Jocko Podcast - 348: Don't Be Careful. Careful Kills. With Peter Maguire. Author, Professor, Surfer, and Black Belt.

Episode Date: August 24, 2022

Peter Maguire. Professor, Author, surfer, Jiu Jitsu Black Belt. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 348 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. We are turning our society upside down. One Cameroogh officer told a Newsweek reporter in the weeks after the revolution. The people of Phnom Penh will grow rice, he said. And almost as an afterthought added, they will work or starve. By early May, 1975, the Camer Rouge were in.

Implementing one of the most radical political plans of the 20th century a peasant revolution with a punitive edge Buddhist monks were made to plow fields Pagodas were turned into killing centers Cham Muslims a religious minority were force-fed pork Cambodia's National Library was converted into a pigsty In Pol Potts democratic Campuchia books were used to start fires It was more about revenge recalled one Cambodian all private property even money was abolished in this

ultra great leap forward the early accounts of life under the Khmer Rouge came from Cambodian refugees who escaped to Thailand at first they sounded too bizarre to be true as if George Orwell had written them to satirize life under a dictatorship of the proletariat a place where parents feared their children and civilians were slaughtered in numbers and for reasons unimagined since Stalin's purges or Hitler's Third Reich. Survivors described a system of slave labor communes where men, women, and children, toiled like human water buffalo under the watchful eye of the mysterious and all-powerful leadership cabal known only as Angar.

They lived in perpetual fear. The CIA held little hope. for America's former allies and educated Cambodians quote executions are reported widespread and in many cases members of the entire form family of former government officials or soldiers are executed along with the heads of the family almost all executions occur in the same manner several communist cadres beat the person to death with ho handles or other blunt instruments and quote Not only did the Khmer Rouge eliminate family life, they made sex before marriage a capital offense. Camer Rouge survivor Yuk Chang remembered watching two young lovers beaten to death in front of his entire commune. In a larger sense, the Khmer Rouge were threatened by all expressions of love between husband and wife, parents and children, friends and colleagues, observes Elizabeth Becker. one Khmer Rouge survivor is still haunted by his mother's final words you have to learn how to live without me

Lang Thirth Khmer Rouge Minister of Culture and Social Affairs stated quote only children can purely serve the revolution and eliminate reactionism since they are young, obedient, loyal, and active end quote. So that right there is a little excerpt from a book called Facing Death in Cambodia. It's written by a man named Peter McGuire. And Peter is also written about the Nuremberg trials, about the treatment of Nazi war criminals. But his focus has not always been on war or genocide. He actually has a pretty significant dichotomy in a.

life Peter McGuire grew up a surfer in Southern California that led to chasing the mythical endless summer that many surfers pursue and he funded that chase by drug smuggling eventually he left that life for academia where he received his doctrine history along the way he became a jiu jitzu practitioner he's a historian, an author, a defense contractor, college professor, and he's lived an extremely multifaceted life, and it is a privilege to have Peter McGuire here with us tonight to share some of his experiences and some of his lessons learned. Well, thank you for having me. Yeah, thanks for coming out. I guess how did you and I originally connect? Surface Journal. I interviewed you.

But how did you, did you just reach out somehow? Through Ivan, I think. Through Ivan, man. Yeah. So Ivan Trent is a, is his former seal. And the reason I knew about Ivan Trent, well, when I got to, on my first deployment, I was on my first deployment. I went to Guam and I walked in to like the headquarters area.

And there's a picture hanging on the wall of a guy dropping in on a giant wave, big Hawaiian wave and it's signed, you know, it says, you know, some cool quote, Ivan Trent. And I'm like, hmm, that's interesting. Well, it's Buzzy Trent's kid and Buzzy, Buzzy Trent is one of the iconic guys that opened up big wave surfing for the world. And his son was a seal. And so you did an article about, how did you know Ivan? I knew Ivan through the combat rescue boat that I did with George Greeno. And so Ivan,

our fathers surfed together in, you know, Malibu in the 50s. And so, yeah, and so I reached out to Ivan, and he was our greatest help and a true ally, and we became great friends. And I stayed with him in Virginia Beach whenever I went there and would have to do jiu-jitsu with his son on the carpet. I think his son might train here. And then his little Chihuahua dog would try to hump my leg. Yeah. So I haven't as Chihuahuas.

That's speaking of dichotomy. There you go. Well, let's get into it. And just let's go through kind of how you ended up here because you have been on a wild ride. I mean, a little bit. Relatively speaking, your life's been a wild ride. So you're born in 1964. Tell us about your, tell us about your mom and dad. My mother was one of the first women screenwriters in Hollywood, Joan Tewkesbury. She wrote Robert Altman's Nashville, among other things. She was actually the ostrich in Mary Martin's Peter Pan on Broadway. She was a child kind of Shirley Temple in Hollywood, grew up in Hollywood.

And my father was the son of a famous pilot. Robert McGuire, who ran operations Magic Carpet and Operations Alibaba, flying Yemenites and concentration camp survivors to Israel. So at 14, my father was a mechanics assistant in Tel Aviv Airport. He was flying missions with my grandfather. He was flying at 14. I think it wasn't DC3s, but it was one of those big silver. How did that happen? My grandfather was a pilot in World War II. and then Alaska and Airlines was hired to resettle Jews in Israel. So that's originally how he got involved. But then Alaskan Airways pulled out,

and he set up a company called Far Eastern Air Transport and flew a remarkable number of hours in a short amount of time. And Ben-Gurion called them the Irish Moses. and the last chapter of Leon Uris' Exodus is called the King Crab King, and that was my grandfather, who lived at Rincon, right at the indicator. And so my dad was a real wild guy. He died about a year ago, and he, so, you know, he goes to Tel Aviv, his mother, their parents are divorced.

She finds out that he's being raised by wolves in the Middle East. So they send him to a fancy French boarding school. he. So this is your dad. My dad. And so then he gets to the couple. So hold on. So your dad's mom realizes that your kid is, that your dad is like a feral child. Exactly. Right. Right. And says, we're going to get him the hell out of there.

Yeah. We're going to take him and send him to a French boarding school. Yeah. And so they send him there. And the French couple that was supposed to be taking care of him took the money and ran. And so he and an older kind of French nobleman who's parents. had been killed in the Holocaust, said, let's not tell anybody. And so they basically ran away and spent the better part of a year riding bikes around France, going to Nice, going to the hookers, going to the whole shebang. And then he moved to California after that, and there was no hope for Southern California. And so he became one of the biggest real estate developers in

Los Angeles. He built Playa Vista and much of the skyline. And, uh, They called him the cat with 10 lives. And so it was a boom or bust life, like, you know, up one day. And then, hey, kids, we're moving and you're going back to public school. So in my DNA, I knew the only thing that couldn't be taken away from me was an education. I knew there would be no inheritance, nothing. And he went public in, I think 2008, 2009, had a billion. dollars cash and then bet it all on black and basically bought the Blackstone Group's real

estate portfolio two weeks before the subprime crisis and lost it all. And so he passed away about a year ago and inherited a few lawsuits. That's what you got out. Yeah, but he was a classic guy, You know, and so, you know, just big things were expected of you as a kid. I mean, my grandpa had, we always had boats. And if Ventura, my grandpa lived in the Ventura Keys, and if Ventura Harbor was closing out, well, that was a good day to take out the boat. Like, let's punch through. Yeah, yeah.

And like, so that was not anything out of the ordinary for me. And so when I first took my job, I got my Ph.D. at Columbia. My PhD advisor was Brigadier General Telford Taylor, the chief prosecutor at Nuremberg. And I had friends who had set up a nonprofit to collect the photographs taken at tool slang prison. The Khmer Rouge's central torture and execution facility, roughly 20,000 went in, roughly 20 survived. Everyone got their picture taken. So they were preserving the negatives and the photographic record. At that time, the Khmer Rouge was still a major force to be reckoned with. So this is what, this is 93, 94. So I go there in early 94, and it's very volatile. The UN has this incredibly

absurd occupation where they treat the, you know, neutrality as the sacred principle. So it's the, it's the UN's model that goes wrong in the 90s. So the Khmer Rouge are allowed, you know, allowed to run, in the election, they're treated, you know, there's no accountability. There's, you know, Khmer Rouge killed roughly, you know, we think two million out of 10 million in... Yeah, it's like a quarter of the population of Kibodians. Yeah, in three years, 10 months, 20 days, most of them, you know, with an ox cart, a handle, axel to the back of the head. And no accountability. When the Khmer Rouge falls in early 79, Thailand, China, Singapore, the U.S., all back them.

And so then Pol Pot et al, become freedom fighters. And so it's just too bizarre. You couldn't make it up. And so there's absolutely no accountability. And I knew from my Nuremberg research is the only thing in that kind of situation, an unresolved conflict still fighting going on, is historical accountability, is preserving the empirical evidence of the crimes. So that was very important to me. Also was building the chains of command from the bloodstained butcher, who's usually the scapegoat. It's easy to try a Lindy England

or these kind of people and the garden variety, you know, sort of perpetrator. But to move up to the food chain like they did at Nuremberg to get the shot callers policymakers, that's what I was more interested in the senior leaders. And so that was my goal. I also wanted to link them to their masters, the Chinese government, because, you know, this was a Chinese sponsored affair. There were Chinese advisors throughout Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge years, and the Chinese have never copped to it.

And they still, we didn't support the bad policies. And, you know, I was there when Jingzha-Main came for the first time. and we went to the press conference and one of my friends from the Wall Street Journal said, what about accountability? What do you say to the Cambodians? And he just started screaming at him and went, no, and stormed off the podium. And I went, wow, this is a different kind of press conference than I've ever been to. So that was my initial foray, was, you know, with these photographs, finding the survivors. But then I was able to find the perpetrators. And I was able to find the perpetrators. I worked with a pretty remarkable guy named Soxin, who was, he said, I'm remarkable survivor.

And I used the weapon of the mouth. And I said, how did you survive the Khmer Rouge? She goes, I worked harder than any man. And I sang revolutionary songs louder than any man. Played the game. Yeah. And so Soxin was a rough guy. And he, you know, started as a petty cab driver.

and one of the guards at the hotel that was the fancy hotel, the press state would whip him with a chain because he'd be too aggressive. So the chain that blocked the driveway, he'd whip Soxin with. So every time Sachin got a new car, he would pull it up to that same guard who'd been there for 20 years guarding that gate, honk the horn, and wave at him.

And so Soxin taught me a lot about Cambodia, probably just driving around with him. I learned as much as, you know, and he would see two young lovers on a motorcycle, and he was like, I cannot look. And I'd say, why? He goes, I missed that. I didn't get that in my life.

Like, too painful, too painful. And it was just amazing what those people went through. And, you know, one of my students, a professor now named Soapal Ear, his parents were sort of elite Cambodians. They pushed their Mercedes out because the Khmer Rouge came in April 17, 1975. They said, oh, we're just leaving for a little bit of. little while. The American bombers are coming. So they're pushing their Mercedes, right? And one of the kids gets separated, never sees them again. And then the father dies. The men always die. The women survive.

The Cambodian women kept that society together. Very similarly how the southern women did after the Civil War. But much more extreme. Anyway, they go to one of those horrible rice gulags where, you know, they're barely given enough calories to survive. And they announce, okay, any Vietnamese we're going to allow out. But you have to take this Vietnamese language exam. You fail that exam. You die. And so she had had Vietnamese maids.

So they coached her, got her Vietnamese back up to speed. She passed the exam. So now they go to a refugee camp in Vietnam. She finds a phone book. and I don't know how, starts dialing numbers in Paris, gets a sponsor. The family gets to go to Paris. She works as a seamstress. Then she finds out she has a relative in San Jose or Oakland.

They come to the United States. She makes sure that she gets a fake address in the best school district in San Francisco, makes her kids take the bus two hours each way. Every one of those kids today, doctor, PhD, you know, those are the immigrants we want, right? Yeah, no, we just, we just did another podcast and we were talking to, talking about some Vietnam, Vietnamese immigrants that came over after the war that had gotten out. And it was the same story for all of them. They'd all worked so hard.

Yeah. And all their kids ended up just, you know, doctors. you know, engineers, just the whole nine yards. Because education was so highly valued for them after they were able to get out of Vietnam. And after, you know, basically everyone that they knew that stayed back was murdered. Oh, yeah.

Awful, just awful how that unfolded. Let's rewind a little bit. We kind of jumped straight into Cambodia, but you took a strange path to get to Cambodia, too. Yeah. So you're born in 1964. Yeah. That's kind of a cool time to be growing up.

And you grew up where, in Malibu? Malibu, Pacific Palisades. Yeah, Santa Monica Canyon. So this is like 19 year. What time did you start? How old were you and you started going down to Malibu by yourself and surfing all day? Which I'm sure he must have done all the time. Well, we had a house in carpentaria and then my grandpa lived at Rincon.

So we were going to Santa Barbara pretty much. Like on the Rincon little point there? The cinder block wall at the indicator. And that's how I met George Greeno. You know, it was about 10 years old. And so I had a charmed life. I could go surf the Bixby Ranch and drive in and the Channel Islands. And I had a very charm.

I was, you know, I was a privileged kid. And, you know, Malibu, I lived in the colony as a very little kid. Then we moved away, but I still knew all those guys. So then I lifeguarded in Malibu colony, which was quite a. an experience but we were bad so this is now the so this is now what the 70s when did you graduate from high school uh 83 83 and i was start like you said going to malibu with the older guys smoking weed in the back of the pickup you know probably 13 what kind of music were you listening to oh lead zeppelin and uh cream and uh yeah that you know some eagles

But yeah, but yeah, we were bad. And we were like free-range children. All our parents were divorced, very permissive time. I mean, there was, especially in Malibu, bizarre. Like one of our friends' mothers had a primal scream room that you like walked through a giant vagina to get into. And just bizarre. Wait, what's a primal scream?

You'd have to expand on this one, bro. I'm not familiar. Yeah, you go in this room and you scream, ah, and you let it all out. And then there was, you know, there was, there was, there was, uh, orgies and this kind of stuff. So what are your parents doing at this point? Like, my mom was making her way in Hollywood and my dad was. Were they together?

No. They, that was. And who are you living with? I lived with my mom until I was, uh, about 10. And then she knew I needed a dad and, uh, put me with my dad. And my dad was a hard ass. Like I was bad. And he kind of, he had a thing where he would wake you up at five in the morning.

And then he'd say, come downstairs, we need to talk. And he was always the throw weight in all the union stuff in L.A. Because he owned all the buildings. So what he did with labor was how the strikes went, everything, and he usually sided with labor. And so he would sit you down and he would just inventory the litany of your sins that you didn't think, You thought you were getting away with everything, right?

And it was so startling. And then he would just hand you, okay, this address, you need to be down there tomorrow morning at 5. And it was the AFL, CIO, Local 300. Oh, so you're going to get some. Yeah, Union Hall. And so he made me work as a union laborer on the high rises, but little did he know my, you know, this was the punishment job. And it was a graveyard shift, 11 nights of six of the morning. But I worked with all Daryl Strawberry's family.

So my marijuana empire expanded exponentially because back then there was green pot in the winter and brown pot in the summer and, you know, and Thai. And the inner city, L.A. couldn't get any of it. No one dared, you know, no white boys dared go down there. And so I did. And I'd go down, I'd go to Venice because I knew some guys from the Venice gangs through athletics. And then I would go down the Crenshaw area with those guys. And I write about that in my book, Tystick.

And then, yeah, and then I got busted when I was 19. So hold on. So it seems like your dad, I mean, your dad owns all these buildings. What's getting you to, you had to have looked at that even as a, 15, 16, 17 year old and said, hey, man, my dad's doing all right. I can probably figure out some kind of a livelihood by working with my dad. But how do you end up getting in the pop business? I don't know. I just did. It was easy. It was right in front of me. The, you know, the surfers controlled the high-end marijuana trade. And so, particularly the tie trade. And so I, you know, wrote in Ty Stick that the arrival of the Thai marijuana fleet marked the beginning of summer.

So the older surfers that I looked up to, and I would see these guys fly into Scorpion Bay. I mean, I first went to Scorpion Bay, I think it's 79. And it was guys on the lamb. I mean, it was a shady place. And it was hard to get to. And so, you know, 16 years old, crossing the mountains from the Sea of Cortez, you know, in my old man's suburban. And, you know, these guys would fly in for low tide in Cessna's and really good surfers. And then they, you know, they'd give us some cold beer because we didn't have ice, you know, like ice was the best commodity.

And it's, okay, we got to go back to Kabul for happy hour. And, you know, and they led this charmed life, you know, oh, North Shore in the winter, Indonesia, you know, in the summer, Baja in the summer. So these guys were on the endless, these guys were literally on the endless summer train. fueled by marijuana. Financed by pot. Yeah. And so Thai pot. So you said it was green.

I forget what you said. I'm not familiar with pot because I spent my whole life well. I was in the military for 20 years. I grew up as like a straight edge hardcore kid. So I don't know enough about pot. Well, now pot. Educate me. Yeah, well, I call it Frankenweed now.

Like it's gone way beyond. We had the what we called purple seedless, which was the Northern California pot. Isn't that supposed to be good? Oh, yeah, it's great. Yeah, it was the best. Now, but it's this weird GMO pot. That's the Frankenweed.

I don't like that stuff. And I don't think it's, I don't think you should be smoking it all the time. So pot has left me, you know, way behind. But anyway, so that would pretty much run out. So it was a real Adam Smith supply and demand thing. Got it. So there was not unlimited amounts of good green pot all year. round. So what's the brown pot? That would be would be Mexican-Columbian inferior pot with seeds and this

and that. But then the ties were master growers and the famous tie stick, right? And so you had pot in the early 70s worth $2,000 a pound. And so one sailboat full, you're a millionaire, you know. And so that's why so many surfers got involved in it because what do surfers need? They need freedom and they need time. So one sailboat full that you're a millionaire and this is in the 70s, so that million, you're good for a life pretty much. Exactly. And then, you know, then you go, I'll do another.

Well, I'll do a bigger boat. Oh, you know, and then all of a sudden you're dealing with Thai gangsters, you know, bringing it across the border in PMAX gas trucks, paying million dollar bribes. I mean, like, you know, remarkable tradecraft, actually. And then that's where I learned a lot of tradecraft. You have this quote. So you wrote a book called Tie Stick. I'm going to pull a quote from it right now.

It says one afternoon, a long-haired, well-traveled surfer came into the surf shop. And after exchanging warm greetings and elaborate handshakes with the shopkeeper, he threw a big plastic bag filled with greenish-brown plant matter onto the counter and said, tie sticks, bro. That same summer, my friend. friend found his older neighbor's stash of tie sticks and stole one. So it was just like this seemed like the thing. You also had another good quote in there. The quest for utopia turned into self-indulgence and narcissism. The beach was an escape, a constant and stable refuge during a time of uncertainty.

This is like the 70s. Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, as I said, almost all of my peers' parents were divorced. And, you know, and luckily athletics grounded me very much, right? What athletics, what were you doing? Baseball, basketball, football from five years old to 14 years old, every season, with the same guys, you know, Pop Warner, and, you know, we were the Palisades Dolphins, light blue uniforms with dolphins on our helmets, about 40 blonde-haired white boys. And our schedule was, Watts, Crenshaw, and that wasn't even the bad teams like Pico Rivera, where these Mexican teams running the wishbone, you know, and you're just like, what is this?

Yeah, and we're in our dorky little, you know, Palisades dolphins, you know. But there were some great athletes who came out of the Palisades, Steve Kerr, Jay Schrader. So it was interesting because back then, L.A. was not segregated. So we were, you know, we were going up against the best of the blacks had to offer, the best the Mexicans had to offer. And we had a lot of mutual respect for each other through athletics. So what is it segregated now? I would say the L.A. riots change things dramatically. And I saw with my younger half-siblings, they didn't, you know, they stayed in their little, you know.

Enclave. Yeah. And it wasn't good, you know. And then I, you know, then I went to private school and it was. So this is once you turned 14, 15 or whatever? Yeah, so I was public school until seventh grade. Then I got sent to a very difficult prep school, despised it, fought it every step of the way. Did you have to wear a uniform and stuff?

No, but just had to do about four hours of homework a night. And, yeah, and, you know, we fought a lot in public school. I mean, back then, we all went to a park after school. and played sports, unsupervised always. And people fought all the time. And it was a very honest hierarchy. And so I had a guy try to bully me at the private school. And I was like, oh, you've got to be kidding me.

And so I waited for cross-country running day. So we could get the furthest possible away from the coaches and then tripped him from behind and then just, just he, and I let him bully me. Like I, I, you know, I, you know from fighting. A lot of it's acting. And so I got him like, like salivating. And then, you know, I probably hit him 15 times in the face.

Dang. Unanswered. He didn't even put his hands up. And then, no, no, but then he had like weird knots all over his head from that day forward. And I won't tell you his last name, but it begins with an L. and his name, he became lumpy L after that day. And then nobody bothered me at private school anymore. And then I wasn't invited back because I'd been on academic probation

and was starting to turn pretty bad by about 10th grade. And then I went to a very, very fancy movie star kid, very permissive, very liberal school in Santa Monica. And that's where I really went bad. because I had an old buddy from sports whose family were all big Crips. And so he was there as the basketball ringer. So they had this ringer basketball team. And so we were involved in all kinds of selling weed, charging people to park at their own high school.

It wasn't pretty. And I wasn't nice. And what's your dad doing during this? He's just working his ass off all the time. Working his ass off kind of has a new family, new wife. And, you know, they were just like, they would say, well, how's Peter doing? My dad said, well, there's still sand in the house, so he's alive. And that was about it.

And so then, yeah, and I was the only one who didn't go to college. I moved to Australia at 18 to surf and had an incredible time. You say this in the book, Thai sticks. Our extreme confidence in the ocean often translated to dangerous sense of freedom and arrogance on land. At 14, I was busted by customs at Tijuana border trying to smuggle fireworks. At 16, I was sneaking onto private government property to surf waves guarded by barbed wire fences, no trespassing signs, and men with guns. At 19, I moved to Australia and never looked back.

There was very little we were not willing to do if it enabled us to surf perfect uncrowded waves, whether it was bringing a few cases of Canadian whiskey through the surf during prohibition, poaching some illegal Mexican lobsters for mobsters in vows. Vegas working on the gambling boats anchored in international waters off Santa Monica Pier or offloading or offloading a load of Thai marijuana. California Watermen had always been part of the black market. Fast money, fast money bought time and freedom. That's like a history of what surfers have been doing for the past since the prohibition crying out loud. You say by 16, marijuana was my daily bread.

without which no surfing session was complete. Although there was a Western Surfing Association, a National Scholastic Surfing Association, a Christian Surfing Association, and probably even a Republican surfing organization, my peers and I were members of the Marijuana Surfing Association. Not all surfers smoked pot. Some were adamantly opposed to it,

but for us, pot and surfing went hand in hand. Not only was smoking an anesthetic for that dulled life's sharp edge, It was above all an effective time killer for our endless waiting, whether it was a swell to come, the tide to drop, or the wind to change. We always seem to be waiting for something. You know, one of the things that I tell people a lot, and it seems like you're just knee-deep in this, when you're young, you don't connect what you're doing right now with your future.

And I think that's a huge problem. It leads kids to do the wrong things because they don't recognize, that, oh, what I'm doing right now, this is going to impact my future. Whether they're not thinking about their future or they don't think they can get caught or they think they can get away with anything or they think they're immortal, all those things. It seems like you were just knee deep into, hey, I'm living for the moment right now. That's it. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. And it took a long time to repair the damage because I went to Australia. So you graduated from high school? Yeah. And then once you graduated from high school, now you're 18, 19 years old. No, no, I'm 18. So you're 18 years old. And does your dad want you to go to college?

Did you get good grades? No, but I was always working. I always had a couple jobs. So I was always, I had a union job or, you know, I was, I was never lazy. And I was always motivated just by not traditional things. And so I would work my ass off. and then I would sell, you know, pot on top of that. But, you know, very kind of only pot, only to adults, only large quantities, never to kids or like a dealer.

I really kind of frowned on that. And just saving all my money for the big surf trip, right? And so I did that for about 10 months after high school. Then I flew to Australia and I lived at Broken Head Point between buying. Byron Bay and Lennox Head with a famous old shaper named Michael Cundeth, and George Greeno was our neighbor, who I knew a little bit from Santa Barbara, and it was just bliss. And I traveled all over Australia with some of the best surfers at the time. One of my best friends was a guy named Aunt Corrigan, who was the best surfer of his generation,

schoolboy, cadet, champ. They wanted him on the pro tour. He went to work at the pub instead. And I love the Aussies because they didn't care. If you're a dick, you're a dick. And they're going to call you out on it. And, you know, the pubs and the drinking and fighting and fighting and fighting. And, you know, it was a wild time, the Aussies.

And I had a ball. And then I went to Micronesia. I served Micronesia, New Caledonia, Fiji before Tavarua, then French Polynesia. and then I had a Tahitian girlfriend, and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. And I'm there, and it just, it was too good. And then suddenly... So now, are you 19 now?

Yeah, I'm 19. You're 19 years old. Damn, that's... You're rolling. And so suddenly a strange car pulls up in the driveway. And I look... Okay, so wait a second now. You're in Tahiti at this point?

Yeah. You got a Tahitian girlfriend. At her house. You're surfing, living the jihad. dream. Yeah. And you're in her house. Yeah.

Living there, staying there. And now what do we get? Strange car pulls up. Fat middle-aged Frenchman jumps out. Eyes pop this far out of his head. Knocks me out of the way. Run straight for the bed. Rips the sheets off the bed.

Start smelling the bed like a dog. I run and grab my path. passport, whatever I can find, and fucking leave half of my shit there and beat feet onto this street up in the hills above Papiete. And I'm just going like, but she said she loved me. And so now I'm in the Quay and Papiete. I check into some Dengi Hotel. Turns out it has like a transvestite disco in it.

And I was really pretty blonde-haired surfer back then. And, you know, and I'm basically, like, had to barricade my door. And then I'm like, I'm going back to L.A. So I get back to L.A. After about a year away, and I see my friends are basically sitting stoned in the same chairs I left them in a year earlier. And I had kind of a moment of Satori and said, like, I'm out of here. I'm never living here again. And I'm getting as far away from as fucking place as I can.

And so... Hold on. That's a weird thing to have because it seemed like everything was kind of, I mean, other than this big French dude who kind of rolled in on your dreams. But, you know, you could find another Tahitian girl or another girl or, I mean. Not one that was sponsoring me. Oh, that's cool. That's true.

So he was technically sponsoring. Yeah, exactly. But you get back to L.A. Okay, so your friends are still kind of stone and they're surfing or whatever, but it's It seems like that's an extreme viewpoint to suddenly have unless, I guess, the connection that I just was talking about where people don't understand that what they're doing now impacts their future. So that's probably what it was.

You made this connection between, oh, I've been gone for a year and these guys are doing the same thing and they're going to be doing that in five years. They're going to be doing that in 10 years. Oh, what I'm doing right now is going to impact my future. So maybe you did make that connection. Well, also, I had surfed such good ways. and so many good waves. I mean, Lennox had back then light crowds, the outer reefs of Cape Iron,

you know, big waves, broken headpoint every day. So that I got back, I was like, okay, I'm going backwards now. Like, I've done all this. And so I found this college of small, another extreme liberal liberal arts school, Bard College. And at that time, I think there were about 750 students. and they basically took your pulse and saw that your check cleared and you could get in. And so they had an immediate decision plan.

So I flew back. I'd been in L.A. maybe four or five days. I found out about it. I flew to New York. I got in. Was it just timing-wise? It happened to be in the fall or whatever,

or whenever they were accepting people. August. Yeah, they had a rolling admittance thing. And it was basically almost an art school and in a remarkable place. and it was up in the woods of New York State, and I got really into hunting and fishing. And so I just, I fished, I had a trout stream on my college campus,

and I fished and hunted every single day, and I had seven weeks off for Christmas, so I'd go to the North Shore every Christmas, and then I'd go to Scorpion Bay every summer. So I'd work in the unions, make money, and then go to Scorpion Bay. So I still got to surf a lot, But I became a pretty serious student.

And it was not easy because I was damaged goods because I hadn't done shit in high school. So I was, like you said, making up for these errors. And I was there with these, you know, really privileged kids from the East Coast. And like, for example, I had never, ever contemplated doing, you know, heroin or anything like that. The first time I even heard about it was on the East Coast with the most privileged children. of America and and it was horrifying to me and so I became a very very serious student and and had some incredible professors and wrote a really first-rate thesis on my great grandfather's time at Nuremberg. Before we get there it seems like you had a moment of

clarity also when it came to the marijuana business. Yes. So in the book tie sticks you say you get pulled over and you say the officer took one look at my bloodshot eyes caught a whiff of the car's interior and asked son are you transporting narcotics across state lines in that moment under the dark desert sky told myself if I got out of this jam I would never put myself in this position again although I continue to smoke pot I never trafficked again so how did you get that how'd you get through that um you know tradecraft on some level. I had, you know, I was like a half a pound or a quarter pound, and it was vacuum bagged and wiped down with the gas or some solvent in the cushion of the driver's seat. And it was a

hatchback Mustang, GT. And I'd been driving straight from L.A. and was all the way at the border of Texas and New Mexico. And I had two joints for the drive. And this was just for my my personal consumption in college because there was no good pot on the East Coast. And so I'm smoking my second joint and I drop it on the ground. I turn on the interior light. I pass a cop going about 85. I don't even see him. And I see, you know, he lights so far back and say, oh, that can't be for me.

And then I'm hit with a spotlight and he's on the PA going, keep your hands on the steering wheel and pull over to the start of the road. So I'm rolling down both windows, the Cheech and Chong shows going on. And I take a really long time to stop. And he walks up. Yeah, no, he said, son, he said, there's a fruity herbal aroma in the car and a brown stain on your lip. And I just said, no, sir, that's all I would say, no, sir. Okay, I'm going to have to ask you to step out of the car.

Yeah, do I have consent to search? So I gave him the keys hoping he would open it without, and he was too smart. So he said, he made me give him consent. And then he started pulling my bags out. And one had a bunch of blocks of white surfboard wax. And up against a car. And he was sure it was like Coke or something. So then he kind of, and then he's going through all my bags.

And then I have these bundles of slides and brown paper with duct tape wrapped around him up against a car. And so he gets two big buildups, two strikes. and now we're like 20 minutes into it. And he's an American Indian. And then finally, he's, you know, my seats are still folded down. He hasn't folded the seats up. I have surfboards. I have all kinds of conversation.

So he's asking me about this. And he's kind of realized, okay, this guy's not that bad. And then he says, son, we're going to strike a little deal. And he goes, you're going to keep it under 50. while you're in New Mexico and we're going to call it even. And that was the hardest part because I was going to jump in his arms. I'll never do it again. I'm sorry, officer. And I really never did it again.

And that was that. Because I had made it over the Rubicon, you know, and I had turned my life around. But I almost fucked it up out of just, you know, arrogance and stupidity, you know. You track on any of the friends that you had back from that era? Absolutely. I'm still friends with all of them for better or worse. Yeah, all of them. Saw them, surfed with them in Malibu yesterday.

And, you know, some of them have been, you know, real heavy lifters when it comes to drugs. You know, like they should take them to the Mayo Clinic and test them because from crack to fentanyl to and lost a lot of friends to fentanyl. Lost a lot of friends to opiates in the last few years. So fentanyl, fentanyl is a fake or a. A man-made opioid? Is that what it is? Oh, yeah, yeah. And it's what a thousand times stronger than or something? Absolutely. Do you know the actual number? How much stronger it is than heroin? It depends on the ratio, but it's it's orders of magnitude and you know, and it's in my opinion, asymmetrical warfare against the United States by China. And so the Chinese ship the chemicals

to the Mexican cartels. They make them. Thanks to our poorest border, it comes. It comes. comes across. I mean, we had... Where do you get the, like, where's this theory come from that the Chinese are sending the chemicals to Mexico? It's fairly well known because they would get American medical journals that had drug recipes that were too addictive that weren't ever approved. And whether it's, I don't see it as like Dr. Evil, you know, with his pinky and his mouth coming. up, but look at the impact that it's had on America. In last year, more Americans died than 108,000 Americans died of ODs. So that's more than Korea, Vietnam, and the War on Terror combined. And nobody seems to be too up in arms about it. Is that in one year? One year.

108,000. Yeah, according to the CDC. As a parent, that scares me more than anything. So the reason it scares you as a parent, because your kid can be at a party, And someone says, hey, you want to take some ecstasy? Exactly. And they take ecstasy, but it turns out being fentanyl all laced and they're dead. Yeah. And that happened in my town in North Carolina. The kid was a sports star getting ready to go to college, you know, senior party.

Let's take some ecstasy and boof, dead. Happened some naval academy students, right? Yeah. Some naval academy students in Florida down there partying. Yeah. A couple of them died. I mean, just like a horror. Yeah, it is.

And to me, I mean, I mean, enforcing drug policies are difficult. But, you know, and then you look at like Purdue Pharma and how the opiate crisis came to America and the corruption. I mean, that's at our core. That's the nation's problem now. It's just a kind of corruption I saw in Cambodia. And, you know, where Pelosi's husband's buying the stock that she's about to approve or Hunter's

laptop or this kind of stuff. And it's a bipartisan game. I'm not, you know, I just, it's, you know, and like we were saying prior to the interview, everybody's in too deep with the Chinese to really call them out on anything. And our obsession with Russia is conspicuous to me compared to the blind eye we turned to China. Now with Taiwan, we're starting to firm up a little bit. But that's sleep, We're sleepwalking, basically, and we're, you know, foreign policy has public relations. And to have the same neoconservatives back, like you, you know, so succinctly talk about, I forget your exact phrase, but, you know, taking responsibility for your failures and extreme ownership, I think. And we look at these foreign policy elites that have just been wrong on wrong and wrong.

and I've had moments where I got to write for the big periodicals and stuff like that, but I always went too far, and I always, I mean, I was all over Soros's guys during the 90s because they were utopians. Oh, the International Criminal Court with universal jurisdiction. It's like, well, we kind of tried that. Woodrow Wilson, and it didn't work out so well. And all those people went on to huge positions, you know, Ben Rhodes, Samantha Powers. These were Cub reporters. These are my peers. And, you know, you played ball, you got tapped, you got pushed to the head of the class. And so I was in the odd position where I was critical of the war on terror from a policy perspective

and thought it could have, you know, particularly when it went to Iraq because I had friends at the Army War College that I would call and say, really impressive guy, Lieutenant Colonel Conrad Crane, who was Petraeus's brain, really. And he was the author of the Counterinsurgency Manual. And he said, yeah, Tom Warwick from the State Department, who I had argued with about war crime stuff, he said he wrote the whole occupation plan. They had like eight volumes. And Rumsfeld said, Warwick, State Department, chuck it.

And so people on the inside were nervous and kind of going like, well, we don't really know where this is going, but it's going. And, you know, like, you know, worse than an error is a blunder. And it's kind of blundering. And, you know. Yeah, I would say worse than an error is to not assess your situation and say, oh, yeah. You know what? I was wrong about this.

And here's the adjustments we need to make now. Yeah. And it took so long for any kind of that type of recognition that it was ridiculous. And then Libya and then Syria and. Keep rolling. You know, and now. It'll work this time. And by the way, you know, you can go all the way back to Vietnam.

Sure. You can look at the exact, it's just the exact same thing. It's the exact same thing in Vietnam. Everything that was going on. It's like, oh, the generals only listen to the, the politicians only listen to the generals and the generals only listen to themselves. Yeah. And no, no one's actually talking to the troops on the ground that know what's happening

and could actually devise a way to move forward in a positive way. Doesn't happen. No. Freaking ridiculous. All right, so going back to, going back to a little tangential discussion, it's all good. Going back to you, so you end up in college, you go to this Bard College and you're, you're having a good time. You enjoy it. Yeah.

And you, so talk to me about your master's thesis. Well, no, just an undergraduate. Okay. And I won a bunch of awards. So what was it? It was on the Nuremberg trials and the secret release of the convictory. Nazis to trade to get German rearmament. Basically, the Germans say, and the Germans were masterful, you know, and I mean, state craft, come on, we're going to beat them. And they said, oh, you have to

release our prisoners of war if you want a German army. And now, you know, with the Soviet Union seeming to be menacing in Europe, Berlin splitting, and the Germans are pouring gas on it, you know, And so one of Hitler's best spymasters on the Soviet Union, Reinhard Gaelin, he took all their records on the Soviet Union and buried them and then surrendered to the U.S. And he said, okay, you want that? You get all my guys off the war crimes list. And, yeah, we'll give you all the intelligence you want on the Soviet Union. So they flew Galen at Al to the United States.

And he would kind of hype up the Soviet threat to keep the Americans. you know, on their heels. And, and so the Germans masterfully manipulated us, and we wound up freeing some of the worst German war criminals, like some of the Einzatz commandos, Einzutschgruppen, who followed the Vermecht, and were just pure executioners. And so, you know, that was quite alarming. When I was younger, I was a little more idealistic before I did field work. And so I then, and it was an interesting, so that became my PhD dissertation. So then I went to Columbia to study with Brigadier General Telford Taylor, who was the chief prosecutor, scary guy.

And there's scary in what way? There's a, well, he, I think he argued, I don't know how many Supreme Court cases. There's a famous movie called the paper chase about law school. And John Hausman is this really, yeah, he was. John Hausman times 10. And if you went off topic talking to him, he would just close his book up and say, I see we're finished today. And that was it.

You were dismissed. And old-fashioned law school, you go, Jones, tell me about the Smith Act. And you get two shots the whole semester. And if you blow it, that's half your grade. And so... So wait, so this is Columbia Law School? Well, I got my PhD in history, but I also took classes in the law school and the School of International Affairs and had some incredible professors. And it was horrible.

I hated every minute of it. I'm so glad I did it now, but it was, you know, like being locked in a box car for four years or something. What was your vision at that time for your life? Like, what did you see yourself doing? Did you want to go into journalism? Did you want to be a professor? What did you want to do? I thought I was going to go to law school.

And then I got my master's in history. I wrote another thesis, went another step further on Nuremberg. And then I got into Columbia Law School, Journalism School, and history. And at that point, you're kind of a professional athlete. So you get no tuition, you get money and all that in the history. And then I kind of pitted them all against each other, and I got the best deal from history.

and I was still not totally committed to academia. I just, you know, was getting a free Ph.D. And I really enjoyed it and I was going to write a book. And so I think it was journalism more moving in that direction. But I was always kind of more active person. I didn't want to just sit on the sidelines. And then the opportunity came as I finished to go to Cambodia. And it was what I wanted to do, you know.

So how'd that opportunity? opportunity spring up? As I said, these two guys I grew up with in California were photographers for agency France Press. They stumbled across the cache of negatives at Tool Slang Prison. And they set up a secret dark room and were printing them and really preserving the original negatives, the evidence of war crimes. And that I knew that's the key.

punishing the individuals is obviously important, but creating an empirical record of the crimes. That's what's made Holocaust revisionism so difficult because Nuremberg created an unassailable historical record. So that's where my mind was. I didn't think that they would ever try anybody. And in fact, they did. And I played a small role in keeping those issues. alive, preserving the evidence and passing that evidence on to the Cambodian documentation center.

Then I worked closely with them as I went further on. So what year is this now? So this would be 94 is my first trip. And then... When did you... Side note. When did you start training Jiu-Jitsu? I was training in Jekundo first with a guy named John Peretti in.

in New York City who was a former pro kickboxer and a real badass who fought on Indian reservations and was fighting like MMA matches in the tunnels beneath Chinatown. And before the era of closed circuit TV, he had those A6 tiger shoes and he would so steal toes in them. And we get in all kinds of fights in New York City and beat up bad people. people and he encouraged us to do that. And John Donahir was kind of around a bit at that time. And so I was, you know, I was training with Preddy, a lot of kickboxing.

And he was a real, a very brilliant guy, an odd guy, very sadistic in his training. Everything was live, full contact. And he would bring in incredible fighters that he knew. He brought in a sumo wrestler. Igor Zinoviev who fought, beat Mario Sperry. We met him when he had just come and he was fighting underground fights. A Russian fencer who was the fastest human I've ever seen only in one direction. And, you know, small arms stuff and all kinds of different things.

And we were all kind of scared of wrestlers. And Peretti talked about fighting this Russian wrestler who almost broke a lot. his neck and killed him in the first round of their challenge match. And then he knocked him out so unconscious that he thought he killed him in the second round. But that left a big mark. So he never, he encouraged us to finish our fights on the hardwood floor. And so we had no mats. And not many people lasted that long in that school. And then I heard about the Garcia brothers, the Mexican guys, the Garcia brothers. And that was the Gracies.

And so then I had a friend who was a college wrestler, and he said, oh yeah, I'm training with Hicks and Gracie on Pico. So you came back out to California? I come every summer. So when you spent your summer in California, you got to, that's the first time you went down to Pico. Yeah, I went first time, I think 92. I got a private.

And then Hickson said, come back. You know, come back and really train. And so then the next summer I trained, you know, three days a week in the men's, open men's daytime class. And my friend used to say it was it was lunchtime on the prison yard. And it was, you know, we had Eric. This is 94, 95? No, 93.

So this was Eric Paulson. Yeah. John Lewis was in there as a white belt. and as I said in the book, like they were minor compared to guys like you. Then there was like prison extraction unit guards that were so big. And the narly's guy was an offshore oil rig like pipe joiner guy. It was like 300 pounds.

And he would just grab a wrist and like peel. They just take things. And yeah, Paul Voonak was in there. And then just all the karaoke, Brazilian Rio guys coming here and coming there. And I surfed well. And they knew me from surfing. So they liked that. And I was a good stand-up fighter.

So, and we had to do a lot of stand-up back then. And Luis LeMau would put on these ridiculous leather boxing gloves. And I do my Bruce Lee stuff. And they all, like, Hickson's kids thought it was the best, you know. And it was a great time, you know. And Hickson and I became good friends. And not that deep, but then we both kind of had a pivotal moment in both of our lives. And it was when I was going to start in Cambodia and he was going to fight in Japan.

And we would run into each other at sunrise at Malibu. And just there's Hickson. Hey, Hickson. And we talked for an hour. And I don't think I've had any superficial, conversations with Hickson in 30 years. And it's always straight to the guts of it. And then I started, you know, going to Cambodia. And a lot of times I would come straight back from a gnarly trip right to his house, always unannounced. In the same clothes I've been wearing,

smelling like wood smoke and kind of spun out on volumes and beers. And because you can't sleep after you get that wound up, right? And he'd take one look at me, and he'd go, take off your boots. And he said, let's play around a little bit. And he wouldn't even let me start my show and tell. And then I'd have like a two-hour private in like street clothes. And then he'd say, okay, like, what the fuck happened here on this one?

And so then I would tell them these like these martial arts scenarios, like fighting on motorcycles. I got attacked on motorcycles once and like had a full 30, 40 mile an hour fight on motorcycles with three guys trying to pull me off and we made them crash and then a lot of mob stuff. And as I was saying earlier... This is all in Cambodia.

Yeah, in Cambodia. Like in, gosh, I don't know, I think about 99, they attacked the Cambodian government orchestrated mobs that attacked the Thai embassy. And the Thai ambassador had to be. escape in a speedboat. And any Thai business was ransacked by kind of government orchestrated mobs, icons, but in plain clothes, Molotov cocktails. And as I was saying earlier, I really began to see the mob as this like organic organism that, you know, feeds on the sound of broken glass

and the smell of fire. And they were all on motorcycles. And they would, the, the military police would come and disperse them, and then you'd hear the beep, beep, beep, and they'd all honk their horns, and they'd reform up. And it went on all night, and you'd hear the beep, beep, beep, beep. And this was my wife's first trip to Cambodia.

So you were bringing your wife on these trips? Nah, this was supposed to be a mellow one. Okay. Yeah, I said, oh, no, it's mellow. It's not bad anymore. And this springs up out of nowhere. And we were in the capital this time, and I was not expecting much.

and she goes oh look fireworks i go those are tracers and uh and so and it was a remarkable thing um you know that really stuck with me of of and i think as a society we're moving towards this point of of you know this mob gets kind of the military police heard them down this narrow street and so they're they're like five abreast all on those little motorcycles two or three guys on the motorcycle and they're kind of street punks right and there's three military policemen all hard old probably former camer rouge guys dark skin which is typically the you know the camere rouge guys are more peasant areas and and they block them off and they all have AKs old banged up AKs and they walk up and they walk up and the lead punk and the lead cop go nose to nose and the punk's going,

and you see it. I'm on a balcony, second floor, right above it. And the lead cop plays really passive. Oh, yeah, okay, man, I'm sorry. And he wheels around, takes two steps back, nods to his guys, whips it around from the hip. They all open up 30 round magazines, foot over the heads. of the mob.

Reload, those guys, leave their bikes, run each other over. It turns into complete keystone cops. They turn into the biggest bunch of cowards you've ever seen in your life. And then I went out on the balcony and started clapping. And, you know, but yeah, and I just, I think, yeah, it had a profound impact on, you know, on the mob and the cowardice of the mob. when someone has the courage to stand up to the mob. What was the initial thread that you caught onto for going to Cambodia?

In my mind, this was the worst unaccounted for atrocity since World War II. This was the event that destroyed the never again promise, that made the whole never again, and we're not going to be bystanders to genocide mythical. And I said, how and why did this happen? And that's what made me go. That's why I wanted to start there. Then Bosnia happened.

And then I'm in the Foreign Correspondence Club watching Rwanda. And Rwanda is just on a magnitude that, you know, is like Cambodia. And so these things are flaring up all around us. The UN's sending forces doing the same bullshit neutrality thing. You had the French Foreign Legion in Cambodia. Generals Louridane and Redoux said, unleashes, war is our business. We'll go fight these guys, and they wouldn't take them off the leash.

And both generals resigned. You had the Aussie SAS. You had real serious guys, but they'd send the Bulgarians. They'd send, you know, I mean, the most lasting legacy of the UN in Cambodia was AIDS, because they took soldiers from all over the world, put them all over the country and that was their most, and UN land cruisers that the Khmer Rouge all stole.

And they would just steal them at gunpoint. And one of the guys that I hired an ex-Kamir-Rouge guy, he would then sell them back to the UN. He would be the negotiator for them to buy back their own cars. And it was just weakness upon weakness. Yeah, you say in Facing Death in Cambodia, your book, you say, I began the research that would make this book possible in 1993.

I was completing my PhD dissertation at Columbia University on the Nuremberg, war crime trials, and laws of war. The dissertation was awarded honors, but it was cold comfort. I felt hollow and fraudulent, like a boxing commentator who had never been in the ring. I was writing about modern conflict as a civilian leading a secure life and an Ivy League university. 28 and a product of one of the softest generations in American history. What did I know about conflict resolution beyond what I had read? to teach undergraduates about how the world should be without addressing the rapidity changing the rapidly changing world on its own terms was to perpetuate a familiar cycle of fraudulence so you were going to go get in it yeah then so so as cambod the first time you went to Cambodia like how much intel did you gather the first time you went there um I saw that it was that the UN had done nothing about accountability. I saw that the evidence of war crimes and genocide and all that

was in the wind. That, you know, I mean, we're finding stuff, you know, from third parties. I got a bunch of material in East Germany because the East Germans came in with the Vietnamese military. So there was no kind of, it was catch as catch can. So my main imperative initially was to preserve the historical evidence. And I was a historian with a background in war crimes. And so, you know, when I went to Telford Taylor and said, oh, do you think I should do this? He looked at me like, you know, are you stupid?

What did you study all this stuff for? And my grandfather, when I went, the pilot, when I went to tell him, hey, I'm going to go to Cambodia. You know, he said, yeah, great. Don't be careful. Careful kills. And so nobody in my family thought it was the least bit. strange, you know. So that, you know, my dad's half-sister, Marty Hoy, would have been the first

woman to climb Everest, I think, in 82, and her waist belt then did, and she fell 5,000 vertical feet, and they never found her body. And she was probably the greatest female mountain climber of all time. My uncle sailed like a 29-foot boat from Ventura Harbor to the Marquesas and spent like six years sailing around the world. So we get it honest, you know. And so, I don't know, you know, it's just as normal. Now at some point, you know, when you're working the Cambodia case, you start pulling the thread on James Clark, Lance McNamara, Mike Deeds, and Crystal Lance.

Yeah. And that's, tell us about those guys. Well, I had friends from the marijuana trade who said, hey, these guys, we knew vanished in Cambodia. And we never, we don't know what happened, see if you can find any records, see if you can find anything about them. And I found one of their pictures in the prison, white guy, you know, surfer. And that was, you know, that was something I could identify with. Had I been 10 years older, it could have been me. I would have probably done that at that time. So that and then I met the families, you know, and that I think, and that's the thing also that leads us into the migues.

I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, but nothing is more damaging and traumatizing to a family than having a family member disappear and not knowing how, what, when, and not being able to tie that up and to see the trauma, that the family goes through as a result, alcoholism, suicide, all those kind of things, you know, really followed a lot of the Westerners who were captured by the Khmer Rouge. How were these guys rolled up initially? Sailboat, just got too close. And those disputed islands off of Cambodia, the Vietnamese and Cambodians were always fighting over.

So they had American fastboats, they had armed fishing boats. So they were patrolling that stretch of water and very vigilant about it. And so, yeah, so that was it. And they just got their boats, took them in, took them to tool slang prison, interrogated and tortured them for, you know, gosh, the last two who died, you know, there was days before the Vietnamese liberated Cambodia. So, you know, but they were three months or something, you know, just horrible tortures and and rewriting their confessions over and over and over and long, 30, 40, 50 page confessions.

And, you know, and that's the thing. And that's, you know, you see that at a certain point with torture, it doesn't work. So. It's crazy that the, that the Camer Rouge decided to photograph everyone. before they tortured and killed them. Yeah. Did you ever, what compelled them to do that? They were so paranoid that they had to prove to the leadership

that they were carrying out their orders. And the remarkable thing about that prison is there were roughly like 1,200 guards and staff members, something like 500 of them wound up as prisoners. One guy screamed, had a bad dream in the night and screamed, you're a CIA. One guy broke an axe handle, you're KGB. I mean, you know, this is Stone Age communism.

And basically, they're all spying on each other. They're all snitching on each other. They would have these meetings. And one guy I interviewed who was one of the head executioners named Him Hoy. And I was prepared to meet evil incarnate. And he was rumored to have killed thousands with, with the ox cart axle to the back of the neck. And so I said, you know, I'd be interviewing him

and a couple of Marlboro Reds and Tiger beers always kind of loosened him up a little bit. And he said, you know, I said, how did you get it to a sling prison? He said, well, they showed up in my village, you know, and you were drafted at gunpoint, and I ran away. And then they came back to my village.

I ran away again. and the second time they sent me to the front. In my first battle, I was shot in the head, and they said, oh, you're going to die so over the top. You lead the charge. He gets shot a bunch more times. He recovers from that. And then during the invasion of Phnom Penh, he gets a grenade dropped on him.

And I say, wow, you know, were you afraid you were going to die? He goes, no, I was afraid that I was going to get captured, and they were going to eat my liver in front of me. So he crawls under a house. survives that and they say oh comrade hoi you're such a valiant warrior we have a special job for you and they send him to a sling so he starts out as a low-level guard then his boss is accused he becomes a prisoner he moves up the food chain and and so his superiors keep getting killed so suddenly he's one of the head guards he's driving the truck to the killing fields at chung-ac and you know and i said something to

the effect like, do you feel bad about it or some stupid question like that? And he just looked to me, he goes, it was death either way. And, and, you know, and it was remarkable in that he, his whole life now is about penance. And, you know, because I would say like these guys like, oh, do you think it's important that Pol Pot has tried and we hold him accountable and all this rah-rah Western human rights bullshit? And they would say, No, not really at all. I think they should dig a big hole and bury all of it because vengeance breeds vengeance. And that's very Buddhist, right?

But then they would say, what does it matter? He's 70 years old. He's only going to live 10 more years. He's coming back for 15,000 lives as a cockroach. So he's going to get his. So their thing is you're reincarnated as the lowliest horrible creature on earth for the next 10,000 years. So anything we can do in our earthly time frame is immaterial to them. So that was interesting, you know, that really, and that, the guy who probably had a bigger,

more profound effect on me was one of the survivors, a guy named M. Chon. They kept him alive because he could carve effigies of Pol Pot. Sure, he was a good artist. Yeah, he was a good artist. He figured out that he was a good artist. Yeah. And I, same thing. First trip.

Oh, isn't this great? Never again. We're going to get you justice. And he cracked. And he said, you know what? I'm only talking to you because the museum director told me to. And I don't like talking to you guys. And every time I talk to you, you shorten my life.

I think that they should take all this crap and dig a big hole and bury it and tear down this prison. because vengeance reads vengeance. And then I turned off my tape recorder, said, okay, I'll see you later. And I could have easily spun that and gone, you know, never again, rah, rah, rah, and gotten a big check from George Soros.

But I really, it put me on my heels. And I thought, what cold comfort that we're going to come in, like the white nights after the genocide and hold a couple old guys up, accountable. And at this time, you've got Rwanda going on. You've got Bosnia going on. I mean, during the former Yugoslavia war, they're indicting people with an ongoing conflict where there's massive atrocities being carried out and they're not even doing anything. Rwanda, the same, East Timor. And these are just blowing up all over the place. And the U.N.'s taking this very

passive, you know, non-interventionist. Even when they have forces on the ground, they don't take them off the leash. And so the whole thing seemed very fraudulent to me. I went to the Hague a couple of times and, you know, and again, I call it the human rights industry. It's an industry. And when I started in the whole war crimes thing, I was one of about three people. Nobody was in this field. And then it becomes this booming industry with the Hague, with all these institutes and places at different universities. And I've worked on a lot of these high-profile cases because I have subject matter expertise, but I can't take money or I'm a partisan. So I've walked a strange line in my career, you know, where, you know, I worked on the Jose Padilla, the Dirty Bomber case. I worked on the

David Irving case. I worked in the Cameroos case. And, you know, and I've sort of, you know, run afoul of everyone over the years. And it's funny because books are like children. They make their own friends. So I thought, oh, the New York Times, the polite society, they're going to all love me. No, they hated me. And it was the professional military and the far left became my best constituents, you know. And my first book...

How was that? You'd have to ask them. This is Law and War. You're talking about your first book? Law and War. Yeah, Law and War is an interesting book because that took me 10 years to get published. And it got rejected by a lot of publishers. And I would get, they take your book, they send it out to the experts in the field.

And I would always get one really good review and then one really bad review. Because basically I said, Nuremberg trials, if anything, drew the Germans together in their defense of the Third Reich. It was the Marshall Plan, it was economic prosperity. That's what converted them to see the era of the Third Reich. And the era of the Third Reich, the key players are the children of the people who lived through the Third Reich. The 68er generation comes of age and say, Dad, what did you do in the war? So that was... Would you say the 68er generation?

Yeah, the 68ers is, you know, like 68 was a big year of strife in the United States. people that were born in 19. Yeah, like the kind of lefties of, yeah. And so that generation, that's when that society began to reckon with its past. It was not in the 50s. So that was a very unwelcome message. But then a German historian, a guy by the name of Yerg Friedrich, he was one of my reviewers. And he said, oh, yeah, of course, we all know this. This is, this should be published, blah, blah, blah. And then my second guy sent me the most scathing criticism of anything I've ever written. And I, and Friedrich called me, hey, Maguire, oh, great job, blah, blah, blah. I said, it's done. I'm, I didn't get the contract. He said, what? And he sent, he said, send me the guy's

review. So then he went through the guy's review and ripped it apart and got me hired by Schiegel TV in Germany. So then he introduced me to Adnauer's war crime. advisors, the German defense attorneys, Floten Richter Otto Kronzbuehler, who was Dunitz and Krupps defense attorney. And this guy was Adnauer's special advisor on the war crime stuff. So in the treaty, restoring German sovereignty

in the 50s, where in their kind of let off probation in this gigantic thousands of page treaty, he inserts these paragraphs. that invalidate all the post-war war crimes trial decisions. The legal validity is rejected. And I would know one would ever found it out. But he said, look, I wrote it in Invisible Inc. I put the exception before the rule.

No good lawyer would ever do that. And so I had that in my book, and that was not happily received. So, yeah, so that was a difficult, you know, 10 years, knowing that you're right, but you've got to fight and fight and fight. And then the book got published. And, yeah, that's the book that the military liked and the left like. But the polite society sure didn't like it, but they didn't, they couldn't really come after me because they hadn't done the heavy lifting. Like I said, their analysis of the Nuremberg trials never went deeper than Robert Jackson's opening address.

It's this mythic myth of Nuremberg as this redemptive thing. And so, yeah. And then what about, what about death, facing death in Cambodia? How that one get received? Pretty well, actually. Yeah, that one, that one I did better, but still. And, I mean, is the end, what's your takeaway from, you know, vengeance breeds, vendors?

Is that your takeaway from that whole thing? Hey, bury this stuff in a hole and let's move on? No, definitely. But I think what really came home for me was that you have to talk to the culture that survived this, that endured this. You can't come from the high and parachute down from the hague. And that's what they did in Cambodia. And so when they finally, you know, they took more time to try four 80-year-old Khmer Rouge leaders than it took to try thousands of war. criminals after World War II. And, you know, I don't know how many millions they spent. The numbers

are impossible to tell. And they got involved in what I call therapeutic legalism, which is we need closure and healing. And you can't ask a court to do that. And then they point to Nuremberg. Say, look, Nuremberg did that, which is a myth. And so to ask a court to do anything more than punish the guilty and exonerate the innocent is too much. And so all of this, you know, therapeutic legalism, and you burden it with victims units and all this kind of emotional stuff. And that's the world we live in now, where, you know, these notions of comfort and safety. And I have a very kind of different view of it.

And I believe that freedom isn't safe. You know, the lamb's freedom's safe if you want this kind of timid little bleeding freedom, but the lion's freedom is a bold thing. And if the lion breaks its leg, the hyenas get it. And that's the game, you know. So you don't get it both ways. And I don't, and I'm very uncomfortable with the direction American society is going now with, you know, this note. And that's why I don't teach anymore because, and I love teaching.

It was very fun. but it turned into this notions of, oh, well, you know, I don't feel safe, I don't feel comfortable. I can't teach the Holocaust and Cameroos and you be comfortable. What is that? So I'm very Socratic in the way I taught in that, you know, you don't raise your hand. I call on you. And, you know, and that keeps them reading and keeps them on their toes. And I would walk in when I taught at Columbia with three by five cards.

And I'd say, okay, take one, pass it down, and they'd kind of be giggling. And then I'd say, fold it in half. And they go, ha, it's arts and crafts. I go, write your name on it. I can't be bothered to remember your name. Smith, why are you here? Smith, stock tips, sports scores, talk, and just, boom, fast, and make them all talk. And just like you dealt with in buds, by the end of that first class, they were bound together as a unit in tailors.

And then, you know, but then once that class was over, they go, Professor McGuire, I go, no, it's Peter. I said, that was a fucking show. I said, you call on me anytime you need a letter of recommendation, anything. You know, you survive, man. I'm yours for the rest of your life. And I'm still in touch with a lot of those students, and they've done incredibly well. And I also also taught Jiu-Jitsu while I taught history.

And I'd say any of you don't like your grade, you can come to the Jiu-Sit-Soo class and you can settle it with me on the mat. How's that sound? Hey, when you look at the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, when you look at the Nazis, Nazis had like a ramp-up period. You know, it took 1933. You could see it brewing. There was this sort of slower boil as the things started to transform. But the Khmer Rouge was like overnight madness. And madness at a level that's, it's actual insanity.

Well, it was class resentment that was stoked. And so you had an incredibly corrupt, you had the crazy King Seenuk. who was, you know, just this kind of wild playboy, an incredible decadent corruption of the elites, and the peasantry resenting them already, leading really hard lives. You know, when you go up in the Cambodian provinces, a day seems like a week and it's hot,

and it's just a hard, hard life. And so, you know, there seems, these very westernized, you know, decadent elites in the city. And then you have Pol Potting, Surrey, Qusampan, and these are all sore bone educated. So, and they bring the latest trendy Marxist theories. And particularly Mao. And the cultural revolution becomes, you know, the model. And they want the blank slate, clean peasants.

Year zero. Yeah, they want people, you know, most of the elites were, you know, real, you know, peasants with, you know, no education, nothing. And they would get them away from their parents and reshape them. And that's what they did. And they did very quickly. And they did it with great Chinese support and denial on the Western left, who were, you know, Noam Chomsky in particular. that, you know, would deny the atrocities and cast a shadow of doubt over what was going on when it was pretty clear what was going on. And then it was a very shameful period.

And then it was shameful afterwards when everybody knew and propped them up in the name of Cold War geopolitics. And so, yeah, and then, I mean, so you have in, you know, in 79, you have the Vietnamese knock out the Khmer Rouge. Then the Chinese take a run at the Vietnamese, and they have a nasty little border war for a minute there. And then they come to a truce, and basically the Chinese are like, you were not to talk about the genocide, okay? And they did a lot better than people thought they would, the Vietnamese. The Vietnamese are pretty fierce. and so yeah and so that that was that was how those the you know those cold war geopolitics you know shape things up all right so when did when did when did facing death in cambod do you

actually come out 2005 oh said you were working on that for you're working on that book for 10 years 10 years usually you're yeah you're not a fast writer no no I'm very fast but I had to let the events play out Hickson's book took me six months Okay, there you go. So that means you were you, you were in Cambodia when 9-11 happened. I was. And what was that like? It was surreal.

My buddy Luke Hunt, who had just come from Afghanistan, and I think he had interviewed Mullah Omar, and we were at the Foreign Correspondents Club. It was late. And he's an Aussie, and he runs up the stairs. World War III started, World War III. three started and I was like oh get out of here and and I was kind of in denial and I said oh you know it's just some drunk and a sessna and so I had a room I would keep at the foreign correspondence club so me and another reporter and Luke went down and were drinking beer and

watching the thing and all of a sudden the second plane flew in and I went what the fuck and then then the only thing I was right about was when all of a sudden the whole screen went gray. And I was like, it panicked. And I knew that from construction because I'd seen controlled, I'd seen buildings collapse and things like that because, you know, I've been around construction my whole life.

And so that's when it got real. My wife was in New York City. And so it was impossible to get in touch with her. And we were on the Upper West Side, so we weren't quite near it. But, yeah, that was, and it took me a long time to get back, and I was stuck over there. And, yeah, it was surreal. Okay.

And so this book comes out in 2005, Facing Death in Cambodia, that's received better than law and war. Yeah. And then in the meantime, you're working on this, on the Greeno Advanced Rescue Craft. Yes. So George Greenau, who's like a legendary kind of iconic surfer, shaper. He's kind of credited for the modern surfing fin. Yeah. How did you know him?

When I lived in Australia. That's right. You lived next door neighbor or something. Yeah. And then I would come often from Cambodia to Australia. And so it was like the key, the PTA. The S-D cure was being afraid of getting eaten by, I mean, getting, you know, killed by the Khmer Rouge, and then you go surf these outer reefs with George Green on have to worry about getting eaten by Great White Sharks.

And there were so many sharks there at that, and there still are. It's actually much worse now. And then, and I had grown up on boats, and George always had these incredible skiffs. And he had one, a 12-foot boat. He's an amazing fisherman. He caught a 12-foot and a 13-foot tiger shark on hand lines off his 12-foot boat, cut both heads off with a serrated bread knife, brought them both in. And, you know, before it was, before sharks became the new dolphin,

we regularly fished for sharks and didn't feel really bad about it. But anyway, so I fished with Georgia a fair bit, and I was living on the North Shore. I had been a lifeguard and I was having to make a lot of rescues in Mokalaya and the North Shore guy who does all the sleds and rescue stuff taught me out of drive a jet ski. And I was like, these things suck. And then I had friends in the teams and they were telling me about all you got to do is make this one Yamaha SUV that we want because it's stable. Just splash a mold off it. And of course, that would have been too easy. I don't do anything easy.

I always have to reinvent the wheel. So I call George, hey George, you still got the mold for the 12-footer? Yeah, yeah, I do. Okay, let's make a jet boat. And so in the dirt under George's house, me and my old right-hand man from Cambodia cut the jet ski up and married it to his 12-footer, and the first one came out of the mold.

Perfect. And then we canceled, We canceled a military program, and that really, I didn't understand military contracting, things like that. And then we were a big threat, and military industrial complex stuff, and it wasn't fun anymore. The military industrial conference will eat you alive. Yeah. And Ivan was a great ally, and teams loved the boat. the PJs actually became our best,

our best clients, because it was, you know, C-130 dropable. So did you actually start manufacturing them? Oh, yeah, yeah. We sold, I think, about 30 to the PJs. But then they made us, they didn't let us cut up Yamaha Jetskis anymore that were perfect with perfect wiring harnesses

and gauges and all that. So we had to cob and a crappy engine that they made us use and wiring harnesses and steering and all that. And just it was like death by a thousand cuts with NavC engineers and it was no longer fun at all. But I managed to get through it and came in on time and on budget and delivered the boats and then sold my company to a company called Maritime Applied Physics,

and now it's probably the best unmanned craft out there. And it's got a Volvo Penta and it's super badass. It goes like 50 knots. Now, was the James Clark, Lance McName, or Mike Deeds, Chris DeLance, those guys, those surfers, guys that were captured off of Cambodia and imprisoned and killed. Was that sort of the first thing that that, that the thread that led you to writing tie stick? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

And so I found out about that and I got more information and I was at Scorpion Bay and which is kind of like a, you know, a smuggler's retirement home now. And it was unbelievable. Oh, yeah, I knew them. And, you know, all these people, I knew them. I knew them. And then they kept saying, you need to talk to Mike Ritter. You need to talk to Mike Ritter. You need to talk to Mike Ritter.

And I finally met Mike Ritter. And he had been a big smuggler in Thailand. And what he didn't tell me was that he had been contracted to supply their load. And so he... So he had been contracted? To bring them. their load of pot. From Thailand.

From Thailand. Yeah, from trot. So those guys were on a boat sailing to Thailand. Yeah. They were going to link up. Yeah. And Mike Ritter was going to give them a load of pot to bring wherever, probably back to the States.

Yeah, and Ritter was a surfer from Santa Barbara. And he would go on a Thai fishing boat with, you know, usually no compass. They'd give them the crappiest boat they had because they didn't want to get it seized. And he'd have one of those truffle log spinners. and, you know, just old-fashioned navigating, and he'd bring the pot out, and, you know, pirates. And, I mean, that's, that period of time is the worst period of piracy in world history. This is what years? This is in the 70s.

Late 70s? Yeah, so, Vietnam falls in 75. So you have all those Vietnamese going out to sea with all their worldly possessions, usually in women's jewelry. That's how they carry their wealth. So you had the most feral, brutal pirates you could ever imagine. So that was a very dangerous piece of water. And so that's what Ritter was doing for many, many years and living in Thailand.

And he was one of the first guys to surf Grogigen, one of the first guys to surf Bali. So you had a bunch of smugglers in Bali in the off season. And basically Grodgigan was founded by pot smugglers. And so they were the ones who really were the first to really kind of explore the Indonesian archipelago. And that was, you know, Ritter was one of them. And so then I trained him as a historian. And then he started interviewing his sources of old retired smugglers. And we made sure we interviewed people who had been busted.

So there was at that time no double jeopardy. And then things got a little wobbly after 9-11. And then I was going to find the old Cameroge guys and, you know, different, you know, people on that side, law enforcement, confidential informants. There were a lot of old U.S. intelligence guys involved because, you know, they had the knowledge of Thailand. And they had the insurgent areas of Thailand were where all the pot was grown. So they had worked those insurgent areas during the Vietnam War. How long did it take you to write Thai stick? 10 years.

But that was a thousand hours of interviews we did. Yeah. What do you think the value of the trade, the pot trade coming out of that the surfers brought into America? Well, I mean, at that time, it was great. But ultimately, it's basic Adam Smith economics. It becomes too expensive to transport it. The lows get too big. I mean, we're talking about like 20, 30 ton loads.

And then it drives the industry to the United States. California is growing the best pot in the world. So people are like, why don't we just grow it in Mendocino or, you know, Trinity or one of those counties? And so there's no, the money's gone. And so that's ultimately what happens in 88. That's where there's a bunch of huge busts. and the biggest guys kind of go down and then nobody wants to bother with it.

And that's it. It just implodes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Now, at some point during this, you got another book that you're working on right now. Well, I guess before we get to that, you got, you did end up writing brief.

You wrote the Hickson book. And you kind of got into that a little bit. But what was the spark? How did you convince Hickson that he needed to write? a book? We had been talking about it for a long, long time, and he and I talk a lot. And like I said, and then it's never light. And there's a lot of stuff I know that he doesn't know, and there's a lot of stuff that he knows that I don't know. And we always were friends. And I was a jiu-jitsu skeptic. I was not- For how many minutes?

Well, it wasn't that it didn't work in a one-on-one situation. but in the worlds I was in. I loved it as an exercise thing. I loved it for the friends I made by going and beating these terrifying guys and then being nice and not humiliating them and making them into students and made some of my best friends around. I mean, I fought guys in West Australia, Canada, Maine, Cambodia, always with the like, well, that wouldn't work on me.

And, you know, how it goes from there. The skeptic. for three minutes. Yeah. So I was like John the Baptist of Jiu-Jitsu for a minute there because I was just had done it early. But I didn't like geese. And I didn't, you know, there were just pieces of it I didn't like.

I liked striking. I was confident striking. I had some very patented entries that were kind of like, you know, I don't have a politically correct way to say it. but the lunging special needs person. Like the drunken monkey. Exactly. Just like,

what? No, it was what, what, what? And then close the distance. And so, you know,

so I, you know, again, and I would throw this stuff at Hickson. Uh, come on, Hickson, like,

yeah, try to, yeah, try to disarm me with this knife. Like, because I learned the fencing from the Russian guys and they're so fast,

you're not, they're not doing this. They're doing that. And, uh, so, you know, we really kind of explored this stuff for a long, long time, and in a very honest way, and we're really good friends through a lot, through his son's death, and, you know, I knew his son

well, and so, yeah, he just finally, I think the COVID year, everybody, things were going slow, and that's how we got going. Well, I mean, that's a fantastic book. And you hit the New York Times bestseller list. Yep, yeah. whether they liked it or not. No, Hickson. Hickson did.

Boy, we got the worst review I've ever had in my life in Publishers Weekly, and it was, you know, toxic masculinity gone wrong, and it was classic. I loved it. No kidding. Oh, yeah, it was bad. I wrote a novel called Final Spin, and Publishers Weekly gave me a great review, and it was pretty awesome, and my editor sent it to me. He goes, I can't believe this.

They compared me to David Mammat. Wow. And just like, oh, this is, you know, bop. And my publisher was like, dude, this is insane that they gave you this incredible review. And I was like, well, it's not that insane, bro. It's an awesome book. But, but yeah, the thing, the thing that was cool about it was I know that publishers weekly, they don't play around. Like, if they're coming at you, they have no problem just trashing your book if they don't like it.

So they didn't like breathe. hated it, but it was great. And there was like, nobody should be interested in this book. There's only martial arts deviates or something to that effect. And then it was bestseller a week later. Tell us a little bit. You mentioned this quickly. You got the Fainting Robin Foundation, which is a nonprofit that you have.

The name of the foundation comes from an Emily Dickinson poem, which is if I can stop one heart from breaking. I shall not live in vain if I can ease one life the aching or cool one pain or help one fainting Robin unto his nest again. I shall not live in vain. Meaning that if you can help someone that's really not in a position to help themselves, that's going to be a positive thing. Absolutely.

What inspired that from you? I was watching my professions disappear. Journalism, number one. the internet really killed a lot of our careers you know we went from you know getting paid per word royalties every time something was published to flat rates and just it goes on the internet it's gone forever well i mean i kind of look at like that's because i'm on the other side right i'm like i'm from the people yeah yeah you know we have a podcast i remember i went to we had we had this podcast for maybe six months or something,

and I went and got interviewed on NPR. And so I roll into this NPR interview is in New York City. I go into a full-on studio. There's six or seven people behind the glass pane. There's two people in the room. Then there's the person that's interviewed. It's massive, like this massive production. I mean, as you can see, like this is the,

we're sitting in our recording studio right now, which is literally a converted closet. This used to be the maintenance. closet at Victory, MMA, and Fitness. We eventually made it a little bit bigger than it used to be. But I go in there and so then I go, you know, like how many people listen to, you know, what's the audience of your show?

Because I was talking to the guy a little bit afterwards. And he gave me some number and it was some not big number. And I was like, dang, here's me and Echo Charles with a thousand dollars worth, literally a thousand dollars worth of equipment. How much you spend when you first bought the gear? Yeah, $1,000. Yeah, $1,000 worth of equipment. And our audience was at least 20, literally 20 times as big as theirs.

Yeah, yeah. And I'm thinking, this is kind of awesome. Oh, yeah. Here's these people. They went to school and they got promotion and they're paying, they're paying people to listen. There's advertisements going out and all this stuff, all this hype. And we're sitting in here in a closet with $1,000 worth of equipment. Our audiences at least 20 times bigger than theirs.

So I support the downfall of journalism. Yeah. So tell me your take, what am I missing? Well, as much journalism, it's academia, and because I was also a professor. Okay. Are you going to make me attack the academic profession now, too? Oh, let's go. I'm happy to help.

But no, that, you know, I basically was making less money as a professor with three, two books, three books, Ivy League Ph.D. than I made as a construction labor without a high school diploma at 17 years old, without adjusting anything for inflation. And so what we've seen in academia is that the money's gone to middle management. So every special interest group now has a commissar that they go to who advocates for them. And the student is a customer now. So that's completely... Explain to me the commissar in the middle here.

How is that taking money out of the professor's pockets? Well, because professor's salaries have dropped, 10 years disappeared, to make way for this managerial class. Oh, got it. And so the managerial class, you know, will typically when I first started, I would be the assistant dean for a semester. It was always a professor. Now you have people who are neither scholars nor teachers. And this is this, you know, I have a PhD in education. come on you know you can teach or you can't teach i can't teach you how to teach and it's as much an art

as it is a science and uh and it's depressing frankly and i don't want to be around it it's it's not um there's just there it would yeah that's a whole that's a whole big ball of wax but um i was going to college when i went to college when i was 28 years old because i had been in the military in the military sent me to college, and I was going to the University of San Diego, and I was in class. I had an English professor, super cool, I was an English major,

and she said at the beginning of one of these classes, so I'd been in the Navy. I'd listened to Navy when I was 18 years old, and so I'd been in the Navy for 10 years at that time. And the professor was kind of saying, hey, listen, you know, here I am. I'm a tenured professor. I have a PhD in literature, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I went to this school and that school. and she goes, and yeah, I can't afford a house in San Diego. And so I'm sitting in the front row, which I always did. I sat in the front row of every class just looking at the professors just like no one else cared. I would line up my pens like in case I had a pen go down. I would be ready with a secondary. And so I'm sitting there in the front row. And I would over, I guess I was being a little bit abrasive, a little bit abrasive.

But the teachers usually love me because I was like the, I would the most fully engaged student they probably ever had in their lives. So I'm sitting in the front row. She gets done with her tirade and I just raised my hand, you know, straight up in the air. And she's like, and this, when I went to college was the only place in my life that they called me John because that's what was on the roster because my real name is John. So they call me John. I never corrected him because I didn't care. So she says, you know, yes, John. And I said, how long did you go to school for?

And she goes, well, it was total. I think it was the total was 10 years, you know, to get her, blah, this, this. I said, and how much did that cost you? And she said, you know, whatever it was. was $380,000 or something like this. And I said, well, hey, I said, I enlisted in the U.S. Navy when I got done with high school. And I've been working that whole time. And I have not one house in San Diego, but two.

And she was so, she was so frustrated with that statement. But it's kind of true. Because, you know, she literally spent two, that was what my first two houses in San Diego cost. I guess they cost a little bit more than that. but that was around what the first two houses I bought in San Diego. So, you know, that academic thing and, I mean, the academic world just seems to be, have gone, it's gone insane. Am I wrong?

Absolutely right. And the thing is, and I've seen this for a long time and spoken out against it for a long time, I'm a First Amendment absolutist. I believe anything short of that is sophistry, that this group gets. it's this level and you, you know, and then we come back to, to comfort and safety and psychic damage in this and that and oh, you're, you can't, you know, criticize this group because of the psychic damage you're inflicting and this and that. Once you go down that road, you're, you're in sophistry lane and I don't want to play that game. And so, yeah, it's just everyone,

my friends who are still in academia walk on eggshells and, you know, they have to watch out for the cultural commissars because, you know, then you have this kind of star chamber courts where the student goes to one of the many deans and says he looked at me in a way that made me uncomfortable. And my response to me, you were born uncomfortable. I can't help you with that. And your level of comfort and my level of comfort aren't the same. So then the professor is accused without a hearing, without knowing who his accuser is. So there's no due process.

I mean, one of the cases my foundation looked into was an anatomy professor named Michael Shively. He taught for 30 years at Utah Valley University. the president of the university's son, what was it, nephew, kind of instigated a crusade against him because he was, his classes were too hard. He didn't put things up on the right, you know, blackboard, you know, sort of computer thing. And they couldn't really get him on anything. And again, he didn't know who he was accused. by he didn't know what he was accused of and after about six months he started losing his mind and he blew his brains out and and then the family sued the university it came out that it was

you know that the president of the university intervened on behalf of her nephew it went all the way to the 10th circuit court of appeals now their attorney is going for a writ of cert to try to get the Supreme Court to take it up. But these are increasingly common situations where you are accused of something and you don't get to defend yourself. You don't know who your accuser is. And this is a real violation of due process. And I mean, I had a situation where I had a female student come and say, oh, well, I was, I was, I couldn't do, I've been missing the classes or something because I was sexually assaulted. I said, okay, that's very serious. I said, let's, I know the U.S. attorney and like, let's do it. You know, if you, you got to think this

through. If you want to, you know, go really do this, you go to the U.S. attorney. You don't go or the DA in town. You don't go to some academic bureaucrat that will pollute the case if you want to go after this guy. Well, well, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I said, well, look, you think about it. Let's talk about it. Tomorrow, I go to the head of my department. I say, hey, this happened. I told her she needs to go to the authorities if she's serious about it. She said, no, no, no. She has to go to the Title IX group and this, which is an in-house university judiciary. And I said, no, I don't agree. And I'm not going to do that. And I'm on one semester contract. So what do you got on me? And I liked my department head. And I didn't,

you know, want to make trouble for. But then I met with the student the next day. I said, okay, come on, let's get into the brass tax of this, because if you do go down this road of litigation and all that, you're going to get your past pulled out. It's going to be serious. And I said, was there alcohol involved? Yeah. Okay. And so anyway, it turns out she drank too much, passed out on a couch of the friends, woke up, and there was one of the roommates had come in and was standing over her. And, you know, that could have ended this guy's career. It have been incredibly problematic and he wouldn't have known what he was accused of by who or what. Oh, that was the extent of what it happened.

That was what it happened. And so, you know, again, these things need to be heard out. You can't just take, you know, every man is guilty. Every woman is always right. Life is more complex than that. I mean, I saw professors that married students that are still married. So I don't have a kind of childlike view of life. I treated my students as adults.

And I talked to them like adults, and I talk to them about their futures. And, you know, I would say every student would have to come and meet me in my office. And people would say, oh, don't ever close your door with a female student. So why? I'm, you know, I'm married. I'm not like your students are like your kids. And I would say, what's your? major what's your major what do you what's your major what do you want to do what are your parents want

you to do and how much student debt do you have almost every one of those kids would say no one's ever asked me that in my career thank you so much no one they've tried to sell them into a new program oh we got this new graduate certificate and i was like a what a certificate i said is that a master's no it's a certificate i said that's a fucking scam and and And so, and I said, are they paying for you to get this certificate? Oh, no, I got to pay. I said, well, is the professor that's telling you to do it in charge of this certificate program? Hey, how'd you know?

I was like, man, you're getting hustled. And so it's a business now. And because the universities are competing with each other, you know, to get students, they're spending huge amounts of money on gyms and vegan food. food bars and, you know, just really ancillary stuff. Yeah. You know, when I look at it, if you can get, if you're going to learn something of value, if you're going to be actually educated, great.

Knowledge is power. And if you can go to go to some event or some school or some university and you're going to learn something, you're going to walk out of there and say, oh, I know how to do this thing now. More power to you. Great. But yeah, if you're in there and you're spending money on something that has no value other than the paper that it's printed on, then it's kind of worthless. And I don't know that I think that a lot of times the what people are taught isn't really a usable skill. And especially the way it's taught isn't really a usable skill. I mean, this happens with leadership. You know, a lot of there's universities that offer some kind of leadership training

but it's not actually leadership training. They don't learn any leadership from it. They learn some weird abstract theory about leadership, but they don't know how they don't learn how to lead. It's like if you went to college to play guitar, and they never gave you a guitar to play. You wouldn't know how to play when you got done. You'd be able to talk about it a little bit,

but you wouldn't be able to do it. And I see a lot of programs that are set up like that where they're teaching you a lot about the guitar and you learn some theory about the guitar and you know what a guitar looks like, but you don't know how to play that guitar. And so basically what you learned has almost no value. So, you know, for leadership, for me, you know,

the reason I know this is because I teach leadership and we teach leadership to people that have gone through big programs and they don't, they'll tell us. Like, oh, I learned more in the three days I just spent with your company about leadership infinitely more. So we're not even close to what I learned in my two-year, you know, master's degree or in my MBA. They just don't, they're not doing it in the same way.

So, and I think that that's kind of become, the standard sure the standard is oh well we can teach you about the guitar and we can teach you about the theory music theory and they can teach you about a bunch of different guitars we're going to have a bunch of different guitars come and talk to you we're going to have the best we're going to have Eric Clapton come and talk to you and Tony I owe me it's going to be great and that is cool sounds cool right but you still don't know how to play guitar right so we like to get him playing that guitar right get on that get box but you're playing a high stakes game in your view of leadership that there's actually something on the table.

Well, yeah, but I mean, I teach businesses. I mean, sure. The vast majority of clients I have now are, look, we teach law enforcement. We teach military, absolutely, but we mostly teach businesses. Sure. Business leaders. Now business leaders actually do have something real at stake. They got jobs, they got capital, they got safety. There's for sure.

This is all really important stuff. But it is derived. from the highest of consequences sure without question and so because of all these changes good and bad maybe mostly bad some definitely good because like I said it's good that echo Charles and I could sit in this room with a thousand dollars worth of equipment and talked to way more people than NPR yeah in a lot of cases you made the fainting Robin Foundation so the the mission is to help out people that need it. Yeah. And it grew. Like it started out professors, journalists,

and journalists pushing the envelope, right? The real guys like Ed Willemey, who, you know, was British newsman of the year, testified in the Hague, found the Serb camps in Bosnia, the people that are outliers that are, you know, coming into the later parts of their career and, you know, have really put it all out there. But isn't it kind of cool now that you can do that with no, without being part of the mainstream media at all? I mean, there's plenty of people out there that are publishing.

I mean, I know you have a substack. Sure. Stubstack. I love substack. You know, that's a way that you can go and you can get published and you can publish your stuff and you can get out there and you don't have to worry about the mainstream media. And say whatever you want.

Yeah. But then it grew into helping those who can't help themselves, like a lot of veteran outreach, your generation of veterans did more heavy lifting than, you know, really any generation, I would say in American history with the multiple tours, with a lot was asked of you. And I am living in North Carolina. There's a lot of veterans. And having a hard time finding their way after their time in the service, many of them.

And simple things, helping them find jobs, helping them do things like that, complex things, getting them off SSRIs and the meds and stuff like that. They're giving out those things like candy, aren't you? You see this track in this most recent stuff that they're saying that depression isn't from a chemical imbalance anymore? Yeah, it doesn't work. This is like a big lie. Yeah.

Like a 30-year lie. Have you heard the psychotrials? So they used to say, oh, you're depressed. Okay, it's because you have a chemical imbalance in your head. Take these drugs and it'll make you feel better. Right. And now they're saying, actually, no, it's not a chemical imbalance. It's just like how you're feeling.

And drugs aren't going to help you in that way that we were saying they were. Which is really freaking disturbing. Very. It's horrible. And particularly the side effects. That's very disturbing. Yeah, the side effects are crazy. And the side effects, too, that even when you read the fine print about what it's going to do to you, there's finer print that says like, oh, and by the way, if you come off this at this rate or you mix this with that, it's going to make you have.

literal suicidal ideations. Like, it's crazy. Yeah. Yeah, it is. And that I'm, and Hickson and I have been talking a lot about that and, uh, and finding, you know, natural ways. And I've been, this is some of the things I've been doing, but also doing kind of more direct action stuff, like a woman, uh, friend of a friend in Santa Barbara's sister was murdered in Cambodia. We launched an investigation and it took us about eight years, but captured the guy. Um, Another guy, old pot smuggler who did a double life, got double life and a billion dollar fine, was a big smuggler, but all pot. And he did, yeah, 27 years for a conspiracy. He was not part of what, and I, you know, I read these things all the time.

A drug conspiracy? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And he got out, he got a presidential pardon the last year, and we were lobbying for that. So things kind of, I'm almost like the last resort when everything, every other avenue has failed, they wind up at my doorstep. And I can't take all of them. I mean, I basically work from my kitchen table with no office. And but it is remarkable what you can do through persistence.

And I have persistence. You're a one book a decade writer. You got definite persistence. So we got this thread of your writing, and it's the thread that you pull through. So, you know, you had the Nuremberg trials. This thread kind of leads to war crimes. This war crimes thread leads to Cambodia.

The Cambodia thread, you find the surfers that got rolled up and tortured and killed. That thread leads to tie stick. There's another thread that is something that you're working on now, And that's the Battle of Kotang, which happened at the end of the Vietnam War. And the Khmer Rouge seized a U.S. merchant ship, the Mayaguayeviz. And this whole thing unfold. So the Marines go, they recapture the ship, but they also assault the island. There's a little island where it looked like the crew of the Mayaguayez had been taken.

And so the Marines do an assault on this island. Well, the island is, it's run by the Khmer Rouge. There's Khmer Rouge elements on there. The, the, they didn't know it. The Marines didn't know it at the time, but the crew wasn't on that island at all. And they'd actually been released and returned, but they didn't know. They're already in the air. They go and assault this, this island.

And I'm actually going to, you gave me like a kind of, it's sort of a draft. Your proposal, you're working on it. But let me just read a little chunk of this. This is your latest project. It's going to be called Left Behind. And again, the thread is, how did you get onto the story? You met someone that was on Cambodia. I met Cameroos.

Yeah. That was on Kotang Island and fought against the Marines. Yeah, absolutely. This is what opens up this story for you. And you also started hearing about, you were tracking on the Americans that were in S-21, prison. Yeah. And you were hearing that there might have been other Americans and where were these

other Americans? And so you pulled the threat on this. Yeah. Let me go to this little section here. From his trench near the East Beach, M. Somme, and this is the Cambodian soldier that you met. Yeah. So, or sorry, Camer Rouge soldier.

Yeah, one of a number. M. Somme watched Knife 23. That's a helicopter. The next chopper attempting to land fly straight toward him. This one had a big. propeller on top and a small one for steering, said Somm. He shouldered his rocket and waited until it was 50 meters away and in his crosshairs. I aim for the head and hit the tail, he

recalled. The helicopter's tail broke off with an audible snap and now the rudderless CH 53 shuttered, spun, and crash landed on the beach. All 25 Americans on board were able to escape from the wreckage and find cover. Soldiers in stretchy robes jumped down, said Somm. There was exchange of fire. Now due to clouds of thick dust and smoke from the gunfire, the Khmer Rouge commander could not even see the beach and took a moment to pray to Buddha for help. I had been fighting all my life, but the fighting on Kotang was really terrifying. The initial assault on the island had been a debacle. In less than one hour, the U.S. had lost three helicopters and 11 men. The young Marines who had been training in Okinawa, less than 48 hours earlier, were now experiencing combat for the first time all alone.

At only 7.20 a.m., the longest day of their lives was just beginning. Unbeknownst to the Americans and Cambodians now fighting on Kotang, minutes before Knife 21 landed on the island, Camer Rouge radioed announced that they had freed the Maigues and her crew. Even worse, the prisoners were not, and had never. been on the island. Al Bailey was standing waist deep in a Khmer Rouge latrine, almost out of ammunition, fighting for his life. He was happy to see Jolly Green 43, the big Sikorsky H-H-53 search and rescue helicopter approach the land. The young Marine was even happier when he saw his six-foot-two, 250-pound sergeant, Fofo Sergeant T. And you say that? Toetely. To telly. Sergeant.

Sergeant Tutele. Walk onto the beach with mortar rounds exploding around him like a comic book superhero. Sergeant T. stepped out of the helicopter and was like, let me get this shit under control. It was a walk in the park to him. He was ready to conduct business, recalled Bailey. He was like a pissed off parent who had just found someone had abused his kids. Born and raised an American Samoa.

man how do you say his first name foo okay just leaving it you got the full name here fofo my togali something like tulagali uh tuateli better known as fofo moved to hawaii at ten and joined the

Marines at 18 he spent his first tour in 1967 as a scout sniper hunting viet Kong in the jungle during his second tour he fought in choulai Kisan in the battle of way and was awarded two presidential unit citations for extraordinary heroism and a bronze star. After Chetelli's request for a third tour was denied, he became a platoon sergeant with

2nd battalion 9th Marines, and had been training Al Bailey's squad when he received word, that training was over, and that he would be leading them into combat for the first time. Although the soft-spoken Samoan treated his men well, he'd made quite an impression on his charges in Okinawa when he broke up a fight between a black and a white Marine by placing each of them in headlocks. He shouted, Marines don't fight Marines. Fofo smashed their heads together

and knocked them both unconscious. Nobody, and I mean nobody ever challenged him, said Bailey. This man had killed a rack of Vietnamese. You could see it in his demeanor the way he carried himself. When Sergeant T. spotted his Marines clumped together on the West Beach,

he ran toward them shouting, what the fuck are you guys doing? Calm the hell down and listen. Fofo worked his way up and down their line giving orders and words of encouragement. Finally, he turned to Bailey and said, only fire when the helicopter comes in. Don't waste ammo.

Watch the trail. Any of these bastards cross the trail blow their ass away. Then he grabbed his M-16 and said, I'm going to take care of this machine gun problem. No shooting until I get back and vanished into the jungle. Fofo walked carefully under the canopy until he heard an incoming American helicopter. Then he stopped and listened. The Samoans saw some branches move.

Then he spotted two bare-chested Cambodians with red checkered scarves around their heads adjusting a big gun. When they began firing at the helicopter, he shouldered his weapon but could not get a clear shot because of the foliage. So he walked all the way to the edge of the machine gun nest and opened fire. By the time Fofo had emptied his one magazine, one magazine, one Khmer Rouge soldier lay dead, and another was wounded but still alive. Rather than reload, the Marine picked up a nearby machete, hacked the wounded man until he stopped moving, then grabbed their AK-47s, cigarettes, canteens, and sandals. As he worked his way back toward the West Beach,

he saw another occupied bunker, opened fire, and ran towards it. By the time the Samoan reached it, the bunker was empty, but a fire was still burning, a pot of rice cooking, and there was a fresh blood trail leading into the jungle. So this is some serious scrapping that these guys are going through and Just going through some of the events it took place by zero seven hundred there's a hundred nine Marines on the island Three of the helos there was eight helos used in the assault three of them were destroyed on the insert Between zero nine hundred and ten hundred a hundred additional Marines had been landed on the island

nine had been wounded and those guys had been evacuated, which meant there was about 225 Marines on the island. They make, they're fighting throughout the day. They make multiple attempts to extract the Marines. They drop at 1800 at night. They drop a freaking blue 82 massive bomb. They call it a daisy cutter. I mean, it's just a massive bomb.

It creates a mushroom cloud. It's huge. After dark, they finally start to get extracted. They're loading helo. is under fire. They leave dead behind. They also leave with a false headcount, meaning they think that they have everyone,

but they don't. They finally get back on the ships, you know, and now they do a headcount, a legit headcount, and they figure out that they're missing. Lance Corporal Joseph Hargrove, PFC, Gary Hall, and Private Danny Marshall. And then they received a radio transmission,

from those guys like one of the aircraft circling overhead receives a radio transmission saying hey swim to sea and we'll get you and they respond to only one of us only one of the Marines could swim effectively enough to actually swim to sea and these guys get declared missing in action

on July 21st 1976 those were changed to killed in action the way it turned out Joseph Hargrove was captured pretty quickly. He had a leg wound and then a week later and you go through the details even in this. I don't want to, you know, obviously you're going to put a whole book together on this that we'll have to, we'll have to cover on the podcast and I hope we can get FOFO in here to get it done. That's the plan. You know, because I know this and you talk about it here, but he was, he received

the Navy Cross. Is that correct? The Navy Cross. No, he did receive. He got, uh, uh, uh, he got, uh, It was interesting because on, it's the Marine, it was a very lower medal. And I had a general look at the whole paperwork. And the secretary of the Navy had signed it. And he said the only reason the secretary of the Navy would have ever even seen this was because he was either up for the Navy Cross or the Congressional Medal. So one of the lieutenants got the Navy Cross for doing nothing close to what, Fofo Tatele had done.

And even one of the things I've been trying to do is get them the Vietnam Service Medal. And Tulsi Gabbard and Mark Meadows had tried to do it in 2016. And the official government position was, well, you know, the Vietnam War ended when the Paris peace agreement was signed in 1973. So this isn't the Vietnam War. I mean, their names are on the wall. So it's a very strange case. And I think there's institutional embarrassment.

As I demonstrate there, there's also knowledge that those men were left behind. And I think what's motivated me on this case is how heavily that's weighed on those Marines and those who knew that and were ordered not to talk about it as well. And so I spoke at their reunion this last May. And, you know, this is something that, you know, many of these guys have been back to Cambodia. They've met with M. Somme. They've pleaded with him, where are their bodies? And, you know, they've sent the POWMIA guys from Camp Smith there to do the mitochondria DNA. and it's you know I think that the Ford administration acted very badly

I think that they already had it planted on the New York Times as America is back and that was that was you know the height of our impotence so this is May 15th 1975 this is two weeks after the fall of Saigon yeah that's one thing that makes it so it would and again that You've got some of the details even that I read here. Just you're used to this kind of incompetence in Vietnam now by, you know, the generals, the politicians, McNamara, LBJ. Like, you're just used to this disgusting lack of ability to make decisions and lead and not be influenced just by raw politics on a daily basis. Just disgusting. Yeah.

And then, but what's interesting about this, this is like one incident. And since it's a little bit separated, and you've got a different administration, you go, oh, it's the same incompetence, and you just see these decisions getting made and these cover-ups are happening. It's just gross. Yeah.

It's gross. And of course, it's the freaking men on the ground, the Marines that pay the ultimate price for these horrible decisions. I mean, you got a section in there about the SEAL commander. Yeah, an amazing guy. Yeah, who's like, this is total bullshit.

He's calling it good for him. Yeah, Tom Coulter. and he basically, you know, face down the admiral and said, okay, I'm going to leave room on the front of my zodiac for you and your officers, and you can go on that island with me. And they were not honest with him either. And they said, oh, we want to drop leaflets. And this is kind of, you know, they had the lithographer aboard one of the Navy ships print 10,000 cards, Cambodian, French, and English saying, bring all the Americans to the helicopter wreckage, including the dead ones. So that does lead you to believe they knew that these guys were behind.

I left behind. I have no doubt they knew. And again, it was already on the cover of the New York Times and the press attempt and, you know, the pictures of Kissinger and Rumsfeld and Ford in tuxedo smoking cigars. And, you know, it's the carelessness of the human material. You know, that's the part to me that's so galling. And I, you know, as the war on terror, you know, kind of pushed forward, I'd see it more and more. Just badly used people, lives destroyed unnecessarily.

I mean, war is war. But, you know, there's a kind of carelessness that only people who risk nothing, who are never going to be near it, who have never felt the hard hand of it, or seen the aftermath of it, that they can, they can entertain these fantasies and do it without remorse and do it over and over again. Yeah, I mean, you found out through your interviews, Joseph Hargrove, like I said, was captured with a leg wound and executed pretty quickly.

Yeah. But it was a week later that they captured Gary Hall and Danny Marshall. So those guys were on the island. You got massive American forces around there that could have done any number of things to try and get those guys out. and they just got Yeah, and they want And so you had the Marine officers

volunteered to go back The seals wanted to go back I think the PJs had gone back to Thailand But the Wayne Fisk, unbelievable PJs Who was on the Sante raid And you know, the Apollo missions I mean he

You know you had all the All the people ready to do the heavy lifting Without any qualms about doing it And And they just steamed away and left them, you know, left them behind, gone. And, you know, and that's, they were stealing rice from the Khmer Rouge. And so basically, they finally saw boot prints going into their kitchen because every day

the Khmer Rouge guys, hey, why'd you eat the leftover rice? I didn't eat the leftover rice. No, you did. You know, so they're fighting about this. And then they go to M-SOM and the same accounts of the rice missing as happening over and over. So then they say, okay, there's still two guys here, so let's set up an ambush. They capture them coming at night to get the rice. And they're at this point so physically beaten down.

They don't even bother to tie them up. And in fact, according to the Khmer Rouge, they made them rice and made them food. And they just waited for their orders. And then they sent them to the mainland. Then they were put in a prison. Then they were probably interrogated and executed. So what's the status of this book right now? You know, probably 10 years.

You know, it's been more than 10 years. It's a hard sell. And it's funny that's like, oh, you know, we don't want another book about the Vietnam War. That's what my agent was saying. And I said, look, this is about, you know, leave no man behind. This is as old as warfare. This is a much bigger kind of theme. So we'll see.

I'll pick away at it. But yeah, there's not much interest in the Vietnam War, not that much interest in this subject. What's causing the lack of interest in the Vietnam War? I think there were too many books. There was just a big spate of books, and it's just publishing now. Publishing isn't doing that well,

and everybody's nervous. The economy's going funny. It's just like... Well, that's one of the reasons for that is because you can publish a book by yourself. Like, you know, Echo Charles could publish a book in a week. Yeah. You could literally publish a book in a week. Yeah.

And it could be available on Amazon and it could have, which is 85% of book sales or Amazon. Sure. Right now. Anyway, so Echo Charles could write a book about Bicep curls. Yes, sir. And since that's your area of expertise. And he could have it published immediately. Yeah.

And he could have access to 85% of the market. Yeah. Which is a pretty unbelievable thing. Sure. And so, yes, the publishers are definitely scared about that. But I need to go back. I got to go back to Cambodia and do some more interviews. And if you're going to make, you've made that much effort, you've made this much effort now.

You're going to make some more effort. If your publisher doesn't want a publisher, what are you going to do? You're going to publish it yourself? Sure. Eventually. But, you know, I have like three jobs. So it's, you know, it's, I have to write a lot of stuff to pay the bills. And then I...

What do you normally write to pay the bills? A lot of ghost writing, some screenwriting. Yeah. Have you written any screenplays that we've seen? No, not yet. Nothing. You know, it's Hollywood where everything almost always happens. I wrote, I co-wrote the screenplay for the Hickson movie.

Is that coming? That's battling with Netflix, because now Netflix is all, you know, taken on water and they're all panicking. And I wrote a couple of pilots for the Tie Stick TV series. I wrote a really- Do Kelly Slater buy the rights to Tie Stick? He did, but then he fumbled them. And yeah, he had a deal with Sony, and then it's just Hollywood. And it's just, it makes the DoD seem positively efficient.

Same thing is going on, too, with, like, Hollywood. Because if you want to, you could make a movie and you can post it on YouTube and see what happens. Well, and the thing is, like, the Hickson movie is remarkable because it starts with Maida. So it starts in 1890 in Japan. And Maida is an unbelievable guy. I mean, he's prize fighting all over Europe. He comes to the United States, like in the 20s. He's prize fighting in the South.

He's going to West Point. Going to West Point. Yeah. And then he fights like one of the gangs in New York guys in Brooklyn. And then he goes to Cuba. And then we think he's the guy who invented the Mexican wrestling mask because no one would fight him. And then he winds up in Brazil, meets the Gracies. And then that's where the second part of the story goes.

And Jose Padilla, who did Narcos, who's from Rio, grew up, you know, around Hickson and the Gracie. is the director. So it ain't rocket science. Yeah, that's a no-brainer. Yeah, and you're kind of like, so I think you're right. I mean, that's what I told Jose Padilla, the director. I was like, go get some private equity people.

I mean, this isn't that tough a business case to make. Yeah. Come on. And that's not like a crazy special effects movie or anything either. Like, it's not going to be a huge budget film. It's big. Like, you know, you got some great fights. You know, you have like Helio,

fighting. Camira? No, Camura, but you also have the Black Panther, his former student, Pantera, you know, the three-hour, 48-minute fight and just classic stories that Hickson talks about as his childhood. And so all that's in there. And it's just, you know, you could see it. Rio in the 70s and, you know, surfing, drugs, rock and roll, you know, street fights. Yeah, yeah. What's not to like? Yeah.

So they'll, I don't know. I just like when I write something for Hollywood, I write it and I forget about it. Just forget about it. And my mom, luckily, I grew up around this. And I grew up on the set of Robert Altman movies. And Altman was all in. Altman was put in his house on the line to pay for that movie. And there was none of this committee decision.

Like the greatest oxymoron I've ever seen is what they call in Hollywood a creative. executive. And so you go to these meetings about meetings and everybody has, and then I get in trouble because I'm not nice enough or whatever. And then I'm not really allowed to go to meetings anymore. But the best meeting we had was we went into Ted Sarandos, the owner of Netflix's office. And my co-author, Mike Ritter, glass like a half a pound of weed in a 1970s single-fin pin tail and we had the tie stick cover on top of it and I pulled out a rubber mallet and a chisel ripped the deck off of it and put a half a pound of wheat in an abalone shell and pushed it to Ted Sarandos and there it is it's all yours Ted and he's like and I was like nope I'm not taking

it back leave it in your commissary whatever and so I left a bunch of weed at Netflix Hopefully some of those things get eventually made, man. Sounds like good stuff. Yeah. That kind of has us up to date. Yeah. We made it through your life to this point. Do we miss anything?

No, I mean, yeah, but no, I think we got most of the salient points there. The high points. Yeah. People can find you at fainting robin.org if they want to support that. You've got your substack, which is petermiguire.substack. Sour Milk. And it's Peter McGuire's sour milk. What's the title about?

Why is it called Sour Milk? Because I'm sour milk. I'm a 57-year-old white guy. You got your books, law and order. Sorry, law and war, facing death in Cambodia, tie stick. And then the book that I covered on podcast, 293, I think, with Hicks and Gracie. The book is called Breathe. I wrote the forward.

And you did a great job. And that was the best interview anybody did on that whole. book tour. Oh, well, I appreciate it. It was an absolute honor to be able to write that forward. When you hit me up, I was like, you know, can you said, can you write a Ford? I was like, let me think about that for, yes, I can. Well, thank you. Yeah, that's just a great book. And now you're working on a follow-on book with Hickson? Yeah. And what's the premise of the follow-on book with Hickson? It's called Invisible Jiu-Jitsu. And it's-Visible Jiu-Jitsu. Yeah, and it's, there's a lot about Jiu-Jitsu in fighting, but there's also a lot about life and a lot about people dealing with problems

and, you know, similar to the things you talk about and how the answer can't be found in a pill or a shrink and that, you know, you kind of have to, you know, there's sections on strategy. There's sections on things Hickson talks about generally, but then I make him, you know, delve into in much greater detail. And so I think people will find it very useful for their daily lives, trying to get people kind of back in their bodies and out of their heads. And I think there's really something to that. And we've been teaching a lot of really civilian, unathletic people, really, really basic jiu-jitsu and how someone's walking into you. What do you do? Do you let them close the distance? Do you, so kind of coming back to this?

the old self-defense jujitsu in a very fundamental level. And I have all these kind of out-of-shaped civilian students I've been testing it on. And they come every week and they love it, even though they go drink 20 beers afterwards and get even more out of shape. But now they want to roll. And they're rolling. And I've got to be careful that they don't get hurt because they're not in the best shape. But you really see the change on them, as we've all seen with Jiu-Jitsu.

It does change people. Yeah, I think one thing with Hickson is like Jiu-Jitsu is so much a part of him that there's, you kind of have to tease it out of him. It's like the water, this is the water that he lives in, right? And so you ask him how the water tastes like that fish story, right? How's the water? They're like, what's water?

Yeah. So you're pulling out because my, I connected so many things in my life because of Jiu-Jitsu. It made all the pictures start to become assimilated into the same world. And that was absolutely huge for me. And so I think that, you know, if you pull those strings on Hickson where he can talk about, he makes a decision in life without thinking about it because that's just who he is. But if you start saying, hey, why did you make that decision?

Why would you do it that way? And then he'll start to see and you'll start to see and we'll all start to see. that's the Jiu-Jitsu. Well, like he talks about acceptance, you know, and he'll use these words, and you'll think it's kind of a new age thing, acceptance and forgiveness, and I'll say, what do you mean acceptance?

He goes, well, when Finaki broke my orbital bones in my eye socket, I had to accept the fact that I couldn't see, and I was going to have to fight him blind, and I was figuring out how I was going to fight him blind, and I had a plan. But then I got a little bit of vision back, and I took him down,

and broke his knee and then choked him unconscious. So it's funny because, like you said, to kind of force him to really elaborate on some of this stuff, the well is deep. No doubt. Awesome, man. Echo, any questions from you. So you have your black belt. Yes. When did that happen?

After 30 years I got it, I don't know, two months ago or something. Oh, you just got your black belt? Yeah, I have my black belt and jeekundo, but yeah, I was a purple belt, I think, for like 17 years. Damn. Well, I only would take belts from Hickson. So, and I didn't, I'm not out here all the time. So. Dude, you're a black belt snob.

Listen to this guy. He's like, I'll only take a black belt from Hickson. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. It does make sense, though, because you started with Hickson and then, you know, like all your knowledge and stuff like that is like from Hickson. And then what, some other guy kind of slides in. Yeah.

He's like, you know. I train with Henson. Henson's Hickson, too, but, you know, it just was different, you know, Hickson's Higson. I, Donah her, I trained with a lot. How much did you train with Hensow? Not much, because I was a daytime guy. So I trained with Donaheher. And John was a white belt.

I met him when he was a white belt. I was a professor at Columbia when he was a graduate student. Oh. And so you guys knew each other. Oh, yeah. You guys were bros back in the day. Oh, yeah. And he would kind of ramp me up for Cambodia, you know?

So I'd just like take these horrible Donaheher beatings for a month. so that nothing was really that bad in Cambodia, the legionnaires and stuff that didn't know Jiu-Jitsu. So were you there when he quit being whatever he was being at Columbia? And he just took a chit's all day? Yeah, yeah. And yeah, and he, I was getting threatened by the Serbs and I was putting on this conference

and I had all these big Richard Goldstone, the chief prosecutor in the Hague and this and that. And so John Donner and Peretti, my old kickboxing coach, which came as the undercover security and just shadowed these two serbs the whole time. It was pretty funny. But, yeah, John Donner actually came to my wedding and wore a three-piece suit. He did not wear Lycra.

Did he have a butt pack on? No, Donnerer was, he was, he's a classic guy. And we had a lot of fun. And, yeah, he was, I could, I could really plumb the depths of my cynicism. with Donnerher. Well, he's been awesome to watch him and his team. Man, they're just dominating in Jiu-Zitsu. It's freaking awesome to watch.

Well, he's, I mean, he's a really sharp guy. And, you know, on some level, I think they saw my academic career and was like, no way, man. I'm just going to teach Jiu-Zit-T. No, I remember Henzo and Donahar came to one of my classes at Columbia. and I was teaching about Japan and the samurai and this and that. I had a student go, I don't think it's appropriate for you to get into these cultural stereotypes about the Japanese warrior culture.

They had almost 20 years of Weimar-like democracy. Just bury my head and my hands. And I think that was probably the day Donna decided he wasn't going to become a professor. Yeah. Well, he's a professor of jih Tzu. Oh, he is. I'm sure. He is.

It's kind of wild. You've heard the story that like, you know Dean Lister is obviously. And he had that conversation with Dean. And it's kind of like this mythical thing now, right? It's a little bit of a mythical thing that Dean said, you know, Dean was get catching guys. And Dean tells it super humble. You know, I was doing okay with my leg locks training with some of the students, which means people were, he was tapping people out.

I can tell you that right now because he's tapping out one million times. And I've seen it. We used to do, you know, dojo storms and all that. stuff and even just tournaments he would just foot lock leg lock everybody and win by other methods because his whole game of jiu jitzu but it's kind of wild you know like Donner was asking him like you know or said something like you know you spend a lot of time on the you know going for people's legs and and Dean Lister said why would you ignore 50% of the human body and that's become this yeah yeah but it's if you think about the the the sharpness

of Donner, her to hear that and go, hmm, that's a really good point. Oh, yeah. That's a really good point. And Dean was, you know, Dean, it wasn't like, if you have the idea that Dean was, had a couple footlocks in his game and that's what, no, Dean was way deep into, heel hooks, foot locks, he was way deep in that stuff. I mean, so far deep into it that people have only caught up, I think it's been now, it's about a year and a half when Dean,

I would ask Dean like, hey, have you seen anything you didn't know yet? It was like a year and a half. It was like, yeah, now they're starting to do things that I don't know. But that was a long time where Dean was just way above everybody else. But it is amazing that Don or her heard that, saw what he did and said, oh, yeah, there's something going on here. And of course, now we have Pete the Greek. Yeah, he's a wrist locker. And he says, why would you ignore 5% of the human?

Yeah, yeah. Well, I trained with LaBelle also. Oh, hell yeah. And so I trained. I met him a few times. And he's scary. And so... I have his book.

You know, he's got a big book about... Pro wrestling finishing holds, that one? Yeah, I guess he is. I don't know. He has more than one. I got a big giant book by Judo G. Lebel. And it's all these crazy finishing holes. It also got like weird.

Like you have a cane and how you can choke some with a cane and all this other stuff. Well, I grew up watching him. Lucha Libre. Eki. Hey, Kiki, television, La Hanqueles. And, you know, that was wrestling at the Olympics. and Gene's brother was the announcer, and then Gene was the hangman.

Gene was like three different masked guys. And then, you know, when you train with him, he goes into character, you know, get you in some horrible, weird neck twist, and be like, who's the most beautiful man in the world? And yeah, he's a scary guy. He, I mean, Judo Gene LaBelle, he has to be one of the premier guys. And for whatever reason, it like, didn't make it out.

You know, like the Gracie is. did the most incredible job of marketing jiu-jitsu by creating the UFC. Yeah. And Gene LaBelle had some, some MMA fights. Oh, yeah. And he reft, what was the big fight? Anoki and Ali. Yes, right.

Anoki, now, he refereed that fight. Yeah. But again, it wasn't quite, it didn't quite get over the hump. And maybe UFC wouldn't have made it over the hump because, you know, the Fratita brothers, and it was banned everywhere and it eventually got picked up. But man, Judo Gene LaBelle, he was a legit. submission grappler before that was even a thing well he was AAU wrestling champ god what a beast he was all Japan judo champ at some point first American yeah and his mom I think owned the

Olympic auditorium or ran it something like that so he grew up training with like ed strangler Lewis yeah the legit catch wrestler yeah yeah the catch is catch can guys so he didn't know anything but like, you know, real nasty old-fashioned submission grappling. And yeah, and then I got to go to his cabin at high elevation, and you show up there at like 10 at night. Where was it, a big bear or something? Yeah, and you train until like three in the morning. And it was me, Peretti, and John Lewis.

And we walk in, and his wife says, oh, hi, boys, da-da-da. And John Lewis is so nervous, he goes, It's nice to know you. And then there's a loft. And we hear this booming voice from the loft. How do you know it's nice to know her? You just matter. And so, but he actually surfed with Lord Talleyho Bleers,

who was the old announcer for pro surfing, who was a wrestler in Hawaii. So, and Tallyho Bleers took him to Makaha, like on a big day. And, like, LaBelle got his front teeth knocked out. And Gene was terrified of surfing. And so like, and I was surfing a lot of big waves then, and I must have had a picture or something. So I wound up at his kitchen table, like talking to him. It's about surfing for hours. And he was very close to the Machado's.

And I think, you know, Jean-Jacques Machado is one of the guys who's impressed me as much as anyone other than Hickson. And I've been able to train with him in the last few years. And that's been great. And he's a really nice guy. And that's a book I'd like to write. What about Jean-Jacques? Yeah, because being born... Or judo Jean-Lebel.

Both, but I think Gene's a little more, plays it close to the vest. But Jean-Jacques, born with one hand and becoming, you know, one of the best of all time and turning a handicap into an advantage is a remarkable story. And again, he's a great teacher. Did you run into the Armenian-Kru? Oh yeah, go car.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is like a whole timeline for me and Dean and we were going up there and like those guys were, we, we did matches in these underground places. There was one place called neutral grounds. It was in some terrible part of L.A. and like there was pit bulls everywhere and there was no like, it's just just mayhem. But it's hard to explain that to people that didn't live through that, the pre-Cambian

times. I thought Dean killed an Armenian one time. Like this guy, these guys would not tap. No. I mean, they were, it was a life or death scenario for them. Oh yeah. And they were taught, I mean, obviously tough as hell. And they, you know, they also knew they were also foot locking and knee walking. Oh yeah. They were all linked in with judo gene LaBelle. So there's some mayhem going up there. Oh, yeah. Awesome times. Yeah. There were some, uh, definite chaos between jiu jitsu and I, I guess sombo maybe at Jiu-Jitsu tournaments and it would be mayhem

but it was fun it was a good way to start to learn things everybody got a lot better fast yeah no doubt about it and now it's like you got to just have an open mind with everything yeah you know you got to keep that mind open um anyways man yeah a few more things

oh we got more questions from Echo Charles rewind back to Tahiti right you're talking about the guy who came who was that guy her husband The sugar daddy. Oh, the sugar daddy. From Paris.

D. Landed from Paris. Brutal. Shod up unannounced. And start smelling the sheets. No, man. Damn.

So you were just out. Out. Passport. Where is it? Yeah. Where is it? Sugar. God.

That's probably the most, everything you've done that might have been the closest to death you've been. And then back to your weed selling days. You said you didn't like to do the small stuff. No. Only do like bigger. Like, how does that work?

Where would you get it from or whatever? From the older guys who were. who were smuggling it. Oh, okay. So you had to deal with like the older guys. Yeah, but they were guys I knew from surfing. It was very small, closed loop. It wasn't.

And they would what, sell it to you? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, basic. And it didn't want exposure. Didn't want, you know, people coming to my house or whatever. It was just go to McDonald's and bring in the duffel bag and they leave with the duffel bag or, you know, usually. But the Crenshaw stuff was, you'd sit on the front porch and, you know, that was, you know, was a trip like that was a whole other world what's going on there well that was um it was

just out in the open you know and and and i had a i had a white Mustang gt and when that white mustang gt pulled up like line would form and people coming from all walks of life all ages everything and uh and i remember once these cars came screeching up and i was like oh man it's a drive-by. And they get out and they just rob the Crenshaw High School marching band. And so they have... Sounds like a great take. So they have...

They've got a trombone. And so they're trying to run up on the porch of the house where I am to stash the stuff. And my buddy's mom comes out. No, no, no. They're not putting that here. So there's like, get that shit out of here. And then there's like 10 guys walking down the street with like Crenshaw Cougars. big drums and tubas and stuff.

Like, oh, man. Yeah, so I, I, the truth is always stranger than fiction. You know, it really is. And it's just, you know. How much money you think, when you went on your eight or nine month trip to Australia and Southeast Asia and whatnot,

how much money do you think you had in your, how much money did you have in your bank account when you rolled out? Probably like 20 grand or something. That's like more than enough. Yeah. live forever on time. Yeah, and my rent in Australia was, it was like 300 Australian a month right across the street from a little grass trail to broken headpoint and, you know, go to the pub

and, you know, play pool in the afternoons. And yeah, it was great. And yeah, and then the banquet for the surf contest, I was in a few surf contests, always had to culminate with a giant Wild, Wild West fight. And the Bondi guys were real badasses. So Ant and the Bondi guys would come up. And it was, the big one was the Sky Easter classic. And so we were all in that. And then some guys from Malibu came and they started slam dancing at the awards banquet and the Aussies thought they were fighting. And it turns into the gnarliest Wild Wild West brawl you've ever seen. And yeah, And one of the Americans got his lip split a little bit. And, you know, it just comes with the turf.

And, yeah, no, I love the Aussies. Yeah, I'm still friends with all those guys. Yeah, I was lucky enough to go down there for a bit. And it was one of the places where I was like, man, I went to damn Nusa. Oh, yeah. What the, that place is ridiculous. Oh, yeah. No, no, but see, then I started going to West Australia, and that's gnarly.

And so by then I was pretty good in Jiu-Jitsu, and they called me the human knot. And my friends, it's like four brothers, and they're the best guys at Margaret River. So I would stay with them, but I would first have to line them all up on the lawn and beat all of them just to get it over with. And I would also have a mouthpiece with me any time I went out. And so, and they worked, these are hard guys. They worked all day on the blacktop, shoveling blacktop. And the father was a treasure hunter, deep sea diver, and they were also commercial fishermen. And they come home and their little council worker outfits with his short shorts.

And the one brother who was the wimpiest one, but he was the natural in Jiu-Jitsu. So suddenly he's whipping the brothers who've been kicking his ass this whole life. And he's like, pite. And he's really looked scared. I go, what's wrong? Jay, he goes, well, cousin Dave's a bit crook with him. you and I'm like cousin Dave I don't know your cousin Dave I go what are you talking right he goes well I've gone and shown him that choke and he said no sepo choke's

gonna work on me so I've gone and shown him but but I forgot to tell him to tap me leg and he's gone unconscious on the job site and so then I'd go to these parties and like cousin Dave wanted to give me the king hit which is a sucker punch so you're having to like always keep your back to the wall and watch out for cousin Dave so and then there was gentlemen's night at the Margaret Rivers Board Riders Club, which was, you know, an endless glass of beer for three hours. Then the fully naked strippers.

And then the motorcycle club crashed that party to fight with the surfers. Then I... And this was like a normal Wednesday night? No, this is a big event. You know, yeah. And so, no, so we're there, you know, stumbled drunk in true Australian fashion. and the whole front window shatters.

And they get, the bikies are here, the bikies are here. So they spill out and there's some fighting with the motorcycle guys. And then I'm thinking like, I can't really stay vertical, but if I jog slow, it's a lot better. So I'm kind of jogging slow. And then I see a cop and I'm like, oh man, that cop's going to get me for public drunkenness or something. And then I kind of get lost. And now I'm in West Australia.

It's like two in the morning. And then I sort of get my bearings again. I'm like, okay, and I can see where I'm staying. And I'm going down the main drag of Margaret River. And there was like a crazy Australian Vietnam vet who lived in the park. And all he did was march with this big staff on his head and do push-ups and body weight exercises. And he was a monster. And I'm lurking in the shadows.

And I hear this. Oh, I see you. Oh, see you, Skatey Cat. Come on, Skatey Cat. come out and fly and uh and i go down one block and there's like three blocks to my place where i'm staying i put my mouthpiece in and i just start running and i'm like okay it's football time and he didn't do anything but then i wake up the next day i'm so hungover and my wife says oh let's go out breakfast i said okay yeah you're married at this point yeah so my wife's gnarly and uh and so i take like

two steps and run back, throw up. And I say, I just got to go to the beach and get in the water and I'll be better. Like, just let me get in the water. So you go to Margar River, you got to go down this long staircase. And then there's a big beach with some rocks. And I'm walking with my wife. And I get halfway down the beach. I'm like, and my wife just peels off.

Like, she's never seen me in my life. And there's like one twig I'm trying to hide under and puke. And all the Aussies are up on the thing, watching the whole thing. and that's when they're like, ah, that pipe's a tall bloke. And that's like Australia. You have to do that, you know? What year did you get married? 2000.

Wait a second. So this was, I wasn't married yet. You wasn't married yet, but it was you. She became your wife. Yeah, that was her, that was the final time. She's like, yeah, that was your courting process. Yeah, and a little time, an up wedge island at the lobster camp. She liked that a lot.

Where's she from originally? South. She's from Virginia and Florida, but a real southerner. When did you meet her? Blind eight in New York City in 95, I think. So again, how was she, what was she doing down in Australia? This shit was happening in Australia, like in 1995? No, no, this would, this would have been about probably 97 or eight or somewhere around then. Oh, so you were actually a grown man doing this shit.

Yeah. Yeah. I thought this was when you were 18. No, no, but in Australia, you say, oh, well, that was back then. Everybody's old now. And these guys all have kids and all that. But they're still down the pub. Oh, no.

And then the two brothers that night went home and got in a fist fight with each other on the way home. And then they had to drive like four hours to Perth in the car, one with a black guy, them not talking and the kids in the back. And, yeah, it's the Aussie way. That's how we roll, I guess. Awesome, man. Oh, thank you. Appreciate you coming on.

Thanks for joining us. Thanks for sharing your experiences. I'd say thanks for reminding us that life's a story. And in order to write it, you've got to go live it. Yep. So good lesson for all of us. Go out there and live. Thanks for joining us, man.

Thank you. And with that, Peter McGuire has left the building. Echo Charles. Surfing, Jiu-Jitsu. academia, genocide, a lot going on in there. Yeah. Definitely an interesting path. And it's a good thing to remember that when you're on a path, you can step off that

path and go into a different direction. Yeah. You know, this isn't, I'm not talking about the, I'm not talking about the path, right, capital T, capital P. Yeah, yeah, we don't want to go to. Let's say you could be going down one lane of the road and you could get off and go down a different lane. And it was kind of hard to convey this,

but a lot of this stuff was happening in Peter's life was happening at the same time. He's doing jiu-jitsu. He's going to Cambodia. He's writing about this. He's still a prophet. Like, he did a lot. A lot of this stuff was, he was living,

it was happening parallel in his life. So that is definitely something to remember. Sometimes I think people feel stuck in a rut. And the reason they feel stuck in a rut is because they're staying in the rut that they're in. And you don't have to sacrifice everything to go and you know, put another toe in the water over here, test the waters over there. You know, you can, you can go and try a jih Tidu class. You can go and take a guitar class. You can go and do some research about something that you don't know much about. You can go and interview people. What does it

cost to interview somebody? It doesn't cost anything. Go learn. Yeah. A lot of opportunity out there. Man, I was, so surfing is one of those things. Jiu Jiu jitsu is like this too, but surfing is a big one and you see you know you see movies about this or whatever right that the even idea of the endless summer right where you're chasing like essentially you're chasing waves right you can go ahead and say it what point break point break all day so that's what i that's what i basically compared in my mind right because point break is essentially parts of it anyway right they were robbing banks instead of smuggling drugs but exactly right you know but it's the same gig you know where it's like i'm just going to make as much money as i can as fast as i can so i don't have to

work, right? Even though he was working all the jobs, but still the idea is there where they'll rob all the banks and do all this and then just surf and skydive and stuff the rest of the time and that's kind of the dream right. Or you can just join the teams. Yeah, but here's the point with that and actually you're right though.

You're right where if you go around the world chasing waves where you'll just by incident, find yourself in different interesting situations where you'll learn new things, meet new people, have all these like varying levels of craziness experiences and then that builds on itself right you know you know

you know like one experience with this experience put together it's like oh that's also and jiu jizu's like that as well where but most people don't travel around just doing jihistu sometimes you do sometimes they do and actually i had that experience on a small degree when i was traveling around doing filming jiu jitza but i was i would train too so that's how i met at that time all the main guys and they'd be like yeah come train because I'd be purple belt and brown belt so it's like the perfect guy for them to train with because I'm usually their size or whatever not good enough you know so it's easy to it's kind of they can beat me up at the same time and then give me the experience of their gym and all this stuff it's like hospitality thing it was perfect yeah and so I got that train freaking everybody that is a

good thing and then you get all these experiences and now you know them oh you know how he knew all these people. You're like Eric Paulzing, you know, like all these people and he knew them all, but it's because of that same concept where he's like, he's going around chasing waves, you know, oh, uh, Hickson's here. Okay, I'll take a jiu jutsic last or whatever. And I'm going to meet this guy. Now I know this guy, you know. It's kind of crazy how many like that one level of connection to John Donah her and then John Donah heard of Dean Lister. We got judo Jee and the bell. You got Eric Paul. Like all these are, these guys are the premier people that brought the sport to what it is, you know. I mean, obviously you've got Hickson and Horian and Aalio, like, for sure.

But then you have all like the second gen people that were coming up. And it's just, it's just interesting how it's all connected. And it seems, I guess it seems more interesting to me because Jiu-Jitsu is such a big part of my world, you know, takes up a big part of my world, takes up a big part of your world. and but still like the connection between like John Donnerher, Hensow Gracie Hicks and Gracie, Peter McGuire, Gene LaBelle, like it's just wildness, it's wildness. So I say, you know, I heard this some expression about like if you want to be a writer, well, what's the best thing you do if you want to be a writer?

Go live. That's a great advice. You want to be a writer, go live. Somebody asked me yesterday, when was I? Oh, yeah. When we were up yesterday, I got asked, you know, oh, did you always want to be a writer? I'm like, nope.

Now I've written, I think, 11 books, but I didn't quote, like, I was like, oh, I'm going to be a writer. I just was going to be a commando and then happened to start writing, but that's a good, it's not a bad. And I'm not saying you have to be a commando, but maybe you're going to be a damn,

Jitsu player or maybe you're going to be a surfer or maybe you're going to be anything go out and be something You have something to write about at least Yeah take a little bit of risk too. What was the quote he said about being careful? Careful gets you kill careful gets you killed. Yeah, yeah careful kills, yeah Careful kills but also careful prevents life prevents living. Oh, and look, I'm not saying obviously go on do dumb shit But don't but don't let caution guide your every move where you don't take risk

because you're going to be out there getting after it. No, look, is it smart to smuggle pot? No, it's not. But is it smart to, hey, I don't have too much money, but I got enough money to get down to Indonesia. I'm going to go serve and, oh, cool.

You know, don't do dumb illegal shit. But, man, roll the dice a little bit. Go get after it a little bit. It's going to be good for you. Yeah, it's almost like within a certain threshold. it's like you that's the best thing you can actually do for yourself within reasons so if you would look at it and be like hey this is dumb this is a dumb move you know illegal stuff mainly like falls within that category or whatever

then okay that exclude that everything else should kind of be in play in a way when you think about it seriously yeah just and between the and of course on one superficial and you got a cool story that's on the super but like all the stuff you learn whether you're successful or not. It's like by the stuff you learn, you'd be surprised how valuable that ends up becoming. Yep.

Go get some experience. Go live a little bit. That's the recommendation. But the other thing it's a remember is it's not too. You know, you can be, I'm 50. I still need to go out there and get after a little bit more.

I need to take a little bit more chances in the world. I will say and maybe, maybe you disagree. But I would say it gets harder and harder though. As you get a, you know, take on more fixed responsibility. That is true. That's 100% true from a financial.

thing but I'm not even too and also in other ways it comes easier because now you got money like remember when you had no money yeah yeah and you you know you were working as a whatever I almost feel like and maybe I guess it depends on the circumstance but I almost feel like when you have no money it kind of pushes you to have to do more stuff you know so if you have money I'll just pay for it oh just whatever whatever whatever kind of a thing where it's like things will come a lot easier and I thought about this too where you know how like when you think back to the times when you don't make any money. It's like what was the difference? The 20 years I was in the Navy. But think about it. There are certain parts of life. It's funny. I say that. But you know what?

At the time and you've heard me say this. Like I was the richest guy in the world. Me and my friends in the dames. We thought that we were the richest guys in the world. We had so much money. Young single team guy. And you five frog man gets them in your position to you get a lot of stuff paid for, right? By the name, you know, like well, wet suits. Right. Yeah. A lot of the parachutes. Yeah. And that's a huge. You guns? Yeah. What people would want to spend money on? Yeah.

You get a battery's toilet paper. Oh yeah. So that's little bit. My buddy had to freaking went to his house. You know like the big industrial toilet paper rolls that are like a foot across? Yeah, yeah. That's what they had in the seal teams and this dude had it at his house. I was like, pro.

You're a savage. Wasn't even going to pay for his own toilet paper. Taking a freaking roll of, that role probably lasts like six months to a year. The thing though. Here's the thing. And actually, which is part of the point. Fraud waste and abuse, by the way. Fraud waste and abuse.

Government. Is those things in life cost money. And if you don't have a lot of money, like certain parts, little, little tiny parts of life that all are, and there's a lot of them too, a lot of them, every day, all day. Those little parts of life are hard. It's like, they're so hard that you're taking toilet paper from the tools. Yeah. You know.

Guys, batteries. Batteries. There's kind of an unlimited supply of batteries in the seal teams. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, any kind of rigors tape, like what do you call it? Gaff tape. Sure. Gaff tape.

Yeah, that stuff. You go to a team guy's house. There's a freaking pretty good. There's a box of rigors tape just in case. Some 550 cord, some one inch tubular nylon. Yep. So think about this. Let's say you don't get free rigors tape and toilet paper.

And hotels, places to stay. Like, these are things like per die. If you have money or. you get that stuff free. It's kind of like it makes it things so much easier, but it keeps you in a little bit more of a box than if you didn't. So let's say this. I'm a jiu-jitsu bomb,

I'm a surf bomb, whatever. I don't have, like, I don't sell weed. I don't rob banks. I have normal. I have to get a normal job. I don't have that much money, but I want to go to Australia.

First off, I'm not flying first class in this cozy thing and no one bothering me. I might even write in the cargo part and then have a good story or whatever. But you'd be in coach or whatever. You're going to meet some weird dude or maybe. or maybe, you know, or maybe some weird girl or something like this, right? Then you go to Australia and now you've got to search for a place to stay.

It's not taking care of... Just many adventures. You know, exactly, right? Many adventures because you got to make do, you got to struggle for everything and it becomes more of a thing. If you have money, you're just like, yeah, you probably don't even book it. You're like, hey, can you just book me in that hotel,

just choose the nicest one or kind of a thing? So you don't have a story behind that. You're safe in the hotel. You're safe in your box. You see what I'm saying? If you'd have money, you're out there earning every little teeny tiny things so you have way more of a experience. Is you what I'm saying?

Embrace it. Risky too. Yeah. All right. Well, hey, take some chances. Go out there. If you want to support the podcasts and you want to support yourself, you want to get stronger, faster, better, smarter.

Get yourself some jocco fuel. New flavors. In discipline go. Discipline go. New flavors. Get yourself some milk. I need some milk right now. Bro.

And how's this? And I'm with you. Right. You know how like you know when you get you know when you get hungry and then like even like a normal chocolate bar or something seems like oh like wait you know just when you get real hungry Bro I I mixed banana milk and chocolate milk and I put some chocolate milk in it just because I like you know how everything sounds good to you is what I'm saying So I was like oh yeah put some banana in there whatever and probably it was really really good I don't know if it's because it was so hungry or because that could be a banana chocolate is good

Wait it was a chocolate peanut butter so that made sense think about it you you you chop up a banana, put some peanut butter on it, I mean in real life, not milk, and then put a little bit of chocolate on there. Come on, bro, that's good. It's the same flavor is what I'm saying. Yeah. So yeah, milk. Get yourself some milk.

That way you do, it's just so good. Especially like I'm saying right now. So it's pretty standard that when, that we are here when we're recording, I haven't eaten. Yeah. So have you eaten today? No. So we're both on a fast right now. Yeah.

It all sounds good. I'm going to break a fast with like some mixed nuts and some milk when I get done with this little scenario. So I recommend you do the same thing. Get yourself some milk. Get yourself some discipline go. And you can get all that at jacofield.com. You can also get it at, you get the drinks at Wawa. We got the ready to drink coming.

Ready to drink protein all the way. Like a date or anything on that? August. By the end of August, it'll be in Wawa. It'll be a, we're not able to make enough of it yet to get it everywhere. But we'll get it out there. I'll let you know where it's at. Um, you'd be able to order it.

I could tell you that from joccofuel.com. You can get stuff at vitamin shop as well. We get it H.E.B. down in Texas. We're going into some other men. I, they're putting a list together to me because there's a huge, we're in a bunch of different stores now, thousands and thousands of stores. So I'll, I'll get a list together so I can tell everyone where to go and hit it. Yeah.

So there you go. OriginUSA.com. If you need Jiu-Jitsu gear. You've got. Look, if you're not doing jujitsu right now, come on. Let's go. Let's just get in the game. Get yourself a ghee.

Go to originusa.com. Get American made ghee. Don't get someone, don't get a ghee that's made by someone that's basically in a prison camp. Bro, have you ever. Have you ever been at home or wherever, wherever you go? And just thought to yourself, I wish I was like doing jiu jih Tzu right now. And not the kind where it's like, oh, I wish I was doing something else. Hmm, jiu jitsu sounds fun.

So that. Like the feeling of man, I wish I was actually like Doing jiu-jitsu with someone right now You know what? I had the feeling similar feeling But like so Dean's had an injured hand because he broke his hand for like a couple months right And you know so whenever we're training There's a little bit of a little bit of holdback right a little bit of oh hey you know hey switch arms Hey switch positions hey oh hold on

You know that kind of hurt that kind of thing and like the other day we actually like he I had forgotten he'd hurt in his hand because he's been hit he's had it all taped up you know so when you're rolling you just see this taped up thing and then I was gone for a little few days I come back he didn't put the tape on because it's healing and we were just rolling and when we got done he said something like you know my hand felt pretty good today I was like oh I didn't even remember it but the role was so fun because it was like the limits were off yeah yeah and it was just like felt so good yeah so yes sometimes you got to train that jiu jihitsu yes yeah fully You ever, and this is not a judgmental thing by any means, but you ever, you ever think about yourself before you knew Jiu-Jitsu and be like, man, I felt like that was almost like an empty shell version of myself.

You ever think that? You feel like you were not enlightened. Yes. You feel like there was just a whole thing. It was all, a lot of it too was like a lie. What's, there's another word? What is the word like the Buddhist used to say is an illusion? You were, I was a little bit of an illusion.

because there's a lot of things that you think that are wrong. Yeah. Just straight up even just the pragmatic things like, I think I can beat this person up and you don't know Jiu-Jitsu. You think that, but it's an illusion. Yeah. Because you may or may, I'm sure you might be able to, but you also might not be able to.

Yeah. So there's a whole illusion to your life when you're not doing Jiu-Jitsu. And that's a problem. Yes, and this is, you're actually sure, absolutely correct. And you know more about what I, was just said than I do actually because now that you say that I remember yes that's correct because I was a bouncer in Hawaii before I started jiu jit-to. Oh yeah.

You thought you were the bad. And I never really thought I was bad because I worked with a bunch of big someone guys. So I did not think I was a badass. But yeah, probably, yeah, probably related to him. But I didn't think I was a badass in that group, but compared to the patrons that would act up and stuff, I did. But I think of myself back then. I was like almost like there was this big part of my brain that was just empty, not knowing,

unknowing, you know? So yes, not enlightened. Exactly right. Did you see they're making, apparently they're making a remake of Roadhouse. Yes, yes. You're fired up for that. That pisses me off. It doesn't piss me off, but I know it's going to be lame.

Well, it's Connor McGregor. So. What, what? Who's Connor McGregor. He's in it? He's slated, given what I've been sent. You know what's funny? You're the third person now to bring, actually.

Oh, yeah, because everybody knows you're into it. They've been sending me the stuff. Yep. And so. Connor McGregor's going to be in it, playing what role? Well, the online stuff that people sent me had a picture of Connor McGregor to be in Roadhouse, the remake. That's different. He's going to be in it and he's going to have a bit role.

That's cool. No, I think he's the guy. But I don't know. He was Dalton? That's what I think. No. I don't know. I didn't look into it.

A bunch of people just been sending it to me and then people have been bringing it up to me. There's a lot of roles that Connor McGregor would be awesome at. Dalton's not one of them, in my opinion. I don't know. You think so? I don't. I have no idea. I think he'd be better as the as the protagonist in that.

The pro sorry, the antagonist. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I think he'd be a better bad guy. The dude that gets his throat ripped out. Remember the OG one? Like something like this. Well, here's the thing.

So my fantasy of a Roadhouse remake would be a super dark and gritty one, not like kind of cheesy, like real dark with drugs and like a real explicit. That was my OG fantasy. Then I found out later that Ronda Rousey in her heyday was. slated as Dalton as a remake of Roadhouse where you know it's a woman protagonist that's what I that's the intel I got that's back in the day as long time ago and then yes recently maybe that's why because my vision of Roadhouse was more like an actual fighter guy yeah and maybe it's just embedded my brain and you don't see women bouncers so it's like that's I think a big time

of a mistake when you're trying to sell a certain story and it's like okay let's put like a different person in that role that it's like brother that's not that realistic as a woman bouncer they're so rare so unless it's about the rarity of women bouncer cool but it's like it's not as believable you know you know how like you get like a like a like if you got a ninja will say but the ninja is a 10 year old boy it's like i see what you're doing but it's like brad ninjas aren't 10 year old boys typically ninjas is like a trained decades of training guy That's who we're going to believe. You see what I'm saying?

Anyway, so when I saw Connor McGregor, I was like, hey, I feel like that's viable. This is what I thought. I think character-wise, I think he would have more fun playing like a bad guy. I think you're right. I think you're good. The antagonist. Because even though he's good, he's that good at talking smack. He's kind of good.

He's kind of good at being a bad guy in MMA, but also has like the good side, right? They love him. He's not just a pure. Heal. You know what the term heel is, right? From wrestling? Like Chao Sondon was, dude. He was, you know, bad guy, inc, bro. And he was so good at it. And Connor plays that role a little bit, but he's not, but he still does it with like a nice side and he has a lot of, you know, a lot of positivity to him. And so if he was allowed to just go off and just be bad, he'd have a good time with it. Well, here's the thing. And I didn't realize this until it was.

actually like told to me where the, I felt it, but I never knew this as a specific thing. So the best bad guys in history are guys that we like, like guys who were like, hey, sure, he's a bad guy, but oh, I kind of want to be like him. And that always has to have a positive element to it. Like, Darth Vader. Like they're, they're usually like guys who are like, sure, they're all, you know. You just gave me a list of one. Yeah.

You started counting your fingers too. Like you're going to have at least five. Give you a list of one. And it's freaking Darth Vader. Good job. He was the first guy that came to. All right. Well, you tell me who is, who's like an iconic bad guy?

Anton Schigur. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So stoicism is stoic dude, right? In touch with or able to control his emotions. Super successful. Like there's all these elements of him that are like and then there's one or two.

Really. I mean, they're significant. But this is usually just one or two bad elements. limits of them. And in fact, you get bad guys who, some movies they do it on purpose and they do it well where if they want you to really not like a bad guy, like they'll make him like kind of weasily or someone who like, you wouldn't want to like listen to or hang out with. In fact, you'd really rather be quiet and not show up to the party kind of a thing. But usually the good bad guys, you're like, as long as he liked me, I would like to hang out with that guy or be like

that guy when you think about it. So you get a Connor McGregor as the bad guy. Yeah. Perfect. And you said Chail Sonin. Chil Sonin, yeah, he is a little bit more on the, like, antagonistic side for sure. But he has a lot of those elements. He's smart. He's funny. Oh, yeah. Like, right, you kind of like him.

Dude, some of the Chal Sonan, like smack talking, I don't know. It entered the algorithm. It entered my algorithm. Oh, yeah. And, dude, he was freaking epic, man. He was just epic as smack talker. And just, I think he might be the king. Yeah.

I think he might actually be the. the best smack talker of all time. And he dig it. Fourth round. Fifth round. Fifth round. He talked the biggest smack to Anderson Silver. Oh, yeah.

And he was in the fifth round. And there was a minute left, man. And he got caught. Brutal. That was savage. That was a, that was a hard. Well, I was rooting, you know, for him. What was his nickname?

The American Bad Guy, Inc. or something? Bad Guy Inc is like his video channel. He's got a YouTube channel. And he talks, you know, about MMA and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. But he would say he's a gangster from Westland, Oregon. Yeah. He's like, I'm an American.

I'm a gangster. It's freaking legit. It's so funny. I've been to his house before. Oh, really? For what? For interview stuff. Okay.

So, and this was back in the day. So you know, jail. Yeah, a little bit. You guys go way back. Yeah. Like when I last, like, for example, last time I saw him a different thing. We remembered each other for sure, but I don't have a month to be down, nothing like this. But, yes, I've been to his house when I went to this. It was just me.

And yeah, that's a real nice place. He lives in. That whole neighborhood is super nice. What, Westland, Oregon? Wesleyan Oregon. He's a gangster from Wesleyan, Oregon. I salute that. No, right. So there you go.

Hey, if you want to get into Jiu Jitza.com, go to joccal store.com. Get yourself some cool t-shirts to wear. Yep, represent. Represent. Standard issue is out. Oh, the standard issue. Discipline equals freedom. Sure.

People asked what's the layer. See if you can figure out what the layers are. You got to look at them kind of comprehensively. There's four of them. Four versions. Each one is a little bit different. Yeah. See if you can figure out those layers.

It's good. Yeah, a lot of cool other stuff on that too. Joko store. Jock Underground.com. YouTube. We got a YouTube channel. We got psychological warfare. We got flipside canvas Dakota Meyer making cool stuff to hang on your wall

A bunch of books. Here's the books from Peter McGuire breath which is or sorry breathe with with Hicks and Gracie Tie stick law and war facing death in Cambodia. So check those out check out only cry for the living by Holly McKay I was telling Peter about her I'm like dude this girl wrist this woman is girl insulting I don't think so just like is boy insulting okay this one woman risked her life to write the book only cry for the living so check out that book if you want to know what war what war is like from both sides while it's happening get yourself that book i i mentioned my book final spin publishers weekly gave me a good review thank you publishers weekly hey publishers weekly you didn't like breathe that's a bummer it's a good book check it out

uh i've written a bunch of other books about leadership i've written a bunch of kids books get the kids book for the kids you know. It's going to help them. It's going to make the world a better place. Eshlam Front. We solve problems through leadership. If you want to check out or if you need help with leadership at your organization, go to Eshalomfront.com.

Come to one of our events. Next one is Atlanta. We have the muster. Everything we do sells out. That's going to sell out too. So if you want to come, go to Eshlamfront.com. Get the details there. Extreme Ownership.com.

We have an online training academy where you can be a part of what we teach. You can learn it. You can train it all the time. We have live interaction. We have courses that are set up extreme ownership.com also if you want to help service members active and retired You want to help out their families gold star families Mark Lee Markley's mom She's got a charity organization if you want to donate or you want to get involved you want to help out our veterans and their families go to America's mighty warriors.org Also heroes and horses.org We got Micah Fink up there taking guys and recreating their brains and bodies and spirits in the woods on horses and ice baths. So there you go.

And if you want to check us out on social media, on Twitter, on the gram, on the Facebook. Echoes that echo Charles. I'm at Jocker Willink. Of course, beware of the algorithm because it's looking to suck you in. It's looking to grab a hold of your brain. That's what they did to me. They got me watching these Chal Sownan smack talk videos and now I'm now they're just loading them up for me and I'm like what do what he says on this one click Watch out watch out for the algorithm. It'll grab you

Thanks for listening. Thanks for supporting the cause. We We would not be here without you listening and supporting so thank you. We would also not be here if it wasn't for the military doing what the military does. So thanks to all military members past, present, and future, thank you for protecting our freedom and our way of life. And also thank you to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers,

correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, all the first responders, thank you for doing what you do to keep us safe here on the home front. And everyone else out there, listen to someone like Peter McGuire is a great reminder for all of us

that there is so. much going on in the world so much to do so much to experience and for Peter that meant surfing and jiu-jitsu and reading and writing and traveling and maybe some smuggling and some studying and some teaching and so much more there's so much going on in the world there's experiences waiting to be experienced there's sites waiting to be seen and there's life waiting to be lived so go live it and until next time this is echo and jocco out