The Joe Rogan Experience - #1467 - Jack Carr

Episode Date: April 30, 2020

Jack Carr is a bestselling author and former Navy SEAL. He is the author of "The Terminal List", "True Believer", and his latest "Savage Son" is now available on Amazon.

And we're live. Hey, what's up? Hey, thanks for having me on. This is awesome. My pleasure. Good to see you again. Great to see you. You know, when we first met, I knew you were an author, and I knew that Chris Pratt was

involved in doing that thing with you, and that you guys were working towards making this, which is happening now, which is very exciting. Crazy. But I'd never read any of your work until now. So getting ready for this, I actually listened to the audio book, which is really well done. The guy who reads it, what is his name? Ray Porter. He's fucking great.

Yeah, he's awesome. It's a little disturbing when he does a girl's voice. No getting around that. If a guy's doing a girl voice, especially putting an accent to it, there's no getting around the creepy part of that. It's a little weird. But he's so good at Russian accents and then South African accents. It's a really good book, man. Thank you.

It's fucking riveting. It's hard to put down. It's really good. And most of it I listen to either on workouts, walking, hikes with the dog, or in the sauna. Nice. Perfect place to listen to it. I burned through it in a few days. Nice.

It's really good, man. Yeah. And you know, like half the characters are the people that were inspired by actual people. I know. That was what's crazy is like so many people, whether it was, you know, John Dudley or Barclow or, you know, Half-Faced Blades, like Black Rifle Coffee, Icon 4x4. There's like so many different things. Sitka. so many different things that I— It would be strange for me not to talk about gear just because I was a gear guy before I went in the Navy. And then, of course, in the SEAL teams, you're like, that's your time to shine and to like go down these rabbit holes and try to make the gear better or anything that's going to make you more effective and efficient on the battlefield. So he really gets a go all in.

And then just after the military, same thing. I'm just a gear guy. So it would be strange just to say he pulled out a rifle, you know, or something like that. I couldn't do it. It wouldn't sit right. When you were in the SEAL team, did you think you were ever going to become an author? Is this something that you'd always had in the back of your head you would like to dabble in someday? Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't even a thing I was going to dabble in. I was going to do it. And since I was a little kid, my mom was a librarian. So I grew up surrounded by books and this love of reading from a very early age. And back then, like so early 80s, there's hardly anything written about SEALs. But what there is written is a lot of

times from fiction. So protagonists in different stories by guys like Tom Clancy, David Murrell, Nelson DeMille, A.J. Quinnell, all these guys in the 80s who had protagonists with backgrounds I wanted to have in real life one day. And I enjoyed reading them so much. I knew that after the military, then I would write. So I just said, wow, that's going to be the path. So you had kind of mapped it out, joined the military first, joined the SEALs. And then after you retire, then, and how many years were you in for? 20. You were in for 20. And then during that time, you had always mapped out that you were going to be an author when you were done.

Yep. Wow. I didn't put any thought in it while I was in. I wasn't writing. I wasn't practicing. But I was reading. So first, I'm a fan. I'm always a reader, both fiction and non.

So all those guys I read in the 80s, those are like my professors in the art of storytelling. And then I coupled that with the academic study of warfare, terrorism, insurgencies, counterinsurgencies, and then the practical application from Afghanistan, from Iraq. And then it all kind of came together at the right time and place as I was getting out. So for that last like year, year and a half, then I started writing because I wasn't taking guys down range anymore. My job was essentially to get out of the military. And because it's, you feel like you're the first person to do it, even though people do it every day. But you walk in, you need to get something signed or go to a meeting or get read out of a secret program or go to medical or dental. So your job becomes to get out of this gigantic bureaucracy. So during that time, that takes like a year. I mean, you can probably do it in a week. Like Jocko didn't do any of it,

from what I understand. He's just like, no. And he just laughed. You know, but I didn't know that was it. I know. I'm done. Yep, exactly. Yeah, I didn't do these transition classes you're supposed to do. And you sit there in these rooms and people drone on and on about transition and some options for you. And you're awful, horrible. But I did it. I thought you had to. So you get something signed and off you go.

But yeah. You don't have to do it? I think you do. Just Jocko didn't. Like, that's what he told me. He's like, no, I didn't. I'm like, well, who's going to tell him to do it? You know?

Right. No one. No one's going to say you have to do this. You're going to get crushed. Yeah, it's not good luck. Yeah. So you were planning all along to write. And so during that time, while you were being deployed and while you're being a SEAL, in the back of your head, that was always a part of the plan.

Yeah. That was when I'm done with this, then I'll do that. So I wasn't thinking about how to set it up. I didn't know anyone in publishing, didn't know anything. But I knew that one day that's what I would do. And it wasn't even a question. But you clearly had equal enthusiasm for being a SEAL as well. Yes.

Oh, yeah. That's why they had to be separate. So I had to be 100% all in on being a SEAL because you have to. That's what you owe the guys under your command. When you're going down range, that's what you owe their families, the country, the mission. But when I got home from that last Iraq deployment and took a breath and looked around and saw, oh, my family needs me. I've been gone for quite some time. Even when you're training, when you're training, you're out for three weeks here, two weeks there, a month there, getting ready to deploy. So it's not just the six to seven month deployments. It's all that time spent training up to go down range with your team. So I knew that my family needed me. It's

time to get out. So it was very clear. It wasn't a hard decision for me. Plus I'd gotten to the end of my time where I would tactically lead guys on the battlefield. So that's a troop commander. So that's where Jocko was when he did his last deployment as a troop commander as an 04, which is a major in the other services, a lieutenant commander in the Navy. And after that, yeah, you're still a leader, but you're leading from behind, essentially. You're in the Tactical Operations Center. You're more of a manager-type leader. You're not out there kicking doors with the guys, which is what we all come in to do, or most of us come in to do anyway.

So I knew that that part of my life was over, and it was time to transition, take care of the family. So it's time to start writing. Did you take journalism classes or writing classes or? Nope. It was all the reading, all that reading I did growing up. And my mom introduced me to a guy named Joseph Campbell back in 1987. So he did a series of interviews with Bill Moyers on PBS called The Power of Myth. And he wrote a book called Hero with a Thousand Faces. So back in 1988, so I'm, I don't know, 11 years old or whatever, 12 years old, I get introduced to him. And I read that book. And I watched all those interviews. And I read the book that came out called The Power of Myth based on those interviews. And I think I applied that paradigm, that model of the hero's journey, the monolith,

to really every movie I watched, every series I watched, every book I read from then on. And that really helped as I made the transition because I had this foundation. It wasn't just like I woke up one day and said, you know what? Can you make money at writing? Oh, that sounds like a good thing to do. I'll go back and read and I'll go back and see, kind of figure out the history of this genre. No, I already had that figured out because I did it my whole life. And it was that foundation that was already there. And while I was in the military, I kept reading for fun. I read those fiction books still, and I discovered Stephen Hunter and Brad Thorne and Vince Flynn and Daniel Silva and now Mark Graney today. So those are kind of the bigger names in the genre. But then I was also studying, studying all that nonfiction stuff, trying to stay up on

my game to make the best decisions I possibly could under fire for the guys when it mattered. So just always studying, always reading. When I was downrange, I never really watched a movie or played video games. It was always, if I wasn't out operating and we weren't putting together a target package, I was reading. That's interesting. Because I would think that most people that would venture and become a professional novelist, they would have some sort of background in writing, like some sort of education, some classical education, English literature or something. Yeah, no, it was all reading. It was all knowing what I liked, knowing what I didn't like. And

that's why the first novel is really all about revenge, because that theme resonated with me. Obviously, it's resonated with people from the beginning of time, from telling those stories around campfires, usually told in a way to pass on some sort of a lesson about something to the next generation so they don't have to learn the same lessons in blood but they're told as a story and passed down that way and i think that's why there's so many death wish movies that's why there's just because you can't if someone cuts you off in traffic you can't go out and do something or someone you know at work there's some politics you don't get the promotion or whatever you get mad you can't do anything about it but you can in the pages of a novel you can escape there or you don't get the promotion or whatever, you get mad. You can't do anything about it. But you can in the pages of a novel, you can escape there, or you can escape in the

movie theater. And you can see somebody that goes out and gets this revenge. And it makes you feel good, because you know, you can't do it. Because in real life, if you do it, you're gonna go to jail, you can get the death penalty, it's not possible. But you can do it. And you can explore all that in the pages of a fictional thriller. So I think that's why it resonates with with people. And then, in this particular case, I got to take the emotions and feelings behind things I was involved in downrange, and then just apply them to a fictional narrative. So I didn't have to talk to somebody and say, how did it feel to be a sniper in Ramadi in 2005, 2006, and then filter that through whatever biases I had, or whatever my past experience or whatever, and then put it into a fictional

narrative. No, I just took my experience, and then just morphed it and put it into the narrative. So it ended up being very therapeutic. So did you approach an agent first? Like, how did you get started? Thank goodness I didn't know you're supposed to do that. Because I'd probably still be looking for one today. So I did very little research on that front, because I think that a lot of people can study how to do something too much or too long. And it's going to be different for everybody. But, you know, some people can study how to do something their whole life and never actually do it because you only have a certain amount of bandwidth. And for me, I read – so Steven Pressfield, who's become a great friend now, who's on this show a while back.

I love that guy. He's so great. He wrote Gates of Fire, A Legend of Bagger Vance, The Afghan Campaign, and then has those series of books on creativity. The War of Art. You gave that out to people, right? For a while. Yeah, I had a stack of them that I used to keep at the studio. Yeah. So he's amazing. Actually, listening to him on this show before I started writing, gave me the idea of writing a one word theme down to keep me on point. So I wrote Revenge for that first novel on a yellow sticky. But he didn't really say this on

your show. He was talking about somebody else, a playwright who would write a sentence to keep him on theme. But somehow, through my filters, I heard him say, oh, a one word theme on a yellow sticky on my computer. And so I did the same thing. So it wasn't, it's not really what he said on the show, but I took it as what he said and I wrote it down. And that really, for the first book, Revenge, second book, Redemption, and then fourth book, I morphed, or third book, I morphed it a little bit, Dark Side of Man. But so those are the themes that really kept me on track. And you're on the fourth one right now? On the fourth one, yep. How long does it take you to do one? The first one can take as long as you want, because you have to have, for fiction, you have to have the finished product.

So for nonfiction, you can sell like an idea, a chapter, an outline, something like that. If you're coming from sports or politics, you can sell that idea because they know they're going to get some sales. For this, you have to have the whole manuscript done. So the first one took about, just try two years, and you get it as good as you can possibly get it. And then what you're supposed to do is go to an agent. But I didn't know that. Thank goodness. Because I did do I did that research I talked about with Stephen Pressfield's books on creativity, war of art, authentic swing, turning pro, do the work. Read those read Stephen King's on writing.

That's a great book. Stephen King's book. So it's not a biography. It's not just about writing. It's about his entire life. David Murrell is the successful novelist. And I think those were the main ones that I read. And then I was like, OK, got it.

And I put those within sight of me and my computer, but I didn't touch them again. But they were there. So I would look to them for inspiration as far as, oh, Stephen Pressfield says you're a professional. You're a writer. You sit down and write. Writer's block doesn't exist because it doesn't exist for dentists or truckers or doctors. You don't get doctor's block. So you don't get writer's block. You're professional and you write. So just having them that close really helped with that transition. And I made the decision to once I was a SEAL and now I write. So I think that really helped. But I didn't know you needed an agent. And thank goodness I didn't, because otherwise, like I said, I'd still be looking for one.

Because those are the gatekeepers, essentially. And they have assistants that are even gatekeepers to them. So it's tough, I think. But lucky for me, a friend of mine sat next to a guy named Brad Thor, who writes in this genre. He has a character called Scott Harvath, who's a former SEAL. And he's a former SEAL. And, uh, he's a, he's a great guy. My friend sat next to him at a, one of these events for to raise money for a SEAL foundation type thing. And as I'm writing, I'm about four months in and my buddy says, Hey, do you want, do you know this guy named Brad Thor? And I said, Oh yeah, yeah. I mean,

I don't know him, but I've read all his stuff. And he said, do you want to talk to him? I know you're writing a book. And I said, yeah, I'd love to talk to him. Would he talk to me? And he said, do you want to talk to him? I know you're writing a book. And I said, yeah, I'd love to talk to him. Would he talk to me? And he said, yeah, I'll set it up. I helped him out with a couple things in his books. So sure enough, he sets it up. And actually, I'm up here at an event in L.A. at the time. I was trying to find a quiet place to have this call with Brad Thor. So I go to the parking lot at the Taranee Resort parking lot up there. Sun's beating down on my Land Cruiser.

Everything's off, though. The engine land cruiser everything's off though the engine's off because it's so loud and and uh and i thought my pen and paper are there i'm sweating but uh sure enough we have this great call and and it was like a job interview i think he wanted to know like hey why do you want to write and i told him the same stuff i tell you or tell everybody that i grew up loving reading and knew i was going to do this one day and about my mom being a librarian and knowing the history of the genre and all that and just being excited about it. He could sense the passion and he's like, all right, so if you write a book, what I can do for you, your friend told me some things you did in the SEAL teams. And as a thank you for that, I'll let my publisher know it's

coming. I can't guarantee they'll open the package. Can't guarantee they'll read one word. Definitely can't guarantee that they'll like it. But a thank you i can let them know it's coming and i said that's all i need and he said how long until you're done i said one year from today and so he's like he's like all right don't call me how did you know chapters your first book how did you know one year from today you'd be done because i was because other guys that have serious characters have one book a year and so i figured well you know doing this don't think i was about four months into it so i was like I give or take a couple months. So sure enough, I called him back one year from the day.

And he's like, but he said, hey, don't call me. Don't send me chapters. I'm not going to give you any advice. And he did give me some advice on that call, but he didn't want me bugging him throughout the year, which I totally understand now. And called him back a year from then and said, it's done. And to his credit, it was so awesome. He said, is it done or is it the best you can possibly make it? And I said, well, I could probably edit it a little bit, but it's finished.

And he's like, all right, call me back again when it's the best you can possibly do. So I took another four months of reading it and editing it, sending it to a couple of friends, and then called him back four months later and said, this is the best I can possibly get it. And he said, all right, I'll let him know what's coming. So how many hours a day do you think you were putting in? Gosh, so it's not like hours. I mean, I would love to get on a discipline type schedule, like a Jocko type schedule someday, but I'm not quite there yet. Especially at this stage where I still feel like this is a startup.

And I can't say no to a lot of things. I need to take advantage of emerging opportunities just like I would on the battlefield. Looking at the enemy, they're learning from us. We're learning from them. And it's really who adapts quicker. You're looking for those emerging opportunities, taking advantage of momentum, looking for gaps. So the same things that you would do for a startup or starting like a coffee shop somewhere, you have to do for writing. And I didn't really get that at the outset. Like how so? So you're not just writing and sending it to New York, which is what

I thought up until about the time I published the first one. I thought you just went back and forth with an editor a little bit, and then you start the next book. Well, really, you have to do advertising, branding, co-branding, your marketing stuff, your budgets, your social media, like anything you would have to do with any other business that you're starting up you have to do as an author so uh so i kind of treated it as a startup and starting it like just like you're starting something in your garage and you're hungry and you're passionate and uh you're seeing an opportunity here or there and you're and you just want to build this readership and let people know that you have this character

and see where it goes so uh so it's been a sprint. So point being, at some point, I think you get to a stage where you can say no, and you don't have to sprint off in all these different directions, almost at the same time. And you can say, Okay, you know what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna wake up, I'm gonna write for four hours. And it doesn't matter if someone calls for an interview, or if CNN wants you on or Fox News wants you on, doesn't matter. I'm just going to do my four hours. And then after that, then I'll check my texts. Then I'll check my emails. And if something comes up, yeah, we can schedule it out maybe later in the week.

But right now it's just like, oh, really? Fox wants me on? Bam. I'm on. And then all of a sudden, no, I'm not writing for those four hours in the morning. Right, right, right. Usually it's the first novel and all the others. We're really done between 10 at night and about 4 in the morning because that's the time it was quiet in our house with three kids, a dog, wife.

Yeah, that's how I just end up writing too. Same thing. When everyone's asleep, you do your best work. Because there's no one interrupting. Those interruptions kill you. But I have friends that feel like they can't work like that and they only work good if they get up in the morning and then write immediately. They write even before breakfast. So I was getting up and working out like that up in the morning and then write immediately. They write even before breakfast. So I was getting up and working out like that up until the publication of the first book,

and then things got a little crazy. The publicity stuff. Publicity stuff, and then writing late at night, also working on the next one, dialing that in, and then you're editing one while you're writing another. So you're kind of juggling at the same time. Oh, Jesus. When you're on this book-a-year type program, that's what you're doing. And maybe I'll get past that at some point and I'll have an end date

and then I'll start the next one. But right now it's not quite like that yet. So my mornings were taken up with getting up early and not anymore. I need to get back after it. But in Park City where we live, there's some crazy in shape people out there. And I happen to know a couple of them. So as soon as we moved out there after the Navy, they're like, hey, come meet. We got to go work out. It's 5.30 in the morning. And I know Jocko's been up for two hours already. But for me, that's pretty good. So waking up at 5, getting

down there and doing these crazy trail runs, CrossFit stuff, jumping in the pool, all sorts of crazy stuff that these guys put together. And it's like five or six CrossFit workouts meshed into one with trail running, with the endurance side. What group are you in with that's doing this? Is it a local gym? Yeah, we meet at the local gym. But Hobie Darling, who is the CEO of Skullcandy, he's all into human performance at all levels. Emotional, physical, mental, spiritual, being the best human he can possibly be. You'd love him.

And those guys are all out there? They're all out there. Yeah. And Eric Snyder is another guy. His Defender 110 is used in some of my videos. He's a big Defender guy. But those guys are animals. They're animals. And get up with them, work out, get home, get

the kids to school. So I had a schedule like that for a little bit, but then it all became hey, when you're working until four in the morning and getting up an hour and a half later, that's a little much. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's always been a problem with comedy, you know, because you have to go late. You're at the, you're testing stuff out and then you're home and maybe you get home and then you're making some, but then after you, after you tested out something at the comedy club, you come home and make those notes. Yeah. Well, luckily now the way well now we

can't do shit but um when this crisis the covid thing wasn't going on what i would do is i would record my sets on my iphone and then on the way home i would listen to this set and then when i got home either i would listen to it more or i would write you know sometimes i'd listen to it more and then take notes and then write and try to adjust or just write on completely different subjects okay but i just got to a schedule where the best writing i was doing was when no one was listen to it more, and then take notes and then write and try to adjust or just write on completely different subjects. Okay. But I just got to a schedule where the best writing I was doing was when no one was home. Yeah.

Because I'd be writing and then I'd hear, Daddy, I got a question, or Daddy, or my wife would want to know something or someone else would need something or phones would ring. At 2 o'clock in the morning, no one's calling you. Exactly. It's free. You're free. You're free. And then it's just quiet no one's calling you exactly it's free you're free and then it's just quiet yes and also it's creepy something about the darkness is creepy like you have your thoughts are weirder yeah maybe it was a real hard time to get up and do like i would do

like a 10 a.m jujitsu class right and when you're up at four and you crash and then try to get up six hours later or not even five hours later and then get to the gym with a little bit of food in your stomach. It was too hard. Oh, yeah. And you just listen to yours or do you video? I just listen. But video is better. I really need, like, Damon Wayans, who's a hilarious comedian, has a collection of every set that he's ever done since the 90s.

Really? Yeah. He films everything. He brings a tripod and a fucking camera and he sets it up in the back of the room and films every set he does. And then he edits it all himself on his computer. I'm like, dang. That's next level. That is next level.

And do you ever look at, is there like for people on Amazon, you can leave reviews of books. Are there, like for Comedy Club, are there reviews of comics that go in there or anything like that? I don't know. I mean, maybe. That's good that you don't know then. Yeah, I don't read any of that shit.

Yeah. You can't. It's all at scale, right? When you get to a certain number, like the number of people that are contacting you, like I'm at a place where I just, I can't. No. It's like 9 million something Instagram followers or whatever the fuck it is. It's like, you can't, you can't read that.

You just post and you're done. You just get a, and it's not good for you. It's not good for you, positive or negative. Like, just, you should know what you're doing. Get out of there. Yeah, so for me, I feel like I need to thank everybody at this point because I feel so fortunate that the books are resonating with people.

And really, this whole thing's been at grassroots. Like, this third book made the New York Times list. And it made it without, like, a national news appearance or with any of these other bigger things. It was hunters. It was tactical shooting people. It was readers that took a risk on a new author and then told a friend. And then that person took a risk and told another friend.

That's awesome. So it's crazy. And then these companies like Black Rifle Coffee, like those guys, like veteran-owned businesses, or like Dudley, like those guys that posted Andy Stumpf, like all those guys that held it up and said, oh, I love this, but it's still grassroots. It's just like, instead of around the water cooler at work, it's modern. Yeah. So I feel like I need to get on and say, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Cause I do, I feel so fortunate and I really want to thank everyone,

but I think I'm about at that stage where I can't do it anymore. I got to do a blanket. Thank you. Yeah. I don't, I hope people don't think that I'm not thankful. Oh, no. That's not the case. It's just for my own sanity.

Oh, yeah. And I've seen people that do get really too into the comments, and they lose their fucking mind. It's not healthy. Oh, yeah. I don't respond to anything negative. If anything's a little weird, I do the block. I'm very good.

And I treat it like if I owned a general store in small town USA and I'm behind the counter, I own the place. Somebody walks in and they ask for directions. And some drunk comes in screaming the N word. Yeah. So you dip, you treat those people differently. So, so the guy who wants directions and doesn't even want to buy anything. I mean, you're like, you treat the, Hey, here's the, here's how you get back to the interstate. Thanks so much. You know, and he has a good impression that he's left with. Or someone comes in and wants to buy a candy bar, a six pack or whatever, you just point them in the right direction and make conversation. So I treat it kind of like that. I treat people on social

media the same way I would if I was interacting with them the way we are right here, but just across the table at my business local general store. So I try to treat it like that, but I'm about at that point where there's too many people coming into the store and I can't say hi to everybody. Yeah. But I still am so sincerely thankful for everyone that took a risk on me as I was starting this out. Yeah. Well, I can relate.

I understand where you're coming from. And I used to interact with people all the time online too. But then it got to the point where I was like, I see too many of my friends like getting mad about things or engaging back and forth and having these Twitter wars with people, then I realized this is the worst way to communicate ever. Yeah, you can't do that. It's just not a good, effective way to express yourself with another human being if there's any sort of a dispute or disagreement about things. The best way to express yourself is in person. And I know you can't do that with everybody, but it's just,

it's not, you, you only have so much time in the day. It's not, it's not, it's not a smart way to value your time. Oh yeah. No,

it's that, it's that bandwidth. So I never worried about how hard it was to get out. Like I didn't worry about how hard it was to get into the SEAL teams or get to, get to Bud's. All I knew that it was very hard and that for me, that was enough. So it can be done. People have done it before. Um, and so even growing up,

even so in mid eighties, I'm still doing like what today people would call CrossFit. Uh, so I'd get home from school. I'd run the Hill by the house. I'd go into the basketball hoop and then pull myself through, you know, and these kinds of pull up things, you know, we had a jungle gym in the backyard. So I do some regular pull-ups there, change my grip, uh, put a, put a rope up in the backyard. So I was doing that pull ups there, change my grip, put a put a rope up in the backyard. So I was doing that. I had my bow out. So I'd shoot for the higher heart rate and everything. So I was doing all those things.

And then I was reading like Zen and the Art of Archery. And I was reading the nonfiction stuff on warfare. And I was reading these those authors I talked about earlier that was a genre I'm writing in today. So I was doing all that stuff. But I wasn't focused on how hard it was or, oh, maybe I'm not going to make it. Am I good enough? I'm like, well, I'm going to get myself as good as I possibly can by doing all the things that I think I need to do. And now you can type in like Navy SEAL workout

program. And there's so many, you never know, even hard to pick which one. Back then there was nothing, you know? So I'm like, what did I see? I see him running in the sand. I've seen a couple of pictures like that. I see these guys in Vietnam with these guns. And I'm like, OK, I've seen a couple movies. OK, what are you going to do? OK, you're going to climb this tree. You're going to do this rope stuff, do these hill sprints. So I just did that. Did you have like a program that you wrote out or did you just wing it?

Nope, just as many. Work out until you're tired? Which is very similar to actually when I got to the SEAL teams where it was pre-CrossFit days and all that. So you ran as far as you could, as fast as you could in sand. And then you came back and you lifted as heavy weights as you possibly could. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger, 1980 encyclopedia of bodybuilding. That was the workout up until probably early 2000s. So early 2000s, what changed? CrossFit came on the scene. That was huge. We adapted or adopted it fairly quickly.

CrossFit seems great until things go wrong. Seems great until your joints start going or your back starts going. Yeah. In fact, CrossFit, I just kind of mean functional fitness in general. I don't really mean the actual program. But first, yeah, those programs came out and people would get on and say, oh, look. Look at this thing. This is new.

Give it a shot with me. It took a little bit of time, but some guys jumped right on. But really what it showed us, and then right about that time also war kicks off and all that. And we realized, okay, you're at 10,000 feet in these mountains. You have a ruck on, you're a radio guy, you have an automatic weapon guy that has a ton of ammo. Then you're going, you're hitting this compound and you're putting these ladders up and then you're going through these windows. And sometimes there are these spaces you have to get into to clear where people are hiding or they're hiding weapons. So encyclopedia bodybuilding and running as far as you could, as fast as you could in sand, and that being all you did. There's probably a better way.

So we're kind of forced into it, essentially. Do they do any work where they're monitoring heart rate and checking recovery and trying to keep you at a certain heart rate while you're working? No, they might now. So I'm a little dated. So I got out in summer of 2016. And I know they're trying to modernize a lot of things as I was leaving for those last couple of years. But so it's possible they do now. And one thing that they did to that incorporated a little technology was in Hell Week, like when I went through with Andy, they just pull you out of the surf and then they'd walk down the line and shine a flashlight in your eyes and they'd say okay this guy is on the verge of hyperthermia he's about to die pull him out but then they have someone that looks totally fine and then that person would just collapse as soon as like the

doctor walked by so what they had people do is start to take these little RFID chips and swallow them and so they'd walk down that line and they'd hit you with like the zapper from Walmart and they'd get your core body temperature. So it lasted for about like two days until you passed it. But for those first couple of days, that's how they did it. So you had an RFID chip in your stomach and then you shit it out after two days. Yeah. And so that's how they could tell your temperature?

Yep. I don't know when they started doing that. They certainly didn't do it in 97 when I went through. That's what they're going to do with this fucking COVID virus shit. Maybe. They're going to make you swallow an RFID chip. Put it under your skin or something. I'm really worried about this tracking thing that they're trying to implement. That they're

talking about how South Korea is doing that. They're giving up a little bit of personal liberty and freedom. And I'm like, you can kiss my ass. They're giving up a little bit of privacy yeah like no no I'd rather wash my hands and stay home fuck off yeah and they're not gonna give that back like when the government takes

something thank you I don't know how many times they've actually given freedom back zero yeah there's no way once they have that kind of surveillance where they can monitor you they're tracking you okay so they can track everywhere you go and measure you versus all the other people that they know are infected. Did you come in contact with them?

This guy's got a recent test. You don't like you need to get a recent test. Now you're registered. Okay. Now we're tracking you and everywhere you go, you're going to be tracked. You're telling when they come up with a vaccine, they're going to just drop that tracking and go, Hey, go back to being completely free. Go back. No chance. No. Once they take those freedoms, like you never, laws are never, I shouldn't say never, rarely taken off the books. Right. Every week you have people on talking about bills that they're sponsoring.

Well, are they getting rid of another one to add that one? Or are you just adding, like, there's a book called Three Felonies a Day. And it talks about how a guy wakes up and the normal guy gets up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, has dinner, puts the kids to bed. And unbeknownst to him during that day, he has committed three felonies because there are so many laws on the books you can't even keep track. The American Bar Association can't even tell you how many laws are on the books, state, local, federal, international ones that play in,

all sorts of different ordinances, laws, and you're breaking at least three of them a day to commit a felony. It's a fascinating book in that they're not going to give those back. They're not going to give those freedoms back. I read a really disturbing thing today, and I'm not even sure if it's true. So we should find out right now. Clickety-clickety-click. Did the CDC stop tracking flu deaths for this year?

Because this is what I read. And it might have been some wacko right-wing website that I was on. So you never know. But I was like, this can't be true. Because the real concern is that the CDC tracks flu and they find out that flu is lower or the same as COVID and why we're making a big deal out of COVID. And then, you know, people riot in the streets. That's why people can't. It's hard to tell who to trust.

You see two politicians and you see you don't trust either side. And you see everyone trying to make a power grab and use this as a way to make power or hurt an opponent or whatever it is. And even with, yes, the CDC, you don't know there. World Health Organization, you obviously can't tell there. You can't trust information coming out of other countries. So people at home are just like, what do I do? Safest thing to do is just to stay where I am. But you don't know who to trust.

It's very hard. It's very hard to figure out who to trust. And doctors are giving disparate. What do you got? I'm on their website. I'm seeing information updated as of last week, April 18th. For flu deaths? It's on the CDC, weekly flu surveillance.

I mean, it's all the flu information. So how many people have died this year from the flu? I have to dig through here to find that information. Because the COVID deaths are, what is it now? 55,000, I think, something like that. For this country, yeah. I think it's more, right? Maybe 60,000 now?

Closing in on that, yeah. Which is not a small number. It's a lot of people. But then you find out that that's a bad year for the flu. That's normal. But obviously, this year, we've locked everybody down worldwide even. And there has to be a slower spread because of this quarantining and because of the social distancing. So I would imagine you're getting far lower numbers than they would have gotten if everybody had just gone out into the streets. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No doubt about that. But for flu, this is my understanding, because that fourth novel that I'm writing right now is deep into

the study of infectious diseases. Perfect for you. Perfect timing, right? It was crazy. And then how you weaponize those infectious diseases, what the Japanese did prior to World War II in that space, how they used them in World War II against the Chinese, what happened to that data afterward, after the war, the Soviet program from the end of World War II up to the collapse, what happened to that information, and then our programs today from the end of World War II up to and continuing through today. So I was keyed in to all that ahead of time.

And so it made me a little kind of hypersensitive to this. I'd been talking to doctors, people that had worked in that space, doing my research. But from, obviously, I'm not a doctor. But from what I've studied, the difference here is that the incubation period. So for us, so in the military, we go overseas, and now we're fighting insurgents. And what do they look like? Well, they look like the people that aren't insurgents. What does that car look like that's pulling up to this checkpoint? It looks like the one that didn't haveurgents. What does that car look like that's pulling up to this checkpoint? It looks like the one that didn't have a VBID in it. Or is that one looking a little low on the suspension?

So they're not in a uniform. They're not driving a military-type vehicle. So same with this. It's like an insurgent that's adapted. And it's adapted to those other diseases and how we fought them. And it's adapted by the incubation period, by that nine days. So a flu, you get the flu. You're down.

You know you shouldn't go into work. If you show up at work, someone's like, bro, go home. You look horrible. Get out of here. You're going to infect everybody. You don't know that with COVID-19. So you go out there for this nine days, whatever it is, and you're infecting people during that time frame. So it's like that insurgent that hides amongst the populace.

It's the same type of thing. Like, it adapted. SARS was different. Flu populace. It's the same type of thing. Like they've adapted. SARS was different. Flu is different. All these other ones have been different. And that's the adaptation of this one is that you go out and you infect other people without knowing it. So that's the difference between it and the flu. So it's a hard thing to wrap your head around when you just look at numbers.

But there is a difference in that flu. You're staying home. You're sick. You know, it's really, in a lot of ways, it's a perfect way to spread a virus. Because there's a video game that my wife plays. She used to play. She doesn't play anymore now that this is going down. But it was a virus video game. Really?

You send a virus throughout the world. And the key is, if you make your virus too strong, it's a video game you play on your iPad or your phone. If you make the virus too strong, it kills people too quickly and then it doesn't spread. So the way you get a virus everywhere is you have one that sits in your system for a little bit and it's just weak in the beginning and slowly spreads its way across the world. And that's essentially what this is in a lot of ways. But this is, this one's so weird, man. I mean, Newsweek actually had a story yesterday saying that they think it came from a lab.

So now that theory of whether or not it came from a laboratory, I think I tweeted it. I think I tweeted it. So you can find it on my Twitter page. I was reading it yesterday. I'm like, okay, Newsweek, not really a sensationalistic publication. Right. When they're publishing something like that, you've got to go, hmm, probably something to this. And there's a lot of speculation. I mean, it's not so hard to imagine.

I mean, you're talking about something that literally was a few blocks from the epicenter in Wuhan where they had that level four lab. Right. So the deal is with the video game your wife was playing and the goal of that game, it sounds like, was to infect the world. To kill the world. But if that's not your goal, if you have a goal and you want your country to survive, then you don't want it to become a global pandemic. You want it to hit the city, the country, whatever geographic area you want to hit with a weaponized infectious disease, you want it to burn out in that city. So instead of going over and dropping bombs on it like World War II, like firebombing Dresden or whatever else or Tokyo and just destroying those cities, well, you know what? After the war, you can go in with an infectious disease and it's burnt out and there's no

damage. But you don't want it to spread throughout the whole world and come back to your own country. So when I first looked at this and I heard about Wuhan, I heard that there was a, let's say, not a weapons lab, maybe, but maybe it's a weapons lab, but at least a lab doing research in infectious diseases, a couple miles from these wet markets where they're saying that this thing broke out. There are cases in the former Soviet Union of them doing these this research into infectious diseases and weaponizing it and then having it get out because the protocols weren't followed or whatever else and kills a few people and they hush hush it because it's a 1960 something or 1970 something. So there is precedent and it wouldn't be beyond the pale to think that, oh, someone was doing some sort of research.

And it doesn't even have to be weaponization. It can just be they're just studying this infectious disease, not even weaponizing it. And someone contracts it somehow in that lab and then brings it outside. Yeah, that's the controversial theory. So here's the thing. The controversial experiments in Wuhan lab suspected of starting the coronavirus pandemic and says the case against a Wuhan lab. And so it says why the Wuhan lab remains a suspect in the coronavirus investigation. I mean, it's really likely that we never really will know. But they most certainly were working on viruses similar to this one right there. The end of this article says there's another one called RATG13, which is very, very similar to the SARS-CoV-2 one that we're experiencing now.

Oh, terrific. They share 96% of the same genetic material. Yeah. Wow. It's thought to be the most similar to SARS-CoV-2 of any known virus. The two share 96% of their genetic material. That 4% gap would still be a formidable gap for animal passage research, says Ralph Baric, virologist, University of North Carolina, probably in bed with the Russians, who collaborated

with... When you found out that a Harvard guy got arrested because he was taking money from Russia, or excuse me, taking money from China because he was doing something with them. Yeah, I mean, it's real spooky. What's really spooky is the World Health Organization is essentially in bed with China. Yeah. And they're not giving us 100% clear, detailed information. Everything gets filtered down through the Chinese propaganda system. Oh, sure.

Very dangerous. And they also were exceedingly – we don't know the numbers, right? And we can't trust China. But it seems like they were a little more prepared for this than we were with so far as testing kits goes and all that. So if you're doing research, there's a lab where you're doing research similar to this close by there, there's a history of other countries, maybe even China to of doing research into infectious diseases, not following protocols that we would here in the United States are not all as safe as they are shocker here in the United States where we're doing the same type of research. Then it gets out and then they just happen to have a lot of these kits ready to go for testing. I don't know. Yeah. Well, in 2018, they were actually cited for violating safety protocols at that same lab

in 2018. So there were concerns about that area long before. But what's really fucked up is the World Health Organization posted in January that, according to China, there is no evidence of person-to-person transmission of this disease. This is days after they knew for sure it was being transmitted from person to person. So China has been deceptive about this from the very beginning. China has been deceptive about this from the very beginning. And they think that if they were honest about it and that they stopped everybody from leaving, they could have covered this in the point where it would have been 95% less. I saw that. Yeah, 95% less people would have gotten infected. Yeah, just lock down Wuhan, deal with it there as much as you can anyway.

Let the rest of the world know. I mean, looking back, that seems like, but you're dealing with China. Same thing, you're dealing with Russia, you're dealing with some of these other countries like that. China seems the worst. It seems like the worst. It does seem that way. It's a perfect storm. It seems like, but the way they handle their own citizens, when their citizens are testing positive, there's this horrible video of this family being dragged out by these people in hazmat suits.

And they're trying to resist. These people are dragging them away because they tested positive. Oh, yeah. Once again, that government taking a little more control, a little more control, a little more control. And we're just giving it up. And we give up so much. And even before this, obviously, we gave up so much information about ourselves voluntarily. We would, let's say in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, we never would have given up.

And now we're like, oh, click, accept. And bam, there you go. Awesome. I can post a picture or whatever it is. You know, this is fun. I can communicate with my friends. We're very accustomed to clicking on those. Awesome. I can post a picture or whatever it is. You know, this is fun. I can communicate with my friends. We're very accustomed to clicking on those user agreements. I know.

No one can figure them out. It's horrible. Those concern me. And obviously, we've given up a lot of our information in terms of data, where we go, the map information, that kind of shit. But this tracking thing really freaks me the fuck out. It really does. Because they're going to find another reason why they should be able to track you.

thing really freaks me the fuck out. It really does because they're going to find another reason why they should be able to track you. Once they do it because of the virus and then it'll just be next year it'll be the flu. They'll find reasons to keep fucking tracking you. To keep you safe. And you're like, oh, if you're not doing anything wrong, what are you worried about?

Listen. As soon as someone says that you're a fool. Antenna's got to go up. You don't understand. You don't understand what this could mean. the fucking mayor of los angeles was paying people to rat people out for not finding social just not following social social distancing rules oh yeah there was an article in the fucking newspaper we're saying that normally snitches get stitches i saw that video get rewards i saw that video it's horrible Do you not know about history? That guy's never lived in that town. I know. It's crazy. It's just like, so for this third novel, I went to Russia to do some research.

And I'd always wanted to go there. I knew that for this third one, because the first one- Did you go before or after- August. So before. You had written about Russia in your books. I was in the process of writing it. I was getting kind of closer to the end, but I finished up edits, gosh, I want to say this

January. So I've only read Savage Son. Is that, I didn't even read it I listened to it people get mad if you say you read an audio book I saw that the other day

when you posted that I know I was like dang yeah I guess because it's harder to read but so Savage Son

is the only one I've listened to did you talk about Russia in the other books in the second one I did it plays in in the geopolitics side

so the first one is really very I wanted it to be very basic very visceral very primal right out In the second one I did, it plays in the geopolitics side. So the first one is really very, I wanted it to be very basic, very visceral, very primal, right out of the gate, because I knew that in New York, Simon & Schuster, all these big publishing houses, they see thousands of these things a year. So something needs to make this stand out. And a lot of that was the personal experience from Iraq and Afghanistan morphed into the novel to make it feel real personal and visceral. So I wanted to come out swinging with that novel of revenge without constraint. So I'd done that research essentially just as part of my life by going to Iraq, going to Afghanistan, all those sorts of things. For the second one, I knew it had to be different.

So I put in a lot more of the geopolitics of what's going on with Russia, power struggles, all this other – to make it a little different. Because I didn't want people saying, oh, he's just a one-trick pony. He just picked up this revenge thing. Now he drops it in Africa, drops it in China, drops it in Europe. So it had to be different. It had to continue that hero's journey in this story of violent redemption. But I went to Mozambique as part of it to do that research. Because I knew, and this is before I even had a publishing deal,

I knew that, hey, John Grisham, he wrote A Time to Kill first. And he couldn't give that book away. And then he wrote The Firm. And that's the one that takes off with the movie with Tom Cruise. Then later, then they go back and they publish A Time to Kill. Matthew McConaughey makes the movie. But if he'd stopped at A Time to Kill, he'd probably still be practicing law somewhere in Memphis. So I knew I was always going to write too. So off I went to Mozambique to do that research, get that boots on the ground experience like I had in Iraq, had in Afghanistan already for the first novel, had by living in San Diego, knowing L.A., knowing New York, and really being able to incorporate what I'd done already.

But I hadn't been to Mozambique, had to go there. We wanted to talk about the politics. We wanted to talk about Chinese influence in the region with mining operations, both legal and illegal, and the meat poaching that goes along to feed all the people in those mines, how that's affecting the environment. So that couldn't stop them from talking. It was great. And then for this third one, I thought it would be the same in Russia. So I wanted to go to Kamchatka Peninsula and do a hunt, do a little fishing over there at the same time, but it's all part of the research. And for one month a year, you can get to Kamchatka Peninsula from Alaska. So you don't have to go from here to Germany or London for all of August. So you get in one flight a day. I'm sorry, one flight a week. Only in August. Only in August. Otherwise you have to go all the way around the

world. So much better to fly to Anchorage, then hop on a couple hour flight. And next thing you know, you're in Russia. It's awesome. But I thought it was going to be the same. I thought, you know, I'll land, I'll get to this remote backcountry place where we have these guides and all that, and I'll be able to really—and it's on the military installation because the people guiding us used to have some connection to the government, so he has this hunting concession out there in the backcountry. And I thought they'd all want to talk to me. And then I realized very quickly that for most of Russian history, if someone is asking you pointed questions, that kind that you'd ask if you're writing a political thriller, you were not long for this world.

It was off to Firing Squad, Gulag, off to Siberia, whatever. So they were very hesitant to talk to me. And I left all my computers behind because as soon as I walked through customs, I knew I was going to get everything sucked out of my phone and computer. And I didn't know who sent things to me in email or text over the last 20-plus years. So I just left all that behind, brought a pen and a paper. But I was asking these questions, and I thought, oh, here's my book. They're going to know I'm an author. I'm just asking this.

But no, they were very standoffish and very suspicious of why I was asking them these kind of questions. But it all worked out. I got some great stuff and got to weave that into the third one. What kind of hunting did you do in Russia? So brown bear. Oh, wow. Yeah, it was crazy. What does brown bear taste like?

I'll tell you that I don't know because usually I follow the customs of the local people because I don't want to show up and be kind of the ugly American and show, oh, I'm better than you. You don't eat this show up and be kind of the ugly American and show, oh, I'm better than you. You don't eat this, but I will. I kind of adopt what the locals do. They don't eat the bear? No. Interesting. I wonder why. Yeah, I don't know. It's just one of those things

that they don't... Well, a lot of times people... I mean, bear is amazing. I had the best bear this year. A black bear. Brian Call gave me some. Okay. Black bear is delicious. it was so good i tell that to people and they're like shut the fuck up like my daughter got asked what's your favorite food she goes bear yeah and her friends were like what amazing yeah like it's probably not really her favorite food i think she was probably trying to shock her friends

i don't know that black bear that black bear that Brian gave me is canned. So it was just sitting there for a while. Yeah, so it's this canned thing. So how did he make it? You know, what do you boil it? And it's in the, how are you canned? Wayne Endicott from the Bo-Rack up in Springfield, Oregon gave me some canned deer meat and it was really good.

Yeah. But it's really bottled. It's like bottled deer. Interesting. I haven't had bottled deer before. But had bottled i've had bottled deer before but i'll tell you bottled black bear and if this maybe it was eating you know blueberries or whatever but it was and it sat on our counter for six months because my wife was like hmm get the fuck out of here with this exactly so so then we had all these guys came over like guys from total archery challenge and yet we came over to the house

we did a wild game dinner uh trevor thompson came so we opened it up, and it was everyone's favorite. I wish we had more of it. What were the ingredients besides just the bear? He must have put a couple, some spices in there of some sort, but I don't know. I mean, it didn't look like it. You just open it up, and it looked weird, but then you open it up, and it all of a sudden looked like filet mignon. Was it a metal can? No, like glass, like you would with a jam uh jam yeah same as the deer that i had same like one of those vacuum sealed bottles

it was awesome i want to go down there and get some more from him if he has any more if he's listening i'm gonna come down and get some of that because that was legit yeah maybe my wife loved it she's like wow this and as soon as you opened it up and it hit the air it changed like it changed it didn't look like this murky thing that was in the jar like it looked beautiful it was amazing we loved it it was amazing. We loved it. It was great. Everybody's favorite. It was awesome.

Yeah. That's a weird thing. Like bear actually tastes good. People are so wrapped up in bears because of teddy bears. They have this distorted perception of what a bear is. And people that have no problem eating cows get mad at you if you eat a bear. Do you know how much nicer a cow is than a fucking bear? I know. Cows don't eat their young, I don't think. Not only if you eat a bear. Do you know how much nicer a cow is than a fucking bear? I know.

Cows don't eat their young, I don't think. Not only do they eat their children, they kill other people's children and then the mutt, well, other bears' children, rather. And then the mutt, when I was in Alberta, my friend John and Jen, the people who run the camp out there, the Rivets, their son saw a male bear kill a cub and then the female bear chased the male bear away and then finished eating her cub. It's amazing.

Because he was eating her cub. So she ate her own cub right after she was defending it. It becomes meat once they're dead. Yeah. They're all cannibals. It's crazy. A lot of that stuff is interesting how people have, uh, will associate bears with, well, and humans. I mean, they do look, when you skin them,

they do look a little like humans. Sort of. Someone looks like a fucking bear when they're dead. Like you've done something awful with your body. Yeah. It's a big boy. You're not going to take care of yourself. Steve Rinella calls it best. He says that they're charismatic megafauna. Yeah. That's it. There's some animals that we have in our head that you're not supposed to eat. And we also, I think, we connect bears to what you would call trophy hunting, meaning like someone who hunts lions, someone who hunts things you don't eat. Although mountain lion apparently is very good. It's delicious. I've heard this.

I've had friends. It's like their favorite food. Yeah. Donnie Vincent was saying, I've heard him here. He's talking about it's the best thing he's ever eaten, I guess heard this. I've had friends. It's like their favorite food. Yeah. Yeah. Donnie Vincent was saying, I've heard him here. He's talking about it was the best thing he's ever eaten, I guess. Yeah. And I did my first one this year and it was amazing. It was incredible.

You had mountain lion. I didn't eat it because the guide didn't really, it was like a no-go. Same thing? Yeah. The guide wouldn't let you eat it. It was very clear to me that that was not something that was done there. Where was this? I probably should have pushed it in Utah.

So I probably should have pushed it. I could have pushed that one. Yeah, you should have pushed it. I could have pushed that one. Yeah, you should have pushed it. I feel bad about it now. It's hard to get a tag for them too. So it's not like it's easy to get some mouth line sticks. It was wild. Yeah, that was amazing.

But back to that, the bear experience was incredible, especially with someone that doesn't speak English. Like you're over there with this guy who's, that's really, he was part of, well, in the military and then worked for the government and then is now. For the people listening, you're doing air quotes. Yeah. So I, it was really interesting. Um, but yeah, so got my bear and then, but the craziest part was my friend who got his and, uh, he wounded it first by accident, of course. And that happens like we know. Um, and it goes off into this thick, thick brush. And in the States, because I went and did another hunt in Alaska this year,

like they won't let you go in after a wounded bear into the thick stuff. Like maybe some will, but from what I've gleaned, they're going to go in and do it. Kind of like going in after a wounded leopard or something in Africa. Like the guides, that's where the guides are going to go earn it, go and do that. So this thing's wounded. And they hand me this rusty side-by-side shotgun that's at the bottom of this boat that we're in, this little tiny little boat that we're in on this river. And the guy hands it to me and then hands me two shells. And I'm looking at this rusty thing.

And I have these two shells in my hand. I'm like, okay. And I'm like, no, because he had a couple more. I'm like, no, give me some more. And I trained up for Africa with a double rifle. I went to FTW Ranch in Texas to get really good with a double rifle because I wanted to do a Cape Buffalo hunt the same way someone would have done it 100 years ago. So no optic, double rifle, so it's a rifle, but it looks like a shotgun. So big rounds.

So there's two rounds. Yep, side by side. Interesting. And so you have two shots, but you have two other ones ready to go. And so you practice at FTW practice and they have charging animals that are coming in after you and you're just like you would in the military, changing mags. But this time you're getting two more in there and getting it back up. So I trained hard for that. Uh, and so when he handed me this old rusty shotgun, um, and I think someone said, Oh, that was made in an AK factory. And I was like, ah, okay, I feel better about this because I've seen a lot of AKs,

and I've seen a lot of them rusty and working. So I'm like, okay, I'm about to trust my life to this thing, and it's rusty, and it's from the bottom of a boat, and this guy doesn't even speak English. So, bam, here we go. How many shells did he get you? Four. And I look at them just to make sure it's not like buckshot or something so I can see that it's a slug. It feels like the double rifle I trained up so hard with to go to Africa, which was an amazing experience.

Couldn't have written that one better. And off we go into the brush. So it's like they wouldn't let you do this in the States. Like you're going into this thing and you have a wounded huge bear, brown bear. And off you go. And it's just me, the guide, and my friend. And this thing, it's all quiet. And I haven't felt this dialed in since romario six like i was on and then bam this thing rears up like i don't know 15 yards away it's just like a human and i just span and boom shot him like i would a person just how how big was he ended up being over 10

feet yeah i'll show you a picture after this. 10-foot tall bear. Jesus Christ. But even more than that was the size of the head. And I forget how, well, I think they measured it, but I forget. It was huge. It was huge. I'll show you a picture after this.

So, yeah, I shot it like it would a human. And it goes running off like, I don't know, 20 yards or something like that into some more thick stuff. And then we hear a death bellow. But before we hear the death bellow, the guide in broken English was like, I'm going to go around the other side and I'm going to scare him towards you. And I'm like, Oh, okay.

So I do, I go around to the other side and I get down. I'm like, well, if it charges out, it's probably going to be on all legs and it's going to come charging like this. So I knelt down and then just got ready to,

to put one in it. If it's coming charging at me, I'm trying to figure out, okay, face mouth right here, you know, it was my first bear hunt. So anyway, we heard the death bellow after that. God damn.

It was huge. It was crazy. That is such a different kind of hunting when you're hunting something that absolutely could tear you apart. Oh, yeah. Like you're made out of tissue paper. Oh, yeah. Yeah, no doubt.

I'll show you the picture. Yeah, it's crazy. But what surprised me was how much, it wasn't like Wild West over there where you said, oh, can I can we go and get another bear? It was very like, no, you had your tag just like you would in the States. It was all science based. We need to take this many out for the population. Like it was want to deplete the resources. Right. Yeah. That's exactly it. Yeah. Yeah. They're smart. But for some reason that surprised me. I thought, oh, it's Russia. Because I'd been to Russia before. I'd been to Moscow. I'd been to Ukraine. I'd been to the catacombs for earlier in life. And I wove those into the second novel. But I just figured it would be kind of Wild West-y, kind of like how I remembered it over in Ukraine and Moscow back in the early 90s. But it wasn't. It was all very much, you have your tag, this is yours, and we're not going to deviate from that.

It's kind of interesting they wouldn't even entertain eating it. Yeah, and there's a language barrier there too. So it's hard, especially when you're dealing with people that are tough. I mean, they're living in these huts built into the ground, essentially, for insulation, Just south of Siberia. So Kamchatka is just south of Siberia. But essentially the same type of thing.

And so they're built into these small hills for insulation. So, I mean, they're out there. Wow. And it's a rough existence. So when they say, we're not doing something, and they say it in a way with this Russian accent, and it's not really like, oh, let's talk about it. Right. No, you would think that those people would want meat more than anybody.

You know, I mean, you would think meat would be very valuable in a 10 foot bear. You could feed so many goddamn people. Maybe that's why they told us we couldn't because they're keeping it. It's possible. Oh, that's possible. That's very possible. I would definitely not discount that in the least. That's possible.

Yeah. But a ton of fish out there, moose, huge moose out there. A lot of northern pike, right? Yeah. Well, they might, but we were after Dolly Varden and rainbow trout, brown trout. Oh, wow. Some big ones out there. So it was pretty crazy. It was a good trip. And I got to weave all that stuff in. So I got to weave in some of the people that I met over there. The snowmobiles they have over there have one skid in the front instead of the two. So they're going through this taiga, this tundra.

Oh, so it's tight. Yeah. So they're only watching one getting hit by a root or something like that instead of the two. So I got a lot of good stuff by going over there. And I wouldn't have known what to ask. I wanted to see the vehicles that they used over there. I was very happy to see some Land Cruisers. So that was pretty cool.

But they had a whole bunch of other stuff too, some Russian, some crazy Russian stuff. And I got to incorporate those vehicles into the novel as well. So you really never know what you're going to get until you get on the ground, talk to people, build those relationships. And then things ended up making their way into the stories. Have you ever seen that Werner Herzog documentary, Happy People, Life on the Taiga? No. I need to see that. You need to see it i wish i'd

seen it before i read the third book it's crazy it's really good it's and it's this amazing documentary about these people that live in the taiga in russia and uh it shows them from being in the summertime uh all the way through into being in the wintertime and it just there are just hunters and gatherers and they're so happy. It's really weird. It's really weird. Like there's no mental illness, there's no suicide and everyone's just struggling. I mean, they're just, they're making their own skis.

They're making their own homes. They're making their own, I mean, they have these cabins set up for trapping and they use snowmobiles and then they have dogs. They have a very tight relationship with their dogs and they get fish and they get meat and then that is what they eat and they bring bread with them

and the bread's all frozen, obviously. So they have these loaves of bread they bring and they store it in their cabins. They have to bear-proof everything. But their life is so compatible with being a human being. It's like there's something about our human reward systems that have evolved over thousands and thousands of years that Being a hunter-gatherer just completely locks in with all the things that keep you content and happy. There's the documentary right now Oh awesome. Yeah, very interesting the relationships with our dogs. Oh, yeah dogs over there were amazing everything

Their dogs are everything they have a huge, very tight relationship with their dogs. That's incredible. Yeah, the dogs that we had in the camp, they protected the camp from the bears. Like that was the bear protection was these dogs that were specifically trained up to chase bears off. Yeah. I think I called them Lakita. I have to go back and look, but absolutely incredible dogs. They were amazing.

It's a really amazing documentary. Absolutely one of my favorite. Yeah. There's another really interesting documentary. Well, not a documentary. It's a really amazing documentary. Absolutely one of my favorite. Yeah. There's another really interesting documentary. Well, not a documentary. It's a vice guy to travel where it's called – I think his name is Haimo. Haimo's Arctic Adventure. And it's a guy who got a job in Alaska in like the 1970s.

in like the 1970s and he owns the he has like a lease to have a cabin out there in this very remote part of the Arctic and once he's dead like this is it like no one else can goes back to the government yeah I don't think anybody else is going to be allowed but it's

another amazing documentary and he's a guy who's a really he's an American guy who's really articulate very interesting guy very intelligent guy who loves living like this. And he raised his family out there and his wife is American Eskimo. And it's just a fucking amazing way of life. I don't want to live. I don't want to live like that.

I mean, I like cities. I like cars. I like all that stuff. I like all that stuff. But there's something incredibly compelling about being completely reliant on nature and your own ingenuity and hard work. And he was talking about it in this documentary where the Vice people – this is back when Vice was just starting out too, this Vice Guide to Travel. It's one of their earlier series that they were doing on YouTube. one of their earlier series that they were doing on YouTube. And it's really cool when you're seeing this guy who's this reporter who has no experience like this at all interacting with this guy

and him explaining his life and why he lives like this and why it's so important to him. I think maybe that's why people find their way back to nature in some way, shape, or form. Like they want a cabin somewhere. They like going to the mountains. They like going to Big Sky. They like going to Big Sky. They like going to Park City.

That's the dream for people. Yeah. But it's still nice to be able to drive in and go to the grocery store. It's nice to go to a restaurant. I know. It is nice. But it's good to be prepared. Like who's looking smart now?

Exactly. That guy might not even know what's going on, but he doesn't even need to. Right. Yeah. People, I think, also, this was a little bit of a wake- up call for people as far as how soft we've gotten generally as a people. And I'll say from the end of World War Two, for those guys that came back and got back to work, didn't complain and built this country into what it is today. But since then, we've gotten a little soft and people are like, oh, wait a second. Maybe it would have been better had I had like a week of food or maybe I would have had, you know, maybe do I need a gun?

Do I have a gun in the house? And oh, we do. It's in that safe and I haven't shot it in years or it was given to me. My dad gave it to me. Maybe I should learn how to maybe use it in case the police aren't there for me when I need them to. Or do we have fire extinguishers in the house? Do we know how to use them? Are those things expired?

Do the kids know how to use them? Like all those little types of questions. once again, gets back to bandwidth. So if you're worried about that stuff, you know what you're not worried about? How do you adapt your business? How do you adapt having your family at home and moving forward here when maybe you don't have a job anymore and you need to get creative? about, oh, how many beans are in the cap? But instead, if you had, oh, we have three. And everybody's experience is going to be different, like what they're comfortable with as far as their levels of preparedness. And it's not really about being paranoid. It's just allowing you to focus elsewhere if there's a natural disaster here in California, like an earthquake, other places, tsunami, whatever it is, hurricanes, whatever.

It allows you then to focus where you need to be focused. And some people will be like, three days of food and maybe a little water. Do I need something to filter water with in case I turn on the tap and there's nothing that comes out? It's brown. So everybody's level is going to be different. But I think this was a wake up call. And I'm not super confident that people going forward will take those lessons and act on them because that's what's important. Most will slide right back into complacency. Unfortunately, I think that you're right. But it's funny because my wife was like, ah, now I see why we have all this stuff. And no, it's not crazy stuff, but it's just like, I like being prepared. It's not just from being a SEAL. It's from before that. I've just always been drawn to the outdoors and wanting to be

prepared and know how to live out there, survive, or whatever else. It's always been a part of me. So it was very natural for us to have a couple guns, have some ammo, have some water, have some food. Because when this hit, you know what I did? A book was coming out, and I had to figure out how to adapt very quickly to the changing environment and launch it. To me, it was very important to do it in an appropriate way and do it as much good as I could at the same time by helping independent bookstores who have no foot traffic, that sort of thing. But very quickly, I had to take that breath, look around, and adapt. And I didn't have to worry about food or water or filtration systems or ammo or protecting my family.

Because you were already prepared. We already had that. So I got to put all my effort into figuring out how to adapt to these changing conditions. Did you get a lot of questions from people like, how do I get a gun? Yes. A lot of California people. The lines around the block in front of gun stores were hilarious. They didn't realize you couldn't just walk in.

They've heard about this loophole. How can I, where's that loophole that they keep talking about? How do I just get one of these? No. And I can't even loan you one because if I loan you one and you walk more than 20 yards away or whatever, now it's an illegal transfer of a firearm. So sorry, I might have 300 of them, but guess who's not getting any? You, because you didn't prepare and I don't want to be a felon. Well, there's also so many people that were anti-gun that now want a gun. I mean, it is hilarious. It's really interesting to see. Like this is where people are protected and when society is running great and we, you know, up until this pandemic at least, we had a wonderful society.

I mean it's like – I mean there are problems with every society. It's certainly not perfect and there's certainly a lot of crime and certainly there's things wrong. But however, it is absolutely the best time in history to be a human being and to be alive. Especially in this country. It's many people like, why would you need a gun? No one needs a gun. The First Amendment's bullshit. We need to take all the guns.

Now that the pandemic hits, those same people are like, oh, okay, now I get it. There's not enough cops in the world to deal with riots. If there's mass riots in the street and people are breaking into people's houses and the world becomes lawless because the economy has absolutely collapsed and people that were maybe like a little bit sketchy just go on to become a full on criminal. That is absolutely inside the realm of possibility. And we need to recognize that. And the people that were anti-gun, there is, I mean, a great percentage of them now are saying to me, like, I either, I want a gun or I get it, or how do I get a gun? Or how do I train? Like, I see those

videos of you training. How do you train with a gun? Where do you go? How do you, how to just start? And all these questions, where do you hunt? Like the Google searches on hunting must be through the roof. I would think so. I would think so. because if you're worried about food, like my friend went to the grocery store right after the big thing hit and everything was shut down. He said, all I could find was one package of ground beef. Yeah. That's something we're definitely not worried about. Yeah, you're not worried about that.

Come over here, man. I got three commercial freezers. I'll hook you up. I'll give you, I've been giving a lot of my friends meat. I love doing it. This is all I ask. Send me a picture of your food. I love it. I just want to see what it looks like when you cook it. Yeah. I mean, this isn't the first time. This is the first time that you've been somewhere else and you've

been able to... It's not LA riots and you're seeing the Korean shopkeepers defending their stores. It's not Katrina where you're hearing a few things about the police not maybe confiscating firearms there, but then not being able to protect yourself. But, you know, if you live in Montana or maybe you're in upstate New York or whatever,

and you're seeing that on the news and then you go back to making your dinner and having whatever, it's not real. Now, this one, I think, was real for more people. For everybody. Yeah. Because the whole country is locked down. Even Montana, which has a very low number of deaths and a very low number of infections, still has statewide social distancing rules uh the mediator crew those guys are all doing their podcast uh from their homes remotely

yeah it's a different deal this drove it home for people i think it did it drove home the vulnerability and i think this is a good drive run because this is and i don't want to disrespect anybody who's died or anybody who's got sick, but this is not the worst pandemic the world's ever experienced. It's not nearly as bad as like the 1918 Spanish flu, which killed 50 million people worldwide. So this is a smaller number, still bad, smaller number. But this is a wake up call that this kind of thing is a real possibility. And then take this and then couple it with, OK, a terrorist attack or take this and couple it with a natural disaster. Now you have two things going on. Now you have a pandemic and now you have a huge earthquake here in California.

You have fires, you have a tsunami, whatever it is. So you have those things or civil unrest somewhere. So that's three things now. Choose any of those. Or maybe someone's watching and this is a time because we're weak and you get hit with a cyber attack from somewhere. Now all of a sudden you're at home and your credit cards don't work. All this data has been gathered over the last 10, 15 years on people, credit card information. I mean, they're building in China all these huge fields that collect data, huge hard drives essentially that collect data. So now you're at home and you want to order from your Whole Foods, Delivers, or whatever.

Oh, not working. Credit cards. Let's try this next one. Oh, this one's not working. Now what do you do? So it can get worse. It can get a lot worse, yeah. But being prepared, just a little bit.

You don't have to get crazy. But it would be nice to defend your family. For me, as a husband, father, I feel that's my responsibility. As a citizen, that's my responsibility. That's one of my jobs is to be able to prepare my family and defend my family if need be. So my family might be maybe a little bit different. But my wife spent to Thunder Ranch up in Oregon training on both pistols and ARs up there. Our daughter has been hunting since she's

seven. She's very comfortable with firearms, but it's just natural. And I think it's just natural for us as people to want to protect that greatest gift of life and not just ours, but those that we love as well. Well, I think it seemed like it was not inside the real world of problems that most people are going to have to deal with before this. And now that they've seen like, oh, the actual structure of our civilization is very thin. The veil that keeps you from bad things happening is very small. And it's just we lived in this nice little Goldilocks zone where nothing was happening, where there wasn't any pandemics. There wasn't any state, like besides 9-11, there's no real attacks on American soil other than that one day. So you look at the United States over this long period of time, you're like, wow, this is like

the most amazing time ever to be alive and everything's going so great. This is just how it's going to be now forever. And then something like this happens and people realize like, wow, this is like the most amazing time ever to be alive and everything's going so great. This is just how it's going to be now forever. And then something like this happens and people realize like, oh. And especially I feel terrible for the people that work hard every day and then their job is taken away from them. It's no fault of their own. They're not lazy. They're not drug addicts. They didn't gamble it all away.

One day they woke up and the world had changed and now they don't have food money. It's tough. It's fucking hard. And it's, yeah, it's also one of the, well, it's the other piece when we talk about being prepared. It's the one that often gets overlooked when you're talking about preparedness is that financial security piece. And for everybody, it's going to be different. Is it one month worth of bills? Is it two? Is it three?

That's what the experts say or whatever. Everyone's going to be different, but it's important, I think, going forward for people to realize if they weren't prepared financially for this, that going forward, they need to start putting a little bit away. They need to talk to somebody about how they best can do that because things aren't always going to be rose. You're going to face adversity in life. And we're just like, we're facing it as a country now. Like, yeah, you're going to face it in life as well. It doesn't have to be a pandemic. You could just lose your job or something could happen to a family member, whatever it may be. It doesn't need to be a pandemic or a terrorist attack or anything, these global calamities.

It can just be you losing your job or getting sick or whatever it may be. So having that foundation of financial security, hopefully that's one of those notes people are taking from this going forward so they can be better prepared, not just for any of these calamities we're talking about, but just for normal everyday life. Because you're going to get hit, you're going to get knocked down, and you're going to have to get up and keep moving forward. And you know what's going to help you with that is not wasting bandwidth on figuring out how you're going to pay that next bill, because you're prepared ahead of time, just a little bit. I hope people also recognize that if you're in a dead end job and you've been just playing it safe and then it got taken away from you because of this pandemic. And even though you

played it safe and you did this terrible job that sucks, like you realize like, maybe I should have chased my dream. You know, maybe there's a chance. I mean, like a guy like you who takes, but I want to get back to this because we never really, we never really finished how the book got, you talked about how you wrote it. We went off on some tangents. Yeah, we did go on a tangent. But your story is one of the great American success stories. I mean that is the story.

The story is the guy has a dream or the woman has a dream, whoever, works hard and then one day figures out a way to make it happen. That's it. And that's what you did. That's it. And that's what you did. That's it. And I didn't, that whole thing about just not worried about it not happening. I mean, it can always not happen. It's good to have contingency plans for sure. I had, I didn't have any specific contingency plans, but I knew I was going to be okay. But when you sent it off, I want to get to the, I want to get a lot of things.

I want to ask you how you created Reese, how you created these characters. I want to get to a lot of things. I want to ask you how you created Reese, how you created these characters. But when you sent it off, what does it feel like when you've spent a year and, what, eight months or something? A year and four months first, and then another four months to edit. And then you're like, all right, and you send it off. What is that feeling like? It was awesome.

It was awesome. I went to Coronado, California. I went to the UPS store on the main street there called Orange Avenue and I wanted to get next day air, tracking, you know, everything, insurance, whatever you could possibly do. I'm sure you had other copies of it, right? Yeah. So it's all perfect. And what I found out from taking those notes in the car when I was talking to Brad Thor, I found out how Emily Bessler, who is his editor, who is Vince Flynn's editor, who did the Mitch Rapp series, who sadly passed away a few years ago, but he wrote a book called Term Limits in the late 90s that really defined the modern political thriller. So I knew the font that she liked.

I knew the spacing that she liked. And also I made it perfect. What kind of spacing does she like? It was like Arial two and a half. It's in my old notes. Now it doesn't matter so much. But back then I wanted to do everything I possibly could to increase my chances of success or making her not just look at it and have anything. Even if it was just psychological, like, oh, it's in the wrong font.

I don't like it. Did you specifically like juice up the beginning chapter, the first chapter, just to make it very riveting? Yes. Grabber, keeper? Absolutely. Yep. Because I knew what I liked. Because I knew what I liked. And I knew what I liked reading.

And I knew I liked sniper stuff. And I had that background. And I could weave all that in there. And I didn't just say he's walking in in shoes. They're Solomon boots. Why? Because that's what I use downrange. Or why is he in Sika gear?

Because, well, buddy John Hart started Sika. And also, it would make him blend in to that environment. So he's not dressed in military stuff in the beginning. So I needed to do all these sorts of things that were very natural to do and get him to a place where the reader wants to turn the page. How do I make the reader want to turn to that next chapter and want to keep them up at night? How do I make them want to go through the entire night to finish this thing? Did you spend the most time on the first chapter because of that? Nope. I think it was all pretty much the same on every chapter, I would say.

When you go back to edits is really where you spend time dialing it in. And gosh, I'm trying to remember. There weren't very many edits on the first one from New York. I thought there was going to be a ton, but maybe it was because I had that yellow sticky from listening to your show with Steven Pressfield. And I had that thing that said revenge. I tied every single paragraph, chapter, whatever. I had to directly or more importantly indirectly tie back to that theme to keep the reader going. Same thing with the second one. I had to directly or indirectly tie back to redemption somehow, even if it was very subtle. What was the theme for Savage Son? The Dark Side of Man.

So it explores the hunter versus hunted dynamic through the dark side of man. So really finding out, hey, is James Reese the protagonist? Is he a killer? Is he a soldier? What is he? Is he a hunter? Or is he all three of these things? So exploring that because a lot of us are drawn to these jobs where we're defending our country, defending the guys to our right and left when we're downrange.

So why are we doing that? Is it because of his country? Well, people have been doing this from the beginning of time. They've been defending the guys to our right and left when we're downrange. So why are we doing that? Is it because of his country? Well, people have been doing this from the beginning of time. They've been defending the tribe. They've been picking up the same type of weapons to provide meals for that tribe. They've been passing down lessons on how to hunt and how to defeat other tribes in battle to ensure the success and the continuation of their bloodline. So why are we still doing that today?

Is it all for God and country or is there something more? And so that's what I was really exploring with the other one, but the third one. But yeah, the important thing is to get to the end of that chapter and to have the person want to turn the page and to look forward and also to establish a relationship with the character. Like I knew creating James Roos, I wanted him to be a likable guy. Like I don't want people, people don't want to spend time with someone they don't like.

That's like, why would you do that? So I wanted people to invest in this character, to like him, to want to sit down and have a beer with him. But also he needed to have that background, the training, the experience to be able to flip that switch when everything's taken away and essentially become the terrorist, become the insurgent that he'd been fighting for the last, at that point, 16 years at war, and use those tactics, techniques, and procedures that worked so well against us from the enemy side in Iraq and Afghanistan, and use those here on the home front. So it's more than just a story of revenge, that first one.

It's really also about someone who comes home and brings the wars from Iraq and Afghanistan home to people who have been sending young men and women to their deaths for close to 20 years now. So you can read it at a couple of different levels depending on how deep you want to go into it. Now, when you sent it to her, how long did it take before they responded? Almost immediately. Really? Yeah, it was so cool. So I sent it off.

I'm super excited. I totally remember because after I put it in after i mailed it i'm in the street walking back to the land cruiser and this crazy lady walks out into the street from around the corner in this nightgown and i'm like what's going on and she's like there's a there's a dead rat in my house can you help me i'm like what and it was right there like 50 feet away and i couldn't say no so i remember this vividly that i sent this off, had my lifetime dream. I get it in the mail to Emily Bessler at Simon & Schuster and off it goes. And I'm taking that breath and I take a couple steps towards the car and this lady runs around

the corner like in a just frantic look in her eye. And I'm like, yeah, I'll help you. And so I went into this house and it was like this hoarder house. There was just stuff everywhere. It was crazy. So I had to go up to this top level, this old like Victorian house and take this dead rat and take it down. Did you think you were going to die in there? Imagine if you send out all the shit you've been through. It was crazy. That's how it ends. It's a fucking serial killer house.

But anyway, I just remember that distinctly because it was so odd. But yeah, so send it off. And then I didn't know, like, you don't know, are they going to call you back? Are they not? Are they going to read one word of it and just say, eh? Or, have I been opening it all? Who knows? But about two weeks. So about two weeks. When I say immediately, I mean like two weeks. That's pretty quick.

Yeah, pretty quick. I get a call from Brad Thor. And I pull the car over. I'm in Texas. I just finished this hunt. And I pull over to the side of the road. And he said, hey, you've been struck by lightning. And I was like, what?

And he said, yep, you've been struck by lightning. And I was like, what? And he said, yep, she loves it. What year was this? This is, I mailed it in November of 2016. So I got out of the military in July or June 2016, mailed it in November. And then I heard back at early December. Wow. Yeah, it was crazy. And yeah, he said she loves it and she wants to publish it. And later I found out that she called him because he's their political thriller guy. And she's like, hey, you know, I got Jack Carr's manuscript and I love it. But kind of you're our guy. What do you want me to do?

And he's like, I want you to publish Jack. And that was so cool. So cool. So he could have put the kibosh on it if he was a bitch. Maybe. I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. He's so great. He was so cool. So cool. So he could have put the kibosh on it. Maybe. I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. He's so great. He's so awesome. And one thing he told me when we first talked, like I said, he didn't, he said, don't call me throughout this next year when you're writing. But what he did say is that the only difference between a published author and an unpublished author is that the published author never quit. And so for me from buds and having

that bell right there, that's with insight of you during hell week, we Week, we put it in the trailer hitch of these vehicles that follow you everywhere. So you don't even have to run anywhere. You just have to take a few steps and ring this thing and you're done. So that really resonated with me because of that. And I just love that. So I'm like, all right, I can do this. And I always knew I could anyway because I had that background and had that foundation. I knew what I was going to do.

And I was so excited. So anyway, he told me that that next couple weeks later or mid-December, I fly to New York and we sit down. I think she wanted to make sure that I wasn't a crazy person. So we get to New York. Especially after you read your books, like who the fuck is coming up with this shit? Good point. And that first one, well, I'll tell you that there's a first one. There's like in this third one, if you've got to the torture scene yet, well, there's something similar. I read the whole book or went through the whole book. So there's a torture scene. Yeah, I've been through the torture scene. Yeah. So there's something similar. I read the whole book or went through the whole book. Yeah, I've been through the torture scene. So there's that one.

And then the second one, there's another torture scene. And then in this other, the first one, there's one that I got from the Shining Path guerrilla movement in South America. And what they used to do is, and they got it from somewhere too, but they'd essentially eviscerate you while you're alive and make you walk around a tree. So your intestines are now wrapped around this tree and then the jungle eats you alive. Yeah, it was crazy. So I was worried that might be a little off-putting to somebody in New York and publishing. Um, but later I found out that that's like everyone's favorite chapter from the book, especially people you wouldn't expect, like librarians and like, people absolutely love it. But, uh, what I get to New York and I'm little like, so now I'm like, okay, um, I've run to New York and I'm little, like, so now I'm

like, okay, um, I've run to make a good impression. Uh, so I bring a suit, uh, and I, I, I've never had to do this before. So I, I heard of people, you hang it in the bathroom and you let the steam get to it to get the wrinkles out of the suit. So I do that and I'm getting ready. And then I go to put the suit on it's soaking wet and it's December it's New York. It's freezing. I don't have like a coat like other people in New York have or scarves or whatever they wear. And so I put this thing on and I walk, I'm like soaking wet and I have to walk to this coffee place. And by the time I get there, I'm like a sheet of ice and I get there, make sure I'm there an hour early. And I gave the guy, I think I gave him like 40 bucks or something to try to wait for a table to be ready. That was a little more private than the other tables in the coffee shop. And so in we go, I sit down waiting. I ask her what her favorite coffee

is ahead of time. Boom. You know, she shows up, sit down. We have a great conversation for about 45 minutes to an hour. And she said, Hey, I want this thing, but do you know, you need an agent? And I was like, what? Like you need an agent to negotiate. Yeah. Like the Pressfield thing didn't say that in there. And when I was learning about the war of art and the resistance and all that stuff, we didn't talk about agents in there. And I'm like, oh, no. How do I get one of those? She's like, all right, new guy. I'll introduce you to four and then just pick one.

And I was like, OK. Oh, wow. So interviewed four. How do you know who to pick? So it was crazy. So there was two males, two females. They were all fantastic, all great reputations, all amazing. The guys I was like, it was very obvious that it wasn't, they would have been great.

You're not going to pick, I'm not going to make a wrong choice here. So it was in that sense, I was very lucky. But I said, okay, they're probably not the right ones. But between the two females, they were both so amazing, but they're 180 out from each other. One had been around since the Tom Clancy days, small boutique agency, represents John Grisham. So you go in there and you have all these John Grisham posters all over the place. The whole team comes out, sits down, talks to you. It was amazing.

She was so awesome. And then the other one, younger, hadn't really found her Tom Clancy or Grisham type person yet. Bigger agency that ICM that's out here in Hollywood as well. And it was such a tough decision. It was like a final rose ceremony. I haven't broken up with someone in 20 years, but I felt like I was breaking up with someone because I was so invested in both of these agents. I just like they were both so fantastic. But I felt like I was in Lanai at the time when I made the decision. And I was like, man, it felt like the final rose ceremony. And then pick the one with ICM because I thought, you know, for this type of a novel and for where I wanted to go with a movie or series or something like that to be that part of the mosaic and to continue building this foundation of readers. I think that's probably the right choice.

And I think it was. So you had this plan to turn this into some sort of a series from the time you released the very first book. Yeah, from before that. And so what's crazy is that as I'm writing this, now they tell you not to think of someone playing your character as you're writing. But as a child of the 80s, that's almost impossible not to do. So as I'm writing, the crazy part is like, usually you think of like Mark Wahlberg, or you think of somebody that had done these sort of things kind of before. But I thought of Chris Pratt. And he had just done, all he'd done is Parks and Rec, and he had a small role in Zero Dark Thirty where he plays a SEAL.

He has like a couple lines in there. And for some reason I'm like, that's the guy. Really? I had no connection to him. And it wouldn't have been the obvious choice back then. This is 20, so I start writing in December of 2014, I think, or early 2015, somewhere there. So he wasn't as giant giant movie star back then either. I hadn't done any of that stuff yet. And I thought, you know what, this is a likable guy. Uh, and he seems like an

awesome dude. I'm getting a good feeling from him. And I thought, you know, growing up in the eighties, I love Magnum. Uh, you know, he started off as a Naval intelligence officer and then they found out about seals, the writers, they turned them into a seal a couple of seasons into it. I'm like, everybody loved Magnum in the eighties and women liked him. The guys liked him, you know, nothing not to like about Magnum. And he also does the first essentially what you would call a murder on national television with the other person, not having a firearm or a weapon. And it's the end of, I think it's season, season three. Um, but the guy, a guy that had him as a POW in Vietnam comes to Hawaii.

There's a little conspiracy thing involved. And at the end, he thinks he's walking away. And then Magnum asks him if he's seen the sun rise that morning. Because that morning when his friend gets killed, there's a sunrise. And the guy turns around. He's like, yes, why? And Magnum turns around and boom. And they stop it right there with this like fireball coming out of the end of his 1911.

And they freeze it right there with this like fireball coming out of the end of his 1911 and they freeze it right there. And it was the first time on television in that primetime hour where someone had killed somebody else. The hero had killed someone else who wasn't armed. I forgot about that, but I'm remembering it now. That was very controversial. Yeah. And it's amazing. So I thought, that's who I need. I need somebody who's a likable guy who's going to invest in this. And I heard he was like pro-military and that sort of thing. And Chris Pratt's the guy. And that's all the thought I gave to it. You couldn't have picked a better guy. So awesome. And who knew what he was going to turn into with Jurassic Park? And he hadn't done Passengers. He hadn't done anything serious yet. But I also thought about,

because I've been studying this since my whole life. And I thought about in the 80s, look what Tom Hanks did in the 80s. You know, he's in Bosom Buddies. He's in Dragnet. He's in The Burbs. He's in Joe vs. the Volcano. And then he does something called Philadelphia in the early 90s, and he takes that risk. And since then, he's been able to write his own ticket. He's one of the greatest actors of his generation.

And I thought, who is that guy in this generation that needs to stretch a little bit, that needs to do something different? And I'm like, that's Chris Pratt. He can do this. And so I thought of, and then even crazier, before the first book came out, I'm at Thunder Ranch training, doing some shooting stuff up there in Oregon. And I get this call from a guy that I knew in the SEAL teams. And he's like, hey, bro, do you remember me? And you know, you know, Jared, and he was out there in Utah with us. And he's like, Hey, bro, you remember me? I'm like, Yeah, of course. I remember you. How's it going? And talk to him in five years or something. And we catch up a little bit. And he's like, Hey, you know, I just want to thank you for a couple when I was leaving the SEAL teams. I don't know if you remember, but you've had me in your office,

you sat me down, you talked about transition, you introduced me to some people in the private sector and I've never forgotten it. I was like, oh, wow. Hey, of course I'm gonna do that for you. Cause I mean, he's an awesome dude, total stud, great operator and wants to get out of the team. So I'm gonna try to help him as best I can. Uh, but he really remembered it. And he said, Hey, I heard you wrote a book. And I said, yeah, it's coming out in a couple months here. There are these galley copy things, which are early copies of a novel. I can send one to you. I'd love to send it. And he said, yeah, that'd be great, but I'd like to give one to a friend of mine. And I said, yeah, no problem. Who's that? He said, Chris Pratt. I was like, no way. Wow. Yeah. So he gives it to Chris. Chris reads it. And next thing you know, he's optioned it before it even comes out.

Are you a guy who believes in fate? Do you believe in destiny? So when I was in Ramadi in 2005, 2006, that's where I got to think about this a little bit. Because every time you left the wire, anything could have been an IED. And you could have either spent that time on the way to Target and coming back from Target worried about, oh, is that dead donkey on the side? Is that going to blow up and kill me or hit that Humvee in front of me? Is that piece of trash right there? Is that covering something else? Is there a wire there?

You could spend every single mission, especially going to and from Target and even on Target, worried about that. Or you could focus on the mission, focus on the job, get there, do the job, get back. And at that time, I was like, I think I have to resign myself to fate here in a lot of these things. Otherwise, my mind is going to be focused not where it needs to be, but on is that an IED?

Is that an IED? And so I thought, all right, you know what? If I get blown up today, that's just how it was. Do everything we possibly can to mitigate that. But, you know, it could happen. And I'm not going to spend an inordinate amount of bandwidth worried about that other than trying to mitigate it as best we possibly can. But that's not going to be the focus of everything that I'm thinking about. It can't be. I need to be focused on this mission. I need to focus on contingencies. There's a firefight. I need to figure out what assets are available to come in here for QRF or

whatever else, what air we have overhead. How do we maneuver here? All those things. That's what I need to worry about as a leader. What's QRF, a quick reaction force. So you have those set up at different places in case you get hit. So they can come on in usually in like Bradley's or Abrams, sometimes different vehicles that have a little more fire power than you do as you're sneaking through the streets. So, so I kind of resigned myself to fate and there's a book called the bridge at San Luis Rey. And there's like, I forget how many people, but let's say five or six people that are on this bridge and it collapses. And the story is how each one of them

got to be on that bridge. Why were those six people the ones that were on that bridge at that time? And it's fate. So I guess, and I haven't really thought of it too much since then, other than that experience in Iraq and just having to, or feeling like I had to resign myself to it. The Chris Pratt thing is eerie, though.

It's crazy. It's a little eerie. It's crazy. I mean, wonderfully eerie. Eerie may be the worst word for it. It's pretty amazing. I feel very fortunate. Yeah.

And, yeah, it's one of those things that. You kind of maybe made that happen like maybe you kind of put that out there as you were writing it thinking about him maybe i don't know i say that and i said shut up hippie like it's like oh what do you got a crystal up your ass too you know it's like but that yeah but who knows i hadn't uh if i hadn't if i was like not i don't know i mean i was you know whatever an average seal or whatever but if i uh you know hadn't, if I was like, I don't know, I mean, I was, you know, whatever, an average seal or whatever. But if I hadn't taken the time to sit down with Jared and like, maybe Chris doesn't even know this exists today. Right.

And other crazy part of this, I thought of Anton Fuqua directing it. Really? He's directing it. Yeah. Why him? Because I love Shooter. Did he do Training Day? He did Training Day.

Got the Oscar for Training Day. Love that. Magnificent Seven. I knew he'd worked with Chris on Magnificent Seven. I actually did know someone who knew him, so I did have that connection through someone else. But I love Shooter, which is based on the book Point of Impact by Stephen Hunter with Mark Wahlberg. Love that movie because I love the book so much. They made it more modern for today's time, but it's a Vietnam sniper.

It's Bob Lee Swagger. That's who it originally is. But I just thought he's the guy. He's the guy to direct this thing. And now they're both doing it, which is crazy. That is crazy. Yeah. That's so weird, man, that you had those two people in your head.

That's what makes me think. I don't not believe that it's possible to manifest something. But I think most of the people that talk about that stuff are full of shit. That's where it's a problem. Like most of the people that talk about that stuff, they're trying to sell you something that, well, you know, you can make your life happen and you just need a dream board and write all those things down. There's a lot of that stuff is horseshit because you got to do the work, right?

That's it. But part of me thinks that if you do do the work and you do have that focus and that intensity i feel like there might be some sort of frequency that you can tap in where you make things more likely to happen or possibly you can make things happen but the thing is you know like you only hear those stories from the people that are successful like how many people like are like, I wrote a book. I had Chris Pratt in my head. I said, Chris.

Yeah. And he's like, get the fuck away from me. No, it's totally crazy how all that stuff kind of comes together. You couldn't have picked a better guy than Chris. He is such a good guy. He's such a great guy. He's almost weirdly nice. Yeah.

No, he's so nice. Maybe that's just different for around here, maybe. I don't know. But he's very different in terms of Hollywood actors. There's a few like him. People love to say that actors are full of shit, and they're gross, and they're self-centered, and narcissists. And it's true a lot of the time.

Is it really? But it's not true all the time. Yeah. And Chris is a great example of a guy who's a very he's a very religious guy, very pro-military. He's a really positive guy, very, very, very friendly guy. He's not your typical actor. Yeah, no, he's been so great to me. But he's also a huge movie star.

So it's weird. It's like he's not that guy who does coke and goes to parties. And he's a different animal. So they do exist, male and female. There are actresses that are great people. They just really genuinely enjoy acting. But for the most part, the people that get into it are people that need a disproportionate amount of attention.

And for the most part, the people that need a disproportionate amount of attention are disproportionately annoying. And usually they like to get rid of the author right away when you option something because they're like, I want to get rid of that guy. Cause he's going to be on set and he's going to be like, that's not my vision. You're ruining my book or whatever. So they'd like to get rid of you,

but Chris wanted to be involved. So I got to help out on the, on the pilot script for this thing. That's awesome. It is so good. Now, is this a Netflix thing? Is that what you're doing?

It's a, it's still classified. Okay. I think they're doing some, some announcement at some point, but it's a streaming service. Oh, that's right. Okay. I know what it is. I forgot at some point but it's a streaming service oh that's right okay I know what it is I forgot yeah it's a 10 fart series maybe something like that eight to ten parts I think so perfect

that's yeah cuz if they tried to jam that you know I don't work no movie well you don't have to anymore yeah it's great people like looks genius right especially now yeah another crazy fate thing is because when you were doing And now he looks genius, right? Yes. Especially now. Yes. So it looks like such a good move. Another crazy fate thing is because when you were doing that, like when you were writing that in 2016, the streaming thing wasn't what it is today. Right. And even when we did the deal, it was like a movie. It was kind of like that. It was early 2018 when we did the deal.

And it's like, well, do you want a series or a movie? So it's both. It could be both did the deal. And it's like, well, do you want a series or movie? So it's both. It could be both in the contract. And then they decided to do the series earlier on before COVID even was on the radar. But now it looks like, yeah, genius move. Well, now series have a giant advantage over movies. Now movies are getting released. It's a really interesting thing today.

One of the theater chains was saying that they're not going to have universal films anymore because Universal released Trolls on direct-to-demand with people with Apple TV and Amazon and stuff like that. So these cinemas are now going to war, like publicly going to war with the studios because they're saying, hey, you need to release your fucking movies in our theaters. We've got a business together. they're saying, hey, you need to release your fucking movies in our theaters. We've got a business together. And then the theater's like, you know, the movie production company's like, you might not have a business in six months. It's tough. Because who the fuck is going to go to the movies now?

I know. Even when they're like, okay, it's all good. We're opening up May 1st or whatever it is or June 1st. And then who's going to rush right back with their kids? It's not going to be what it used to be. Yeah. It's going to take a long time. And they were on the way down anyway.

Yeah. It's going to take a long time. And they were on the way down anyway. Yeah. They were because, well, I've been saying forever, I would love if, you know, I have a big TV at home. I would love if I could just watch movies on TV. I don't want to go to the movie and some guy's talking to his girlfriend in the middle of the movie and ruining everything. Or people are checking their phones. They see the light from their phone.

It distracts you. Some weird guy walks in and all of a sudden you're like, ugh, I kind of like him. Right. For me anyway, I'm like looking at that. That's strange exactly he's got a backpack great

what does that mean I'm going to sit here the whole time with my kids just on edge the entire time worried about this whatever the exits that sort of thing

which is important to do in a movie theater exits there's smoke or whatever you've got to go to the wall use your hand down the wall to get to the exit that sort of stuff

but yeah why not stay at home enjoy it at home make your popcorn at home so it's looking like a good move now but going back to that going back to the fate thing so it's also like what if i had not been a uh you know the operator or whatever that i was what if the guy had a different impression of me that sat next to brad thor at the fundraiser yeah he's not going to recommend me to to brad thor if i was uh if he had a bad impression of me or he thought

i was a bad operator or had a bad reputation or whatever else, like he's not going to mention my name to Brad Thor. So all those little things that kind of came together or what if I didn't read growing up? What if I didn't read all these guys like David Morrell who created Rambo in 1972 and, or read Brotherhood of the Rose early on, which also solidified me to go into the SEAL teams. I was already on the path, but he has one sentence in that book, Brotherhood of the Rose, that talks about SEALs. And I had such a good time, such a great experience reading that novel that I knew that one day I'd write in the same genre as he does. And now he's a dear friend now. He's an incredible guy. So all those little things just kind of, I mean, they happened, but I did them because I was passionate about them. I was passionate about

reading, passionate about writing, passionate about serving my country, passionate about being the best operator I could possibly be. So I was always focused on those things. And then, you know, these other things kind of helped. It helped propel this whole thing forward. That seems like the formula for success in everything. It really does. Like being passionate about something, focusing all your attention and all your energy, and really trying to do your best at something. That seems like the formula.

Well, do the work. Yeah, and that whole Pressfield book is called Do the Work. You have to do that before anything else can happen. You can't just wish that something was going to happen. No, you have to sit down and do the work, whether it's write comedy, whether it's write a novel, whether it's start a gym, whatever you're going to do. You have to sit down and do the work. Whether it's write comedy, whether it's write a novel, start a gym, whatever you're going to do. Like you have to sit down and do the work. And people don't, they, for whatever reason, don't quantify in their head that all those little things you don't feel like doing when you just make yourself do them, they all add up. And it really makes something happen that doesn't happen before.

It's not going to happen otherwise. No one's going to do it for you. No, no one's going to do it for you. Like I hear authors talking all the time about what their publisher doesn't happen before. It's not going to happen otherwise. No one's going to do it for you. No, no one's going to do it for you. Like I hear authors talking all the time about what their publisher doesn't do for them. Right. I hear that about comics too. My agent doesn't do anything for me. Be undeniable.

They can't do shit then. Yeah. For me, I'm like, well, I have no background. I'm not coming from politics. I'm not coming from sports. I'm not coming from anything where I have any sort of a following that's going to push me forward in this type of a realm. They don't owe me anything.

I owe them something. I need to prove myself to them and prove that I was a good investment. Because most books don't make back their initial investment. So you have to make that back. Most books. Yeah, most books. Really? There's a few of them, kind of like movies.

Like all the Avengers and all that sort of stuff makes the money back for the studios for all the other ones that no one sees that maybe win Oscars but aren't making back their money. So same thing in publishing. There's a few at the top, like the Stephen Kings and Brad Thors and Vince Flynn's and all that. They make it back for all the books that don't make back their investment. So I was like, I need to prove myself to Simon & Schuster. How am I going to do that? Well, I owe them. They gave me this shot. And so I'm not going to leave any rock unturned. I'm going to look at things from other industries like Black Rifle Coffee. How do they build a coffee company?

Like guys getting out of the military and out of the agency. How did these guys get together and make some YouTube videos? And all of a sudden now they have this amazing company. Well, it's a great product. Huge company. It's an amazing product at its base. But you know what else they did? Oh, they did some advertising.

They did some marketing. They did their own marketing on advertising on social media platforms. They did their own marketing on advertising on social media platforms, and they connected with other people that had similar interests or that they thought might be able to then grow the brand and also help those other brands along the way. Well, it's also authentic. Like Evan Hayfer, the CEO of Black Rifle Coffee, has always been a coffee freak, like his whole life. He used to fucking roast coffee in the back of his Humvee while he was doing deployments. It's amazing. Yeah, he's great. And when he takes you through, you sense that passion. So when he talks about coffee, it's like me talking about writing. You can sense that passion and it's incredible. I learned so much about coffee from him. Now I'm turning into more of

a coffee snob like before I wasn't. But now that I know him and know those guys and have seen the process and now I'm a total coffee snob. Does he give you a hard time because Reese likes honey and a little bit cream in his coffee? Not as much as I thought he would. Cause you know, when he makes coffee, it's really good without anything in it. Like when he knows what he's doing and they do that thing with a glass deal and the whole thing, it's awesome. He measures it out. Yeah. And they weigh it and the whole thing. It's awesome. Uh, for me, I mean, getting up in the morning, it's chaos. The kids, it's insanity. So we just hit the coffee maker. Black Rifle Coffee's in there, and I toss in some honey, toss in some cream. So that's you.

You're the honey guy. Oh. Yes. I want to make my character relatable. Did anybody give you shit about putting honey in your coffee? Yes. Just like the protagonists of these stories, they like their coffee black. Well, in real life, a lot of SEALs and Special Forces guys like their coffee black also.

They like to suffer. Yeah. But I always liked, you know, can I get that latte? Can I get that caramel macchiato latte? So I always did that. And then I found out about honey and coffee and honey and tea later. But it just was very natural for me to write that into the character because he has a background similar to me as a former Navy SEAL sniper that becomes an officer. And he's at this point in his time in uniform where he's going to get out and take care of his family,

which is where I was when I started writing it. So I wanted him to be relatable. I didn't want him to be this superhero. I wanted him to be someone that was good at some things, like kicking in doors, like taking sniper shots, some of the things that I'm okay at. But then also surveillance side of the house, some of the things that we don't typically do in the SEAL team. Maybe he's not as good at those sorts of things. And maybe he drives a FJ62 Land Cruiser because I love Land Cruisers.

And there's also, you know, that whole subculture of people that love Land Cruisers. You can bring into the fold also. So it's very natural for me to talk about those vehicles and then to develop characters by talking about, oh, Defender 110, Land Cruiser, you know, give each other a hard time, whatever else, or Nineville vs. 45 or whatever. Just use those things as character development tools. So it was very natural for me to add honey and cream to the protagonist's coffee because that's what I drink at home daily. Yeah, that's got to be the interesting,

one of the many, many interesting things about writing a character is that you can incorporate your own little quirks and Resco watches. You notice that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure, I have a Resco. All the different stuff that you're, I mean, and the gear thing too. It's like, you're very meticulous and very specific about the type of gear and how he prepares everything. Yeah. It'd be very, very odd for me not to do that. And some people don't like it um and there

are plenty of books where someone you know takes the safety off on their glock before they shoot someone or something like that or they you know click it off on a revolver or whatever like there's plenty of books out there that do that right and uh you know i won't make a mistake that egregious i'm sure i'll make a mistake at some point for the people that really get but when you see a mistake like that doesn't it take you out a little bit it's like oh i'm gonna try not to pay attention it's kind of like watching a movie where they really kind of jack something up and i'm like because the worst thing to do is watch a like a seal movie with a seal or a course movie like a police movie with a cop or whatever uh that's gonna tell you about all the mistakes so you

can't enjoy the film so i try to just enjoy them for what they are but it does take you out and it's like ah what else did they get kind of not right at the guys, like flipping the safety off on this Glock. So, uh, so for me, it's very natural to incorporate that gear. And it's also very natural for me to talk about it because I was so into it for so long that I know a lot of people in these industries. And like, this is an Aries watch right here. Guy was at the CIA, he's friends with Evan Hafer. Uh, you know, so I'd talk to Evan and be like, Hey, this dude legit. And he's like, Oh yeah, he's legit. So all that stuff gets woven in there as well. And it's just so natural for me to do. And also, when I see somebody, I can tell a lot about them by what they're carrying, how they're carrying it, what kind of belt they're using, what kind of shoes they're wearing,

what kind of knife is in their pocket. I can tell a lot about them. It tells a story immediately. So I'm reading them without them saying one word. And so my characters do that as well. And then I use those tools to describe other characters that aren't me, that aren't a SEAL, that aren't somebody else. Well, I know how SF guys travel or how they have their packs or whatever it is. Or I know someone that doesn't really know what they're doing. This character doesn't really know what they're doing. So yeah, he's going to be carrying his 1911 that's brand new that he's not carrying. Cocton Locke doesn't have one in the chamber. Whatever it is. Like I can tell a lot about someone just by looking at their setup with a quick glance.

So it's very natural for me to do that in stories as well. And it gives me a lot to work with. How many seals are novelists? Is it common? It's not common. There are seals, obviously, who get out and write nonfiction.fiction. Richard Marcinko, who created... Dick Marcinko. I read those books. Those are the first books that I ever read on military. Oh, nice. Nice. Yeah. Early 90s. And when that came out, I was so excited because I had read everything you possibly could on SEALs up until

that point because I wanted to be a SEAL since I was seven years old. I knew I was going to be in the military even before then. When did those books come out? Those came out in the 90s. Did they really? Yep, early 90s. That was the first one called Road Warrior. I felt like I read them before then, but I guess that makes sense. 90s is a long time ago. Yeah, no, time kind of blends together.

So when I found out, hey, there's an autobiography coming out about the guy that started this command, damn neck on the East Coast, this counterterrorist unit. I was so excited to read that book. Wasn't there an issue, too, where people were kind of upset that he was telling these stories? I think so, but as a kid reading that, like, you don't know any of that. You don't know any of that backstory. You're just like, oh, this is amazing.

He must have had an incredible life to be able to write a book. And the first commanding officer of Delta Force wrote a book called The Delta Force in, I think, 1986, which really goes into the Iranian hostage crisis and what happened to Desert One in 1980. And that was a very formative time for me because I knew I was going in the military. And at the time, Walter Cronkite's on TV.

We're watching it during dinner. He's counting down the days that U.S. personnel have been taken hostage in Iran. And I'm seeing those click down or click up every single night. And I'm wondering, I see the pictures, black and white photos of US military and people from the State Department. I didn't know that at the time, though. I just see a guy in a suit and a guy in a military uniform, blindfolded in black and white photos on the cover of the newspaper. And I'm wondering, why is the United States standing by and letting this happen, even though I'm six years old at the time.

Why is this happening? Why don't we go in there and get those guys? And then Desert One happens. And, of course, that's on the mind. It still shades. Everything we do is in special operations. There's a big black eye for the country, special operations in general. Explain to people what happens.

So about six months after the hostages were taken in Iran, so they were taken, I think, in November of 1979. And about six months, they were eventually held for 444 days. But about five, six months into that, we made an attempt to rescue them. So they're being held at the embassy still in an adjacent building, I think. And it was the first use that most people know of what's called Delta Force. So our premier counter-terrorist unit that is modeled after the British SAS. And the British SAS has been in service for a long time. So we had guys that went through their program in the 60s even, and they took those lessons and created ours. Because

late 60s, mid 70s, there's a lot of hijackings. We have the Munich Olympics. We have all these terrorist events, and we don't really have a good way to counter them. And so Delta Force is created, and their first test was Operation Eagle Claw to rescue the hostages in Iran. So the anniversary of it just happened the other day. So April 1980, we give it a shot, and it didn't work out. So what happened was we have Marine pilots flying these Sea Stallion helicopters off. I think it was the USS Nimitz, I think. So they're flying off an aircraft carrier.

They're meeting the assaulters from Delta Force who are flying in on C-130s from an island called Masira in the Gulf of Oman, a place where we would then launch into Afghanistan years later. Interestingly enough, I spent a little time there. And they were going to meet up in the desert outside of Tehran, Iran, a few hundred miles outside the city. So the C-130s land, EC-130s land that have fuel, helicopters land from the aircraft carrier. They're going to refuel those helos and the planes are going back to Masira and the helicopters are going to get closer to Tehran. So they're going to get closer, they're going to land, they're going to get camouflaged during the day. And then some guys who have been on the ground in Tehran, this is the best part of the story that no one really

talks about. We've had guys on the ground in Iran. We had an E6 Air Force guy that spoke Farsi. We had a special operations legend, Dick Meadows, who was also on the Sante raid in Vietnam. And we have two special forces guys out of Germany and then two CIA assets. I think one's called Bob and one's named Mohammed. And they had to get vehicles out there to the hide site where the Delta Force guys are. And then they're going to assault. And they had to get vehicles out there to the hide site where the Delta Force guys are. And then they're going to assault. They're going to go in, they're going to retake the embassy, they're going to get the hostages. And then the helicopter is going to take back off, land in a soccer stadium next door, and they're going to extract from there,

exfil from there. So what happened was the planes land, helicopters, some have mechanical problems, a couple get lost in the sandstorm. They needed six to do the mission. They launched with eight. Less than six make it to that link-up point in the desert, so they have to scrap. It's called no-go criteria. So it takes the decision essentially away from the ground force commander because ahead of time, he knows that if we don't have, if we have four helicopters, we can't do this mission. So instead of being on the ground saying, okay, we have four. How many guys do you have?

Can we do it with this? Those decisions have been made ahead of time in the planning process. So the helicopters land. Not enough. They scrap the mission. They abort. And what would have happened is they would have gone back and they would have reconstituted and gone after the hostages a few days later. But one of the helicopters in refueling collides with one of the EC-130s.

Huge explosion. Eight U.S. servicemen die. And so they don't go take the hostages. They don't go back for the hostages again a few days later. Iran moves the hostages, different locations all over Iran to make it a lot more difficult if we had gone after them again. But the next day, President Carter makes an announcement, said we tried to get the hostages, didn't work, had this disaster in the desert.

And it was a big black eye for his presidency and for special operations in general. But the important part, we took those lessons and we applied them going forward. So now we train all together instead of having all these pilots and assaulters and all these people that have never really trained together up until that point. Well, now we do. Now we have a special operations command. We all train together. So pilots are trained. You're doing all this stuff together. So when 9-11 hit, all those years later, we're much more prepared because of what happened to Desert One. So that's how we honor those guys

that died. That's how we honor that mission is by taking those lessons and apply them going forward. And that's what you, interestingly enough, that's what you do in life also when you have to learn these lessons and apply them going forward. It's all about how you apply them going forward. Well, that's a huge advantage for you as an author to have all that information and to have that legitimate background. Like to be writing about these things, like we're talking about guys who are writing about taking safeties off glocks, people that really don't know what they're writing about when they do. It's like, I mean, you can be creative and pretend you're a ballerina without ever ballet danced, but I don't think it's going to be the same.

And there's an authenticity to the way you write and to the one book that I've read, at least, Savage Son, where there's a frequency that you tap into that is a frequency of a person that has experienced this stuff in real life. You're not imagining. There's a lot of stuff where people write about things where they're imagining. There's a movie called Warrior where it's an MMA movie. Oh, yeah. That's a great one.

They fight two days in a row. And when they fought two days in a row, I'm like, get the fuck out of here. I'm watching. I'm like, what are you talking? You can't fight two days in a row. Have you ever seen get the fuck out of here. I'm watching. I'm like, what are you talking? You can't fight two days in a row. Have you ever seen someone the day after a fight? They look like a fucking elephant man. Their whole body's a mess.

Everything's swollen. Like, this is nonsense. But someone that doesn't know is like, oh, I'm going to have this in the story. He's going to lose the first night, but the next night he's going to go in and he's going to win. Exactly. Exactly. They do things that take you out of, like, it's a world they don't really know about and they're writing about this world. Whereas you're writing about a world that you were so deeply embedded in for all those years that when you're writing about it, it's really compelling.

It's very interesting. Thank you. Yeah. And I incorporate some real-world stuff in there too, like a shot that I didn't take in Jafarac. And I fictionalize it by having a memory from Fallujah. And so I morph it around a little bit. But the passion is there. The feelings and emotions behind it are there.

And it's woven into the first story. And so it was very therapeutic. I got to take – I was very lucky downrange. You can do all the right things in combat. Like if you were to whiteboard something out here and we talk about tactics and all the rest of it, you could make those exact same right decisions downrange and things can still go south and people can die.

The other is opposite true. You can make all the wrong decisions of quote unquote wrong decisions and things can work out just fine. Just like life, right? Yeah, like life. Whether you made mistakes or not, point being you're going to have a hard time dealing with them later. For whatever reason, whether it was luck or whatever else, I sleep very well at night because of the things that that was involved in downrange. But I still got to tap into them and put them into the story. Now, there's going back to what you said about SEALs writing books. Interestingly enough, in the first book, there's an interrogation scene, interrogation, an interview, meaning not a torture scene, but sitting down with NCIS, the Naval Criminal Investigation Service. And so some bad things, my career

wasn't all wonderful, like the downrange stuff, very lucky, very fortunate to be in a couple of right places at the right time to do some interesting things. But when we got back, a good buddy of mine, Mark Owen, he writes a book called No Easy Day. And that's the one about the Bin Laden raid. And that one, that was like a tipping point because in our community at the time, there'd been Act of Valor, that movie with seals, active duty seals playing characters in an actual movie. There were other books out there. So there was already discussion happening like, hey, are we too much in the limelight here? We're supposed to be these quiet professionals. But, you know, going back in time, I read all these Vietnam books growing up and every autobiography I could about people in the

military. Grant has his memoirs or whatever. So there's a precedent, not just in this country, but worldwide of people getting out, talking about their experiences. And that's part of a first person account that historians will use later. Is it frowned upon at all? So it was starting to get even more and more frowned upon at all? that happened, they went in and essentially anyone that had a connection with him, they pulled in and investigated as a way to put pressure on him to get what they wanted. So I was one of those guys. I've known him since 99 or something like that. So we've been dear friends since that time.

And so we have emails going back all these years. So I got pulled in to this interrogation room and they pulled out single personal emails, single sentences, totally out of context to try to get me for something that would put pressure on him. And they did that not just with me, but with almost anyone that had some sort of a connection with him. They investigated because he's already out of the military at this point. So things that you said totally out of context, like joking around about something or just statements about things? Yeah, just statements like, what did you mean by this? And I used that in the first novel because I'm sitting there in this interrogation.

You got these guys across from you and essentially NCIS, from my perspective, are people that they couldn't make it in the or the CIA, and they weren't tough enough to be street cops. So now they're busting people on piss tests in the military and that sort of thing. Actually, my first experience with them was after September 11th. And I think we're all on the same team. And we're doing these ship boardings in the Northern Arabian Gulf to enforce the UN embargo for oil tankers that are leaving Iraq and then going to Iran. And so our job was to take those ships down before they got to Iranian waters, and then the UN would take over after that. But it was a really interesting time because it's like a cop pulling over someone, and you're walking up and you don't really know what's going on.

And so they would come out of Iraq. They had all these metal over all the windows. It cut off all the ladders on the ship, so you'd have to use a caving ladder to hook and climb up, and then you'd have to breach and get inside these things and get them back into the Gulf before they hit Iranian waters. Otherwise, you had to get off. So it was kind of a crazy deal. But during what—and we're doing a couple nights on, a couple nights off,

that sort of thing with another platoon, and then NCIS shows up, and they pull us all into these different rooms, and they said, hey, so, uh, an M 60, some sort of a machine gun type thing, uh, was, has gone missing on one of these ships that you guys were on. And I was like, Oh, that's terrible. You know? Okay.

Um, well, how can I help you? And so we started talking and they, how, how would you get one off a ship if you wanted to steal a machine gun from a ship? How would you get it off? And me, I'm just kind of creative. I'm like, we're all on the same team here. I'm like, oh, this is what I would do. I'd take it off piece by piece and whatever I said.

So I gave them my, and then as I was nearing the end, I'm seeing it in their face and seeing the notes they're taking. I'm like, wait a second. Are they like trying to get me to, like I didn't take an M60 off a ship piece by piece. We were only on there for like a- But the problem is you're an author. And I'm trying to think of this all through.

Yeah. So I'm like- You're being creative. Yeah. So even back then I you're being creative. Yeah. So even back then I had a bad experience with them. But, so what are they saying to you?

Did you do this? They just start accusing you? In, in with the Mark Owen. Oh, in there? No, they didn't accuse me,

but I could tell that things shifted and I'm getting so creative and telling them how I do it and I mix it in with this and we'd get it off like that. Just get excited and smile at them.

Yeah, totally. Yeah. Just like I am now. And then these guys are just like, anyway, so I kind of figured it out near the end and I'm like, oh, wow, this is not,

something's not feeling quite right here. Like these guys are just after a win. That's what they're, they're just trying to get somebody. That's their job. And if they can get a seal, even better. So after Mark Owen wrote the book, No Easy Day, same thing.

And you saw these guys across the table and this is years later. So it wasn't like immediately. They went after some guys immediately, whatever, but they put all this together over a long time and followed all these trainings. What was their ultimate goal? What do they want? I think they wanted him to, they wanted to build a case against him, a criminal case against him. For what? For not submitting his book to the Department of Defense for review. And is that so they can redact certain things that are classified? Yeah, which is why I was hypersensitive to it.

And even though mine are fiction, I submitted them. Is that protocol? So when all those things in your book where it says redacted, is that why it's redacted? Really? So it's because of them? Yep. So they made me hypersensitive to it. So no other author of fiction that has the

security clearances that I had, no one else submits fiction. But I was so just tied to this because of my experience with the Mark Owen book and what they tried to do. I was like, I just want to make sure. And what they've taken out, absolutely ridiculous. So the first book, I didn't appeal it because they took 45 days to do it, which I thought was pretty good because they say they'll take 30. And I thought it's pretty good. They took out nine lines or something like that, which is fine. But the second one, a month goes by, then two, then three, then four, then five, then six. And they get almost to the seven-month mark when they finally get back to me.

So at this point, we had to push the publication date out of April to the summer. It's like a movie, trying to figure out like when you don't want two Avengers movies coming out at the same time from the same studio. So these are thought well ahead of time. So it was not convenient to have to push it all the way to the end of July. So it was a pain. And every single thing in there that was blacked out, my attorneys found in publicly available government documents. So not just like on Wikipedia or from somebody else that wrote a book. No, publicly available government websites, government documents that anyone on earth can download. So they had done their due diligence to check if that stuff had actually been released already publicly?

My lawyers did. Yeah, but the people that— Those guys, the people you submitted to at the Department of Defense, they just have this black pen and they're just taking things out. And then they see, oh, CIA, we'll send it off to the CIA, even though I don't work for the CIA, but they send it off. And then that starts the CIA clock looking at it. It's just ridiculous. And this is not something you had to do.

It's by precedent, no. Because it's fiction. Because it's fiction by precedent. Now, like we talked about those laws earlier, three felonies a day. Yeah. Laws are written, if you look at them, very broadly so that the government can interpret them the way they want to. And that didn't always used to be the case. If you go back 50 years, the idea was you had to write a law that the average guy could understand when you looked at it one time, read it, it's evident what that law means.

Not anymore. The language involved, how long they are, how tough they are to decipher, even for attorneys to decipher. So it's written in a way that they can come after anyone they want for anything, which is by design. And they used it to go after Mark Owen. They used it, even though that's nonfiction. You know, maybe should have, he went to an attorney that had experience in this space, which you would do. Who's the best attorney for this?

Oh, the guy that did a book called Kill Bin Laden with someone from Delta Force. That guy has experience. I'll go to him. So he went to that lawyer who said, no, you don't need to submit this. So there's lawsuits and all sorts of stuff that are associated with that.

But for me me what they did this is years later his second book he sends it to me so i'm getting ready to get out of the military uh he sends me his second book and says hey what do you think of this and so i read it and i just you know read it quick and then i sent him like one note that said hey awesome uh maybe in the first part in the preface maybe talk about your experience over the last couple years with the first book and what the government did to you and how you reacted. Just people would probably be interested in that.

So I wrote that. So now I'm in this interrogation room with these NCIS guys and that's one of the things that they pull out and said, so why are you editing classified material that hasn't been approved? But like, I don't know.

Guy's a good friend, sends me the thing, I look at it. So what they wanted was to just put pressure on him and said, hey, we know. Guy's a good friend. Sends me the thing. I look at it. So what they wanted was to just put pressure on him and said, hey, we're going to go after your buddy if you don't do this for us, which was totally just safe. So what did they want from him? I think they wanted him to admit he was guilty. And they also wanted a statement of not submitting it to the Department of Defense Office of Pre-Publication and Security Review, not going through. They wanted to make an example of him so that anybody else getting out would know that they had to do that.

And I don't think it worked because there's plenty of books out there that are nonfiction that have not been through that process. But that's what they wanted from him. They wanted all the money from it, which was significant. All the money. Yep. And interestingly enough. All the money? All the money.

And he was always going to give it all. That's the other part of this is so interesting is because I've known him for so. And he was always going to give it all. That's the other part of this is so interesting is because I've known him for so long, he was always going to give it all away. And he had no reason to tell me that, you know, a year before the whatever, however long it was before. Like he wasn't setting this up as some criminal mastermind, but he was always going to give it away to a SEAL foundation. And when the book came out, it all went into a bank account. But guess what came out of the bank account? Lawyer fees after that. So he still had all the money except for the lawyer fees.

And then they still go after you for taxes that you're supposed to be. Anyway, it's the government. So they wanted that money, anything money going forward. Like if they made a movie from it, all those proceeds, they just wanted to crush them and make an example of them so other people would submit or make people think about not even writing anything anyway. How did it all end up? So it's a lawsuit with the attorney that gave the bad advice. I'm not sure exactly where that is. And then all the money went back to the government that was in the account,

and he's paying off the rest of it that went to attorney fees. So he didn't make anything? No. Wow. Not one penny. All the money went to the government? All the money went to the government. Plus taxes. So double money.

So all the money goes to the government because he lost? Is that the idea? Because they finally put enough pressure on where the lawyers do their thing and they figure out a settlement of some sort. And that was the settlement. All the money. Wow. And his second book, the same deal? No, that one went through the process.

Went through the – but after I read it. So he sent it to me before he sent it in. Oh, okay. But you know, there's nothing. But you read it, and that's one of the things they used to try to get him to do what they wanted. And that wasn't the only one. Everybody that knew him got pulled into this thing. But point being is that had that not happened, then that interrogation scene in my novel where James Reese sits down after what happens to his team, sits down with those guys across the table. I changed it to Afghanistan, changed it from San Diego to Afghanistan. But that's how I felt about the guys sitting across the table from me. So it feels real because I wasn't just like, hey, have you read into interrogation room? Or I'm arresting a couple of cop shows where they have somebody in an interrogation room.

I'll just kind of write what that looks like or feels like. No, that's what it feels like to be in there, having these eyes on you, having them tell you that there's no cameras on when you know that there are, uh, and all, all that sort of thing. So I got to put all that together and make the book what it is. So without that happening, without them trying to go after me to put pressure on him, uh, and everyone associated with that, the first book would not be nearly as good. Like the combat stuff, yeah, it's different. But the other stuff, the conspiracy side of the house and the NCIS guys and that interrogation in particular and some of the bad guys that, once again, you can't kill people in real life. But you know what?

You can. You can in fiction. And so it made it so much better than it would have been otherwise. So now looking back, and I thank him to this day. I'm like, you know what? That first book, that resonated with Simon & Schuster for some reason. And a lot of it's what happened down range and those feelings and emotions, but a lot of it is because

of what happened with you as I was getting out. That's interesting. Now, when you create these characters, do you write a backstory? Do you spend time like writing out this guy's life and then sort of use pieces of that in the story? Or do you write it along while you're writing the story? Because he was had a background so similar to mine, I didn't need to do that.

So I didn't need to create. So now I am for this fourth one, because now there's so many characters that it's hard to keep spelling straight and background straight and all that sort of thing. So now I have these family trees and these characters written out on Scrivener, which is how I write it. Yeah, I use Scrivener too. I love it for stand up. It's so good to organize things on the left side. So cool. You hit that button and it all turns into like a poster board type thing.

I absolutely love Scrivener. But I didn't use that one until the third one. poster board type thing. I absolutely love Scrivener, but I didn't use that one until the third one. Up until that point, I was using Word and copying and pasting and then scrolling and then putting it in where I wanted. And then maybe I didn't cut because I was worried it was going to delete. So now I go back and now delete it. So it's so nice to use Scrivener like that. It just makes it so much easier to do that. So now I do, but at the beginning, I didn't. With one novel and kind of creating, you have the story. So I did the, I wrote six or seven different

Ideas down like one page executive summaries as I was getting ready and the one I wanted to start with was savage son That was the one I wanted to start with really but I knew the characters weren't quite at that place Where I could explore the dark side of man I needed to get readers invested in them take him on a journey much like I Learned about Joseph Campbell and the hero's journey and the hero with a thousand faces back in 1988. I had to take him on that sort of a journey and get him to that point where I could explore the dark side of man through these characters. So I just had to start with that first one. It was very evident it's going to be the Terminalist. That's the one. So I took that one-page executive summary, turned it into an outline. But if I came to a point in that outline

where I got stuck, and this is the important part, I didn't say, ah, man, readers aren't going to figure this out. They're not going to come along on me with this journey. That's not believable. I just went around it because I'm not on the battlefield. I'm solving problems on the page like I am. I'm adapting like I am on the battlefield, but you know what? I can sleep on it and I don't have to solve this problem right now. I can get five months down the line and just continue going. And eventually I'm going to figure this problem out and it's going to work out. So I didn't let anything, any obstacle stop me as I was writing that outline. And then I took that outline and started writing. And as I figured out those problems,

then I would change the outline and I would adapt it so I could have a visual representation of what was going on. And then eventually about the 75% point, then I just discarded the outline completely and just kept writing. So Scrivener made that a ton easier for the third book because doing it in Word was a pain. There is apparently a way that you could set up Word to behave like Scrivener. Oh, really? Yeah. I read an article on it and I tried to do it and I was like, I fucking give up. I'm just going to keep using Scrivener. I just love how Word – I write bits in Word because I can get it on my phone. I can get it on a computer. I just log into Microsoft Word, and it just shows me all the files, any laptop, any computer I use, any phone I use.

It just goes right to it. Whereas, like, with Scrivener, you have to, like, upload it to Dropbox and then get it from Dropbox. Oh, that's a pain. Yeah, I know I did it in Scrivener and then when I sent it to the editor, I did that thing where it changes it to Word and then I worked in Word the rest of the time. So I didn't go back to Scrivener after I did that. Once it's a finished product. Yeah, as finished as it could be anyway. What else has changed from the time you wrote your first book to now in terms of like your process and how you, and how you do it and what do you think you're better at now than you were when you started?

So the timeline is obviously compressed now. So I started writing the second one before I'd even submitted the first one to Simon and Schuster. Cause I was always going to write those two because of that John Grisham story and him not being able to give a time to kill away. So I was always going to write two. So I was already in Mozambique. I was already doing that, that research over there, already writing that second one. And if both of them didn't work out, then I was going to reevaluate my life choices, but I was always going to go all in on two. So now, so point being for the second one, I wasn't yet on that year timeline because there was no deal, hadn't even gone to Simon & Schuster. And then once the first one did get to Simon &

Schuster, then they plotted it out. And I still had another over a year before it came out while I'm working on the other one. So this third one is the first one that I've had to be on that year-long timeline for. But I've had it in my head for so long. So this fourth one now is one where things are really compressed because, especially because of COVID-19, having to adapt at the last second for this book tour. And having to think of things that I wouldn't necessarily have thought had to think of otherwise. Like helping these independent bookstores. How do I drive business towards them? They're hurting so bad right now.

How can I help? They were hurting before this, right? Well, people are going back to them. Yeah, they're hurting for a while. And then people are going back. Yeah. People like that page in their hand. They like to have that experience with someone that they know in their hometown. So those kinds of bookstores were actually

on the upswing. It was like the bigger ones. There was importers that shut down years ago, Barnes and Noble adapting-ish. They're kind of hurting. So the little ones were like, hey, they're part of a main street park city. There's a bookstore there, Dolly's. It's right there. Yeah, I've been to that place. Yeah. It's great. Love it. They have a little chocolate place attached to it, get some coffee, whatever. Um, so it's great. Uh, so I figured how do I help them at the same time? Um, and what I did was do these signed book plates that you can only get through those independent bookstores. So if anybody wants a signed book, that's where they have to go. So did that. I have some merchandise on my site, all of that. It was already going 100%

to these veteran focused foundations that I had some sort of a touch point with because they'd help friends of mine or whatever else. But now it's all going Center for Disaster Philanthropy, COVID-19 Response Fund. So the things to talk about on interviews rather than, oh, I just have a new book out. You can talk about how you're trying to help as you're launching or talk about preparedness, talk about what the enemy is learning by watching our response to COVID-19 and how they're incorporating that into future battle plans, those sorts of things. So how to adapt, do virtual book signings, that sort of thing, or Q&As using the technology that wasn't available 10 or 20 years ago, certainly 30, certainly 40 years ago to today. So I had to spend all that time doing, doing that. So, uh, point being this fourth one, when I get back from here, it's all in back on book four, uh, which is, which would be great because I love writing. That's what I love to do. And the other side of it, the business side of it that we've been talking about, that is interesting to me because I'm learning something new and I

love learning new things and I wouldn't be learning about branding and marketing and all this sort of thing if I didn't have a product if I didn't have a book and it and I can help other people as they're getting out of the military starting other businesses that aren't even writing related at all like I can help them and talk to them about my experience and what I've learned and how I've adapted because I had to no one's gonna hand this stuff to you you have to go out there prove yourself get after it after it, do the work, and be smart about it. You have to study that landscape. So I studied social media for like a year before I even did my first post.

But I saw what people were doing. You studied it? I studied it. I saw what do I like, what do I not like, what's appropriate, what's not. Did you write this stuff down or just keep it on the head? No, kept that in my head. That stuff's pretty obvious, like what's appropriate and what's not. Like when someone walks into that general store, very clear how you should treat someone,

whether they come in yelling and screaming or they come in asking for directions. Right. Same thing. So that's some basic stuff that a lot of people don't quite get. How fortuitous is it that you're writing about infectious diseases and then this shit goes down? I mean, if there's ever a person who got a gift by a tragedy it's crazy because i'd done all that research in the fall uh and into the early part of the year did you go to galveston the cdc no no i talked to doctors that have been involved in

infectious diseases and with the weaponization of infectious diseases uh and then i read there's some books out there a lot of stuff online but the online stuff you have to be able really careful about and check with other people that really know right there what they're doing even though it's fiction so I'd done all that part of it ahead of time so what really changed for me as far as what I'm doing now and what I'm incorporating from this is what our response has been to COVID-19 because it's put obviously our economy into a tailspin. So what's the enemy doing? The enemy is looking at that and realizing, oh, look what this invisible virus has done to the United States, what the Soviet Union couldn't do in 40 plus years of trying. So how do we incorporate that into future battle plans? Can we have a strategy even of failure? What if there's

a threat of a bio attack? What if there's a failed bio attack somewhere? It's still going to affect that economy, especially right now with us being so gun shy about all these sorts of things. So what are they taking from that? And what are they learning to apply going forward? So for my fourth novel, I'm taking those lessons of what the enemy is learning from this and how they're going to, how I think they're going to apply it going forward and incorporating that into a fictional narrative. So in that sense, I'm trying to, yeah, learn, always learning. It's always important to learn and apply it going forward. And you're also, you're in the middle of writing this story, but you're also living a life of a person that actually has to deal with this coronavirus pandemic where the whole world

is kind of shut down. Like as a, just as a human being, when you're dealing with this, what's frustrating for you about how everything is going down i you know i think it's what we just talked about as far as people not taking these lessons seriously going forward and making this a stronger country because of this um so you know you get knocked down you get back up you're stronger for it you've learned something uh we talk about in jujitsu know, it's either you win or you learn. And so what are we going to learn from that? Are we going to apply that going forward?

Like the whole thing with the Iran crisis with the hostage situation. Exactly. We learned from that. We applied those lessons, and we were more prepared for 9-11 as a special operations force because of it. So for this, I worry, just like you said, are people going to go back to their old ways after this? They can't wait to. They can't wait to slide back into their old ways. Yeah. So are we going to be a stronger citizenry? Maybe a certain percentage take these lessons to heart? I don't know. So I think that's probably the, it's knowing that people expect the government to take care of them. And that's the expectation. Not you. You don't have to take care of them. And that's the expectation. Yeah. Not you. It's not.

You don't have to take care of yourself or your family. The government's going to do it. They're looking for a daddy. Yeah. How do I get that? What, $1,200? Whatever money they handed out. Oh, great.

Well, you know what's even better? You being strong, self-reliant, self-sufficient, and having your kids look up and see how you're handling this and say, well, mom and dad are either in the kitchen talking about how much they're worried about paying that rent or that mortgage, or they're in that kitchen, maybe talking about it, even if they are worried in a way like, hey, how do we do this better next time? How do we prepare as on the other side of this? And what are the things we can do now to get better prepared if this happens two months from now, a year from now, five years from now, and the kids can see that too. Or they see mom and dad in the kitchen talking about, hey, we are so lucky that we prepared for this.

We were prepared financially. We had a little food here, whatever it is. And so the kids will take those lessons on, take those to heart, because they're very impressionable right now, especially as we have 14, 12, and nine. And they're definitely processing this and they're catching things on the news

and they're talking to friends on social media. They're texting back and forth, all that sort sort of thing so this can either make them stronger citizens going forward uh or they can see mom and look mom and dad relied on government we came out the other side of this we got this check and nothing really changed so oh what lesson are they going to take going forward from that so it's a very important time uh not just for how you deal with this but and how you get through it and how you, uh, move forward better for it, but because of the lessons that we're teaching our kids, uh, whether we mean to or not, it doesn't have to be a conscious thing. Like they're going to take lessons. And as parents, it's up to us to figure out what those lessons are going to be. And we can morph it and make them stronger, more self-reliant

going forward. Like our daughter sees our, our freezer is full of elk and moose. And we pull that out. We frost it. And she's a part of it because she knows she got this elk in Colorado last year. Now she's feeding our family. How old is your daughter? She's 14. Wow.

She shot her first elk at 14? She shot her first elk at 10. Whoa. Yeah. New Mexico. Yeah. No kidding. Damn.

You got a tag in New Mexico at 10? Yeah. So somebody, it was a retirement gift, a great guy. And I said, you know, she gave me two, one for me and one for my wife, or one for me and one for my daughter. And I was like, you know what? I got an elk last year in New Mexico, public land. It was crazy, crazy. But I was like, you know, can I transfer that to my wife and have my wife and daughter go do this together? And I'm with them also and have a bit of family experience. And he was like, yeah, absolutely. That's let's do it. And, uh, so she was 10, uh, standing off sticks, 300 some yards, one shot. And the guide was, uh, he said, miss,

and she'd been hunting before. She's been hunting since she was seven and she is good. And I was like, Oh, you know, it was a tough shot. Uh, Hey, uh, you know, it's okay. How'd you feel about that shot? She's like, I felt good. I'm like, oh, it's just a 10 year old saying that because they don't want to kind of lose face in front of the guide and mom's there and dad's there. And I'm like, well, it's okay. You know, it's okay to miss. Everybody misses. I guess let's learn from it, move forward. She's like, I didn't miss. And so you go up there, there's no blood, there's no anything. We think we're tracking it. We walk but again yeah she you know she missed and we walk back down and there's this little tiny just rivet in the ground and there it was 20

yards away wow yeah amazing i'll show you a picture after so the guide feels stupid because he's like miss but it really just went all the way through and he saw he saw an impact behind you know one shot and uh but uh yeah that's the problem right they see the dust kick up behind the animal and they think that it's a mess yeah so yeah but she so we have that meet from this last year in colorado that's amazing talk about it with the family and she's like she knows that she provided that for all of us and that's gotta be very exciting and rewarding for her and then our little guy he's uh he got his first animal in africa this last year whoa yeah so i went back

to the crazy place to get your first animal. Yeah, so crazy. So I'd been over there doing some more research. I went to South Africa to help train up an anti-poaching unit because they hadn't used Glocks, hadn't used M4s. I have a little bit of experience with both those weapon systems. And I wanted to do some research

in the art and science of man tracking. So I went to South Africa, helped train up this anti-poaching unit. It was an amazing experience. And then they asked me to come back as a thank you with my family over the summer. So I came back with my family and our little guy. Got his first animal there.

They put the blood on his cheeks. I have this amazing picture of him in the back of the Land Cruiser on the way back. He's never had a haircut at age nine. So his blonde hair is blowing in the wind. It's awesome. And then we use every piece of it. That's what's great about over there is they see you use much more than we use over here. I mean, stomach linings, like everything gets used in Africa, which is cool for them to see because they think we're using it all here.

They see us taking that rib meat and neck meat and all the rest of it. But over there, they see everything get used, which is a pretty cool thing for them to experience at that young age. Yeah, that is a very amazing thing for them. It helps them be self-reliant too. It's, and they see the people out there working on the land cruisers. They see all, everything you have to do in Africa that you can just call someone to fix the plumbing or call someone because the electricity is out or whatever, you know, you fix it yourself. Uh, cause you have to, how did you get to be a land cruiser fanatic? How'd that happen? Gosh, you know, I found out

about Icon 2006 or so, I think it was maybe five five. And it's from seeing them overseas. So I saw the Hilux's first in Afghanistan, 2003, I think it was. Yeah, 2003. This lasts forever. Yeah, you're seeing these things over there, and then you're seeing what we're doing to them. We have some mechanics over there that are bolting on armor, and they're doing things to the engine,

and they're putting in these radio console stuff for our secure communications. And they're like, wow, this is pretty cool. And then I saw the evolution of the Hilux over the next 15 years radio console stuff for our secure communications. And they're like, wow, this is pretty cool. And then I saw the evolution of the Hilux over the next 15 years and got to see these things purpose built from a factory to an aftermarket place that then does all that stuff that we were doing in Afghanistan with, with screwdrivers and the rest of it. I got to see what those look like. And that was pretty sweet. And you just see how much abuse they can take and what they're going up and over.

And so I think it was seeing the Hilux and then looking into, maybe I'll get a Tacoma when I get back because I saw these things over there and these things last forever and it was amazing. I had some crazy experiences in them. And then I was like, oh, Land Cruisers, this is pretty sweet. And it was a natural thing for me to like older stuff and more classic stuff and then to also like classic stuff that looks old, but is really new and can really gas it down.

Well, Land Cruisers, those little 62s, just like that Porsche that I have out there where the metal is thicker and heavier gauge, like you shut those doors. Like, oh, this is not a, it's just different. They're just, they just made, they're made different. Yeah. So I started doing my research.

And I think on the first things that pops up when you put in, like, you know, restoration for Land Cruisers is Icon. Yeah. There's a bunch of other people doing it now, but Jonathan gets really mad. I mean, he gets mad at people doing shitty jobs of restoring Broncos or shitty jobs of restoring Land Cruisers. Yeah. And I guess he's got every right to. I mean, he's so meticulous. Incredible.

What they do is just incredible. I mean, it's so meticulous. Incredible. What they do is just incredible. I mean, it's amazing. It's one of those build it and they will come type businesses. Oh, yeah. Because who is going to buy a 3,000 man hour restoration job on a 95 Land Cruiser? It's not that many. It's a niche market. Yeah.

But he owns that fucking niche. Yep. And on so many other cars too i'm so fortunate that he's you know down the road yeah i can hang out with him and talk to him yeah he's and i listened to him on your podcast i listened to him there so and then i drove up from la and gave him had them start working on my uh fj62 when we were in san diego just doing a stage one kind of making sure all the belts and stuff were good and you know whatever just kind of making sure it wasn't gonna fall apart uh but i always wanted to do that stage three or that icon type restoration and i always

had my eye on that and then my land cruiser broke down uh my wife was driving it and the oil came out engine sees crack engine block like uh not that it's her fault uh but anyway so it sat in our driveway for a couple years as i'm getting out of the military and uh that was kind of a bummer seeing it there but get that deal and uh getting out of the military. And that was kind of a bummer seeing it there, but get that deal. And so one of the first things I did was send that up to Jonathan and get in line. I had to get in line. Mine was behind yours. He's like, yeah, you're just behind Joe.

So I had to wait for your 80 to get done. I think I have a few of them working at the same time, but they do a cool picture with yours and mine. Yours was just getting done or they were frame off or whatever. And then mine was there kind of looking dilapidated in the back, just waiting. You know, like I said cause you have to 18 months. You had to wait. That's a long wait.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a crazy. So that was cool. So it just showed up the other day. And of course I'm not, I don't want to really, I want to show people or whatever,

but at the same time, people are hurting right now, even though it's been in the works for a long time, it's not appropriate to, you know, show it. Yeah. This is not a time to be flossing.

No, it's sweet though that thing is legit so i love it so it's natural for me to put them in the books and that's cool and use it like that and i want to say thank you to jonathan for doing that so just like i put sitka in the books for my friend john hart who started sick like i think it's on the first or second page of my first novel is sick a year so you know that's woven in there and i just love to do that sort of thing yeah it was cool it gave me a bunch of smiles. All the different things, the Black Rifle Coffee, Sitka, Dudley. Barklow in there.

Yeah, Barklow. All that stuff is very cool. Now, when you're in the middle of this book now, what is your timeline? How long have you been writing on this fourth book? So I outlined it. I had the idea for a while, but I was still finishing up the third one. So on the way to Russia, I outlined it because I didn't have my computer. When you outlined it, how do you do that? So this time I used the third one. I outlined it in Word, and then I got my Scrivener set up, and then I transferred it over and did the writing in Word. So this one, I did the outline in Scrivener, and I'm writing it in Scrivener as well. So I have those little post things or whatever they call them in Scrivener with a little description of the chapter. So I've outlined it that way, but I started doing it longhand because I didn't have my computer with me on the way to Russia. I just didn't want to take it. Didn't want all that information sucked out when I

walked through customs. So just legal pad and just wrote it out and just arrows and things and asterisks and all that, just a mess. So I did that back then, got home, finished up book three, and then started writing book four. But I'm also doing the research. So you have to, I'm diving into books. I'm talking to those doctors. As I'm talking to them, I'm getting other ideas about how to move the plot forward,

different things that can test the protagonist. So this theme of this next one is really the ethics, morality, and legality behind targeted assassinations. And the bioweapons piece really forms the foundation of that. But really what the protagonist is struggling with is targeted assassinations. And who is he today? Is he now an assassin? He's been a hunter. He's been a soldier. He went after these people that wronged his family and his troop and put them all in the ground in that first book. And now he has both. It's a mixture of a personal and professional

track that he's now going to take going forward because he still has a little unfinished business to take care of and needs to use the United States government to track these guys down that he still needs to get. So as I'm doing that and interviewing all these people, I'm thinking about how that works. And I'm reading a book. It's almost done with it. It's called Rise First and Kill by Ronan Bergman. And it's really about the state of Israel. Because really, we think of targeted assassinations. And we don't really associate it with our government. I mean, we do. And we've done it before. And we just did it in January. But Israel, it's much more closely associated with Israel from its inception up until today. And it's a fascinating book.

So I'm getting lots of ideas from there. I'm reading David Kilcullen's. It's called The Snakes and Dragons, The Dragon and the Snakes. And he's a fascinating guy. He was a counterterrorist advisor for Petraeus during the surge. He's become a good friend. And so I'm reading, doing all that research, which helps me move the plot forward. So I'm writing it, I'm touching up those outlines, and I'm working that research into the plot. So at this stage, I've written probably about half of

it. And it's hard to say, because you never know when you're going to get another idea or when it's going to take too long. But I'd say, I'd say a little more than half, even though it's all outlined, I know where I'm going, know what I need to do. And that first draft is due in mid-June. When you write out an outline, but then in the middle of your writing, do you ever have these – like Stephen King apparently doesn't write outlines. Oh, he doesn't. They call him a pantser. So you're right by the seat of your pants. Ah, yeah.

What are your thoughts on that? I mean, like when you read that he does that, and he's – I mean, I'm a giant Stephen King fan. I mean, he's probably written some of the most amazing horror novels ever. I mean, not probably. He has. And what an amazing story also about doing the work, being persistent, being resilient. Incredible. I haven't been hit by a bus.

I know. Yeah, a van. Some fucking idiot not paying attention and every bone in his body is broken. Insane. And the story on writing about him starting back up again and his wife setting him up. But what do you think about someone who writes like that? I mean, with his incredible results. Yeah.

No, it's all personal. Also, by the way, a lot of cocaine and cigarettes and alcohol. Because earlier shit, like The Shining, and apparently he doesn't even remember writing Cujo. Wow. Yeah. He talked about that. He was so fucked up. He didn't even remember writing it. Hey, I mean, it makes me want to do more drugs. I do think about that

when I'm up late and it's three 30 in the morning, I'm exhausted. I know the kids are going to be up at six 37 or whatever. I'm like, man, I mean, I need a little bump right here to keep me going. Like I worked for Stephen King, but he wrote, he wrote just the craziest shit but i your stuff's pretty fucking crazy too but your stuff is crazy in a sense that like i think these things really happen you know like you like even like the tortures and i wanted to talk to you about that too like the torture scene like um there's i've have i've seen so many pencil necks talk about and i don't want to be rude about i shouldn't even said that but people who talk about torture saying that torture doesn't work i'm like how can you say torture doesn't work like by what statistic and i've seen people say these two we shouldn't torture because torture

doesn't work and i'm like how do first of all, how do you know? Have you tortured someone? How do you know? What are you basing this off? And why are you saying it with such authority and resolve and conviction that you know based on statistics of something you read that torture doesn't work? It seems to me like if people have information and they don't want to give up that information, yeah, we don't want to think of ourselves as being this barbaric type of civilization that would torture someone to get information out of them.

But also, if you want to look at it pragmatically, that is how you would get people to talk. So to say that torture doesn't work and, in fact, people who are tortured will say anything, well, that says who? I hate that kind of conversation because it's an anti-military conversation in a lot of ways because it's the same kind of mentality that sort of dismisses all sorts of tactics that are used to protect people that don't – they have the luxury of not knowing what needs to be done or how it is done. Yeah. So it's very, it's very complex and yet it's very simple. And I obviously use this in my writing.

And I did in that first book because the protagonist had to become that terrorist, become that insurgent. Yeah. So he had to adopt those tactics and he had essentially had to abandon everything that he'd been fighting for for the past 16 years to go after these people that wronged his family and his troop. So as far as the torture stuff goes, I got to explore it in a fictional sense. So in real life, it's important to talk about these things with your troop. So at the tactical leadership level, where I was my entire career, whether I was just a brand new guy, enlisted guy, or a troop commander at the end, it was important, especially once 9-11 happened, to talk about these things before we're in a situation where we called it,

first we call it BIT, first we call it Battlefield Interrogation. And then it became TQ, Tactical Questioning, or PC to call it Tactical Questioning rather than Battlefield Interrogation. But you had to talk about it ahead of time so that your guys would know what was appropriate ahead of time. So they're not in a situation where an IED has just gone off, one of our guys is killed. And now we have someone we think is responsible for that. And there's one or two of us, three of us in this room with him. What are those guys going to do? Well, they're emotional. And maybe we haven't talked about it ahead of time. So what are they going to do?

They're going to, well, who knows? But point being, before we get there, during training, it can't just be a brief by like a pencil neck lawyer that comes in and says, all right, this is not right. This is what's appropriate. Exactly. It can't be that. It has to be incorporated into the training. It has to be discussed by people that are trusted. And so that when someone's in that situation, he knows what, one, is appropriate because of the second and third order effects that may come from it.

Yeah, you might want to put a bullet in that guy. You might want to torture him, whatever. But second, third order effects of doing that could be more devastating to this unit, to the, the, our, our strategy as a whole that we're trying to accomplish over there. So you need to talk about it ahead of time. So for me, it was important that for the guys to know that we have to maintain the moral high ground because there's very few things that separate us from our enemy. When you get down to it, you're both killing,

you're both killing each other. And there has to be something that makes it different for us. And that's maintaining the moral high ground. We do not deliberately target civilians. That's a big differentiation. They target civilians on purpose to get the political end that they want. So that is a huge differentiator right there. The torture thing is so interesting because of definitions.

So is making someone uncomfortable torture? Right. Is waterboarding torture. Is that torture? Well, they did it to my SEER class. SEER is Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. And we all go through this training. Back then when I went through it, it was based on Vietnam-era type experiences that people had had in Vietnam.

And it's morphed a little bit over time. But they waterboarded people. And they waterboarded people in my class, if you did something that they thought the instructors thought would get you killed in real life or get somebody else killed in real life. So being a model prisoner, it did not happen to me. But to my buddy, he got waterboarded because you did something that the instructors thought would get you. And it's crazy. They put you in this prison camp where they're speaking a different language, a made up language. There are sites that you look like you're in a prison camp because it's built like that. There are smells, they're cooking weird things. So the smells feel like you're in a different country. So all these different sensory

inputs are telling you that you're not in the United States anymore. And you get slapped around, they call it camp slappy. So you're getting slapped around, which is different. But you get waterboarded if you do something wrong. So is that torture? Are they torturing you as service members? Or is it just making them uncomfortable for a while? So these definitions are very important when we start talking. We put somebody sitting in a corner, and they're in that seat position,

and they're not sleeping. We're keeping them up at night. Is that torture? Well, we kept Bud's students up in SEAL training for almost a week. So is that torture? I guess it's self-imposed. I mean, we're all volunteering to do it. This guy's not volunteering to sit there in the corner.

But we also snatched him off the battlefield and we think he might have some information. And it's putting him in an uncomfortable seated position. Is that torture? Some would say yes. and we think he might have some information and it's putting him in an uncomfortable seated position. Is that torture? Some would say yes. So it's crazy in that when it becomes politicized and the enemy gets to use it. And when I say the enemy, I also mean all their social media type networks, all journalists that are sympathetic to the cause or whatever. As soon as that can be morphed and called torture and become a distraction and become something that undermines the mission

as a whole, then you have to look at it and say, okay, what are we getting by what we're doing in Guantanamo? What, what, what, how versus how much is that hurting and helping the enemy's recruiting efforts? And I don't know where that is. I don't know what those numbers look like or where that tipping point is, but as soon as the enemy can get something and use it for their own benefit, like having black sites, if we didn't know that black sites existed, you know, that would be wonderful. But everyone knows that black sites exist. It's just a base that is typically set up by another government agency with the knowledge of a different government. And so it's not in the United States. It's not

on US soil to let the other government do the things that they can do that we can't, essentially. So it's off the books type site, but everyone knows what it is because it's been on cover of the front page of The New York Times and everywhere else. As soon as that becomes something that the enemy can then leverage, at what point does it hurt us more than help us to have those? Does it hurt us more than help us to have those? And at what point does it hurt us more than help us to, quote, unquote, torture someone or continue waterboarding or to put somebody in these seated positions and to have that be the distraction? And I don't know the answer. But it's something that needs to be thought of and talked about. And at the tactical level, the guys have to know that we need to maintain that moral high ground.

That's the only thing in a lot of cases that differentiates us from the enemy. And we have to hold that ground. That's imperative. So as a leader, you got to talk about it. And the guys have to know that once you have somebody, much like a police officer here in the States, once they have you cuffed and you're on the ground, like it's over. Like your job now becomes to protect that person. That's how it has to be. That's what makes us different. That makes you different from that criminal. That makes us different from the enemy. They're going to, if they have us in that position, they're going to behead us and they're going to hold our heads up on TV and they're going to use it for us. Our job is now to protect that person with our life. That's the difference between us and the enemy at the base level. to understand it so that when they're in that position and it's a guy's first deployment and his friend is wounded or dead and he thinks this guy is behind it, that he doesn't execute him when he has his hands cuffed behind him. So it's important stuff to talk about, important stuff to think about. And it's tough.

It's a tough thing to grapple with. And those are the variables, right? perception, whether or not that perception or the knowledge of things that have been done could be used against our troops or used against our country as a whole and in social media, in perception. But the idea that this is what has driven me crazy about it is that those hard, fast statements that torture doesn't work. And I'm like, I don't know what you're saying. I think it probably works in some situations, maybe not in others. I mean, who knows? But when people say that, I'm like,

I bet I can get you to say this. I bet I can get you to tell me where your fucking car keys are. Yeah, no, exactly. Like, what are you saying? Like, of course it works. Like, the idea that it does, like, and they'll say it, and it's always really left-wing people. They'll say, statistically, torture doesn't work. Yeah, what's that? And they say it. Like and it's always really left-wing people, that'll say statistically torture doesn't work.

Yeah, what's that? Who's been keeping these stats since the beginning of time? Bitch, have you ever seen anybody tortured? Like, what are you talking about? If I kept you up, you would tell me everything. All I'd have to do is keep you up. Yep. No, I mean, there's a reason people have been doing it

from the beginning of time. I'm sure in some places it didn't work or whatever. But outside that tactical level, when we're talking about that next stage where the world knows about it, where media knows about it, where they're driving that story and they're helping the enemy by shining a light on these things that may or may not work, doesn't matter whether it works or not. It's detrimental at this point. And whatever that point is, then it's time to abandon it. Do you find that now that you're a prominent voice in the world of fiction authors and the fact that your novels have a lot to do with like real places and real things and real issues?

Do you get asked questions? Do you get asked to give statements or have your opinion on things where you have to kind of measure it and go, is there a benefit to this? Is there a risk to like- To be talking about it? Yeah. Am I alienating people or is this something where you can use your knowledge and your position as a platform to kind of like give your perspective on things from an educated point of view? to like give your perspective on things from an educated point of view yeah so it's it's uh for me it is very it's hard for me not to tell the truth like i am i'm the worst liar on the earth and my wife will that will tell you uh so it it's very natural for me to uh answer honestly but then also to be thoughtful uh and that's why the novels i think also another reason they resonated with

simon and schuster is because it's thoughtful violence. That's how I think of it. It's not just, ah, shoots the guy in the knee or whatever. It's thoughtful violence, which is why those torture scenes are so intricate and involved. Dude, that one with the Russian mobsters, heavy. Yeah, there's some good ones. So I want kind of that to be a kind of a hallmark of the series is that there are things that people haven't seen before. And it's not just extra violence. It's thoughtful violence. So I don't worry about

alienating. It's more about me being honest, because people can tell. Especially today, like maybe 20 years ago, you could have hidden behind managers and reputation, whatever you call it. Today, you can't really hide. If you're on social media, like I think eventually if you have a thousand some posts, people are going to glean and you're doing it and it's not obvious that it's just a manager that's doing it and it's a picture of, you know, you are not really, it's not you. It's obvious it's not you. I'm talking about when it's obvious it's you. It's hard, I think, to not be authentic and to let something slip through.

Yeah, I think eventually it slips through. Yeah, I think, I mean, and you can see things that aren't appropriate. You're like, oh my, why would this person say that? Oh, you know why? Cause it's them. Like that's, that's why. Or they were drunk. Maybe, maybe a little late at night. Also like people don't understand the ramifications of posting things that, and like you were saying, how you got brought in by NCIS that one thing could be taken out of context and used against you in a really weird way. Oh, yeah. And I used to think, oh, no, we're all on the same side.

And, you know, it's all about the. No, people are after a win. That had to be a really disturbing revelation. Oh, it was. And that's why that book is so powerful in that scene. And why why how those guys go down is so violent because it was therapeutic for me. I didn't have to actually go out and do it myself. I got to do it on the pages of a thriller. But for me, it's interesting. So I do get asked,

I am, I do go on different shows now as a military analyst. They ask me things and I answer honestly, and I try to do it in a thoughtful way. So example being the, was the CEO of the Roosevelt that was relieved last couple of weeks because he wrote this letter and, you know, was framed by senior level officials as he sent out essentially like an open letter. It sounded like they made it sound like he sent it out to his entire address book. And he went above the chain of command. And so he was fired and it didn't go through the right proper channels. And it smelled weird to me from the beginning because you don't get to be in command of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier by being like, eh, just some guy.

Like, you know the military. You're in for like 25 years at this point. You're a captain. And I would be shocked if he had not exhausted every other avenue to try to get out what he needed to have done. And he's responsible for fighting that aircraft carrier, and he's also responsible for the men under his command. And now we have like 900 cases on that ship. And that's after it's docked.

Explain to people the ship was infected. Yep. So they had a couple cases. I think they had three to start with on an aircraft carrier. It had docked in Thailand or something like that, maybe in January, early February, something like that, before really things got out of control. So you're in an aircraft carrier that docked in Thailand or something like that, maybe in January, early February, something like that, before really things got out of control. So you're in an aircraft carrier, and the only place worse than a ship

in a circumstance like this with an infectious disease is probably a submarine. But he saw what was happening, and he saw it starting to spread. He saw that it was impossible to abide by social distancing guidelines. And once you do, when you actually have it, not just social distancing, but once you have it, how you isolate somebody, impossible to do on a ship. And so he saw that. And then the story is that he wrote a letter, wrote a letter, and it got picked up by the Chronicle in Northern California. And that it just went out to this huge number of people. So it went out to 20 people. It was, I've read the letter. It's four pages. It's very, very well done. Very

thoughtful. It gives two courses of action. One, if we're at war and how we can keep fighting the ship. And two, if we're not at war, we need to take care of these guys and be ready for when war comes. So it's very clearly delineated in these four pages, very professional. It's on Navy letterhead, and it went out to 20 people. And for me, I thought, you know what? This is very strange that he's being attacked like this from senior-level leaders, making it seem like he sent it out to his entire Gmail address book.

No, it's still usnavy.mil or whatever. It's not a secret communication, but there's official Navy emails that aren't secret as well. And, yeah, it bypassed the chain of command, I guess. But that, at some point, I think is his responsibility. He needs to keep that ship fighting, and who knows what the relational relationship was between him and the guy above him or whatever. I think there's something. The investigation will show it. And then the secretary of the Navy flies from Washington, D.C., to Guam to give a speech to these people on the aircraft carrier.

And he says that the captain that has just been relieved of duty was either stupid or incompetent if he thought that what he wrote in that email wasn't going to get out to the press. Meanwhile, the ironic part is that whole thing is videotaped. That whole speech is taped and there's audio that makes it out to the media. So that's a funny part for me. But then also, so then he's fired a couple of days later. Oh, Jesus. And then the Secretary of Defense now writes a letter, an open letter that says essentially the same thing as the captain of the aircraft carrier wrote a few days earlier that got him fired. So it's really interesting. And I went on some of these shows and got to sit down with a couple different people with military backgrounds.

And I was the only one saying that something doesn't smell right here. And this guy has a responsibility to fight that ship, to support his soldiers or his sailors. And something's just not right about this. And now we'll see what happens. But point being, yeah, I do get asked about these things. And I answer honestly, because one of the other guys were saying on this show was that, nope, chain of command. He didn't follow the chain of command.

And he should have followed that chain of command regardless. You know, the typical Navy type line. But being from special operations and being a free thinker, that's what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to be creative. We're supposed to think, kind of red sell things from the enemy's side, think about it from that side of the house and do what we do, which is why we get in trouble a lot of the time in special operations, because we're kind of not military. And I mean, we're

military, but we like to not break the rules. We like to bend them to a certain extent to get what we need done. And that's just very natural for us. But when you're sitting down with people that aren't like that, and don't think that way, it's kind of interesting. But point being, I do get asked about these things. And I don't really measure it against if I'm going to alienate people or not, it's just I'm gonna be honest, I'm gonna be open, I'm gonna be authentic. And that's what people can trust about me. And they can trust about my writing is that when they read that, they know that I just didn't get it from somebody else, like it's a part of me somehow. And it's very personal, even though it's fiction. And that's what you can trust. And if my writing is that when they read that, they know that I just didn't get it from somebody else. Like it's a part of me somehow. And it's very personal, even though it's fiction. And that's what you can trust. And if my protagonist is using a certain weapon or a certain knife or a certain, it's not

just that I Googled Navy SEAL knife and so on, or someone saying, and then he pulled out his Navy SEAL dagger instead. Like, no, that's not how it goes. You're going to know exactly who made it, the relationship, all that sort of thing. So what people can trust is that they're going to get my honest assessment. And that's what I owe the guys in the teams. I owe them my honest assessment. That's what I owe the people above me in the chain of command. No matter what it did, I owe them my honest assessment because that's what they could trust. They didn't have to worry about whether I'm just telling them something just because I think that's what they want to hear or I'm looking to get ahead because I never wanted this to be a career in the military. I was just in there to

fight and to lead. But that's what they can trust is my honest assessment. And so that's how I deal with today. I'm just going to answer honestly, but it will be thoughtful. It's not going to be like an off the cuff craziness that I then have to go back and retract or I hope it's not going to be. It's going to be thoughtful because that's what I that's what I owe the guys also was that thoughtful assessment both up and down the chain. So that's just natural for me to do and what you're going to get today. Well, this mindset and this, the, the discipline and the authenticity, it comes out in your writing, man. I know I started with the last one and I have to start. You were a little bummed out that I was like starting with the last one, right?

Well, most people get invested in the character. Like people ask me like, can I start with this third one? And the publisher wants me to say, yes, start with the third one. Like buy it now. Let me tell you, you could absolutely start with the third one. Maybe I'll be more invested if I start with the third one. Let me tell you, you could absolutely start with the third one. Maybe I'll be more invested if I start with the first one. I don't know, man, but the third one was fucking great. I loved it. And I'm going to get into the first two now. Awesome.

Listen, you knocked it out of the park, man. It was an amazing, amazing book. I'm excited to read the first two now. Awesome. People can follow you. Is it JackcarUSA? It's JackcarUSA on the socials, most active on Instagram and Twitter. There is a Facebook, but three was too much. Yeah, I feel the exact same way.

So JackcarUSA and then officialjackcar.com is the website, and people can go deep dive into weapons or knives or gear on that sort of thing. All right, man. Well, thanks, brother. I appreciate you. Thanks so much for having me on, and thank you for what you do for hunting and for those of us that are self-reliant and for giving this, really opening people's eyes to what they can do to be better citizens and better prepared going forward.

So thank you for all you do. My pleasure. My pleasure. Thank you. Bye, everybody. Yeah, man. Dude. Dude.

Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude.

Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Thank you.