The Joe Rogan Experience - #1986 - Jack Carr

Episode Date: May 16, 2023

Jack Carr is a bestselling author, retired Navy SEAL, and host of the “Danger Close” podcast. His latest book, “Only the Dead,” is available now.  www.officialjackcarr.com/

the Joe Rogan experience all right we're up and we are up good to see you man great to see you how does it feel to have another one done oh it feels great but there's another one in the work so it doesn't really stop. I mean, I hear some guys like John Grisham talk about they do six months of work and six months off, and that's kind of the routine that they've gotten on. But for me, it's go, go, go, this, the next one, scripts, although those are odds. Do you ever anticipate doing like a six-month-on, six-month-off thing?

Maybe when the kids are out of the house, maybe someday, way later on. But right now it's still building. It's just like any entrepreneurial type of venture. You've got to just go and keep building and take advantage of momentum and look for gaps in the enemy's defenses and adapt and just go, go, go, go. So it's a constant thing from the second I wake up until everybody else is in bed and I'm working for a few more hours. Yeah, you've got to make hay while the sun's shining.

Yeah, I think about that too with the podcast. I'm like, one day, you know, I do so many things. Sometimes I'm like, one day maybe I'll just do one thing. I don't know. Will you be able to do that? I don't know. I don't think I'm ill. Have you ever been bored?

I don't even know what that means. Neither do I. No, I never. When people talk about being bored, like I'm going to hear that from one of our kids. I'm like, that's like the one thing that gets me. Yeah. But it's because I've never been bored in my life. I'm bored at things.

Like if someone takes me to a gala, I have to dress like a monkey, sit there and wait. How many of those have you – you don't do those anymore, do you? I had to do one recently. Oh, for what? Yeah, a friend. Yeah. There was an art thing that was going on here, so I had to dress up. I'm like, Jesus Christ.

It's every now and again. It's okay, maybe. Maybe. It was okay because I was next to my friend and his jesus christ every now and again it's okay maybe maybe it was okay because i was next to my friend yeah his wife and my wife it was fun but it's for the most part it's like that's the only time i get bored yeah then i get hostile then i have a couple of drinks i get a little hostile are people nervous when you're there no they get weird weird man just looking at you that you're there people Yeah, people stare at me. Really? Yeah, it's gotten exponentially weirder over the last, like, three years.

I bet. I used to be able to blend in. Yeah. Five years ago, I could blend in anywhere. Really? Yeah, just people say hi, but that would be it. Okay. But now it changes the dynamic of the room type of thing?

Yeah. Yeah. It's weird. I'm not changing the dynamic of any room, I don't think, but people definitely in the airport stop and say hi, and I feel so just fortunate that people are interested enough in the books or the podcast or the TV show or whatever to actually recognize me and say hi. One guy recognized me by my Sitka backpack last night. Oh, wow. I was flying out here, and he's like, the backpack gave you away.

I was in the corner calling my wife on Mother's Day and my mom on Mother's Day. It's all Optifade. He said, well, no, it's the gray one. It's the drifter. So it just blends, but it has a little sick assemble. And he said, the backpack gave you away. I turned around and said hi. But I feel extremely fortunate.

Yeah, I do too. We're very lucky guys to be able to do what we love to do. When someone meets you too, also it's like your writing is so brutal. This one in particular. You're such a nice guy. It's like when someone meets you, they're like, what the fuck is going on behind those eyes? I worry about that. I don't spend too much time worrying about it.

But like our kid's friend's parents, that sort of thing. Like, did you read his book? It was a little disturbing. Maybe our kid shouldn't play over there type of a thing. Oh, really? Well, I don't know. But that's kind of what i think about like if i was someone else's parent was to read this and not know me never having met me yeah all of a sudden you read this thing like oh maybe our son or daughter should find another friend i would worry about that more

in california yeah in california so what are we drinking here what is this all right so right here cheers thank you so much for everything my My pleasure, brother. Amazing. Look at this. The official Jack Carr leather colored whiskey glasses. There it is. The whiskey glasses. People are very fond of their whiskey. And who made this whiskey? It's not bad. It's very good.

Here we go. So this is Hooten Young right there. Okay. And he made a Jack Carr edition. Yep. Jack Carr edition right here. And so there's both veterans, but norm hooten was played by eric banna and blackhawk down so he was a delta operator who's now out makes these makes cigars

that i'll show you here in a second cigars too yep cigars and this this whiskey and i put them in the show in the terminal list so and chris bratz uh they're drinking with boozer in that first episode put a little hooten young on there and there's no product placement and like in the show in the books people think that that's a huge thing, and in a lot of Hollywood I think it is. If someone's like, let me open this tab, you know, back in 1985 or whatever. But there's none of that. It's all just character development tools. And so I want to try to hook up whoever I can,

and these guys put in so much time and service to this nation. So it's right on the counter there in that first episode. That's the best kind of product placement. Yeah, and it helps develop the – Yeah, exactly. No one pays to get in any of these, which is – I didn't know how it was going to work with Hollywood. It was my first time down that road. Yeah.

I didn't think they were going to say, hey, you know what? You have this, and I know it's important, and I know who the guys are, but how about this company? They're paying us, so let's put that in there instead. It wasn't like that at all, which was pretty cool. I think it's all because Chris Antoine Fuqua and the showrunner just held the line and said, hey, no, we're just going to use these things and make it organic and authentic and root this whole thing in this foundation of operator culture. It also probably helps that you guys are on Amazon, too, which is like a fairly new platform.

Yeah. And in terms of like streaming and things, it's only like the last decade or so. Right. Netflix had a little head start. of streaming and things. It's only the last decade or so. Right. Netflix had a little head start.

Yeah, as opposed to something like NBC or CBS or ABC, which is probably standard operational procedure to have people pay to put Coca-Cola on. Right, because they're going to need to make money however they can because now they're in competition with Amazon and with Netflix. They're going to come to you with Bud Light. There you go. You guys can fix Bud Light.

I saw a new one today. Did you see the Miller Lite one today? Yeah, like, does no one learn? Does no one learn? I mean, and they were taking all those ads that we loved from the 80s, and they were just putting them in shredders. That was their campaign today. I saw it this morning.

This is so stupid. I mean, I don't know. But once again. Like, there's something wrong. Also, it's making, there's something wrong with women wearing bikinis. Those women wear bikinis because they look great. They like to look great. They take photos of them looking great.

The girls see those photos of them in bikinis. They get excited. Look, I look great. People buy it. Wow, she looks great. It's not bad to look great. It's just like it's not bad for a guy to have his shirt off. If Chris Pratt has his shirt off and he's looking ripped, it's not objectifying.

I mean, I guess it is, but it's not negative. It's not negative. It's selling movie tickets right there. That ad is so weird. Isn't it strange? You want to watch it? Let's watch it. Let's watch it just so we can goof off. Oh boy, here we go. I couldn't believe it this morning. They don't learn. No one learns. Well, it's just in general, I think.

It's kind of those taking lessons from the past and applying them going forward as wisdom. How about lessons from a week ago? I know. It's not even the past. It's like a couple of days ago. The only thing that saves is like maybe they spent a lot of money on it and they filmed it six months ago. Is that possible? I've already seen it. There's an article from two months ago.

But still, you could put a pause on that. Oh, it came out two months ago? At least two months ago. Okay. So it came out before the bullshit, right? Was that about the same time as the bullshit? I just saw it this morning. This says it was in honor of Women's History Month.

That's why they put it out. So I'm like, as I saw it today, I was like, maybe there's a reason they made this, and we just started seeing that. But it's also crazy. They want to shred all the good-looking pictures from the 80s. And they're buying it back. That was part of the thing. They're buying back all those old ads that people have, I guess, in their garage malls. That's what it said in this thing that I saw this morning.

And they're going to turn it into good. Yeah, that's it. They were the first to brew beer ever. From Mesopotamia to the Middle Ages to colonial America, women were the ones doing the brewing. Centuries later, how did the industry pay homage to the founding

mothers of beer? They put us in bikinis. With awesome pictures like that is how. She looks hot. Yeah. I mean, look at that. Those are great ads. Those are great ads. Quiet.

It's time beer made it up to women. So today, Miller Lite is on a mission to clean up their shit. Miller Lite's on a mission to make sure no one buys their stuff. Oh, my goodness. They're scouring the internet and buying it back. Yeah. Because that's easy to do once you get an image up there on the internet. So what is she saying? Hmm.

Interesting. Yeah. Which has been donated to women brewers to make their own really good shit. But there's definitely more shit out there. In your attic, in the garage, in your parents' basement. Send any shit you got into Miller Lite and they'll turn that into good shit too. Oh. So here's to women. Because without us, there would be no beer.

Wow. Oh, God. I, there would be no beer. Wow. Oh, God. I hate identity politics with a passion. I really do. It's pretty interesting. It's so stupid. Oh, my Lord. It's that human beings made beer, okay?

And some human beings look good in bikinis. It's like, what are we doing? It's crazy. Women do it. Women do it. Women do it. I'd like to see a pie chart of how many women are actually involved in making beer or drinking beer. Well, now I'm going to hold on to all those posters from Miller Lite that I have from the 80s in my garage.

I'm going to turn that stuff in. It's going to be worth a lot more now. Do you have some? No. Imagine. I wish I did. This is it. Miller Lite ads with their shit.

No, I mean, that was crazy to wake up. I didn't mean to see that this morning. Does paper turn into compost? Is that how it works? I mean, isn't a bunch of chemicals and shit Why are they lying to us? Why would something like that just get resurfaced on like a Monday and now everyone's talking because people are angry They're looking to be angry months. That's what I mean. Like it's been out for two months. We didn't see it before that I think the Bud Light thing was probably so overwhelming that no one paid attention to anything else Yeah, and now that that's kind of died down I think the Bud Light thing was probably so overwhelming that no one paid attention to anything else.

Yeah. And now that that's kind of died down. Yeah. It's all so stupid. Since we're on alcohol and we're on all that stuff, let me do this so I don't forget. Because this is pretty amazing here. I know you like cigars, and as do I. And this right here. So these cigars right here.

Hooten Young, the guys that we just talked to about this whiskey, that Jack Carr edition right there. Oh, wow. Look at the label. This is pretty cool. So what they did, they called me, and I was kind of like a million things going on. And I pick up, and they started to talk to me about this, and it gave me goosebumps. And this right here is World Trade Center Steel. Whoa.

Yeah. World Trade Center Steel. The guys Yeah. World Trade Center steel. The guys that put this together aren't just Hooten Young, aren't just Norm Hooten. There's some, I'm going to call them two Army Rangers and a Special Forces guy. But we can talk more about them. Just incredible human beings who have sacrificed so much for this nation. And so they did this. And then he kept talking to me.

And he said, under these cigars, under each one right here, so if I pull one of these out, you can see that there is some dirt under each one of these right here, and it's laminated in there over the top, so there's dirt and there's a little laminate over it, and each one of these comes from a special place. And right here, Dday invasion sacred sand recovered from omaha beach in normandy right there largest amphibious invasion in history so they have that there iranian hostage crisis april 24th 1980 operation eagle claw so that's when they went in to try to rescue the american hostages in iran tehran, and they landed at a place called Desert One. One of the refueling birds hit one of the, or one of the refueling C-130s hit one of the helicopters,

and there was an explosion, and people died, and they had to abort the mission. They didn't have enough helicopters to keep going, so they brought dirt back from that. There is not much dirt that they brought back, but there is some in here. And Battle of Mogadishu, October 3rd to 4th, 1993, Operation Gothic Serpent. Sand smuggled from the Black Hawk Down crash site in Mogadishu, Somalia. World Trade Center attack, Operation Enduring Freedom. The steel right here. And Saddam Hussein, Operation Iraqi Freedom from March 20, 2003. So there is dirt from some amazing dates in special operations and military history in here. And each one of these cigars you can tell right here has, there you go right here, you right there.

Wow, that's incredible. Amazing, yeah. right there so wow yeah that's incredible amazing yeah hooten young and then some guys that are that are out there at the at the tip of the spear that have uh have access to this dirt from places like operation eagle claw uh desert one outside of tehran iran is uh is in here so wow put that back in we're gonna save these for some special occasion there we go that's that's amazing yeah so i was blown away so they made one for you made for me, and so we're the only two people to have these. That's very cool. Yeah.

Operator cigars right there. And there you are. Wow. Hooten Young across Tomahawks right there. Yeah. Pretty amazing. Very cool. Yeah.

Have you smoked one of these yet? Not yet. Not yet. It arrived just hours before I got here. So pretty cool. Pretty cool. That's very cool. So thank you guys, Hooten Young and the guys at the tip of the spear who put this together.

Yeah, thank you. That's incredible. Yeah. Wow. Absolutely amazing. And this stuff launches, I think, today. You have to wait for the government. There's all sorts of things you have to hop through before they approve it.

And so this stuff, I think, is launching tomorrow or today when this thing launches. So that will be out there. And what's crazy is you have to go through these patent things, so not like trademark stuff with attorneys and things, and there's different little categories. So you have to do subcategories if you want to patent the Cross Tomahawks. So I have lawyers doing all that, and part of that's whiskey. And so they did the whiskey one, and right away the Jack Daniels lawyers, boom, right on it.

They are very aggressive when it comes to any whiskey that has Jack in it, And so they did the whiskey one, and right away the Jack Daniels lawyers, boom, right on it. They are very aggressive when it comes to any whiskey that has Jack in it, even though it's obviously a different label, different style bottle, no connection. They get upset at the name Jack? Yeah. Jack Carr? Yep. Don't they just look at it and go, oh, that's the author?

Well, well. Come on, Jack Daniels. Seriously, Jack Daniels has done so much for America. We love you, Jack Daniels. We, Jack Daniels has done so much for America's. We love you, Jack Daniels. We love Jack Daniels. I know. Seriously, but it's, but they're very good. They did something with, they had like a dog poop thing that was out there with Jack Daniels on it or something like that.

You can look that up, but it was a big thing. I think it went to the Supreme Court recently. So point being, they're very aggressive. We do love Jack Daniels, but their lawyers get a little aggressive and juxtapose that. Because while you're doing this, yeah, there it is right there. Whiskey and poop thing dog toy meet in a trademark clash. Oh, boy. That's lawyers.

That's just lawyers. Got a bunch of people that probably work for the firm. And they're like, oh, this is an opportunity to get on the board. Yeah, they get very aggressive. But you juxtapose that. So there's also car wine. And so we happen to drink a lot of that in our household. My dog has one of those.

Really? Yes. Marshall has one of those. He's got a fake Jack Daniels. As a matter of fact, there might be a photo of him with it on his Instagram page. My dog's Instagram has like 750,000 followers. It's blowing up. He's so handsome.

That is awesome. That is awesome. That is awesome. I'm pretty sure in one of his photos, he's got a rubber bottle of Jack Daniels. That might have spurred this whole lawsuit. I wonder. Point being, there's also car wine. There he is.

There it is right there. Look at that. Oh, look at that. That is a great shot. So they should be excited. That's his best position. That's his favorite position is cuddling. When you watch TV, he hops on board and just puts his head on your chest.

He's the best. But we do love Jack Daniels. They do so much for the military. I do love Jack Daniels. I know. It's not them. It's some lawyers. Yeah, I think so.

Some dipshits. I mean, also, Jack Daniels has been around for, like, what? A hundred years plus? A long time. How long have they been around? So it's not really Jack Daniels has been around for like, what, 100 years plus? Long time. How long has he been around? So it's not really Jack Daniels. It's people that assume a position at Jack Daniels and go after dog toys. And anything with Jack in the title.

Hopefully we can work through that. But different than the lawyers for car wine. So same situation. You have to do wine as separate than liquor and that sort of a thing with trademarks and all that. And so car wine reaches out. But're like uh hey kind of excuse us um uh we're big fans but uh i would love love what jack's doing but uh what do you guys plan on doing with this wine it's really just kind of a series of things you just do when you apply for a trademark just to cover things and uh and they were awesome and i was like these guys are so fun we drink their wine

anyway been drinking it for years and uh i was like, hey, just tell them if I ever do a wine that if they were uncomfortable with it, I'll just change it up. Just whatever they wanted. It'll be totally different anyway, but I'll show it to them first. So I told the attorneys, just tell them whatever. We'll have some wine together. There's wine cart vineyards maybe in Northern California, I think. And they're out there in all the grocery stores, and they're pretty big. But they're good, good solid wine. But they were cool about it. Yeah, super cool. Super cool. Yeah, their lawyers reached out.

But it's the same situation. But you can be cool, or you can not be cool. Be cool like Fonzie. Yeah, be cool. Just be cool like Fonzie. Like, how hard is this? Well, it's lawyers. I mean, it's also that's their job.

Yeah, it is their job. I mean, it's like the scorpion and the frog. It's in my nature. And they're there to protect, so I do get it. But, you know, that's okay. But you still have to be nice about it. Yeah. Well, hopefully this podcast will maybe lube the gears a little bit.

Yeah, maybe. Be cool, you know? So are you guys, is season two, it's on hold now because of the writer's strike? Well, working on the scripts. Are you allowed to work on the scripts? No. I mean, I'm not part of the guild yet. I would be after this one because I'm writing the finale.

But out of respect for what they have going on, I'm pencils down on it too. So all the writers that are part of the WGA, pencils down on all their projects right now. So the Writers Guild is only television and film. It has nothing to do with authors. Nothing to do with the publishing industry as far as the books and Simon & Schuster and all that stuff. And same thing with video games. I learned video games because there are writers for these video games. Yeah.

And so that's not part of it either. So people can work on that stuff. But it's the television and film. And is the main dispute streaming? Is that what's going on? Streaming has been a long time coming. So that was coming to a head anyway, and they probably should have negotiated, or not they should have. It's been a long time in the works just because things have changed so much since the last writer's strike when it comes to streaming. But then right when that comes to a

head, AI hits the news this January. Of course, AI with chat GPT and all that stuff, and people are putting it as you've seen. People can just say, hey, write a show about X, Y, or Z, and pops out, not bad, do a little editing, off it goes. And you don't have to pay a writer's room. So if you're an executive and you're beholden to, I guess, shareholders or whatever it is, maybe that's attractive, but not so attractive to those people who make their living coming up with these ideas in a writer's room and then making all this money. Essentially, the foundation of everything that we see in film and television happens in those writer's rooms and happens from these creators. And a lot of them, it's not huge money they're making anyway,

but it's just how do you deal with streaming and how do we deal with AI? And we'll see. What is the solution to the AI problem? Because we're dealing with ChatGPT 4 now, and as ChatGPT 5, 6, and 7 roll out, I would imagine they're going to be able to write in the style of Jack Carr and write a perfect James Reese novel. Maybe eventually. Somebody did that, right? When it came out, I think in January, I got a text, and I said, check your email. This is what I just, a screenshot of chat GPT. I said,

write the first novel, the first chapter in the next Jack Carr, James Reese terminalist thing. And it wasn't great, but in five years it probably will be. Right. And even if it's not great, it maybe is a scaffolding for an actual writer to go in and put some real flair to it. Exactly. This new book is really good. Oh, thank you. Like I said, I think I'm on chapter 24 or 25. And you're writing, I liked how you're shift, you switch your styles up a little bit.

Yeah. You know, like there's like new elements to the way you do things. Like I don't wanna give anything away, but when Reese is incarcerated. Yeah. Yeah, there's like, there's something to the way you're doing it differently, it's interesting.

Cause you don't have the same novel every time. Yeah. Just you pick somebody up and he's a carbon cut out and you drop him now in Europe. Now he's getting revenge. Now he's in Africa getting revenge. Now he's in China. I wanted to avoid that and that was right out of the gate. I was cognizant of that being something that could be an issue if you have a success. Just kind of copy that and I never wanted to do that. I always want to evolve just like anything else in life. In the the SEAL teams, my, uh, my whole mission was to be a better operator and a better leader today than I was yesterday. Uh, personal front, be a better husband and father than I was yesterday. And for writing, be a better author for the next book than I was for this one.

My, my next sentence to be better than, uh, than the sentence before. So it's, um, so this one, James Reese is on a journey and that's, that's one of the one things that we have in common just with everyone else on this planet. We're all on a journey. No matter your race, your religion, your socioeconomic background, you're on a journey. And you don't know how much time you have on this planet. You get one ride. And so you've got to make it count. So people are trusting me with that time, which is something I take extremely seriously.

So as much thought goes into any Instagram post or blog or question for a guest on my podcast or whatever it is, as goes into any sentence in the novel. And I want to always improve on that craft every single time. So James Reese is on this journey. He's not the same guy he was in the first book, not the same guy he was in the third, and he's not the same guy he is in the sixth one. He's evolving.

He's learning, taking those past successes and failures and taking those lessons and applying them forward. Hopefully it's wisdom. Hopefully we're all doing that, except for Bud Light and Miller Light, apparently. They'll learn, too. They'll learn, too. They need to read these novels, perhaps, and figure out how it's done. They're only down 21%.

No big deal. And that's more than a rounding error. That's more than a rounding error. That's a real number. That's tough to come back from. Well, what's interesting now is gay bars are now boycotting them because they didn't back up Dylan Mulvaney. I saw. They can't win.

They just waded into this thing. It's like an L ambush. You walk in and you're getting hit from all sides and you kind of cover up. And then they did that one post. They put their first one after that. They put the Bud Light can and they said, TGIF? Question mark. But what they should have done, this is hindsight.

They should have laid low. Well, they could lay low and hope that somebody else messes up like Mike Miller here a few weeks later, even though it was before. The Miller Light one is very mild. It's pretty mild, but it's kind of a... It's just silly. It's just like you're also attacking women. You're attacking these girls that are fitness models. There's nothing wrong with being a fitness model, just like there's nothing wrong with being a male fitness influencer,

one of those guys that does a lot of posts on lifting weights and technique and they're shirtless and they look jacked. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with being a beautiful woman who makes a living taking photographs with beer. No, guys that drink Miller Lite like that. But it's this narrow view of what a woman is supposed to be, that a woman is only supposed to be a lady who's succeeding

and killing it in the corporate world. And like, why? This is why. I saw another one that was similar to that. So they said, why are we vilifying women that stay home and raise kids and handle the household and that sort of thing but celebrating the men pretending to be women who stay home and do the same thing so it's kind of like that juxtaposition those dichotomies are interesting

but particularly in the way they dress right because one of the things about trans people is that like you'll celebrate the most stereotypical like image of what a woman is like short skirts and a lot of makeup and fake eyelashes and like elbow high gloves and the whole deal it's like it's a caricature of what it's drag like what is drag right it's like the most ridiculous version of what a woman is and it's celebrated but an actual woman like that is disparaged we live in interesting times and i think if bud light after remember that scene from the hangover where uh bradley cooper they pull over to the side and he's on the road they're all beat up and he's covered in dust and everything and he takes that phone call and he's like

man we fucked up like if they just played that clip like that like a 10 second clip yeah just put that up just put it up and people clip like that like a 10 second clip yeah just people would have been like yeah just put that up just put it up and people would have been like oh okay all right everybody screws up everybody messes up you know we're all trying to navigate this kind of new world and we're all trying to do the best we can and i went on a bud light tour back back in 2007 me and charlie murphy and john heffron we went on a Real Men of Comedy Bud Light tour. Nice. Like Real Men of Genius or whatever that was? The guy from Survivor was with us. Jeff Probst, the guy that-

No, no, no, no. The band. Oh, Survivor. It's the eye of the tiger. Nice. Because those were the guys that would sing the song Real Men of Genius. Oh, no way. Remember those?

I do remember those, but I did not know that was Survivor. Those were really funny. Those were funny ads. And those guys did those ads in front of the audience. So it was like, yeah, it was a fun tour. And that gentleman has passed away, the Survivor guy. I believe so. Wasn't the lead singer of Survivor?

Didn't he pass away? Super fucking cool guy, though. What a hell of a voice, too. Dang. Yeah, so we got to hang out with those guys and travel the country with them for a month. That's awesome. Yeah, we did like 22 dates. And I got to become friends with Charlie and Heffron,

and we traveled around, and that was when Bud Light embraced this humorous, like sort of dopey man version of beer, which is like what everybody likes. Do you know Shane Gillis? One of the best comics in the country. Fucking top shelf. If I saw it, I'd know it. He's a new guy coming up. Do you know Shane Gillis? One of the best comics in the country. Fucking top shelf.

If I saw it, I'd know it. He's a new guy coming up. But anyway, he drinks Bud Light, and he's in a dilemma. Oh, boy. Because he'll drink Bud Light on the podcast. And we've had podcasts where he drank 16 Bud Lights. 16? Oh, yeah. In three hours.

He's a big boy. Wow. Big fella. It's all relative. He can put them down. Yeah, it's all relative. That's amazing, though. Even how big you are.

That's pretty serious. I don't even know how much fluid. How many did you do? Were you joining him? I just can't keep up with that. I'm six, seven in. I'm done. Six, seven?

I can't stop peeing. That's pretty good, though. Three hours, you have to pee and thing. Bud Light is a light beer. It's only like, what is the percentage of alcohol? Five percent? Yeah. It's light.

It's a lot like water. Yeah. It's for people who like to drink all day long. You can hydrate with it. Yeah. You can hydrate with it. Yeah. It's a lot like what yeah, it's like it's for people like to drink all day long You can hydrate with it. Yeah With yeah, yeah, you know nice little buzz. Yeah hydrate. It's not offensive tasting now. Now. It's just offensive Well, this is one ad campaign. It's just so dumb and the lady behind it was there Just like talking about the fratty sense of humor. Like, what are you going to do?

You're going to replace it with this fucking mentally ill person? I know. It's tough. They had a winning. It just needs attention constantly. I mean, they had a winning campaign going for decades. It worked. Yeah.

They should have gone back to another real men of genius. Listen, you can make fun of men hardcore in those ads and we'll laugh along with you. Absolutely. You know, it's like, it would have been fine. Yeah, but- And they would have got people to buy Bud Light, which you got the opposite. You got the opposite. Now the gay folks don't want it.

The trans folks don't want it. Nobody wants it. Everybody's mad at you. It's tough. They're saying, I've read this story where this bar owner was saying that he had to stop carrying it because people were attacking people that were drinking it. Oh my gosh. So people that were like, ah, fuck it.

I don't care. I'm not involved in this. What are you, fucking communists? People just beating people's asses for having Bud Light. They were having fights at the bars. It's so sad. And who are they owned by now? Aren't they owned by some international corporation at this point?

I believe so. Yeah. Yeah. Are they owned by a Chinese corporation? I wouldn't be surprised. Who owns Bud Light? I think it's somebody in Europe. Yeah. Yeah. Are they owned by a Chinese corporation? I wouldn't be surprised. Who owns Bud Light? I think it's somebody in Europe. Yeah, who owns Anheuser-Busch?

Let's find out who owns Anheuser-Busch. I think it's a European company, isn't it? Maybe. But, uh... Whatever something's bad, I blame it on China. Yeah. Those headlights, like those lights that you got, you know? Oh, the ones from my Land Cruiser?

Those actually were from China. Yeah. They look cool. They just died. They got water in them somehow or another. Oh, jeez. It's a fucking Land Cruiser. Those actually were from China. Yeah. They would look cool. They just died. They got water in them somehow or another. Oh, jeez. It's a fucking Land Cruiser. I mean, come on.

How are they not sealed? I guess a company called InBev bought it. I've never heard of that. And what's InBev? I don't know. It's tied to the communist China. I want to short them right now. I want to call my broker.

I got a feeling this is going to keep going. Belgium, multinational. Belgium. Yeah, let's manipulate some markets right now. Yeah. I got a feeling this is going to keep going. Belgium, multinational. Belgium. Yeah, let's manipulate some markets right now. Yeah. I think you could. Let's take a break, though. Let me make a couple calls.

So we have this podcast that we do called Protect Our Parks that I do with Shane Gillis and Ari Shaffir and Mark Norman, and we get hammered most of the time. Yeah. And we're trying to figure out what's the least woke beer to drink. And Mark Norman said Colt 45. And I think he's right. Is he? Well, who owns it?

We got to look it up. You don't know. I don't know, but Colt 45. You don't know. That is the least woke advertising campaign. It was. I remember growing up, those commercials were fantastic. Malt liquor.

Yeah. I mean, that stuff is, what is the alcohol percentage of that? That stuff is brutal. It's more than Bud Light. Yeah. A lot more. That stuff's rough. More than Bud Light. Yeah. A lot more. That stuff's rough. That's not even real.

Beer. It's malt liquor. It's 5.6. Malt liquor is? Well, Colt 45 is according to Wikipedia. Really? What about Old English? It's an old, it's a psyop.

It's a psychological operation. You just think it is. There's something else in there. But they're saying maybe that's. 800 is just slightly. Well, it ranges from 5.9 to 8. Maybe we need, well, I would say Canada is the wokest fucking place on earth right now.

I would have said go with Canadian beer because Canadian beer is like 9%. Yeah, they have like XXX stuff. Yeah, they get hammered up. Oh, nice. They go hard. It gets cold. Yeah, it's really cold. You gotta do something. Gotta do something up there. They locked themselves in and get fucking blasted. Yeah got to do something up there. Someone was talking about Canada and food the other day.

You don't hear about somebody saying they want to go out and have a nice Canadian meal. Andrew Schultz. Was that it? Oh, my God. Let's play that bit. Andrew Schultz's bit on food. Did I see that on yours? Where did I see that?

I saw that somewhere. Maybe we played it here. Oh, did you? Because it's fucking genius. He does a bit about countries that suppress their women. That's it. About how horrible it is to suppress women. That's it. It's a fucking great bit. See if you can find it.

Okay, so I do know that guy. That's my side. This is such a good bit. It's pretty clever. This is such a bit. There's a lot of countries in the world that treat women like shit. That's fucked up. But they got the best food. That's undeniable. Right?

The more countries like stay in the kitchen, the better the food comes out of the kitchen, right? It does. It comes out more delicious that way. Have you ever eaten food from a country where the women are equal? Get the fuck... Get it away.

Get away. What is that, equality cuisine? Move away. Get away. What is that? Equality cuisine? Move it. Move it. Move. Nobody in this room has ever said, you know what we should do for dinner tonight?

Canadian. Never been said. Never once. That's it. Canada treats their women equally. Their food is fucking dog shit. It's disgusting Canadian bacon?

Kill yourself if you like Canadian bacon What is this coaster of ham? What am I looking at? I absolutely like Canadian bacon Yeah, Canadian bacon That maybe wasn't the best analogy I know what he was doing there But it's a funny joke

It is It's a great joke But no one has said Let's go eat Canadian. No. I mean, I don't even know what that means. I don't know what it means either. Poutine, I think, is all I know.

Poutine's good. I think that's French, though. Yeah, that's over from that. That's more East. Yeah, that's Montreal. Yeah, and there are some good restaurants in Montreal. Poutine's pretty bomb diggity. They have smoked meat.

Actually, Canada has some good food. And who's the hunter that has his place up? Is it Montreal? Michael Hunter. Yeah, yeah. No, it's Toronto. Toronto, okay. Yeah, Antler.

Yeah. Yeah. That's the guy that when the vegans were angry, he butchered a deer in front of the window. Mm-hmm. And was he on the podcast? Yes. And so I've met him before as well.

Super nice guy. Very nice guy. So you don't think that he would do, like just having talked to him, like you wouldn't think that his mind would just go there to do that. But that was, yeah, it was pretty legit. Well, it was a smart move. Got on the podcast got him famous i mean like

take advantage of me these people are like making it uncomfortable for people to go to his business yeah just because they have an idea of what you should and shouldn't eat and if someone confronted them like if you unless you are growing your own vegetables and you know exactly what happens, you are responsible for animal death 100%. I mean, there's a crazy video of this combine going through a field and it goes to this patch of, I guess it's probably corn or something like that. And 13 deer run out of there. Wow. You know how many of those fawns get chewed up you know many rabbits rabbits and you know like if it is a life a life Because I'll tell you what you lose a lot of light for a pound of grain no matter what poisoning

pesticides herbicides like This idea that you're gonna have some zero karma, no worry at all vegetable dinner. Like, fuck off. You're not. Just getting the things, getting the organic paper towels or whatever they have. They have those things. Just getting those to the store. Grabbing the cost of the country, the amount of insects that hit the windshield.

It depends. And Steve Rinella has that thing, right? Doesn't he have the pyramid of things like fish? Nobody cares. That whole deal. I had a post that I did on Instagram way back in the day called the hierarchy of dead animals on social media. That's it.

So I said like, if you catch a fish, no one's upset with you. Yeah. And then I showed a picture of me with a dead turkey like, we're crossing into a weird area, but nobody cares. Yeah. And then I had a package of bear meat. Right. Just a package.

Just meat. It just said bear meat. And. Just a package. Just meat. It just said bear meat. And it's like, you can get away with a lot. You do it in a sneaky way. Yeah, there it is. Bear meat. And that's okay.

That was okay, right? Not too many people hating that one. Yeah, hierarchy of dead animals on social media. Yeah. That, when did you put, May 1st, 2015. Gosh, eight years ago. Eight years ago. Amazing.

Yeah, that was probably the last time I hunted bears. Was it? Yeah. I haven't been up there in a while. Well, there was the pandemic, and then you couldn't get up there for a while. Yeah. Now I'm just angry at Canada. Yeah, they invite, yeah. It's rivets, and they've been in touch and want to try to get me up there.

It's a crazy spot. They have so many bears up there. And anyone that thinks that somehow or another bears, like, they're a protected species. Listen, go to Canada. Go to Alberta. And go wander around the woods. There are so many goddamn bears. They have to kill bears.

Their deer population, their moose population, all depends on it. They are overrun with bears. Yeah, absolutely. When we were up there, there's bear cannibalism. overrun with bears. Yep. Absolutely. When we were up there, there's bear cannibalism.

Yeah. John, one of the guys that was, Jonathan, one of the sons of the Rivets, he saw a bear, a male bear, the boar, attacked a female and was trying to get to her cubs, killed one of her cubs. The female chased the bear off and then the female ate her own cub Wow. Yeah, you know this aren't This aren't teddy bears. Yeah, they're edible monsters Yeah, did you post a picture of your did you post a picture of your bear at one point? And that's where the hatred there a lot of hate. Oh Alaskan monsters bears go at it

Longest most intense grizzly bear fight he's seen? Oh, jeez. Did you miss it? No, I did not see it. I'm guessing by your reaction you did not see this. This is May 11th. This is a few days ago. It's a crazy fight.

This is a few days ago here. This is an intense fight. Is this new? Yeah, it's pretty new. Oh, I haven't seen this one. May 11th this year. I mean, we could go into it. I don't.

Look at that thing. Oh, my gosh. That is incredible. That's nature's cleanup crew, ladies and gentlemen. There it is. Anything that fucks up gets eaten by this 2,000-pound monster. And here comes this guy. This is going to happen dangerously close to us.

Oh, boy. Here we go. Look how beautiful they are. Look at the color on those things. Gosh. Look at that backdrop. Yeah. People will say it's CGI.

That's incredible. Weird life they have. Look at that. I mean, that looks pretty evenly matched at this point. Yeah, they're both the same size. I mean, it's... They're just biting each other's faces. He's been training harder.

Fuck, man. Oh. They do a lot of jiu-jitsu, though. Look, right there, those little grammy roll. There it is. Oh, going for the back. He's got it in the back. He's been watching UFC.

Oh, look at that, though. Yeah, he's just biting chunks out of his back. Oh, my gosh. And that guy's trying to get away now. He's trying to get too late. Their skin is so thick, and they're covered in fat. He was like, that's just annoying. Like, broke it off me.

Wow. I will say, this goes on and on and on. How long do you want to watch this? Wow. This is a good fight. This is pretty good. Oh, look at this. Really good attention.

Oh, my gosh. I like how the other bear just keeps moving, though. That's good. I like his technique. Oh, there he is. The guy's still got his back, but he's rolling. Oh, he's pulled guard. Trying to get him off of him.

Oh, my gosh. That is crazy. That one better run. That one better just get on those getaway sticks. I don't know. I feel like the other guy's going to gas out. Yeah, we're good. We're good. I'm watching. Because the guy's wasting all his time biting him in the back. Yeah, maybe he's going for the spine.

Eh. No? It's not really going to happen. No. I don't think anyone dies in a spine. Oh, really? It's an intense fight. It's a crazy fight. Well, you know who got the best bear fight footage before this was Grizzly Man.

Oh, man. Which is one of my favorite all-time comedies. I haven't watched it. You haven't watched it? No, I keep meaning to. I haven't watched it, but I know that. Oh, my God. Have a cocktail and watch Grizzly Man.

It is the best unintentional comedy that's ever been made. And I wonder if it's unintentional because werner herzog is a genius yeah yeah you know and he's made so many amazing films and that to me is his favorite my favorite of his films and there's so many moments that just are laugh out loud funny like there's one where there's a sheriff and he's talking about like finding the body and the fact this guy was camping with him. And the sheriff looks at the camera and goes, I thought he was retarded. It's like the way he says it. There's a smash cut.

The bear guy always gets eaten by the bear. The shark guy ends up getting eaten by the shark. The rattlesnake guy gets it and ends up getting bit by the rattlesnake. What's happening with these? That's just the trailer. Oh, for Grizzly Man? Yeah, that poor guy.

Well, that guy was very, very sad. He was a sad guy, and he had this idea that he was protecting them. But he just doesn't even understand. He doesn't understand wildlife conservation. That's so brutal. If a lion guy gets eaten by the lion, it's always the way. But this one, this is amazing. Brilliant tale of adventure and potential madness and hilarious. Well, I think, I feel like genuinely this story was suicide by bear.

Yeah. Because he stayed long after you're supposed to be there. Yeah. He stayed after the animals were in hibernation. He was very depressed. And I think he kind of wanted to die. Yeah. I really do.

I just think this guy just was very sad. That's tough. And he very much seemed like an in-the-closet gay guy. Because, like, he said a lot of crazy shit. Like, he was walking around with a camera. He goes, I wish I was gay. If I was gay, it would be so easy. I'd just find a guy and hook up.

But I'm not gay. I'm like, are you sure? Like, it's like there's so many layers to that film. I'm going to have to watch it at some point. It's great. It's a great documentary. And it also highlights how majestic these animals are. They're so amazing. And delicious, too, if you get the right ones eating the right stuff.

I've never eaten a brown bear. No, I have not eaten a brown bear. But black bears are very good. If they're eating the blueberries, just munching on those blueberries. I haven't had that, but Ronellis is some of the best meat he's ever eaten. It is. What's interesting is that settlers in America in the pioneer days, they preferred bear meat and they shot deer for their skins. Oh, interesting.

That's why like a buck. Do you know what a buck? A buck deer? It's a dollar because that was what it was worth. Yeah. One of those deer skins was worth a dollar, so they called it a buck. Yeah. Yeah, which is kind of crazy. Back then, that's a dollar because that was what it was worth. Yeah. One of those deer skins was worth a dollar. So they called it a buck. Yeah.

Yeah, which is kind of crazy. Back then, that's a lot of money. Oh, my God. Back then, a dollar is a lot of money. Get 20 of those, 30 of those, 50 of those, 100 of those. You're fucking balling. Yeah. You know, the richest guy in the world at one point in time was a beaver pelt salesman.

I believe it. In America. I believe it. Yeah, there was a time. And it was just like the stock market. There were ups and downs in the markets for those things. Did you see that recent, I think it was in Kenya. I just saw it maybe yesterday, the day before. But the villagers out there killed a lion, an old lion. And it made the news, but not so much in the way that some of the others have,

because this lion was eating some of their livestock. And they're like, oh, guess what? This is killing our livestock. That's how we survive. So we're going to kill livestock. And they're like, oh, guess what? This is killing our livestock. That's how we survive. So we're going to kill it. So they did. And of course, you know, when asked more questions about, well, why and why is,

why is there not hunting here? And if there was hunting, would that animal have had value? And then would there be incentive to keep those populations at a certain level and apply the science to it and make sure,

but there's none of that. They just kill it, and that's how it goes because these things are killing your livestock that you feed your family with. So it wasn't long for this earth. That happens with elephants, with crops. Yeah. Oh, they destroy a bunch of crops over there.

So what do they do? They kill them. I have no idea what a farm is. They're not worried. They're not worried. It's just free food. They just go through. I've seen those videos, those pictures,

but that's the problem about not putting the requisite time, energy, and effort into studying an issue, no matter what that issue is, and just making a snap decision

based on something that someone with a lot of followers puts out there. All of a sudden, that's your position as well rather than, hmm, let me just do some study here.

Let me think about this a little more, and now I'll make my decision. What's sort of like a woman attacking women for wearing bikinis? It's like, let's talk about this. You're ruining it for everyone. There's something wrong with that.

And also, there's the thing about wildlife conservation that's very uncomfortable. It really bothers us that the only way animals really have value in terms of these wild populations of antelope and gazelles and all these different things they hunt in Africa, the way they've made them thrive is by putting value on them to hunt them. And that bothers people a lot. It does. And I get it. Yeah. I get why it would. I mean, it would be nice if all these people that were animal conservationists spent as much money as hunters. Yeah, but it doesn't happen that way.

But they don't. Nope. Especially in America with the Pittman-Robertson Act where a percentage of all ammunition sales, of all gear, all hunting gear, and it turns into all that goes towards wildlife conservation. It's the tune of billions of dollars. Yeah, and sportsmen voted that in. Yes. Voted that in. That was a tax, self-imposed tax.

Yes, and a beautiful one, really. It's one of the, wildlife conservation in this country and the preservation of public land for recreational use and hunting and fishing and camping is one of the greatest things this country has ever pioneered. Oh, yeah. Because it really doesn't exist or hadn't exist until we did it in this country. Out of necessity, because all those bucks added up to a lot of dead deer and a lot of

population decline. And so, but now, now we have thriving populations of these animals and turkeys also. Same thing. And now they're all over the place. We have about 200, essentially, that go between a ridge by our house. They come through every day up to this other ridge and then work their way back.

And I was heading up to see Steve Rinella in Montana two weeks ago, and I took a video. He'd been out turkey hunting, didn't see anything. And I took about 200 turkeys just standing there in the road as I'm leaving the house. And yeah, right there. Yeah, but you're in Park City. He's always blasting shotguns in Park City. No, no. They're town turkeys. They're very safe. They're

very comfortable hanging out in the backyard. But I thought they were going to die this winter because there was a last winter they were here the whole time because we had a very mild winter last year. This year, it was not mild. It was like the largest recorded snowfall in Utah history or Park City history anyway. And so they disappeared. And I thought, oh, they're gone. Because it's the first time they've seen this kind of snow as well. But they came back about three weeks ago. They came back in force, 200 of them, right back like they never left. Did they migrate?

I think they found a barn somewhere with some heat and some feed. I'm thinking. I don't know. I don't know. But it has to be because I don't know if they can just hunker down for all those months that we got all that snow. They don't fly very far can just hunker down for all those months that we got all that snow i don't know fly very far no but they fly it's pretty cool to see them fly for the for the first time when you're not uh when you think that uh maybe they don't and then you see them go

up to roost and or come down and that's that's pretty cool that's pretty cool but yeah i've um how far can they fly i don't know 100 yards or something maybe i don't know that's all i've seen them fly is in or near these these trees, so not very far. But who knows? Maybe they do. What a weird bird. Could kind of fly, but not much. It kind of glides, you know, and they get up there and fly.

Let's find out. Let's find out right now. 100 yards. It says wild turkeys can fly at speeds of up to 40 miles an hour, 50 miles an hour, but only for short distances, usually limit their flight distance to about 100 yards or less. Nice. I nailed it. You did.

Right on. It wasn't 101 or 99. Like, you were on it. That's less. Nice. I nailed it. You did. Right on. It wasn't 101 or 99. You were on it. That's amazing. Well, I've seen them. I've seen them fly. I took a guess. How much have you spent turkey hunting?

Only once. Yeah. Yeah, I only went once with Rinella. Yeah. It's good, but my time is very valuable. And if I'm just hunting for one meal, that bothers me. I want to hunt where if I shoot, like I went with Ronella, we went down to South Texas.

I got two whitetail and a neal guy. So I'm eating good. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's like that to me, I like to eat those animals for months. Yeah, yeah. Like I've got neal guy liver in my refrigerator for breakfast. Nice. It's like I like that.

That's what I like. I think it was good. If you had moose heart. Did you guys eat the moose heart when you went? I did. Good. Good. In BC, yeah.

Really good. Like slice it real thin and then fry it. Mm-hmm. Oh, man. Yeah. Delicious. Yeah. Well, I'm a big fan of liver for its performance.

Like just as a food, as a superfood. It's so good for you. Well, didn't the liver guy, what was the liver guy's deal? The liver king? Yeah, yeah. Steroids. That was his deal. Because I was doing it and it didn't work.

Just kidding. No, it wasn't. I'm not even working out anymore. It's like the workouts, the nutrition, and the sleep have fallen to the bottom of the priority list with everything going on. Because of work? Because, yeah, there's books to write and scripts to write. Well, not right now, but you reprioritize and focus on book seven. And then I have this nonfiction coming out, which has taken a lot more research than I anticipated,

which the first one is on the 1983 Beirut Barracks bombing. So it's my first foray into the nonfiction side of the house. So working on that right now with an amazing guy, historian, Pulitzer Prize finalist, James Scott. And there's really not the seminal work on that event yet. But as a kid, I remember just how impactful that was to me, seeing the Newsweek and Time and come across our dining room table and seeing those photos

and knowing that I was going to go in the military, even at that young age. So I was always interested in insurgencies and counterinsurgencies and terrorism and special operations. I was focused on that from a very early age. I I was always interested in insurgencies and counterinsurgencies and terrorism and special operations. Like I was focused on that from a very early age. I'm not aware of that story. Yeah, so October of 1983,

there was two actual car bombs, one with the French paratroopers and one with the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. And there were some lead up events. First one in, or the first large one that really people noticed, the bombing of the American embassy in Beirut in April 1983. And then there's some newly declassified documents from the Reagan administration that talk about what was going on behind the scenes and who was advocating to put Marines ashore, who wanted to keep them on amphib ships.

So a little smaller than an aircraft carrier, but take Marines around who wanted to keep them on those ships in a little safer area out on the water in the Med. And then who made the decision? Well, the president made the final decision. And I talked to Michael Reagan about it. And he said that decision haunted his father until the day he died. And so they put Marines ashore in Beirut, Lebanon. And then there was a bomb that took out those barracks. And it was the largest Marine loss of life since Iwo Jima in World War II. And so I'm doing this research right now. How many people died? There were 300.

We can look it up exactly so I don't mess it up by one or two. But it's so impactful and looms over U.S. foreign policy to this day. And there's an ending to it, too. 307. Yeah, there it is. 241 U.S. military personnel. 58 French. Personnel 58 French, six civilians, two suicide bombers.

Yeah. What is your take on what's going on in Ukraine? Are you up on it? Up on it? I mean, I'm up on it in— Because I know you're writing about it. I'm writing about it. I'm writing about it.

I wrote about it in the second novel, in True Believer. And I got that from someone who's also been on this podcast, Peter Zehan, wrote a book back in 2014. And so I used that. I read that on my flight to Mozambique, where I was doing research for the second novel, even though I didn't have a deal for the first novel yet. I hadn't even turned that in, but I always knew I was going to write two. for the first novel yet. I hadn't even turned that in, but I always knew I was going to write two because John Grisham, he wrote his first book, A Time to Kill, and couldn't give that book away. And then he writes The Firm,

and that one takes off. Tom Cruise is in the movie. Then they republish A Time to Kill, and Matthew McConaughey stars in that one. And we've had a John Grisham novel every year. So I thought back to that and thought I'll at least write two. And if both of them don't take off,

then I'll maybe reevaluate my choices. So I knew I was always going to write two, but on the flight over there, I read his book, Accidental Superpower. And that one very clearly predicts a Russian invasion of Ukraine by the year 2022. And that was back in 2014, he wrote that. So there were signs. Peter Zion, was that on the ball? To the year. Wow. He's a weirdly smart guy. He's amazing. Yeah, he's been on my podcast, and he's been on your podcast, and I've read all his books.

He's so sure of what he's saying, too. That's what's uncomfortable. You're not even hedging your bets. No, no. And he doesn't hedge the bets at all. But he also, that's his thing. That is 100% his area of expertise and study. He lives it. He breathes it. It's not something he just dabbles in.

So read that book. Amazing, amazing book. So I incorporated that into my second novel. But now Russia actually did invade Ukraine. So now when we work on these scripts for the second season of The Terminalist, well, we have to figure that out. It's going to change, obviously, because they actually invaded instead of, like in the book, the hero, of course, wins the day. But when he talks about that and talks about population decline very steep population decline in russia and gives the

reasons behind it and uh talks about the ethnic russian population in ukraine being the largest outside of russia and he looked at how long you can field an army uh before you can't feel that army anymore and 2022 was that year. So in order to feel the army at current levels, they had to invade by that time. And we really, I mean, this is going back to to learning lessons from the past and applying them going forward as wisdom, because we really made that invasion inevitable by some of our decisions at the end of the Cold War in the early 90s, all the way through the 90s, and really set things up to make that invasion an inevitability. NATO expansion.

NATO expansion, promises. So I like to look at things through the enemy's eyes, which I did in The Devil's Hand, my fourth book. But I think it's important to look at things through the enemy's eyes because it allows you to then make decisions taking that into account. And so with Russia certainly knowing what our response would be to an invasion of Ukraine, that's what I incorporated into this one. So if you knew what we would do if they invaded Ukraine, what should you do now as Russia to set yourself up? Success is the wrong word, but financially. So with gas and oil sales and contracts and futures with India and with China. So I work all that into this book. So it was quite the education.

What did you think about the blowing up of the pipeline? Oh, my goodness. There's Seymour Hersh that has a few articles out there on Substack. Amazing. People should read those before they just retweet something. But he is detailed in those accounts of where people are, what military exercises are going on that would cover a cover for action, we call it, to allow the U.S. to go in and blow up those pipelines. So it's it's very and now it's it's, I think, fairly established that what he writes in there is actually true. So it's incredible. Well, there's a video of Biden saying that they were going to put a stop to the Nord Stream pipeline.

And there was an assistant secretary of state, I think she was, saying similar things out there. And it's, yeah. So when we go back and look at these things and don't apply any political bias to it and just apply common sense, that's the other thing we don't do. And it's Karlon Klausowitz, who wrote On War, said the most important attribute of a battlefield leader is common sense. George Marshall, World War II, said the same thing. And we neglect to apply common sense to a lot of these things, whether it's as a populace or our elected officials or military leaders. So there's a lack of common sense and a stark lack of accountability as well. So it's very therapeutic for me to write some of these novels because I get to hold people accountable in a fictional sense that you couldn't do in real life.

Is it a lack of common sense or is it a willingness to ignore consequences because of the financial interest or the political interest in what you're trying to accomplish? That's a huge part of it. And we can see a change in 1947. So when the defense establishment and the intelligence agencies were all reorganized in 1947, when we changed the Department of War to the Department of Defense, it became an industry. And it stopped being a profession of arms and started becoming a career of arms for senior level officers in particular. And at the same time, we start seeing a lack of accountability because up to that point, we can go back to the Civil War and see Lincoln go through general after general until he got to Grant. And same thing in World War II. George Marshall went through general after general after general, admiral after admiral after admiral until he got to those names that we all know today who led us to victory in World War II.

And then for some reason, and that means that there were people in those positions before who didn't measure up. So George Marshall would give them a chance and maybe a second one, but not a third. And then they'd put somebody in place, regardless of rank, essentially, he'd promote people into the rank they needed to be for those positions if they showed promise. And that's how we got to these leaders that we all know the last names of. And we lost that after World War II, particularly in Vietnam. Now we start seeing people not held accountable for mistakes. We certainly see it with Afghanistan. 20 years they had to prepare for this eventuality. 20 years. And then the best they can do is what we saw in August of 2021. And someone who has no touch points with the military, never read a book

on military history, strategy, tactics, doesn't know anyone in the military, maybe even never seen a military film, can apply common sense to that situation and say, look, wait, it looks like Bagram here would be the tactically advantageous position, which it was. Why are we putting our junior level enlisted people at this gate, at this essentially a public airport in Kabul, putting them in a tactically disadvantageous position to get out of there after we had 20 years to prepare to leave. And once again, no one held accountable. And there's a great book. It's called the Afghanistan Papers by Craig Whitlock. And after two Freedom of Information Act lawsuits by the Washington Post, they got access to these classified histories of the war. And so they

took these generals and admirals coming back, and they interviewed them. And they thought these interviews were going to stay classified. And so what Craig Whitlock does once he got access to this is he juxtaposes what they said in private that they thought was going to stay classified to what they said in front of Congress. And they are 180 out from each other. And once again, no one held accountable. All those guys make rank, they fail up, and then sit on boards of defense industry companies going forward. And yeah, we saw that change 1947 onward. You cover some of these problems in your books. But how frustrating is it for you? And how infuriating is it as a man who's a veteran, who's served,

who's been deployed overseas, who's been in these conflicts, to see this happening and to see no accountability and to see these poor choices being made over and over again that put veterans' lives at risk, put our lives at risk, and put the entire world in this state right now where we're genuinely concerned about nuclear war, which we haven't been since the 80s. The fall of the Soviet Union was this great moment in history where we're like, oh, Jesus, we're done.

Oh, my God, Soviet Union is now Russia. It's like they have elected leaders. Everything is going to be great. Yeah. Yeah, I know it's tough because you lose friends over there. People lose arms, legs, wheelchairs. They sacrifice elected leaders. Everything's going to be great. Yeah. Yeah, I know it's tough because you lose friends over there. People lose arms, legs, and wheelchairs. They sacrifice so much. And they're trusting those senior-level leaders to make good decisions, politicians and military leaders.

And then they see what happens over there. And so it's very natural to ask that question. Was it all worth it? What were we doing over there for all these years, for 20 years? So it's very natural to ask that question. And, you know, for my own sanity, I just go back to taking those lessons learned and applying them going forward in a way that honors the sacrifice of those who did lose their lives,

who didn't come home or who came home changed forever because of post-traumatic stress or traumatic brain injury, missing arms and legs. And my hope, and I hate to say hope, is that we can take those lessons and apply them to the next generation so they don't have to learn those same lessons in blood. But I guess I'm not hopeful because we have shown time and time again that we have a very difficult time doing that for some reason. And I don't know why that is, but it's extremely disheartening. It also sets up that next generation for failure because you have these people coming up the ranks and they see these generals sit in front of Congress, say certain things. You can go back to every single testimony from these guys,

and they all say pretty much the same thing. We're making progress. We just need more money. We need more time. And privately, what were they saying? They were saying that this is a disaster. Yeah. And you can go back and look at these.

And Greg Wilhock spells it all out. He has the transcripts in there. And there's one, I forget who it is right now, an exact time, but it's around the 2009-2010 timeframe, where there's one senior level official who's in charge of Afghanistan. He doesn't even say anything bad. He's just kind of like, you know, it's not going as great as we may have led you to believe. And then a few months later, he is quietly moved aside and somebody else was put in. So that tells everybody else coming up behind them that if they want to get this next star and they want to sit on the board of company X, Y, or Z, they better tow this line. And it's an industry. Is that an issue where the amount of money that's involved in it now because of the military industrial complex is almost it's like you can't turn that back now because you've turned on that spigot the the amount of money is continuing to flow these coffers are filling these people are making so much money to stop it now and to hold people accountable and to try to like put it into this chain of failure i mean it's a huge bureaucracy it's a it's an ecosystem that includes politicians it includes military leaders both in uniform and just out sitting on these boards, lobbyists, permanent Washington. It's all a part of this huge infrastructure that is moving forward. And just like any company, you got to show profits.

Eisenhower warned us about this at the end of World War II when he's leaving office He warned us about it in the 50s and said there is a military industrial complex and the crazy thing is that speech at that time aired on television and People you know remember it they had a sense of it But it wasn't until the internet where you could pull up that speech at any moment You wanted to on YouTube and just play his words, which is such an incredible resource. I mean, we have access to history instantaneously in a way that's never existed before, and we seem to be learning less.

I know. It's one of those dichotomies that is very odd, and we all thought when you could carry the Internet around in your pocket with that first iPhone, I mean, you thought, oh, when we have a discussion and someone says, no, it's this, you know, it's this. Guess what? We don't have to argue about it. We can look it up right here. And it's going to be great because we can solve all these arguments immediately.

And what did it do? Well, it just snowballed into this thing where it divides us even further rather than someone saying, oh, look, oh, I was wrong. Oh, yeah, it says it right here. No, it just divides us even further. And, of course, Adventist social media, it's a tool. And any tool can be used for productive purposes or as a weapon. And we have weaponized social media for sure to divide. And who benefits?

Well, politicians that need to galvanize bases, of course, and the social media companies themselves who have lobbyists in Washington who pay a lot of money to these politicians. And it's a whole ecosystem. And so being aware of it, I think, is the first step. So for our kids, I talk about it with them and i always ask the question how am i being manipulated here which is kind of a cynical way to look at things but you kind of have to today and then with the advent of ai that's a whole another another side of it like figuring out what is truth and what is not and what's been made up and what podcast is real and what's not it's uh it's a crazy situation but i want the kids to know that even if they're following somebody on social media,

like a person, that's an advertisement for that person and their life. And you can see time and time again beautiful families out there and they're showing here we are in Aruba or whatever and here we are

with our Easter photo together. And then the next week there's their divorce and there's abuse and there's all that. And it's like, this whole thing was all a farce. Isn't that crazy?

Yeah, so that's an advertisement just like a company. When I see someone doing something like that, I always assume that you're trying's like, this whole thing was all a farce. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, so that's an advertising, just like a company. When I see someone doing something like that, I always assume that you're trying to sell me something. Yeah, exactly. Come on, why are you trying to sell me your relationship so good? Exactly, exactly. How am I being manipulated right here?

It's one thing it's Mother's Day. She's such a great mom. Okay, okay. But how many days a week are you doing that? Right, right. You have the perfect family. You have the perfect life. You have the perfect life. You have the perfect this.

So you're trying to sell it to people instead of just living it. And it's a very weird thing that we're doing that never existed before, so there's no real roadmap of how to navigate it correctly. Exactly. It's kind of like when you have a psychologist or a psychiatrist on, and they're really getting into your life maybe, or they're out there giving advice, giving all this advice. And then you find out that in the background there, they're a total disaster. Right.

And they're a crazy person. That happens more often than not. Not sorry to psychologists and psychologists out there, but you know it's true. Oh, it's very true. I mean, there's a lot of doctors out there that are extremely unhealthy. So there's a lot of weird stuff going on in this world where there's people that are experts and giving advice. I know. it's tough i think about that a lot when i talk i'm like man better better not be full shit i know it's tough and how are you supposed to check all this it's a full-time job checking on this stuff and it's wild and but for the kids it's the toughest our daughter just

missed it she's 17 so she got a little bit of it but i think she was the internet if she grew up the internet but she didn't grow up with the amount of input that these kids are getting now at age nine ten eleven twelve exactly yeah she just missed that yeah um so our little guy who is uh who is 12 is hitting that that side and you know they're pretty sly our little guy out there he's a smart one so he can uh you can figure out ways around the blocks and and all these other sorts of things so it's a it's interesting time for parents tough time i think for parents and tough time, I think, for parents and tough time for kids. I think it's always been a tough time for parents and always been a tough time for kids.

And these are just unique challenges that exist. But every era has unique challenges. What I'm worried about is this stuff that we're talking about in terms of accountability with the military industrial complex. And I don't know how that turns around. I don't know. Other than some catastrophic disaster. Right. And the catastrophic disasters that we're talking about are nuclear.

And if there's a nuclear disaster, you know, it's that Einstein quote, I don't know what weapons World War III will be fought with, but World War four will be fought with rocks and sticks. Oh interesting Yeah, I don't know. I've never heard that quote before. I might have paraphrased it. I'm sure I did Yeah, it's good. It's basically what he said Yeah, and that's what scares the shit out of me is that you know You got a guy like Putin who may or may not have cancer You know who's backed into a corner and what does he do if he thinks he's going to lose and he thinks he's going to die? Right. So the only thing I think about in that point

is who benefits if you use even tactical nuclear weapons in a place like Ukraine? That's the area that they want. So when you look at it logically, maybe they can move some things around on a board and move nuclear weapons closer or farther away or that sort of a thing. It's kind of pieces on a chessboard.

But if you want to invade a country because you want its population and because you want its food sources, then to nuke it doesn't really play in. Unless they think they're going to lose Russia. And that's with the population decline. There are essentially a few, according to Peter Zeon, there are a few generations away from the same thing with China with the one trial policy. So there's a similar situation there. Japan has a giant population collapse issue as well.

Yeah, so it's tough. It's nuts. There's so many, I mean, who the fuck would want to be president? Seriously, that's the whole thing. Just a politician in general. Who's drawn to that? I'm sure there are people that are drawn to it

for fewer reasons and want to serve and they started businesses and made money and want to give back and they're concerned about the future of the country. I'm sure they exist. But, man, people get into those positions and they sure do pick stocks a lot better than they did before. Across the board. And that's not just Nancy Pelosi. No. It's a whole thing. It's part of that established, part of that permanent Washington.

It's part of the ecosystem. And it's how whole thing. It's part of that established part of that permanent Washington. It's part of the ecosystem. And it's it's how it is. That's the motivation. And the access to information that allows you to pick stocks are good. It's incredible. And in my first book, I talk about, hey, you show me a politician in Washington and I'm going to show you a family member who has some sort of a lobbying firm or this or that. And then what are we seeing with the Biden administration? You're seeing some of that right now on the front pages. They are just holding on to that as long as they can, because it seems like that is a crazy mountain of corruption. Yeah. And I don't think it's I don't think it is only them. I want you to imagine if that was Trump. Imagine if Donald Trump Jr. was Hunter Biden. Yeah. Smoking street crack with Vietnamese hookers and all of it documented. It's not like rumors like the Steele dossier where they're like, Trump likes to get peed on.

No, this guy's getting foot jobs and putting it on his laptop and then dropping it off in Maryland. But I'm skeptical about everything. I'm skeptical about the laptop story. I mean, it's it's sort of It's burned into our brains like that's what happened But I think like 10 years from now probably feel find out that that's horseshit, too I mean who fucking knows I don't know I Just put stutter so I know a couple people that saw it right off the bat and and what it has been kept to

In the news from my understanding, is the professional side. So the people who saw it are people who didn't have a vested interest in showing any of the personal stuff, which some of it is out there. And this is secondhand information. But there's stuff out there that is personally a lot more, I guess, damaging, you would say, that's horrible. But what they tried to stay to, for the most part, is the ties to... The corruption. Exactly. The corruption's undeniable.

I mean, just the fact that he's just completely unqualified to be in those positions that he's at, making the kind of money that he was making, and doing it for Russia and China. It's just, it's so... And Ukraine. Yeah. You know, I mean, what's crazy is that Ukraine was thought to be one of the most corrupt countries up until Russia invaded them. And now they're the darling. You get Sean Penn's giving his Oscar to Zelensky.

And it's like, we are so fucking lost. That's what goes back to doing the research. And really before you take that step going back and you know Making sure you're taking the right one But if for the American people it's almost like there's too much research to do you don't have the time for the average person that wants to if you have a conservative position or or a Liberal position it's like boy You have to trust in these fucking jackasses that are running the country to be steering you correctly and they never are they

Never are it's so tough. They lie about anything that's gonna damage their party They lie about anything that's gonna damage their positions or anything that's gonna contradict what what they've said in the past It's it's crazy. It's great. And I talk about it in most of the books. I weave it I weave it in there that it is so it's. I don't think it is just reserved for one party, but we're divided along these lines. But who does it benefit? Certainly not the citizenry, certainly not us. It doesn't benefit us to say just side with your side because it's your side without even thinking. And that's the position we're in right now, unfortunately. But benefits the people who make the most money, which is so terrifying. And then you see these politicians that just they they benefit from benefiting those people that make the most money. It's an ecosystem. It's so huge right now. Then you lose. You undercut confidence in voting systems. So that's in there now. And then you have, let's say, going back to 100 Biden laptop, you have 50, what, 51, 52 intelligence officials who signed some letter that's now shown that they were coerced into signing, not coerced into signing this thing, but they signed it for a reason to give their candidate, the establishment candidate, a talking point in a debate. And that undercuts everyone's confidence in those institutions anyway.

And it was always a little shaky, your confidence in an intelligence service just in general. Yes. Well, particularly after the Trump administration attacked them for four years. The Trump administration attacked the intelligence community. And then what does the intelligence community do? They come out and lie about the Hunter Biden laptop. It's like, hey, guys. And that just undermines all of our confidence in these institutions.

Yeah. And the FBI, same thing. Just huge, huge issues there. And then it goes down to the local level and local level politics as well. Police departments and mayors and all the rest of it. So it's, you know, it's endemic throughout the whole system, unfortunately. How does that ever get corrected? I mean, I don't want, I mean, when I have conversations with my kids about politics and life and stuff, it's like,

you know, my young kids, I'm talking, not my, my oldest is 26. I don't, my, my, when I'm talking to my 12, well now 13 and 14 year olds and 15 year olds, when I'm talking to them, like they're at this point where they're going to be graduating from high school in a few years. They're going to be going to college. They're going to be entering to the workforce and doing stuff. What do you tell them about this insanely corrupt system that's supposed to be the controlling operating system of this greatest country the world has ever known? This experiment in self-government. And it's just deeply corrupt. It is.

And so what we do is we go back and talk about all those sacrifices that were made so we can have these options and opportunities in the hopes that our kids take a pause and actually become part of the solution and respect what has happened in the past so that we can be this country we are today. Even though it seems to be we seem to be pretty good at destroying ourselves from the inside out right now. We did have a civil war, and at the end of that civil war, we did manage to come back together. So that gives me hope right there. It took a long-ass time. It took some time.

There were people that didn't want it to happen. A lot of murder in the Appalachias. And we didn't have social media. We didn't have this tool that you could use to continue to divide. So I often wonder, after the civil war, if we had iPhones in our pockets and two sides or even some other factions that wanted to continue to divide and either prolong or whatever it was, would we still have come back together? I think social media is a problem, but at least social media has this, at least with Elon on board. Social media has this, at least with Elon on board, Elon being in control of Twitter, has this self-correcting option that's built in with community notes where, say, if you are a politician and you tweet something and a bunch of people say that is not correct at all. Twitter will put a community note on and show all the real facts.

And the Biden administration has deleted tweets because they've been checked. Really? I haven't seen it yet. So you've seen it out there? Oh, yeah. I haven't seen it yet. I tried to follow politicians. The Biden administration, they have deleted at least one that I'm aware of. I think it's more than one.

Really? Yeah. It's like that's the good thing about social media as it exists. But that's why, you know, all these people that are mad that Elon took over. Oh, he's letting in these jackasses that were banned in the past. The only answer to bad speech is better speech. The only answer to bad information is correct information. And if you ban that information, then they just find some echo chamber and spit it out amongst each other.

And that's how you get QAnon. That's how you get flat earthers. That's how you get all these fucking loons out there. So if you want to maintain hope for the nation, don't go into the comments section of Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube, because very quickly you will come to the conclusion that all is lost. I don't know about Twitter anymore. I don't read anything about myself.

And it's given me great sanity over the last few years. It's a giant factor. And I try to drill it into all these comedians' heads. Like, please don't read the comments. Just don't do it. Because, first of all, especially if they do a podcast. If you're doing this, like I had my friends Sarah Wineshank and Kim Congdon on, and after the podcast was over,

I was like, please don't read the comments. Just please. We had a great time. It was a lot of fun. I enjoyed it. I think it was really funny. Don't read the comments.

But these girls are- Of course they did. They're used to small podcasts that might get a thousand downloads or a couple thousand downloads. Now you got 11 million people that are commenting on every fucking thing you've said. Right. And the only thing you're going to think of is the negatives.

Yeah. And these girls suck and they're fucking losers and how funny they're this, they're that. Those are just unhappy, bitter people. You know, who is this? Was it Michael Jordan who said it? I don't remember who said it. I've never met a hater doing better than me. Right. I don't remember who said it I've never met a hater doing better than me right I remember who said but it's the perfect the perfect quote yeah you've got people that are allowed to

have their opinions they're allowed to be angry they're allowed to be bitter they're allowed to say you suck they're allowed to say you're a liar they're allowed to say you're stupid let them talk it's okay let them talk but just don't read it even yeah you need to be happy again it still gets in there it gets in there and it gets in there you know that's why I don't read it even if you have thick skin it still gets in there it gets in there it gets in there you know that's why i don't read it i don't it's not i don't not read it because uh well it's not like i'm immune right i read it because like it's natural human nature to look for threats and if you read a hundred quotes that are great and then one that sucks and that one person says this person should

Kill themselves and they're there, you know They're a this and a that and a that or this and like oh my god Am I that person and you can't engage you can't go back? Oh, it's just you know, I see people that do and I'm like Jesus Christ You just use throwing gasoline on exactly the fuck out of there How long did you look at comments before when did you stop years for years? I looked at comments. Yeah.

And it would make me feel bad. I didn't like it. I didn't like getting mad. Like, that's not true. Fuck them. I'm going to fucking come back. I'm going to look at your Instagram. Look at you, you fucking fat loser.

But that's just what. Yeah. The way I try to explain it to people is look at your mind and your attention like it is bandwidth. And let's, let's assume that you have units, you have a hundred units of bandwidth. If you spend 13 units of bandwidth paying attention to social media critics and comments, that's 13 less. Now you only have 87 units. So to, to, I, I, Sam Harris told me once that he was on a trip in Hawaii with his family and he read something negative about him and it tanked his whole trip because he spent his entire time crafting a response oh

my god damn no and he's brilliant yeah he's a very smart man so for him to fall into that trap yeah we're all human and no matter if you're a special operator people think you have this thick skin

and you went to Iraq and Afghanistan and made through buds and all that stuff for me anyway it definitely hurts but I try to get on there still and say thank you to people

because I'm not quite I can still do it at the end of the night and I'm exhausted but I want to say thank you but it also means I see the craziness and so I see that I never respond to it but I want to say thank you. But it also means I see the craziness. And so I see that I never respond to it, but I want to say thank you to all those

people who grassroots, like before I, you know, before you invite me on here, before I, before Chris Pratt texted about the show or posted about the show before I was on Tucker, it was all grassroots. It was all somebody taking a risk on me as a new author, telling a friend and so when people get on and say, Hey, I love your book. I gave it to my dad. Now he's a fan. I want to say thank you to that person. so I'm up late doing that but it also means that I see there comes a point in time where you just have to post things

and then say thank you in the post but you can't respond to people individually just because it's just bad for your brain yeah it's not healthy you know I mean you're saying with special operators but I see it with fighters I try to tell fighters all the time don't read that shit, man. Some guys love it.

Really? David Goggins fucking loves it. Does he get in there after people? He reads all the comments out to, he reads haters to himself and he plays it when he runs. Oh, wow. Yeah, he's a different kind of psycho. Wow, that's interesting. Is that cheating then?

If he can't listen to music, then that's cheating. He just needs to listen. Oh, Wow, that's interesting. Is that cheating then? If he can't listen to music, then that's cheating. He just needs to listen. Oh yeah, that's right. That guy has no knees and he runs a thousand miles a day. Whatever the fuck he has to do what he does. That's interesting. So I do, I haven't done it in a while, but I used to read, go into the negative reviews on Amazon and then read those

and kind of have a little fun with them. And when I went on Tucker I read the negative reviews from the show and that was fun because the Daily Beast was, oh, they were just mean. There were some mean ones out there. Like the audience on Rotten Tomatoes was crazy high for a show. I mean, it was in the high 90s. Yeah. But then the critics weren't big fans.

But every single day we realized, and we're making that show, that we're not making it for critics. We're making it for that person who went downrange to Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 20 years. So when they sit down and crack a beer and sit on the couch and turn this thing on, that they at least know we put in the effort to make a show for them that paid tribute to them, that was rooted in the realities of modern combat. And we put in the work. You fucking nailed it. No doubt. And you nailed it on the show. They made that show so fucking gritty. And whenever someone makes an adaptation of a very brutal novel, or multiple novels like yours, you always wonder

like, oh god, are they going to be able to really do, and they did, man. They fucking did. Yeah, that's a tribute to Chris Pratt and Antoine Fuqua, who were from the get-go they wanted this thing, they wanted to make it for the people who went downrange. Yes. And every single day we talked about that, knowing that there's going to be like, there's going to be Hollywood hot sauce in anything,

you gotta do that. But anywhere we could, anywhere we could root this in the realities of modern combat, we were going to do that. If we had to reshoot something or change something in the script on the fly, we were going to do that. And that's that's Chris and Antoine and the showrunner, David Agilio and Max Adams, former Army Ranger, who's in that writer's room every day. And and Jared Shaw, my buddy, who is there every day, who gave the book to Chris Pratt and Raymond Doza, another SEAL buddy out there doing the technical advising. I mean, they were all in. And you had Chris and Antoine and David DiGilio trusting those guys on set every day. So if one of them said this is not going to play to that person who went to Iraq and Afghanistan, we'd change it right there. That's pretty cool.

That is very cool. And, you know, at the end of the day, those people that were critics, they were never going to like it. They don't like that subject matter. It's not. You really, you really, there's room for criticism. And the criticism should be reserved for people that actually understand what they're talking about. And, you know, something like the Daily Beast, it exists. It's okay.

That's cool, too. That's fine. It's cool to shit on them. Yeah, and it was fun to read it and have a good time with it on Tucker. I got so many people reaching out to me saying they love that and we just had a little fun on a friday reading those things and you know just reading their own words back to them and having a little fun with it so yeah so that's kind of a healthy way to deal with it rather than then looking at it and just kind of craft that response or like getting mad about it like they're

gonna hate it anyway and that's okay that's not their thing there's plenty of other things out there that they can love and that's that's okay we're going to make something something for us here and then that's what we're doing we're taking that guiding principle because i don't think amazon will ever none of those streaming streaming companies will ever share their their data um but they know exactly how many people watched every single show when they changed the channel when they got to an end of episode and didn't go to the next one they have all that data and uh that's the reason that we're doing a spinoff and a second season. What's the spinoff?

So spinoff is there's a character, Ben Edwards. And so spoiler alert for those who have not seen it, we'll just give you two seconds to put the earmuffs on. So he's killed at the end. And so it's a prequel that goes back to show how he went from the SEAL teams to the CIA, essentially how he turns bad. It's played by Taylor Kitsch, who was just awesome. And that's one of the characters I thought was more fully developed than the character in my novel and on the page. And then what Taylor Kitsch brought to it was just next level. So when we did the premiere in LA in June and it debuted on July 1st, but we had did the premiere in June, I came home and for some reason I had a day

without interruption. I don't know where my wife and kids were, but we did the premiere in June. I came home and for some reason I had a day without interruption. I don't know where my wife and kids were, but I was sitting in a chair that I would never sit in if I didn't want to be interrupted. And I wrote from the second I woke up all the way through the night until they got back. And I wrote a spinoff and I sent it to the show runner,

David DiGilio, and he loved it. And then a couple of days later, Chris Pratt called and he's like, hey, I have this idea for a spinoff. And he pitched me on it and it wasn't mine. It was not my spinoff. Mine was totally different. And his was this Taylor Kitsch spinoff, a prequel going back in time a little bit. And I said, Chris, that's amazing. Let's do that. That's a great idea. And so he pitched it to Taylor. Taylor was all on board. And then we put a package together and pitched it to Amazon and they loved it. And so off we go to the races with this spin-off, which is more of an international espionage type of a show,

rather than revenge thriller, action thriller, conspiracy thriller like the first one. And it is awesome. And also, nobody can compare it to a book. So even fans of the book that look at it and say, this is different, this is different, this is different, I hate it because there's no prequel. And then that leads right into the second season,

True Believer starring Chris Pratt. So we'll roll right into that. And things in Hollywood, as you know, can go off the rails at any time. So I always have, you know, that's just how it goes. But right now we're working on those scripts. Well, we put the pencils down about five days ago now, six days ago, seven days ago for the writer's strike. But we're about at episode five, and it's good. Oh, man, it's awesome.

That's awesome. Yeah, yeah. And so when was that supposed to go into production? We were supposed to do it sometime in the fall, or early fall, and start filming then, and then post-production, and who knows when they get it out after that. But international this time.

Have they made progress with the strike? I don't know. I think they're picketing right now, so I think it's the early stages still, and there's so much to negotiate. I mean, I don't know, but I would think it might take a little bit with this one. I don't know.

Yeah, when someone crosses the rioter strike, that's some dirty shit. Yeah. They cross the picket line. Yeah, I don't think I've ever seen anybody doing that yet. I think Ellen did. Oh, really? Yeah. I had a buddy of mine who was riding on Ellen back in the day. Oh, well.

Yeah. That's tough because now we're going forward. Everybody's like, hey, you're the one that didn't stand up. Well, also. Oh, well. Everybody kind of knows now what she's really all about. And that's another one of those. Like, I'm so nice and I'm so sweet.

Interesting. Yeah. Very interesting. So that's the, yeah. Mean behind the scenes. That's tough. That's weird when that happens. It happens a lot.

Because people ask me about you. People ask me and people give me things to, as you know, people probably send you things all the time. People send me stuff. Can you get this to Chris? Can you get this to Joe? Can you get this to Tucker type things? And you're like, but so that part is kind of strange, but people always ask, you know, what those people are like, you know, and, you know, you are you.

You know, how could you fake this five days a week up on stage? There's no way. You can fake a talk show though. I guess because you're an hour. Because you have an hour, right? Not only that, you don't know the people. You're not having these uncensored conversations for hours. Yeah, it's very edited.

And it's also like there's an audience there. So you're playing to the audience. You're well aware. And there's stuff that's filmed, stuff that's not filmed. Chris is the same thing, man. Chris is so, you know, me and my wife were having a conversation about like actors, you know, and she, she was talking about someone that was very annoying that, and I said, yeah, I go, it's rare, but it makes you cherish the ones that are cool. Like Scott Eastwood.

Scott Eastwood. If you didn't know that he was Clint Eastwood's son, if you didn't know he's a big movie star, he's like the fucking nicest, most normal, no ego-having guy, just friendly and normal. You talk to him, he's not needy. He's just like right there. He's a great guy. Unless you put two pictures of him and his dad from the 70s now, then that's an amazing resemblance. Crazy resemblance. He seems like an awesome guy.

Strong genes. That is. Yeah, those are good ones seems like an awesome guy. That's some strong genes. That is. Yeah, those are good ones right there. Those outlawed Josie Wales genes. Not bad. Exactly. That's the picture. That's the picture.

Great fucking genes, though. Not bad. You know, if you had to choose. Good looking guy. Not bad. But him and Chris, so nice. They're the nicest.

I ran into Chris once, accidental, just randomly in Hawaii with my family. He was on, I believe he was on his honeymoon. Yeah. At Four Seasons out there. Yeah. We were setting that, setting some stuff up for him. We're just going to get him a little house there. They decided to go with the,

and the actual hotel. But, and we'd spent some time together in Utah, you and Chris out there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that was the first time that I got to sit there. So he'd optioned it in before the book came out. So January of 2018, and we all met up in Utah in, what was it, August of 2018, maybe September? Was the book out when I met you? The book was out for a few months. Yep. The book was out for a few months.

But, yeah, Chris saw it early because Jared Shaw, my buddy, gave him a copy because of a favor I did for Jared and the SEAL teams, which I just did because, once again, you want to help good guys. And he was getting out of the SEAL team, so I introduced him to some people in the private sector and followed up and I forgot all about it. And he never did. So he called me when the book was, when he heard that I had a book coming out. So a few months before it came out in November of 2017, he called me and said, Hey man, I always wanted to thank you for what you did for me. And I couldn't remember what it was. And, uh, and he told me what it was. And I said, Oh man, great. How's it going? And he said, uh, it's going great, but I heard you have a book coming out. And I said, yeah, I can send you an early copy if you'd like. And he said, well, I'd like to give it to a friend of mine if that's okay. And I said, yeah, man, great. How's it going? And he said, it's going great, but I heard you have a book coming out. And I said, yeah, I can send you an early copy if you'd like.

And he said, well, I'd like to give it to a friend of mine if that's okay. And I said, yeah, no problem. Who's that? And Chris Pratt. And that's who I thought about playing the role when I was writing it before he'd been in Guardians, before he'd been in Jurassic World. Really? So he'd been in Andy Dwyer, Parks and Rec. You thought about him in Chubby Chris Pratt?

Chubby Chris Pratt in Parks and Rec. But I saw him make the transformation to SEAL operator in Zero Dark Thirty, where he had a very small role. So I thought, okay, I see this guy right here. Look at that transformation. And he seems like an inherently likable person on and off screen. And then I thought back then, I'm going to give Chris a chance here. I'm going to help his career along because it looks like he needs it. This is me writing my first sentence of the book in Coronado, California, still in the SEAL teams in a little office off our bedroom.

But I thought of Chris Pratt. And that's because back in the day, everybody loved Magnum P.I. in the 80s because he was funny, but he could flip that switch and he could get it done. In one episode, we talked about this once before. There's an episode where it's the first time on network television where a protagonist kills a bad guy who's unarmed. And it's an amazing episode. They had to fight for it and they got it. And now it's a classic episode of 80s television. And so I thought about that, flipping that switch.

I thought about my background in the SEAL teams and coming home to wife and kids and all that stuff and having to flip that switch. And I thought Chris is the guy who can pull this off. He hasn't done something like this, hasn't been in action films yet. And so I thought of Chris and I thought of Antoine being the director. And because I love what he did with Training Day and Tears of the Sun

and a movie called Shooter based on Point of Impact by Stephen Hunter. And I just loved Antoine's work. So I thought this is the guy. And now we're all three executive producers on it and doing it.

Do you ever wonder if you made that happen with your brain? Like how much do you think you manifest things with your mind? Well, it certainly didn't take up any of that bandwidth worried about it not happening. And I think a lot of that comes from just knowing what I wanted to do from a very early age, serve my country specifically as a SEAL and then write thrillers back from my, my earliest days. So I set this, I started building this foundation at age seven, eight,

nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, reading all these guys like Tom Clancy and Nelson DeMille and A.J. Quinnell and J.C. Pollock and Mark Olden and Louis L'Amour and Stephen Hunter, all these guys back in the 80s who had protagonists with backgrounds I wanted in real life one day. So I read all those and I just loved the magic in those pages and knew that one day I'd write those. But that wasn't like Machiavellian. I wasn't like, I'm going to read these today at age 12 so that one day I can write them at age 45. No, I just loved those books. And then I was studying warfare and insurgencies and counterinsurgencies and terrorism and special operations. So I had this academic study of warfare that's never stopped. And then I had the practical application on the field of battle in Iraq and Afghanistan. It all came together

at the right time and place. So I never worried about not making it. I only saw number one New York Times bestseller on all those books I read growing up. I only saw those books like First Blood made into a film. And so that was what was always in my mind. So if I write this book, it's going to be a number one New York Times bestseller and it's going to be optioned by whoever I want to make it a number one film. And that stuff happened. But I didn't worry about it not happening, if that makes sense. Maybe it's a little naivete, which seems to have been fine. Sometimes helps. Yeah, exactly.

I didn't worry about the odds. People love to tell you the odds. They're going to tell you how hard it is. What's your backup plan? You want to be an author? What are you really going to do when that fails? Or you want to be a SEAL? What are you going to do when you don't make it through BUDS?

Anybody says that, you stop talking to them. Exactly. Exactly. There's no benefit in thinking that way. Negative. Yeah, you've got to get rid of those people. And if you do have a safety net, you might fall. Yeah.

You might make it, but you might fall. And there's something to that, and I don't know why. I don't understand it. I don't understand the way reality works. Yeah, it's that bandwidth because you're thinking about those other things. Where for me, all my heart and soul went into the book, continue to go into the books every single sentence. And for me, writing these kind of books, I don't have to go out there and find a sniper from Ramadi in 2006. I don't have to go find somebody who was in an ambush.

I can remember what it was like to be a sniper in Ramadi or what it was like to be ambushed in Baghdad in 2006. And then my protagonist gets in an ambush in Los Angeles, California. So I go back and think of the feelings and emotions associated with that event that I was in. And then I apply those completely to a fictional narrative without any filters. So I don't have to interview somebody and then have those answers get filtered through other interviews that I've done or other movies I've seen or research that I've done and then go into the page of the book. It goes right from my heart and soul right into that page. So that's pretty amazing. So I think that helped as well and made us stand out to Simon and Schuster and makes it resonate with readers and resonate to Chris and Antoine That's pretty amazing. Casting, seeing everybody that came through wanting to be in it, and then through production and post-production and then marketing and advertising and then the premiere and then negotiations for a second season and a spinoff.

And being a part of all that from the inside, I learned so much over the last couple of years. It was really cool. Have you thought about writing new characters? Have you thought about making a new James Reese or something similar or some complete different ecosystem, some complete different universe? Yes, yes. So I love doing this. I absolutely love every part of the process, writing this.

So I'm going to write James Reese for as long as I possibly can do that and have the nonfiction that I'm so passionate about with history. So that will be coming out here in a year and a half. And then there's another thing in the works that got put on a little bit of hold because of the writer's strike, but I'll text you about it when it comes through. But there's some other things in the works that I thought would be done by now. But writer's strike, everything goes on hold for that. But there's some other things that will allow me to write some other characters and work on some other productions, I guess is the best way to put it. So would it be productions or would it be novels or both?

Some other, exactly, both. Both, yeah. So we'll see. There's a thing about getting trapped in the success. And also, you have to have Chris Pratt on board. You can't recast. No, I don't think so. I don't think so.

He's the guy. He's the guy. How many Jack Ryans have we had? We've had one, two, three, four, like five Jack Ryan's up to this point. So that one survived and people accepted that. Yeah, I guess. So close to the time that a book came out, maybe not. But yeah, Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford were pretty close to those movies in the 80s.

Yeah. In the early 90s. So there is that. But you never know how things are going to go. It's like how many James Bonds have there been. Yep, exactly. That continues. And so there is that. There never yeah you never know how things are going to go it's like how many james bonds have there been yep exactly that continues and uh so so there is so so there is that there is precedent there but uh but the casting was was really interesting because you see these people

who you have you've grown up watching who during the time was it's kind of covid well it is covid time so they're doing screen tests and you're seeing these people that everyone knows the name of like doing a screen test wanting to be in the show and i'm like part of that is crazy it was crazy and then taylor of course just knocked it out of the park when we saw the screen test with him and chris like there was no question like taylor is ben edwards and taylor is just an awesome dude he's so fired up to get to where we're just texting on the way over here and he was uh he's so excited to get to work on this next one and i'm yeah he just elevated that character to a new level and such a good dude suck playing a bad guy though yeah but now he gets to go back and kind of like play around with it a little bit.

Yeah. And we get great action sequences that are just next level. And Taylor's just such a good, he's one of those guys also. Totally normal. Totally cool. You want to sit down and have a beer with him. They exist. Have a whiskey with him.

Have a coffee with him. Yeah, they exist. Just an awesome dude. It's just in that world, it almost celebrates people that aren't genuine. It's strange. Yeah. It's strange. strange yeah it's a pretend business it's a business of pretending yeah well everybody in that everybody in the show that i can think of jean triple horn amazing um she played the secretary of defense uh lorraine

hartley and she's been around that lady's done some great movies amazing movie and so nice and so kind and so normal um everybody's the Monica Garrett amazing who's in 1883 right after our show he left and went to do 1883 and such a good dude just a normal dude they just want to hang out with you see that's UFC together we saw you at USC in the in January July 2nd when we went up there for the the terminal list thing and Chris now has the blood splattered terminal list thing from the octagon oh wow named yeah it's awesome I got a piece of it I got a piece of the blood fromattered Terminalist thing from the Octagon framed. Oh, wow. Oh, that's cool.

It's awesome. I got a piece of it. I got a piece of the blood from that night. Oh, that's right. The Terminalist sponsored the actual event. Yeah. And it was on the canvas. Yep.

Yep. He's got the whole thing and it's all covered in blood. And I have a square from it that's covered in blood. But yeah, he's got the whole banner, the whole middle part of the cage, which is pretty cool. Yeah. We shared elk camp together and hung out. He's fucking as normal as can be. If you didn't know that that guy was a movie star, you would never guess it. Yep hung out. He's a fucking as normal as can be. If you didn't know that that guy was a movie star,

you would never guess it. Yep. Yep. He's a big dude too. So he's, you know, it's hard for him to blend in. I think he's a big dude.

Yeah. He's tall. He's a wrestler. Yeah. Good, solid guy. But he had everybody on that set was so cool, but you know,

it comes down to Chris and Antoine to the leadership and it comes down to them setting the tone at that, like Antoine at that strategic level. So up there as the, as the director, executive producer right there at the top, setting that tone strategically. And then Chris right there also as the tactical level inspiration for everybody on set. So everybody wanted to be there. And they're at the top of their games.

And so many people came up to me on set and they didn't have to. And they said they'd been on hundreds of sets in Hollywood and they've never felt like this on a set before. And it was just something about it. It was inspiring. They wanted to be there, do their best work and crush it because it was fun. It was fun to go to work. Well, there's also there's not a lot of guys like you that wind up being successful authors. It's a very small, tiny group of people that have had the kind of real world experience that you've had and then conveyed that into fiction.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For me, it's very, very natural and very therapeutic. But also I knew what I wanted. I didn't wake up at age 45 and say, hey, can you make money at writing? What should I have been reading for the last 30 years in preparation for this? That's what's crazy. It's like your life was like sort of ordained.

It's almost like destiny. Well, I think it's my parents made uh made reading a natural part of my life it wasn't something that was forced upon me it was just as natural as anything else and just reading is what we did my mom's a librarian so grew up with the love of books and reading so it's been as normal as having a phone i guess for a lot of kids today it was normal for me to have books i've never been without a book i've never been not in the middle of a book and when i finished one i'd start the next one I've never had like a week wondering what I should read next. I've never had that my entire life.

Do you read, do you listen rather to audiobooks? Nope. Always read? Yep, always read. That's how I grew up. I love turning the pages. But audiobooks are the fastest growing segment of publishing. And I'm so fortunate to have Ray Porter, who's also an awesome guy,

by the Shakespearean trained actor. He's been in tons of shows. If you look up Ray Porter, you can see just a list of shows that he's been in. He's great. He's great as a voiceover guy, too. He does so many different accents. That's tough.

I think about him now as I'm writing. I think about, well, maybe I should say that this person has some crazy accent in the first sentence so that Ray doesn't read and get halfway down the page and have to go back and then start with it again. So I do think about Ray as I'm writing and trying to make it write things that make sense for him. So just to be kind so I don't get to the end and all of a sudden say this person had some Rhodesian accent. Has anybody ever come up to you and said,

hey, are you writing about me? Nope. Nope. Not yet. Not yet. But for the people that I write about that could be bad guys, I don't have contact with any of them. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Yeah. So let them hear about it. Not yet. There's some, and it's, you know, we're all products of our experience and, you know, what we, what we decided to study. And so there are maybe some characters in these books that might seem similar to some people at higher levels of government or military. And I kind of morph some things together and maybe make them worse or sometimes better

than they actually are. So yeah, we're a product of our environments and the education we choose to give ourselves these days and what we pay attention to in our life experience. So all that ends up in these pages. So yeah, no one's come up yet though and been upset about it. What about, you know, one of the things that you, you deal with is like some very, very corrupt and evil people that are involved in military that are in management positions and executive positions that fuck over soldiers. Yeah. Like that's, Have you encountered that in real life,

or is that just your knowledge of that? Well, we all saw it with Afghanistan, so there is that. You see the process of people sitting on these boards after their time in uniform and then approving gigantic contracts for these companies in positions that they were just in prior where they had that chance to approve,

and now they're on this board. So that's just a part of it. And then I saw people get scapegoated for certain things in the military to protect others higher up the chain. And that's just kind of how it goes. I think it's any big bureaucracy, really. But I think it's been a part of just the human experience from the beginning of time, just like violence. What I do hear from people is the violence part. Some people like that, and like is probably the wrong word, but they recognize that violence has been a part of the human condition from the beginning of time, and they like that I don't pull any punches in the pages of these things. Some people hate it. They like a sanitized version of violence, and there's plenty of that out there, and that's not me. So for me, it's all about the story. And I never look at, let's say, reviews, talking about negative comments before. I never think about, oh, what's selling right now?

I've never had even my publisher, and I didn't know going in what was going to happen with agents and publishers. And if they were going to say, okay, we have this. Next time, can you lay off on this? Or can you do this a little more because this is selling right now? Never, never even a hint. They have had complete creative control on that side, which is different than screenwriting. In screenwriting, you have a team. And all those scripts and outlines, they go all the way up to the top of Amazon and back down with notes. And then you incorporate those or you argue and come to some sort of an agreement or whatever it might be.

But team oriented on this side, only me on this side. And I love that my publisher and agent have never hinted at doing anything differently because if it fails, it's all on me. I can't say, man, I knew I shouldn't have listened to my agent. And my only vision of agents is it was Californication and Entourage. Like I had no idea I knew any agents. So that's what I thought agents were. And that's not my agent. And she doesn't give any input into what I do.

That's very fortunate. Is it different than that in most people's experience? Like how many agents have you had over the years? I've had a few agents, but I've had the same manager since I was an open mic-er. Do you have to have an agent now, or is it just a manager? Yeah, I mean, I don't have to, I guess. I probably could do everything with a manager. But I've had the same agent since 2007, and I've had the same manager since 1991.

Oh, wow. Yeah. No kidding. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, my manager found me when I was a beginner. No. When did you get to L.A.? 94. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. My manager found me when I was a beginner. No. When did you get to LA? 94. 94. Oh, geez. So before. Yeah. That's wild. Yeah. No. Are they an LA based person or New York based? Okay. Yeah. Still with one of them's LA based. One of them's New York based. But yeah, I've had the same people forever. And fortunately, they get me. But's the thing. You know, you can run into the wrong – like in Hollywood, they're notorious for taking things that are very successful and fucking them up because they have their input on it.

I mean, that's what they did with the Chappelle show. When Dave Chappelle was on top of the world, the executives at Comedy Central fucked that whole thing up. Really? Yeah. They were telling him, do this and do that, and you can do this, and stop saying this and stop doing that. They were telling him, do this and do that and you can do this and stop saying this and stop doing that

and he was like, fuck this and he went to Africa and quit the show. I remember. He was famous and didn't do stand-up for years for money.

Like, literally would show up in Seattle, he would bring a microphone and like a little portable speaker and just do stand-up in the park.

No way. I didn't know that part. I remember when he quit the show and went to Africa and came back, and it seemed like he was gone for a decade almost. He was gone for a long time, and he just was thinking about things and trying to figure out what he was doing

and just didn't, I mean, the kind of integrity that he had to walk away from, I think it was like $50 million. Crazy. Yeah. Was it like a record-setting type of a deal? Record-setting. Giant.

It was the biggest show on cable. It was huge. And it only did two seasons. It's, to this day, I think, the best sketch comedy show that's ever been made. And he walked away from it because they fucked it up. Man. If they just left him alone, if they were smart, they're like, have fun. Right.

Like what they do at South Park. Just leave you alone. Go have a good time. You know what you're doing. There'll be some controversy every now and again, but that's just how it goes. But controversy with who? People that weren't fans anyway? I mean, it was so funny. The bottom line was, it was really,

really, really funny, and they came in and they made it no fun. Yeah, our little guy just got into it. He's watching them all right now. So so good clayton bigsby the the blind white supremacist that doesn't know he's black the whole thing is genius i mean the whole thing yeah and it's so different also it's also so different it's not so good no no no no no it's so good which is fantastic but they wanted to safe in it up a little bit. And they started fucking with him and talking to him about it. And it just felt awful. And, you know, he's a man of integrity.

And he just said, fuck this. But they ruined it. The executives ruined the greatest sketch comedy show of all time. And they got one of the greatest comedians that's ever walked the face of the earth to walk away from his own show. Wow. Yeah. Amazing. They can fuck it up.

Yeah. They can get in there, you know. What a genius. I mean, his stuff. Oh, my gosh. It's just so great. No, he's awesome. He was out here week one, the second week that we were open at the mothership.

He came by. And he christened the little room. Oh, it's so awesome. That mothership, it looks so amazing. I mean, everybody listening to this has obviously watched the video and seen that drone go in those doors and take the tour of that whole place. The day you opened, I think it was. With that rant, the Bill Burr rant, which is like the perfect rant to have over it. So great.

Perfect. That guy, I love listening to that guy. It's so funny. Yeah, and that rant was just so perfect for that video and what we're trying to do. Yeah, you guys are crushing. It's turned Austin into like the comedy capital of the country. it's just amazing i remember you telling me about it beforehand you know and i was like oh yeah you came to the right place when you left la i remember you're looking at a couple different places and i think you chose well i know you chose the right spot to come and

then to build this what you built here is so inspiring and so cool um but that one when i saw that video i was like oh because i you told me about like a year in advance, a year and a half, whatever it was. And I was so excited when I saw that video and I texted you about it. And that was just awesome. I'm just so fired up that that is here. I mean, it's a destination. You made this a destination for comedy. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

It's pretty cool. It's almost surreal. When we're there, Tony and I, Tony Inchcliffe and I were there sometimes. We just go, how the fuck did we do this? Seriously. I can't believe we did this. Yeah. It really worked. And it was such a weird gamble because you had

I left LA in the middle of this Spotify deal, this enormous deal, and they were like, what the fuck are you doing? You're gonna go to Texas? How are you gonna get guests? How are you gonna do this? You know, it was like there's so much to it. Like, how do you do this? But I was like I just like I have a compass.

Like, it's like that way. Go that way. Have you always had that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a risk taker.

Like, when I feel like something is the thing to do, you should take a risk. Yeah. You have to. Yeah. I think that that's a giant component for success. You cannot play safe. And there's sometimes where it seems counterintuitive and other people are going to think it's a terrible idea. And you've got to not listen to them.

You've got to be able to just jump on it. Yeah, we call it in sniper school a bold adjustment. So you have a certain amount of time on that line and you have, especially if you're doing something with like an old M14 type of a thing, have, especially if you're doing something with like a, uh, an old M14 type of a thing where you're starting out and you're doing these clicks on your, your, on your scope and on your, uh, on your elevation and like bold adjustments, gentlemen, I remember them walking down the line saying that. So you're not like taking a tiny click cause they've got to get people through this course or get them out of the course or whatever it is.

So bold adjustment. Okay. Went there. Boom. Halfway back. Bang. You're on. Instead of these little tiny, very safe, tiny little adjustments that keep you on that line for another hour.

Bold adjustments is what they told us. So that's what it sounds like here. And, yeah, I mean, it's awesome. I can't wait to go and check it out. I think it sounds crazy, but I think the universe rewards that. Yeah, I mean, you have to. Otherwise, you just have a safe. I mean, you get one shot.

Yeah. One shot at life. Yeah. And one shot to, well, you can learn from successes and failures, so why not learn from them and take some risks and do it, because you're not coming back. Well, maybe. We don't know.

Yeah, who knows? Maybe you're just doing it over and over and over and over and over again, and that's one of the reasons why I'm willing to take these chances. Maybe. It's because I've fucked it up before. And I know, nope, now's the time to get moving. This is your 500th time going through this. Remember when you stayed in LA? The last life?

Let's get the fuck out of there. Time to go. Let's not be depressed. Yeah. The first time I came out was LA and that was a crazy time to come out because that was COVID. So the book hit the New York Times list and then you texted and I jumped in the car and drove on out and there was nobody on the roads. That was crazy. That was April of early, late April, early May of 2020.

Nobody on the roads, nobody on the 405. Like that was super weird. Yeah. And then we got to talk about COVID on the thing. And I remember it was still a time when the Wuhan lab was conspiracy theory stuff. Oh, yeah. And I remember just that we talked about it. I didn't put it as eloquently as John Stewart did when he talked about the Wuhan lab coronavirus thing and the Hershey, the bit where he does on, hey, if there's an outbreak of chocolatey goodness in Hershey, Pennsylvania, you might want to look at the chocolate factory.

That was genius. But we did talk about it. And at the time, you know, that was conspiracy theory craziness. And I was like, well, there is a lab there. So if I was a detective in any big city in the United States, I'd probably call that a clue. Well, you'd want to look into it. You should look into it. And also, how did that become a conspiracy theory?

I mean, what fantastic level of manipulation and propaganda did they impart on the United States that that was a conspiracy theory? That a respiratory coronavirus lab in Wuhan, China definitely couldn't be the place. It's like a block away. Yeah. It's certainly not that place. It could be anything else. We're not sure, but it's certainly not the coronavirus lab a block away from the outbreak. Looking back on it. At the time, I had been very fortunate to be friends with people that actually understood viruses and actually understood the fear and cleavage sites and the way that viruses normally jump from an animal host to a human, the natural spillover. There's so many different factors that pointed to the idea that this is a gain of function research project that went wrong.

And that's what it was. And there's still people out there that deny that. That one little guy a little fellow Guy yeah, you see there is no evidence That little fucker, but that's the that's the manipulation part where as a populace we have to realize that we are being manipulated In many instances One guy's been manipulating people that way his entire career. Did you ever read the Robert Kennedy book? No, it's on my list, but I have not. Holy shit. Pretty good. I need to read that. So these days I read, uh, for people coming on the podcast, I've read every

book for people that have come on thus far. I don't know if I'll always be able to. Um, but, uh, I think some of those books would have fallen to lower on the priority list if they weren't coming on the podcast. But some of those conversations that I've had in those books would have fallen to lower on the priority list if they weren't coming on the podcast. But some of those conversations that I've had in the books I've read have made it into the pages of the novel. So there's all this overlap to include this one. Brian Moore has a book called The Able Archers, and it talks about a nuclear exchange that almost happened between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1983. And there was one guy in the Soviet Union, an officer on watch that night who was not supposed to be there. The guy who was supposed to be there got sick.

So this one guy steps up, goes in for the person who's sick. And he's the one guy who studied the United States. And he's an intellectual. And he's put in this time and effort into understanding the strategic kind of aspects of this conflict in the Cold War. And there's a launch from the United States, ICBMs heading towards the Soviet Union. That's what shows up on their screen. And what he's supposed to do is launch back. And he has pressure from above to launch. It's the protocol. And he doesn't because he's like, this isn't right. And it was a glitch in their system that showed. Yeah. And there's all these other things that play to

Korean Airlines flight 007 that was shot down earlier. There's all these things happening that would lend themselves to... High intentions. Exactly. Exactly. And those documents were just... I think it was... I might be off by a year or two, but I think it was 1999 when these documents were finally declassified.

So well after the end of the Cold War. But things like that. So I read that book and had that conversation with this guy. And he's a really nice guy, great guy, been in the intelligence world his whole career and that made it

into the pages of this novel. So there's overlap but Robert Kennedy has not been on the podcast yet so I have not read that book but I've been meaning to read it. It sounds fascinating. He was just on

Russell Brand's podcast and he talked about his uncle and his father's assassination. Holy shit. His recall is amazing. His ability to just remember all these different pieces that were in play, particularly with the JFK assassination and Lee Harvey Oswald

and the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald was a CIA asset and that he had defected to Russia but it was a fake defection and all the different pieces that were in place that you could point to, there's so much evidence. He's like, if we went into this, he said to Russell that if we just wanted to cover the evidence that the CIA killed JFK, he goes, this would be a 10-hour podcast. Yeah. No, it's fascinating. And it makes it, you haven't gotten to the stage in the book yet, but I don't want to give too much away.

Don't give it away. Yeah, no, no. But, uh, you'll like, when you get to the certain part, you'll be like, no way. Cause I think nobody is going to expect this part of the book to, to go the way it does. But, uh, point being, it takes us back to that assassination and so crazy early nineties. Remember, I mean, you had Oliver North on, on here, which is Oliver North's books. And so crazy, early 90s, remember, you had Oliver North on here, which is Oliver North's books, fascinating. But you have Congress mandating, law, that the United States has to declassify these documents by a certain date. And two administrations, after a visit from the CIA, neglect to do that. Or they let some things out, but not everything is mandated by law all these years after. So if they're not involved, then they might not be.

But they're certainly going well out of their way to make themselves look guilty. Like, really trying hard to make themselves look guilty. But I feel like them making themselves look guilty is safer than removing all doubt. Maybe. Yeah. I mean, because it is. Because we're not talking about it. I mean, Tucker talked about it on his television show, and he boldly claimed that the CIA killed Kennedy.

But it was a weird way that he did it. Like he said, someone told me, and he doesn't release that person's name. It's like the way Robert Kennedy Jr. talks about it on Russell Brand's podcast. It's like in-depth. I'm going to listen to that. Yeah. It's just this holy shit. Yeah, it's incredible. I mean, in most of my books I make mention, and this one in particular, go back to the church hearings and the pike hearings of the 70s that exposed some overreach by agencies in the federal government, particularly the CIA.

But as it pertains to the Kennedy assassination, it is so strange. All these years later, they still walk into the Oval Office and have a private conversation and walk out, and all of a sudden these documents that are mandated to be released by law are not. It's so odd. But in this one also, a friend of mine married into the Kennedy family, so I went back to Hainesport, got to meet Robert Kennedy, spent some time with Ethel Kennedy, and it was amazing. And that experience also informs, I think you've gotten to that chapter already where he goes to meet the old woman. And so that part inspired this book right here. And that was really cool to be back there and see, look at this chair. And in this chair, there's a little table next to it. And you see a picture of JFK watching the election results

come in. And you look at the picture and you look at the chair and it's him in that chair right there. It's amazing. It was really interesting to be in that part of the world, in that place, with that family. It's an old history. Yeah, big time. But yeah, it inspired this. I mean, who knows if we'll ever get to the bottom of that assassination. And it wasn't that long ago. When we were born, we thought it was a long time ago. Like, let's say 1983 or something.

63 is a long time ago when you're a kid. But now looking back, everything's relative. It's that time-space continuum thing. Whatever that is, that's a real deal. Time's speeding up as you get older. Sure. I saw a meme the other day, and it said if Marty McFly went back in time today, he'd be going back to 1993 or something like that.

Jesus. Yeah, I know. Well, how about World War I was 100 years ago? Crazy. Well, yeah, a little over, but yeah. Yeah. Essentially 100 years. That's nothing. That's nothing. World War II, less. Vietnam, much less. Korea, less. Yep. And Donnie Edwards, who has the Best Defense Foundation, he has a picture of himself with a

World War I veteran, which is pretty cool. And so my daughter, who's 17, we went to Pearl Harbor and took 62 veterans back to Pearl Harbor for the 80th anniversary commemoration event about a year and a half ago. Last June, we went to Normandy. So she's on Normandy with somebody who is the first out of his landing craft storming the beach. And she's there on this beach with him. And he's 100 years old right now hearing that story from him. And I'm getting pictures of them talking together. And so one day she'll say, I have a picture with a World War II veteran.

How many, what percentage of guys died on that beach? I don't know the exact numbers, but it was a lot. And then a lot when you, I mean, you think about the Pacific campaign, and they did that over and over again, island after island after island. And then those guys came home, and what did they do? They got back to work. They didn't complain. They built the country into what it is today.

And that's a little different. That was a different time. Different kind of human being. Yeah, and a lot of those guys didn't even talk about it until just a little while ago. It's just fascinating the different kinds of human beings that exist depend upon the amount of adversity they've overcome. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I think that's why they started Outward Bound.

They did this study, and they found, I think it was World War I. I might get this a little off, but the general gist is on track. And they found that people dying in the North Atlantic that were there like treading water, trying to survive, trying to signal another boat, were the older guys were surviving and the younger guys that should be in better shape their whole life ahead of them were the ones that weren't. that should be in better shape their whole life ahead of them were the ones that weren't and they thought well this is because those people haven't faced as much adversity as the older people so they started this outward bound thing get kids in the outdoors have them do a solo out there by themselves for a couple nights and put them in these positions that are uncomfortable and um so i think that's why that started but there's something to that there's not the case with like ultra marathon runners a lot of those like cam haynes age like 55 maybe probably yeah probably but yeah the younger generation do they think we're on ultra marathon or want to make another tick tock video it's a hard sell that's a hard sell i don't know it's a that's an interesting

thing in the world of fighting because as the as fighters get older they they have more experience more understanding more toughness but the body doesn't work right anymore. That's tough. And that's it right there. So it's a privilege to be getting old. That's for sure. Especially if you've spent some time in an occupation where it didn't end up. But it's funny how nature balances it out.

Yeah. You know? Yeah. We had Cowboy come in the show. He had a cameo. He had a cameo. Chris Pratt got to put a tomahawk in his head. And that was awesome.

That's right. Yeah. He flew in for the day. Did that. It was awesome. We had a great time doing that we got to go out to spend some time with him also on the range out at sig free uh not sig freedom days but they have this uh sniper course they do in utah the last couple years and we got to spend some time together out there and uh and what a good dude he was he was awesome he's the best and he and cowboy insisted on falling a very specific

way right yeah he wouldn't even know stuntman no makeup either cowboy didn't put on makeup good insisted on falling a very specific way, right? Yeah. No stuntmen, no makeup either. Cowboy didn't put on makeup. Good for him. Yeah, exactly. None of this, you know, going in and putting the stuff. No.

And they're like, well, we have to have a double fall for you. Nope. Nope. He's doing it all. And you're like, are you going to argue with him?

Nope. Are you going to put the makeup person going to like, no, I have to do this? Nope. They just back right off. So he was fun

to spend some time with both in Utah with Sig and then on the set. So that was really cool to have a couple touch points with him over the last year. Again, that's a guy who's overcome

a lot of fucking adversity. Yeah. You know, and that's why he's got that character. There it is. There it is. There it is.

Bam. Yeah. See, there's no, that floor isn't padded. That floor's not padded right there. At least it didn't bang his head.

Yeah. I was worried. He was not concerned. Zero concerns about banging his head. That dude, he's one of the wildest guys I've ever met because the shit that he does outside of fighting, which is wild. They're always trying to get him to calm down

because he's always doing things like jumping jet skis and snowmobiles. Just doing so much wild shit outside of fighting, which is the wildest fucking thing you could do as a sport. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, remember back in the day when Point Break came out and Patrick Swayze was jumping every weekend, like actually jumping out of planes and they were trying to, with insurance, like trying to get him to not do that. Oh, were they?

Yeah. So I remember that story from back in the day. And then what did we just see? Mission Impossible, whatever number it's coming up on now, Tom Cruise doing that jump. He broke his ankle. Oh, did he? Yeah. Well, he jumped off that, on that bike, off that cliff, like a number of times. That wasn't one take. That was, those videos out there that show him training for it and then doing it. And how old is he? 60. Crazy. Yeah. He jumped from one building to the next and shattered his ankle when he made impact. There's a video of his ankle crumbling as it hits the wall.

Yeah. And then he's like, well, for the next one, we got to up it. And I'm going to take this motorcycle and jump off this cliff. And like, was it Norway or something like that? Yeah. But insane. I mean, amazing. He's out of his fucking mind.

Yeah. You're not jumping out of planes, right? No.'t do that no surfing no yeah I'm fuck sharks yeah exactly in sharks yeah I was reading this story about that woman Bethany I forget her last Hamilton yeah she got her arm bitten off by a shark and then got right back in there I'm like okay yeah yeah so my little guy are nice outcome a little guy but he's awesome and's 12, and he hadn't been to Pearl Harbor yet. My daughter has, so we took him for his spring break. We took him out to Oahu and went to Pearl Harbor, and so he got to go to the Arizona Memorial and then USS Missouri and then up to Punchbowl National Cemetery up there.

But we got there, and he's surfing out there. We went with a family that really knows what they're doing surfing. And so we did that. And then we went on a shark dive at age 12. So we're going out there with these three. And now that, you know, the age that I am, these people are very young that are taking us out there. They're the shark experts. And we go out there in a boat. And off you go.

And they have a photographer there who's studying sharks at the University of Hawaii. And then you get the shark expert also studying sharks at the University of Hawaii. But they're like 21, maybe. And we zip down there and they're looking and making sure there's no tiger sharks. And we go in and we do this dive. And our little guy is just snorkeling. But you dive down and they get the picture and you're seeing these sharks and you learn a little bit about them. And then we get back.

And the same day we find out that on Oahu, somebody got chomped. So it was just about a month and a half ago. And some girl diving somewhere, not in Hawaii, but like in the Maldives or somewhere like that, also got chomped doing the exact same kind of snorkeling thing that a little guy was doing. But I like how you say, you know, if you're not going into the water like that, then you're not going to get eaten by a shark. You know, it's like, it's just kind of like, if you don't jump out of the plane like then you're not gonna burn in yeah and i'd like the jumping like in the military i liked jumping i like flying i shouldn't say i like jumping i did not like going to the exit because that's when you're like okay here we go you jump out whether it's dark and you got all your stuff

on or whatever it might be but i like the flying around so the flying around was very cool in free fall i saw a video recently of a guy who jumped out of a plane and forgot his parachute. Ooh. That seems... Experienced jumper, too. You see that? He was filming it. No.

Yeah, he was filming it. Yeah, he was filming other people and forgot to put his shoot on. No. Yeah, it was like in the 90s, I think. Way.

Yeah. Wow. Well, we have a couple of things in place in the military that at least would, you know, prevent that, I think.

So you have the jump masters and they're checking all your stuff and making sure you're good but the flying around is pretty cool the pulling not so much because then you come for me anyway the guys love it but uh for me when it came time to pull i was like okay here it is this is either going to open or it's not and if it doesn't then i have procedures i need to go through i got to remember those and all that stuff and in my free fall class two people died really yeah the student and instructor ran into each other like oh boy and they just just yeah we had one more jump to go so we spent uh hours combing the

desert looking for the bodies and uh and we still had to get back and uh and jump again after that so that was interesting and then a buddy of mine burned in amazing guy such a great guy mike beard and just a such a solid dude um went through buds with him, and then he burned in right before they sent me to free fall. When did you say burned in? Parachute malfunction, and then died. Yeah, hit the ground. But amazing guy. Such a cool person.

Just a solid human being. And then so like the next week they sent me and like another guy who were his best friends to jump school. So that was interesting. And then have two people die in your class, have to do the investigation. So then you're sitting there on base waiting for this investigation to be done for like a week, week and a half. And then you do your final jump. It's not without its risks. I think that's part of the excitement about it.

Maybe. That's why I ask Andy about it. I don't think he's doing it too much anymore, Andy Stomp. Andy's out of his fucking mind. Yeah. I don't think he's done it too much anymore, Andy Stumpf. Andy's out of his fucking mind. Yeah, I don't think he's done it in a while, though. I don't think it's been a little bit since I've seen him do a base jump. He'll do it. He's just doing them.

Was he doing base? He's jumping out of planes. He's jumping out of planes still. Maybe not the base jumping. Maybe it's been the base jumping that's been on pause for a little bit. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. Maybe concentrate on the coffee shop.

He's out of his fucking mind. He's out of his fucking mind. He's out of his fucking mind. It's cool, but it's, man. It's a rough way to go. That's tough. Well, he's doing the flying squirrel suit shit, too. Yeah, it's like Trevor Thompson, those guys who's been on here. What is this one? Is this Andy?

Look at him go. Yeah, they just jumped over. Yeah, look at that. Look at this. This is amazing. That is wild. Yeah, look at it. And the photos they got from this.

That's fucking crazy. Seven jumps, seven days, seven continents to raise money for Folds of Honor. And look at that. That is beautiful. Look how bizarre the pyramids look in juxtaposition to Cairo. Yep. Yep. I was there years ago.

And I see that one right there in the far right. I climbed to the top of that one. Wow. And a long, long time ago, when it was all dark outside, I bribed some guards, got some horses, and rode out to that thing in the middle of the night, climbed up to the top, and then watched the sun rise over Cairo. I got to get out there. I still have never been.

I got to get out there. It's a really cool place. And the same thing, Taj Mahal, also. I went to the Taj Mahal years ago, and you think it's going to be gaudy when you get there. It is beautiful. It is just incredible to see some of these places. I'm just so fascinated by the pyramids, though.

How they made them. Yeah, and also this just... these insanely complex cultures that vanish. They just, they go away. Yeah. Like, what happened? Like, what is that? And then this is the thing I think about

when I think about America today, that every empire collapses. And one of the things that Douglas Murray has talked about, and it's really fascinating to me, he said every society, when it's at the verge of collapse, becomes obsessed with gender. I've seen that. Which is real weird and not good for us because if there's any fucking society. It seems like we're overly focused on some of these things right now. Oh, my God. Yeah.

So if you're, let's say you're Iran, you're Russia, you're China, you're North Korea. Look at these fuckers. They're going down. Yeah. You're a super empowered individual. You're a terrorist organization. You might just want to lay back a little bit and watch because we're doing a pretty good job of destroying ourselves from the inside.

And I'm sure they're helping. I'm sure they're helping. Give it a nudge. Social media. I'm sure there's like, I mean, one of the things they found out on Facebook was that 19

of the top Christian sites were run by Russian troll farms. Really? Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Well,

19 of the top 20. And they're just saying wild shit and trying to start a holy war. Just trying to divide. Oh my gosh. And then we get like,

okay, so we have aliens. We have some spaceships in here. I mean, in the news, okay, so we have aliens. We have some spaceships in here. I mean, in the news. Imagine that coming out in 1985. Yeah. I don't know what to think about that.

I go back and forth and back and forth. You know, part of me thinks some of it is real. And part of me thinks a good percentage of it is probably, like, some black project that they're not telling us about. That there's some insanely complex drone, an unmanned drone that has capabilities beyond what we think of in terms of conventional propulsion systems. Right. No, certainly a possibility.

A lot of those sightings were, in fact, the black helicopters. They're black helicopters, but they're training for overseas. And they just have to go to these cities every now and again to do some- Or stealth bombers. Stealth. Back in the day, yeah, back in the day, remember remember the 80s there was a model of it i remember a marvel i forget the model anyway i built some old world world two planes back in the day and i always see this stealth bomber that was like a uh interpretation from the toy company that made

these models of a stealth bomber and it was pretty dang close when they actually revealed it years later um so i i distinctly remember that but uh did you have the guy that, is it a Navy pilot? Commander Fravor. Okay. Did you have him on? Yeah. I think you did. Yeah.

But two guys, Ryan Graves and Commander Fravor. Both of them were fascinating. Commander Fravor was the one that off the coast of San Diego in 2004, he encountered that object that went from more than 50,000 feet above sea level to 50 in less than a second. Yeah. They have no idea what it did. It was blocking the tracking systems. They got visual.

They saw it visually. They have footage of it. They have video footage of it. Multiple jets encountered this thing. And when it zipped off at insane rates of speed it returned to their cat point so the place where they were supposed to go meet up later it went there like i know where you're going bitch wild yeah they don't know what it is they don't know where they think there was something else that was under the water that it was uh interacting with something that was

under the water because there was ripples like there was like almost like a submarine jeez so whatever that thing was that that they encountered that sort of that man uh commander fravor who is so rock solid yeah when you talk to him he's not a loon in any shape or it was just a fucking dedicated lifelong pilot military man who's just he's his credentials are impeccable. And when he talks about it, it's pretty stunning. And also the attitude that a lot of the higher ups had, like they were aware of it and that they talked to people on the Nimitz and they were saying, yeah, we see these things every couple of weeks. Those guys say that some of the things they saw were classified. Really? Yeah. And then there was Ryan Graves who said that, I believe it was in 2014, they upgraded all of their equipment. And then they started seeing these things because the equipment had new capabilities.

And they're seeing these things that are 120 knot winds, completely motionless, just staying totally still. Which is like, how? No heat signature, no visual means of propulsion. They don't know what the fuck these things were doing. Moving at insane rates of speed occasionally, shadowing them. They try to find them. They try to catch up and they take off. They couldn't keep up with them.

They don't know what they are. That's crazy. Something that was a cube inside a sphere. Did those guys write books or did they forget? Did one of them write a book about it? I don't know. I don't know if any of those guys have read a sphere. Did those guys write books or did they, I forget, did one of them write a book about it or just talk about it? I don't know. I don't know if any of those guys

have written a book. But Commander Fravor, I first saw him on Lex Friedman's podcast and then I had him on mine to talk to him about it. But it is a fascinating encounter. Where did you get into UFOs

and all that sort of thing? Oh, I don't know. I think since I was a kid. It's just fun. Yeah. Just because I think it's interesting. Yeah.

I got obsessed with the Roswell crash and then, you know, just because I think it's interesting. And then I got obsessed with the Roswell crash and then, you know, reading all these different books about it. But it wasn't until talking to people that have had experiences that it really burns in your head. Right.

Because you're talking, you can kind of get a sense that people are bullshit artists. You know, you kind of get a sense. The Bob Lazar one's the most bizarre. I don't know that one. Bob Lazar is the gentleman that worked on Area S4, Site 4, Area 51.

He worked back engineering this thing that they said that they had recovered. And they were trying to figure out how the propulsion system worked, and they brought him on. And they don't tell him what these things are. It's like, hey, tell us how this works. And he's in this thing that's designed for something that's three feet tall these these completely smooth surfaces this metal that they don't understand they this visual really the metal the actual thing yeah they don't like in the movies we're like we don't have any evidence of this ever existing what the fuck it is they they was different... He said the problem with it is that these... Science

doesn't exist in a vacuum. You need a bunch of scientists comparing notes and trying to discuss it, but everything was top secret and classified, so they couldn't do that. So they brought in people who are the metallurgy people, and they were not allowed to communicate with the people that were the propulsions experts. They were not allowed

to communicate with the people that were the propulsions experts they were not allowed to communicate with people who supposedly had some sort of contact with the biological entities and then there's this amazing documentary that was just released recently called moment of contact about Varginha Brazil in 1996 there was a crash and not only was a crash, but there's a crash in these bodies Yeah, one of them was alive and injured this soldier picked this thing up. They carry this thing to multiple different hospitals They did autopsies on this thing and then the soldier who encountered it died of a horrific Bacterial infection that they could not describe. They didn't know what it was They didn't know how he got it and he got it from being in contact with this entity supposedly what oh my god what's it called moment of contact moment of contact it's incredible that's insane what's

incredible too is this one of these guys one of the soldiers that was in this documentary they bring him to the crash site and this guy starts weeping and he's talking about it. I mean, unless this guy's like the greatest fucking actor the world's ever known, the way he reacts when he sees this site, when he describes his experience, when they found this thing that had crash landed. And there's also documentation that the Air Force had flown a jet to Virginia and returned with whatever the fuck they caught, whatever they got there, and brought it back to the United States.

That is wild. You know, Jackie Gleason supposedly had an encounter with Nixon, that Nixon and Gleason were buddies and they were drinking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a famous story that's disputed, but apparently— Let's go with it, though. Yeah, let's go with it. Gleason apparently had said that jackie gleason and him were

drinking and uh and nixon was like you want to see a fucking ufo no way yeah and and he flew him to see wreckage and they had uh frozen biological entities and they got a chance to see these things that they had uh that they had frozen. What? Yeah. What? So that must have been like early 70s. Yeah, something like that. And Jackie Gleason wound up having a house built

in the shape of a UFO afterwards. No way. Yeah, that was for sale as recently as I think like a decade ago. See if you can find that house. In LA or something? No, it's in upstate New York. But the house looks like a fucking UFO. No way.

He had a UFO house built. Yeah, Jackie Gleason apparently was obsessed with UFOs after the fact. No. What? Yeah. That looks like a cabin. Jackie Gleason's UFO-inspired upstate New York spaceship house. No way.

Yeah. That picture makes it look bigger. Okay, that's serious. Oh, wow. That's a fucking serious That's beautiful That's two different buildings The first one is like the guest house Oh I see

That's the guest house the other one That's amazing So Jackie Gleason became a UFO freak Man I'm going to do that after this That's a pretty cool looking house Yeah it's pretty dope I wonder if it's still for sale Entrance to the mothership. Woo!

I'm going to talk to my wife about this when I get home. This is serious. Well, now you have this Sig spear. So there's a lot of UFO stuff on this Sig spear, so maybe this should be reserved for taking out the aliens. I don't want to take them out! Well, if they attack you.

If they attack. If they do attack, I think they could render you useless almost instantaneously. But them too. They're kind of like, why wouldn't they just sit back and watch? I think they're- They're going to pass right by. If I had to guess. If I had to guess.

I mean, this is the wildest of speculations. I would guess that every civilization reaches a point of technological proficiency when they're also dealing with these territorial warring tribes where they have the ability to literally destroy the earth and that if this is a natural course of progression for intelligent beings they get to this point there's a transition where it gets very dangerous and if I was from another planet and I was monitoring this, I would be there to make sure that they don't launch. And see, that's the theme of the Mothership Comedy Club, is that the rooms are called Fat Man and Little Boy. And the reason why the rooms are called Fat Man and Little Boy

is because that is a specific moment in UFO folklore when the aliens start arriving. After the detonation of those bombs, that's when you start seeing this massive uptick in sightings. Really? Yes. And interactions with fighter pilots and these different military bases that have nuclear programs where the bases get shut down and all the power goes off. Yeah.

It's like- That's wild. Yeah. and all the power goes off. Yeah, it's like... That's wild. Yeah, it's heavy stuff because if you think that they are watching, that would make the most sense,

that they see that we have nuclear power, we have the ability to blow ourselves up, and we detonate two bombs. And then they're like, okay, let's fucking... Let's go monitor these assholes. Let's go make sure that Tate's which one it is that's going to affect

the rest of the universe. It seems like only one country right now has them. Let's fucking specifically these assholes. Let's go make sure that they don't do anything that's going to affect the rest of the universe. One country right now has them. Let's fucking specifically concentrate on them. And then they have sightings in the Soviet Union when the Soviet Union has the capabilities. And yeah, there's a there's a ton of documented sightings and these encounters that happen. And then beforehand, there's not really anything. Very little. Very little.

Very well. I'm sure they've probably been visiting us, if they do visit us. I would imagine they've been visiting us forever. Like, look, they've got engines. Look, they've got guns. Look, they've got this. You know, it would be fascinating to watch. Like, look at these territorial apes with nuclear weapons.

Like, that's the time to watch. Right now, they're probably just sitting back, popping that popcorn and being like, oh, man. It's getting interesting now. We're getting closer and closer to our fucking inevitable demise. That's when the sightings are ramped up to the point where the Pentagon has to start talking about it. And they are. Yes. In front of Congress.

Yes. I mean, that's wild. Yeah. But no one pays attention. No, no one pays attention. It's like, let's go back to TikTok and Instagram. Well, I mean, they kind of pay attention, but there's not, there's nothing that you could fucking put your fork into. Right.

You know, it's like, what is it? And why are they telling us about this? Also, there's a lot of cynicism when it comes to like, why is the government telling us about UFOs? Like a distraction, you mean? But what is it? Are they telling us because they really have this information and they want to slowly leak it out because this is an inevitable contact moment and they want to prepare civilization? Or is it just horseshit? Is it just they're distracting us and this is how they institute this drone program where they have this anti-gravity device and they can move at the same rates of speed? I don't know. I mean, it's just

guesswork. That's crazy. Yeah. That's crazy. You get to hear directly from these guys who've actually seen it, experienced it. Yeah. And talk with them for a little bit. I've talked to quite a few now, quite a few that have seen these things and had these experiences. But the Bob Lazar one is uniquely compelling. Uniquely compelling because Bob is without a doubt a brilliant guy. And he was a legitimate propulsions expert who it's been proven he worked at Los Alamos labs and they tried to hide that they tried to lie about that and say that he wasn't but he he's on the employee roster he has an intimate knowledge of the facilities they took him George Knapp took him on a tour of Los Alamos he knew where

everything was he knew the people there they knew him it's wild shit man because if he's telling the truth He says is not one that they've recovered but multiple and that one of them they think is really old and they got it from an Archaeological dig they think that they recovered this thing in the ground. That's movie stuff I mean you see that and you know we all watch it movies and think it's science fiction But there's a lot of science fiction that has has come to fruition You know, we all watch it in movies and think it's science fiction, but there's a lot of science fiction that has come to fruition. From submarines to going to the moon to also space travel in general, flight, just flying. Sure, all of it.

And we're just like, eh. Buck Rogers. No big deal. But I remember we got back to Coronado, which is one of the seal hubs. Virginia Beach is the other. We were in Virginia Beach, went back there. And I think you did a – didn't you do a bit on flight when you're like – about when internet first became available on a flight? And you're like, people, first time, a Southwest flight, whatever it was. Hey, we have internet for the first time on this flight.

And here's the password for your internet thing. And a guy opens it up and whatever and opens it up and it doesn't work for a second. He slams it down. Oh, that's Louis C.K. Oh, is it? Louis C.K. had a joke about that. Fucking piece of shit. Exactly.

You're flying through the air. Yeah. Literally. You might look around and be thankful. You're getting the internet from space. Yeah. Exactly. But instead you're like, ah, it doesn't work.

Yeah. What the hell is going on here? That's people that haven't had to develop those things that don't appreciate them. I mean, how many people get mad their Wi-Fi cuts out on their phone? I mean, it's just – It allows that level of anxiety in your life, and you just got to be – I mean, it's tough. You got to figure out how to manage that. Just like these negative comments we were talking about.

Like, I won't go into the comments on this one. I mean, imagine what people are going to say about UFOs and everything else in the comments. I think people listen to this podcast love UFOs. It's such a fun thing. It's such a fun thing to be excited about. I mean, and it might be the thing that could save us from demise. If we really are on this path of mutually assured destruction with Russia and with China, with China invading Taiwan, which seems also inevitable. It's terrifying, terrifying stuff. Also something in the pages of this novel. I don't think you've got – yeah, you did get there.

Yeah, there's the sentence about it in the earlier chapter. So I try to – just things that are on my mind work their way into the pages of these things as well. So China-Taiwan is in there. Ukraine is in there, of course. And there's some other things that will be a surprise to people in these pages. But for me, it's a great outlet because I get to think all these things that I'm thinking about or worried about or whatever else. I get to weave into these pages and think about them alone with no interruption. Well, most of the time.

There's some interruptions in our house with three kids, dog, and everything else going on. But it's fantastic. I mean, I actually enjoy the interruptions because I know when they're gone, I'll miss them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's great, your ability to see that. Because sometimes it's hard for people when you're in the middle of things to appreciate it. Yeah, you're building.

And you can be solely focused on that task at hand. Like in the military, that pendulum has to be on the side of the team because you're taking these guys down range. Your life is in their hands. So you have to be as prepared as you can possibly be to make the best decisions under fire you possibly can. Because what that means, that pendulum is not on the side of the family. Right. It's over here. Right.

And so they're doing all those other things. So you have to have a very supportive family that understands that, hey, you're going to Iraq. You're going to Afghanistan. Your best friends are in that trench with you to the right and the left. And so that pendulum has to be over here. You owe that to them, their families, the country, the mission, the team. But once you get out and, you know, can start building. But it's about any business.

You're building and you're solely focused on it and your family's over here. And sometimes that does take a back seat when you're building. But for me, I know that, yeah, I'm going to miss those times. I'm going to miss all those interruptions in a few years oh yeah for sure I mean I miss the kit me my kids are teenagers now but I miss them when they were little kids it was just the videos you could watch I know now you can go back on your phone and Apple puts it right there they put those little memories or whatever they pop up and things you've almost of that I've forgotten about in a lot of cases pop up

on there and I go oh and I stop I stop. I stop what I'm doing. I watch it and then I send it to my wife. You know, I say, did you see this? Apple found this memory. That's what's so unique too because of, you know, a lot of people have iPhones and they've had them since 2007 or 8, whenever they came out. Like that's a long history of your iPhoto that you can pull from and get these wild memories. I mean, yeah, her daughter was born in 2005. I got my iPhone in, I don't know, 2007. Yeah.

And so same thing. And they get you early. Once you're Apple, they like, they get you, you know, they get everything's in this cloud eventually, and then they've got you for life. The walled garden. So I've got a couple of phones now since you recommended that to me. I haven't committed to the other one yet, which I need to do because that thing's going off. I feel very fortunate, very, very fortunate, but I need to commit to that other number. Yeah. You got to have a phone that only a few people have. It's, I think at a certain point in time, you want to be able to have a phone that you check every now and again, but to have a phone where your wife has, your best friends have, and then

don't let anybody give that fucker away. Yes. tell it like if i get a group text exactly and there's a group text with someone hey man this guy wants to talk to you about a project and it's just a number not a name yeah i blocked that person i say all right well you're off the fucking list now because you just connected me to some asshole from a tech company you have to yeah how are you supposed to live maybe not even an asshole maybe a nice guy, but it's not his fault. He's not self-aware enough to realize that that's not appropriate. Some people don't understand what it's like to like, I'll leave a podcast. I'll have 150 text messages, 140 text messages.

It's nuts. Dang. Yeah. I've had days where I've had hundreds of text messages. Wow. You can't keep up. It's not possible. Nope.

And some people abuse the shit out of that. And they're like, hey, man, you fucking, you're ignoring me? I'm like, dude, if you could see the volume of emails and direct messages, it's like, do you want to be a normal human? Because if you want to be a normal human, you cannot keep up with all that stuff. Especially if you want to be a person that you cannot keep up with all that stuff possible especially if you want to be a person that does what i do perform yeah you want to be funny and do do podcasts and i can't be checking that thing all the time you gotta you create a podcast for hours i'm locked in in a conversation like we're having one right now phone's not going phones on

phones on airplane mode and and then i leave i gotta have dinner with my family i got shows i got shows two shows a night sometimes. I mean, that's incredible. So now, I mean, it's not nearly at your level, but I certainly see it. And I'm going to do that thing where I miss the 80s. I mean, if I could go back in time, I'd go back to 85. Really? And I would just stay in 85, I think. You know, we have Back to the Future comes out.

Rambo First Blood Part II comes out. That's hilarious. I think Fletch is out there. Anyway, it's a great year. I mean, 85, right in the middle. I just stay right there. I like it right now. You like it? Do you? I like it right now. That's awesome. I think Fletch is out there. Anyway, it's a great year. I mean, 85 right in the middle. I just stay right there. I like it right now. You like it? Do you? I like it right now. That's awesome. I love it. I'm going to try to get

to that. I'm going to try to get to that sort of an attitude. Well, because I think this is the last generation before we can read minds. Oh, geez. This is the last generation before we become fully integrated with technology that's actually embedded into your body.

I think we're a decade or so away from cyborgs. None of that was there in 1985 either. I'm going back. I enjoy having a phone. I enjoy being able to film things and I enjoy being able to ask Google, how far can a

turkey fly? That was important. I love doing that with my kids. 100 yards for people joining us. All the time while we're driving, we'll have conversations about stuff. And you're like, check it. So let's Google it. And then it's really fun. It's fun to have that kind of access to information.

There's negative consequences to every generation that's ever existed. There's always going to be negatives, but I like it today. Man, I love your attitude. I'm going to go home and I'm going to think about this while I'm on book tour right now. So I'm going to go to my hotel and think about this as I continue on book tour. But I'm building a time machine. And this time machine is about it's about it's almost the size of this room right here. And you walk in and it's VHS tapes. It's video discs.

So video discs are not. No, not late 70s. So it's like a record. And so it skips all over the place. video discs. Laser discs? No, not laser. Late 70s. Really? So it's like a record. And so it skips all over the place, and you have to put RCA video disc player. You put them in. It's a square. You pull the square out,

and it leaves the disc in there that's plastic. You get to about 35 minutes. You've got to put it in again, pull it out, turn it around, put it back in again. So it's a precursor to laser discs. Wow. I wasn't even aware that existed.

Oh, yeah. That's in the 70s? Like 79 or something like that. People can fact check it, and I won't even aware that existed. Oh, yeah. That's in the 70s? Like 79 or something like that. People can fact check it. Wow. I won't look at the comments, but it's- There it is. Video disc.

There it is. Bam. And look at that. Yep. That's the one. RCA SpectraVision. That's the one we had growing up. Look at that thing.

Wow. Look at that thing. I love how they use fake wood with those. Fantastic. Wood paneling. Yeah, exactly. It is so- Well, I was like wood paneling.

Atari, too. Or just like a. Why is, like, wood paneling? Like, Atari, too. Or just like a Wagoneer, or like in Vacation, you know, they had the wood paneling down the side of their car. But, yes. Look at Tom Cruise. So I'm going back. So my time machine is one of these. It's

VHS, or VCR, VHS tapes, and an Atari 2600, and I'm going to track down the first Nintendo. And I'm just going to have those in there, and I walk in, and now I'm back in 1985. That's my time machine. Better leave your phone outside. Exactly.

Yeah, no phones. No phones in that thing right there. So, yeah, the phone thing. And what I'm going to do with my phone with the one that I have now is plug it in and treat it like it's a cord. So treat it like it is attached to the wall like it would have been back in the 80s. And so I have to go up there to a room, not the time machine, but another room where I have to pick it up right there.

And it's just attached with the cable to the charger. But I'm going to pretend that that is a cord to the wall. And so if I want to check those messages, then I have to go up there. That's my plan. That's my plan. And then the other phone phone that will be the one that's on me that just a few people have

that sort of thing because it's gotten a little crazy but I feel so fortunate. At the same time you feel so fortunate. Of course. You're way better off

being busy than wishing you were busy. Yeah. Yeah, you're way better off. I think that you not being able to work out things scares me

because for me I need it for mental health. I have to. I have to do some sort of physical exercise to sort of wring out the tension and anxiety in my body. And if I don't do that, I'd go crazy. I should. I should be doing that. And I know I should be doing that.

But right now, it's shot out of that can every morning. And when it's quiet, it's when everybody's in bed. Maybe you just enforce a certain number of calisthenics you have to do every day. I started just getting out of bed and doing some pushups and sit-ups and stuff like that. And I did that for like two weeks. And then it just went by the wayside for whatever reason. But again, you're so fortunate that you're in this position that you have all this stuff going on. That's like the dream.

The dream was, I mean, you're living the fucking American dream. You really did it. You really did it. You really did it. And it's actually happening. Yeah. And as are you. I mean, you're an inspiration for a ton of people. You'll never even know how many people.

It's impossible to quantify with how many people listen to this and see you and see what you've created and what you've done and what you've built. And that's on a scale that's not close to what I'm doing. But I've been busy every single second of my life just like you. And I didn't even look at it as building just like you're just doing. Yeah. And if you recognize that, that you just have this one shot at it, like why not go all in? Why not go all in? Yeah. It's just, you don't get a lot of opportunities and the people that don't go all in, I think they're always going to have some sort of a regret. Yeah. I think.

I mean, but everybody's different. I mean, there's a lot of people out there that, like, have that opportunity. Like, you know what? I'd rather live a simple life. Yeah. And that's great, too. That's great, too. If that's your thing.

Yeah. You know, everybody has it. That's what's great about America is you get to choose. Yeah. Where most everywhere else in the world, you don't. Right. So I think a lot of people forget that here. That no matter where you come from, no matter where you start, it's up to you.

You have opportunity here. You're not forced into doing what your father did or whatever else. You're not forced into that because of tradition and socioeconomic status and the country that doesn't give you these opportunities. But we have that here. So once you recognize that and then realize that you've got this one shot, like you won the lottery being born here. Like I feel like I won the lottery being born here, not having my buddy give the book to Chris Pratt or having somebody give the book to Simon and Schuster or whatever it was being born here is winning that lottery. Yeah. And I've always felt that way. That's true. That's 100% true because people like to compare themselves to other people like, Oh, they have more opportunities. They were

set up better. They, this, they, that, but you, if you're listening to this, you live in a rare time. This is a rare time. And you're in an amazing place. If you're in America in particular, but even if you're in other parts of the world, I mean, this is a great place to be alive. Yeah. A lot of people want to come here for that, just for that, because they don't have it where they are.

So they do everything they possibly can, sacrifice everything to come here. So they have that opportunity that we're lucky enough to be born with. I think about that when I see the border crisis. When I see the border crisis, I'm like, listen, if I was in Guatemala, I'd be doing the same shit. I'd be sneaking across that border just like everybody else. I guess it's not even sneaking anymore. Just walking. Seems like just walking, and they give you a free phone.

Yeah. A buddy of mine from the Border Patrol texted me the other day and he was, because I sent him one of the books, I sent him one of these actually in this case right here and he's a Border Patrol agent down there and I sent it to him and he got home from work and he took a picture of it

and he said, man, he texted me. He's like, man, this was a rough day and this made my day getting this

that you still remember me from these, you know, whatever. But he said today was horrible and he was writing the Title 42 thing just a few days ago. And he talked about people coming across and getting $1,500, I think it was, and off they go and how they're forced to release and do all these things.

And their job is to protect, yet they have to let through. And they don't know who they're letting through. Yeah, it's not a perfect screening process. So you're this person that's supposed to protect. You're supposed to be on that border, protecting that border. You're on that wall. That's what you swore your oath to. And now you're just opening these gates.

It's crazy. He was just so demoralized. What the fuck do you think that is? Like, why is that happening? Well, I mean, I think there's a voter base that a certain segment of society thinks is going to be more apt to vote for one side than the other. But we have, I mean, when you talk about it and people like to make fun of Trump and the wall. I mean, there are great memes out there about the wall. And then people like to point to places in history

where walls were meant to keep people in. Well, no, the walls also work to keep people out. And so it's just tough. But you also, at the same time, as a compassionate person, you want to let that person in from Guatemala that worked their way all the way up here and put in that work for a new opportunity for them and their family here. And that's going to be probably a productive citizen. But along with that person comes other people with nefarious types of ambitions that can also work their way up. Of course.

I mean, it's extremely tough. But a country needs borders. And us is not a country. Yeah, I don't understand how it's this porous I don't understand how is this crazy because when you're watching the influx of people from and again I understand why they would want to do it totally but what a fucking terrible mismanagement yeah no it's it's it's the compassion of the American people we're very compassionate I think overall and just like when you see somebody who posts a picture of a dead animal and they're so excited. They put in all this work and they got there and they took this picture and they posted it.

And then they get destroyed online because of these comments or whatever it might be. People that are eating a cheeseburger. Yeah. Yeah. That happens as well. But they're doing it. It's not – it can be twisted and it can be turned, and they're putting it up there because they're feeding their family or whatever else. And now all these things are very connected because you can exploit and you can twist and you can turn all of them.

You can weaponize all of it. And the internet and social media in particular makes that a lot easier. And now these companies that own these things are not American companies. They're global multinational corporations and they benefit. But America gave them, in most cases, that opportunity to be so successful, to be so wildly wealthy, more wealthy than most anyone in the history of the world. So it's a tough time. It's a weird time. It's a weird time. Man, it is so crazy. But yeah, but Border Patrol, I mean, those guys down there, they get, It's a weird time. It's just, oh my goodness, he's asking for trouble. But what a great guy. He was awesome. And he brought an old Civil War musket, not a musket, Civil War

percussion rifle and brought it, showed it to me at this book signing. And what a great guy. But geez, people still want to serve. They want to stand up there as law enforcement. Austin, I know, has an issue with that right now. Border Patrol agents, teachers. I mean, what a tough time to be in those positions. I know, and they're just not appreciated. And our culture, for whatever reason, doesn't celebrate them like they should. Yeah, I appreciate those guys every day.

And I think about them every day. So thankful that they're out there every day, willing to do that job, willing to be teachers, willing to put themselves on the line, on the border, willing to suit up and get in that squad car and roll into the city or whatever else, knowing that there's a whole segment of society that just wants to vilify them no matter what they do.

And it's a tough position to be in. It's very tough. Hard, hard on the morale, especially police officers. Well, and teachers, both of them. You're right. Those are the two people that are most maligned, the two groups of people. I think you're drawn to those things for good reasons right off the bat. You want to teach kids or whatever else, and all of a sudden you find yourself embroiled in some crazy controversy, and you're like, I just want to teach kids some history

or I want to teach them math or whatever it might be. And same thing with cops. I mean, they're getting that squad car to protect, and they go out and people make a mistake, and there's good people and bad people in every single institution and every single organization. It doesn't matter what it is. But then the mistakes are vilified and then used to divide a country, not just-

Politically. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty fucked. It's tough. It is tough. Yeah. Man.

And Austin here, you guys have that going on right now, right? The police, there's like all sorts of stuff going on in the- Yeah. Defunding the police. Yeah. Right here. Do you notice it since you've been here? Yeah.

Yeah. There's definitely a decrease in police presence. And my friends that have had issues, they said the wait time is insane. It's not good. That's wild. And also, how about outside where the comedy club is? Well, we hire a lot of Austin cops for the comedy club. I wanted to hire them to show them that we care and we respect them and want to give them employment. And so guys that are off duty, they work there.

Nice. So it's nice. That's cool. That helps a lot. And it also keeps the club safe. It's good for everybody. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

That's what I worry about the book tour. There are a lot of cops that come. Thank goodness they're in the audience because when I'm doing a signing, it's like I'm looking at that person. I'm so thankful. I'm shaking that hand. We're getting that picture. But also that means I'm not paying attention to anything else. So I'm lucky that there are a lot of cops in the audience that are looking out for me,

which is very, very cool. I mean, Salman Rushdie. Remember Salman Rushdie in the 80s with the Satanic Verses? Yeah, he just gets attacked recently. Yeah, last summer. Last damn stabbed in the neck and face and lost an eye. And I'm not sure how he's doing right now. But that's all those years later.

I know. The enemy doesn't forget. No. They do not forget. Not at all. Well, listen, brother, thank you very much for all you do. And thank you for your awesome books. Thank you.

Only the Dead. It's out right now. You can get it. Like I said, I'm in the middle of it. And I love it. You are awesome. I love all your stuff. You are awesome.

Thank you. Thank you, brother. Appreciate you very much thank you for everything alright take care bye everybody