This Past Weekend with Theo Von - #623 - Gary Sinise

00:00:00.000 When I was there, you had to have a knife. 0.99

00:00:02.240 One of you's got to take turns carrying it up your rectum. 1.00

00:00:05.160 Wait, it's up your butt? 1.00

00:00:06.480 That's the prison wallet. 1.00

00:00:07.640 You'll never leave home enough.

00:00:08.380 You have something protected around it, I'm assuming.

00:00:10.160 Yeah, or else you'll be bleeding out your culo.

00:00:12.320 I'm Arianna Van Zeller, and after reporting on black markets

00:00:15.240 for my Emmy-winning National Geographic show, Trafficked,

00:00:18.100 I'm launching a podcast.

00:00:19.980 Are you getting emotional on me?

00:00:21.480 Intimate conversations with those operating in the shadows.

00:00:24.980 The Hidden Third is out now with new episodes every Wednesday.

00:00:28.640 Subscribe at youtube.com slash Mariana Van Zeller.

00:00:32.100 Follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

00:00:36.800 Today's guest is an actor.

00:00:38.820 He's a musician, and he's an activist.

00:00:41.780 You know him for some of his famous roles like Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump

00:00:45.680 and Mac Taylor in CSI New York.

00:00:49.560 But he's also known for his work helping veterans and first responders.

00:00:53.580 I had a great chat today with the one and only Mr. Gary.

00:00:58.420 Sinise.

00:01:00.300 Shine on me

00:01:02.680 And I will find a song

00:01:07.020 I've been singing

00:01:08.200 Thanks for having me.

00:01:17.680 Yeah, thanks so much for coming in.

00:01:19.280 Yeah, so you bought in Nashville in...

00:01:23.200 Well, we bought in 21, and then we moved in 23.

00:01:26.700 Okay.

00:01:27.280 So we had to do some renovating for our son and his, what was going on with him and everything

00:01:32.960 like that.

00:01:33.480 But then we finally, I moved my foundation in 22, and then we moved out in 23.

00:01:38.940 And overall, has it been a good experience?

00:01:41.480 Fantastic.

00:01:41.960 Yeah.

00:01:42.920 I got an overdue...

00:01:44.220 I was in Hollywood for 35 years.

00:01:47.100 Wow.

00:01:47.580 So that's enough.

00:01:48.260 Yeah.

00:01:49.160 That's a lot of service, man.

00:01:50.540 You did...

00:01:50.860 Yeah, you kind of like...

00:01:51.960 You did your service.

00:01:53.320 It was good.

00:01:55.580 You know, we raised our kids there and everything.

00:01:57.480 Oh, yeah.

00:01:59.560 Gary Sinise, thanks for joining me, man.

00:02:01.620 Oh, it's great to be with you, bud.

00:02:03.080 I appreciate it.

00:02:03.780 And the Lieutenant Dan Band, you guys are performing at the Ryman Auditorium on Veterans

00:02:09.160 Day?

00:02:09.820 Yep.

00:02:10.300 Yeah.

00:02:10.840 Yeah, at the Opry.

00:02:11.960 Yeah, it's good.

00:02:12.360 Sorry, you guys are performing at the Grand Ole Opry.

00:02:14.040 Yeah.

00:02:14.460 On Veterans Day.

00:02:15.160 Oh, that's going to be sick.

00:02:16.520 There's more seats there, too, which is even better.

00:02:18.580 I think it's 4,000-something seats in there.

00:02:22.160 You know, we played there summer of 24.

00:02:27.860 They did a really fun thing.

00:02:29.960 We were talking about having my band come there at some point to the Opry, and it was

00:02:36.740 the 30th anniversary of Forrest Gump coming out that summer.

00:02:43.040 So they did a...

00:02:44.200 Opry celebrates 30 years of Forrest Gump, and we went and we played, and we had a bunch

00:02:50.540 of people on the bill, and yeah, there we are.

00:02:53.240 Did you guys play any songs from the movie?

00:02:55.380 Well, everybody did.

00:02:56.680 That's what was cool about the night, is we had Gary LaVox from Rascal Flatts.

00:03:01.280 He was on the bill.

00:03:02.740 Jamie Johnson.

00:03:03.960 Jamie Johnson's the best, dude.

00:03:05.760 Yeah, Jamie.

00:03:06.640 And he'll be there on Tuesday when we play.

00:03:09.780 The bill, Tuesday is great, and then when we did the 30th anniversary, it was great,

00:03:16.580 and they had the idea that everybody on the bill would do songs from the soundtrack of

00:03:22.140 Forrest Gump.

00:03:22.840 That's so cool.

00:03:23.520 So we all did.

00:03:24.740 What a fun night.

00:03:25.620 Yeah, it was really fun.

00:03:27.100 Does the band rehearse a lot?

00:03:29.540 You know, I mean, I've been doing it with this band for over 20 years, so we will rehearse

00:03:36.500 once or twice a year, and it's all about learning some new songs.

00:03:43.020 You know, sometimes we can plug those in in our soundcheck.

00:03:46.420 We just give a little extra time for soundcheck, and we wind up a song, a new song, but we play

00:03:53.660 you know, we play a lot of the same songs for, because my band is, the whole purpose of my

00:03:59.640 band is the military veterans, first responders mission.

00:04:04.140 So I take the band on military bases and military hospitals and do all that kind of stuff.

00:04:10.920 That's, I don't play for money.

00:04:12.640 This is what I do for a mission.

00:04:15.220 It's a service mission.

00:04:16.680 I have to pay the band.

00:04:19.020 I have to pay the production costs of the staging and the lighting.

00:04:21.780 Of course.

00:04:22.180 And that stuff's pricey.

00:04:23.220 People don't realize it.

00:04:24.080 There's, you know, there's costs affixed with that.

00:04:25.820 Yeah.

00:04:25.900 And we have a big band.

00:04:26.960 Yeah.

00:04:27.060 I mean, if you look at my band, there's, you know, there's me plus 12, so there's 13 of

00:04:31.400 us in the band.

00:04:32.860 It's not cheap.

00:04:33.880 Yeah, it's an expensive show, but it's a good show.

00:04:37.300 We play a lot of good songs.

00:04:39.340 Were you always a musician?

00:04:41.920 Well, back in fourth grade, I got my first guitar.

00:04:49.180 And this goes back to the 60s.

00:04:51.460 So Beach Boys were my band, and I started listening to them a lot and trying to play their songs.

00:04:57.900 And then I got my guitar, and then in seventh grade, I got a bass, and I started playing

00:05:06.160 bass, and then played all the way through high school into my early 20s, and then I

00:05:11.120 got very busy with acting and started a theater company and got very busy with that.

00:05:15.920 So I didn't play for a long time until, like, the late 90s.

00:05:18.720 I started picking it up again, and now we've, you know, formed a band and started going on

00:05:24.420 military bases, and overseas, we've done over 600-something shows for the military.

00:05:30.100 Wow.

00:05:31.380 That's incredible, man.

00:05:32.420 Thank you so much for your service, for supporting the people who serve.

00:05:39.160 You bet.

00:05:40.160 I, yeah, whenever I was first starting out in comedy, we would do a bunch of, like, kind

00:05:45.200 of USO-affiliated kind of tours where you would go, and we went to so many unique places

00:05:51.080 that you don't even think that there's bases, that you don't even think that there's people,

00:05:55.080 like, like, little, like, Ford operator, like, Arif John, we went to one time.

00:05:59.640 Oh, sure, yeah, I've been there.

00:06:00.240 We went to the Azores.

00:06:02.440 Oh, my gosh.

00:06:03.280 We went to, like, places in Spain, just places you don't even think that there's bases,

00:06:08.460 and there's people there.

00:06:10.300 You know what, there, we have, how many bases do you think there are that the U.S.

00:06:15.180 has in the world?

00:06:16.220 So, I mean, I couldn't even guess, I don't think.

00:06:19.960 It's about 800 bases, and the big, giant ones, you know, like Fort Bragg or something

00:06:26.160 like that, two very, very tiny ones in little remote areas, like you said, and a lot of

00:06:32.460 them don't get a lot of support or entertainment, that kind of thing.

00:06:36.760 It's, I think it's 750, 800 bases, something like that.

00:06:40.680 What's that say?

00:06:42.140 Yeah, it says, oh, yeah, 750, yeah, to 877 U.S. military bases.

00:06:47.180 Yeah, that's a lot of bases.

00:06:49.140 When I started out with this, my goal was to hit every single one of them, and then I

00:06:52.920 realized, well, I think I'm about 25% the way there.

00:06:57.720 I think I've played about 200 bases around the world.

00:07:00.960 That's cool.

00:07:02.180 Oh, there's something about, like, I went to Qatar a couple of months ago.

00:07:06.020 Sure, yeah.

00:07:06.600 The president was doing something there, and they invited me to come, and so it was

00:07:13.300 just, like, but you get there, and the-

00:07:15.220 Were you on that big Middle East tour that-

00:07:18.180 I wasn't on the whole thing.

00:07:19.520 I was just on Qatar, and it was, like, a last-minute thing.

00:07:22.460 I was literally-

00:07:22.900 That's Central Command, yeah.

00:07:24.240 Yeah.

00:07:24.800 And they're like, do you want to come?

00:07:25.900 You have to get on a plane in, like, five hours, and I was like, shh.

00:07:29.060 Of course, yeah.

00:07:30.120 And, dude, but even the best part of it was when you walk up, there's all these soldiers,

00:07:33.820 like, in line, because they're, like, I don't know if it was mandatory that they go to this

00:07:37.940 event, but I think a lot of them wanted to, too.

00:07:39.440 It was probably, like, a fun thing to do on the base that day.

00:07:41.380 Oh, sure, yeah.

00:07:42.520 Anything to break up the day.

00:07:43.820 Yeah.

00:07:44.120 That's for sure.

00:07:44.980 And just to walk up, and a lot of them were like, hey, what's up?

00:07:48.800 And just, like, that moment alone, like, not for me, but for both of us, kind of, it was

00:07:53.260 just, like, that I got to be-

00:07:54.980 It was just awesome, man.

00:07:56.140 That's what it's like.

00:07:57.320 Yeah.

00:07:57.560 It was just awesome.

00:07:58.580 And then, yeah, you see guys, like, who are away from their families, and then you

00:08:04.380 have friends who their families are away.

00:08:07.800 Just all of it, you know?

00:08:09.140 I don't know.

00:08:09.680 Being close to it, you get to kind of see so much of what it's about.

00:08:14.020 Did you-

00:08:14.980 Because there's kind of this theory, I feel like, with you, for some people that don't

00:08:17.860 know, that you got into, like, the Lieutenant Dan character, right?

00:08:21.240 And you got into it so much that you were just like, I am now-

00:08:26.020 This is, like, my life calling.

00:08:28.580 Well, it's kind of like that.

00:08:30.800 Is that kind of what happened, or is that, but that-

00:08:32.700 No, I mean, I have Vietnam veterans in my family.

00:08:37.040 I was playing a Vietnam veteran, Lieutenant Dan.

00:08:39.140 And so, prior to playing him, I was, like, keyed up and tuned up to that, because with Vietnam 0.98

00:08:48.200 veterans and my family, I, you know, I was in high school, I was a senior in high school

00:08:54.440 when combat operations ended in Vietnam.

00:08:58.020 Wow.

00:08:58.740 In 1973.

00:08:59.660 So, I remember people coming home.

00:09:02.140 And then I met my wife, and she introduced me to her two brothers who served, her sister's

00:09:07.660 husband served in Vietnam.

00:09:09.500 So, I was kind of tuned up to what was going on with our Vietnam veterans, had a lot of

00:09:13.980 compassion for them and what happened when they came home.

00:09:17.180 You know, they were not treated well at all.

00:09:19.960 It was a difficult time for our country, difficult time to be a soldier.

00:09:23.140 And then when Lieutenant Dan came around, I had the opportunity to audition for it.

00:09:29.280 I very much wanted to get that part.

00:09:31.520 I was lucky to get it.

00:09:33.280 And then I just started, I mean, I remember getting invited to the Disabled American Veterans

00:09:40.900 Organization convention about five or six weeks after Forrest Gump came out.

00:09:48.200 And they wanted to give me an award for playing a wounded veteran.

00:09:52.040 And this was an organization that, at that time, represented 1.5 million wounded veterans

00:10:00.200 going back to World War II, all the way up to the Gulf War, because this is 1994.

00:10:06.400 And I walk out on the stage, get introduced, and I walk out on the stage.

00:10:11.400 Yeah, that's a picture of it.

00:10:13.680 And they gave me their National Commander's Award.

00:10:16.540 And the guy there, Richard Marbs, he's got one leg.

00:10:20.020 He's missing one leg up to his hip.

00:10:22.120 He's standing on crutches there.

00:10:23.820 And I looked out into the audience, and I saw 2,000 wounded veterans out there in the crowd.

00:10:31.200 Wow.

00:10:31.660 And it was very, very moving.

00:10:33.820 I mean, it really—

00:10:34.280 I can feel it right now.

00:10:34.880 It's moving to me to even imagine that somebody saw that.

00:10:37.460 And it was very impactful.

00:10:38.900 And that started me supporting our wounded going back to that time.

00:10:45.100 And then September 11th happened, and I just turned it into a full-time mission.

00:10:49.960 Wow.

00:10:50.660 Yeah, it was—I've met a lot of interesting people over the years.

00:10:56.280 I started going on USO tours in 2003.

00:10:59.900 I started going to the bases.

00:11:01.520 Qatar was one of the first bases I went to on my first overseas US tour tour.

00:11:06.340 Really?

00:11:06.940 Yeah.

00:11:07.480 It's a beautiful base.

00:11:08.640 Yeah.

00:11:08.940 We were there.

00:11:09.980 We were in Iraq.

00:11:13.080 We were in Kuwait.

00:11:15.180 That was a big tour that Kid Rock was on, and Leanne Womack was on that tour.

00:11:23.100 Oh, yeah.

00:11:23.920 Robert De Niro was on the tour.

00:11:25.680 I mean, Paul Rodriguez, comedians were on the tour.

00:11:29.440 It was—there were a lot of entertainers.

00:11:33.560 It was called Project Salute, and that's some footage there from that very first trip overseas to Iraq and Kuwait.

00:11:44.680 This is me going out to a place called Camp Udari, which was right on the Iraq-Kuwait border.

00:11:50.120 And I saw thousands of troops that day, and it was very impactful to go out there, see these people in the war zones, see what they were doing, shake hands with them.

00:12:02.900 I wanted to talk to everybody, and I didn't have time because, you know, there were so many people lined up to see us.

00:12:10.740 But we entertained.

00:12:12.480 You know, we—I didn't do anything except I'm Lieutenant Dan, and I'm waving to everybody and shaking hands and taking pictures.

00:12:19.860 But Kid Rock put on the show.

00:12:21.520 Oh, for sure, yeah.

00:12:22.400 Bob's been in here. 0.99

00:12:23.340 Bob's ridiculous. 0.99

00:12:24.120 He lives across town. 1.00

00:12:24.980 He's one of a kind.

00:12:26.160 Good guy.

00:12:28.260 We've known each other since that trip.

00:12:30.980 He's got a big heart, dude.

00:12:32.160 He's a—yeah, he's hilarious.

00:12:34.160 Loves our military.

00:12:35.820 Yeah.

00:12:36.380 We spend a good bit of time together.

00:12:37.920 He's a special guy.

00:12:38.840 Anyway, what's something—yeah, because you just had, like, you had so many, like, kind of iconic roles, like, you know, and were in so many, like, just, you know, films that really touched people.

00:12:51.580 You know, The Green Mile, I remember, of mice and men.

00:12:55.900 That's crazy, dude.

00:12:57.400 Did you see that in high school?

00:12:58.860 Yeah.

00:12:59.420 I remember, dude.

00:13:00.540 You know how many people even on the spectrum were not allowed to have a pet after that movie?

00:13:08.840 Do you know how many of my—

00:13:10.580 You can't have a dog.

00:13:11.980 Oh, dude.

00:13:12.540 You know how many of my neighbors got their pets taken away after that movie?

00:13:17.680 I never thought of that.

00:13:19.680 Oh, dude.

00:13:20.300 It was—yeah, it took, like, a month to get them back for some of us.

00:13:23.300 That's hilarious.

00:13:23.920 But that—just so many special roles.

00:13:27.460 But then it feels like you really kind of found this, like, a role that really, like, like, almost a bigger role in this space of service, you know, and of feeling like even just showing up somewhere and giving of yourself, you know?

00:13:41.220 Well, with the veterans in my family, and especially the Vietnam veterans, I have World War II and World War I on my side of the family, Korea era.

00:13:52.020 My dad was in the Navy during Korea.

00:13:53.860 My grandfather in World War I, my two uncles in World War II, so—but it was when I met the Vietnam veterans on my wife's side of the family, and that was very impactful because they had not been treated well, and I started to have a lot of compassion for them and feel very, very badly.

00:14:13.900 So when we were attacked on September 11th and our, you know, young men and women started raising their hand and joining the military and going off to Afghanistan and Iraq, and I wanted to do something to support them.

00:14:31.480 I just felt a lot of compassion for them having veterans in my own family and having seen what happened to our Vietnam veterans when they went off to war.

00:14:39.660 And it was starting to—if you recall, the Iraq War was starting to be—you know, the country was starting to divide itself over whether we should be there or not and all of that.

00:14:51.060 And I didn't want our service members to get caught in the middle of all that, so I just started raising my hand and going out and supporting them where I could, and that led to all these nonprofits that I supported, and then I just started my own.

00:15:05.580 And that's the Gary Sinise Foundation?

00:15:07.380 Yeah.

00:15:07.760 Yeah.

00:15:07.920 Yeah.

00:15:08.220 How do you stay out of the minute—like, how do you stay out of the political side of things, right?

00:15:12.900 Like, because I'm sure sometimes that, like you were saying with Vietnam, it was probably one of the first times that soldiers came back, and a lot of people didn't agree with them being there.

00:15:21.180 And it's like, it's not really their fault, right?

00:15:24.360 They're just signing up to protect, like, the freedoms that we have, right?

00:15:28.160 Like, my job is freedom of speech.

00:15:29.940 My job doesn't even exist if it's not for somebody out there protecting it, right?

00:15:34.420 You're absolutely right.

00:15:35.940 But so how do you stay out of that?

00:15:37.920 Like, is that tough sometimes to stay out of, like, the political side of it and just focus on the, like, boots on the ground?

00:15:44.280 Or do you?

00:15:45.160 Like, does that make any sense, that question?

00:15:46.920 You know, I didn't care about that stuff.

00:15:49.240 What I did care about was them feeling kind of a negative thing coming at them from the country. 0.93

00:15:58.880 And we were starting to divide at that point.

00:16:02.240 You know, after September 11th, everyone was sort of united, you know, in, you know, I mean, we got smacked on September 11th.

00:16:12.020 That was a real turning point for me towards service in a greater way.

00:16:17.820 But our country was sort of, you know, reeling from that.

00:16:21.180 And remember, we were all in pain.

00:16:22.900 We were all scared.

00:16:24.500 Nobody knew what was going on.

00:16:26.620 We wanted, you know, our troops to go over there and do something, find this bad guy that did that to us.

00:16:32.460 And, you know, everybody was sort of united behind that.

00:16:35.600 As time went on, though, you started to feel like, okay, we're, you know, we don't support George Bush going into Iraq.

00:16:43.460 And I didn't want our troops to get caught in the middle of that.

00:16:47.660 So I just said, you know, what can I do as an entertainer?

00:16:52.900 You know, as somebody that they recognize from the movies, I can go over there and shake hands with them and tell them, hey, you know, we appreciate you.

00:16:59.780 We don't, you know, we don't take what you're doing for granted.

00:17:03.280 And I started doing that, and then I did it some more and more and more and more.

00:17:09.280 And the more I did it, the more I felt like I was having a positive effect on people that were away from their families, losing friends, you know, getting blown up, ending up in the hospital, multiple limbs amputated, all these terrible things that were happening.

00:17:27.360 And I felt like I was bringing some positive light into their world, which was, you know, a pretty difficult time.

00:17:37.000 I mean, if you're over there and you lose 10 buddies and then you lose your legs, you've got a long way, a long road ahead.

00:17:45.200 And I wanted to help them.

00:17:46.320 You know, the real-life Lieutenant Dan's, I wanted to help them out, and I wanted to help the families out who were losing loved ones.

00:17:53.340 And I just felt that was a role that I could play, and now it's just a big, big part of life.

00:17:59.200 Yeah, you were right, you know.

00:18:01.560 I think so.

00:18:02.780 We can't let our service members get caught in the middle of stuff.

00:18:06.140 Now, if you volunteer to serve your country, what do you volunteer for?

00:18:10.520 To do what they want you to do.

00:18:12.720 You don't have a question, you know, and if they send you into a war zone, you've got to go.

00:18:16.820 So they're just doing their duty, and I want to support them and help them through the difficulties of going to war and the things that they see and the things that happen to them.

00:18:28.660 I remember one time on a base, we were there, and something, I think it was in Arifjana, one of those bases near there.

00:18:40.900 And everybody was in the hospital.

00:18:44.460 Something had happened.

00:18:45.460 Something had come into the base, and somebody had taken shrapnel or something, and they were losing a lot of blood.

00:18:51.400 And they basically had this hallway lined up in this hospital of people literally going through and donating blood.

00:18:56.920 But it was like, I mean, there may have been 100 people in the hallway.

00:19:00.900 And they're like, hey, can you just kind of go through and just try to boost people's spirits?

00:19:03.980 And it was like, man, it was just kind of a harrowing moment because you're like, I don't know these people, right?

00:19:09.660 Like, I'm not one of them.

00:19:12.220 You know, I'm one of them in the sense that I'm an American, and I have, like, empathy, maybe something.

00:19:18.300 There's something there, like a human connection.

00:19:21.300 But, man, that was, like, heartbreaking.

00:19:22.960 And so you were just kind of passing out waters and shaking hands and just, like, you know, patting people on the chest or trying to do anything that you felt like maybe God was pushing you to do without being egotistical to try and just be there and support.

00:19:36.560 But you were there.

00:19:38.320 Right.

00:19:38.840 They had to be there.

00:19:40.940 You did not.

00:19:42.020 Right.

00:19:42.320 And so that was a special thing, the fact that you took the time to go over there to do that, to pat them on the back, to shake their hand, to hand them a water bottle, to tell some jokes, to break up their day a little bit, help them through that experience.

00:19:57.100 That was, I'm sure that was profoundly impactful for you, but it was also very meaningful for them.

00:20:03.380 I've seen it, you know, hundreds of times.

00:20:05.260 Yeah.

00:20:05.360 And it's helpful, you know, to have somebody from home show up and say, hey, thanks for what you're doing.

00:20:13.760 And the next day they found out that the guy didn't make it, you know?

00:20:17.780 And it was just like, it was, have you had moments like that on these bases?

00:20:24.820 Like, what kind of moments do you kind of experience on some of these bases?

00:20:28.040 Have you been in some moments where it's, or have you been on bases where it's a night where it's like, man, this is a, a lot's happened today and it might be a tough night for these guys to come and enjoy some music?

00:20:37.560 Like, or what are some of the, like, what are some of the things we don't see that, as regular civilians, of what bass life is like?

00:20:45.040 You know, when, when you go to, when you go to a war zone, um, you're, you, you're keen, keenly aware that at any moment for any one of these folks that you're meeting, any of these soldiers who are infantry especially or something like that, that at any point they could get called out to a mission, get in the, get in the Humvee or get in the tank or whatever, go out on a mission and something bad could happen to them.

00:21:11.660 And you're keenly aware of that.

00:21:13.020 And that, that's happened to me multiple times where I'll be taking pictures with a thousand people or something like that.

00:21:21.180 And I know that, you know, I mean, at any minute they could get called on a mission and that could be their last mission.

00:21:27.180 Anything could happen.

00:21:28.460 So the 20 seconds that I spend with them or something like that can be very meaningful.

00:21:33.080 I've had mothers come up to me with photographs of me and their son who was, he was killed the next day, you know, after not like, this is the last picture that was taken.

00:21:46.060 Uh, and you know, as soon as he got that picture, he sent it home to the family and it lit him up.

00:21:51.300 And then the next day he's shot by a sniper or something like that.

00:21:54.940 And, and, and those types of things can, uh, impact you in a very profound, uh, way.

00:22:02.800 And you don't, you don't forget about that, you know, and it makes you come back and do it again.

00:22:08.480 You know, uh, I, I thought the first time I went to a hospital, um, I would, I remember it's well over 20 years ago.

00:22:18.000 And I went to Landstuhl medical center in, in, uh, Germany and Landstuhl it's called Landstuhl.

00:22:23.720 Yeah.

00:22:25.040 And it's where, you know, our service members, if they get hurt, it's the first place they go, right?

00:22:31.880 They will go to Germany. 0.96

00:22:32.900 They get stabilized and then they come home when, when they're okay to be transferred.

00:22:38.920 Um, and that was the first military hospital I went to.

00:22:43.460 So you've got people that were in Iraq yesterday who got blown up yesterday and flown to the hospital.

00:22:49.800 And here they are within 24 hours of being on the battlefield and I'm seeing them.

00:22:56.420 Wow.

00:22:57.160 And that, that was very, I was very nervous about it.

00:23:01.540 I mean, I remember the first time it was kind of, I tell this story about, you know, when I was a kid, my grandmother dying in the hospital and it was, and she was very sick.

00:23:13.460 And it was just very hard to be in the hospital and see her like that.

00:23:17.640 And the, those were my hospital memories.

00:23:20.840 And so now I'm on a bus with the USO and I'm driving to the military hospital where our troops are first taken when they get blown up or something bad happens to them.

00:23:32.280 And I'm going to see a bunch of these people and I'm thinking this, I don't know how I'm going to, I don't know how I'm going to get through it.

00:23:39.960 You know, I, uh, I'm nervous.

00:23:42.720 I'm feeling kind of nervous in my stomach. 0.92

00:23:45.020 And if one of them opens their eyes and like, holy shit, Lieutenant Dan, like I'm in heaven. 0.89

00:23:48.900 Like where am I? 0.97

00:23:49.860 Or they're hallucinating.

00:23:50.980 You know, they're on so much medication. 0.95

00:23:52.640 They think, think they're nuts.

00:23:54.600 And I walked in and I, I, I tell this story about walking into the first room and there were like 30 people in there and they were all banged up, but they were going to get patched up and sent back to the war zone.

00:24:07.760 They weren't injuries that would send them home.

00:24:10.600 Um, and everything was quiet and I'm, you know, I, I wore glasses at the time.

00:24:16.980 I had the funny little glasses on, little USO hat and I walk in and I'm not sure what to do or what to say.

00:24:24.760 Everybody's really quiet.

00:24:25.920 And somebody saw me and screamed Lieutenant Dan at me.

00:24:28.960 And then everybody jumped up and wanted a picture and the whole mood changed into something positive.

00:24:35.860 And so that was, and then I went to the hospital rooms and I saw people that were missing limbs and people that were in traumatic brain injuries and just really awful stuff.

00:24:46.760 But when I left there, I felt, I felt like really good that I had done something positive.

00:24:56.880 Like purposeful.

00:24:57.640 Yeah.

00:24:57.940 That, you know, when I went there, it was, I was, it was all, all about me and what I was thinking about how I'm going to react to it.

00:25:05.400 And, and when I left, it was, I realized, no, it's, it's not about me and my reaction to it.

00:25:11.020 It's about just bringing some joy, bringing some light into a dark situation and trying to lift somebody up.

00:25:17.200 And that's the energy you get.

00:25:19.100 So that made me want to go back.

00:25:20.920 Two weeks later, I was at Walter Reed.

00:25:22.680 And then I was at another hospital, Naval Medical Center at, at Bethesda.

00:25:28.480 And then it's just now it's hundreds of trips and, you know, multiple thousands and thousands of wounded service members and family members.

00:25:38.400 We take care of, you know, families of our fallen heroes and, you know, you wrap your arms around these kids that have lost a mom or a dad in, in the, in the military or even our first responders, firefighters, police officers.

00:25:52.660 We take care of all of them.

00:25:54.080 And, you know, you just, you know, you're doing something positive and, and it helps you get through the, the difficult moments where some, you, you meet somebody that's really been through some really bad stuff.

00:26:07.440 But I'm just there to help them through.

00:26:10.480 So you learn, you kind of learn, you know, how it's, it's not about you at all.

00:26:16.380 It's about them and what you want them to, to get out of you, giving them a hug or patting them on the back or telling them you, you appreciate them.

00:26:25.080 And that's, that's rewarding.

00:26:26.360 That's, that gives life great purpose to be able to take something.

00:26:31.440 You know, I'm in the movie business.

00:26:32.700 I walk into a room and they see Lieutenant Dan or something, but it makes Lieutenant Dan so much more meaningful when he can actually do something positive for somebody else, you know?

00:26:42.760 Yeah.

00:26:43.080 He wasn't a character that just kind of ended right there.

00:26:46.200 Like, he wasn't a character who just had this, you know what I'm saying?

00:26:49.460 Like it was.

00:26:50.120 Yeah.

00:26:50.640 No, it wasn't.

00:26:51.480 I realized at a certain point, uh, Lieutenant Dan's just going to, that's just, he's just a part of, part of my life now because so many soldiers relate to him.

00:27:04.140 And, uh, you know, I'd go into the hospitals and I see somebody missing both legs like Lieutenant Dan and they just, they want me to talk about the story of Lieutenant Dan.

00:27:12.500 And, uh, and you know, the story of Lieutenant Dan is very positive actually.

00:27:15.900 He goes through dark stuff, but it's a happy ending at the end.

00:27:19.860 And so.

00:27:20.480 Yeah.

00:27:20.640 What did he, at the end of the, own a car wash or something?

00:27:22.320 What did he do for a living at the end?

00:27:23.380 No, he's a shrimp guy.

00:27:24.500 Oh yeah.

00:27:26.720 He's a shrimp guy.

00:27:27.760 He makes a bunch of, yeah, they make a bunch of money on, on shrimp and then he invests in Apple.

00:27:33.180 He's like an early investor in Apple and they both make a gazillion dollars in Apple and, uh, you know, he's doing well.

00:27:41.920 You look at him.

00:27:42.620 He's, he's married at the end.

00:27:44.000 He's standing up on prosthetic legs and it's a, it's a happy ending.

00:27:48.320 And you, you pull for a guy like that in a movie and you, you want him to be okay.

00:27:52.640 And so many of the other movies that came out, you know, in the late seventies, early eighties, um, about Vietnam, you know, you just.

00:28:03.180 You always had this feeling that the Vietnam veteran wasn't going to make it right.

00:28:08.860 He wasn't going to be okay.

00:28:10.100 And something bad was going to happen to him.

00:28:12.260 And with Forrest Gump, it was different.

00:28:14.580 It was a new look at a Vietnam veteran who came home from war, processed everything and then moved on.

00:28:22.600 Recently, I've been on a mission to partner with more companies that are based here in America.

00:28:28.820 It's just important to me.

00:28:30.300 Um, I had a podcast with Mike Rowe and he told me about this company called Good Ranchers.

00:28:36.240 Good Ranchers is unique, uh, compared to other meat companies as all of their meat is born, raised and harvested here in the USA.

00:28:45.080 I was shocked when I learned that over 85% of beef in the grocery store was from overseas.

00:28:51.580 Good Ranchers is all about transparency and supporting local farms and ranches.

00:28:55.700 And that's why I'm a subscriber plus their meat is top quality steaks, chicken, pork, you name it.

00:29:01.560 They do it right now.

00:29:02.580 If you go to good ranchers.com and use my code Theo, all new subscribers will get a hundred dollars off their first three orders.

00:29:10.040 You also get to pick which of their best selling cuts you want free in every order for life.

00:29:16.480 That's free chicken breasts, free wagyu burgers or free bacon in every order for life.

00:29:22.040 Once again, use code Theo for a hundred dollars off plus free meat for life for all new subscribers.

00:29:27.960 Seriously, that's Good Ranchers best offer ever, but you have to order by December 1st and I cannot speak highly enough of this company streaming November 16th on Paramount plus it's the return of Landman TV's biggest phenomenon from Taylor Sheridan co-creator of Yellowstone Academy award winner.

00:29:49.320 Billy Bob Thornton is back as Tommy Norris and managing higher stakes than ever before featuring an all-star cast, including Academy Award nominees, Demi Moore, Andy Garcia, and Sam Elliott in the wake of his former boss's passing.

00:30:05.680 Tensions come to a head as Tommy and Demi Moore's Cammie Miller struggle to maintain control of M tech's oil and with his father played by Sam Elliott coming back into his life.

00:30:17.920 Tommy must juggle both his roles as an oil man and a family man as pressure builds and his worlds collide.

00:30:26.120 Don't miss the hit series.

00:30:27.520 Everyone is talking about Landman new season streaming November 16th only on Paramount plus.

00:30:37.580 We just had a miles teller was just on the other day and he and I actually ended up talking about you, which is crazy because I had no idea that you were going to come on.

00:30:45.520 When I first started this, my mom, um, she's had two husbands that served and, uh, that passed away, but, um, she was like, I hope you could get Gary Sinise one day on your podcast.

00:30:58.300 Oh, she was, she's been her favorite guest.

00:31:00.340 So this is, and she watches every episode.

00:31:02.300 So she'll be excited, but, um, give your mom a hug for me.

00:31:05.020 Oh, you bet.

00:31:05.940 I will give her one.

00:31:07.040 Um, we started hugging finally about a year ago, so.

00:31:10.820 Okay, good.

00:31:11.800 Well, give her two. 0.95

00:31:12.860 It's been a long road, but I'll give her, I'll make sure of two.

00:31:15.400 I'll make sure of two.

00:31:15.680 That's another podcast.

00:31:16.700 You can tell me.

00:31:19.360 Miles Tuttle was on and he was talking about just working with servicemen and, and, um, and he was talking about, uh, just his experience.

00:31:25.600 He had a film called, um, thank you for your service.

00:31:28.680 I think it was, and he said that a lot of times it's like, we know how to package these people and get them ready to go off to war to serve, to, uh, be on the front lines to protect our freedoms, but we don't bring them home very well.

00:31:44.020 What do you notice in your experience with a lot of this, with spending time with a lot of these people?

00:31:49.920 Like, uh, what do you think that, uh, uh, we can do better as a country and then just as everyday people, if there's any, and I know this isn't judgment, but what do you kind of survey?

00:32:01.480 Haven't had a lot of experience.

00:32:03.740 Well, Miles, Miles has a point about that.

00:32:05.680 Uh, and we learned a lot during the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.

00:32:11.940 I mean, they, the, the military, the various branches of the military did start to address that.

00:32:18.720 We need to be, we need to fight the war on the battlefield, but we have to make sure that we don't leave the war on the battlefield and for, and neglect the war that's coming on, that's going on at home, you know, when our service members return.

00:32:32.820 So we've been involved at the Gary Sinise Foundation in a number of initiatives, a number of programs to address that coming home, transitioning, uh, from the battlefield to, to home, coming back to your family.

00:32:45.820 There was a movie that, uh, I was involved in that I, I was executive producer on, um, back during the Iraq war called Brothers at War.

00:32:56.220 And it was all about that experience of going off to war and then coming back and kind of reintegrating with the family.

00:33:03.700 And how difficult that can be when you've seen people blown up and seen people, uh, go through difficult things.

00:33:11.080 Um, this was a buddy of mine who had two brothers that were serving in Iraq and he, he wasn't serving, but he embedded with units over in Iraq and he made a documentary.

00:33:23.000 His name's Jake Rademacher and Jake's a buddy of mine, uh, I ended up being an executive producer on this film.

00:33:30.340 And then recently we decided because there's so many people in the movie, uh, that we meet, not just the two brothers, but we meet the people that they're serving with and we get to know them in that particular film.

00:33:44.180 Um, we started talking, uh, you know, 10 years later after the movie about like, where are those guys?

00:33:52.020 What happened to everybody that was in that first film?

00:33:54.920 Are they out of the service now?

00:33:57.080 What's their transition out of the service been like?

00:33:59.400 So we've just done, we, we've got a new movie out now called brothers after war and brothers after war and brothers at war deals with military life.

00:34:09.740 What it's like to go off and serve, come home, then get deployed again.

00:34:14.100 Cause many of our service members would redeploy multiple times.

00:34:18.420 That could be very tough on the family.

00:34:20.620 Just imagine a child, you know, growing up with mom or dad deploying 10 times over, over a 12 year period.

00:34:28.320 And they're never home and the child is growing up.

00:34:30.860 It's very, very difficult.

00:34:32.160 So brothers after war deals with the transitioning veteran, the person who's come home and now they're out of the service.

00:34:41.000 Most of the people that we meet in brothers after war, uh, that we met in the first movie, brothers at war are out of the service.

00:34:49.600 A few of them, Jake's brothers were just finishing up their service.

00:34:53.900 The Rademachers. 1.00

00:34:54.680 The Rademachers, yeah, two brothers. 1.00

00:34:56.560 Thank you for your service.

00:34:57.280 So you meet them and it's a beautiful documentary.

00:35:01.000 I mean, both, both of them are very beautiful.

00:35:03.140 And we use these movies to help our veterans.

00:35:07.260 We use the first movie.

00:35:09.380 Jake has done hundreds of workshops on military bases, showing the movie and they hands out workbooks to everybody and says, what did, what did you feel about this?

00:35:19.120 When you saw this, the soldier coming home, dealing with his children who haven't seen him for a long time.

00:35:24.760 All these, and all these people kind of start expressing themselves, start talking about it.

00:35:31.620 And we have so many service members that come home and they don't talk about it.

00:35:36.020 Yeah.

00:35:36.260 Right.

00:35:36.520 They compartmentalize.

00:35:38.340 They keep it in and sometimes it explodes in a very bad and damaging way.

00:35:43.440 And we don't want that to happen.

00:35:45.700 We want to combat the suicide problem that we have within the services and do everything we can to be proactive to go after it and provide mental wellness initiatives so that we can help these people transition.

00:35:58.780 That's what both these movies are about.

00:36:00.600 And they really are helpful.

00:36:03.320 Jake is now doing workshops with Brothers After War for veterans.

00:36:08.340 So Brothers At War and Brothers After War.

00:36:10.140 Yeah.

00:36:10.420 Very, very positive movies.

00:36:13.260 Brothers After War was totally funded by the Gary Sinise Foundation.

00:36:16.980 And thankfully our donors allow me to do a lot of great things.

00:36:21.240 And for our donors, they should know that this movie is making a difference in people's lives.

00:36:28.160 We are helping veterans.

00:36:29.400 That's Jake doing a workshop there for Brothers After War.

00:36:34.200 We're making a positive impact, but there's so much more that we can do.

00:36:38.680 Thankfully, there are a lot of nonprofits out there that are focused on this.

00:36:42.100 We have other mental wellness initiatives.

00:36:44.560 We work with an organization called Boulder Crest Foundation, Boulder Crest.

00:36:49.840 They provide retreats all around the country for veterans to go to.

00:36:54.460 We've sent hundreds of veterans to these retreats.

00:36:56.920 It can be very, very positive because so many of these people come home and then they isolate.

00:37:02.860 And we don't want them to do that.

00:37:04.420 We want them to tell their stories.

00:37:06.480 We want to teach them how to share their stories and that it's okay to share their stories.

00:37:10.820 We saw Vietnam veterans come home from war and they had to keep everything inside of them. 0.98

00:37:16.780 And it was not good.

00:37:19.100 And we don't want that to happen to anybody who's serving our country.

00:37:21.800 So we provide a lot of programs and initiatives with Gary Sinise Foundation to help them through that.

00:37:27.720 Well, we're going to make a donation today, Gary.

00:37:29.360 So thank you.

00:37:30.720 Oh, thanks so much.

00:37:31.740 We'll donate $10,000 today just to support the foundation.

00:37:35.000 Holy cow. 0.89

00:37:35.780 Thank you.

00:37:36.220 I know it's not the largest donation you've gotten, but we're happy to do that.

00:37:40.680 And on behalf of our podcast today, it feels like it's falling upon the private sector to take care of a lot of our servicemen and women.

00:37:49.280 Is that a true feeling, do you think?

00:37:51.040 Or do you think that the government is still doing a good job?

00:37:55.680 And then do you think one political party really does it better than the other?

00:38:01.480 Like have you noticed any of that?

00:38:02.880 And if you feel uncomfortable talking about that, that's okay.

00:38:05.180 I don't want to put you in any weird spot.

00:38:06.720 Well, there's two things.

00:38:09.440 Just imagine, okay, if there were no nonprofits in the military and first responder community, right, that are trying to fill the gaps and help, we'd have a catastrophe.

00:38:23.020 Wow.

00:38:23.140 And if there was no VA system, we'd have a catastrophe.

00:38:29.900 So both of them are necessary, you know.

00:38:32.420 But I don't think the government can provide all the help that is needed for our veteran community.

00:38:41.120 It's just – it's a large community.

00:38:43.260 You know, we have veterans going back, you know, pretty far and some of – you know, like look at our Vietnam veterans for example.

00:38:51.040 They're aging into their 70s and 80s and, you know, things are a little tougher for them because they're aging and, you know, they might have needs that they didn't have 20 or 30 years ago.

00:39:05.860 So is it – will the government provide everything that's necessary for all the people that have served our country over the years?

00:39:14.560 While they may try, I don't think it's possible.

00:39:18.020 I think the nonprofits play a pretty significant role in this.

00:39:23.620 And so take the nonprofits away and we'd have a real serious problem.

00:39:29.260 Got it.

00:39:29.420 But we have to work together and so, you know, the VA is just one of those large bureaucracies that we have.

00:39:39.160 You know, I mean there's many, many VA hospitals around the country.

00:39:43.180 There are a lot of hospitals that need upgrades, you know, because they've been around a long time.

00:39:50.540 And so we constantly have to reinvest in that within the government.

00:39:56.060 My dad got help from the VA, you know.

00:39:58.500 And so that was good.

00:40:01.120 Oh, yeah.

00:40:01.540 I think my stepdad did for sure.

00:40:03.100 I think he was in Korea and he got help from the VA.

00:40:05.320 But now the nonprofits play a very, very significant role.

00:40:08.920 And there are certain things that the VA does well and there are certain things that they don't do well.

00:40:13.500 There are certain things that nonprofits could do better at.

00:40:16.320 But there's a lot of things that nonprofits do that are really making a difference.

00:40:21.460 And I think we have to all work together constantly to do everything we possibly can to serve the men and women who have served our country and protect our freedoms and keep us safe, our first responders as well.

00:40:34.760 We have many programs at the Gary Sinise Foundation that are serving all these communities.

00:40:40.240 What would you say then just to any lawmakers who are listening, right?

00:40:44.400 Because we've talked to – we've had a lot of politicians on this show.

00:40:49.080 Like we've had a lot of people come through.

00:40:51.320 We've gotten to express things to them about different like laws and things that we would like to see changed.

00:40:56.300 Is there anything to lawmakers that you would say if there were any lawmakers listening?

00:41:01.040 Like is there anything you would say to them based on like your experiences that could be done or that could be different or is that too broad of a thing to even ask?

00:41:12.960 Democrats and Republicans serve our country, right, in military uniform.

00:41:18.160 So do we owe them or do we not?

00:41:22.900 And if you're in government, I always believe we can never do enough for the men and women to serve our country.

00:41:30.100 So let's make sure that they don't get caught in some political game that's going on.

00:41:38.820 Right now we have a government shutdown going on right now and certain people are struggling.

00:41:44.700 We don't want that to happen to our military service members.

00:41:48.320 They're going to serve no matter what.

00:41:51.020 Right.

00:41:51.740 And the stress of that knowing the government is shut down, that has to feel weird for some of them, especially some of the older ones who are going to VA, like wondering if in a month they're still going to be able to get if the place they're going to or that they're getting housing from is still going to be available.

00:42:03.980 It could just be a fear, you know, the stress of so much of that is crazy.

00:42:07.660 That's exactly right.

00:42:08.640 When we don't want them to fall through the cracks because of some political thing that's happening.

00:42:14.240 And that's a political kickball that they use, and it has real life – it has real life – what word am I looking for?

00:42:21.440 Consequences.

00:42:22.100 Consequences.

00:42:22.580 Yeah.

00:42:22.900 Thank you, sir.

00:42:23.860 You're absolutely right.

00:42:25.040 Here it says, on perplexity, it says, the government shutdown in 2025 has had a significant impact on veteran affairs, although most vets, benefits, and core services continue.

00:42:35.140 About 37,000 Department of VA employees are furloughed or working without pay, affecting certain services and programs.

00:42:42.540 Critical services that have been suspended or halted include the GI Bill hotline, which assists over 900,000 veterans, was shut down.

00:42:51.920 56 regional VA benefits offices are closed to the public.

00:42:55.640 So I'm not sure how factual some of this is, but even just the fear of this, say if I'm someone who's looking online and I'm a veteran, the fear and stress caused by this is a lot.

00:43:05.020 I know there are things going on.

00:43:06.620 For example, a lot of times when I want to go to a military base, right, and I have a foundation that provides uplifting events on military bases all across the country and overseas.

00:43:23.100 And many times if I – you know, I will look at my calendar, which we're doing right now, and I'll figure out when I can be in different areas of the country, and then I'll call up the general or the colonel and say, would you like us to come and lift up the base with some entertainment and that kind of thing.

00:43:49.340 And, you know, nine times out of ten there, you know, if the date's available and they don't have something else going on, they'll want me to come.

00:43:58.080 And we provide meals.

00:44:00.260 We do all kinds of things like that on military bases.

00:44:03.040 Well, I'm in the process of doing that right now, winding up 2026, and a lot of the bases that I'm reaching out to are saying, you know, we're kind of – we got a lot of people furloughed right now, so we can't make any decisions.

00:44:16.580 But, you know, we're hoping that, you know, this is going to stop.

00:44:19.920 So, you know, it's all – this furlough stuff is already sort of slowing things down a bit.

00:44:26.660 I mean, they'll get this sorted out eventually.

00:44:29.640 It's not going to last forever and everything.

00:44:31.360 But it is – you know, it is kind of a roadblock, you know, for them to just get on with things on the military base and continue serving our country.

00:44:43.440 And part of what I do is just – everything in my foundation is all about – the heartbeat of everything we do, I say this, is lifting people up.

00:44:53.760 It's making them feel important, making them feel that they're not forgotten, that we appreciate what they're doing.

00:45:02.920 You know, and so often somebody who's serving in the military, they can just go about their daily life in the military and not even think that anybody knows what they're doing.

00:45:12.100 And I've found that my role as an entertainer and somebody who can interact with them on military bases and, you know, talk to the leaders and all that kind of stuff is to kind of let people know what they do.

00:45:25.520 And I go to these military bases all the time.

00:45:28.760 I've been to hundreds of them and I go there and then I come back and I talk to people like you, Theo, and I tell people what I see.

00:45:36.480 And I've met some of the most extraordinary people serving our country out there.

00:45:40.720 Just some of my best friends are in the military and I – from somebody who's missing three limbs or four limbs to, you know, some general who has served his country for 42 years and is now retired.

00:45:56.080 And when I met him, he was a major, you know, or something.

00:46:00.020 I mean, you know, so I've been doing this a long time and I've met extraordinary people.

00:46:03.840 I want to serve them.

00:46:04.820 I don't want them to get caught in the political games and all that stuff.

00:46:10.600 These are our defenders.

00:46:11.980 You know, where would we be if nobody wanted to do that?

00:46:14.480 Oh, if you had to sleep in fear too?

00:46:16.380 I mean, the fact that we – I mean, it's a little bit scary certainly in certain neighborhoods and different places.

00:46:21.000 But the fact if you had to sleep in complete fear, you know, and that somebody else is sleeping – is not sleeping so you don't have to.

00:46:30.380 It's like, yeah, the things like that we don't think about.

00:46:32.100 My dad would always make us pray for this serviceman when we were kids, I remember.

00:46:36.580 I didn't even remember that until you just said that.

00:46:39.660 But, yeah, the fact that some of these people –

00:46:41.520 You did.

00:46:41.960 Yeah.

00:46:42.240 How old were you?

00:46:43.280 I was probably six or seven.

00:46:45.040 I think when I first could remember that I was praying, you know.

00:46:47.860 But I was – I just remember that he would do that.

00:46:51.580 But I think – yeah, I think people used to have a different affinity for maybe the military or some people did.

00:46:59.700 I don't know.

00:47:00.600 We had a different affinity as a country.

00:47:02.900 I remember the Pledge of Allegiance was like the most important thing, you know.

00:47:06.520 And do it every morning, yeah.

00:47:07.800 Yeah, the fact that we were all together.

00:47:09.240 It was one moment where it felt like we were all together for something.

00:47:12.320 Yeah.

00:47:13.700 Yeah, absolutely.

00:47:14.360 When I was there, you had to have a knife. 0.99

00:47:17.420 One of you's got to take turns carrying it up your rectum. 1.00

00:47:20.340 Wait, it's up your butt? 1.00

00:47:21.640 That's the prison wallet. 1.00

00:47:22.800 You'll never leave home enough.

00:47:23.440 You have something protected around it, I'm assuming.

00:47:25.360 Yeah, or else you'll be bleeding out your culo.

00:47:27.100 I'm Marianna Van Zeller, and after reporting on black markets for my Emmy-winning National Geographic show, Trafficked, I'm launching a podcast.

00:47:35.160 Are you getting emotional on me?

00:47:36.660 Intimate conversations with those operating in the shadows.

00:47:39.600 You know, if I could go back in time and do one thing differently for myself, financially, it would be to save.

00:48:01.700 Save a little bit of money, just a little bit.

00:48:04.140 Just put something away.

00:48:05.740 Watch it grow.

00:48:06.380 So, that's one thing that I really enjoy about Acorns.

00:48:10.860 Acorns is the financial wellness app that cares about where your money is going tomorrow.

00:48:17.080 I've got my niece set up on Acorns. 0.70

00:48:19.060 I've got her mindset is changing.

00:48:21.180 It's learning about investing and compounding interest.

00:48:25.680 Acorns is a smart way to give your money a chance to grow.

00:48:28.760 Sign up now and join the over 14 million all-time customers who have already saved and invested over $27 billion with Acorns.

00:48:39.260 Plus, Acorns will boost your new account with a $20 bonus investment.

00:48:44.180 Offer available at acorns.com slash theo.

00:48:47.240 That's A-C-O-R-N-S dot com slash T-H-E-O to get your $20 bonus investment today.

00:48:56.460 Terms and conditions apply.

00:48:58.200 See acorns.com slash terms for details.

00:49:01.780 Paid non-client endorsement.

00:49:02.740 Compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns.

00:49:04.480 Tier 2 compensation provided.

00:49:05.480 Potential subject to various factors such as customers' accounts, age, and investment settings.

00:49:08.060 Does not include Acorns fees.

00:49:09.240 Results do not predict or represent the performance of any Acorns portfolio.

00:49:11.380 Investment results will vary.

00:49:12.180 Investing involves risk.

00:49:12.840 Acorns Advisors, LLC, and SEC Registered Investment Advisor.

00:49:14.680 View important disclosures at acorns.com slash theo.

00:49:17.320 I'll admit that customer reviews have a lot to do with whether I'm going to buy a product or not.

00:49:23.460 I go right online.

00:49:24.760 I look at those reviews.

00:49:26.900 And it'll say on there, it says, able to stand by itself.

00:49:31.500 It said that for a shelving unit I was buying.

00:49:35.740 And I said, yeah, I want that.

00:49:39.260 If you run an e-commerce business, you know customer reviews mean everything.

00:49:44.100 That's why there's ShipStation.

00:49:46.660 Level up your business with ShipStation.

00:49:50.020 ShipStation goes beyond just shipping labels.

00:49:52.600 It's order fulfillment excellence.

00:49:55.260 There's a reason why successful businesses use ShipStation.

00:49:58.800 You can automate your workflow, save time, and reduce human error.

00:50:03.520 Wow your customers and get rave reviews with cheaper, faster, and better shipping.

00:50:07.680 Upgrade to ShipStation today to get a 60-day free trial at ShipStation.com slash theo.

00:50:14.720 There's no credit card or contract required, and you can cancel at any time.

00:50:19.080 That's ShipStation.com slash theo.

00:50:22.120 Your foundation does so many unique things.

00:50:26.140 I saw the Snowball Express, which was really cool.

00:50:28.940 Is that what it's called, the Snowball Express?

00:50:30.820 Yeah.

00:50:31.140 That's a program for children of our fallen heroes.

00:50:35.520 Yeah.

00:50:35.760 Tell me.

00:50:36.340 There's a great photo.

00:50:37.780 I think it was from this year that you put up.

00:50:39.620 Oh, this is so great.

00:50:42.400 A Thousand Children of Fallen Soldiers to Disneyland.

00:50:45.820 You guys all went?

00:50:47.840 Yeah, we take them.

00:50:49.580 I got involved with, there was an organization that started in 2006,

00:50:55.160 and they brought a bunch of kids to Disneyland in Anaheim.

00:50:58.280 And after they did that event, they contacted me to tell me about the event,

00:51:04.700 and they wanted to do it again in 2007, and they asked me to get involved, and I did.

00:51:10.080 And started attending the event, started donating my band.

00:51:15.180 American Airlines is a big supporter of that.

00:51:18.980 They provide all the airfare, all the charter airplanes.

00:51:22.580 They say, well, they'll provide 12 charters from all over the country to fly the kids into this event.

00:51:32.880 Thank you, American Airlines.

00:51:33.920 That's amazing.

00:51:34.680 American Airlines.

00:51:35.400 And they've been doing it now, you know, going back to the beginning.

00:51:39.520 And I got involved, you know, like I said, it's almost 20 years.

00:51:44.280 And we eventually moved it from Anaheim to Dallas, which is where American Airlines is based.

00:51:51.920 And so we did the event there for about nine years, and I would come bring my band and all of that.

00:51:59.420 And then I have this great relationship with Disney World.

00:52:03.460 I've been narrating a show down there since 2000 every Christmastime.

00:52:08.300 It's called the Candlelight Processional.

00:52:10.860 And I would bring my family there, and I thought, this is the next place that we have to bring the kids.

00:52:17.860 It was going to cost a lot more money.

00:52:19.600 Yeah, that's the Candlelight Processional.

00:52:22.180 I started in 2000, and I've done it many, many times.

00:52:27.320 I'll be doing it again this year.

00:52:28.880 When do you do it?

00:52:30.520 I used to do it right – sometimes I do it on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

00:52:35.720 Wow.

00:52:36.060 And now I do it because we're bringing the kids there.

00:52:41.280 In 2018, we folded that organization, Snowball Express, into the Gary Sinise Foundation because it was going to cost a lot more money to move it to Disney World.

00:52:52.420 So we had the ability to raise the additional money.

00:52:56.540 So now we take the kids to Disney World.

00:52:59.380 And so when we do two events, we do military kids, and we will have close to 1,000 children who have lost a parent in military service, plus the surviving spouse, plus hundreds of volunteers.

00:53:17.460 I mean, we take over an entire hotel at Disney World, 800 rooms and all that.

00:53:24.260 It's very expensive.

00:53:25.420 But what you see happening to these children when they come together and they meet each other and they meet other children that are going through the same thing.

00:53:35.780 They've all lost a mom or a dad in the military, and they're all heartbroken kids, and they're going through all that.

00:53:43.880 But they meet all these other kids, and they befriend each other, and they stay in touch with each other.

00:53:47.940 And then we provide year-round events in states all over the country throughout the year for these families.

00:53:54.140 And then after we do the military event, we bring children of fallen firefighters and police officers there.

00:54:01.060 And we'll have, gosh, we'll have 500-something kids of fallen firefighters and police officers there.

00:54:09.400 So we do two back-to-back events, all expense paid.

00:54:13.300 We just want them to come, and we want to shine a spotlight on them, and we want to just wrap our arms around these families and love on them.

00:54:23.540 So that they know that they can go home from that and know that there's a big, big, giant community of people that care about them, that don't forget what they're going through, that honor their hero that they lost, and think about them every day.

00:54:36.720 And that's what we do at the Gary Sinise Foundation.

00:54:38.460 We have dozens of corporate sponsors that love the event, and like I say, we probably have 2,000 people there working the event with the volunteers and the staff and the Disney folks.

00:54:53.540 And then the families that we bring in.

00:54:56.060 It's a gigantic event.

00:54:58.020 And, you know, I'll always send them off on an airplane, and, you know, I show up at the airport.

00:55:04.300 That's what you were seeing there with me on the plane with the kids and all that.

00:55:08.680 I mean, it's amazing, you know.

00:55:10.680 It's nice to be reminded that there's an organization that's helping to fill in the gaps of, like, the government organizations.

00:55:18.860 And it's not like – but that's what we need.

00:55:21.200 That's what we've always been, you know.

00:55:22.440 It's like we have to – in the end, we have to count on ourselves, right?

00:55:27.380 Is there, like, a moment or two that stands out from some of the experiences on those types of weekends that –

00:55:33.060 Yeah, I'm in hundreds and hundreds of families, you know, and they're all going through some difficult loss, you know.

00:55:40.900 And, unfortunately, each year there's a new family, you know.

00:55:46.500 I mean, these are – you know, we can't point to a war that's going on right now, but people are serving out there.

00:55:54.660 Unfortunately, we lose people who take their own lives because they don't know where to turn, and they feel like that's the only way out, and that leaves the family behind.

00:56:07.280 We don't want those families to feel like nobody cares, you know.

00:56:12.080 This is a family who's served and sacrificed for our country.

00:56:15.920 We're all – we all benefit from the service of our defenders and their families, so we have a role to play.

00:56:25.400 I think we, as citizens, have a role to play.

00:56:27.660 I have said this, that government does a certain amount, but I don't think we can expect government to do everything for everybody, and we have a role to play as citizens.

00:56:41.400 And if every neighborhood, every community, every town, every city, every state in the country recognize that there are veterans and military families and first responders within those communities that are struggling,

00:56:58.260 and we reached out, took the initiative ourselves within our own communities to touch those families and take care of them and let them know, hey, we're here for you, whatever you need.

00:57:10.220 And if every community did that in the country, yeah, this stuff that you hear about veterans falling through the cracks and all that stuff and being left by, they're waiting in line for different things and stuff, you know, all of that would be greatly reduced, all those problems.

00:57:25.480 If we, as citizens, just recognize that, hey, there are people out there that protect us, they defend us, and I appreciate that, so I'm not going to neglect, I'm not going to take it for granted.

00:57:38.640 And who, like, who in my neighborhood, who in my town, who in my township, who has a family member that's over there serving that I could stop by and say hello or do something nice for or leave a card in their mailbox or do something, you know what I'm saying, just little things like that.

00:57:53.500 It's like I'm even asking myself, it's like, you know, how can I be a part of even just my local community to help let people around me feel recognized that their dad isn't over there in vain or their mother isn't over there serving in vain, that there aren't people thinking about them and praying for them and making themselves available if there's something else that the family needs.

00:58:14.280 That little thing can make a big difference.

00:58:16.300 Yeah.

00:58:16.500 There are big things that you can do, right?

00:58:18.240 You can donate to national organizations.

00:58:21.320 You can, you know, you can create an organization, but there are small things that you can do, too, you know.

00:58:28.000 You can just pat somebody on the back and say, I appreciate you.

00:58:33.040 You know, that's it.

00:58:34.360 That gesture, you know, if you're walking through an airport, you see a soldier, and you pat him on the back and say, I appreciate what you're doing.

00:58:41.580 Thank you for serving our country.

00:58:44.400 You don't know if that person has just lost three buddies in something, if he's coming home carrying a big, heavy load.

00:58:51.660 And that little gesture, that little pat on the back, that little acknowledgement of what they're doing.

00:58:58.620 Yeah, that can go a long way.

00:59:01.940 That can change somebody's day in a big way, just those little tiny gestures.

00:59:06.680 I remember, you know, the kinds of stuff you hear about.

00:59:12.080 And I made a practice of this.

00:59:15.540 If I saw soldiers or something like that in a restaurant, I'd always, like, anonymously pick up their check.

00:59:21.200 I mean, this goes along, you know, this goes back a long way.

00:59:25.440 Well, when I started my foundation, we created a program, and we call it Serving Heroes.

00:59:32.160 And now we've served well over a million meals on military bases, firehouses, you know, police departments, people like that.

00:59:42.440 Bring me to one of the things next year if you do something.

00:59:45.480 Yeah, sure.

00:59:46.140 Well, I know you live here now.

00:59:48.920 Oh, yeah. 0.96

00:59:49.380 Now I'm screwed. 0.98

00:59:50.500 Now you're stuck. 0.98

00:59:51.700 I'm going to start learning how to march.

00:59:54.240 You'll be serving some heroes with us.

00:59:56.640 I would love to, Gary.

00:59:57.860 That would fill my heart up.

00:59:59.700 That's it right there.

01:00:00.800 Yeah.

01:00:01.160 So that's me.

01:00:01.760 Oh, yeah, I love macaroni.

01:00:03.520 Yeah, that's macaroni and cheese or beans or whatever it is.

01:00:06.920 You know, we always get great food.

01:00:09.300 And we, you know, we have multiple programs at the foundation.

01:00:12.080 Now that little program there, just serving veterans at a VA or some, you know, military base or something like that, that little program can make a big difference.

01:00:23.720 You know, somebody like me comes out and dishes out the hamburgers and beans and stuff.

01:00:28.380 And they call home and say, hey, guess who gave me the beans today?

01:00:34.240 You know what I mean?

01:00:34.800 Lieutenant Dan's doing fine.

01:00:36.460 Yeah, it could be.

01:00:37.560 Lieutenant Dan dished out the beans.

01:00:39.680 He's doing great, dude.

01:00:41.440 But I've done it so many times.

01:00:43.820 No, I love it.

01:00:45.000 You know, remember the Palisades burning down?

01:00:47.540 Yeah.

01:00:47.880 We were there a couple weeks later.

01:00:50.560 We were dishing out food to all the first responders, the National Guard people that were there, serving hundreds of meals, just, you know, and that kind of stuff.

01:01:00.040 They just saw a lot of bad stuff, you know.

01:01:02.960 And those types of things can just help them through.

01:01:07.040 Hey, I'm not doing this.

01:01:09.320 Yeah, that's the Palisades here.

01:01:11.480 Wow.

01:01:13.000 I'm not doing, that's Joe Mantegna on my right there.

01:01:15.800 Is it really?

01:01:16.420 Yeah, Joe, and on my left right there, that's John Andrasik from Five for Fighting, and they're buddies of mine.

01:01:24.060 They're both ambassadors for my foundation.

01:01:26.540 I can't stand to fly.

01:01:28.160 Is that them?

01:01:28.780 Yeah, yeah, Superman, yeah.

01:01:30.660 Oh, yeah.

01:01:31.120 And they're old buddies of mine.

01:01:33.280 We've known each other a long time.

01:01:34.980 And I said, hey, we're dishing out food.

01:01:37.500 Come on over.

01:01:38.480 So they came over to do it.

01:01:39.800 And we do these all over the place.

01:01:42.500 I mean, you know.

01:01:43.300 Oh, yeah.

01:01:43.580 I just go to AA meetings up there all the time.

01:01:45.440 I go to some big AA meetings up there in Palisades.

01:01:47.920 In the Palisades.

01:01:48.960 Yeah.

01:01:49.540 Some pretty big ones.

01:01:51.160 We go to them at the VA over there.

01:01:52.940 They had one over there.

01:01:54.020 In Westwood?

01:01:54.620 In Westwood, yeah.

01:01:55.860 With that golf course in the back, that crazy place.

01:01:59.620 Yes.

01:02:00.200 That place seems like.

01:02:01.180 We've done a bunch of those serving heroes at the VA in Westwood.

01:02:04.320 I bet you have.

01:02:05.080 Yeah.

01:02:05.220 That place, they just keep trying to repaint it to make it look like it's okay, you know?

01:02:08.520 You know what I'm talking about?

01:02:09.720 I told you that some of the VAs need a little work. 0.97

01:02:12.880 But it also has a really cool old school feeling there.

01:02:16.720 But that's a, yeah.

01:02:17.880 I've been over to that one a great deal just to go to meetings sometimes.

01:02:21.680 And sometimes I'll sit out there and talk to some of the guys that are sitting around over there.

01:02:26.260 Yeah.

01:02:26.560 Yeah.

01:02:26.760 Please let me know if there's something I can do, if there's something I can be, help be a part of, I'd love to.

01:02:32.160 I think this is like even just the fact that you came here and are sharing this stuff with us, it's important to be reminded.

01:02:37.520 Sometimes I just get, you get caught up in your own life so much.

01:02:39.620 It's, you get, you forget about the things that are keeping your own.

01:02:43.280 We have thousands of donors that go to the Gary Sinise Foundation and help us do all this stuff.

01:02:48.380 Yeah.

01:02:48.480 You know, and I've, I've been blessed because I've been, you know, I had a, you know, had good, good years in Hollywood and I've been able to take those resources and channel it into doing something good.

01:03:00.680 And then, you know, provide something that the American people can support and come on board with.

01:03:05.900 And now, like I said, we have hundreds of corporate donors that help us with all kinds of stuff.

01:03:11.460 We build houses for our wounded.

01:03:13.340 Oh, I just heard you guys are building, you just building your 100th house or what did I hear?

01:03:16.660 Uh, on Veterans Day, we give away our 99th home in Virginia.

01:03:21.480 And then, uh, a couple of weeks, uh, just about nine days later, eight days later, we give away our 100th home.

01:03:29.360 Let's go.

01:03:30.040 And how do you get, how do these homes get built?

01:03:31.700 That's wild.

01:03:32.600 We have a great team of builders.

01:03:34.340 These are all professionals.

01:03:35.800 You know, we don't just get volunteers to hammer the nails and stuff.

01:03:40.940 Uh, we get, we, we've had a team of very professional builders.

01:03:44.920 They, you know, our, our work is not the only thing they do, but they're very, very good at, you know, building these homes.

01:03:53.420 We come in, we rally the communities around the service member.

01:03:57.860 Uh, we just had, uh, just, um, just a few days ago.

01:04:02.940 We just had one of our events here in Tennessee, uh, called Walls of Honor, which is about halfway through the home.

01:04:11.600 You can see the frame up in this home.

01:04:14.780 Um, we will do something before the drywall goes in.

01:04:18.960 We'll have the community and corporate sponsors and people that are part of our, uh, building.

01:04:25.460 They will come and they'll write messages on the frame.

01:04:28.620 Oh.

01:04:29.460 And these are messages that are just part of the house.

01:04:33.300 Now these beautiful messages of support and love and appreciation.

01:04:38.300 And, uh, we just had one of those events, uh, just, I was, I was just there just a few days ago.

01:04:44.540 So you're on the go a lot with these things.

01:04:46.440 This is amazing.

01:04:47.140 And this is so, and if people wanted to, if people do want to donate, they could just donate to Gary Sinise Foundation and it goes to all of these different things.

01:04:53.620 Yeah.

01:04:53.840 Unless you want to designate it to something special or something like that, you can do that.

01:04:58.720 And they can do it right on your website?

01:05:00.300 Yeah.

01:05:00.760 Just GarySinniseFoundation.org.

01:05:02.880 It helps us to do all the things.

01:05:04.480 And when I take my band out to a military base, uh, that's, you know, the, the band is a, is an initiative of the Gary Sinise Foundation.

01:05:14.900 Just one of our many, many programs that we have at the Gary Sinise Foundation to raise spirits and lift people up and to help them through.

01:05:22.620 Hmm.

01:05:24.260 Wow.

01:05:24.700 No, it's so great.

01:05:25.440 Cause sometimes you're like, what do I give to?

01:05:27.640 What do I donate to?

01:05:28.660 Especially these days, you hear so many charities and you don't really know what's going on.

01:05:32.780 And then like people will create negative press about charities just to, you know, how evil it can be in the media.

01:05:39.140 Um, but just to know firsthand to hear all these great things, it's like, man, this feels like a safe place.

01:05:44.240 If I want to donate to that, I know that the finances are going towards something important.

01:05:47.960 So that, yeah, just cause so many times people don't know what to donate to.

01:05:51.840 They just pick something that they've heard of, which is fine, but to know that this is there, that's super important.

01:05:57.460 Um, thank you.

01:05:58.680 Yeah.

01:05:59.000 Thank you, man.

01:05:59.700 Thank you so much.

01:06:01.240 Uh, I know, um, you've had an interesting few years.

01:06:06.620 Your son got very sick in the past few years.

01:06:09.860 Yeah.

01:06:10.940 Mac, his name was his full name.

01:06:12.940 Mac.

01:06:13.400 Yeah.

01:06:14.320 First name is McKenna and everybody called him, you know, we all called him Mac.

01:06:18.140 Oh, there he is.

01:06:20.040 Handsome guy.

01:06:21.660 McKenna Anthony.

01:06:23.560 Yeah.

01:06:23.780 Mac was, um, he, uh, started playing drums when he was nine years old and he was just took

01:06:34.020 to it right away.

01:06:35.160 Uh, just an incredibly, he had just a natural talent and played all the way through high school.

01:06:42.140 And look how proud he looks right there.

01:06:43.340 He's pretending to look like that, like kind of austere, you know, well, is austere a word?

01:06:48.620 Yeah, it is.

01:06:50.840 After, um, after music school, he went to USC music school.

01:06:56.660 Um, and, and then he went on tour.

01:07:00.340 He was touring around overseas and around the country with different bands and whatnot.

01:07:05.600 He came to work for the Gary Sinise Foundation in 2017.

01:07:10.120 Wow.

01:07:11.020 He just was kind of tired of the road and he, I kept kind of bugging him a little bit.

01:07:15.200 Well, why don't you dip your toe in the water and just come and work at the foundation part

01:07:19.640 time.

01:07:20.340 And he started to do it and he fell in love with the mission.

01:07:23.940 And, uh, that's, that's Mac and I on one of our, uh, trips where we took, uh, probably

01:07:30.520 about 45 World War II veterans down to the National World War II Museum.

01:07:34.740 In New Orleans?

01:07:35.540 In New Orleans.

01:07:36.460 Yeah.

01:07:37.020 And we take him with our, our program called Soaring Valor.

01:07:40.880 Mac fell in love with that program and just loved being around the veterans.

01:07:44.300 And he was just getting so into working with the foundation.

01:07:51.000 He also was a great composer and, um, wrote music for the foundation.

01:07:56.500 And then in 2018, he was, uh, he was diagnosed with a very rare cancer called Chordoma.

01:08:05.860 It starts in the spine.

01:08:08.420 And, um, he, he had his initial tumor removed in September of 2018, but the cancer came back

01:08:23.320 in May of 2019.

01:08:24.660 He stayed working with further foundation while he was going through treatment until the end

01:08:29.780 of 2019.

01:08:30.740 And then things got very, very hard for him.

01:08:34.140 And, uh, you can see him there in a wheelchair.

01:08:36.600 He, he was disabled by the cancer, couldn't walk anymore, couldn't play any music anymore.

01:08:42.820 Wasn't thinking about music at all.

01:08:44.680 Uh, for, for 2020, 2021, 22, in early 2023.

01:08:52.300 And this is a story that you see there that I posted on the Gary Sinise Foundation website

01:08:58.380 about six weeks after he died.

01:09:00.920 He worked for the foundation and I wanted people to know that we lost one of our team

01:09:05.680 and, and, um, people, you know, I, I didn't talk about this for six years while we were

01:09:11.200 going through it and just, we were just going through cancer and trying to fight it and

01:09:15.960 hoping we would find some drugs that worked.

01:09:18.960 And we, Mac tried 25 different drugs during a four and a half year period and nothing worked.

01:09:24.840 And it's a rare cancer.

01:09:26.420 I mean, it's, there's no cure for it.

01:09:28.260 So yeah, in early 2023 though, he said to me, dad, I've been thinking about this piece

01:09:37.000 of music that I wrote in college that I never finished and I'm thinking I'd like to try

01:09:41.640 to finish it.

01:09:43.440 And, you know, he hadn't been thinking about music at all.

01:09:45.820 When he said that, I was just like, I was so knocked out by that.

01:09:51.040 I said, yes, that, do it, do it.

01:09:53.420 And so he teamed up with a couple of my band members who he knew.

01:09:56.800 Mac, Mac was our number two drummer.

01:09:59.140 If my guy, Danny Gottlieb, couldn't be there, Mac would play.

01:10:03.240 He grew up around the band.

01:10:04.600 He knew all the band, everybody loved him.

01:10:06.840 So he went to work with Dan Myers and Ben Lewis to start fleshing out this piece called

01:10:13.040 Arctic Circles.

01:10:14.440 And by July of 2023, he was in the studio right there recording.

01:10:21.740 And he also played harmonica.

01:10:23.240 He picked up harmonica in his hospital bed.

01:10:26.060 He couldn't play drums.

01:10:27.760 So he picked up the harmonica and he started playing.

01:10:30.080 And that's Mac playing the great American classic folk tune, Shenandoah, with a string

01:10:40.160 section behind him.

01:10:41.460 And you can see that video.

01:10:43.860 You can see Arctic Circles and other videos at Mac Sinise YouTube.

01:10:49.080 And here's some of this music on the YouTube.

01:10:51.480 You can also download it.

01:10:52.780 And Mac ended up, after these sessions for Shenandoah and Arctic Circles, he decided he

01:10:59.120 wanted to do a whole album.

01:11:02.160 So along with his buddy, Oliver Schnee, composing Buddy from, that's Oliver right there, from

01:11:09.900 USC.

01:11:10.500 USC.

01:11:11.600 They went to work.

01:11:12.840 And Mac did an album called Resurrection and Revival.

01:11:18.880 And he finished the music, was done and ready in December of 2023, two weeks before he died.

01:11:29.040 He finished the record.

01:11:31.120 And we posted up this story.

01:11:33.840 That's one of the sessions with my band for Resurrection and Revival.

01:11:38.100 This story is on the Gary Sinise Foundation website.

01:11:40.840 Oh, that's beautiful.

01:11:41.580 Handsome young man.

01:11:43.200 He was incredible.

01:11:44.760 You can actually see right there on his nose, that's a tumor.

01:11:50.900 And yeah, no, you can see his spirit right there.

01:11:55.080 And we're listening to one of the pieces played back to us right there.

01:11:58.980 And everybody was psyched out about it.

01:12:02.160 And thank you for sharing Mac with us today.

01:12:04.600 Thank you for letting us think about you with him and think about him.

01:12:09.080 Thank you for letting us speak his name today.

01:12:12.240 And, you know, it's important that I think when we say people's names that aren't here in front of us, that they feel it, that that's a real thing, right?

01:12:23.460 To me, that feels very real.

01:12:24.680 Same as when we pray for people, that all those things are very real.

01:12:28.320 Like, I think our spirits are very much alive for a long time.

01:12:31.900 And so thank you for letting us.

01:12:33.360 Mac was a very faithful guy.

01:12:35.380 Was he?

01:12:35.760 Catholic faith helped him through the most challenging, difficult stuff.

01:12:45.220 What was something that amazed you about your son as you're watching him go through that?

01:12:50.260 You know, Theo, I never heard him say, you know, that why me stuff or why is this happening or anything like that.

01:12:59.440 You know, it was just, I remember when we found out he had a tumor and the way he dealt with it was just, oh, that's why my tailbone's been hurting, you know, for two years.

01:13:14.000 You know, he thought it was a tailbone fracture or bruise from a bike accident or something.

01:13:19.980 And, oh, okay, so we're going to take it out and get on with life.

01:13:26.640 And he faced it like that.

01:13:28.420 He always had this sort of, he was what I called a graceful warrior and such courage and such grace under fire because this cancer was devastating.

01:13:44.460 I mean, it was one thing after another.

01:13:48.500 It just kept coming at us and I was like the one in the family who had to guide us, you know, through it.

01:13:58.260 I stopped acting in 2019.

01:14:00.040 At the end of 2019, 2020 became so difficult that I just never went back to acting and I stayed, you know, I just stayed in a battle.

01:14:11.200 And he was the inspiration for everything, the way he courageously just faced it and just took it on the chin and took it in stride.

01:14:23.660 And if he was, if we could keep him out of pain and if we could keep him, you know, from feeling too sick from the treatment and all that, he was just living.

01:14:37.260 He was, you know, he's in a hospital bed and we had to hoist him up with a thing called a Hoyer lift and you lift him out of the bed and put him in a wheelchair or whatever.

01:14:47.900 Like one of those shrimp net things almost, which is crazy.

01:14:50.160 Well, it's a sling.

01:14:51.240 It's a sling that you put under, underneath them and then you hook it to this arm and then you crank it up and it lifts him out of the bed.

01:14:58.880 It's kind of cool.

01:15:00.020 Almost like a stork.

01:15:01.660 Yeah.

01:15:02.120 Yeah.

01:15:02.380 I mean, that's what we had.

01:15:03.360 And we had to get used to all that kind of stuff.

01:15:05.080 Wheelchair bands and treatment and, you know, radiation and, you know, he had multiple surgeries and, and he went through all of this, which was such grace.

01:15:16.560 And the last year of his life, when he said he wanted to go back and write that music, in some ways, even though it was getting harder and we were running out of drug options and, and all of that.

01:15:31.040 And, and his health was, you know, deteriorating in some ways, that was one of the best years of his entire life because he, he accomplished what he set out to do.

01:15:44.220 He wanted to make this record.

01:15:46.060 He wanted to make this music.

01:15:47.500 He wanted to resurrect and revive this old piece that he never finished.

01:15:51.680 And he did it.

01:15:52.380 And he did all of that.

01:15:53.480 And, and then after he died, I found all this additional music in his files that he wrote and tucked away that some, some he'd written in for the foundation and I had heard it.

01:16:05.920 But then I found all this other stuff going all the way back to his college days.

01:16:11.000 And so I produced a second record, Resurrection and Revival Part Two.

01:16:17.820 That's actually a story about Resurrection and Revival Part Two.

01:16:21.860 Go back to that picture.

01:16:22.860 I just want to see him.

01:16:23.860 Oh, look how happy he is, huh?

01:16:25.500 And that is, we blew up a bunch of pictures of Mac and put them in the studio when we were recording.

01:16:31.380 And yeah, there they are.

01:16:33.280 We, we put the pictures around.

01:16:34.720 You had the orchestra there.

01:16:36.060 They're all playing.

01:16:37.320 A lot of them played on the first record, you know?

01:16:40.800 And so we, we made a second record, Resurrection and Revival Part Two, which is a double vinyl album.

01:16:48.160 And Mac wanted all the proceeds that came in.

01:16:53.380 And if people bought the vinyl album, he wanted those proceeds to go to the Gary Sinise Foundation.

01:16:59.800 And so we've, that's him.

01:17:02.100 How special, huh?

01:17:02.860 Yeah.

01:17:03.040 How special for your son to like, just to make it such a family mission, you know?

01:17:08.300 You know what's cool too?

01:17:09.600 You can see here, like all those messages right in the middle of the screen there, those are, there are thousands of messages that were posted on the Gary Sinise Foundation website after people read this story.

01:17:24.900 And I can't tell you how meaningful that was for people to write in and leave these messages for our family and how helpful that was for us to read.

01:17:39.720 These are from my bandmates and some of the people that worked for the foundation.

01:17:43.680 But these are the messages that came in from the general public and they continue to come in.

01:17:48.740 And to have this kind of support and people sharing their own stories of loss and going through it and reading Mac's story and listening to his music and what listening to his music was doing for them, that was, all of that has been so helpful to us in our loss.

01:18:08.800 It's, you know, I mean, to lose a son is, it's, you know, it's the hardest thing that, I've had some hard things in life, but to watch our son go through that and to lose him in the end was the most difficult thing in life.

01:18:30.840 But also, like I said, the blessings that we've had, you know, with his music and, you know, and now I've got a, I've got a third record going.

01:18:42.060 I found even more music.

01:18:43.560 Of Mac stuff?

01:18:44.940 Let's go.

01:18:46.060 I mean, it's incredible.

01:18:47.580 There's a third record going.

01:18:49.380 I just, he wrote so many things that he never thought would, I mean, you know how a musician will get an idea, they'll kind of chunk it out, throw it onto a recorder, tuck it away over here.

01:19:00.840 And then, you know, go on.

01:19:02.620 And so I found all these things that he wrote and tucked away and, and we brought a whole bunch of those to life, orchestral music, jazz things, rock tunes, something as big as, you know, him sitting down with his computer programs and doing big sweeping string orchestrations to him singing a melody into his phone that he didn't want to forget that was in his head.

01:19:30.480 Yeah.

01:19:30.920 And he sings this melody.

01:19:32.400 And so I've, I've taken those melodies, gone to, to my, my guys that work with me on it and said, let's bring these melodies to life.

01:19:40.520 Oh, I love that.

01:19:40.880 And so many of Mac's melodies are coming to life now in, in the third record.

01:19:45.740 It's really, it's spectacular.

01:19:48.140 It's, it's beautiful.

01:19:49.260 And all the proceeds will go to the Gary Sinise Foundation to help our mission.

01:19:53.400 He loved our mission at the Gary Sinise Foundation.

01:19:55.860 Well, it's just so amazing that he got in there and was able to just like, just feel the joy of being a part of serving others, you know?

01:20:03.180 Yeah.

01:20:03.380 Um, if you get a chance, play some, play some of that.

01:20:06.500 Oh, I would love to.

01:20:07.280 It's good stuff.

01:20:08.280 I'm going to play, really amazing music.

01:20:10.700 I want to listen to something in just a second here.

01:20:12.740 Um, was there, do you feel like there was a way that he tried to prepare you for him passing or what is that like?

01:20:19.920 Like, is that a strange question?

01:20:23.580 No, no, it's not.

01:20:24.580 And I, you know what?

01:20:26.980 He was preparing.

01:20:29.420 He knew he had an incurable cancer and every drug we were trying wasn't working.

01:20:34.220 And he tried like 25 different drugs during a four and a half year period.

01:20:40.340 And, uh, we would.

01:20:42.460 Was there plant medicines and stuff you tried to even?

01:20:45.360 Yeah.

01:20:45.700 There, I mean, at one point he was doing, uh, sea cucumbers from New Zealand, you know,

01:20:52.660 that were showing some positive signs, like on an immunotherapy side.

01:20:59.640 Uh, and we had a very good oncologist who was, we never, we never got to that point where they said,

01:21:08.560 we don't know what to do.

01:21:09.760 We don't have any ideas.

01:21:12.060 Our oncologist was like, Mac, as long as you want to keep trying, then I'll keep looking for something to try.

01:21:19.500 And he did.

01:21:21.140 And he kept, he kept trying to find something.

01:21:23.680 And, you know, unfortunately we'd get to a certain point with one drug and we didn't see enough results.

01:21:29.480 So you, you bang into the next one.

01:21:31.660 And, you know, we had a lot of drugs go, go through Mac at a certain point.

01:21:38.200 And it was very, you know, very, very challenging, you know, to, to, to, to, to fight that.

01:21:47.060 But I never saw him not want to do it.

01:21:51.680 Later on, I found videos that he made.

01:21:56.760 And when I say he was trying, he was preparing himself, he was also leaving some things for the family and he wrote some things that I found and he left messages.

01:22:10.120 And at one point in 2022, he had to go in for very serious, he was having a very serious bladder issue.

01:22:20.600 His bladder was just shutting down and he had to have tubes put in his kidneys to drain the urine directly out of his kidneys.

01:22:29.340 And, and he was in the ICU for about 12 days.

01:22:32.480 And at that point he thought this, you know, he, he was wondering if that was going to be it, you know, the end.

01:22:43.540 So he started thinking and he started writing and he started leaving videos and he started preparing.

01:22:48.480 And then I, after he died, I started finding all this stuff, messages from him, things that he was thinking.

01:22:54.740 And not, you know, to be sad, you know, but I want to leave something.

01:22:59.900 And he was saying, I want to leave something that people will, so people will know me a little better.

01:23:06.100 And he was thinking ahead, you know, to the time where he might not make it.

01:23:12.320 And, you know, with everything that was happening to him, he was, he was realistic, you know, he was very realistic about the fight and the uphill battle that we had.

01:23:22.660 And we weren't seeing enough progress, you know, on the positive side to combat the cancer.

01:23:27.840 So he was preparing in, in a lot of ways.

01:23:30.940 And, you know, like I said, I've discovered a lot of things and, and I've discovered more about my son than I could have imagined, you know, just his talent, his wisdom, his spirituality.

01:23:46.940 A lot of beautiful things that, because I've spent countless hours, you know, all the time digging into things about my son.

01:23:58.280 And I'm working on a, you know, something that will come out next year about him.

01:24:02.760 And, you know, so I'm, I'm, I'm spending a lot of time and, and Mac is, he continues to help me and, and we share, you know, my band plays two songs and.

01:24:15.860 That he wrote?

01:24:16.500 And yeah, two songs.

01:24:17.700 Yeah.

01:24:17.960 We're playing at the Opry next week and Mac's going to have his Opry debut.

01:24:22.100 Let's go.

01:24:23.700 With two of his songs.

01:24:24.400 He sounds like such a gift.

01:24:26.280 That's what he sounds like.

01:24:27.160 Was he always like that even when he was small?

01:24:29.680 Like when he was a child?

01:24:31.020 Yeah.

01:24:31.320 You know, he was a kid, you know, like, like other kids, but he was, Mac was a very, always very sensitive.

01:24:38.200 His mom, I think he's, he's got this sensitive beauty that his mother has and she gave him a lot of that.

01:24:47.480 And, um, and at one point he went off to college and he kind of, you know, was doing the college thing and kind of went through a period, you know,

01:24:57.600 where he's a little strayed, but then he came back to his faith in a really big way.

01:25:03.600 You know, when he, uh, at, you know, a couple of years out of college, he was, he was looking for something more than what he had.

01:25:13.380 And that's why, that's when he started kind of revisiting his faith.

01:25:20.080 And I'll tell you the fact that he kind of, uh, reinvested in, in that in 2017, in such a profound way that was so meaningful to him.

01:25:33.880 Um, the fact that he did that when he did was a gigantic benefit to his fight because the following year he's diagnosed with this terrible cancer.

01:25:49.640 And he has something inside to help support him.

01:25:51.400 Yeah.

01:25:51.780 And, and, and the timing couldn't have been better for that, you know, for him to have that strength.

01:25:57.680 And he always relied on that throughout the fight.

01:26:01.540 Um, were you so proud of him?

01:26:14.800 Yeah.

01:26:15.980 Could not be prouder of anyone.

01:26:20.840 Um, I'm proud of my kids and, uh, my, our daughters are amazing.

01:26:25.380 And, uh, you know, through the whole thing, we're all heartbroken, of course, but, uh, our daughters were amazing through it all and love their brothers so much.

01:26:37.220 And, uh, that, that's the three of them right there.

01:26:39.760 Yeah.

01:26:40.240 Tell me about Mac's sisters if you haven't, if you have a minute.

01:26:42.960 Yeah.

01:26:43.360 Um, well, there's the one picture there, um, where they're looking.

01:26:50.840 Looking back at the camera.

01:26:52.120 Yeah, that's cute.

01:26:53.120 That's my daughter, Sophie, on the right and then Mac in the middle.

01:26:56.060 And then, yeah, that one there.

01:26:57.500 And then Ella, the youngest.

01:26:59.800 Ella's pregnant with her third child right now.

01:27:02.300 Let's go, Ella.

01:27:03.200 Somebody's knocking her up, huh?

01:27:05.380 Whoa, dude, sorry.

01:27:07.400 But we know how it happens.

01:27:10.820 Sorry.

01:27:13.220 That's terrible.

01:27:14.260 That is terrible.

01:27:14.820 I'm just trying to make you laugh.

01:27:16.460 I'm just trying to make you laugh.

01:27:17.520 And Sophie on the right, she's got three kids. 0.73

01:27:19.940 So, um, Mac loved his, his little nieces.

01:27:24.800 Um, my wife is amazing. 1.00

01:27:26.960 That's her on the right there with, with Mac. 0.93

01:27:30.300 Um, uh, they, we all have a very close relationship and, uh, we all have helped each other through,

01:27:38.620 uh, you know, this, this very difficult time.

01:27:42.620 Um, no question about it.

01:27:44.520 Um, just the value of family, of having people, you know, you know, in the beginning when you're

01:27:50.100 going through a loss like that, I mean, we've all been through terrible loss, but, but this

01:27:56.080 particular thing in the beginning, you're all, you're all exactly in the same place at the

01:28:03.860 same time, you're all crying every day, all the time.

01:28:07.940 And, and then as time goes on, you start to manage your grief a little bit more, um, just manage those

01:28:18.080 moments, the moments come sneak up on you and stuff like that.

01:28:21.320 And, and sometimes they'll hit me and, you know, all of a sudden I'm in a very emotional

01:28:27.480 place and, you know, my wife will just put her hand on my shoulder, you know, whereas in the

01:28:33.460 beginning she'd start crying herself or my daughter'd start crying. 0.98

01:28:36.900 We'd all be crying at the same time.

01:28:39.060 And you kind of help each other through those moments.

01:28:41.380 You just know, okay, dad's having a, a moment here with Mac and we just have to help him through,

01:28:49.000 you know, and so you learn to process your grief a little better.

01:28:53.740 And the thing I would say to anybody, you know, is, it is those beautiful memories that you have

01:29:03.780 of somebody that you miss like that and that you've lost, those are the things that sustain you,

01:29:09.420 you know, and you have to hang on to them.

01:29:11.560 You can't, you know, Mac, I know Mac doesn't want me to grieve and be sad and depressed all day

01:29:18.860 long and miss him all day long and, you know, all of that.

01:29:22.660 He wants us to go on and live and anybody that we love that we lose, that's what they, they

01:29:28.480 don't want us sitting around wasting a minute of time, just not making the most out of the

01:29:36.320 life that we have.

01:29:37.240 And that's what, that's what we do to kind of celebrate and honor those that we've lost.

01:29:43.540 We live on for them.

01:29:45.720 And, uh, I know that Mac is proud of me and what I'm doing with his music.

01:29:50.540 He's, he's probably a little freaked out about it because I'm so obsessed with it.

01:29:56.380 But, uh, but he's also like, dad, you, you took that little idea and turned it into something.

01:30:02.280 I know.

01:30:03.000 And I've, and sure, Oliver, I brought Oliver Schnee back on and Oliver's producing the

01:30:08.320 second record.

01:30:09.420 Let's go.

01:30:10.000 Thank you, Oliver.

01:30:10.960 Yeah.

01:30:11.380 Oliver's doing a tremendous job with arranging certain things.

01:30:14.700 My keyboard player, Ben Lewis, has taken a bunch of the piano music that I found that

01:30:19.320 Mac did and woven these things together, these beautiful melodies that Mac created.

01:30:25.200 My violin player, uh, Dan Myers, who worked with Mac on a song called Quasi Love that's on

01:30:32.180 the second record.

01:30:33.140 It's a rockin' tune.

01:30:34.520 The last song that Mac wrote, he wrote it with Dan.

01:30:38.000 Um, Dan is working on three different songs right now.

01:30:41.800 They're all came out of Mac's files.

01:30:44.420 So we are doing something pretty cool.

01:30:46.860 And I think Mac, Mac has probably just kind of been shocked, a bit, bit, bit in shock that

01:30:52.980 we're going so crazy with it all.

01:30:55.420 Oh, well, it's like, yeah.

01:30:58.580 In the end, it's like the, like, it's just how much can we try and love, right?

01:31:03.520 How much can we try and love?

01:31:04.840 How much can we try to be there to fill in the gaps, um, of the world, of the parts that

01:31:11.020 are tough?

01:31:11.840 You know, how much can we be there for each other?

01:31:13.720 Those are the things that mean something.

01:31:15.420 Yeah.

01:31:15.760 You know, they really are.

01:31:17.420 And, uh, and it's just, it's, it's the truest thing.

01:31:20.880 And parents, you know, we, we just, you know, spending time with your kids and loving on your

01:31:30.460 kids and, and all of that, that's, that's precious.

01:31:34.280 It's, it's precious stuff, you know, loving on our loved ones and, and, you know, making

01:31:39.760 sure that they know that we do, you know, that's, that's precious, uh, because none

01:31:46.080 of us know, you know, none of us know.

01:31:47.980 Oh yeah.

01:31:48.320 Especially how you even like touch somebody or hold somebody, you know, it was like most

01:31:52.940 of my life.

01:31:53.520 I just wanted my dad to like put his hand on the back of my neck, you know?

01:31:57.280 Yeah.

01:31:57.580 Give you a pat.

01:31:58.520 Yeah.

01:31:59.120 Or just like, even like hold me like that, you know, it's like a very like, uh, familial

01:32:04.420 type of thing, you know, there's things you, yeah.

01:32:07.460 We just want to feel, you know, connected.

01:32:10.640 We want to feel cared about.

01:32:12.120 Um, and yeah, I thank you and Mac, uh, for creating such an environment that continues

01:32:19.500 to just, uh, nurture and inspire that in the world, not in an egotistical way, but in

01:32:25.940 a way of just like, Hey, we feel like this is important.

01:32:28.940 So come and join us on this journey of, um, of being there to, to give out a meal, to give

01:32:34.460 out a hug, to watch a family smile when they get to walk in a Disney world with pens of

01:32:39.020 their dad or their mother on their chest and feel like, uh, they're not alone or they're

01:32:43.580 not forgotten about.

01:32:45.040 Um, that's exactly, exactly right.

01:32:47.760 And, and, and I know with, with regards to Mac, he, he loved the foundation so much.

01:32:54.960 He loved the people that we serve.

01:32:56.940 He was, uh, he wrote a great patriotic anthem called The Rise.

01:33:02.400 It's really an incredible piece, piece of music.

01:33:05.440 And he wrote it for the foundation after he started going on these trips with World War

01:33:10.280 II veterans.

01:33:11.040 Wow.

01:33:11.440 You know, young people, we parent, young students up, you know, like a 16 or 17 year

01:33:18.680 old with a 95 year old World War II veteran who survived Iwo Jima or something like that.

01:33:25.540 And they get to learn from them and Mac learned from them and he, he was inspired by them.

01:33:30.680 And now we have his music to share with, uh, you know what, can I mention this?

01:33:37.580 For sure.

01:33:38.020 Last May, both Resurrection and Revival and Resurrection and Revival part two were among

01:33:48.680 the top 10 most downloaded records in America on iTunes.

01:33:54.580 And this is like Blake Shelton, Morgan Wallen, all these guys are on the top 10 and there's

01:34:00.820 Max Sinise with two records and Forbes, a writer with Forbes saw that and was like,

01:34:08.020 who's Max Sinise, you know, what is this?

01:34:10.760 And so he wrote a story on it, on how these records were among the most downloaded records

01:34:15.680 in America on iTunes.

01:34:18.620 So the music is getting out there.

01:34:20.420 The music is being shared.

01:34:21.960 The music is helping the Gary Sinise Foundation.

01:34:24.960 We have more music coming.

01:34:26.160 And we wanted to continue to inspire people and, and, you know, sharing the story of Mac and

01:34:33.000 the foundation is something that I, I can do all day long because it's a lot of beautiful

01:34:39.460 work.

01:34:40.160 Oh, well, just the beauty that went into it, the life that went into it, you know, and the

01:34:44.660 fact that, um, you know, uh, that it's like Max life has been, is now in it.

01:34:51.820 You know, it's like, it's in it, it's, it's giving your life to making something that's

01:34:56.660 not just of you, you know, like you were saying, like getting out of yourself, you know, I know

01:35:01.780 when I'm not feeling good, it's like, I got to go do something for somebody else.

01:35:04.580 I need to call somebody else and ask them how they're doing.

01:35:06.840 The only solution, uh, to me is you, you know, that's really the truth.

01:35:12.240 Um, for me anyway.

01:35:14.240 Uh, that's, that's, that's true.

01:35:16.100 That's, that's a big, and on the way out today, we will play a couple of Max tunes.

01:35:19.700 We'll keep, um, we'll just go to our screen card of the episode and we'll play Arctic

01:35:23.620 Circles and we'll play, maybe we play that, uh, the veterans at the Anthem.

01:35:30.880 What is that one called?

01:35:31.620 You just mentioned it.

01:35:32.160 It's called the rise.

01:35:33.260 Yeah.

01:35:33.440 That's on the YouTube channel as well.

01:35:35.100 Okay.

01:35:35.440 Yeah.

01:35:35.960 So maybe we can play the rise.

01:35:38.040 Is it good?

01:35:38.500 Well, that's perfect for veterans day.

01:35:39.880 Yeah, absolutely.

01:35:41.160 And for this week.

01:35:42.300 Um, and yeah, Gary, we, we want to double our donation too, to you guys.

01:35:46.420 Sorry for being cheap earlier.

01:35:47.660 And, uh, um, thank you, but yeah, on behalf of our podcast and, uh, the people that listen

01:35:54.980 and just thank you so much for your work and, uh, and for just coming to spend time with

01:35:59.360 us today and for letting us spend time with Max life.

01:36:01.800 You know, I can even feel him smiling, dude.

01:36:03.760 I don't even know him, but I can feel it.

01:36:05.860 And, uh, it's just so special.

01:36:09.000 I'll come back when we got that part three and we can listen to that one.

01:36:12.400 Okay.

01:36:12.720 We can just sit here and listen to it sometime too, if we want.

01:36:15.240 Awesome, bud.

01:36:15.780 We don't have to talk a bunch, tell your wife, thank you so much for being, uh, supportive

01:36:19.680 of you.

01:36:20.380 And I don't know what she does with the organization.

01:36:22.040 She may do a ton, but just tell her, thank you so much for being a supporter as well.

01:36:25.540 Cause I know sometimes there's always a, an amazing woman behind the, the name sometimes

01:36:30.340 and stuff.

01:36:30.740 So, um, yeah, I've got, I've got a great family supporting us, uh, both our sons-in-law.

01:36:36.800 We, we got lucky and you know, we're, we're just, we're very blessed in a lot of ways.

01:36:42.000 Yeah.

01:36:43.480 Um, Gary Sinise, thank you so much, brother.

01:36:46.220 Uh, happy Veterans Day to you.

01:36:47.740 And, um, and yeah, let me know when I can come in and help out next year.

01:36:52.340 I will, bud.

01:36:53.120 Okay, good.

01:36:53.720 Thank you.

01:36:54.200 Thank you.

01:36:54.560 Thank you.

01:36:54.620 Thank you.

01:36:55.060 Thank you.

01:37:25.060 Thank you.

01:37:55.060 Thank you.

01:38:25.060 Thank you.

01:38:55.060 Thank you.

01:38:57.060 Thank you.

01:39:25.060 Thank you.

01:39:27.060 Thank you.

01:39:55.060 Thank you.

01:39:57.060 When I was there, you had to have a knife. 0.99

01:40:12.080 One of you's got to take turns carrying it up your rectum. 1.00

01:40:14.980 Wait, it's up your butt? 1.00

01:40:16.300 That's the prison wallet. 0.99

01:40:17.460 You'll never leave home when I...

01:40:18.220 You have something protected around it, I'm assuming.

01:40:19.980 Yeah, or else you'll be bleeding out your culo.

01:40:22.120 I'm Arianna Van Zeller, and after reporting on black markets

01:40:25.020 for my Emmy-winning National Geographic show, Trafficked,

01:40:27.920 I'm launching a podcast.

01:40:29.820 Are you getting emotional on me?

01:40:31.300 Intimate conversations with those operating in the shadows.

01:40:34.800 The Hidden Third is out now with new episodes every Wednesday.

01:40:38.420 Subscribe at youtube.com slash Mariana Van Zeller.

01:40:41.900 Follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

This Past Weekend with Theo Von - November 11, 2025

#623 - Gary Sinise

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript