The Rich Roll Podcast - Dave Roll: Meditations On Character, Integrity & Leadership

Episode Date: July 1, 2019

For reasons both obvious and perhaps less so, this week's episode holds a very special place in my heart. There is something unique about sitting before a microphone that permits a species of conversation difficult to otherwise have. Done right, the inherent formality of putting it all on the record can countenance an experience of rare intimacy that scarcely transpires in the course of conventional human interaction. From the very beginning of this podcast journey, I've longed to host my father on the show. To provide a ceremonial opportunity to probe his life, uninterrupted. To learn things about him I've always wanted to know — but for whatever reason just never found the right occasion to ask. For years, I harbored the fear that if I didn't make such an experience a priority, it might never happen. And that would be something I would deeply regret for the rest of my days. My drive was never to share such an experience with an audience. I wasn't convinced the conversation I yearned for would be appropriate for public consumption. It's always been about creating a moment just for us. A document I could privately keep for posterity. And for my children. However, a compelling reason recently arose to transform this rumination into reality. A gentleman and a scholar, Dave Roll has spent the better part of his life studying history. The apex of this passion is an incredible new book entitled, George Marshall: Defender of the Republic*. An enthralling and deeply thoughtful chronicle of America's most distinguished soldier since George Washington, it's also a deeply prescient and timely meditation on selflessness, leadership, and the momentous importance of moral character in political and social structures. The embodiment of these ideals, Marshall influenced the course of two world wars, and helped define the American century. By way of background, my dad has enjoyed a very successful 35 year career as an accomplished attorney in the field of antitrust. Over the years, he successfully defended clients in investigations and enforcement actions brought by the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. After government service at the FTC he matriculated to partner and ultimately managing partner of the prestigious Washington, D.C.- based international law firm Steptoe & Johnson. Later in his career, he founded the Lex Mundi Pro Bono Foundation, a non-profit, public interest organization that provides pro bono legal services to social entrepreneurs around the world. Now in his third act, Dave is enjoying a successful career as an author. Also historical biographies, his previous titles include The Hopkins Touch: Harry Hopkins and the Forging of the Alliance to Defeat Hitler* and Louis Johnson and the Arming of America*, a biography of Harry Truman's defense secretary. Enjoy! Rich

The thing about Marshall, though, is character. You know, character matters, and if you have to say anything about the book, it's just, you say, what is it about? It's character. Everybody knew he lived by a moral code that was above most others, and they did not want to displease him in any way. You know, he's called the man with a plan, but he did so much more. So I have this great reverence for the way he conducted himself and the strong character he had. Because he could have been president.

He could have been anything. Are we ever going to get back to the point where we have these kinds of people in our government? Are we ever going to get back to the era where we have moral people that will take stands on principle? That's my dad, Dave Roll, this week on the Rich Roll Podcast. Okay, so this one, for reasons both obvious and perhaps less so, is pretty special. It's a little unique. And I think there's something about the structure, the formality of sitting in front of a microphone that allows – that permits a certain kind of conversation, an intimate experience that really just generally doesn't happen otherwise. There's this ceremonial kind of aspect of it, the inherent decorum that creates a kind of undefinable window to go places with people that you otherwise perhaps just wouldn't. And from the very beginning of this podcast journey, I've wanted to have my

dad on the show, to have a reason to sit down uninterrupted and ask him all kinds of questions about his life, things I've always wanted to know about him. But for whatever reason, I never asked, and maybe it just was never the right time or the setting wasn't correct. And I think I had, on some level, this fear that if I didn't make it a priority that it might never happen. And that's something that I know for sure that I would regret. And to be honest, I didn't do it earlier only because I was super busy. On some level, I think I just thought it wouldn't work for the show. But nonetheless, that at some point I would do it anyway and perhaps just not share it just

so that we could have that moment and I could keep it for posterity and for my kids. But a pretty compelling reason arose to turn this rumination and procrastination on this thing into a reality. And that reason is that my dad, who has always been this avid, fanatical student of history, I mean, this is a guy who on countless weekends would pile my sister and me into the station wagon to go visit some civil war battlefield. He's gone on to write this incredible new book. It's called George Marshall, Defender of the Republic. And it's this amazing, compelling chronicle of the life of General Marshall, who was America's most distinguished soldier statement, arguably since George Washington. So it's a historical biography, but it's also this very timely, prescient at times meditation, meditation on selflessness, on leadership, on moral character, and how this man's embodiment of these traits, you know, traits that I would contend are quite lacking in our current political climate, influenced not just the course of two world wars, but really and truly helped define the American century.

But anyway, by way of background, my dad's a guy who has enjoyed a very successful 35 plus year career as an accomplished attorney, mostly in the field of antitrust. Over the years, he successfully defended clients in investigations and enforcement actions brought by the antitrust division of the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. And after government service at the FTC, he was a partner and then managing partner of his law firm, this prestigious Washington, D.C. law firm called Stepnow & Johnson. And then later in his career, he went into public service. He founded the Lex Mundi Pro Bono Foundation, which is this nonprofit that sources legal services for social entrepreneurs around the world. And now he's enjoying this incredible third act as an author.

Marshall is his third book. His previous titles were also historical biographies. He wrote a book called The Hopkins Touch, which was all about this guy called Harry Hopkins, who was the most powerful man in FDR's administration. And then he wrote Lewis Johnson and the Arming of America, his first book, which was about this guy, Lewis Johnson, who was an important figure under Truman and Roosevelt. But with this Marshall book, he's really, I think, positioned, poised to join the ranks of the great historical biographers like Robert Caro and Walter Isaacson, who incidentally actually gave him an amazing blurb for the book.

I mean, my dad also got blurbs from General Stanley McChrystal, General Petraeus, William Hitchcock. It's insane. Anyway, the book comes out July 9. It's available for pre-order now on Amazon. I'll put a link up in the show notes on my website. He's got all this national press lined up and I'm just, I'm like, I'm getting emotional, but like, I'm super proud of him and it's all coming up in a couple of few. But first, you know what I want to do? I want to share a listener email with you guys. Okay. So,

this is from Charles and Greta. Hello, Mr. Roll. I'd like to begin by saying your journey has inspired me in many ways. So for that, I'm grateful for your courage and discipline to get through your struggles. A little over two years ago, I met my girlfriend, Greta, who had been a vegan for six years. I hadn't known much information about what vegan was, and I was naturally curious about what living a vegan lifestyle meant. I began doing my research, and like many, I couldn't deny what I learned. Shortly after, I began my transition and have made one of the best decisions of my life. During this time, I was working as a special

needs teacher at a school called Learning Link School in Miami, Florida. I've always loved working with kids, but as somebody who graduated in recreational therapy, my ideal setting was outdoors and wasn't in the classroom, and I felt like I needed to make a change. I struggled with this for years until one day during lunchtime, I noticed one of my students eating donuts and a large chocolate milk for lunch. I was outraged and went straight to my director, who later spoke to the parents. To be honest, this student's lunch barely improved, and even worse, he wasn't the only one. I had the idea of starting a lunch program where I could cook healthier meals for our students. I hadn't met

Greta yet, and doing this alone while having a full-time job was not working out. Fast forward, I meet Greta, and we decide to start a plant-based lunch program called Everyday Foodies at our school in August of 2018. During this time, I continue to work at the school full-time. Greta has her own job, and we run our business. We cook, we package all the food ourselves after our jobs. And to our amazement, it was an incredible success. Kids that hadn't even tried a vegetable are now eating broccoli. We even had a young girl that was on a 100% puree diet and is now chewing and eating solid foods. We now decided to go all in with our program and dedicate

ourselves full-time and expand to as many schools as possible. We want to reach as many families as we can and educate them on the benefits of a plant-based lifestyle. So anyway, what an incredible letter. I mean, it doesn't get any better than that. I mean, this truly is the why behind what I do. To see that this message that I'm propagating and putting out in the world is helping to inspire and connect with people who then go out

and actually make tangible, amazing changes with ripple effects that impact many, many people. It's just, it's beautiful. I don't take this stuff for granted at all. And I just, I love sharing letters like that. So thank you for indulging me. We're brought to you today by recovery.com.

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To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay. Dad. Dave. David Lee Roll. It's my dad. He's on the podcast. So, you know, we've gone through it over the years. What can I tell you? I've definitely put him through a lot. I think it's fair to say. I think he would agree that he's put me through a little bit here and there as well. And there's been moments, extended periods of not really estrangement, that's

too strong a word. Let's just say detachment or disassociation, the strained years. But I got to say that we're in a really good place right now. We've grown quite close over the last several years. And that's good. It feels good. It's really nice to feel like I'm in an intimate, healthy relationship with my dad right now. And so I think the timing for this, for him to join me on this thing that I do here is rather perfect. So this conversation is a balance of many things it's a conversation about his life the history of our relationship which gets a bit emotional

I'm going to get emotional right now talking about it and also the life of Marshall this book that he's written about this incredible historical figure and what we can learn from this extraordinary man's example, how it relates and informs to how we think about current politics and America and character and leadership and morality, really. So, I'm excited, a little bit nervous to share this one with you guys, but I think you're going to dig it. In the meantime, please pick up Marshall, Defender of the Republic. You can find it on Amazon or your favorite bookseller.

Link in the bio as well. It comes out July 9th, currently on pre-order. And I really think it's this important and impressive work of epic proportions. Dave is a gentleman. He's a scholar. And this is our conversation. This is me and my dad. I love you, dad. I'm so proud of you. Welcome to your very first podcast. And my dad. I love you, dad. I'm so proud of you.

Welcome to your very first podcast. Thank you. We're rolling. I'm so excited. Thank you for having me. This is a momentous occasion for a number of reasons. I mean, the first family member that I've had on the podcast. And I've been looking forward to this for a very long time. I've had on the podcast. And I've been looking forward to this for a very long time. I mean,

the occasion is, of course, this remarkable achievement of writing this incredible book, the George Marshall book, Defender of the Republic, that's coming out in July. And we're going to talk about that. I mean, this is like- A big plug. This is a serious book for serious people. It's like 600, I mean, the note, it's like, how long is this? 604 pages. 604 pages. Without the notes. I'm intimidated.

I've just started to read it and it's amazing. It's gonna take me a while to get through it. But first of all, congratulations. Thank you. I mean, it's no small thing. And the early feedback on this book has been quite spectacular. You have the Ryan Holiday stamp of approval.

He loves it. And you have incredible blurbs from like Walter Isaacson and General Stanley McChrystal. It's been quite something, right? Petraeus, it looks like you're gonna do an event with him perhaps. Yeah, we're doing in New York next fall. Wow, like the 92nd. He'll do like an interview thing like you're doing.

Right, I think 92nd Street-wise. No, it's gonna be at the New York Historic Society, which is, I don't know, different place. Yeah. But he, yeah, he likes, he wants to do it, so. That's gotta be gratifying. So, no, I didn't ask him. He just sort of said, let's do this, so.

Right. But you, how do you even like reach out to those people? Various ways. Yeah, I mean, it's quite wily how you've done that. With Petraeus, I had a friend who, you know, your cousin's roommate at West Point heard about the book and we started corresponding an email. He was head of the army in Europe and just retired. And he contacted Petraeus.

And Petraeus got in touch with me. Yeah. And said, you know, I'm headed to the Southeast Asia, send me a digital copy of the book. So that's what we did. And then here you are. So the third book, I feel like this book is going to really be the book that's going to break out. Hope so. Yeah, I think so. Well, we're going to talk about all of that, but I have this opportunity now to talk to you about a lot of things

that I've always wanted to talk to you about. I think the formality of this kind of allows us to explore that a little bit. You know, like questions that you always have that you just never feel like it's the right time to ask about your life, you know? Right. And how you got to this place.

Like, you know, I think when I think back to my grandparents, like Everett and Garnett, like my memory of them is as of old, you know, when they were old and I don't feel like ever really, yeah, it feels like, you know, in my memory of course is, you know, far from perfect. So I remember them being quite a bit older. But I'm curious about, you know, how you grew up

and what kind of parents they were and kind of what kind of kid you were. You know, when I think back, you know, for what it must've been like for you as a young person, I know at one point you mentioned that there was that movie that came out, that Terrence Malick movie that came out called Tree of Life.

Yeah. Do you remember that with Brad Pitt? And it was of that era. And I remember you saying to me, like, that's what it was like when I was a kid. When I remember that- it stuck with me. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I had a very, you know, uneventful, but very pleasant, you know, perfect

childhood. And I grew up in a suburb of Detroit called Grosse Pointe, lived there until I went away to college. And my father came off a farm, a farm town in middle Illinois, very poor. And I never knew his parents. In other words, that part of my grandparents, I didn't know. There was a farm in Illinois that we visited a couple times. So he was a guy that came through the depression and made his way to the University of Illinois where I met my mother.

My mother was from a much more middle-class family. And they met at the University of Illinois right after the Red Grange era. But they, you know, they graduated right near the Depression. Actually on the cusp of it, the beginning of the Depression. So my father was lucky to get a job in Detroit as an accountant, and that's what he studied at Illinois and worked for the Detroit Edison Company. We were, I would say, a middle-class family in a upper-middle-class suburb. So we lived on a street with lots of kids.

This was post-war baby boom. Right. GI Bill, everyone can buy a house and have a car. Yeah, and Detroit's a big car city. So we knew every single car that would come down. And when a Studebaker came that looked, the front, you couldn't tell the front from the back. That was like the biggest thing in our neighborhood.

So we put on a carnival when we were kids, seven, eight, nine, ten years old for polio. Polio was a big deal when we were growing up. So we had a friend that lived over the next block who died of polio. So it was kind of a threat. And everybody thought it was coming from the water, in the lake, the lake, we live right near Lake St. Clair, so they closed all the swimming.

I just received a call three days ago from probably my oldest friend who lived behind us across a field. His name was Charlie Harris. And he was a wild, wild kid who loved chemistry. tenured professor at Berkeley and head of the department of biophysics or biochemistry. Now he's very famous, but he has Parkinson's. He just called me the other day

and left me a voicemail for my birthday. Wow. It was amazing. I mean, that's one of the things that I really admire about how you've lived your life is you stayed really close with these friends that you've had your entire life.

Like it's not just Charlie, you've got like four or five of them that you visit every year and you really are in contact with in a way that I don't have in my life. It's not my experience. Well, my book, you probably didn't read the dedication, which is in the first few pages of the book. This is the George Marshall book.

And I dedicated it to Mike and Charlie. And they are two of my oldest, not the Charlie Harris, who's the guy I knew when I was four years old, but another Charlie. Not the Charlie Harris, who's the guy I knew when I was four years old, but another Charlie. And Mike, who I played football with in high school. And they are two of my closest friends. And we still see each other. Like next week, I'm going to go have birthday dinner with them. Yeah, and Charlie went on to become a successful Washington lawyer.

And Mike was a frogman, which is kind of the prototype of the Navy SEALs, right? Yeah, it was the sort of the special ops group that preceded the SEALs and it turned into the SEALs. So yeah, he was in two trips to Vietnam. Yeah. And then hunting diamonds in Brazil. So he's like a stud, you know? Yeah.

Still is. Yeah, well, you know, now he's 79 years old. So Charlie and I both kind of turned away from the law when we were, you know, 15 years ago. Said, we're not going to do this anymore. And so Charlie went to grad school, got a master's in English or, yeah, no, American history. And then I started writing books. So it kind of went that way.

Well, Charlie's an amazing guy. Yep. You know, a true renaissance man. A gentleman Charlie's an amazing guy. A true Renaissance man, a gentleman, a very charismatic individual. Right, right, good friends. So you grew up with these guys, you end up playing football in high school. I mean, it's an all American story in many ways.

And yeah, high school girls, I met your mother when she was 16. Actually, I met her when we were in ninth grade, but when we were on a trip out west together, I can get into that later. But, you know, I met her. So, I've known my wife now of 50 plus years since high school. So that's like unusual. Yeah. Well, most of my friend's parents are divorced.

You know, you guys have really, you know, made it work over the long haul. Like when you think back on how that unfolded and how you continue to, you know, work on your relationship and, you know, keep the the love alive, to what do you attribute that? Oh, I don't know. It's not like it's easy to have a smooth relationship over that amount of time. And of course it's morphed, it's changed, but it's pretty amazing. It is.

Pretty amazing. So, you know. How many years? Well, we got married in 1963, right? You know, while I was still in law school. So ever since then, when I was, it's. Long time. Yeah.

It's getting there. Yeah, mid-50s. Uh-huh. So, actually about your age, you know. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so that's, and, you know, my wife is sitting not far from here. She's right off camera over here. So, careful, I mean, we, you know, when we were growing up,

the idea of a divorce was scandalous. And my mother, my mother was a real gossip. And, you know, at dinner table, there would be all kinds of disparaging remarks about people who were either seeing psychiatrists. And there was one woman in our neighborhood was seeing a psychiatrist. It's like a huge scandal.

At least my mother built it up to be a sin. And then divorce was just, and that happened to Mike, one of the two guys, the frog man guy, in the midst of high school. And it was front-page newspaper news. I remember one morning came over for a ride to school with my father and myself. And that was the day the headlines came out. His family was somewhat prominent in the history of Detroit.

So it was like front-page news. His parents were getting divorced and that made the newspaper. Oh yeah. Wow. I think it was in the Detroit news. It's like, you know, and Mike felt, you know, it was terrible. It was a terrible thing for him. Well, that must've played on your psyche over the years as an impediment to divorce.

You don't stay married for that long without having moments where it looks like it might break. Right. And you don't let that happen. So, yeah, that's exactly right. And I'm sure it's without... Charlie and Mike have been married as long as I have. Charlie Harris, the other guy, the Berkeley professor, you know, has been divorced three times. So. Yeah. Well, to be clear though, you know, I don't want anyone to get the impression that you're in it just because. Like you've said to me many times, even over the last year, like, you know, I'm really in love with your mom. Yeah. And that's no small thing. No, that's right. And she's in love with me. Yeah.

Was Everett a taskmaster or what kind of dad was he? Everett was, I think he was laconic in a way. He didn't say a lot. Part of it was, my mother was a gregarious social person and he was much quieter, but he had a commanding way about him. Part of it, though, was just due to the fact that he had a hearing defect. And so it hindered him in sort of socialization. Like laconic in the sense of being emotionally disconnected and distant?

Yeah, not really, yeah. But when he said stuff or criticized me, which is rarely rare, but he did, that was like, oh, my God, what if I, you know, I'm losing his respect. So, you know, and I had a very extraordinary older brother, much older than I was, eight or nine years. So, and he was, you know, he was, as we were growing up, you know, he was like Mr. Big in terms of having a, I think they even, they used to take us and we had our IQs, you know, done. So, his IQ was like. And everybody knew what everyone's IQ score was? Well, he's an academic, you know,

he's of a prodigious academic mind. He's a nuclear physicist and an extraordinary French horn player. So, you know, but, you know, sort of had real problems with social skills. But anyway, so he was always the person that I had to live up to in some ways intellectually, but I was never in his league, I don't think.

Did that make you resentful? No, the one thing it did was I said, I'm not going to the same college he went to. And I could have gone where he went and decided to go to where I could excel. I wanted to play football. So I went to go to Division III. Back then it wasn't that way, but it was a small school. Yeah, Amherst College. Right.

Well, one of the things that I think we share is we're both competitive and we're both ambitious. Driven. Yeah, very driven. And I feel like you had this sense that you wanted to get out of Detroit and make a name for yourself and do something different on your own terms. Well, except I didn't get out of Detroit at first. What I really want to do is get out of law school fast and start making money and see, you know, whether I can make a name in the legal profession. But, you know, and I went into the law school without a lot of circumspection about I got to be a lawyer. That was always what I wanted to do. I always wanted to go into court or something like that.

You know, it was a good profession. You could, you know, make a living at it. And it was a big deal to have a job getting out of college. And my parents, that was a huge thing with them, which you got to get a job. So after Amherst, I mean, you fast-tracked your law school experience, right? Didn't you start in the summertime? Started the day after I graduated from college. Literally, we drove all night. I remember from Amherst to Ann Arbor, Michigan.

And they dropped me off at the law school at 8 in the morning. I had an 8 o'clock class. It was my first class in law school at eight in the morning, I had an eight o'clock class. It was his first class in law school. And that's where I met the famous Kurt Ludke. That's right. Standing outside the door of our classroom, smoking cigarettes. It's a classic story.

So for those that are listening, Kurt Ludke is kind of a notorious famous character who was your roommate for a period of time and ended up late. He became a journalist and then became a screenwriter in a second act of his career. Kind of famously announced, I'm going to be a screenwriter now. And everybody laughed. And his first screenplay was called Absence of Malice that ended up getting directed by Sidney Pollack starring Paul Newman and Sally Field

in his second screenplay. It was nominated for, that one was nominated for Academy Award. For Best Original Screenplay, Oscar nomination. His second screenplay was Out of Africa. Right, and the third one was a bust. Yeah, Random Hearts. Random Hearts. And then he kind of never came back from that.

Well, he just didn't want to do it. Yeah, and he also never, he just didn't want to do it. Yeah. And he also never, he refused to go to Los Angeles, right? He calls everybody in Los Angeles scum. I think he like made Sidney Pollack come to Michigan to meet with him. That's right. I mean, you know, Sidney Pollack, like a legend of, you know, Hollywood filmmaking at the time. But at that time when you met him, he was kind of a carousing, notorious character.

Right, we had in law school, there were three of us, four of us actually living in the law quad, as they called it. But Kurt, he never went to class, except if the class was in the mid to late afternoon, he would go. Otherwise, he didn't go to any classes. Right. Wasn't he dating like a nurse? Yeah, she didn't get off until midnight. So, it was kind of a difficult, you know, I had to kind of get out of there to

study. But anyway, we had a good time. Right. And so so you then end up getting a job at a law firm in Detroit, moved back to Grosse Pointe. You meet my, well, you reconnect with mom because she was an undergrad at Michigan when you were in law school. When I started law school, she was still in her senior year. And then the second summer I took off

rather than stay in law school. And we got married that summer in 1963. And then we lived in a little apartment near the stadium, the University of Michigan for my final year. And my wife, Nancy, studied speech and hearing and got a job right away in a local school.

So we finished that out. Then I got a job. Started working in Detroit. We lived in Detroit for a couple of years and then moved into Grosse Pointe where I grew up. And that's when I started thinking about going somewhere else. Yeah.

Well, a couple of things. First of all, over the years, you always had a knack for having like an iconic car. Like you had a Dodge Dart and then we had a VW Beetle. And then I remember you had that like Navy, that like midnight blue Navy Mustang. Mustang. That was a beautiful car.

Yeah. What is it? 1964. 65, I think it was. I think they came out in 64. We got one in 65. Yeah. And there's a great photo of you in your diapers, you know, when you're two or one and a half,

helping me wash that Mustang. I know that photo. And, you know, that was a big deal. I think for you, I think more for you than for me. Well, I look at that photo and I'm like, oh man, if you'd only hung onto that car. But the first car I had that when I went to Amherst, you weren't supposed to have cars.

Amherst is in Amherst, Massachusetts. It's a small all-men's college. So I had my mother didn't realize what she was doing, but she let me have her English Anglia. This was the worst English. It was an English Ford. And I don't know why she bought it. It was the cheapest car you could possibly buy in the United States, I think. And it was almost made out of cardboard.

I've never even heard of that. Yeah, well, I had it at Amherst secretly, parked in town somewhere, so I could use it. And actually, when Nancy came to visit me for, you know, the annual big weekend, she came with another young lady from Grosse Pointe who was dating my, you know, one of my best friends. They came to Amherst for the weekend. And while we were in that English Anglia, we got arrested. What happened? I forgot exactly how it happened.

I guess we were speeding or something, and then we ended up in the Amherst police department headquarters, this little police department. And they, oh, because I was supposed to have a car. And, you know, I was an Amherst student and you're not supposed to- It was actually against the law? Well, it was against the regulations of the college. And I had to go before a court, an honor court at Amherst. And I don't know, I was suspended or something like that. Adjudicate this transgression of- Yeah, driving a car without permission of the court.

And then I think you could have a car when you were a senior. But anyway, we used to drive that car back and forth from Amherst to Michigan. And it was an adventure because it would constantly break down and so forth. We didn't have enough money to go on the turnpike. So we would drive the back roads in the English Anglia all the way between. Breakdown on some country lane next to a cornfield. I can't imagine anybody's interested in any of this.

I am. Well, I mean, so when does the, you know, when does this idea of like moving to Washington and enter your consciousness? I mean, was there a sense like, this is where the action is? Like, I want to be involved in, you know, this is where things are happening and important people are making important decisions. This was Nixon, the early Nixon. And actually, there was a lot of reform going on in washington of course it was preceded by kennedy's ask what you can you know you can do

and so forth uh but i was i i wanted to be a big time antitrust lawyer which means you know litigating against corporations on you issues and breaking up big business, that kind of thing. I was really entranced with the idea of there's too much monopoly power in the American economy. And it was an exciting field. And I couldn't get enough of it at the law firm I was with in Michigan. And then this book came along, who now is one of my really good friends, a book called, the first expose of the big law firms in Washington. And it was called The Super Lawyers. So it was about a bunch of the guys at the big law firms

in, they weren't big then, but the major law firms in Washington. And it was about what they did. They did huge kinds of interesting pro bono work. They were arguing Supreme Court cases. They were breaking up companies or defending the companies. It was written by a guy named Joe Goulden. And Joe Goulden now is in his 90s, but he's one of my really good friends.

And he's been mentoring me on writing books ever since I started. I never knew that. And he just lives like two blocks away. So he's, you know, been my big fan. You know, I wrote an op-ed piece a few weeks ago about NATO. And I wanted to get it published, you know, in a decent newspaper. And, you know, you send it to the Times or the Post and they don't know who you are.

But he helped me get it published, not in the greatest newspaper of all, but it was the Washington Times. It was the first time we got an op-ed piece and he made it happen. Anyway, so then I had a really good friend from Amherst who was working in Washington. He called me one day and said, if you ever want to come to Washington, call this guy.

So, I called him. Joe Golden? No, this was a different guy, yeah. A friend of mine that I went to Amherst with who was working in the Justice Department. He said, if you ever want to do antitrust in Washington, call this guy. So, I called the guy. do antitrust in Washington, call this guy. So I called the guy and he was an FTC guy, you know, recruiting lawyers.

And at the time, Ralph Nader, nobody who's listening to this has probably ever heard of Ralph Nader. I mean, he's, you know, famous, perhaps most famous for the Pinto thing. Yeah, right, right. Ralph Nader had this group of hotshot young lawyers that were called Nader's Raiders. And they went into the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, and they identified all kinds of scandals and corruption and so forth. The FTC pre-Nixon was filled with a lot of Southern guys that were just kind of living off the land.

And so as a result, they had a lot of investigations. They cleaned house. They brought in a really respected chairman of the FTC, Miles Kirkpatrick from Philadelphia. And he was staffing the FTC with all these young hotshots. And I wanted to be a young hotshot. So I got a great job there. I just, I was just very lucky. And I was headed, I headed up, you know, a quarter of the antitrust cases that they were doing. I had 28, suddenly I had, I was 32 years old. I had 20, 28 or 29,

30 lawyers working for me and we were investigating the oil industry. It was like heaven, you know? Or that we went after Xerox at the time, which had 99% of the market in copying. So, you know, we were, and we had economists and we went around. And there was like a new energy in that organization to really like affect change.

And it was the best job I ever had. And we, I probably should have stayed in longer, but stayed in it for three years. And there was a lot of esprit. It was we versus them. The best lawyers in Washington were always on the other side. So we were the young guys that were trying to break them up.

We probably wasted a lot of taxpayer. I'm sure we wasted a lot of taxpayer money on our cases. But we sued the oil industry, which were the big eight companies under a new shared monopoly kind of theory. So it was lots of fun. How long were you at the FTC? About three years.

Three years? I thought it was longer than that. No, it was not. So I was lots of fun. How long were you at the FTC? About three years. Three years? I thought it was longer than that. No, it was 70. So I was out. I went in in 1972 and came out about three years later. And I always thought I'd go back to my law firm in Detroit because I was a partner in that law firm. And they wanted me to come back and so forth. But I decided to interview with law firms from the FTC.

You had to be careful ethically about starting the interview process. But the big law firms are looking for people coming out of the FTC and coming out of the Justice Department to defend the companies that are being sued by all these guys. to defend the companies that are being sued by all these guys. So I interviewed, actually came close to working for Sidley & Austin, which was the Chicago-based firm that was handling all the ATT. After I left, at about the time I left the FTC, they were going after the whole AT&T telephone system and breaking it up. So Sidley & Austin was defending all those companies, and they wanted people like me.

So I went to Chicago, interviewed them, and then I also was interviewed by the firm I ended up going to, which was Steptoe & Johnson, because I had met the head of the antitrust practice at Steptoe when I was in the FTC, he was on the other side of the case. But ultimately this presents a scenario in which you're jumping the fence and changing sides, right?

Was there any kind of ethical dilemma around that? Didn't cause me a lot of problems. Yeah, this was a very prestigious law firm in Washington. They were bringing me in as a partner. You know, if I'd gone in that firm as an associate, I don't know whether I would have made partner. I didn't go to Harvard or Yale Law School, which is where most of them came from. Harvard, Yale, Stanford. So, Michigan was, you know, it was a top-ranked law school, but it wasn't in the,

you know, in the higher. Right. So this was your entree, your opportunity to kind of come in and be with the big boys. See if I could swim in that atmosphere. And how old were you? Like 35? I was, no, I was 35. Yes. But that was the one about the age when you became a partner at that point. Right. But I had to prove myself when I got in there, so. And so I think I was six or something when we moved to Washington. So I must've been 10 or something like that

when you joined Steptoe. Yes, yeah, yeah, or nine, right? Nine or 10, right? So I must have been 10 or something like that when you joined Steptoe. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Or nine, right? Nine or 10, right? Yeah.

And yeah, you were thrown into the Washington scene, so to speak, and getting beat up on the street corner while you were waiting for the bus. Yeah. I had a well-documented... I mean, I'm interested in how you remember me at that period of time. I just remember myself being kind of a sensitive kid who was a little bit awkward and uncomfortable in my own skin and sort of kind of bumbling around, a little bit confused. Like I was a sweet kid, I was a little introverted and kind of had difficulty making friends unless I was in like an optimal social environment. Well, yeah, but you had, your best friend was Eric Melanie that lived right behind us.

We had a neighborhood, yeah. It was, you ride your bikes around the neighborhood and all that kind of good stuff. And you went to the Bethesda Elementary School. It seemed like you were doing pretty well, but I know you were somewhat awkward. I think at Bethesda Elementary, I didn't really know what was going on.

And then I don't think I was off to an excellent academic start, but perhaps around the time that you joined Steptoe, suddenly we went from very much middle-class to you then making a much better living. And then you were able to send me to St. Patrick's and that was like an incredible environment in which I thrived.

And I kind of, you know, came out of my skin at that period of time. I can't remember how you got to St. Patrick's. I don't, I have no idea. A bus or your mother drove you? It wasn't close to home. I think there was, I think you drove me or took me to a bus. I think there was a bus stop.

There was one of those, like at one of the circles, Westmoreland Circle or something like that, where you would drop me off and I'd take a bus. But I remember when you were waiting for the bus, or was it? Yeah, well, you were waiting for the bus. And there was that guy that used to, you know, make your life miserable.

Well, that was Bethesda Elementary, I think, taking my hat and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, there was a lot of that. We were worried about, you know, there was this tough kid in the neighborhood, you know, that was harassing you. But we were, you know, I think it was, from my perspective, you know, I didn't think you were, you know, having, certainly not having academic problems or, you know, learning or anything like that. You were a smart, smart kid. You liked to read.

You, you know, you were anything like that. You were a smart, smart kid. You liked to read, you, you know, you were picking up on everything. You know, we played around with sports because I was, you know, interested in that, you know, and soccer, that didn't seem to go so well. Yeah. I mean, I played soccer for a number of years, but I was absolutely, you know, hopeless.

But of course, you know, the minute you hit the water, that was like, you know, that was where you belonged. And I think, you know, and you were incentivized by just getting a trophy, you know. Yeah, I mean, there's nothing like, you know, success to, you know, inspire a young person. I mean, I was naturally good at it. And then of course you gravitate towards

what you're sort of getting accolades in. And I was naturally good at it. Although I think, I don't know. I mean, I think I was on a swim team when I was like seven or something. I didn't, it wasn't until like I was 10 and then I started getting good. Getting serious.

Yeah. And then it became like kind of really serious. But I remember those St. Patrick years like in elementary school very fondly. And then I went off to Landon and that became a whole different story. Yeah, I know, I'm sorry about that. There's nothing to apologize.

I mean, I remember being very excited to get into that school. I mean, it was like this prestigious prep school and you had to apply and it was know, it was a big deal, you know, and I wanted to do well, but I, you know, in retrospect, looking back, like I don't think it was the right environment for me. Well, at St. Patrick's though,

they are the ones that said you should go there. Did they say that? Yeah, they said, well, you know, we don't think you should go to St. Albans because I don't know what, because two, and Sidwell doesn't give you enough structure, you know, and they were the ones I think that sort of directed you there. So it's their fault.

I think they had a lot to do with that. But anyway, it was in, it was not far away and it was, you know, and I felt for you in some of those situations. I mean, looking back on it, I've made, I've really made peace with a lot of it. I think I held on to a resentment about it for a long time, and, you know, I've exerted a lot of energy to kind of work through all of that. And I would say that reconnecting with Tom Scott and then participating in the Nantucket Project last year and seeing a bunch of people from my class who also attended that was incredibly healing and has given me kind of a revisionist perspective on it that's allowed me to feel a lot better about it.

And the truth is like, look, these are 1% or problems. Like I had the privilege of growing up in a family where you guys could provide everything that I needed and send me to these amazing academic institutions that gave me an incredible head start. But I think one advantage of it that you have real, you know that you had, that came out of it, a real, look, your life was not that tough in almost all respects. But the one thing that they said was, you can't swim with this club team because you're going to miss mandatory football in the fall or baseball or lacrosse in the spring. And they had this very rigid sports program at atlanta and you can't

miss that whereas if you want to be a top swimmer you got to work out in the morning and then you got to work out in the afternoon and it's you know you just have to do that and you took it upon yourself to go to the administration and make your case and say, look, I have to do this. And if I can't, you know, if you won't let me, I'm going to have to leave the school. Big threat. Yeah.

I'm sure they were quaking in their boots over that. No, they were. Ultimatum. But you were doing it well academically, very well academically. And they didn't want to lose you. You know, you were going to well academically, very well academically, and they didn't want to lose you. You were going to be one of the kids that's going to get into Harvard or Stanford or whatever,

swimming or not. And they respected somebody who would come in, make his case. I think he did it in writing. Well, I had an ally in the headmaster, Maltz and Coates, who actually liked me and was a fan well I had I had an ally in the headmaster well mouth to coats who actually

you know liked me and was a fan and was a support system for me the athletic department was not you know looking upon that

as kindly and who was the coach again that well it was Lowell Davis the athletic director and he just had it in him that he was going to defeat me

no matter what and I'm like this little skinny 15 year old-old kid who's just saying like, I want to go swim with this club team, swim in the morning, swim in the afternoon. I don't want to do sports at Landon. I'm not going to like, I remember the headmaster saying, well, what happens later in life when you go to the club and you're going to play tennis? And I just thought, well, that's not my life. I'm not gonna be that. That's not the guy that I'm gonna be. I really am committed to trying to be excellent

in this regard. And it confounded me and confused me and angered me that they couldn't see that and wouldn't support that. And so I really did, like I put it in writing and you helped me, like you helped me make a case. Like we had to litigate this and it was not an overnight thing. had to litigate this and it was not an overnight thing. At first they said no. And it went through all these iterations until

finally they relented. And I think if I'm, uh, if I'm correct that at least at that time, I was the only person they had ever exempted from their athletic department to allow me to go do this thing, which I then did. And- They said, if this kid gets away with it, what's good about it? Yeah, like what's the precedent? It's a slippery slope argument.

And then I think junior year is when I wanted to participate in the high school, the local high school swimming championships, metros. And in order to do that, your high school had to have a swim team and my high school did not have a swim team. So I started one. It was, there was one member. I was the only one.

Wasn't there one other guy? I don't, I don't think so. But I had to piggyback on these other high school meets in order to like go through the ramifications of qualifying and then ended up, you know, doing well at that meet. And to this day, there is a swim team at Landon now. And I feel like I helped birth that in my own, you know, kind of inelegant way. But that was quite a saga. And I will say, you know, also, you know, I have to thank you for supporting me in pursuing that dream because it was, you know, it was like an off-center thing

and it required you waking up with me at 4.30 every morning and driving me to some practice. Secretly hoping it wouldn't be. And you did that in the little MG and you would drive me to some practice and you would sit in the car while I was training in the dark cold and like mark up these briefs, like work in the car until I was done. And you did that until I could get a driver's license. And that was a huge thing. And I think about that all the time.

I think about that when, you know, now we're in this situation where, you know, our home is fractured and Julie and I are living in two different places during the week. And, you know, we're trying to support Mathis in art school and it's not easy. And I think, well, my dad got up and drove me to swim practice at 4.30 in the morning. Like this is the least I can do to pay it forward for my own child. But the good thing is you don't have to go to swim meets every Saturday. Yeah. That's the harder part, right? Oh my God. Oh yeah.

Yeah. Driving out to Bowie and sitting in a steamy, chlorinated natatorium for seven hours. I used to actually take boxes of documents. This is in the days way before computers when we did all our antitrust cases with documents, and I'd take a box of documents to the swimming meet. I could finish a whole box during a swimming meet. I could finish a whole box during a swimming meet. Because people who aren't used to that don't realize it, but their child only has about two minutes of glory during an entire day.

Eight hours and driving to these places way out in the middle of nowhere. But you did that. Well, yeah. And we became kind of the middle of nowhere, but you did that. Well, yeah, and we became kind of, you know, the kind of parents that, you know, that are aggressively, you know, involved with, not like we were screaming at anybody or anything like that,

but we were pushing it, you know, and we wanted you to succeed, and we knew how happy it made you. And of course, not just you, but our daughter as well. So- I felt that. I mean, you were never like the crazy parents in the stands yelling or anything like that. But there was definitely a sense, if not an expectation, that you will succeed.

Yeah. And I felt that and I shouldered that. And I was able to fulfill that, I think, in certain respects. But I also think I paid a toll for that as well. Yeah. Well, I think it also exempted you from some of the knocks, the knocks that you might otherwise receive going through high school. Like, you gotta maybe get a part-time job,

maybe learn more about girls, maybe learn more about social stuff, maybe get into a little trouble, with alcohol or whatever, but- Earlier. Yes, and not being exposed to, and Landon of course is, there was a social scene at Landon that you weren't in. No, not only did I exempt myself

from the athletic program, I exempted myself from the social environment. And I lived a very monk-like existence. I would wake up ridiculously early. I'd go to some practice. I'd get through school. Whenever there was a study hall, I would fall asleep on a desk.

I was exhausted all the time and would go to some practice after school and then do my homework and be asleep by nine o'clock every day. And then weekends were swim meets. Right. And that was it. Yeah, yeah.

And the kids at Atlanta knew that that's what you were doing. So, you know, the proms, the dances. I didn't get in trouble. I didn't do any of that normal stuff. And so you had to face up to it. But I was very driven. I was like, I'm going to get into all these schools and I got into all of them. And that was like, I mean-

12 for 12 or whatever. It was pretty epic to get into basically every college you apply to. And I think there was a... Obviously, that's going to make you feel good, but I'd also, obviously that's gonna make you feel good, but I'd also, I felt like the weight of that too, I think. What does that mean? And how does that impact the choices you're gonna make later in life with what you're gonna do with yourself? I thought an interesting thing that I always thought

you and Neil Phillips would go off to Harvard and talk and Neil Phillips would go off to Harvard. And talk about Neil Phillips and how he was regarded at Landon, how you were and how you came together. Sure, so Neil Phillips was the best athlete in our school. And Landon School was a boys prep school. It was small and exclusive. There were only like 60 people in my class.

Neil was African-American, a very gifted athlete, an incredibly charismatic individual and intelligent, the best basketball player, the best football player. He played all three sports, baseball, gets into Harvard. I mean, just on this incredible trajectory towards success. And he has blazed quite an amazing path for himself. He is now regarded as a great civil rights leader on behalf of, you know, he's championing underprivileged African-American boys. And he now founded and runs this school in Florida and travels a lot. He's an incredibly prolific public speaker. At the Nantucket Project this past fall, he interviewed George W. Bush on stage and it was riveting. It was absolutely riveting to see

two people from very different perspectives come together for, you know, a compelling talk was something to behold. And, you know, he's marched with John Lewis and he's done a lot of amazing things. And I have so much respect for, you know, what he's done with his life and, you know, to be able to reconnect with him this past fall. But you connected with him back then, didn't you? When you both got into Harvard? A little bit. Yeah, I got into Harvard. Back then, didn't you, when you both got into Harvard? A little bit, yeah, I got into Harvard. And I ended up not going. And there are, listen, there's plenty of times

where I think, you know, maybe I made a mistake, you know. I know that you would have preferred me to go there. And look, for good reason, you know, who says no to that? Like, who am I to decline that opportunity that nobody gets, you know? And how would my life have been different, you know? It's hard to say. It's hard to say.

And I can't spend a lot of time, you know, entertaining that, but it definitely would have been different, I think. Right, right. But I was happy, you know, at Stanford. And that's when I started, you know, making all of these mistakes and kind of sowing some wild oats

that I never did in high school. And I think- Same thing would have happened at Harvard. But I think a lot of it was the expression of repressed emotions that I didn't understand and really didn't know how to process about what I was doing and what makes me happy. I was on this path towards success and upward mobility

without ever taking a moment to stop and say, like, what do I wanna do? What do I wanna be? What makes me happy? Because I do think that I was an offbeat kid. And I think I, you know, had I not gotten into any colleges, I would have done some kind of, you know, offbeat artistic thing, you know,

but I was on this path towards being a consultant or an investment banker or a lawyer or a doctor. And then, you know, alcohol entered the equation and then all bets were off, you know, and hence, you know, ushered in a very painful period, you know, not just for me, but for you. I mean, what I put you guys through, you know. That was painful. Yeah. Talk about, for a second, I'm interviewing you.

No, I mean, about Michigan, because Michigan was always on the horizon because of your grandfather and you went there. And is that the first time you started drinking? I think, I mean, I don't know that it, it's the first. I'm going to put on my Michigan hat. You're going to put your Michigan hat on. I went on a recruiting trip to the University of Michigan. I was recruited there by the great John Urbanchak, who was the coach at the time, still like my favorite swim coach ever. I think, I just think he's the best. And he was really rebuilding the program

at that period of time and trying to create something, you know, noteworthy and remarkable with the resources. Yeah, he got that guy, other guy younger than you that made the Olympics, right? From Washington. Tom Dolan. No, no, it was the other guy. Well, Michael Phelps.

No, before that, there was a guy that did the canoeing. Oh, Mike Barrowman. Mike Barrowman, who got a medal. Yeah, Mike Barrowman, famous Olympic swimmer. And for those that didn't read my book or are kind of coming into this green- Oh, I forgot it's in your book, right? Yeah, but I mean, a lot of people who listen to this haven't read the book.

My mother who's sitting right over here, her father was a champion swimmer at the University of Michigan in the late 1920s and early 1930s. I believe he was captain of the team in 1929. An Olympic hopeful. Tried out for the Olympics in 32. In 32, and he got third or fourth, whatever the one, I think they were taking three at the time,

and he got fourth. So he missed by one slot, if I'm not mistaken. He actually held the American record in the 150-yard backstroke, which is an event they don't do anymore. I mean, he held the American record in the 150-yard backstroke, which is an event they don't do anymore. I mean, he held an American record. It's really quite amazing. And when you visit the University of Michigan Natatorium,

it's called the Mat Man Natatorium. That was his coach at the time, legendary swim coach. And along the hallways, they have all of the old team photos, and you can find his photo on the wall. And now it's hanging in my container office. There's a picture in the book. And I never had the opportunity to meet him because he passed away before I was born.

He died of a heart attack at age 54. And I know that that was a very traumatic experience in my mother's life and Nancy's life. And I never really thought that much about him. you know, I went on this own, you know, my own journey with alcohol and then, you know, later on the second bottom of like, you know, reconfiguring my lifestyle that I started thinking about him a lot more. And now at 52, I think about him all the time because I'm two years shy of when he passed away. And in so many ways, I feel this kinship with this person that I've never met. And so certainly that was part of the allure of, you know, attending Michigan.

And I thought, you know, long and hard about doing that. But to get back to your question, yeah, I went on a recruiting trip to Michigan and there was a swim meet going on during that visit. And then after the meet, there was a big party. And I remember being in somebody's apartment and there was a keg party and everybody's drinking. And I think maybe I'd had a beer or two. It wasn't like my first beer ever or anything like that. But this was the first time that I was in like an environment where I really wanted to be part of this social community.

I really like looked up to all of these athletes. And there was one moment in particular where there was the diver, Bruce Kimball. Oh, Bruce Kimball was there? Who was the most famous diver in the world other than Greg Louganis at the time. Olympic medalist, his father, Dick Kimball, was the diving coach. Yeah, right.

And Bruce Kimball- They were from Ann Arbor, yeah, right. Bruce Kimball had a beer in his hand, and he did the most amazing thing that I've ever seen to this day, where he did, he was holding his keg cup of beer and from a flat foot, he did a, he did a, he jumped up in the air and did a back flip and landed on his feet, holding this cup of beer and he didn't spill any of it.

And I thought that is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. Whatever that guy has, like I want it. And I was like, I'm in, let me have a beer. You know, and I got loaded that night and ended up partying with him. Of course, you know, the sort of postscript to that story is Bruce Kimball would later careen his car into a crowd of people, killing at least one person and going to jail.

You know, he's an alcoholic. Destroyed his life, destroyed his career. You know, when I say, like, I want what that guy has, like, I did, you know, and then I ended up going on, you know, a less tragic version of that trajectory in a way that I couldn't have foreseen. Do you think Urbanchek knew what was going on with the team when you were recruiting? No, I mean, listen, you know, I think all of these coaches, whether they're swim coaches or,

you know, football, they know these kids are partying, but, you know, they cast a little bit of a blind eye. They have to keep a loose grip on this. Like they have to let these kids, you know, do what they're going to do in college. They can't over-police it. So I think on some level they kind of know and they make a choice to not get too involved. And I don't know what it's like now, but, you know, it was a free-for-all when I was in school. Do you think Skip knew?

Yeah, it's the same thing. You know, I think he kind of knew and kind of decided and kind of decided to not make too big of a deal. You guys weren't doing drugs, they were mainly drinking, right? It was drinking. Yeah, I never saw, I mean, once in a while, you'd see some kid doing hard drugs in college, but it wasn't part of my experience.

It was just a very, it was a drinking culture. And at that time at Stanford, I mean, you could roll a keg into the stands and just have at it and go crazy. I mean, they don't let you do that anymore. It was the same when I was at Amherst. It was whatever you wanted to do was fine. And it was just bananas. And I went crazy.

I think I, coming from a very structured environment to having that kind of freedom, I was ill-prepared for that and I wasn't mature enough to handle it. And I just went full on, but I think there was a, you know, something tweaked inside of me because my relationship with alcohol

was just different from everybody else. And I had a, if not a conscious awareness, a semi-conscious awareness of that from the very beginning. It just would take a very long time before I would do anything about it. And it just progressed over time until it got really dark and terrible. And I put you guys through a huge amount of pain.

Every time I cross- Terribly sorry. Every time I cross Pico Avenue coming from the airport, I think about, you used to live up there. Yeah, well, I lived on Marine off Main Street and there was that time when you came and visited me where I was really at my nadir. And it was after the wedding that went awry and all of that.

And it was super dark moment where I was like drinking in the morning. It was the Rose Bowl. Yeah, we went to the Rose Bowl. That's the last time Michigan. I can't even think about that weekend without getting really upset. Yeah.

I don't get that. It was really, you know, it was hard. Not because of the pain that I was in, but because of how I conducted myself with you, you know. But I think ultimately that precipitated, you know, the solution. Cause that was after that visit, you were like, I'm done. Like you're kind of on your own, you know,

we know what's going on. And if you want help, we're here from you, but you know, we can't really, you know, participate in this anymore. Well, we helped you get some help. Yeah. You know, which was, you know. But I'll never forget that because it was the, partly because of Michigan,

it was the Michigan national championship game. They ended up sharing it with Nebraska, but it was Woodson in the, and so actually had a pretty good time that day. After the actual game? Yeah, because you got me out of the field. I was standing in the end zone, you know, during the third quarter of that game.

But anyway, you know, I wanted to, you know, just publicly acknowledge that, you know, the support that you showed me during those difficult times, like really allowed me to get the help that I needed and to change my life. And it was just a really hard time for all of us. Very, very hard for us, Nancy and myself.

Yeah, because we had never experienced a problem in our family like that. We had death, you know, Nancy's father death. That was, you know, but- Well, and her brother. And her brother, too, yeah, on top of it. but sort of a breakdown in the family dynamic was very, very difficult for us to deal with. And we didn't know how to deal with it. And we didn't want to talk about it a lot with other people. It was our son, you know,

really in trouble with alcohol. Seeing, fortunately seeing a guy that, you know, got you into the rehab, which, and then we all traveled to that. And that was like an amazing eye-opener for me and Nancy and Molly, who your sister. Family week. Who went, I was chairman of the law firm at the time. And part of the reason I stopped doing it as long as I could have was this whole thing upset my life a lot.

Not in the sense that I wanted you know, I wanted to quit law or, you know, anything like that, but it was just like, hey, you know, there's more out there and there are other things I can do than just, you know, keeping my head down and doing my 3,000 hours a year and, you know, trying to run the law firm. So it was a time for, it actually was, for me personally,

in the end, it was a positive thing to have gone through that. So I don't feel, and I felt, think a lot more about life. So part of me also regrets the call I made. You know, I sort of triggered this whole thing in a way in terms of your path. Because I remember when you were on the waiting list at Cornell Law School.

And I think the waiting list is somewhere else, Georgetown or something. Yeah. And you were spending the summer in New York and got onto a movie project where you were helping out with a production of a movie. And I called you up, it was almost Labor Day and said, you know, if you want to go to law school, and I'm not suggesting that you should or shouldn't, but you're going to have to get your stuff together and be there in three days if you want

to go. And, you know, that was sort of like, you know, what if that didn't happen? Well, that was one of those pivotal moments. I mean, I had been a legal assistant at a big law firm in New York City and that kind of ended and I'd applied to law school. I got rejected everywhere. I was on the waiting list at these two schools. And in the meantime, I was a production assistant

on this low budget independent movie, which I was really- About abortion. Right, it was called Rain Without Thunder. Nobody saw it. But I actually, that was like the greatest job ever. My job was to drive the talent around. So I got to pick up Jeff Daniels from the hotel- Oh, I didn't know that.

And drive him to set. And I got to ask him all these questions about working with this director and that director and the theater company that he had in Michigan. Who else? And I got to ask him all these questions about working with this director and that director and the theater company that he had in Michigan. Who else, like Steve Zahn was in that movie. Linda Hunt, remember from the Killing Fields? No. The really short woman.

She won an Oscar for that. I got to drive her. I mean, I was getting coffee. It was like low on the wrong job, but it was really fun. But I was not in a good way. And yeah, I didn't even have an apartment anymore. I was like couch surfing at friends. So you didn't even know how to get ahold of me, but I had to be there right away. And I literally, you know, when I, when somehow you got in touch with a friend of mine who,

my friend, Chris Hildenbrand. The guy was Ty Brown. And then I had to get, you know, from, I had to like pack my bag and go down to DC and get a car and figure out where Ithaca was and drive in there. And like, literally I was in a law school class, like the next day, I didn't even have an apartment. I didn't know that I was going to, at that point I had written off

that that was even gonna be the path for me. Pablo was there though. Not at that time, because he had started there and then he had stopped out to train for the 92 Olympics in Barcelona. He then finished when I finished. So we did our final year together. But I think about that too,

like what would have happened had that not happened. But I don't think me freewheeling it in New York City would have ended well. I think in certain respects, like getting me out of Manhattan and into Ithaca in a structured environment was probably a good thing. And I actually enjoyed law school. Ultimately- Really? Being a lawyer in a law firm was not the path for me, but the academic aspect of being in law school, I actually, you know, I have fond memories of that.

I've never heard you say that. You haven't? But I didn't like law school, but- I enjoyed it. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, that could have been, I mean, you know, life could have been very, very different had that not happened.

But, you know, here we are. You know, I think it's also, even in sobriety for me, it's been a challenge for you to see me make choices that are kind of a little bit, you know, far afield from what perhaps you imagined I would be doing. It's not Georgetown, DC. Yeah. So it's like, I'm not, you know, I didn't move back to Washington. I'm not driving a Volvo around with stickers on the back window with the schools that my kids go to. Like I chose a different path. And I think that's been a process for you and mom to acclimate to.

Well, yeah. I think we're okay now, but it's been- Showing up at the wedding- It's been a journey. Showing up at the wedding when you got married to Julie within my seersucker suit. Right. With Bhagavan Das standing seven feet tall

and sandalwood on his forehead. Yeah, you know, I know, it's a lot. Julie, she was seven months pregnant. She was pregnant and she had a henna tattoo on her belly. Right. I mean, that's a lot for, you know, inside the beltway lawyer. Right, right, right, right. No, it lot for, you know, inside the beltway lawyer. Right, right, right, right.

You know, it was, but, you know, this, yeah, today, I mean, still, your lifestyle is so much different than ours. But we were talking last night. We just, you know, loved it. We think it's so great. And we love the kids. We loved it. We think it's so great. And we love the kids. Julie is an amazing, you know, she continues to enamored with Jaya and what a free spirit she is. She's a cool kid. Yeah.

Come a long way. We've made some choices about how to live that are a little bit different. And that comes with, we're not always making the right decisions about that, but I feel like we're trying to live in an authentic way and do it as responsible parents. Nancy always says, how does he make any money? And I constantly explain it as best I can, but it is somewhat of a mystery.

Well, there's no, you know, there's no edifice or boss, you know, from which the paycheck comes and it's a different, you know, it's, look, it's, I understand. You don't get a W-2. No. Well, maybe you do, I don't know. No, I don't get a W-2.

Well, I can explain all of that to you later. But she did say, it was funny, she's like, do you pay the guests to come on the podcast? I'm hoping to get paid. I'll send you the check later. Yeah, so, and I try to be, you know, empathetic and sympathetic to that because it is so different.

But I think we're in a good place now, aren't we? Yeah, I think so. I think so. Yeah. Well, I feel like you and I have grown a lot closer over the last, you know, two years or something like that. And that warms my heart. And I would like to, you know, continue that evolution.

Well, thank you. So. You know, I'm reserved about stuff like that, but I- What do you mean reserved? Well, I have more trouble talking about our relationship and, you know, how much I love you and things like that. So, it's just- We don't have to do it in a public forum.

It's just the way I am. Well, let's talk about George Marshall. Oh my God. Are you ever gonna get to it? Yeah, the book. This is why I'm here. No, no, no. Well, first of all,

it's your third book. Right. And tackling something like this is such a huge commitment of time and resources and energy. How do you settle on your subject matter? Why did you decide George Marshall is the person I want to spend the next five years with? Yeah. It's a progression because all three books actually have a common person that runs through them.

And it's the founder of my law firm, Stepton Johnson. The first book was about Louis Johnson, who was Secretary of Defense under Truman, fired by Truman famously, and replaced by George Marshall. So, yeah. There's a through line. That through line. And then Harry Hopkins, the second book, was one of Roosevelt's closest advisors and lived in the White House for three and a half years

and was a former social worker. But he and Marshall, of all people, became really close friends. And Marshall used Hopkins to get to Roosevelt, or he was a form of communication to the White House. Because George Marshall did not want to get real close on a social or intimate relationship with Franklin Roosevelt. It was a moral code that he had. So, I almost abandoned the Marshall Project because my first agent and publisher

did not like my original proposal. Actually, it was a much shorter treatment of Marshall. But they didn't, I don't think my agent really got it. And she didn't really know, you know, sort of that era, that time, that timeframe. So I switched agents and, you know, they encouraged me to make it a big book. And they encouraged me, you know, I said, you've got, you know, you've got talent as a writer. And, you know, said you've got you know you've got talent uh as a writer um and you know you can do this so they that's why it got to be as big as you know as long a book as it's possible also there was like this treasure trove of documents that were recently discovered right yeah a lot

of stuff well the question you know there's been biographies about Marshall. There's a four-volume, 2,000-page biography that was sort of the standard thing back in the 80s by a guy named Forrest Pogue. So everything, you have to start with that. The family letters and so on were donated to the Marshall Foundation three or four years ago. And then we happened to meet with George Marshall's, would be his step-grandson. Marshall had no children and he had this favorite stepson named Allen Brown who was killed in the war, World War II, that's a whole, that's a big story part of my book. But his, the guy that was killed, his son lives up in Northern Massachusetts.

And he, you know, we went up, Nancy and I went up to visit with he and his wife in this little farmhouse, it's up on the border between Vermont and Massachusetts on the Connecticut River. And he pulls out this box of documents underneath a bench in his den. Started pulling things out, and that just went nuts. You know, the letters that had, you know, in these thin envelopes that were written during the war, the so-called V letters back and forth. So, he loaned that whole box to me. So, I, you know, took them home.

And I actually started getting nervous that I'd lose them or something like that. So, I made records of all of them and gave them back. or something like that. So I made records of all of them and gave them back. But for example, the battle map that was in this guy's father's hand when he was leading a tank on the way to Rome, shot in the head with a sniper, but the battle map itself just gave me chills

because I had a piece of Marshall's history. So, the thing about Marshall, though, is character. And if you have to say anything about the book, it's just, you say, what is it about? What is it? It's character. Yeah. I mean, look, we're talking about a guy who's, you know, being secretary of defense and- Secretary of state. Secretary of state and, you know, winning the Nobel prize and, you know, being a leader in

World War I and World War II, and then ultimately all the way through the Cold War. I mean, this guy's legacy is just, you know, it's insane, but he's always kind of been perceived as this austere, you know, stoic. Aloof. Nobody could really kind of been perceived as this austere, stoic. Nobody could really kind of get a handle on his personality or his character. And that's kind of what you've been able to crack here with this. Oh, I hope so. But it's not easy with him. He is a very, very difficult character to get a handle on.

very difficult character to get a handle on. But with the letters from his, you know, to and from him, his favorite, the son he never had, his stepson. Right. He married. His first wife couldn't have kids, right? She had a heart condition. And died. And then he marries this actress later.

Yeah. And, you know, gets this stepson, Alan, who was kind of the son he never had, and ends up sort of pulling some strings to make sure that he got into this tank battalion that ultimately leads to his demise. Right, so there's that ironic thing. Yeah, Marshall pulled strings.

He never would do it a favor for anybody, but he did for this kid, headstrong stepson that he really loved, got him into the 1st Armored Division, which had just finished with Kasserine Pass and was going into Italy. And, of course, Marshall, from a strategic point of view, never wanted to be in Italy anyway. He had this fight with Churchill over that. But anyway, stepson, they pull strings for him, gets into Italy, and then gets killed. And actually, his wife, Catherine, the mother of Alan, knew that she found out that Marshall had pulled strings to get them into this armored tank unit. And she was mad. She was. Well, yeah.

You know, she was. I mean, that could be considered an unforgivable. And he wrote, he wrote Allen, he said, keep this confidential, but your mother is really angry about how I got you into this stuff. But, you know, and you know, when he was killed, it was, you know, obviously a devastating thing for his mother and everybody else.

So, that story is that sort of a back story that goes into talking about Marshall and all of his accomplishments, setbacks, you know, mistakes. But, you know, probably his greatest moment and the moment he'll be remembered for was a speech at Harvard in 1947 where he was not a great speaker, but he gave the speech that introduced the Marshall Plan, which what became known as the Marshall Plan. He never called it the Marshall Plan, he never called it the Marshall Plan, but it was called the Marshall Plan. And it was the economic plan that the United States financed that saved Western Europe. Right.

Rebuilding Europe. It was originally called the Truman Plan, right? But Truman's popularity was in the gutter at the time. Well, Truman said, you know, don't call it that. Anything that they send up with my name on it is going to, what did he say? Anything that they send up to the Hill with my name on it is going to quiver a couple of times,

fall onto its belly and die, he said. Even the worst congressman, even the worst Republican will vote for something if it has Marshall's name on it. So, anyway, his name, he's called the man with a plan, but he did so much more. So, I have this great reverence for the way he conducted himself and the strong character he had, because he could have been president. He could have been anything. Right.

He turned down the job of leading. Well, Eisenhower became president because of Marshall. Marshall could have had the job of leading the Normandy invasion, which incidentally is the 75th anniversary in June. But Marshall could have had that had he asked for it and he wouldn't ask for it. The president wanted him in Washington at the time. And he was able to kind of set aside his own personal ambitions and his ego for what was required to do the job, which goes to that, you know, issue of character.

I mean, do you think, you know, time and time again, this is a guy who's like so disciplined in how he compartmentalizes his personality in order to kind of do the job. And he's continually, you know, from like building, you know, the military building, you know, the military complex as we know it today from scratch and, you know, reinvigorating the officer corps, like all of these things, like the legacy of the work that he did back then we're still living with.

But do you think like, had he, like, what is the price that he paid for, you know, ascribing to this you know ego is the enemy kind of you know stoic mindset i mean could he have been president like what what you know what would his his path have been had he allowed himself to probably he probably wouldn't have been a great president because he was so he had this moral code that He was much more inflexible, I suppose, with respect to politicians. He had a- He just wouldn't play the game. A form of contempt, yeah, toward the political side of things.

And he had a terrible temper, which he managed to control most of the time, but sometimes it let loose. The people that have blurbed the book, and there are about 10 of them, I think now, you know, some famous authors and, you know, the generals and so on. The, what, you know, what they're,

some of them are saying, some of it's just implicit, is that they say things like, in this era of failed leadership today, this man, George Marshall, stands out or wish we had a Marshall today, that kind of stuff. So there's a political, you know, I think the reviews and so forth of the book are gonna probably be looking at that. Yeah, the timeliness of it, because the juxtaposition of his moral character, you know, in contrast to what we're seeing, you know, currently- The amoral.

Like kind of, you know, hoist him up as this example, you up as this example or this kind of archetype that we need to reconnect with. is General Mattis, who of course resigned because the president, I forget exactly what the president didn't do that he wanted to do, but there were serious- So many things have happened since then. It's impossible. Yeah, so Mattis was kind of a monk-like character. He wasn't even married, or isn't, never married,

but is kind of regarded as the same sort of person who, you know, is above it all. But do you think that a person of, you know, Marshall's kind of ethical stature could even survive, you know, Capitol Hill right now? Probably not. Without, you know, somebody who's going to say, I stand on this ground and I'm not going to play, you know, I'm not going to submit to the histrionics of daily politics isn't going to last a week. It's not to say he wasn't. I mean, in order to get the Marshall Plan passed through Congress, it was a titanic job. As you're talking about post-war

America, we're trying to get our economy back on their feet. And they want to spend, at that time, $13 billion on saving a bunch of countries in Western Europe. So the selling of that Marshall Plan was a hugely political exercise. And Marshall, because he was regarded as nonpartisan, had a huge role in basically lobbying the congressman.

So it wasn't like he was... One of the reasons why Roosevelt wanted him in Washington was because he was good with Congress. So I'm just saying, the political situation, his political expertise, it was a different kind. Now, if he were secretary of defense or secretary of state under Trump, I can't imagine it would last for more than six months.

Right. He might have let a few things go by, but if he's getting continually undermined or contradicted or belittled, either that or somehow he would have captured Trump as he did Truman. Truman just, you know, revered Marshall. I mean, anything Marshall wanted, but Trump would never do that in my judgment. So, I mean, what are the kind of lessons that we can draw from this guy's example that are relevant to helping us kind of understand and finding our way forward in this climate? You know, character matters. You know, we, you know, it just, in magnanimity, I mean, you know, David Brooks wrote a great little book about character.

I just heard him on a podcast the other day. He's had quite a revelation in his personal life. I know, I know. And the recent book, and people are wondering whether he's Christian or Jewish and all that stuff. That's kind of beside the point. I know, well, but they are. And so, in any event, you know, character matters. Are we ever going to get back to the point where we have these kinds of people in our government? You know, the last—we've been hearing a lot about the Bush family recently because of Susan Page's book about Barbara Bush.

And Susan Page is a good friend of ours. And the last kind of president that bore any resemblance and had a cabinet that bore any resemblance to the way it was with Marshall is George H.W. Bush, probably. And are we ever going to get back to the era where we have moral people that will take stands on principle? Well, there seems to be a split. And I'm interested in your perspective on this as somebody who's lived in Washington for a very long time and is steeped in politics as a Beltway insider. There's the perspective that what's happening now is is an anomaly that's what we have to we have to weather it out and you know that ballast will find you know its neutral point you know that it will swing back towards some semblance of normalcy right and the other camp which is things are never going to be the same you know we've created a different system and we've accepted certain things and created precedents for which it's unclear what the future holds.

I'm concerned about that. So what do your colleagues on Capitol Hill, what is the kind of inside banter on all of that. You know, I think that the communications that we have now in getting the information out and how quickly it gets out, you know, by tweet, you know, and all the social media has changed it probably forever, you know, and we're react, we have to react much quicker to everything. forever, you know, and we have to react much quicker to everything.

And so, you know, I do think that we're never going to get back to sort of the old days of George H.W. Bush and that kind of, you know, it's elitist. It's, you know, the Brent Scowcrofts and those kinds of people. you know, took us part of that way in terms of, you know, not having the, I don't know, the standing, the strength of character that somebody like Marshall or the predecessors have had. So I think there's probably a permanent shift that isn't good and we're not going to come back to it. So, I'm not, the identity politics, the idea that we now have, you know, 20, probably more than 20, I think de Blasio is about to move into the Democratic candidacy. Everybody's running for president all at once. It's unbelievable. One-term senators.

I heard a joke the other day. Somebody said like they could just throw in a name with a stock photo of somebody to see if it would just fly under the radar until somebody said, wait, who's that guy? The guy from the Abercrombie and Fitch catalog? Yeah, and I haven't even heard about Howard Schultz lately but you know

I haven't heard anything about him lately so you know everybody thinks well if Trump can pull it off you know somebody else so you know and I'm worried about what will happen

when Trump loses which you know good chance he will about what will happen when Trump loses, which, you know, a good chance he will next time around, you know, the transition and, you know, when he's out of power, he'll be in it, he'll be causing just about as much trouble as he is now. Yeah, he's not gonna go quietly into the night, no matter what happens.

No, it'll be a- And what is that gonna look like? Terrible transition. And yeah, it's... So I don't wanna be overly, sounding like an old grouch about how things are going these days and so forth. And the good old days.

There are some great candidates among the Democrats. I'm not sure who I would choose at this point. It's early days. And his incredible capacity for leadership, like what are some of those know, I'm interested in kind of like how you distill down what it was about him that made him so effective. Well, I think, you know, his choice of people to be put in various jobs, you know, he didn't like self-promoters. He didn't, you know, he was selfless himself to an enormous degree.

And so he chose people that weren't self-promoters. He chose people that replicated his own abilities. replicated his own abilities. In terms of leading people, a lot of it has to do with I think Dean Acheson used to try to describe it. Dean Acheson

worked with Marshall a lot. Dean Acheson was Secretary of Defense, or Secretary of State after Marshall. He had a sense when he entered the room, everybody knew that he was entering the room. Right. It was a sense of controlled power. Now, what was that?

It was, you know, he ran meetings where he basically let everybody talk before he would then render an opinion he had this amazing gravitas you know and people didn't mess around with him um how did he do that um the best the best words that i could remember from where atchison's words controlled power he was under control uh everything was businesslike, rapid fire. It was all serious stuff. No joking around, no bullshit.

And if there was bullshit, he would call it out. But he always, he let everybody else talk until they were done. And then he would say, okay, this is what we're gonna do. Right. He was not, you know, he was not a good speaker, public speaker, notorious, read speeches. He was more effective in small groups.

I think he, everybody knew he lived by a moral code that was above most others, and they did not want to displease him in any way. He said, he used to say to the guys that worked for him, women, actually, he was a fairly important promoter of women later when he was Secretary of State. But he would say, don't worry the problem. I don't want to hear about the trouble you're having with my assignment. Just solve the fucking problem. Just do it, yeah. I don't want to hear about that stuff. When he was trying to figure out how to design the Marshall Plan, he didn't design it.

He found the guy, the brightest guy in the State Department, George Kennan, and he pulled Kennan out from the war college or wherever he was and brought him into Washington. This was right after he became Secretary of State. He set up a policy planning thing. Anyway, he explained his vision of a Marshall Plan to help Western Europe. He explained his vision of a Marshall Plan to help Western Europe. And he said to Kennan, you got three weeks to come up with a plan. And Kennan said, well, you know, what do you want? Do you have any guidance or whatever? He said, yeah, avoid trivia.

Now, he may have said a few more things than that. But Kennan already knew that. Now, he may have said a few more things than that, but Kennan already knew that. In fact, what Kennan wrote back in 1946 about Russia is such a perfect analysis of the way the Russian people and their governments are and have been ever since. They're doing the same thing today that Kennan talked about back in 1946. In what respect? Marshall found, well, that they were paranoid. There was a paranoid, not just, you know, not just Stalin, Stalin at the time, but now we're dealing with Putin and all the people between them.

Borders. It's all about border security. And when NATO is expanding now from what used to be 12 countries to 29, surrounding the Soviet Union, now today Russia, right on their borders, it drives them crazy. And you can make an argument that we should never have expanded NATO the way we have, because it just exacerbates the problems that we have with Russia. But also, their desire to destabilize, this is back in 1946, he was talking about that. Now, today we're using cyber methods to destabilize the United States,

but Cannon was predicting it back then. But Cannon was such an intellectual, it was always hard to ever pin him down because the minute you started talking, well, it's all about, you know, we got to have more missiles or whatever. No, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about containing them through economics.

So, I'm just saying, Marshall picked Kennan, put him, and the first thing he did when he came to the State Department, he said, nobody around here is thinking about problems that we may face in the future. He got Cannon.

He brought Cannon back from Russia or from wherever he was. I think it was at Russia at the time and set up a policy planning thing. And Cannon basically ran the State Department foreign policy under Marshall. But he crafted the essence of what became the Marshall Plan. Yeah. And I think there were three different people, actually. It was Marshall's thoughts, a guy named Chip Bolin actually wrote the first draft of the speech.

He was a young interpreter, but a very smart guy. And then Cannon, Cannon was the big brain. But what I hear in that is, in Marshall, this guy who would approach these problems by finding the smartest people who knew more than him, and he wasn't afraid to push them out front and to sublimate his own personal aspirations or egoic tendencies in order to get the job done.

Yeah, you say that better than I do. That's right. Yeah, and the lesson in that is, you know, ultimately, you know, at the end of the day, like this guy's one of the greatest statesmen of all time and we all know who he is. was forged through a persistent refusal to make these decisions based on his own personal advancement, like the irony of that, you know what I mean? And I think there's a lot to be appreciated about that level of humility. I mean, this is what Ryan talks about in this book.

You know, ego is the enemy. Like when you're being driven by your ego versus sublimating the ego for, you know, sublimating the ego in order to be of maximum service to getting the job done properly without forethought for who's getting credit for it, ultimately results in the advancement that you're probably seeking anyway. That's right. And it happened to Marshall in two iconic moments. One, when he grabbed

General Pershing in First World War, grabbed him by the arm. Because Pershing had come and had criticized the training of the First Division when they were, this is when they were still trying to get ready to go into the First World War. They were over in France training. Pershing came and ripped everybody apart. And Marshall was at that time a major, not a general. And grabbed Pershing's arm, literally. It was like, you know, grabbed the head of the army. The whole American Expeditionary Force was Pershing.

Grabbed his arm and said, you don't understand what's going on here. We're getting bullshit orders. He didn't say that. But he said, we're getting these orders from your people and back where they are, and they don't make any sense. And he went, blah, blah, blah, and he went on. And everybody said, you're done. And Pershing came back a few days later and said, let's sit down and talk about this. I think you hit, you know.

He came back a few days later and said, let's sit down and talk about this. I think you hit – same thing happened with 22 years later. He's in a meeting where he wants to be appointed by Roosevelt chief of staff. He's up for being chief of staff, but he's sitting in this meeting in the back of the cabinet room in the White House. And Roosevelt's talking away and doing his usual and coming up with a plan this is 1938

how many planes they should build or whatever and he says, don't you think so, George? Trying to get everybody else in the room had agreed on board with his everybody else in the room had agreed. On board with his. Everybody else in the room had agreed and said, oh, yeah, that's right, Mr. President. And Marshall said, first of all, he's irritated that the president called him by his first name.

But Marshall didn't like that. If you didn't know him, if you knew him, it was okay. Patton called him by his first name. But so he said, I don't agree with that at all, Mr. President. And Roosevelt was shocked, he was startled, and the meeting ended. And so all of Marshall's friends said,

you just ruined your chance to be. But there's multiple examples of this where he speaks truth to power in a very blunt and frank way in a career ending way. And yet ultimately he keeps sort of not just surviving that, but advancing himself as a result. You know, if he did that to Trump, you know, Trump would never confront him personally, but it might be the end of him with Trump. I don't know. What was the most surprising thing that you learned about him and all of this research that you've done over the years?

Well, I suppose that the inner life part of it was- He's actually a human being. Yeah. And around his, he had a few intimate friends, and I relate to that. He didn't like to go out in Washington and socialize and all that stuff. But he had this intense love. One of the things I didn't even put in the book was

they sent Alan, the favorite stepson, to a prep school in Virginia called Woodbury Forest. And on one of my trips down to Lexington, I decided I'm going to go to Woodbury Forest, the prep school, and see what they have in terms of letters from Marshall or Marshall's wife to this kid while he was in prep school. And the kid was always getting in trouble. I knew he was, you know, but he was a great athlete. And that's what Marshall loved, you know, to go fishing with him and monitor his progress at Woodbury Forest. So I couldn't believe it. The prep school let me look at everything that was there. And I didn't find anything.

I found out about how he stole a car one night and escaped and almost got kicked out of school and then the letters that go back and forth and how he, the various exploits, and how Marshall and his wife reacted to that. So, they're just parents, they're just like everybody else. He has to put his pants on one leg at a time just like everyone else. Yes, to put his pants on one leg at a time, just like everyone else. Yeah, and they had this relationship

with a young girl, Rose, who they met when he and his first wife moved into Washington. They moved in this apartment building and Rose was only eight. And she was precocious and she started, she saw Marshall in his uniform and started talking to him in the elevator, and he established a relationship that went for the rest of his life with her. Wow. all this stuff.

And she actually wrote a book about it, so you can find out how he confessed to her when he lost his first wife. So, there was a whole human side. Right, like this more robust interior life than you would have imagined. And this book is really kind of the first place where you're able to weave that. I think so, yeah. But you don't want to get – there's so much in terms of his accomplishments that you know, defies, you know, description where he's supposed to negotiate a coalition government between the communists and the nationalists. Right, like between Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong, right? So, you know, it's, so, and how hard he tried and how hopelessly.

That ultimately was a failure, right? Terrible failure. Terrible failure, but he spent too much time trying to do it. But again, and that was where he wouldn't take no for an answer. Everybody said, you're never going to be able to do this. Of course, they were right. So, he made a big mistake in terms of civil-military relations. He almost crossed the line with Roosevelt.

And, you know, he had all these reasons, but he engaged know, he observes the distinction between civilian authority and military authority, but he violated that code, but he came back from it. What do you think, I mean, Truman sort of famously sounded this warning bell about the impending problematic nature of the growing military industrial complex. Well, that was really Eisenhower, but- Oh, right, it was Eisenhower, I'm sorry. It was really Eisenhower. That was Eisenhower. That was his famous speech.

Right, yeah, that famous speech. What do you think Marshall would think of what that has become today? Well, I think he'd probably have some of the same reactions that Eisenhower had. But the one thing that he began promoting, and it's why Stanley McChrystal likes this book so much about Marshall. He believed that as a result of what happened in the Depression, in the Depression, one of Roosevelt's brainchilds was creating the Civilian Conservation Corps, where they took all these young, at that point it was all men, young men, 18 years old, whose parents didn't have jobs, 25% unemployment. So, he took all these young men and moved them into camps around the country, and the Army ran it. It's like a New Deal thing? Oh, yeah. This is the New Deal, 1932.

It's like a New Deal thing? Oh, yeah. This is the New Deal, 1932. Actually, by the summer of 1933, this plan was put together, and they were moving them all over the country, putting them in tents, and they were chopping trees down, and they were planting bushes in parks, and they were building dams, and they were doing all kinds of stuff. Well, Marshall was involved in that during the Depression. First of all, he ran the Southeast Division, and then he did. But he loved the idea of how these men from all walks of life would come together, and it was a unifying thing, and it was also about being a citizen. So he took that concept from the the Depression and he started promoting it. And he actually got a lot of traction right after the Second World War with a bill, universal military

service, you know, as a way to avoid a large standing army. And of course, you know, we have the voluntary army today, but in other words, instead of having to draft these people from scratch if you ever get into a conflict, you'd have everybody, it would be like Israel. You would have two or three years of mandatory service.

They're ready to go. In today's world, it might be more national service, and that's what Stanley McChrystal is promoting today. Not getting anywhere with it very far, but the idea of having citizens that learn about citizenship by helping, by doing something, helping something. Getting paid by the government, maybe, which would be hugely expensive. But he always loved the idea of national service. And he had great respect for how, you know,

if you get everybody together in some project, you know, when they're young, they come out of it and we have a more informed citizenship. And a esprit de corps and a sense of community and purpose. And, you know, there's a lot that comes out of that. And the guy from Brooklyn and the Native American from Arizona and, you know, all that sort of thing melding together with a citizenship. It may be, you know, too altruistic and too, but it was something that was ingrained in him. And it was-

But that's quite, you know, quite far afield from, you know, the current reality in which we have this intersection between, you know, the defense contractors and, you know, the K Street lobbyists and the legislators that are, you know, really, for lack of a better word, this cabal that, you know, creates policy at the highest level that drives our foreign policy. And that was what, you know, kind of the crux of my question, like, what would Marshall think of that? Like, that's very different from the esprit de corps of some kind of national service, where, you know, the amount of money and influence that gets peddled into decisions around how we're ramping up our military and our spending and how that trickles down into decisions that we make overseas is, you know, it's disturbing.

And yeah, it of course has, it's driven by, you know, having projects in the congressman's local districts. Right. And it's a jobs program, you know, rather than what do we really need for national defense. Right. And trying to shut down any of these programs is impossible. Right. And it's a jobs program, you know, rather than what do we really need for national defense. Right. And trying to shut down any of these programs is impossible.

Right. And that's troubling. Yes, it is. And I'm sure it would trouble Marshall. There's no question about it. You know, he was so far removed from, you know, he used to do budgets and all kinds of things like that. But, you know, he never went out and, you know, had to have sort of a regular job. His wife, you know, bought, his wife had money.

A second wife or the first wife? Second wife, yeah. She came from a family of, you know, back in the Civil War, they made money in the South. But she financed, she bought the houses. Right. You know, she bought a house. Well, there's that famous house. The Dodona house in Leesburg.

That was her, you know, she bought that. And I don't, you know, Marshall was offered tons of money to write his memoir. This is another thing about him. You know, everybody writes a book today. Right. But he had all kinds of people after him all the time to write a book, memoir. He could have made, you know, untold amounts of money. And most of these generals are doing it.

It'll be interesting to see whether or not. But he had a rich wife and he was living in a really nice house. Yeah. He didn't need the money. I don't think they ever lacked the other, although they had a mod. She bought the house in Leesburg and then they bought this one-story house

part of the way down south in North Carolina where he spent a lot of the later years. But he was getting a salary from the army until he died. Wow. But he famously did not. Um, so, but he famously did not, he said, I, if I, you know, if I wrote my memoirs, I'd have to, you know, talk about some people that I'd rather not talk about or some issues. I won't, I won't, I don't want to disparage anybody. It was unbefitting of a man of that, you know, kind of, uh, moral latitude. But he was friends with George Patton and Patton really

went after Marshall to be close to him. But he understood Patton. Patton understood Patton needed to be he was the combat general that everybody

had to have. So when Eisenhower was trying to decide whether to get rid of Patton because of the slapping incidents that got in all the newspapers, Marshall said, no, we got to use him. We'll use him after we get into Normandy. As soon as we get into Normandy, we're going to put him back in. So they used him as a decoy before Normandy. So he understood people like that, but he didn't respect Patton for his, well, his- His peccadilloes.

Well, yeah, and his self-promotion. Which was highly effective. Yeah. And yeah, Patton once had an opportunity when Marshall needed a place to live. You know, Patton took him into one of his apartments or one of his houses and he wrote his wife, he said, boy, if I pulled off a big one, I'm going to get a lot of, you know, I'm now close to Marshall and, you know, and he said, and then he says to his wife, but I'm not getting out much anymore.

You know, it's just like. He won't let him out to do his thing. So, anyway, it's, yeah. Well, good. Let's wrap this up. I'm going for two hours. It is an amazing accomplishment. I'm super proud of you. It's going to take me a while, like I said, to work my way through it, but I am looking forward to it. Don't worry about it. No, I'm going to, I'm more enthusiastic now about reading it.

And I'm just delighted that you accomplished this. I mean, it's no small thing. And I'm super excited for everybody to have a chance to read it. So it comes out July 9th. July 9th. Yeah. Yeah, and we're hoping to have an event up at the Chief of Staff's house in late June. I'm not sure that's going to work yet, but where we kind of launch it.

I'll have some books available by then. But I like to go and talk about it at various places. Yeah. So, we'll do that. No, you'll be doing the book tour. And I'll put on my website and on the episode page in the show notes, not only links to buy the book, but any appearances that you're doing, I'm happy to share with everybody. I love you. I love you too.

Very much. Super proud of you. And this was really fun. So thank you. All right. And tell Ryan hi. I will. Okay.

What's up, Ryan? Good. And this is the point where I say, and you can follow Dave on Twitter. He doesn't do any of that stuff. So I guess you can hit me up if you want to get to him, but thank you. Thank you. All right. All right. Let's go see the kids. All right. All right. Peace. So what do you guys think? It was, I don't know. I'm still collecting my thoughts about it. I'm really glad that I did it.

I am emotional about it. There's something beautiful about the fact that we got to sit together and have that conversation. And I really am. I really, really am proud of him. So thank you, dad. I love you. And everybody pick up his book, Marshall, Defender of the Republic. You can find a link on my website. Go to Amazon. Check out the show notes on the episode page. I normally say, head up to guest and let them know what you thought of the conversation.

My dad is not on social media though. So rather than that, yeah, just read his book, I suppose. I think it's a masterpiece. I'm excited that it's just about to be birthed into the world and I can't wait to watch this journey that he's about to go on. In closing, if you're struggling with your diet, are you trying to eat better? Most of us are, right? It's tricky though. We get off the plan. It's hard to get back on. That's why we created this meal planner program. We did it to solve one very basic problem. How do you make nutritious eating convenient, delicious, and

affordable? And the result is something that we're really proud of, the Plant Power Meal Planner. We've put together this digital sort of platform where you have access to thousands of delicious and easy to prepare, nutritious plant-based recipes. Everything's customized. When you sign up, you enter all this information, and it basically runs this algorithm, so you only get the types of recipes that appeal to you. And it integrates with grocery lists and grocery delivery in most metropolitan areas, so everything just shows up at your doorstep. We have incredible support seven days a week from a team of really savvy, educated nutrition coaches. And you get access

to all of this for just $1.90 a week when you sign up for a year. It's so affordable. Again, did I say I'm proud of this? Everybody really seems to be loving it. It's making an impact, a significant impact on people's lives. So if you want a taste of this, again, go to meals.richroll.com, click on Meal Planner on the top menu on my website. You can learn more. You can sign up and do all that good stuff. If you'd like to support the work we do here on the podcast, a couple of simple ways to do that. Tell your friends about your favorite episode or just about the show in general. Share the show on social media, screen grab it, or do whatever you do. Tag me. Sometimes I reshare that stuff. Subscribe. That's the most important thing on Apple Podcasts, on YouTube, Spotify,

Google, wherever you listen to this. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or leave a comment underneath one of the videos on YouTube. That's always very helpful. And if you choose, if you are so inclined, you can support us financially on Patreon. And you can find that by just going to richroll.com forward slash donate. Thank you very much to everybody who's done that. I appreciate everybody who helped put on this show today. Jason Camiolo for all your services on audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music, the WordPress page, all that kind of stuff. interstitial music the WordPress page all that kind of stuff

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that go along with each episode and theme music is always by Annalima. Appreciate it, you guys. Like I said, it's kind of heavy having my dad on, but I feel good about it. Even if no one listened to this episode, I am very proud of sharing it with all you guys. And just to have that kind of conversation with my parents, it was just, it was a great thing. So thank you for listening. I will see you back here next week with a great conversation. It is with Miguel McKelvey, who is the co-founder of WeWork. It's a conversation about entrepreneurship and community. I think you guys are going to really dig it. Miguel's super

cool. He's into all the kinds of things that I'm into, sustainability, the environment, et cetera. So until then, pick up a book. You might just learn something. Pick up my dad's book. How about that? All right, you guys, peace, plants, be well, do good. Namaste. Thank you.