the workers should be even, and everybody should have equal things.
00:59:47.000 Well, you know what happens then?
00:59:50.000 You don't have the same amount of effort because there's a reason why some people work harder than others because they realize you can actually get further ahead.
00:59:59.000 There's a competition and that competition fuels innovation.
01:00:04.000 It fuels all sorts of things.
01:00:05.000 There's incentives.
01:00:06.000 There's incentives to discipline.
01:00:08.000 You wake up an hour earlier than the next guy.
01:00:11.000 You do it seven days a week.
01:00:12.000 You got seven hours of work that that guy doesn't have in.
01:00:15.000 Yep, where you wake up seven hours earlier like Jaco does than everybody else, something like that.
01:00:19.000 But yeah, you have that option.
01:00:20.000 You have that option.
01:00:20.000 I can write books.
01:00:21.000 You can do this.
01:00:22.000 We have these amazing freedoms.
01:00:23.000 And when have you ever read a book, whether fiction or non, or studied history where the people that put names on lists, the people that restrict rights, the people that confiscate firearms are the good guys?
01:00:33.000 In any of those movies.
01:00:34.000 Let's just say fiction.
01:00:35.000 Never.
01:00:35.000 Never.
01:00:36.000 Exactly.
01:00:37.000 So that should be a clue right there.
01:00:39.000 But it seems like when you say it the right way, if you restrict the rights of these people to have guns, then there'll not be any mass shootings because there'll be no guns.
01:00:48.000 Oh, okay.
01:00:49.000 And someone just retweets that.
01:00:50.000 That becomes their opinion rather than, hold on, let me look at the, if this was even the issue, let me take at the FBI crime statistics, the actual ones, and be like, oh, why are they going after this one thing that causes almost nothing?
01:01:01.000 They should be going after hammers and baseball bats.
01:01:03.000 Or if they really wanted to save lives, you should make sure that every single phone just turned off when you got in your car.
01:01:09.000 And just wasn't allowed to operate.
01:01:11.000 If you really cared about the children, or at least start 18 and under.
01:01:13.000 No texting.
01:01:14.000 This thing turns off when you get in a car.
01:01:16.000 If you're really concerned about saving lives.
01:01:18.000 So it's a disingenuous argument from the beginning.
01:01:21.000 But it sounds so good.
01:01:22.000 It does sound so good.
01:01:23.000 To some people, unless it is something that you are not even passionate about, just explore a little bit.
01:01:29.000 Ask some questions.
01:01:31.000 Look at some history.
01:01:32.000 And then make your decision rather than just seeing a tweet and retweeting it.
01:01:35.000 Young people that have these good ideals, their heart's in the right place, their mind's in the right place.
01:01:43.000 They just want things to be better for people.
01:01:45.000 They're sensitive, kind, compassionate people, and that's what they want.
01:01:49.000 But they just don't understand that this is not how you do it, because if you do it that way, someone's going to take advantage of that, and they're going to control everyone.
01:01:57.000 And this is what's happened, that's what happened, that's what Stalin did. 0.52
01:02:01.000 That's what Mao did.
01:02:03.000 It's what's going on in China.
01:02:07.000 How do these things get enforced?
01:02:09.000 Well, you have to use violence to enforce them.
01:02:11.000 That's the only way people are going to listen.
01:02:12.000 If you really want to distribute wealth, you know what you have to do?
01:02:15.000 You have to take wealth from people.
01:02:17.000 So how do you do that?
01:02:18.000 You have to use violence.
01:02:19.000 Because it's the only way it works.
01:02:20.000 Yeah, power comes from the barrel of a gun.
01:02:22.000 And if you say that to people, they go, wait a minute.
01:02:24.000 No.
01:02:25.000 People are just going to give up their wealth.
01:02:26.000 No, they're not.
01:02:27.000 No, they're not.
01:02:28.000 No, they're not.
01:02:29.000 They're not.
01:02:30.000 They're not going to do that.
01:02:30.000 It's so crazy.
01:02:31.000 It's one of the weird things about taxes.
01:02:33.000 Somebody can just jack up your taxes.
01:02:35.000 What are they doing?
01:02:36.000 They're deciding they're going to take more from you.
01:02:38.000 This is what's going on in California.
01:02:40.000 This is what's going on in New York.
01:02:41.000 We've got to get our way out of this problem.
01:02:43.000 What are we going to do?
01:02:44.000 Well, we're just going to take all those people that have been working extra hard and making more money and we're going to decide that they did something wrong and we're going to punish them.
01:02:52.000 And look what's happening.
01:02:53.000 Look at Austin.
01:02:54.000 Look at Park City, where I am.
01:02:56.000 It's crazy.
01:02:57.000 Mass exodus.
01:02:59.000 Mass exodus.
01:02:59.000 Totally changing the landscape with new houses and real estate prices through the roof.
01:03:05.000 It's insane.
01:03:06.000 There's a great article about all the reasons why, this compounding of reasons why people are deciding to move out of California.
01:03:15.000 It's in the National Review.
01:03:16.000 Oh, nice.
01:03:17.000 The Great California Exodus.
01:03:19.000 Yeah.
01:03:20.000 It's everything from, and it's like these, all the different aspects of it, the foundation was set before COVID. It was the over-regulation, there's so many problems with California already.
01:03:34.000 And what a great state.
01:03:35.000 What a great state that was.
01:03:37.000 That's the problem.
01:03:38.000 Oh my gosh.
01:03:38.000 It's so great that people move there.
01:03:40.000 And then jack it all up and then move to other beautiful places, you know, like Bozeman and Park City and Austin.
01:03:46.000 I mean, it's crazy.
01:03:46.000 There are fleets of new Range Rovers and G-Wagons in Park City right now.
01:03:50.000 Yeah, and here too.
01:03:51.000 Yeah, same thing.
01:03:51.000 Same thing.
01:03:52.000 And you see the temporary plates and you're like, oh, yep, that's New York or that's California.
01:03:56.000 That's what it is.
01:03:57.000 It's finance or it's Silicon Valley.
01:03:59.000 And here they are.
01:04:00.000 Wonderful.
01:04:00.000 I can't find a place to buy.
01:04:02.000 Exactly what's happening right here.
01:04:04.000 And I understand that people are mad, but I think...
01:04:07.000 I mean, I don't know how you fix it.
01:04:10.000 I just don't.
01:04:10.000 At this point, I almost think California, I hate to say this, but I feel like it's beyond help.
01:04:15.000 I know.
01:04:16.000 I don't know how you get rid of 100,000 homeless people.
01:04:21.000 How do you fix those people?
01:04:22.000 How do you help them?
01:04:23.000 How do you get them into housing?
01:04:25.000 How do you feed them?
01:04:25.000 How do you get them gainful employment?
01:04:28.000 What do you do?
01:04:29.000 How do you fix that?
01:04:29.000 That's one of the toughest ones, yep.
01:04:30.000 That's the entire population of Boulder, Colorado, homeless in LA. Just in LA. So inside of LA, you have a small city of homeless people.
01:04:41.000 Yeah, that's one of the tougher ones to tackle because it's so heartbreaking.
01:04:46.000 And then, of course, you have a lot of mental issues and you have all sorts of things in there.
01:04:51.000 And it's just so tough.
01:04:52.000 A lot of drug addiction stuff going on.
01:04:53.000 And then for everybody else, you have the fact that they camp out.
01:04:56.000 And so they're just tense.
01:04:58.000 Have you ever seen what's going on in Venice now?
01:05:00.000 Yeah, I drove not through Venice, but I drove through some other areas when all the tents are out on the sides of the streets and all that stuff. 0.95
01:05:05.000 It's fucking bizarre, man.
01:05:06.000 Yeah, I mean, your heart breaks for all them. 0.97
01:05:09.000 I mean, it's tough to...
01:05:10.000 It makes you ask, like, hey, what can I do here?
01:05:12.000 What can we do?
01:05:14.000 Well, one thing that we can do is continue to fight for these freedoms that allow us to make decisions that, whether they're good or bad, they're on us as individuals rather than restrict them.
01:05:26.000 So, I mean, I don't know what else you can do.
01:05:29.000 That's absolutely true, but my problem with it is that I feel like this is the beginning.
01:05:36.000 I don't think this is where it's going to end.
01:05:40.000 I'm legitimately worried about an apocalyptic movie scene, like a Mad Max-style scene that is LA. Because LA's so fucked now, my friend was explaining this to me, that people just go into stores and steal things, because if it's less than X amount of dollars, 0.84
01:05:58.000 I think it's like, what is it, like 900 bucks? 0.99
01:06:01.000 I think it's more than that.
01:06:03.000 Like, they won't prosecute misdemeanors or something like that.
01:06:05.000 They won't seek after them.
01:06:07.000 Yeah, but he was explaining to me about stores, that they have a real problem with stores, because people are just stealing things, and as long as it's below a certain amount, they won't do anything about it.
01:06:17.000 Yeah.
01:06:18.000 And then they have this crazy new district attorney in Los Angeles who's George Soros funded, which freaks people out because they go, wait a minute, is that real? 0.99
01:06:27.000 Are those fucking conspiracy theories real? 0.98
01:06:29.000 Should I get a tinfoil hat and put it on right now? 0.99
01:06:32.000 They make everybody seem like they're crazy when some of these things are absolutely provable.
01:06:36.000 Because this guy doesn't want—he's defunding the gang unit.
01:06:40.000 He's taking out their gang units.
01:06:42.000 So the police are not going to have a gang unit anymore.
01:06:45.000 So what are you going to do?
01:06:46.000 You're not going to arrest the gangs?
01:06:47.000 And so you have—people are getting out of jail for murder, and they're getting out of jail way earlier than they would normally have gotten out.
01:06:56.000 Society is a fragile thing.
01:06:57.000 That's what people don't realize.
01:06:58.000 And I think we even forget, even if we went through this pandemic, we went through a summer of civil unrest.
01:07:03.000 We had some craziness happen around the election.
01:07:06.000 People don't realize how fragile society is unless they've been to some of these countries where they've actually witnessed it or they've been in those riots or they've been in a natural disaster when a hurricane hits and there's no law and order anywhere and it's just chaos and you don't have water, you don't have food, you have a medical emergency, there's no one to call.
01:07:21.000 Society is a very fragile thing.
01:07:22.000 It's only been stable, quote-unquote, for the very slim portion of human history.
01:07:28.000 For most of human history, you had to go out and hunt for your food.
01:07:31.000 You had to defend your family, defend your tribe, defend your community.
01:07:34.000 Now, we outsource that.
01:07:35.000 We call 9-1-1, and we think we can call 9-1-1, because that's what we've been told, that the police are there to protect.
01:07:39.000 Really, they're coming after the fact, unless you're a politician and you have them to your right and left, taxpayer-funded with the same weapons that they want to take from the rest of us.
01:07:48.000 And same thing with food.
01:07:50.000 We're so used to going to that grocery store and always having food there.
01:07:53.000 And that's so fragile.
01:07:55.000 That can just change in an instant.
01:07:57.000 And we got a taste of it with COVID, a taste of it with these things that happened over the summer.
01:08:02.000 But in reality, that can really happen.
01:08:04.000 And you put all three of those things together at a natural disaster, to some civil unrest, to the pandemic.
01:08:08.000 I mean, that's why.
01:08:09.000 What can you do as an individual?
01:08:10.000 Well, you can be prepared, as prepared as you can be.
01:08:13.000 And that's a tough thing to grapple with.
01:08:16.000 It really is.
01:08:17.000 And then you add on to that a disrespect of police and incompetent cops like that lady who shot that kid. 1.00
01:08:23.000 Did you see the video of that?
01:08:25.000 I didn't see the video yet, but I read about it. 1.00
01:08:26.000 She thought she had a fucking taser in her hand. 1.00
01:08:28.000 She had her gun. 1.00
01:08:28.000 And she shoots him and she goes, shit! 1.00
01:08:31.000 I know. 1.00
01:08:32.000 I just shot him. 0.99
01:08:33.000 She goes, Taser! 1.00
01:08:34.000 I'm gonna tase you! 1.00
01:08:35.000 I'm gonna tase you! 1.00
01:08:35.000 She has a fucking pistol in her hand and she doesn't know it's not a taser. 1.00
01:08:39.000 So what that means to me is someone who's panicking. 1.00
01:08:42.000 She's in a full-blown panic.
01:08:43.000 She doesn't know what to do. 1.00
01:08:44.000 She's holding her fucking pistol and she shoots him in the chest and goes, Shit! 1.00
01:08:48.000 Yeah. 1.00
01:08:49.000 I mean, it's the most stressful situation you can possibly be in when you're about to take human life or yours is about to be taken.
01:08:55.000 Yeah, but the kid is just trying to get away.
01:08:57.000 He's not trying to fight them.
01:08:59.000 He's just trying to get away.
01:09:00.000 That's what I mean.
01:09:01.000 So you have this taser.
01:09:02.000 So when tasers first came out, I don't know the exact date, but they had this issue back then and people can fact check or look it up somewhere.
01:09:08.000 I haven't thought about this in about 25 years, so I'm a little off.
01:09:11.000 But the taser was so similar to a pistol, there was an incident, and I forget where it was, where somebody turned around in their seat, someone's being crazy in the back of the police car, and they tased them, but guess what?
01:09:20.000 They shot him.
01:09:20.000 They shot him.
01:09:21.000 Well, this has happened multiple times.
01:09:22.000 It happened in San Francisco on the BART. You remember that?
01:09:25.000 They tried to make, I do remember that, yep, not too long ago.
01:09:27.000 There's a video of that as well.
01:09:28.000 The guy thought he was tasing.
01:09:30.000 Yeah, and so it happens.
01:09:31.000 It should look like a flashlight.
01:09:33.000 Yeah, or something way different than a pistol. 0.99
01:09:35.000 Yeah, it shouldn't be shaped like a fucking pistol. 0.99
01:09:36.000 Yeah, and they've changed it over time. 0.97
01:09:38.000 After that incident that I talked about that I studied 25 years ago, they changed them, but not enough.
01:09:44.000 I mean, not enough. 0.98
01:09:45.000 Make it like a goddamn flashlight. 0.99
01:09:47.000 Yeah, something. 0.99
01:09:47.000 Yeah, there's no way it should be shaped like a pistol, and there's no way whoever that person was should be a cop. 0.99
01:09:54.000 Because if you can't figure out that your gun is on this side and your taser's on that side, so if you go like that and you pull this out and you hope it's a taser, You're fucking looking at a black gun. 0.99
01:10:07.000 It's a gun. 0.99
01:10:08.000 It should be a different color.
01:10:09.000 It should be a lot of things different.
01:10:11.000 Yep.
01:10:11.000 And what do you need?
01:10:12.000 What would help that situation?
01:10:14.000 Well, training.
01:10:16.000 What would we be calling for?
01:10:17.000 Defunding.
01:10:18.000 So what gets hit usually first in these things?
01:10:19.000 That training.
01:10:20.000 Exactly.
01:10:21.000 So it seems like the opposite of what certain people are calling for would be more beneficial.
01:10:27.000 It's more training.
01:10:28.000 So she should have so much time on that taser, so much time on that pistol.
01:10:31.000 So she is competent and knows, hey, this one is for the taser, this is the escalation of force, but you can't just do it once.
01:10:36.000 You just can't have somebody come in and give you a half-hour class, and here's your taser, and now you're on the street, and now you're in this situation that's the most stressful of your life.
01:10:44.000 And so, training, training.
01:10:46.000 Training and a higher caliber of human being for a police officer.
01:10:51.000 But who's going to go now?
01:10:52.000 That's the problem.
01:10:54.000 This is where every one of these things that happens makes it more and more difficult to rebound from this.
01:11:00.000 Yep. 0.98
01:11:01.000 Because every time there's some new cop that does something fucked up. 1.00
01:11:05.000 Like that asshole that pulled the lieutenant over. 1.00
01:11:09.000 The army lieutenant. 1.00
01:11:10.000 Oh, I didn't read the whole article.
01:11:11.000 I saw it.
01:11:12.000 Maced him.
01:11:12.000 The guy was nothing but polite.
01:11:14.000 Oh, jeez.
01:11:14.000 It's horrific.
01:11:15.000 You listen to it. 1.00
01:11:16.000 You get so angry that this piece of shit is a cop. 1.00
01:11:19.000 These situations are so goddamn aggravating, not just because you see a person who's victimized, but also because you realize now it's going to be harder. 1.00
01:11:29.000 Now it's going to be harder for the good cops.
01:11:31.000 It's going to be harder for people to get law enforcement to help them.
01:11:36.000 Yep.
01:11:36.000 And then with less applicants or as you get a pool of applicants that isn't as qualified, well, you only have certain people to choose from.
01:11:44.000 They have to fill certain roles here.
01:11:45.000 So now you don't have the caliber of person that you may have had had these things not happen.
01:11:50.000 So it's so tough.
01:11:51.000 But I know that taking away time training is definitely not...
01:11:55.000 No, and defunding the police is not the way to go either.
01:11:57.000 It's like, what do you guys expect is going to happen when you defund the police?
01:12:00.000 Do you think crime is going to quit?
01:12:02.000 Do you think they're going to go, oh, there's no cops anymore?
01:12:04.000 All right, we're going to stop being criminals.
01:12:06.000 Since there's no jobs, what do you think people are going to do?
01:12:09.000 Well, they're going to turn to crime. 0.99
01:12:11.000 And if there's no way that they're going to go to jail now, if they just steal $900 worth of shit, they're just going to steal $900 worth of shit all day long. 1.00
01:12:19.000 It's so tough. 1.00
01:12:19.000 It's so crazy! 1.00
01:12:20.000 And that's why we're having part of this mass exodus.
01:12:22.000 That's why we're coming to all these other places that aren't necessarily, that have less of these problems, I guess.
01:12:27.000 But California, I mean, is bringing a lot of its problems to Texas.
01:12:31.000 And that's also part of the issue.
01:12:32.000 There's a lot of people that move out here that they, you know, they're not pro-Second Amendment.
01:12:38.000 They don't understand the value of being able to protect yourself.
01:12:43.000 There's some people that are, though.
01:12:44.000 The thing that's interesting is the people that moved earlier Get it less.
01:12:48.000 The people that stayed longer get it more.
01:12:51.000 I have friends that were super liberal.
01:12:53.000 I have a friend who just came out here to visit, and she's like, I think I'm a Republican now.
01:12:59.000 And I'm like, that's crazy.
01:13:01.000 Really?
01:13:01.000 She feels just in freedom?
01:13:03.000 It's not just that.
01:13:04.000 It's just that she realizes you really need the law and order, and you really need rules.
01:13:10.000 You really do.
01:13:11.000 It doesn't mean you need to restrict people's freedom.
01:13:13.000 That's not what it is.
01:13:14.000 It's just you need people to stay within the lines of polite society and obey rules because if they don't, then they just keep pushing that and pushing it.
01:13:24.000 Next thing you know, they're camping on your fucking front lawn and you can't do anything about it because you're infringing on their right to have shelter.
01:13:31.000 And you're like, oh my god, is this real? 0.99
01:13:34.000 And if you kick them out, then they arrest you. 1.00
01:13:35.000 You're like, what the fuck? 0.99
01:13:37.000 And then they sue you, and then they take your house. 1.00
01:13:38.000 Like, what?
01:13:39.000 Is this real?
01:13:40.000 It's crazy.
01:13:40.000 We're living in the twilight zone.
01:13:41.000 It can definitely happen.
01:13:42.000 Nuts! 0.70
01:13:43.000 It's nuts!
01:13:43.000 It can definitely happen.
01:13:44.000 And it's, you know, hey, just be respectful.
01:13:46.000 You know, be kind.
01:13:47.000 Never miss an opportunity to make somebody's day.
01:13:50.000 Like, these things are just normal, good people type of thing.
01:13:53.000 But it's hard to do that if you go outside and these people camped out on your front, you know, on your sidewalk in front of your house.
01:13:58.000 I don't think they can actually camp on your front lawn, but...
01:14:00.000 You know what I'm saying.
01:14:01.000 Yeah, no, it's insane, Mo.
01:14:03.000 It's crazy.
01:14:03.000 And then we also have, you add to this, there's just so much more tension because of social media.
01:14:08.000 And what we have in the military, we talk about online or L, like ambush online or L. And right now we seem to have this ambush happening with big tech over here.
01:14:16.000 What does that mean, online or L? So coming up online, boom, so you have, let's say, bad guys walking along the trail.
01:14:20.000 You're on line right here.
01:14:21.000 You light them up.
01:14:22.000 Or an L, so you're not shooting each other.
01:14:24.000 So they're coming into this ambush and they're getting hit here and they're getting hit sideways.
01:14:27.000 So you're set up to not shoot each other, but to just pour down a massive amount of fire on the enemy force.
01:14:32.000 And so we're walking right into this L ambush. 0.98
01:14:36.000 We're letting our freedoms be taken away in the name of things being dangerous, these restrictions to keep everybody safe.
01:14:42.000 And we have big tech over here and we have politicians and the big government over here.
01:14:46.000 And we're walking right into this L ambush. 0.86
01:14:49.000 I don't know how to get out of it because we all rely now on a lot of these platforms for our businesses.
01:14:54.000 So it's a tough position to be in.
01:14:56.000 There's also this weird feeling that no one is competent that's in charge.
01:15:01.000 When you see Biden on TV talking about the AFT and appointing someone to the head of the AFT... You're like, hey man, why don't you redo this?
01:15:12.000 Because that's not what it is. 0.98
01:15:13.000 You can't say it's A-T-F and you should know what that fucking stands for. 0.98
01:15:19.000 You should know what it means. 0.98
01:15:20.000 It's not as simple as like he just jumbled it up.
01:15:23.000 It's like he's doing this all the time.
01:15:24.000 I know.
01:15:25.000 I know.
01:15:26.000 And, you know, obviously it's very noticeable, but there's other things in there.
01:15:30.000 That's a big one.
01:15:30.000 That's a huge one.
01:15:31.000 And, you know, I'm probably forgiving.
01:15:32.000 You know, everybody makes mistakes, especially when you're out there and there's people and all that stuff.
01:15:35.000 And this is your profession.
01:15:36.000 You've been doing it for 50 years now, maybe a little too long.
01:15:40.000 But then we get people in those positions of power that have these platforms that say, hey, no right is absolute.
01:15:48.000 No amendment to the Constitution is absolute.
01:15:51.000 Okay, there's some discussions about certain things.
01:15:53.000 There's advocacy versus incitement when we're talking about the First Amendment, which is a very clear thing that the Supreme Court has ruled on when it was a very liberal court, by the way.
01:16:01.000 But so what about the 19th Amendment, which I think is women's right to vote?
01:16:05.000 Is that not absolute?
01:16:06.000 And we have the leader of our government saying that.
01:16:09.000 How about right to a fair trial and due process?
01:16:11.000 Is that not absolute anymore?
01:16:13.000 Like which ones?
01:16:14.000 He said there's no amendment that is not absolute.
01:16:17.000 Well, there's two right there.
01:16:18.000 That's a crazy thing to say.
01:16:20.000 It's really crazy.
01:16:21.000 And that one's in the speech.
01:16:22.000 Like that wasn't just a mess up.
01:16:23.000 Like that one was thought out ahead of time and in the speech and on the teleprompter.
01:16:26.000 And if you are a law-abiding citizen, the idea that in this country, where we have had the Second Amendment for the entire time, for you to come along and say now, there's no reason for you to have a gun.
01:16:39.000 And there's a lot of people that have said that.
01:16:40.000 I know Biden hasn't said that, but there's a lot of people that say, we need to take guns away.
01:16:44.000 I've had that discussion with liberals.
01:16:46.000 I'm like, okay, take crime away first, please.
01:16:49.000 Did you take crime away?
01:16:51.000 You didn't.
01:16:51.000 Okay, so how are you going to take guns away?
01:16:53.000 Like, if you ever had someone try to do something, break into your home, why don't you go talk to someone who's defended their family, who used a lawfully acquired firearm to defend their family? 0.99
01:17:04.000 And if you haven't, you probably should shut the fuck up, because you're just talking nonsense. 0.99
01:17:07.000 You're talking like you're on Twitter. 1.00
01:17:09.000 Yep.
01:17:09.000 No, exactly.
01:17:10.000 We are citizens, not subjects, and we must stay ever vigilant that we remain so.
01:17:14.000 And that's a responsibility of a free citizenry, to stand up.
01:17:16.000 But once again, with social media, we all get manipulated like this.
01:17:20.000 We can all say, oh, that sounds good.
01:17:21.000 No, it does not sound good.
01:17:23.000 The First and Second Amendments, all of them are there for a reason.
01:17:26.000 But we need to look into that history.
01:17:27.000 Like, you need to study it.
01:17:28.000 How much time are our kids spending in school studying the Constitution?
01:17:31.000 Probably not much.
01:17:32.000 So when I got out of the military, I gave my kids a gift.
01:17:35.000 I gave them each copy of the Constitution, a leather-bound one, so it's not just something that they look up online, like if they want to look up, you know, some, you know, Kardashian-type thing.
01:17:45.000 No, it's different.
01:17:45.000 It's tangible.
01:17:46.000 It's right there.
01:17:46.000 It's in leather.
01:17:47.000 So the Constitution right there.
01:17:49.000 I gave them a Bible with their name on it.
01:17:50.000 I gave them an old compass to help guide their way, and then I gave them a tomahawk.
01:17:54.000 I gave them this Winkler tomahawk, and then here's the means to defend it.
01:17:58.000 And as a citizenry, that is our responsibility, to ensure that our kids and grandkids can have those same freedoms and options and opportunities that we have.
01:18:07.000 That's what we owe the people that gave their lives from the inception of this country up to today.
01:18:09.000 That's what we owe them.
01:18:10.000 And all it takes is studying history.
01:18:13.000 Not just studying history, but having history taught to you by someone who has a real understanding of the consequences of each individual action and what happened and how this led to an erosion of rights, how this led to chaos.
01:18:29.000 What happened?
01:18:30.000 What went wrong?
01:18:31.000 How Stalin's action led to thousands of people starving to death?
01:18:36.000 What is going on with all these steps that turned into the horrors of these historical stories that you can tell?
01:18:46.000 No, absolutely.
01:18:46.000 And what we used to do in school, we used to teach kids how to think.
01:18:49.000 And that's been passed down from ancient Greeks up through today.
01:18:52.000 You taught people how to think in school.
01:18:54.000 We do the opposite today.
01:18:55.000 And I think that's why this has the power it does.
01:18:59.000 Because you're thinking about these things logically.
01:19:01.000 You're talking about it.
01:19:02.000 And people haven't...
01:19:02.000 People, even if they think they went to school and they took math and science and they took these things...
01:19:07.000 Most people were not taught how to think unless they actually took the time to say, ah, what is the history of education?
01:19:12.000 What is this philosophy about?
01:19:14.000 And they actually do it themselves?
01:19:16.000 They're not learning how to think.
01:19:17.000 And somewhere along the way, like, you learned how to think and how to think logically and how to be a critical thinker and how to ask questions and how to have these conversations.
01:19:24.000 And we don't do that in school anymore.
01:19:26.000 You're just on receive mode for the most part unless you go to maybe a law school where maybe you have a professor who maybe wants to use the Socratic method to teach you and teach you to think logically through his questioning and through his class.
01:19:37.000 But you're going to have 10 others that aren't doing that.
01:19:39.000 So I think that's why this resonates with people because there's something about us that wanted to think logically because that gives us control.
01:19:46.000 That gives us control of our own destiny being able to do that.
01:19:48.000 And it's lost on most people in this country today.
01:19:51.000 Most people in the world today, I'd say.
01:19:53.000 Well, it's just too easy to follow a predetermined pattern of behavior.
01:19:57.000 It's too easy.
01:19:59.000 It's too easy to line yourself with either the left or the right and just adopt a conglomeration of ideas that these people have already set out for you, and then this is how I feel about this, and we need to do that.
01:20:13.000 And I see that so often in Hollywood.
01:20:16.000 And when you would talk to people about it and question them, you realize, like, this is a veneer.
01:20:20.000 There's nothing below this.
01:20:22.000 You haven't given this any deep thought, but you're talking about really important subjects.
01:20:26.000 That affect not just you and your kids, but their kids and their grandkids.
01:20:30.000 That affect the future of this country.
01:20:32.000 And you're putting more thought into, I don't know, what you're going to have for dinner than you're putting into these decisions that will affect future generations.
01:20:38.000 There's people out there just flippantly saying that the freedom of speech is not that important.
01:20:43.000 It's true, and that is so crazy.
01:20:44.000 There's a lot of people saying that.
01:20:45.000 It's crazy.
01:20:46.000 Yeah, and those guardians like we talked about, those people are not standing up.
01:20:49.000 And as an author, I see other authors.
01:20:51.000 I see people that 30 years ago would have stepped forward and said, hey, no, this is not right.
01:20:56.000 Well, they're scared of being canceled.
01:20:58.000 It's a real thing.
01:20:59.000 Yeah, yeah.
01:21:01.000 Depending upon whatever subject it is that's being debated and discussed, if you say that freedom of speech is not an absolute right, there's some people that are going to agree with you because you're talking in reference about something that they support.
01:21:14.000 Yeah, I've done a research into that.
01:21:16.000 Like, yeah, it is true that that one is not absolute and that there's incitement and there's advocacy.
01:21:21.000 And the Supreme Court in Brandenburg, actually, that was their decision, that the Liberal Court standing on the side of people that disagree with you vehemently.
01:21:28.000 And that was the whole point of the Brandenburg decision.
01:21:30.000 And like, I agree with you.
01:21:31.000 I don't agree with you, but I'm going to die for your right to say it as long as you're not inciting violence.
01:21:36.000 And nobody really understands the difference between inciting violence and advocating violence.
01:21:41.000 Advocating violence is actually legal as per the Supreme Court decision.
01:21:44.000 Inciting violence is different, a very narrow set of parameters.
01:21:48.000 But that takes study.
01:21:50.000 It takes more than two seconds to figure that out or to put in the requisite time to read about that.
01:21:55.000 Well, it takes weeks and weeks of discussion to figure out what you think.
01:21:58.000 Yeah, exactly.
01:21:59.000 You have to figure out what you think, especially if you've just been told a bunch of stuff for your whole life and you've been following these people on Twitter and Instagram who also have not put in the requisite time into studying these things.
01:22:07.000 So your opinions are being formed by people who are not informed themselves.
01:22:11.000 So take a breath.
01:22:12.000 And what's your responsibility as a citizen?
01:22:13.000 To go study that past.
01:22:15.000 Absolutely.
01:22:16.000 And then also take it a next step.
01:22:17.000 Once you do that, realize, oh, the police might not be here to defend me.
01:22:20.000 What is my responsibility as a citizen to myself, this gift of life, and to my family?
01:22:24.000 Well, I better get some training here on this.
01:22:27.000 I better get a firearm and get some training because it might come down to me.
01:22:29.000 This society thing is fragile.
01:22:31.000 I thought that we were nice and safe in this country.
01:22:33.000 But you know what?
01:22:34.000 Ah, yeah.
01:22:35.000 Civil unrest, pandemic, hurricane, earthquake, whatever it might be.
01:22:39.000 Maybe I need to take a little personal responsibility here.
01:22:41.000 Yeah, well, that was one of the more fascinating things about the pandemic was watching my more liberal friends start to ask questions about guns.
01:22:50.000 Oh, yeah.
01:22:50.000 And ask me how to get a gun and what do I do?
01:22:53.000 They're all looking for that loophole.
01:22:54.000 Everybody's calling me asking for the loophole.
01:22:56.000 I'm like, hey, here's...
01:22:56.000 I had friends asking if they could get a gun from me.
01:23:00.000 That's a lot of steps you got to take.
01:23:03.000 Yeah, thanks.
01:23:04.000 But also, a lot of them didn't take that next step to then realize, oh, I voted people into power that put all these restrictions in place that do nothing but make it harder for me to defend myself and my family.
01:23:14.000 It doesn't do anything for the person that's not paying attention to these laws.
01:23:18.000 But it's hurting me.
01:23:19.000 Well, you got to be prepared.
01:23:21.000 I mean, I think background checks are important.
01:23:23.000 I mean, I think you really should know if someone's a criminal before you sell them a gun.
01:23:26.000 I think that makes sense.
01:23:27.000 But I also think you, as a person, should have already done that so that you can have some...
01:23:33.000 Best case scenario, you never have to use it.
01:23:36.000 That's best case scenario.
01:23:38.000 Worst case scenario is you don't have a gun and you need one.
01:23:41.000 That's worst case scenario.
01:23:42.000 Oh, yeah.
01:23:43.000 Yeah, and then you make the change, but by then it's too late.
01:23:46.000 It's too late.
01:23:46.000 And we talk about background checks, they throw that around so easily, which it sounds really good, but then you realize, oh, what is a universal background check?
01:23:53.000 We already have background checks in place, okay?
01:23:56.000 I go in, I fill out this paperwork, they call the ATF, they get an approval that I'm not a felon and all these things.
01:24:01.000 Right.
01:24:02.000 That's already there.
01:24:04.000 Then this registry.
01:24:05.000 Now we're talking about a register of guns.
01:24:06.000 We're talking about those lists again.
01:24:08.000 Yeah, that's why it gets tricky.
01:24:09.000 That's, yeah.
01:24:10.000 Because they could look upon your registry if they're going to hire you.
01:24:12.000 It seems, Mr. Carr, you have an AR-15.
01:24:15.000 Like, what are you doing with that?
01:24:17.000 That's an assault rifle.
01:24:19.000 I'd be like, does it just say one on there?
01:24:20.000 Yeah.
01:24:22.000 I got one in my office.
01:24:23.000 Exactly.
01:24:24.000 I got one in the car.
01:24:25.000 I got one in the office.
01:24:26.000 Yeah, yeah.
01:24:26.000 I might have more than one.
01:24:27.000 But yeah, we're going back to those lists again.
01:24:29.000 Yeah.
01:24:30.000 And when we talk about putting people on lists, it's something that does not...
01:24:33.000 If you study your history and put the time into it, you'll realize that that does not end up in a good place for anyone.
01:24:38.000 No.
01:24:38.000 Lists and these vaccine passports.
01:24:41.000 A lot of it is the same kind of...
01:24:43.000 And I understand that you're saying, no, vaccine passports are important to keep everybody safe.
01:24:46.000 And like...
01:24:47.000 How come it's okay to be fat?
01:24:50.000 How come it's okay to be super unhealthy?
01:24:51.000 Joe, don't shame anyone, Joe.
01:24:52.000 You're going to get canceled.
01:24:53.000 But how come that's okay?
01:24:54.000 How come we're not talking about that?
01:24:56.000 Because that takes work.
01:24:58.000 Yeah.
01:24:58.000 Because it's difficult.
01:24:59.000 So we're not putting requirements on people to be healthy.
01:25:02.000 Because there's a lot of people that got COVID, like yourself or like Jamie, that it really wasn't that big of a deal.
01:25:06.000 We're not talking about old people.
01:25:08.000 We're not talking about people with pre-existing conditions.
01:25:10.000 We're talking about people that, through their direct actions, have caused their immune system to be very weak.
01:25:16.000 Yeah.
01:25:17.000 But we don't discuss that at all.
01:25:19.000 No. 0.98
01:25:19.000 But yet we're willing to discuss putting a fucking thing on your phone that allows you to go somewhere or not go somewhere based on whether or not you've allowed them to vaccinate you. 0.98
01:25:29.000 Yep. 0.99
01:25:30.000 No, personal responsibility.
01:25:31.000 That's what it all comes down to.
01:25:32.000 We have that option in this country right now anyway.
01:25:34.000 But in the future, will we?
01:25:36.000 I don't know.
01:25:37.000 I don't know.
01:25:37.000 Yeah, we're going down these paths.
01:25:39.000 Joe, you're going to get boning me out, dude.
01:25:40.000 What are we talking about? 0.94
01:25:41.000 All this crazy...
01:25:42.000 I know.
01:25:42.000 Getting all freaked out.
01:25:43.000 You're...
01:25:44.000 Your character, Reese in these books, is this guy who, I mean, it's very idealistic, right?
01:25:54.000 He's this soldier who does the right thing and can handle these horrible situations.
01:26:04.000 And he's the guy, you know, he's the break glass in case of war guy.
01:26:09.000 Mm-hmm.
01:26:10.000 When you created this guy and you're putting him in these scenarios, you're creating this ideal version of what a soldier is and should be. 0.99
01:26:22.000 And there's a lot of horrific aspects to this guy, but you also realize he's a good person, but if you're a piece of shit, that's the wrong guy to be looking at. 0.99
01:26:34.000 He's the last guy you want to face if you are worthy of his rage. 0.99
01:26:39.000 Yeah, actually, it goes back to a lot of the stuff we were just talking about, about this due process, about the right to a fair trial.
01:26:46.000 Things that he raised his hand to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, just like we all did.
01:26:52.000 And in that first book, I needed a free...
01:26:54.000 That's what I wanted to explore in that first book.
01:26:56.000 It was all about revenge without constraint.
01:26:57.000 So somebody that has come up in this way, in that he has stepped up to defend his country.
01:27:02.000 He's gone downrange.
01:27:03.000 He has the training.
01:27:04.000 He's very good at his job.
01:27:05.000 He's gone downrange in Iraq and Afghanistan, so he has a real-life experience.
01:27:09.000 And then he comes home and his family's killed, his troops killed as part of this government conspiracy.
01:27:13.000 And now he has to question all those things that we just talked about, all those things that he swore to uphold and defend.
01:27:18.000 Well, now he thinks he's dying, which frees him up to then become that terrorist, become that insurgent that he's been fighting in the book for the first 16 years of war.
01:27:28.000 Now we're at 20 years now.
01:27:29.000 So that's really what I wanted to explore in there, which was fascinating for me to explore because I thought about it for a long time.
01:27:34.000 It was very therapeutic to write the novel, by the way.
01:27:37.000 And if it's at a deeper level, it's really also about someone who is bringing the wars from Iraq and Afghanistan home to the front doors of people who have been sending young men and women to their death now for what was 20 years.
01:27:49.000 So yes, he's an ideal soldier in that he is very good at his job.
01:27:53.000 He is a He has a background similar to mine, but he's much better at everything than I am.
01:27:57.000 He's a better shot, he's stronger, he's faster, he's better at jiu-jitsu, he's better at boxing.
01:28:01.000 All these things he's better at, but he's not perfect.
01:28:03.000 He doesn't understand the surveillance side of things.
01:28:09.000 Because in the SEAL teams, we didn't do that.
01:28:10.000 Now we have guys that do that and are very good at it, but when I came up, we didn't do that.
01:28:14.000 So I try to humanize him in that respect, try to humanize him Through his relationships, through the way he likes his coffee, likes his black rifle coffee with some honey and some cream in there, which people made fun of me for in the military.
01:28:25.000 So he's a character that people can relate to.
01:28:27.000 He's the person you want to have a beer with, want to sit down and have a coffee with.
01:28:30.000 He believes in this Second Amendment, this First Amendment.
01:28:33.000 He's an American guy.
01:28:33.000 But all of a sudden, now his family's gone, his troops gone.
01:28:36.000 He has to question those things because he just wants to put everybody involved in the ground.
01:28:39.000 And he does so in a very violent way.
01:28:41.000 Very primal way, which also resonates with people, because sometimes, yeah, the law doesn't work.
01:28:47.000 The justice does not prevail.
01:28:48.000 And in this case, he's freed up to make sure that it does.
01:28:51.000 Well, people do enjoy revenge.
01:28:53.000 Yes.
01:28:54.000 But there's also people in your books that are supposedly on the right side, whether they're politicians, whether they're people in the military, that... 0.85
01:29:10.000 They're corrupt and they're evil and they're doing terrible things.
01:29:15.000 When you're writing these things, is it difficult for you to write about those kind of people?
01:29:21.000 Are you doing it based on your understanding of The realities of some of these people that are either senators or military people, I mean, is it based on your actual knowledge or are you just using your imagination,
01:29:37.000 creativity and creating worst case scenario for a politician?
01:29:41.000 Yeah, so it's a little of both.
01:29:43.000 It's a lot of the creative process, of course.
01:29:45.000 It's a fictional narrative, but they're inspired by feelings and emotions behind things I was involved with.
01:29:51.000 And then, you know, Eisenhower had a speech about the military-industrial complex.
01:29:54.000 He didn't just make that up because it sounded good, because he wanted to sell a book later or something like that.
01:29:58.000 He was trying to get likes and tweets and be incendiary or something like that, clickbait.
01:30:01.000 There's a reason we all know that phrase.
01:30:03.000 And if you read the whole speech or if you watch that whole speech...
01:30:07.000 It's fascinating.
01:30:07.000 People should do both.
01:30:09.000 And, I mean, he was warning about those generals, those admirals that get up to these senior levels of power that all of a sudden get that contract across their desk and they're going to be out of the military in two years and all of a sudden they have this contract from Boeing or Raytheon or General Dynamics or whatever it is and they see their buddy that got out a couple years ahead of time at the three-star mark or the four-star mark that's now sitting on a board for We're good to
01:30:41.000 go.
01:30:43.000 It is a path for these guys.
01:30:45.000 And some people probably come in thinking about that.
01:30:47.000 Maybe some people get jaded along the way and turn into politicians in uniform.
01:30:51.000 And maybe some outliers, maybe some never feel that way.
01:30:54.000 That's possible, too.
01:30:55.000 But for me, when you're making an antagonist, when you're designing a character who's supposed to be a bad guy that you want the reader to cheer for when James Reese takes him out, while some of those senior-level policymakers, both in uniform and out, Are essentially politicians in uniform.
01:31:11.000 So we see that in the military.
01:31:13.000 It's a real thing.
01:31:14.000 And I use that to create some of these characters in the novels.
01:31:18.000 And when you're a ground level combat guy, tactical level leader, tactical level operator, and you're seeing decisions made at higher levels that aren't necessarily made in the best You start asking questions and you notice it.
01:31:35.000 It doesn't escape notice.
01:31:37.000 So in some of these novels I get to create characters where I then get to dispatch with them in a way that feels quite good.
01:31:45.000 Well, you can tell.
01:31:46.000 And it's funny, so the Navy, in the Pratt series, Amazon reached out to the Navy for support and heard nothing back.
01:31:56.000 They support movies now and again, Top Gun or whatever else.
01:31:59.000 Back to the Kane Mutiny, actually, which is a book by Herman Wolk that had Humphrey Bogart in it back in the day.
01:32:04.000 And so they reached out, didn't hear anything back.
01:32:07.000 Reached out to the Marine Corps, heard back right away.
01:32:09.000 Marine Corps is all in.
01:32:10.000 Use Camp Pendleton.
01:32:11.000 We've got all these assets for you.
01:32:12.000 We have planes and helicopters.
01:32:14.000 It's going to be awesome.
01:32:15.000 And then the Navy came back and said, no, we're not supporting.
01:32:18.000 And then the Marine Corps came back the next day and said, no, we're not supporting.
01:32:21.000 Which is great, which is fine, because now there's no politics attached to it, and it's what I expect.
01:32:26.000 So you don't have to get their consent to...
01:32:29.000 Yeah, yeah, exactly.
01:32:30.000 So what do you think happened?
01:32:31.000 Well, somebody probably read the book and was like, wait, he blows up this admiral in his office with an S-vest?
01:32:37.000 Like, no, we're not going to support this.
01:32:38.000 You have all these bad guys that are senior-level politicians and senior-level officers that this guy is going around and gutting and making them walk around trees and blowing them up in their offices.
01:32:46.000 Yeah, we're not supporting this, which is fine.
01:32:48.000 You know, I love it.
01:32:49.000 It works for me.
01:32:51.000 Right.
01:32:51.000 They don't want to support that kind of...
01:32:54.000 Yeah, that's fine.
01:32:55.000 I totally get it.
01:32:56.000 Vigilante behavior.
01:32:58.000 Exactly.
01:32:59.000 When you're writing a bad guy like that and you're making him like a senior level officer or a politician, do you hesitate? 0.99
01:33:08.000 When you're constructing your books and you're putting in these things that these guys have done and in every book there's a piece of shit. 0.98
01:33:20.000 There's not one, multiple. 0.98
01:33:22.000 You know, all of them.
01:33:23.000 Yep.
01:33:24.000 So it's possible they're inspired by multiple people, certain traits that you see in one person here, one person there.
01:33:32.000 Maybe you know them, maybe it's somebody that you see in the news.
01:33:35.000 But you can take those things and create a single character and you can add the fiction side to it to make them even worse.
01:33:41.000 Or maybe in some cases better. 0.98
01:33:42.000 There's probably some horrible people up there that need killing.
01:33:45.000 But it doesn't mean we need to be the ones that do it.
01:33:47.000 Don't get in trouble.
01:33:49.000 But yeah, it's fun to do that.
01:33:51.000 It's so fun to do that.
01:33:52.000 And like I said, very therapeutic because there were some senior level people as I was in the military that you looked up to and said, how did this guy, not looked up to, I mean, like saw them at senior levels and were like, how on earth is this person in this position of power?
01:34:05.000 How does it happen?
01:34:06.000 They don't get too many DUIs, they don't pop positive on a drug test, and they don't get arrested for beating a wife or girlfriend.
01:34:13.000 And then you can rise to the top in government service.
01:34:15.000 Of that, I am fairly confident.
01:34:18.000 Really?
01:34:18.000 Because you see these people, you're in this huge bureaucracy.
01:34:21.000 So all you have to do is just not fuck up. 0.99
01:34:23.000 That's it. 0.99
01:34:24.000 That's it.
01:34:24.000 And I think it's in most gigantic bureaucracies, I would guess.
01:34:28.000 Probably a little harder to do today, I can only imagine.
01:34:30.000 The political games that are going on at senior level is in the military right now and we're talking about all sorts of different social experiments and whatever else going on.
01:34:38.000 I'm glad I'm watching that stuff from the outside. 0.97
01:34:40.000 But then we have just people that get up to these levels and they're just inept.
01:34:44.000 And an example of that would be, you know, people all know who I'm talking about, but when we disbanded the Iraqi army.
01:34:53.000 When we have this policy of de-Bathification in Iraq. 0.99
01:34:56.000 So what does that mean?
01:34:57.000 It means that we essentially made an insurgency because now everyone in the military is out of a job.
01:35:02.000 And we also guaranteed it that people aren't there to pick up the trash to keep the power grid going because everyone was a Ba'athist. 1.00
01:35:09.000 So these two decisions, like if any of us made that a tactical level decision as horrible as that, we probably would have gotten our platoons and troops killed.
01:35:16.000 We would have been court-martialed, sent home, kicked out of the military.
01:35:19.000 But yet we have senior level policymakers who don't study the nature of the conflict in which they're engaged.
01:35:25.000 That is our only job is to understand the nature of the conflict in which we're engaged and make strategic level decisions.
01:35:31.000 Based on that knowledge.
01:35:33.000 And some of these seem like they did not do that, particularly with those two.
01:35:37.000 We fueled an insurgency, we created that insurgency, and we made it so we had to start a society from essentially zero and build up everyone in every single job.
01:35:45.000 Imagine Austin not having power tomorrow, not having water tomorrow, no garbage coming, no stores open, because everyone was a certain political party.
01:35:53.000 And they can't be in a position like that anymore because a force came in and said so.
01:35:59.000 So did they just hope that they would figure it out amongst themselves?
01:36:02.000 What was the logic behind it?
01:36:03.000 Nope, we're going to build it up again.
01:36:04.000 We're going to build up a new army.
01:36:05.000 We're going to build up a new government and all the services that go along with supporting modern society.
01:36:12.000 And they're going to embrace this Jeffersonian democracy.
01:36:16.000 And that was not what happened.
01:36:18.000 At all.
01:36:21.000 You know, young men and women into the ground that stepped up to serve their country and trusted our senior-level leaders to make those good strategic-level decisions, which did not happen.
01:36:32.000 Was it a bad trial and error?
01:36:34.000 Was it just not understanding what the consequences of your decisions are?
01:36:37.000 Was it being poorly informed?
01:36:40.000 What caused it?
01:36:41.000 I think it's a combination of all those things.
01:36:43.000 I mean, it's kind of a new—not necessarily new.
01:36:45.000 I mean, we— We have been involved in different insurgencies for a while, particularly from the end of World War II up to today.
01:36:52.000 So there is some history to look back on, but it's also about understanding the society in which you're moving into.
01:36:58.000 And if you're going in at one of these senior levels where you are making these decisions, where the politicians are then trusting you, that's the other side of this.
01:37:05.000 So in the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln fired a ton of generals until he got to Grant.
01:37:10.000 In World War II, George Marshall, he's best known for the Marshall Plan after World War II, but really what he did during World War II and in the lead up was fire people that did not perform.
01:37:20.000 And after World War II, we saw a shift in that dynamic.
01:37:23.000 We saw it in Korean War a little bit, but by the time we get to Vietnam and through today, we don't punish people.
01:37:28.000 We don't fire people for performance at those higher levels.
01:37:30.000 People fail up from Vietnam up to today, unless there's some scandal like with... 0.67
01:37:35.000 You know, McChrystal talking, you know, with his reporter.
01:37:39.000 You talked about it the other day with Glenn Greenwald.
01:37:41.000 Yes, yeah.
01:37:42.000 Who was fantastic, by the way.
01:37:43.000 Michael Hastings.
01:37:43.000 Yeah, Michael Hastings, yeah.
01:37:45.000 Who I met right before he died.
01:37:46.000 That was crazy.
01:37:48.000 What do you think happened with that guy?
01:37:49.000 I don't know.
01:37:50.000 I mean, I met him, he was...
01:37:51.000 I think they whacked that dude.
01:37:52.000 I mean, it seems suspicious, doesn't it?
01:37:54.000 Like, how could it get more suspicious? 0.99
01:37:55.000 It's suspicious as fuck. 0.97
01:37:57.000 But then again, you know, coincidence and weird things do happen, but, you know, it's... 0.98
01:38:03.000 People don't know what we're talking about.
01:38:04.000 This guy was embedded in Iraq.
01:38:07.000 It was Iraq, right?
01:38:08.000 I think it was Afghanistan with General McChrystal.
01:38:10.000 And he was Afghanistan.
01:38:14.000 I'm sorry.
01:38:15.000 He was stuck because there was a volcano erupted.
01:38:19.000 The Iceland volcano?
01:38:20.000 Yeah, Iceland.
01:38:21.000 Yeah, a volcano in Iceland.
01:38:22.000 This is 2000...
01:38:24.000 I don't know the exact date right now.
01:38:26.000 Probably 2000, what?
01:38:27.000 9, 10, 11, somewhere in there.
01:38:28.000 Somewhere around there?
01:38:29.000 Somewhere.
01:38:29.000 So what happened was the Iceland volcano erupted.
01:38:32.000 It ceased travel.
01:38:34.000 So he couldn't...
01:38:34.000 Hastings couldn't fly home and he's writing for the Rolling Stone, right?
01:38:37.000 Yep.
01:38:38.000 Rolling Stone article.
01:38:38.000 He's embedded.
01:38:39.000 He's been with these guys for a while.
01:38:40.000 These guys start getting comfortable because he's around.
01:38:43.000 And they act the way they always act. 1.00
01:38:44.000 They start talking a little shit. 1.00
01:38:46.000 And where do they go? 1.00
01:38:47.000 They go to a bar.
01:38:48.000 That's the other part.
01:38:48.000 You add some alcohol to this.
01:38:50.000 You add some alcohol fuel to this.
01:38:53.000 Digital courage.
01:38:53.000 And so you just kind of open up.
01:38:54.000 You've been with this guy for a while.
01:38:55.000 Totally natural thing to do because you're building up trust with this person and you think he's a buddy, but really he's there getting information.
01:39:02.000 It's not his job to be your buddy.
01:39:03.000 He's a reporter. 0.98
01:39:04.000 And the juicier and more fucked up the story, the better it is for him. 0.99
01:39:08.000 Exactly. 0.95
01:39:08.000 And so, I guess, what did McChrystal say? 0.95
01:39:11.000 Something about, it wasn't even that bad, but I don't even know if it was McChrystal.
01:39:15.000 I think it might have been one of the guys that was with him.
01:39:16.000 We'll have to go back and look.
01:39:17.000 But regardless, someone in the circle said something critical of either policy or Obama.
01:39:21.000 Yeah, personally.
01:39:22.000 One or the other, I don't remember.
01:39:24.000 And was he fired or was he forced to resign?
01:39:25.000 I think he resigned, but he was going to be fired.
01:39:27.000 I think it was one of those things.
01:39:29.000 But once again, a great innovator. 0.95
01:39:31.000 A great general who was loved by people and then the death threats come in and this guy was freaking the fuck out. 0.82
01:39:38.000 And apparently he was worried for his own life. 0.94
01:39:44.000 Whether or not he took his own life or they took his own life, what happened was he goes like 120 miles an hour into a tree.
01:39:53.000 Yeah, a Mercedes, like, fairly new Mercedes.
01:39:55.000 Yeah, so this is the video of it. 0.99
01:39:56.000 Oh, shit. 0.99
01:39:57.000 Those things don't... 1.00
01:39:58.000 So here it is.
01:39:58.000 Oh, man.
01:39:59.000 Boom, it explodes.
01:40:01.000 Jeez.
01:40:01.000 You know, I've never seen this before.
01:40:02.000 I didn't know there was actual footage of it.
01:40:03.000 So here it goes.
01:40:04.000 Jeez.
01:40:05.000 Boom.
01:40:05.000 And they also suspect that there was something about the way the engine flew from the car that there might have been explosives involved.
01:40:15.000 But they don't know.
01:40:17.000 No one knows.
01:40:18.000 It's so crazy.
01:40:19.000 Suspicious?
01:40:20.000 I mean, look at that car.
01:40:21.000 So, the car's going, you know, 100 plus miles an hour, slams a new tree, explodes, engine goes flying, he's dead.
01:40:33.000 Suspicious. 1.00
01:40:34.000 Suspicious as fuck. 0.99
01:40:35.000 That this is the thing that no one had ever seen before. 0.99
01:40:37.000 Like the engine flew off the car.
01:40:41.000 The engine and the, I think the transmission as well.
01:40:45.000 Like look where it was.
01:40:46.000 Jeez.
01:40:47.000 And they think, look, the conspiracy theory is that it was a bomb.
01:40:52.000 And that, you know, on impact it detonated.
01:40:55.000 And that this guy going 100 and whatever miles and hours because they had taken control of his vehicle.
01:41:01.000 I mean, if I was to write that in a story, it would sound like it was possible.
01:41:05.000 If I wrote that into the story, hey, high-level general in charge of this Jason secretive commands in the military, all of a sudden gets fired because of this guy, whether it's him, supporters, whatever it might be in this shadowy world between intelligence and military special operations where there's a lot of overlap,
01:41:21.000 especially at that time.
01:41:22.000 It does look suspicious.
01:41:24.000 They certainly can do that.
01:41:25.000 I would think that you could do that.
01:41:27.000 100%.
01:41:27.000 They've said they could do that.
01:41:29.000 They've asked people, is it possible to take control of someone's car?
01:41:33.000 And they were like, what year is it?
01:41:34.000 If you're talking about a 1970 Volkswagen, no.
01:41:37.000 You're talking about a 2011 Mercedes?
01:41:41.000 Yes.
01:41:42.000 Interesting.
01:41:42.000 There's a computer in it.
01:41:43.000 Yeah, yeah.
01:41:44.000 There's a lot of computers in these cars today.
01:41:47.000 I know you love your Tesla, right?
01:41:49.000 You love that. 1.00
01:41:50.000 That motherfucker drives itself. 1.00
01:41:51.000 See? 1.00
01:41:52.000 That thing freaks me out.
01:41:53.000 I love that personal responsibility.
01:41:55.000 I don't think I can do it.
01:41:56.000 Don't worry about it.
01:41:59.000 Exactly.
01:41:59.000 1988 Land Cruiser.
01:42:00.000 Here's an 88. 88 and then the FJ-40's got 78. Yeah, that's even less likely.
01:42:06.000 Exactly.
01:42:06.000 And then you get the EMP thing, of course, you know, electromagnetic pulse.
01:42:09.000 You don't have to worry as much about that.
01:42:11.000 That's true, too.
01:42:12.000 One other thing, but you do have a computer in your FJ. I think with that engine, yeah.
01:42:15.000 Yeah, because it's a GM, one of those crate engines.
01:42:18.000 Yeah, I'm going to get something else that's like carbureted from way back in the day.
01:42:21.000 Wait, yeah, but those things stink.
01:42:24.000 The thing about Hastings was they did a toxicology examination on him and they found out that there was amphetamines in his system.
01:42:32.000 But the problem with that analysis is he's a writer.
01:42:36.000 And most journalists, I don't want to say most, a lot of journalists are on amphetamines.
01:42:42.000 Oh really?
01:42:43.000 A lot.
01:42:43.000 Yeah, they're on Adderall.
01:42:45.000 I'm going to have to check this out.
01:42:45.000 Yeah.
01:42:46.000 Interesting.
01:42:47.000 What does that do to you?
01:42:48.000 It makes you be able to write for hours and hours and hours.
01:42:51.000 I'm going to look into this.
01:42:52.000 I'm going to get a prescription because I'm exhausted all the time.
01:42:54.000 A buddy of mine who's a pretty straight-laced guy who's a journalist was snorting Adderall until his wife got mad at him for it.
01:43:00.000 Wow.
01:43:00.000 Yeah.
01:43:01.000 Wow.
01:43:01.000 I won't tell my wife that.
01:43:02.000 I'm going to keep that one on the down low.
01:43:04.000 Well, he's not a journalist.
01:43:05.000 I shouldn't say he's a journalist.
01:43:05.000 He's an author.
01:43:06.000 Okay.
01:43:06.000 But he said it really helped him.
01:43:09.000 He said he didn't like taking the pills and he wanted to get it right away, so he just snort Adderall.
01:43:13.000 You know, I get it.
01:43:14.000 I've thought about this a lot over the last couple years.
01:43:15.000 Not necessarily with the first book or the second, because there wasn't any of these other things going on yet.
01:43:19.000 I wasn't building a business at the same time.
01:43:21.000 I was just writing.
01:43:22.000 But now when the third one hits, and now there's the series, and then the fourth book, and there's just...
01:43:27.000 Thinking about getting on Adderall.
01:43:28.000 You sound like you're on Adderall.
01:43:29.000 Do I all the time?
01:43:30.000 You have a lot of energy.
01:43:31.000 I got a lot going on.
01:43:32.000 I got a lot of thoughts.
01:43:32.000 But if you were like a low-key guy, like really boring, and then you came in here and you're talking like the way you talk right now, I'd be like, oh...
01:43:38.000 Jack Carr got on Adderall.
01:43:40.000 Next time you'll be like, I see what happened here.
01:43:42.000 I recommend it again on Adderall.
01:43:44.000 I definitely have had people in here on Adderall.
01:43:46.000 I've had people in here admit they were on Adderall.
01:43:48.000 Really?
01:43:49.000 Yeah, and it's obvious.
01:43:50.000 There's a thing, there's a tension, there's a weirdness to them.
01:43:53.000 It's like...
01:43:54.000 Because sometimes people are wound up when they come here anyway, just because whenever you're doing something that you know millions of people are going to see, you get weird.
01:44:01.000 You know, but...
01:44:02.000 Well, thanks for bringing that up.
01:44:04.000 Tension.
01:44:04.000 You're fine, but this Hastings guy, they did do a toxicology examination of him, right?
01:44:10.000 And they were suspecting that it might have played a factor in his decision to drive 120 miles an hour into a tree.
01:44:19.000 Yeah.
01:44:19.000 No, it's interesting.
01:44:20.000 I'm part of this group called Gen Next, which is really about figuring out how to make decisions and put people in positions of authority that are making decisions based on the best interests of the country and for future generations.
01:44:36.000 In academics, in border security, national security, that sort of thing.
01:44:40.000 But I met Michael Hastings through them right before he died.
01:44:45.000 So we talked to him.
01:44:46.000 Very interesting guy.
01:44:47.000 Very interesting guy.
01:44:48.000 In what way?
01:44:48.000 And I remembered, because I asked him a question.
01:44:50.000 I asked him, because the story broke maybe a year before, six months before.
01:44:54.000 It was fairly recent.
01:44:55.000 And I asked him, I said, hey, is there anything as a journalist that if you ever, if you found out and you It was not just a Snowden type thing, you know, not just something like that, which actually informs the public.
01:45:06.000 But if you found out something that would be beneficial for you to publish, but would have drastic consequences for the United States, for the citizenry, for the military, would you ever not publish something?
01:45:19.000 Is there anything out there?
01:45:20.000 Is there any line you wouldn't cross?
01:45:21.000 He said no.
01:45:23.000 It's kind of interesting.
01:45:24.000 They killed that dude. 0.80
01:45:26.000 Maybe. 0.94
01:45:26.000 They definitely killed that dude. 0.94
01:45:27.000 Right after you talked to him.
01:45:28.000 Right after, yeah, they were listening on my phone.
01:45:30.000 They were listening in my phone.
01:45:31.000 He was done.
01:45:32.000 He was done.
01:45:33.000 But interesting guy.
01:45:33.000 You know, interesting perspective.
01:45:36.000 Investigators believe he was taking cocaine and the psychedelic drug DMT. Get the fuck here. 1.00
01:45:41.000 At the same time? 1.00
01:45:42.000 That's so dumb. 0.99
01:45:43.000 It says family members told investigators that they didn't find it in the toxicology. 0.99
01:45:47.000 Okay, but here's the thing about them even saying that.
01:45:51.000 First of all, DMT is an exogenous in the human body.
01:45:54.000 Your brain produces it no matter what.
01:45:56.000 Second of all, it's one of the most transient drugs ever observed in the body.
01:46:01.000 Your body brings it back to baseline in 15 minutes. 1.00
01:46:04.000 So the idea that that had anything to do with him driving 125 miles an hour into a fucking tree is so ridiculous. 0.99
01:46:11.000 The cocaine thing, though... 0.99
01:46:12.000 That's what they did find is marijuana and a trace of amphetamine.
01:46:16.000 Yeah, trace of amphetamine. 1.00
01:46:18.000 He's on fucking Adderall. 0.99
01:46:20.000 I guarantee you he's taking Adderall. 0.99
01:46:21.000 Dude, I know so many journalists that are on...
01:46:23.000 I don't know.
01:46:24.000 I don't even know so many journalists.
01:46:25.000 That's kind of a lie.
01:46:26.000 How many journalists?
01:46:27.000 I know journalists.
01:46:28.000 I know less than a dozen.
01:46:30.000 And a lot of them are on Adderall.
01:46:32.000 And the ones that I've talked to about Adderall say you wouldn't believe...
01:46:36.000 One guy in specific who is...
01:46:39.000 He works for a major newspaper.
01:46:41.000 He's like, listen to me, man. 1.00
01:46:42.000 He goes, the fucking news is fueled by Adderall. 1.00
01:46:45.000 No way. 1.00
01:46:46.000 I'm going to ask some people I know.
01:46:47.000 You've got to ask Glenn.
01:46:49.000 It was so great hearing you, because Glenn Greenwald is one of my favorite people to hear speak, whether he has three minutes on the news or three hours with you.
01:46:57.000 He is so fascinating.
01:46:58.000 He's fantastic.
01:46:59.000 I wish we could do it in person, but he lives in Brazil.
01:47:01.000 I know.
01:47:02.000 I heard that.
01:47:03.000 He's one of the few guys that I would have on, again, with Zoom, because I'm kind of done with doing these Skype-type calls.
01:47:10.000 Yeah, yeah.
01:47:11.000 It's tough.
01:47:11.000 Yeah.
01:47:12.000 It's just not as good.
01:47:13.000 No, but that one was great because I listened to it.
01:47:16.000 And, you know, it sounded fantastic.
01:47:18.000 But he's, I mean, he's on that front line.
01:47:21.000 He's an actual journalist on the front line.
01:47:23.000 A real journalist.
01:47:24.000 Taking risks, asking questions.
01:47:26.000 And yeah, he's fantastic.
01:47:27.000 He's always so good.
01:47:28.000 I wish he'd write.
01:47:28.000 I think he has a book that just came out, right?
01:47:29.000 I think he has one.
01:47:30.000 I believe so, yes.
01:47:31.000 But he doesn't care if it's a story that supports the left wing or the right.
01:47:36.000 He's honest about both sides.
01:47:38.000 He's like straight down the middle about things.
01:47:40.000 Yep.
01:47:40.000 No, he's an actual journalist, and there are very few left.
01:47:43.000 And it's like Katie Pavlich at Fox.
01:47:45.000 She has a book called Fast and Furious when we're talking about gun control type thing.
01:47:49.000 So Fast and Furious was the nickname of a program where the government let weapons go into Mexico just to prove- Wound up killing officers.
01:47:57.000 Wound up killing Brian Terry.
01:47:58.000 Yeah.
01:47:58.000 Wound up killing a Border Patrol agent.
01:48:00.000 And then it was, of course, trying to be covered up, and we weren't really trying- But that seems like something right out of your book.
01:48:07.000 It does.
01:48:07.000 It does.
01:48:08.000 Because it seems like the idea that you're going to sell guns to the cartel.
01:48:13.000 Do you know there's a...
01:48:14.000 Marianna Van Zeller, she has this show called Trafficked.
01:48:19.000 Yeah, I've heard of that.
01:48:20.000 It's on...
01:48:20.000 What is it on again?
01:48:22.000 Discovery?
01:48:22.000 Nigeo?
01:48:23.000 Nat Geo?
01:48:24.000 It's a great show. 1.00
01:48:26.000 It's fucking fantastic. 0.99
01:48:26.000 And I watched the one on cocaine. 0.99
01:48:28.000 It's heavy.
01:48:29.000 But there was one on guns and guns in the cartels.
01:48:33.000 And this is coming out of her show.
01:48:37.000 She was getting these guys who were trafficking these guns down into Mexico, explaining how they get them.
01:48:45.000 And they got them from the LAPD. She was like, we're buying them from the LAPD. They put them in their trunk and they drive them to Mexico because there's no border patrol that lets you into Mexico.
01:48:55.000 You can just drive into Mexico.
01:48:57.000 If you're in the United States, driving into Mexico is a breeze.
01:49:00.000 So this guy would fill his trunk up on a regular basis with guns that he got from the LAPD. Some bad person in the LAPD is getting him these guns and he's selling them to Mexico to the cartels.
01:49:13.000 Yeah.
01:49:14.000 Well, this is even worse in that it was a program by the federal government.
01:49:16.000 I believe it started under, they can check out that book, Fast and Furious Details, all of it.
01:49:20.000 But there was one in the Bush administration and it wasn't working out.
01:49:23.000 They're like, okay, let's put a hold on this.
01:49:24.000 Let's stop.
01:49:25.000 This is not working out.
01:49:26.000 We're not able to track these guns.
01:49:28.000 And then Obama administration opens it back up.
01:49:30.000 And they put tracking devices on like two of thousands of firearms.
01:49:36.000 So they tracked two, and they're trying to prove a narrative that, hey, all these gun sales in the United States are ending up in Mexico.
01:49:42.000 Well, yeah, because you're talking to these gun store owners, you're putting pressure on them, making them do things they would not ordinarily do otherwise, and letting 50 AK-47s go out the door and then sift their way into Mexico so you can track them to get into these cartels and take down those cartels.
01:49:56.000 No.
01:49:56.000 And prove this narrative that the violence in Mexico is our fault, so now we need to over-regulate these firearms.
01:50:03.000 And what ends up happening, they lose control of everything because they only put two tracking devices, I think, on all of those thousands of firearms, and one ends up killing a Border Patrol agent.
01:50:12.000 One of the ones they put a tracking device on.
01:50:14.000 Nope.
01:50:15.000 They have the serial numbers of all of them.
01:50:16.000 Oh.
01:50:16.000 So they tracked them all in one of those ones.
01:50:19.000 And then, of course, it tries to get shut down.
01:50:20.000 It's crazy. 1.00
01:50:21.000 Fucking harebrained idea. 0.99
01:50:22.000 That would have been a book. 1.00
01:50:23.000 That would have been a total conspiracy.
01:50:24.000 And people would think it was fiction unless the story was broken and unless Katie wrote this book and unless people talked about it.
01:50:30.000 But people hardly talk about it at all anymore.
01:50:32.000 It's just like, oh, it's the federal government going in and creating some crazy scheme to prove a narrative that's not even real so that they can infringe on our rights as Americans in this country.
01:50:41.000 It's insane.
01:50:42.000 It's so bizarre.
01:50:43.000 It's so bizarre that it's true.
01:50:45.000 That was Eric Holder, right?
01:50:46.000 Eric Holder, yep.
01:50:48.000 Exactly.
01:50:48.000 But it seems like a thing in your book.
01:50:52.000 It does.
01:50:52.000 And it seems like there's some nefarious intent.
01:50:55.000 Yes.
01:50:55.000 It seems like there'd be some other pieces in play.
01:50:58.000 But how much money is involved in selling 50 guns or whatever?
01:51:02.000 How many guns was it?
01:51:03.000 Well, it's thousands.
01:51:04.000 Thousands of guns.
01:51:05.000 Yeah, but they'd walk into a gun store and buy like 50. Buy like 40, buy 30. So Fast and the Furious was thousands of guns?
01:51:10.000 Thousands of guns.
01:51:12.000 Yeah.
01:51:12.000 In the book, it tells you exactly how many.
01:51:14.000 Well, thousands of guns is millions of dollars.
01:51:17.000 I guess, but it's when you're doing it, when one person's going in, buying, let's say, 30. Even going and selling in Mexico.
01:51:23.000 Right, but I mean, all in all, there's a lot of money.
01:51:25.000 Oh, yeah.
01:51:25.000 We're probably talking a lot of money, depending on how much they're selling it for in Mexico.
01:51:28.000 I'm not sure what that exactly works out to.
01:51:31.000 How many guns overall?
01:51:32.000 We can look it up.
01:51:32.000 Yeah, we can look it up right here.
01:51:34.000 Two thousand?
01:51:35.000 Under the sale of 2,000.
01:51:36.000 Which only 710 were recovered.
01:51:38.000 Wow!
01:51:39.000 Yeah, well, good job, federal government.
01:51:41.000 That is crazy!
01:51:42.000 They monitored the sale of about 2,000 firearms.
01:51:46.000 Then they disappeared.
01:51:47.000 You might have did a little more than monitoring.
01:51:49.000 Well, they got the serial numbers as they left the store, because the store has them, obviously.
01:51:53.000 That's crazy.
01:51:53.000 But then there's only tracking devices on it, I think, too.
01:51:56.000 That is fucking crazy. 0.92
01:51:58.000 Yeah, but no one even talks about this. 0.99
01:52:00.000 2,000 guns.
01:52:01.000 Yeah, I think there's some more research that's actually more than that.
01:52:04.000 But yeah, insane.
01:52:06.000 So does the federal government always have our best interest, the interest of the citizenry at heart?
01:52:10.000 Well, I think not.
01:52:11.000 So going back to your book, this guy, James Reese, is essentially a vehicle for you to...
01:52:21.000 In some ways tell your version like what you understand to be possible in terms of incompetence and corruption and just straight-up evil people that really do exist.
01:52:35.000 So you've made these kind of fictional narratives that sort of highlight All the things you highlight, they're not impossible.
01:52:44.000 They could happen that way, even though it is fiction and you have created these characters and created these corrupt senators and all these evil folks behind the scenes.
01:52:54.000 This is all inside the realm of possibility.
01:52:57.000 I think so.
01:52:58.000 I mean, we have...
01:53:00.000 Our politicians give us a lot of material to work with as authors.
01:53:04.000 And they're making my job a lot harder now because now you've got to think.
01:53:08.000 Because you can suspend disbelief for like once in your story.
01:53:11.000 So that's what makes it a good one, especially if it's not science fiction or something like that.
01:53:15.000 I don't think you suspended disbelief.
01:53:17.000 Readers.
01:53:17.000 Well, you can do something like, ah, readers will go with you for one thing.
01:53:20.000 Like, ah, okay, but I'm going to go with it.
01:53:21.000 But if you do three, four, five of those in a row, they're not going with you.
01:53:23.000 I don't think you did that, though.
01:53:24.000 Oh, thank you.
01:53:24.000 Thank you.
01:53:25.000 A lot of it, especially in this one, a ton of research into this book right here in the devil's hand.
01:53:30.000 Usually, well, for the other ones, I'd been to Iraq and Afghanistan for the first book.
01:53:33.000 For the second, I went to Mozambique, put boots on the ground.
01:53:36.000 For that third one, I went to South Africa, helped train up an anti-poaching unit out there, protecting some of the last rhino on Earth so I could talk to these guys in those units and talk to them about man tracking and that sort of thing, getting their heads about that tactic and the tactics they used in the bush wars and in urban centers, and now out there protecting some of these rhino.
01:53:52.000 And then I went to To Siberia, just south of Siberia, to Kamchatka Peninsula.
01:53:55.000 For this one, COVID hit.
01:53:57.000 You went to Siberia for when Rhys goes through Siberia?
01:54:00.000 Yes, I went to Kamchatka, which is just south of Siberia.
01:54:02.000 That was the bear hunt.
01:54:04.000 The bear hunt.
01:54:05.000 We're still going to get to that.
01:54:06.000 But this one, so all of these...
01:54:09.000 A lot of research in here.
01:54:10.000 But all of these laws that are in place or orders that the president can give in case of some sort of an outbreak, those are real?
01:54:20.000 So I talked to a lot of people.
01:54:23.000 I did a lot of research.
01:54:24.000 And I filled in the blanks.
01:54:25.000 So kind of like what I think a journalist would do.
01:54:27.000 Wouldn't just talk to one person and be like, oh, that's it.
01:54:29.000 I'm going to write my story.
01:54:30.000 That was my investigation, talking to one person.
01:54:33.000 No, I talked to multiple people that have been involved in all sorts of different aspects of bioweapons, bioweapon containment, bioweapon research, that sort of thing.
01:54:40.000 Even the horrific...
01:54:42.000 I mean, I don't want to give away too much of the book, but there's moments where things are being contemplated that would have horrific consequences if they're incorrect.
01:54:50.000 Yeah.
01:54:51.000 I would be shocked if that is not true.
01:54:53.000 Out of all my research that I did, whether it was reading articles, whether it was reading books, whether it was talking to people involved, connecting certain dots, overlapping some of these conversations with the research that I've done.
01:55:03.000 Because when you talk to people that have backgrounds in bioweapons research...
01:55:07.000 They're not really that open to talking all about it.
01:55:09.000 So they'll leave things out.
01:55:10.000 Those give you some hints.
01:55:11.000 But you know what?
01:55:12.000 When you talk to five, six, seven, eight different people that are involved in it, every one of them leaves something out, but you can start weaving it together.
01:55:17.000 And then when you do your research, that baseline foundation, then you can start connecting the dots.
01:55:22.000 So I would be shocked if there is not something in place similar to what I describe in the novel.
01:55:27.000 Well, during horrific moments where terrible decisions have to be made for the greater good, those are decisions like when people hear about like when Flight 93 is a good example.
01:55:43.000 The conspiracy theory about Flight 93 that was shot out of the sky, right?
01:55:48.000 Interesting.
01:55:49.000 You ever heard of that?
01:55:49.000 No, no, I haven't heard that.
01:55:51.000 Yeah, that's the one where people were saying they said, let's roll.
01:55:56.000 Yeah.
01:55:56.000 Oh, yeah.
01:55:57.000 Well, the wreckage was spread over miles.
01:56:04.000 I would imagine that if they really did know that a jet was coming into the Pentagon, and they had to stop that jet, those people are dead already.
01:56:12.000 And if they scrambled a jet, a fighter jet, to meet that plane, that hijacked plane in the air, there was no other way.
01:56:19.000 Well, I talk about that as a contingency in the novel here.
01:56:23.000 And the only thing that keeps me from believing a lot of these conspiracies is that, or just ideas, not even conspiracies necessarily, is that I've worked just 20 years in the government, and I know how hard it is to keep a secret, especially today.
01:56:39.000 So Ben Franklin had that thing where he said, hey, three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead.
01:56:43.000 That was what he would say about that.
01:56:45.000 And so just knowing how incompetent the federal government is anyway, just keeping a lid on some of these things and actually swearing everyone to secrecy and so many people would know about something like that.
01:56:56.000 So that makes me in my head think, just knowing these people, you know, that makes me skeptical.
01:57:01.000 If I was on the outside and didn't have that experience, I'd probably be like, oh, this could be.
01:57:05.000 Yeah, but I think people keep secrets.
01:57:07.000 I think they can.
01:57:08.000 Look at Operation Northwoods.
01:57:09.000 They didn't know about that until the Freedom of Information Act.
01:57:11.000 That was from the 1960s where they were going to blow up a drone jetliner and blame it on Cuba.
01:57:18.000 They were going to arm Cuban friendlies and attack Guantanamo Bay and use that to have motivation to go to war with Cuba. 0.55
01:57:25.000 There were some great ones in the 60s.
01:57:27.000 Like when you look back, like Legacy of Ashes in those books.
01:57:29.000 But they kept that secret.
01:57:30.000 Amazing.
01:57:30.000 They kept that secret.
01:57:31.000 That was signed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
01:57:33.000 How did you find out about it?
01:57:34.000 It was vetoed by Kennedy in the Freedom of Information Act.
01:57:36.000 Yeah.
01:57:36.000 Because it was so long after the fact.
01:57:38.000 Yeah.
01:57:39.000 But I don't think they found out about that until the 2000s.
01:57:41.000 Okay.
01:57:42.000 And it was released. 1.00
01:57:42.000 And when it was released, people were like, what the fuck? 1.00
01:57:45.000 This is real? 0.99
01:57:46.000 You guys were going to do this?
01:57:47.000 Yeah, there's a lot of crazy ideas like that.
01:57:48.000 The Castro Beard thing that people know about.
01:57:50.000 There's all sorts of things, especially back during that time frame.
01:57:53.000 Before you get to the church hearings in the 70s when Frank Church of Idaho holds this, and that's where I got inspiration for the terminal list for this testing of drugs on our nation's most elite soldiers who end up with these tumors.
01:58:03.000 That's where I got the inspiration is from Frank Church holding these hearings and really bringing to light some abuses by certain elements of the federal government.
01:58:11.000 What do they do?
01:58:12.000 Well, in the case that I was looking in, they're testing drugs on people in mental institutions, on people in the military, people in prisons, universities, without really the knowledge of what's going to – particularly people in mental institutions because they couldn't make those decisions for themselves if they're going to actually allow themselves to be tested with certain things. 0.99
01:58:39.000 When you hear those kind of evil tests on people, you just go, what the fuck, man? 0.99
01:58:45.000 Tuskegee Airmen, syphilis. 0.99
01:58:46.000 Yes, there's another one that just got reported recently, and this one was about mosquitoes, that they had released an enormous amount of mosquitoes in a predominantly black community in the 1950s,
01:59:03.000 I believe it was.
01:59:04.000 And some of them were infected with diseases, and they were running some sort of an active experiment.
01:59:11.000 See if you can find that.
01:59:13.000 That's crazy.
01:59:14.000 Yeah, I've read it.
01:59:14.000 Savannah.
01:59:15.000 Savannah, Georgia?
01:59:16.000 Yeah.
01:59:17.000 1950s.
01:59:18.000 1950s.
01:59:19.000 Pull that up so we can see that, because I read that a couple of days ago.
01:59:22.000 Yeah, Black Savannans Haunted by Memories of Mosquito Experiment. 1.00
01:59:26.000 How fucking gross is this? 0.99
01:59:28.000 Wow. 1.00
01:59:28.000 I think? 1.00
01:59:46.000 They didn't tell anybody, and it happened.
01:59:48.000 The Chatham County Commission Chairman, Chester Ellis.
01:59:53.000 And so it leaves some apprehension, especially when you have residents of that area who've been there since the 1950s.
02:00:00.000 Wow. 1.00
02:00:00.000 Fuck. 1.00
02:00:01.000 Yeah. 1.00
02:00:02.000 That is so crazy.
02:00:03.000 There you go.
02:00:04.000 Right there.
02:00:05.000 Once again, it's out, though, so who knows?
02:00:06.000 Maybe in 50 years we'll learn a lot more about things that were going on on September 11th or after, just like this.
02:00:12.000 And what other experience do you think have been done on U.S. military?
02:00:16.000 There's some...
02:00:17.000 What do they do?
02:00:18.000 A lot of stuff with acid in the 60s.
02:00:20.000 Oh, that's right.
02:00:21.000 Yeah, yeah.
02:00:22.000 Even when I was in, we had anthrax.
02:00:24.000 People were like, I don't really want to get that anthrax vaccination.
02:00:27.000 I think it was a series of six shots, maybe?
02:00:29.000 Did they give it to you?
02:00:31.000 So they gave me a couple, and then I was like, you know, I'm done with this.
02:00:33.000 Can we just sign and say that I did this?
02:00:35.000 You know, that's kind of how most people did it from then on.
02:00:38.000 Because when you're brand new, you don't know.
02:00:39.000 You're just kind of like, yeah.
02:00:40.000 So you walk in, you don't know, you're like, uh.
02:00:41.000 And then you realize, man.
02:00:43.000 Is it voluntary?
02:00:44.000 It didn't seem like it.
02:00:45.000 No.
02:00:46.000 No.
02:00:46.000 If it was voluntary, they didn't make it seem like that to a brand new guy that's walking in and getting all these shots.
02:00:53.000 So I think that happened maybe my first year or two in SEAL Teams.
02:00:56.000 Yeah.
02:00:57.000 Yeah, crazy.
02:00:58.000 But you had to get all of them for it to work.
02:00:59.000 So it was kind of like, or that's what they said anyway.
02:01:01.000 I don't know.
02:01:02.000 Does it even work?
02:01:03.000 I don't know.
02:01:04.000 I think it only works against a certain strain or something like that because there's multiple strains of anthrax or something like that.
02:01:09.000 Jesus Christ.
02:01:10.000 Yeah.
02:01:10.000 For this book, I was looking at it.
02:01:11.000 I didn't look into anthrax.
02:01:12.000 I was looking into this Marburg variant U, which is a crazy... 1.00
02:01:16.000 And that's real?
02:01:17.000 ...infectious disease.
02:01:18.000 It's real.
02:01:18.000 Yep.
02:01:19.000 So this is the first time in the back of the novel I have an author's note that talks about what people just read.
02:01:23.000 And what's real and what's not.
02:01:24.000 I have a preface that kind of sets the tone for the books in all of them, but there was so much research involved in this novel that I put an author's note in the back so people wouldn't be wondering, hey, what's real, what's not?
02:01:34.000 I don't really know.
02:01:35.000 And just to make it kind of easier for them, be like, oh, no way, that's real, or okay, this is not real, or this is an assumption.
02:01:42.000 So I spell all that out in the author's note.
02:01:45.000 Dr. Ustinov, and I'm probably messing up, butchering his name because I've only read it, haven't said it out loud, but he injected himself with Marburg, which was a...
02:01:53.000 Accidentally.
02:01:54.000 Accidentally.
02:01:54.000 That's all true.
02:01:55.000 Exactly.
02:01:56.000 They're researching this disease in the Soviet Union.
02:02:00.000 And he accidentally injected it into his thumb.
02:02:03.000 So he's sealed off in this containment facility as he slowly liquefies from the inside out.
02:02:09.000 So he's bleeding through his pores.
02:02:11.000 Like he would sweat blood coming out of there, blood coming out of nose, blood coming out of eyes, mouth, ears, every orifice.
02:02:17.000 And he's brain slowly liquefying.
02:02:19.000 And that happens slowly over a period of three weeks.
02:02:21.000 And because he's a scientist, he takes notes about what he's feeling during this time frame.
02:02:25.000 And so he eventually dies.
02:02:26.000 He's sealed in this stainless casket.
02:02:29.000 And he's buried.
02:02:31.000 But they have this data, and now they have what happens when you get a virus that takes over a host.
02:02:36.000 Oftentimes it becomes more virulent.
02:02:37.000 So they take a sample from either his bone marrow, his blood, his organs, and they weaponize it.
02:02:44.000 So they have this strain of Marburg, variant U, after his last name.
02:03:03.000 That's true.
02:03:19.000 So it's fascinating.
02:03:23.000 Is it defense in that you have to understand the capabilities of the virus?
02:03:27.000 Yeah, you have to understand.
02:03:27.000 What might the enemy have?
02:03:29.000 Okay, they have this Marburg variant U. Okay, well, either we have to develop this on our own, or we have to get a sample here, and that's the intelligence side of the house, trying to figure out how to turn people and get this thing out so we can then study it and then develop a weapon so that we can then...
02:03:47.000 Yeah, it's a crazy world to work in for these people that get into it.
02:03:51.000 But it was fascinating to me because I didn't know anything in the military other than putting on my little biohazard suit thing we had to put on and take off if we ever went into an environment like that.
02:03:59.000 But I didn't really spend much time.
02:04:01.000 Learning about the specific bioweapons and going deep on it.
02:04:05.000 And here, here I could.
02:04:07.000 Jesus.
02:04:08.000 Yeah, it's great.
02:04:09.000 It has to be really like disconcerting to find out.
02:04:13.000 Well, especially when COVID hits.
02:04:14.000 So I'm doing this in August of 2019. I start doing this research and I'm researching all through the fall, getting into January.
02:04:20.000 In December, I heard a little something because I was so deep into this research.
02:04:22.000 And I'm talking to these people that that's their whole life is studying these things.
02:04:26.000 So I hear about it in December.
02:04:27.000 I'm kind of like, you know, I've heard a bunch of things coming out of, you know, swine flu and avian flu and kind of I've heard of these things, you know, over the years.
02:04:34.000 Then we get into late December or January.
02:04:36.000 I hear a little more still hypersensitive to it because I'm in the midst of this study.
02:04:40.000 Then into February.
02:04:41.000 And it's like, okay, interesting.
02:04:43.000 So then it became, well...
02:04:46.000 I'm looking at this stuff from the enemy's perspective, and here we start responding.
02:04:49.000 We're shutting everything down.
02:04:50.000 I mean, when I came out here to see you last time, you know, at the gas station, I'm getting out putting on the rubber gloves and putting my mask on outside because we didn't know, you know.
02:04:56.000 We still don't know who to trust at that point in early May of 2020 when I drove out.
02:05:00.000 But the enemy's looking at that.
02:05:02.000 Look what we can do.
02:05:03.000 Look what we can manipulate here.
02:05:04.000 And this is for a.03 mortality rate.
02:05:07.000 Well, what if we have something with a 90% or an 80% or 70 or 60 or 50?
02:05:12.000 Imagine what the United States will do to itself if we get this in there.
02:05:16.000 And we don't even have to be successful.
02:05:17.000 We just have to introduce the fear.
02:05:20.000 It's a horrific precedent to set.
02:05:22.000 Yeah, they're learning.
02:05:23.000 They're always watching, just like on the battlefield.
02:05:24.000 They're always looking, always adapting.
02:05:26.000 That's the whole point of warfare is adapting faster than your enemy.
02:05:29.000 So they're looking, they're learning, they're adapting.
02:05:31.000 That's also a really disturbing thing when you see how much easier it is to contain if the people don't have any freedom.
02:05:40.000 Yeah, exactly.
02:05:41.000 And that's what scares me about some unscrupulous members of our society, that the people that do wish that this country was a dictatorship, because there are some politicians that would be very happy if they could run this country the same way other countries are run,
02:06:00.000 with an iron fist, and punish people for any deviation outside of the right way of thinking.
02:06:07.000 Yeah, that's the path we're on.
02:06:09.000 You know, slowly built up over time in that, you know, growing up for us, we thought, oh, it'll never happen.
02:06:13.000 Oh, here's a little bit more.
02:06:14.000 They're encroaching here.
02:06:15.000 But, you know, this is the United States.
02:06:16.000 We're free.
02:06:17.000 We have these options, opportunities.
02:06:18.000 Here's a little more.
02:06:18.000 Here's a little more.
02:06:19.000 Then all of a sudden, a very pivotal year in 2020 where people see that they can take control because of this fear.
02:06:26.000 And then you don't know who to trust, especially with social media.
02:06:28.000 Like, what do you do?
02:06:29.000 And then you have this powerful government taking more.
02:06:32.000 They're not going to give that control back.
02:06:34.000 They never do.
02:06:35.000 Once they get it, they've got it.
02:06:36.000 And then wait for the next one and grab a little more.
02:06:39.000 And pretty much, next thing you know, you're in this dictatorship.
02:06:42.000 Well, it just happens also in ways where you're like, is this really happening?
02:06:46.000 Like this guy who got visited by the Capitol Hill police for saying that something was underwhelming.
02:06:51.000 Yeah.
02:06:52.000 Where's the outrage?
02:06:53.000 There is no outrage.
02:06:55.000 Yeah.
02:06:55.000 And it's also the media, the news cycle is so overwhelming.
02:07:00.000 There's so much going on that there's no way to keep in touch with all of it.
02:07:04.000 So if people are upset about this, they'll find some new thing to be more upset about and they'll stop being upset about that.
02:07:10.000 Yep, no, exactly.
02:07:10.000 It's a squirrel, you know, another thing, next thing.
02:07:12.000 But also, we go back to talking about George Marshall, and we talk about these generals who weren't fired.
02:07:16.000 Well, same thing here.
02:07:17.000 Like, who is that person that said whatever they said in order to send the Highway Patrol to this guy's house?
02:07:23.000 Right.
02:07:23.000 Like, where is that person they should be fired immediately?
02:07:26.000 Gone.
02:07:26.000 Yeah, or maybe it's just someone online that did it, or a group of people online that did it, but...
02:07:32.000 How does the Capitol Hill police not research that before they go to this fucking guy's house? 0.96
02:07:37.000 You should have to have some real clear evidence, A, that it was him, B, that what he said was inciting violence or was threatening. 0.98
02:07:47.000 But just reading that...
02:07:49.000 Yeah.
02:07:49.000 People that showed up probably never knew.
02:07:51.000 They probably got something that said, hey, there's this person that might be violent.
02:07:54.000 They're making threats against a person in Congress.
02:07:55.000 Oh, let's go check this out.
02:07:57.000 But they're at the tactical level.
02:07:59.000 They're just like, okay, yes, we'll be there in 15 minutes.
02:08:01.000 But imagine the fact that it takes how much time to research it.
02:08:05.000 Shouldn't you have at least a link where you can go to the link and go, oh, yeah, here's the guy saying some terrible things.
02:08:11.000 Let's go visit him.
02:08:12.000 Yeah, it's that trust thing.
02:08:13.000 I mean, you're trusting your chain of command.
02:08:14.000 How much time does it take to go to someone's house?
02:08:15.000 It takes a long time. 1.00
02:08:16.000 Doesn't it take less time to just read what the fucking guy said and go, he didn't say shit? 1.00
02:08:21.000 Yeah, it's one of those things. 0.99
02:08:22.000 Who knows what protocols and processes are in place?
02:08:24.000 And obviously, there's a control missing.
02:08:27.000 There's a control level missing right there. 0.99
02:08:29.000 My fear is the same protocols are in place that hired that lady who shot that kid who doesn't know the difference between a fucking taser and a pistol. 0.99
02:08:35.000 That's what my fear is. 0.99
02:08:36.000 My fear is it's all in the same line.
02:08:39.000 That it's just incompetence more than anything.
02:08:42.000 And that's one of the things that we really do have to fear.
02:08:44.000 We have to fear incompetence.
02:08:45.000 Yeah, but unfortunately, we keep electing people that are incompetent or at least that exhibit these incompetent tendencies.
02:08:52.000 And we have track records.
02:08:53.000 We can go back and look.
02:08:54.000 We can go back and look at the highest levels of government.
02:08:57.000 You can go back 50 years.
02:08:58.000 You can look at voting records.
02:08:59.000 You can look at statements.
02:09:00.000 You can go look at, hey, why didn't that first election, why didn't that not work out?
02:09:05.000 Oh, what, plagiarism and lying about your college record?
02:09:09.000 Oh, Oh, him?
02:09:10.000 Biden?
02:09:10.000 Yeah, that guy?
02:09:12.000 That's kind of crazy.
02:09:13.000 But enough time has passed.
02:09:14.000 People have forgotten about that.
02:09:15.000 I guess it's okay now to do that.
02:09:17.000 We used to do Joe Biden Night at Stitch's Comedy Club in Boston.
02:09:21.000 Back in the day?
02:09:21.000 In 1988. No way.
02:09:23.000 Yeah, say if you and I were comics, I would do your act and you would do my act.
02:09:27.000 What?
02:09:28.000 How long did you have before you jumped on stage where you got that person's actor?
02:09:31.000 Did you know them well enough?
02:09:32.000 Well, we knew it.
02:09:33.000 We were friends.
02:09:34.000 We all worked together.
02:09:35.000 So they had Joe Biden night where we'd go on and we would do each other's acts.
02:09:39.000 No way.
02:09:40.000 And then we'd call it Joe Biden night.
02:09:41.000 That's crazy.
02:09:42.000 That's how much in the news.
02:09:44.000 But this is back in the news where there was like four channels on television and people actually read the newspaper.
02:09:49.000 So it was a big deal.
02:09:50.000 It got Biden kicked out of the presidential race.
02:09:53.000 And when it got him kicked out of the race, that was when we all did this on television.
02:09:58.000 Or on stage, rather.
02:10:00.000 Amazing.
02:10:01.000 It was all over television.
02:10:02.000 It was a big deal that this guy was a plagiarist.
02:10:04.000 And then they also caught him.
02:10:07.000 The lying about his college record was so egregious.
02:10:10.000 Yeah.
02:10:10.000 He just lied about what—he was bragging about what this amazing student he was, and then he had to say, oh, well, I was misinformed about my own record.
02:10:20.000 Yeah, I mean, it's a little odd.
02:10:21.000 I mean, people—I think people are very forgiving, especially back then, more so back then than today.
02:10:25.000 Not really, because he just sort of, you know, became a senator, right?
02:10:29.000 Well, that's what I mean.
02:10:30.000 Like, people forgave that.
02:10:31.000 And then, you know, but then it just stacks up over time.
02:10:34.000 But I tend to be a fairly forgiving person.
02:10:36.000 I think it's important to forgive and move on.
02:10:38.000 Yeah, it is.
02:10:38.000 It's very important.
02:10:39.000 And you can get people out, you know, you don't have to talk to people anymore.
02:10:41.000 But you can, you know, hey, I'm moving on, I forgive you, and I'm moving forward.
02:10:44.000 Like, that's a powerful thing, to be able to forgive rather than keep that all inside.
02:10:48.000 But I think that that's...
02:10:49.000 Those kind of lies, though, are weird lies.
02:10:52.000 That's a weird one.
02:10:52.000 Because they're indicative of a real character flaw.
02:10:55.000 Yeah, that would seem like it didn't just mess up, like to say that I went to school in 1988, but I meant 1989. Right, right, right.
02:11:01.000 Or, you know, I got an A in history when I really got a B+. Right.
02:11:06.000 I remember that differently, you know, because the memories are an interesting thing.
02:11:08.000 Malcolm Gladwell has a really cool...
02:11:10.000 Have you had him on, by the way?
02:11:10.000 Yes.
02:11:11.000 Yeah, I've got to listen to that one.
02:11:13.000 I love his stuff.
02:11:14.000 He's great.
02:11:14.000 He's an amazing guy.
02:11:15.000 I love that guy.
02:11:16.000 I love his books, love his podcast.
02:11:17.000 But he has a podcast on that where he talks about memory.
02:11:21.000 And he uses the Brian Williams example, saying that he was in a helicopter in Iraq and it was shot down and all these things and it didn't really happen.
02:11:29.000 And he talks about the psychology behind that.
02:11:31.000 And it's fascinating.
02:11:33.000 And you end up having much more empathy for people that end up going down these paths that actually start believing their lies.
02:11:39.000 What is the name of the episode?
02:11:40.000 Do you remember?
02:11:41.000 I forget which season it is because he has like seven seasons now.
02:11:43.000 He has a lot.
02:11:44.000 It's revisionist history, right?
02:11:45.000 Revisionist history, yep. 0.93
02:11:46.000 Yep.
02:11:47.000 Fascinating guy who actually loves reading thrillers and such a smart guy.
02:11:51.000 And someone who I think is on the opposite side of like, you know, political spectrum, but one of those guys that I can sit down and have a drink with.
02:11:58.000 I want to sit down and have a beer with, have a coffee with and talk because he's so smart and so thoughtful.
02:12:02.000 Most importantly, more thoughtful about his positions.
02:12:05.000 Yeah.
02:12:06.000 I mean, I can't say enough good things about him and his work.
02:12:09.000 I couldn't agree more.
02:12:09.000 But he has a thing on memory.
02:12:11.000 But when you have multiple...
02:12:13.000 He's talking about one instance here, one instance there, one instance there.
02:12:16.000 Not this pattern of essentially...
02:12:19.000 Well, eventually you get to this point, hey, tipping point, where there's so many lies that it's like, ah, is this person...
02:12:25.000 Is there something wrong with this person?
02:12:26.000 Should we be electing them to anything?
02:12:29.000 Well, there's a difference between making mistakes and not remembering things correctly and clearly exaggerating your own accomplishments to make yourself look more competent or qualified or more...
02:12:42.000 Just make it look like you're a better person than you are.
02:12:46.000 But how do you not think you're going to get caught on that one?
02:12:49.000 I mean, there are cameras everywhere.
02:12:49.000 That old footage of him talking about that?
02:12:51.000 There's cameras everywhere, and it's not the day where...
02:12:53.000 It's not phones.
02:12:54.000 I mean, it's like actual cameras there.
02:12:56.000 Oh, yeah.
02:12:57.000 He just thought no one was going to research it.
02:12:59.000 That's wild.
02:13:00.000 Yeah.
02:13:00.000 Well, I think before the internet, people did not have a good understanding of research.
02:13:05.000 Yeah.
02:13:05.000 Of whether or not someone...
02:13:06.000 And I think there was a lot of people that lied back then.
02:13:08.000 Interesting.
02:13:09.000 I think it was...
02:13:09.000 Way more people lied back then than...
02:13:11.000 Really?
02:13:12.000 Yeah.
02:13:12.000 Because they weren't worried about an instant check or somebody jumping online and saying...
02:13:16.000 Yeah.
02:13:17.000 But sometimes now it's like...
02:13:18.000 For sure.
02:13:18.000 But now if you say the truth, here's the difference now.
02:13:20.000 Well, now you can say the truth and try to get canceled because it doesn't align with the powers that be.
02:13:25.000 Yeah, well, that's a different kind of canceling.
02:13:26.000 But I ran into a guy when I was in Park City that had this guy working for him that was telling these stories about being a SEAL. And there were these heavy-duty, detailed stories about operations and Courageous moments and gunfights and all this crazy detailed shit. 0.93
02:13:54.000 And somehow or another, he got wind that this guy might be full of shit. 0.99
02:14:00.000 And Goggins somehow became a part of it as well. 1.00
02:14:03.000 And Goggins found out that this guy was full of shit and informed him that he was not a SEAL. The guy was never a SEAL. And apparently he was a nurse. 0.99
02:14:14.000 The story was just total concocted heroics.
02:14:18.000 That is crazy.
02:14:19.000 You hear about that a lot in Vietnam.
02:14:20.000 You hear about a lot of guys saying they came back from Vietnam being special forces guys or SEALs or whatever, when they didn't think you could really check on these things.
02:14:27.000 They're from a small town.
02:14:28.000 Some politicians, like some mayor somewhere, said they were a SEAL, had the uniform, like the trident on there.
02:14:33.000 I think it's pre-internet days.
02:14:35.000 And yeah, sure enough, eventually busted.
02:14:37.000 But after years, and everybody believed it, because when you're talking about a top-secret operation from You know, Vietnam or something, how are you going to check that in 1978, 1985, 86, 92, whatever?
02:14:47.000 But today, you can check on that sort of thing.
02:14:49.000 Have you ever met a guy that's like a full-on liar?
02:14:51.000 No, but there's some guys that were out at a bar in Tennessee, and somebody walked in with a, in their blues, with like a wife-girlfriend type person, with a trident, with this stack of medals, and he walks into this bar.
02:15:04.000 And we used to train down there.
02:15:06.000 We used to do close quarter battle stuff down there.
02:15:08.000 We're good to go.
02:15:29.000 And he's there with a lady, and they're like, hey, we are from SEAL Team 2, and you should probably leave right now.
02:15:36.000 And he turned around and walked out. 0.92
02:15:39.000 Crazy! 0.59
02:15:39.000 Like wearing a uniform at a bar in the middle of Tennessee, like somewhere. 0.59
02:15:43.000 Like crazy, or Mississippi, wherever that was.
02:15:45.000 You know, somewhere down there.
02:15:46.000 It was like insane, but that's what happened.
02:15:49.000 That's so nuts.
02:15:50.000 Yeah.
02:15:50.000 But people do it, and people take, especially with that one, that's a weird one.
02:15:53.000 The stolen valor thing is odd. 0.99
02:15:57.000 It's a mentally ill person. 1.00
02:15:59.000 Yeah, it's got to be. 1.00
02:16:00.000 It has to be.
02:16:01.000 I don't know how you would...
02:16:02.000 And then we have people elected to Congress that say they served in Vietnam or something that didn't even go.
02:16:08.000 Yeah, we can look that up.
02:16:10.000 Oh, that's right.
02:16:10.000 Who was that?
02:16:12.000 And it's probably happened more than once.
02:16:14.000 I'm sure.
02:16:15.000 I'm sure it happened before...
02:16:17.000 People were doing research on stuff like that.
02:16:19.000 That's a big one, though.
02:16:20.000 Especially if you're a politician, because you're going to fall hard.
02:16:22.000 That's right.
02:16:24.000 What did he say?
02:16:25.000 But he didn't fall hard.
02:16:25.000 He's still there.
02:16:26.000 I forget.
02:16:28.000 It's so unbelievable that people keep electing him.
02:16:31.000 He was in the army, but he didn't get sent overseas.
02:16:36.000 Isn't that what it was?
02:16:37.000 I don't know.
02:16:38.000 I think he said he went to Nam, but he actually didn't deploy.
02:16:41.000 That's not when you forget, you know?
02:16:43.000 I forgot.
02:16:46.000 I forgot I did a year in Vietnam.
02:16:47.000 No, I did not do a year in Vietnam.
02:16:49.000 Yeah, I told this story before, but there was a guy that we knew that was a fake Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, and he tricked a bunch of people and was actually writing for Abu Dhabi Combat News.
02:17:00.000 Did you ever hear me tell a story?
02:17:01.000 I have.
02:17:01.000 That is crazy, because they just think that you're not going to...
02:17:04.000 He killed this woman's husband, and he was fucking her, and he was banging this guy's wife, and he wound up killing him and driving his car around, and he's in jail right now. 0.99
02:17:14.000 Dang. 0.99
02:17:15.000 He had a whole fake name and everything.
02:17:17.000 That's crazy.
02:17:17.000 That's a tough one, too.
02:17:18.000 You're saying you're a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt.
02:17:21.000 You could check that, especially back when there was a couple.
02:17:25.000 You'd count them on one hand, say 92 or something.
02:17:27.000 Yeah, this was in the 2000s, like early, early 2000s.
02:17:32.000 I want to say like 2001-ish, something like that.
02:17:35.000 Well, I was on Fear Factor at the time, and I know this because my friend who knew the guy was talking to me about it, and his phone was tapped, and then the cops wound up calling me while I'm in my trailer.
02:17:49.000 And they go, hey, is this Joe Rogan?
02:17:52.000 Yeah, this is Sheriff, blah, blah, blah.
02:17:54.000 And I go, hell, what's up?
02:17:56.000 And he goes, how much do you know about this thing?
02:17:59.000 And so I go, okay.
02:18:00.000 This is exactly what I know. 1.00
02:18:01.000 I go, I know the guy's a liar. 0.69
02:18:03.000 I don't know if the guy really killed somebody, but I know that he lied about being a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt. 0.83
02:18:07.000 And we had heard that he'd killed somebody, but, you know, so we went through the whole thing.
02:18:12.000 I go, but in my... 1.00
02:18:15.000 And without understanding of it, this guy's completely full of shit. 0.99
02:18:18.000 So I didn't know him that well, but he was a student of this other guy that I know who told us about this whole situation. 1.00
02:18:26.000 Dude, that's crazy.
02:18:27.000 It was crazy.
02:18:28.000 Yeah, yeah.
02:18:28.000 Yeah, but the cops luckily believe me.
02:18:31.000 Luckily, I was telling the truth, because I wasn't close with the guy, but one of my best friends, Eddie Bravo, knew him because Eddie had done some stuff for Abu Dhabi as well, and he was telling Eddie that he was a black belt, and Eddie rolled with him. 0.96
02:18:47.000 They sparred, and Eddie was like, man, something's wrong.
02:18:51.000 This guy should be a lot better.
02:18:53.000 But there were some guys back then that had these janky black belts.
02:18:59.000 They would be a black belt in some fake jiu-jitsu.
02:19:03.000 Before Brazilian jiu-jitsu came around, there was a lot of fake karate.
02:19:08.000 A lot.
02:19:09.000 I mean a lot.
02:19:10.000 There was a lot of fake martial artists, because I could show you how to throw a kick or two, and if you're reasonably athletic, you could throw some kicks, and I could show you how to throw a punch or two, and then you could go and tell people you're a black belt.
02:19:24.000 It's not that hard.
02:19:27.000 Kicking, in particular, and punching, you could pretend you're doing some karate.
02:19:34.000 If I teach you how to do this, you could do that in a few seconds.
02:19:37.000 If I could teach a little kid, like when I used to teach Taekwondo, I would get someone doing this in just a few seconds.
02:19:44.000 So all you would have to do is get some reasonably athletic person, you teach them how to throw a couple of kicks, and they could say they're a grand champion.
02:19:51.000 Well, this guy was so crazy, he had his friends drop him off in the woods.
02:19:56.000 With a bag. 0.63
02:19:57.000 He brought a bag.
02:19:58.000 And inside the bag, he had a trophy.
02:20:00.000 But he didn't tell anybody. 0.99
02:20:01.000 So he has this fucking big bag. 0.99
02:20:02.000 He said, I'm going to compete in this No Rules Kumite Karate Tournament. 0.99
02:20:05.000 This is fantastic.
02:20:06.000 The guy goes, come back and get me tomorrow.
02:20:09.000 So the guy goes off into the woods.
02:20:11.000 And then his friend comes back the next day.
02:20:13.000 And he's got no bag.
02:20:14.000 But now he's got a trophy in his hand.
02:20:15.000 And it's exactly the same size as a bag.
02:20:18.000 That's so great.
02:20:18.000 And he tells him, yeah, I won the karate tournament.
02:20:20.000 And he's like... 1.00
02:20:21.000 This is how full shit this guy was. 1.00
02:20:23.000 He created this sort of persona. 1.00
02:20:25.000 And this is where he got tripped up.
02:20:27.000 Not even just that my friend rolled with him, but that he said that he was going to Thailand to fight in a mixed martial arts fight.
02:20:36.000 Okay.
02:20:37.000 So he goes to Thailand.
02:20:38.000 Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. 0.98
02:20:40.000 There was a lot of really shitty martial artists back then, right? 0.99
02:20:43.000 A lot of weird fucking people that were fighting in these tournaments that had no business fighting anybody. 0.99
02:20:50.000 So he comes back and he says he caught the guy in a twister. 0.99
02:20:54.000 You know, Twister is a really complicated submission.
02:20:58.000 It's very complicated.
02:21:00.000 It's hard to set up because it's very specific.
02:21:02.000 You have to be inside control or have someone's back.
02:21:06.000 And if you're inside control, this is like, say if a guy's laid out like this and his head is here, his feet are here.
02:21:12.000 If I'm inside control, I have to grab his left leg, I have to pull it, I have to hook it with my left leg, and then I have to triangle it with my right, so I have his leg isolated.
02:21:23.000 Then I have to dive forward on my left shoulder and roll so I'm behind him.
02:21:28.000 So I turn his whole body and flip him over. 0.80
02:21:31.000 Then I have to take his arm and I have to pull it behind my neck.
02:21:35.000 This is a series of complicated control moves.
02:21:38.000 We can find it online.
02:21:40.000 Eddie Bravo was the master of it.
02:21:41.000 And then he was my instructor.
02:21:43.000 And then you have to grab the guy's head and pull him like this.
02:21:46.000 So it's like a very terrible spinal lock.
02:21:50.000 It hurts like hell.
02:21:51.000 And if you don't tap, then they go to DEFCON 4, which is instead of holding it like this, you do this.
02:22:00.000 And you do it like a rear naked choke.
02:22:03.000 And you could snap someone's neck. 1.00
02:22:04.000 You could really fuck them up hard. 1.00
02:22:05.000 That sounds awesome. 1.00
02:22:06.000 That's it.
02:22:07.000 The Korean Zombie is one of only a couple people that ever got it and pulled it off in the UFC. So look at the position.
02:22:14.000 See how he's got his left leg isolated underneath him.
02:22:18.000 And then he had to wrap his arm around his head.
02:22:22.000 And then he's got this horrible spinal lock.
02:22:26.000 I think that's Leonard Garcia that he pulled it off on.
02:22:29.000 I think?
02:22:30.000 I don't remember who it was.
02:22:31.000 Yeah.
02:22:32.000 That's next level, right there.
02:22:34.000 Super next level.
02:22:36.000 Is that one aggressive?
02:22:36.000 That's a black belt move.
02:22:37.000 Does it say?
02:22:39.000 Super next level technique.
02:22:41.000 There's only a few guys that have ever pulled it off.
02:22:43.000 Let me see the face of the guy.
02:22:45.000 I don't know who that is.
02:22:46.000 That's hard to tell. 0.96
02:22:48.000 Korean zombie. 0.97
02:22:50.000 Yeah, there you go. 0.99
02:22:51.000 Yeah, so he said that, and Eddie hung up the phone and was like, there's no fucking way. 0.99
02:22:58.000 He goes, I'm telling you, dude, I roll with that guy, he's terrible. 0.98
02:23:01.000 He tells me he's got a fucking twister, and he actually had a fake fight in King of the Cage. 0.99
02:23:06.000 Oh, we're going in. 0.98
02:23:06.000 Yeah, he had a guy that he knew that was his friend, and he paid the guy to take a dive so he could have a real, legit mixed martial arts fight. 0.98
02:23:16.000 No way.
02:23:17.000 I think you can watch it online.
02:23:19.000 That's crazy.
02:23:19.000 Haven't we played it before?
02:23:20.000 Have we played it before?
02:23:23.000 Rafael Torre is his name.
02:23:25.000 That's not his name, though.
02:23:26.000 It's a fake name.
02:23:27.000 He made up a Brazilian jiu-jitsu sounding name.
02:23:31.000 I mean, that's a ballsy to me.
02:23:32.000 His real name is Ralph.
02:23:32.000 Get in the ring with somebody?
02:23:34.000 It's on Fight Pass.
02:23:34.000 Oh, you can see it on Fight Pass?
02:23:36.000 That's hilarious.
02:23:37.000 To roll with somebody?
02:23:38.000 But it's a fake fight.
02:23:39.000 Yeah, but I mean before, to roll, you know, to get in and say that you're this black belt and then actually get on the mat with someone who is?
02:23:44.000 Like, what?
02:23:44.000 Yeah, it's nuts.
02:23:45.000 But that's happened before.
02:23:46.000 That is crazy.
02:23:46.000 There's been a few guys that have been called out.
02:23:48.000 Like, there's another video, I don't know who the black belt is, the actual black belt is a black belt screaming at a guy, take that fucking belt off, you know you're not a... 1.00
02:23:57.000 Nice. 0.99
02:23:57.000 Because they rolled with the guy, and they had the guy roll with people, and he just doesn't know what he's doing. 0.99
02:24:01.000 He's just a crazy person. 0.97
02:24:02.000 But this guy's not just a crazy person. 1.00
02:24:04.000 He's a murderer. 1.00
02:24:05.000 That's crazier. 1.00
02:24:06.000 Well, what was it?
02:24:07.000 And then Tough Man, before UFC, remember the Tough Man contest?
02:24:10.000 Yeah.
02:24:10.000 Like, how did they vet people for those?
02:24:12.000 You just, like, in there.
02:24:12.000 I remember some of those guys.
02:24:13.000 I was watching back then, and I was, you know, doing...
02:24:15.000 They didn't do background checks.
02:24:16.000 They didn't check you for medical records.
02:24:17.000 Like, a lady died at one of them.
02:24:19.000 Really?
02:24:19.000 Pregnant one.
02:24:20.000 What?
02:24:20.000 Not pregnant.
02:24:21.000 A mother.
02:24:21.000 No way.
02:24:22.000 Yeah, she was just broke.
02:24:22.000 And, you know, if you win, you get 500 bucks.
02:24:24.000 She's like, ah, fuck that bitch up. 1.00
02:24:26.000 And she goes and winds up getting pounded and has brain bleeding and dies. 1.00
02:24:30.000 Oh.
02:24:30.000 That was like late 80s, early 90s, like right before UFC. I saw the last one.
02:24:33.000 They were wild to watch though.
02:24:35.000 They were crazy. 0.78
02:24:37.000 Yeah, they were pretty crazy.
02:24:38.000 And a lot of guys who wound up fighting in the UFC started out in tough man competitions.
02:24:42.000 Because they would do anything.
02:24:43.000 There's a lot of guys like Jorge Masvidal, who's fighting for the title, not this weekend, but next weekend in Jacksonville. 0.98
02:24:51.000 He's fighting Kamaru Usman for the fucking title. 0.89
02:24:55.000 That guy started off in backyard fighting. 0.98
02:24:57.000 You can watch his backyard bare-knuckle fights on YouTube.
02:25:02.000 Wow. 0.96
02:25:02.000 So a lot of these guys, they're just tough, tough people that have an opportunity in front of them, whatever, a karate tournament, a fucking tough man contest, bare-knuckle fight in the woods. 0.96
02:25:13.000 Don't tilt. 0.97
02:25:14.000 With your trophy?
02:25:15.000 That's so fantastic.
02:25:17.000 It's so crazy!
02:25:17.000 I've got to write that into a book.
02:25:18.000 That's going to end up in the next novel.
02:25:19.000 Can you watch the fight?
02:25:20.000 Oh, here it is.
02:25:21.000 I don't have my Fight Pass thing connected, apparently, right now, but this is the same fight where it rained in the cage.
02:25:27.000 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:25:28.000 King of the Cage, Slippery When Wet.
02:25:30.000 So, Slippery When Wet.
02:25:32.000 Wow.
02:25:32.000 See, let me pause for a second.
02:25:34.000 King of the Cage was a pretty wild organization.
02:25:37.000 My friend Bud was actually the owner of King of the Cage, one of my best friends, who actually sold him his house.
02:25:45.000 He lives in my old house.
02:25:46.000 So this is...
02:25:47.000 It's pouring rain.
02:25:48.000 It's pouring rain.
02:25:50.000 So this is not the fight though.
02:25:52.000 No, this is an article about the event, and then at the bottom it talks about the fight.
02:25:56.000 Okay, that's the dude.
02:25:57.000 That's the dude.
02:25:58.000 That's the dude.
02:25:59.000 That's the fake black belt.
02:26:01.000 No way.
02:26:01.000 So they had it outside in an Indian reservation, because this was back when MMA was illegal in California.
02:26:08.000 So the only way to get it sanctioned was go to Indian reservations.
02:26:11.000 That's right.
02:26:11.000 So Eddie and I, Eddie was one of the commentators of King of the Cage back then.
02:26:14.000 And we would go to these Indian reservations to watch these fights.
02:26:18.000 This is like the early days of the Tap Out crew and all these martial artists, whether they're jiu-jitsu people or a lot of like...
02:26:26.000 A lot of these top shelf guys started off in King of the Cage fighting in these Indian reservations.
02:26:32.000 And so we would go travel out to the middle of nowhere to these places to watch these events because that was the only way you could see live events in California.
02:26:40.000 And so this dude talked one of his students into taking a dive.
02:26:45.000 He had a fake student.
02:26:47.000 He was teaching fake martial arts.
02:26:49.000 I think he knew a little karate.
02:26:50.000 But he called himself a black belt.
02:26:52.000 And then he would say, listen, I'm going to pay you off.
02:26:54.000 Let me give you 500 bucks.
02:26:55.000 Just pretend I'm knee-barring.
02:26:57.000 I think he got him in a knee bar.
02:26:58.000 I'm not going to hurt you.
02:26:59.000 Enough to worry.
02:27:00.000 It's not like a knockout.
02:27:01.000 And so I'm pretty sure he got him in a knee bar, if I remember correctly. 0.99
02:27:04.000 But it looked fake as fuck. 0.99
02:27:07.000 How could it not? 0.99
02:27:08.000 Of course it's going to look fake. 1.00
02:27:09.000 There was some fake shit in Pride. 1.00
02:27:11.000 Oh, really? 1.00
02:27:12.000 Very high levels.
02:27:13.000 Really?
02:27:13.000 Yeah, there was some pro wrestling.
02:27:15.000 See, the thing about Pride is that they had a lot of pro wrestling stars.
02:27:21.000 Okay.
02:27:21.000 I don't want to throw anybody under the bus, but there was one where there was a prominent mixed martial artist from the United States who got tapped by a heel hook.
02:27:29.000 And it's so obviously fake.
02:27:31.000 It looks like pro wrestling.
02:27:32.000 Like, he's hesitant, hesitant, and he decides to tap. 0.96
02:27:36.000 It's like, get the fuck out of here. 0.98
02:27:37.000 It looks so fake. 0.98
02:27:39.000 Yeah.
02:27:39.000 But it's just, you know, they give you money.
02:27:41.000 Yeah.
02:27:41.000 No, those tough man ones were legit because I was training for the SEAL teams at the time.
02:27:45.000 My whole life I've been training for the SEAL teams, but that was something cool because it was like real.
02:27:48.000 Okay, I was doing boxing over here, jiu-jitsu over here, but then it was just tough man contests.
02:27:52.000 Anybody can enter?
02:27:53.000 How do they do this?
02:27:53.000 Oh, this is cool.
02:27:54.000 So you're studying it and looking.
02:27:55.000 And then, of course, UFC hits a couple years later and just changes. 0.93
02:27:58.000 Well, they used to do real shit back in the day at carnivals, where you'd get a guy who was a real wrestler who would take on all comers. 0.89
02:28:05.000 Yeah, he used to pay for the purse, like 50 bucks. 0.99
02:28:09.000 Yeah, you'd get some local fucking farmer, some strong guy, and he'd get in there and he would grapple with some guy who was a ringer. 0.99
02:28:17.000 Yeah, I mean, I can imagine how, I wonder how horrific some of those people got just destroyed, I can imagine. 0.99
02:28:22.000 Oh, sure, they got their arms broken, and it's fucked up. 0.88
02:28:25.000 Yeah, no medic people there, referee, and who's the referee for that, sort of? 0.96
02:28:28.000 Is there one?
02:28:28.000 I don't even know.
02:28:29.000 People just cheer in, it's like beginning of Rambo 3 when he's in there, has the sticks, you know?
02:28:34.000 Yeah, no refs. 0.81
02:28:35.000 Well, they still, I think they kind of stopped this in California, but for a long time they had smokers.
02:28:41.000 And what a smoker is, it's like a way where an up-and-coming fighter would get experience in a gym fight.
02:28:47.000 And so what it would be like, say, if you were a student and you're learning Muay Thai or something like that, Yeah.
02:28:56.000 Yeah.
02:29:16.000 I'm pretty sure they made it illegal.
02:29:19.000 But not until recently.
02:29:21.000 Really?
02:29:22.000 Because it was one of those things where I think people didn't know that it was happening. 1.00
02:29:26.000 And someone's got a big fucking mouth. 1.00
02:29:29.000 Yeah, because they ruined it for everybody. 1.00
02:29:30.000 Yeah, there's always those people that ruin it for everybody.
02:29:32.000 But yeah, that seems like one, hey, want to have a little fight in the backyard?
02:29:37.000 Who's the government to regulate that?
02:29:38.000 Well, the thing is, it's a good way to get experience.
02:29:40.000 Because if you're a young fighter and you want to be, say if you want to be a pro Muay Thai fighter, You know, it's hard to find fights.
02:29:47.000 But you can get a lot of amateur fights.
02:29:48.000 Because there's a lot of other students that are like, I want to try a fight.
02:29:51.000 I'll try a fight.
02:29:52.000 And then, you know, you get guys of similar experience.
02:29:56.000 And you try to be honest about that.
02:29:57.000 You put them together.
02:29:58.000 Yeah, we have guys that would go over to Thailand to train on their leave.
02:30:01.000 Like, they go back to Thailand and go back over to train.
02:30:04.000 Yeah, so we had some feasts back in, especially in the 90s before you were actually deploying and going to war.
02:30:08.000 We would go over there and you'd go on deployment and you'd get to go to Thailand or you're out of Guam or wherever you're going.
02:30:13.000 And then the guys would go back.
02:30:14.000 They'd get home and take their 30 days of leave or something like that that they built up to go train or to go fight.
02:30:19.000 And then when they came back, it was, like, mysterious.
02:30:21.000 You know, they came back, like, dude, that guy went down to Thailand to train on leave, you know?
02:30:24.000 Instead of, like, hanging out with his family, they went to his divorce now.
02:30:27.000 But, you know, yeah.
02:30:28.000 But he went out there and just, you know, got that experience.
02:30:31.000 And it was a good place to go to do that sort of thing.
02:30:33.000 Oh, yeah.
02:30:34.000 I mean, Thailand is the motherland for that stuff.
02:30:37.000 I knew a dude who went to Thailand in the 80s.
02:30:38.000 I remember thinking, wow.
02:30:40.000 Yeah. 0.95
02:30:40.000 This guy's crazy. 0.95
02:30:41.000 Yeah, it's good stuff. 0.95
02:30:42.000 He had fights in Thailand.
02:30:43.000 He had these big-ass scars where he got cut up with elbows.
02:30:45.000 Yeah.
02:30:46.000 So he was going over there.
02:30:47.000 And that was when I first learned about leg kicks.
02:30:49.000 Because I remember...
02:30:51.000 Nobody...
02:30:51.000 Did leg kicks back in my taekwondo days.
02:30:54.000 Yeah, you were kicking for the head.
02:30:55.000 Yeah, and then the moment I got kicked in the leg the first time, I was like, oh no.
02:30:59.000 Right. 1.00
02:31:00.000 I was like, shit. 1.00
02:31:01.000 Yeah. 1.00
02:31:01.000 This is, I've been wasting all this time. 1.00
02:31:04.000 Like, kick someone in the legs is so fucking painful. 0.99
02:31:07.000 And it numbs your leg. 1.00
02:31:08.000 Your leg becomes half useless almost immediately.
02:31:10.000 Yep.
02:31:11.000 Especially if you don't know how to move or to check it or your legs aren't conditioned.
02:31:14.000 Yeah, no, it's so beneficial.
02:31:15.000 Like, I need to get our kids back in.
02:31:16.000 In San Diego, I don't think they realized what they had in San Diego when we were there because they're learning to shoot from Navy SEAL snipers.
02:31:22.000 They're doing jujitsu with Navy SEAL black belt jujitsu people.
02:31:25.000 Like, they're learning all this stuff.
02:31:26.000 It's normal.
02:31:27.000 Is there good martial arts in Park City?
02:31:29.000 There is, but the kids kind of went into skiing and snowboarding and all these other things.
02:31:35.000 Well, you can only do that for four months out of the year.
02:31:38.000 Yeah, and then lacrosse takes.
02:31:39.000 So we're in that stage where they're doing these other things, unfortunately.
02:31:42.000 But yeah, it's such a great lesson because when I'm on the sand in Hell Week or whatever and I had that boat over my head, I thought back.
02:31:49.000 Because I was in the early days of jiu-jitsu, but I plateaued, like, early.
02:31:52.000 So I... Very early.
02:31:54.000 But I think back to those, like being on the mat and having them take those people that are fresh and just cycle through.
02:32:00.000 Just cycle through for an hour, hour and a half, whatever it was.
02:32:03.000 But that was some of the toughest stuff that I ever did.
02:32:05.000 Or same thing in the ring.
02:32:06.000 Boxers come in and you're just going, you're just so tired.
02:32:09.000 And you keep pushing through it.
02:32:10.000 And in my head I'm always thinking ahead about going to the SEAL teams.
02:32:13.000 And I thought about that quite a bit during Hell Week and during other times when I was like, hey, this is pretty hard.
02:32:17.000 And then I think, oh, you know what?
02:32:18.000 But it's not as hard as what I did on that mat or in that ring.
02:32:20.000 Is it really not as hard?
02:32:22.000 I guess I put it in perspective.
02:32:23.000 I'd be like, okay, it's not that.
02:32:25.000 And then I also, at the same time, I'd take that next leap and be like, you know what?
02:32:28.000 I am not storming the beaches at Normandy.
02:32:31.000 I am not going across this beach with no cover, no concealment, running into enemy machine gun fire who are in an elevated position, or Iwo Jima.
02:32:38.000 I'm like, you know what?
02:32:39.000 I can do a couple more push-ups here in the sand in sunny Southern California.
02:32:42.000 Because those guys died so that I could pursue this dream that I wanted to do for my entire life.
02:32:47.000 So that really put it in perspective for me.
02:32:50.000 Everything's relative.
02:32:51.000 But I thought about that.
02:32:52.000 I'm like, hey, these guys died so that I could be here and I could take my turn, get standing in the breach and just stepping up to put on the uniform of this country.
02:32:59.000 So I thought about jujitsu, I thought about boxing, and I thought about those guys that sacrificed everything so I could be there doing that job.
02:33:05.000 Yeah, Andy told me that the thing is to keep your world small and to think in terms of if I could just get to the next meal and just keep doing that.
02:33:13.000 Don't think in terms of like, oh my god, I have all these days left.
02:33:17.000 Exactly.
02:33:18.000 That's when people quit right there.
02:33:19.000 They're thinking about Friday on Sunday night.
02:33:21.000 You're thinking about the next Friday.
02:33:23.000 And so Andy went meal to meal.
02:33:24.000 I went evolution to evolution.
02:33:26.000 So I'm like, I can get through this obstacle course.
02:33:28.000 What are we doing next?
02:33:29.000 The swim.
02:33:29.000 Okay, I can swim.
02:33:30.000 Okay.
02:33:30.000 What are we doing next?
02:33:31.000 The soft sand run.
02:33:32.000 You know, I can do that.
02:33:33.000 So I just took it evolution by evolution.
02:33:35.000 But other people go meal by meal.
02:33:38.000 But if you start thinking more than one meal ahead, yeah, it's a little dicey.
02:33:42.000 It's a little dicey.
02:33:43.000 Because they make it very easy to quit and ring that bell and all of a sudden be warm and not get yelled at anymore.
02:33:47.000 It's self-select out of the program.
02:33:49.000 Do they let you—I mean, does anybody sort of give you a guideline like, hey, I'm going to give you some advice.
02:33:57.000 This is the way to get through this.
02:33:59.000 Yeah, you have people that roll back, like did a couple days of Hell Week, and then they got hurt, and they're back in your class now going through it again.
02:34:05.000 So you have all these people with all sorts of advice for you as you start.
02:34:09.000 And usually those are the people that quit right away again.
02:34:11.000 Oh, really?
02:34:12.000 Again?
02:34:12.000 Yeah, it's typical that, like, the fastest person, the strongest person, the most outgoing person that's trying to motivate the class, they quit, like, that first couple hours.
02:34:20.000 Isn't that always the truth?
02:34:22.000 What is that about?
02:34:23.000 I don't know, but people told me that ahead of time, and I was like, wow, this guy looks pretty strong.
02:34:26.000 He's, like, climbing these ropes, and he's so fast, and he's, like, motivating everybody.
02:34:29.000 I'm like, jeez.
02:34:30.000 And then he quits the first hour. 1.00
02:34:31.000 It's those silent motherfuckers that just keep going. 1.00
02:34:35.000 And remember, the class, we're in the, you know, Andy and I are in the surf zone, and we're watching these people get up to quit, and some people would be like, Come back. 1.00
02:34:41.000 Don't quit.
02:34:41.000 You can do it.
02:34:42.000 Don't quit.
02:34:43.000 And I was like...
02:34:44.000 Because that's the program working.
02:34:46.000 That is the program working.
02:34:48.000 You want that guy to quit.
02:34:48.000 I want that guy to quit.
02:34:49.000 If he's thinking about it, then get up there, ring that bell, self-select out.
02:34:53.000 That kept me warm.
02:34:54.000 That might sound terrible to say, but that's the truth.
02:34:57.000 It doesn't sound terrible at all.
02:34:59.000 That's why you go there.
02:35:00.000 Because you know 80% of these people are not making it through.
02:35:02.000 I'm here to test myself, serve my country, and this person's quitting.
02:35:06.000 This is working.
02:35:07.000 Now, what do you think when they're talking about lowering protocols?
02:35:11.000 They're lowering standards to allow more women to go through? 0.99
02:35:16.000 Yeah, so I'm glad I'm looking at that from the outside.
02:35:19.000 So for me, Andy tells something different.
02:35:21.000 He says that, hey, no matter what, the standards are the same.
02:35:24.000 You know, I don't care who you are.
02:35:26.000 And for me, you know, so as a kid growing up, what do they teach you?
02:35:30.000 They teach you, hey, you never hit a girl.
02:35:31.000 You stand up when a woman enters the room. 0.99
02:35:34.000 You pull a chair out for the woman. 1.00
02:35:35.000 You open the door for them. 0.81
02:35:36.000 Like, you're taught to do these things.
02:35:38.000 So as a combat leader, and this is, you know, this is just how I am.
02:35:42.000 So going into battle, I am 100% going to be more concerned about her than I am the other guys, just because that's how we're taught growing up.
02:35:48.000 You're taught to, you know, stand up, to be the protector, to stand up, to open that door.
02:35:52.000 It's just a part of me.
02:35:54.000 Maybe now we're not doing that anymore.
02:35:55.000 So maybe going forward, it's just fine.
02:35:58.000 But for me, I would definitely care about the female more than the male, just because that's How I am.
02:36:04.000 But when there's all guys in there and you're going forward and you're doing the job, that variable isn't there.
02:36:09.000 And maybe that's on me, but going forward, maybe they're not going to teach kids growing up that you respect females and you open the door for them and you pull up the chair for them and when they sit down and do all these things, maybe they're not going to teach that anymore and everybody's going to be the same and you won't care more about a female than you would a male and vice versa.
02:36:29.000 I don't know how it works, vice versa.
02:36:30.000 I've never really put much thought into that, but I'm glad I'm looking at it from the outside.
02:36:34.000 I'm glad I did that 20 years.
02:36:35.000 I'm glad that I was there in 9-11 and could do those combat deployments.
02:36:39.000 And then now I'm glad to be out taking care of my family and writing these novels.
02:36:43.000 And so you don't have to think about how it would impact your life.
02:36:46.000 That's why you're saying you're glad that you're out.
02:36:48.000 Because it's a tough thing to grapple with.
02:36:49.000 Because all of a sudden you have someone there and now I'm going down range and we're going to take down this target and I just can't not...
02:36:55.000 Care more about this one person that's in my platoon. 1.00
02:36:58.000 The concept that men and women are the same thing is just so stupid. 1.00
02:37:02.000 It's so irrational and illogical. 1.00
02:37:05.000 And it doesn't mean that a woman can't do what a man can do, because there are outliers.
02:37:10.000 But when we're looking at the average woman versus the average man, if you're selecting for the elite of the elite, if there is a woman that can appeal to those standards, how many women have gone through SEAL training?
02:37:25.000 I don't think anybody yet, but I'm dated now.
02:37:27.000 I think someone tried to do the pre-Buds and didn't make it, but I don't think anybody yet, but I might be. 0.99
02:37:34.000 I think if you get one of those crazy CrossFit ladies, it's all juice to the tits. 1.00
02:37:39.000 Physically, you can make it through this program, and any average high school athlete can make it through this program. 0.98
02:37:44.000 You're going to get in shape while you're there, and it's all mental.
02:37:47.000 It's that team ability we're looking for.
02:37:50.000 It's that moral courage, that physical courage.
02:37:52.000 You're looking for these certain things.
02:37:54.000 You're looking for grit.
02:37:55.000 So it's not insurmountable for a woman. 0.57
02:37:57.000 No, no, no, not at all.
02:37:58.000 My point wasn't that at all.
02:38:00.000 My point was that, hey, the problem's with me going into combat.
02:38:02.000 I'm going to look at a woman differently. 0.81
02:38:04.000 That's just how I was brought up.
02:38:05.000 I was put up to respect women and protect women, and that's just how it was.
02:38:09.000 So if any average high school athlete can get through it, then a woman can get through it, but no woman has gotten through it. 1.00
02:38:16.000 Yeah, I think so.
02:38:17.000 I think that's probably the case.
02:38:18.000 But we'll see it.
02:38:21.000 It'll happen and, you know, maybe it won't be a big deal.
02:38:23.000 Maybe it'll be just like anything else, you know, glass ceilings, maybe it'll be fine.
02:38:26.000 But why are they talking about lowering standards then, if it's possible?
02:38:29.000 Yeah, well, you know, because you want to make one thing and that's that politics involved.
02:38:35.000 So what is the difference?
02:38:37.000 The difference is...
02:38:41.000 The way, well, only one woman has tried? 0.88
02:38:44.000 I mean, how many women have tried? 0.99
02:38:45.000 Well, there's different stages that you go through.
02:38:47.000 So there's like one before you even show up at BUDS, you have to do your push-ups, your sit-ups, your pull-ups, your run, your swim.
02:38:52.000 So that's before you even show up.
02:38:54.000 So I'm not sure how many people have tried that.
02:38:55.000 What do you have to do?
02:38:57.000 It's a number of sit-ups, and I forget how many.
02:38:58.000 It's two minutes or three minutes.
02:39:00.000 I forget.
02:39:00.000 It's all online now.
02:39:01.000 It's been a little while.
02:39:02.000 But push-ups in a certain amount of time, sit-ups in a certain amount of time, pull-ups, I think it's only like 10 or 12 maybe.
02:39:07.000 What?
02:39:08.000 Yeah, just to get through the door.
02:39:09.000 You only have to do 10 or 12 chin-ups?
02:39:11.000 Just to get there.
02:39:12.000 Yeah, just to get there.
02:39:13.000 But there's other things involved, too.
02:39:14.000 So you're doing your ASVAB test.
02:39:16.000 So they just want to make sure you're not fat and weak.
02:39:19.000 Yeah, I mean, you're going to get in shape. 0.83
02:39:20.000 It's not ridiculous.
02:39:21.000 It's not crazy.
02:39:22.000 Right. 1.00
02:39:22.000 But I'm saying you can't be a ridiculous person. 1.00
02:39:25.000 You still got to be in shape. 0.99
02:39:26.000 You got to be in some kind of shape.
02:39:27.000 So they check you, and they go, okay, let's see how tough you are.
02:39:30.000 Yeah, and you should pass this bait.
02:39:31.000 Okay, they did these things.
02:39:33.000 They were comfortable enough in the water to do this swim in whatever time that was.
02:39:37.000 They were a good enough runner to make it around the track, however many times that was, a mile, two miles, I forget what it was, and to do some pull-ups and sit-ups and that sort of thing.
02:39:45.000 But it's timed, and it's regulated, and there's only a certain amount of time between those different events.
02:39:48.000 So, you know, you have a base, and then you go to the next stage where you go to BUDS, and then you have another test when you get there.
02:39:56.000 That is the same.
02:39:57.000 So maybe you got out of shape between these two or maybe you made this one just barely and now you didn't make it here.
02:40:03.000 So then there's another gate and then you start your training and then you have tests every single week.
02:40:09.000 So there's different gates that you have to get through.
02:40:12.000 So I'm not sure how many have started here.
02:40:14.000 Gotten to here and then gone forward, but the last time that I checked was probably a few months ago where somebody told me it was one person that had gotten to this last stage as an officer, I think she was, and didn't make it through this pre-BUDS training they do for officers just to make sure, like, hey,
02:40:29.000 you want to get...
02:40:31.000 Some more options as far as preparing for SEAL training.
02:40:35.000 So one of them is called MiniBuds, and you show up in this MiniBuds thing.
02:40:38.000 You go through a week just to make sure that you've made the right choice and you didn't really want to be an aviator or somebody on a ship or in Intel or whatever else.
02:40:46.000 And so she was in that, from what I understand, and then didn't make it through.
02:40:50.000 Now, when you're writing about someone like James Reese and you're writing this story, do you feel like you have an obligation to represent the SEALs through this character?
02:41:01.000 Are there things that you would never have this guy do?
02:41:06.000 When you think about it, do you think of it as not just a fictional character, but he's also a representative of something that you hold sacred?
02:41:14.000 I do.
02:41:15.000 And the same thing, just the way I interact with anybody, either social media or in real life in person, he's that kind of a guy.
02:41:24.000 So I do think about that.
02:41:25.000 But I want to explore certain paths that you wouldn't do.
02:41:27.000 Like that first book, yeah, you're going to jail forever if you do what he does in the first book.
02:41:31.000 You're going to the gas chamber if you do that in real life.
02:41:33.000 But this is fiction.
02:41:34.000 I get to explore some of these things.
02:41:35.000 And I get to give that person that reads it or that watches the show...
02:41:38.000 We're good to go.
02:42:03.000 Yeah, all these things like that.
02:42:05.000 Vigilante Justice is a very popular thing.
02:42:09.000 So for him, and when you write a character that is going to have more than one novel, or even if it is just one, people are trusting you with their time for that.
02:42:17.000 So whether it's three days they're reading this, one week, two weeks, or they're listening to 13 hours of Ray Porter do that narration.
02:42:23.000 They've trusted you with the time, and no one wants to spend time with someone they don't like.
02:42:27.000 You get to choose all these books out there, all these movies out there, all these audiobooks out there, and you get to choose who you're going to spend 12 hours that you're not getting back with.
02:42:36.000 So I take that very seriously, and I want to provide something of value.
02:42:40.000 So whether I'm writing that book and James Reese, The protagonist, former Navy SEAL sniper, is the catalyst, is the protagonist, is the guy that moves the story forward.
02:42:50.000 And we see the world through his eyes for the most part.
02:42:52.000 So I do take that very seriously.
02:42:55.000 And I put a lot of thought into everything that he does.
02:42:58.000 into how I personally interact with people online and things that I post every day because once again people have trusted me whether they're gonna read that post for 10 seconds or they're gonna look at that picture for two seconds or whatever it is I don't want to waste their time because you are not getting that time back you only have a certain amount of time on this planet And,
02:43:14.000 you know, you might not make it through tomorrow.
02:43:16.000 You don't know.
02:43:17.000 You might make five years.
02:43:18.000 You might make ten years.
02:43:19.000 But you trusted me with that time.
02:43:20.000 That's why it's so important who you follow, why you follow them.
02:43:24.000 And so I take my posts on social media just as seriously as I do writing a paragraph in the novel.
02:43:29.000 I like to put that thought into there, add value to people's lives because they're trusting me.
02:43:33.000 And as a way to thank them for trusting me, that's what I owe them in return, is putting that requisite time, energy, effort, and thought Into how I explain something in a post or how I read a paragraph in the novel.
02:43:45.000 Is this surreal for you to be this successful with these books?
02:43:50.000 I mean, it's not that quickly in that it's five years, but right away, you know?
02:43:57.000 I mean, you knocked it out of the park with the first book, man.
02:44:00.000 I mean, it's kind of crazy.
02:44:02.000 And that book now is being made into an eight series Amazon Prime special.
02:44:08.000 Crazy.
02:44:09.000 I guess it sounds strange to say, but I thought about this for so long growing up, knowing that I wanted to be a SEAL since I was seven years old.
02:44:16.000 Everything that I did was focused on that goal, whether I was playing soccer or lacrosse or running cross-country or whatever it was, I was thinking about it in terms of how does this prepare me to be a SEAL later in life at an early age.
02:44:27.000 When did it start?
02:44:28.000 When I was seven years old, so let's say 1979, 1980. When you were seven?
02:44:32.000 Yeah.
02:44:33.000 Yeah, so my grandfather was killed in World War II. He was a Corsair pilot, which was the planes that had the gull wings that folded up like this.
02:44:39.000 There was a show on at the time called Black Chief Squadron with Robert Conrad, and he played Pappy Boynton, who was the commanding officer of this squadron in the Pacific.
02:44:48.000 Which was also the same plane that my grandfather flew.
02:44:50.000 So I had this connection.
02:44:51.000 I watched those with my dad.
02:44:52.000 We had this connection to his dad, to my grandfather.
02:44:55.000 And I grew up with his pictures of him and his squadron, the maps they used to give aviators back then, which were made out of silk.
02:45:00.000 Because if you hit the water with a paper one, they would disintegrate.
02:45:03.000 So you had these silk maps, had his medals from the war, that sort of thing.
02:45:07.000 Military service was a calling.
02:45:08.000 I just felt it.
02:45:09.000 It was innate.
02:45:10.000 And very early on in life, I found out about Frogman through a movie called The Frogman.
02:45:16.000 And I watched it with my dad.
02:45:17.000 I didn't watch the whole thing because in our house, there was four channels back then, ABC, CBS, NBC, and this outlier that always had some war movie playing on Sunday, opposite Sunday football.
02:45:26.000 And I didn't really care about the football, but I cared about that war movie that was on.
02:45:31.000 And when we hit a commercial break, my dad would look at his watch and say, two minutes, and I'd run up because I was in remote control back then.
02:45:36.000 And I'd turn it to that Outlier channel and I'd get to watch for a few minutes.
02:45:40.000 And he'd be like, turn it back.
02:45:40.000 So I'd turn it back and then we'd wait until the next commercial.
02:45:43.000 Wow.
02:45:43.000 And so I saw this movie called The Frogmen.
02:45:45.000 These guys, black and white, they're going up over the beach.
02:45:47.000 They're placing explosives on obstacles in advance of a conventional forced landing.
02:45:50.000 And I asked my dad, hey, who are these guys?
02:45:52.000 And he said, they're frogmen.
02:45:54.000 And I'm like, what?
02:45:55.000 Pestering with more questions.
02:45:56.000 And he said, ask your mother.
02:45:57.000 Because she was a librarian at the time.
02:45:59.000 And we went down to the local library, looked into frogmen, found out about underwater demolition teams, found out about SEALs.
02:46:04.000 And my takeaway from that research was that, hey, these are some of the toughest, the training's some of the toughest ever devised by a modern military, and these are some of the most elite fighting forces on the planet.
02:46:14.000 And so I was like, age seven, okay, this is what I'm doing.
02:46:17.000 And then when I got to about age 10, I started to read the things my parents were reading.
02:46:21.000 So Hunt for Red October came out when I was in fifth grade, started reading that.
02:46:24.000 Then I found David Murrell, who created Rambo.
02:46:26.000 I found Stephen Hunter.
02:46:27.000 I found A.J. Quinnell, J.C. Pollock, Mark Olden, all these guys in the 80s who had protagonists with Vietnam experience, typically in special operations.
02:46:35.000 So I find this world of reading in thrillers, and I just love it.
02:46:38.000 There's this magic.
02:46:40.000 And I know that these authors did some sort of research into their characters.
02:46:43.000 So I'm learning at the same time.
02:46:45.000 So I'm reading nonfiction, on warfare, on terrorism, on insurgencies, on counterinsurgencies, and I'm reading this fiction.
02:46:50.000 And I just love it.
02:46:51.000 I know that, hey, after the military, I'm going to one day write books just like this.
02:46:55.000 And then today, David Murrell is a dear friend.
02:46:58.000 Stephen Hunter is a dear friend.
02:46:59.000 We talk every week or so on email.
02:47:02.000 And these guys have been so fantastic.
02:47:04.000 So these guys that I looked up to are now Friends.
02:47:07.000 It's incredible.
02:47:08.000 It's such an honor.
02:47:09.000 That's so wild.
02:47:09.000 It's crazy.
02:47:10.000 But I thought back then, I'm like, of course, I'm going to be a SEAL. 80% attrition?
02:47:13.000 Yes.
02:47:13.000 And back then, I thought there was like six guys on each SEAL team.
02:47:16.000 I didn't realize there was a lot more than that.
02:47:18.000 And I'm like, okay, six guys.
02:47:19.000 Okay, I read that there's three teams on each coast.
02:47:21.000 I'm going to make it through.
02:47:22.000 I'm going to be part of this 20% that makes it through, of course.
02:47:25.000 I never thought that I would fail.
02:47:27.000 And then I also knew once I get out, I'll write thrillers and then they'll be optioned by an A-list star.
02:47:33.000 I'll have an awesome director.
02:47:34.000 I just thought that's how it worked because that's how when you have this dream when you're seven years old and then 10 years old, that's what you think happens.
02:47:42.000 And so I just never lost that.
02:47:44.000 Of course, you have some other people tell you how hard it is along the way and you have to discount that and stay focused because you only have so much bandwidth.
02:47:50.000 You can't be worried about not making it.
02:47:54.000 Yeah.
02:48:09.000 And then I would write these novels.
02:48:11.000 So I just never thought that that wasn't how it went.
02:48:14.000 And so I just focused on making the best book I possibly could, getting it to the exact publisher, the exact editor that I wanted to read it, Emily Bessler at Emily Bessler Books.
02:48:21.000 Because I looked in the acknowledgements of other people's books, and I kept seeing this name, Emily Bessler.
02:48:25.000 And I'm like, ah, Vince Flynn, Kyle Mills, Brad Thor, this is who I want.
02:48:29.000 This is who needs to read the book.
02:48:30.000 And sure enough, ends up on her desk.
02:48:32.000 She reads it.
02:48:33.000 She loves it.
02:48:33.000 And next thing you know, here we are.
02:48:35.000 It's such a study and discipline and focus.
02:48:38.000 It's crazy.
02:48:39.000 And having a path and being sure of that path and going on it and not varying.
02:48:44.000 It's crazy.
02:48:45.000 Well, the other part of it is also you have to do that work.
02:48:47.000 So I read all these books growing up.
02:48:48.000 So I didn't just wake up one day and decide, hey, what should I be reading if I want to be an author?
02:48:51.000 I'm going to go back.
02:48:52.000 No, I read those things at a very pivotal time, very impactful time in my life.
02:48:57.000 And it would be different reading them today.
02:48:59.000 And some of them I'm hesitant to reread because they were just so magical to me back then.
02:49:04.000 But I did all that work reading those books and then doing all that academic study of warfare, then getting the SEAL teams, then that experience downrange in Iraq and Afghanistan, so that when that door got cracked for me by Brad Thor, who said, when I talked to him, he's like, hey, I'll let my publisher know it's coming because a friend of mine told me some things you did in the SEAL teams.
02:49:22.000 And I said, thank you for that.
02:49:23.000 I'm going to let them know that a book's coming from you.
02:49:25.000 Can't guarantee they'll open the package.
02:49:27.000 Can't guarantee that they'll read one word.
02:49:28.000 Definitely can't guarantee that you'll like it.
02:49:30.000 And he thought they'd just maybe read one word and toss it out.
02:49:33.000 But he cracked that door for me, and then I kicked it in.
02:49:36.000 So you have to be prepared to kick it in.
02:49:38.000 You have to have done this work at this level, because if you don't and someone cracks that door for you, guess what?
02:49:42.000 It's not happening.
02:49:42.000 So the constant is that you have to do this work at this foundational level.
02:49:52.000 You're such a great role model in terms of your ability to go after something and pursue it with full passion.
02:50:01.000 And I think that's so important for people to see because there's so many people out there that are They don't know what they want.
02:50:10.000 They're confused.
02:50:12.000 They're not focused.
02:50:14.000 They don't have a real path.
02:50:16.000 And they're disenchanted by life.
02:50:17.000 They don't know what to do.
02:50:19.000 And it's a mindset, and it's a matter of discipline and action.
02:50:24.000 And you're just such a great example there.
02:50:26.000 Well, I appreciate that.
02:50:27.000 And there'll be plenty of people along the path for anybody that'll tell you how hard something is.
02:50:31.000 And when I told people I wanted to be a SEAL, they thought I'd grow out of it.
02:50:34.000 Or, oh, that's nice.
02:50:36.000 It'll be a rude awakening once he gets to Bud's, if he even enlists and takes the risk.
02:50:42.000 Those are the same kind of looks I got when I told people I wanted to be an author.
02:50:45.000 I get those same looks.
02:50:46.000 Like, oh, he'll grow out of it.
02:50:47.000 Kind of like telling somebody you want to be an astronaut or whatever.
02:50:49.000 They're like, oh, yeah, the world will knock you down soon enough, son.
02:50:52.000 Which is true.
02:50:53.000 You'll get knocked down.
02:50:53.000 Yeah, but that's the case with everything that's difficult to do that very few people do.
02:50:58.000 I hear that all the time about...
02:51:00.000 Well, I'm always telling people to chase their dreams.
02:51:02.000 And I've had people say you shouldn't tell people to chase their dreams because a lot of people are not going to accomplish those dreams. 1.00
02:51:08.000 And I'm like, you can eat shit. 0.99
02:51:09.000 Because I'm going to keep talking to the people that are going to listen. 1.00
02:51:12.000 And the people that are going to listen are just human beings.
02:51:14.000 And human beings decide who they are based on what they're willing to do to achieve their goals.
02:51:20.000 You decide.
02:51:21.000 Yeah.
02:51:22.000 You get to decide.
02:51:22.000 You get to decide.
02:51:23.000 You know what?
02:51:24.000 For sure they're not going to kind of push that dream if they don't try, if they don't devote themselves to it.
02:51:29.000 Kind of like you say about surfing, when you're like, guess what the odds are of me going...
02:51:32.000 I told my little guy I didn't want to go in the water in Hawaii, so I told him that story about...
02:51:37.000 I'm like, yeah, I get it, because, you know...
02:51:38.000 You know, Joe says, what are the odds of me being eaten by a shark if I don't go in the water?
02:51:42.000 Zero percent.
02:51:43.000 I'm not getting eaten by a shark if I don't go in the water.
02:51:45.000 But same thing, if you don't put in that work or if you get discouraged along the way or you're worried too much about everybody that says that you can't do it or how hard it is, guess what?
02:51:53.000 You're probably not going to make it.
02:51:54.000 You're probably not going to make it.
02:51:55.000 And you might not make it if you go after it, too.
02:51:56.000 But you for sure won't make it if you don't give it a shot and don't devote everything to it.
02:52:00.000 You might not make it, but you also might not make it if you stop when you don't make it the first time.
02:52:06.000 You might make it if you keep going.
02:52:08.000 You gotta keep going.
02:52:09.000 You might not make it the first time.
02:52:10.000 You might have to reassess, reevaluate, and re-engage.
02:52:13.000 Exactly.
02:52:14.000 So John Grisham wrote A Time to Kill First.
02:52:16.000 He could not give that book away.
02:52:18.000 Then he writes The Firm.
02:52:19.000 That takes off.
02:52:20.000 So if he'd stopped at A Time to Kill, we would not have The Firm, The Client.
02:52:24.000 We wouldn't have one John Grisham novel every year since 1991 or whatever it was.
02:52:29.000 So I always thought about that.
02:52:30.000 So I always thought, okay, if the first one doesn't hit, I'm definitely writing a second.
02:52:34.000 Maybe the second one doesn't hit, I'll do that reevaluation of life choices and take a breath here.
02:52:38.000 But I thought about that John Grisham story.
02:52:40.000 So I started writing and I went to Mozambique to do the research for the second novel before I had even submitted the first one to Simon& Schuster.
02:52:46.000 That's wild.
02:52:47.000 That's awesome.
02:52:48.000 I love that.
02:52:50.000 And again, this is really important for people to hear that don't exactly know what to do with their life.
02:52:55.000 Maybe they have a goal, but people have tried to dissuade them from trying to achieve that goal. 0.98
02:53:00.000 Just fucking go for it. 0.98
02:53:02.000 You gotta go for it. 1.00
02:53:02.000 You gotta figure that mission and that passion. 1.00
02:53:04.000 You have to have those two coincide together.
02:53:07.000 That's the key, I think, is identifying that mission and then finding that passion and putting those two together.
02:53:13.000 So for whatever reason, that's what I've done here is I've moved out of the military, taken care of my family.
02:53:18.000 It's my mission.
02:53:19.000 We have a middle child with some severe special needs, so taking care of him for a lifetime of full-time care, that is my mission.
02:53:24.000 And then my passion is writing.
02:53:25.000 And so I get to do both of those on this path.
02:53:28.000 And I feel so fortunate that the book's resonating with people and that people took a risk on me as a new author, told a friend, and that's what allowed all this to happen.
02:53:35.000 It was really cool.
02:53:37.000 Is that a lot of it was all grassroots.
02:53:38.000 It was veterans.
02:53:39.000 It was veteran-owned companies.
02:53:40.000 It was tactical shooters.
02:53:42.000 It was hunters.
02:53:42.000 It was readers that all, like, took a risk and read this book and then said, hey, I'm going to tell a friend about this.
02:53:48.000 And that's why I get to do what I do.
02:53:50.000 And then after I made the New York Times list, you had me on.
02:53:52.000 Chris Pratt says something about her to go on Tucker.
02:53:54.000 And then it just keeps building.
02:53:55.000 From there.
02:53:56.000 So I feel extremely fortunate to everybody, especially in the beginning, before you've been vetted by multiple people, and they take a risk on you with their time more important than how much the book costs.
02:54:05.000 But that time, that's really what they took a risk on me with.
02:54:08.000 And so I just want to do the best job I can for them, always.
02:54:11.000 Well, I feel very fortunate that you're out there, and I feel very fortunate that you've been on the show and get to talk to people, and I'm very fortunate that you mentioned the podcast in your book, too.
02:54:22.000 Ah, you got that?
02:54:23.000 Yeah!
02:54:23.000 You like that?
02:54:24.000 It was cool.
02:54:25.000 Nice.
02:54:26.000 Pretty cool.
02:54:26.000 Awesome.
02:54:27.000 Awesome.
02:54:27.000 Thanks for noticing.
02:54:28.000 So, it's out now, Devil's Hand. 0.93
02:54:30.000 It's fucking awesome, like all these books.
02:54:32.000 There's four of them now, all the James Reese series, and when is the movie series or TV? I don't know. 0.86
02:54:38.000 I hate calling it a TV series because it's more than that.
02:54:40.000 It is.
02:54:41.000 And Antoine and Chris talk about it as a movie.
02:54:43.000 They talk about it as a film.
02:54:44.000 It's like a long-ass movie.
02:54:45.000 So that's how they talk about it.
02:54:46.000 When does it start?
02:54:47.000 So they're filming right now.
02:54:48.000 I think it goes into post-production in the fall and I think sometime in 2022. Beautiful.
02:54:53.000 I hope it comes out the same day that the next book drops.
02:54:56.000 That would be awesome.
02:54:57.000 So hopefully the second week in, to Amazon if you're listening, yeah, the second Tuesday in April would be ideal.
02:55:02.000 You've already started the next book.
02:55:03.000 Yep.
02:55:04.000 Yeah, well into it.
02:55:04.000 Yeah, yeah.
02:55:05.000 Oh, I'm excited.
02:55:06.000 Yeah, my brain's all on that one right now.
02:55:07.000 Let's talk about that off air.
02:55:08.000 Awesome, man.
02:55:09.000 I want to hear.
02:55:09.000 All right.
02:55:10.000 Thank you, brother.
02:55:10.000 Appreciate you.
02:55:11.000 Thanks for having me.
02:55:11.000 Bye, everybody.