The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 261: Jack Carr is a Tomahawk Kinda Guy

Episode Date: July 26, 2022

Former Navy SEAL and bestselling author, Jack Carr talks writing, grit, and how his desire to "never miss an opportunity to make someone's day" led to the serendipitous circumstances that got his first novel into the hands of Chris Pratt.  

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together, then allow me to remind you, here, without all the cleverness and charm, that unlimited talk, text and data on a blazing fast network for just 3499 a month really is an unmitigated bargain from an American wireless company that keeps all their customer service in this country, supports our veterans in a meaningful way, as well as the MicroWorks Foundation, and allows me to exploit my own mother in a national advertising campaign. Do what my mom did. Get yourself unlimited high-speed data for just 3499 a month at puretalk.com slash row. You can switch in as little as 10 minutes at puretalk.com slash row. Pure Talk. Hey guys, it's the way I heard it episode number 261. This one's called Jack Carr is a Tomahawk kind of guy. Because he is, Chuck. I mean, there's no denying it. Well, he's very fond of the Tomahawk. It's his logo, actually.

It's a great logo. Yeah, it's beautiful. Two tomahawks over each other. Jack Carr, if you've been living under a rock for the last couple of months, is a best-selling author. He has five best-selling books, all based on a character called James Reese, which he created. Maybe out of thin air, or maybe out of his experience as a lieutenant-com. commander in the Navy SEALs, where he spent 20 years serving his country. I wanted to have this guy on because I have a lot of writer-related questions, and I have a lot of SEAL-related questions, and I am absolutely, oh, I don't know, not really envious because the guy paid his dues, as we'll learn in the conversation. But I've never really talked to anybody, Chuck, who had such

clarity of purpose and who knew with such precision exactly what he was going to do with his life. He knew it at a young age. And he knew he was going to be in the Seals and he knew he was going to be a writer. So he put in 20 years with the Seals. And then once he retires from the Seals, he's like, all right, well, I guess it's time to get started on the writing. And he did. And to great success, in five years, he's written five novels that have all been New York Times bestsellers. We have a great conversation. It goes on for the better part of 90 minutes, so I won't drag it out with a lot of hoop-de-doodle here in the preamble. But I will tell you that the Terminal List was his first novel.

It's just been turned into a huge success over on Amazon. It stars Chris Pratt, a bona fide movie star, which is insane because as he was writing the novel, he was thinking, oh, you know what, Chris Pratt would be a great guy to play my character. And then he thought, hmm, Anton Fuku, gosh, I love Training Day. He'd be a great director to direct this. And so everything the guy has wished for, everything he visualizes, happens. It's happening. He's like, you know what?

I think maybe a Tomahawk would be a really great logo and a really great weapon for my main character to have. And this kind of success couldn't happen to a nicer guy. In this case, Jack Carr is not just a nice guy, but he risk his life for the better part of two decades on our behalf. So what a pleasure to have him on the podcast. He's a fine writer. He's a great American. He has a lot of ideas on a lot of different topics, including what you should be reading.

He makes five great recommendations that'll come out in the course of our conversation with a whole lot of other cool stuff. Jack Carr, try not to envy him. It might not be easy because Jack Carr, if you hadn't heard, is a Tomahawk kind of guy. No, look, it's a super weird conversation. Jack Carr is with us right now, but I was just bringing Chuck up to date on the saga of the retainer. You'll love this, dude. Five days ago, I go for a jog on the bike path here in Northern California, and I stop at the water fountain where I always get a drink. And on top of the water fountain is this thing that looks like a lobster claw.

but it's not. It's a retainer. Somebody took a retainer out of their mouth, got a drink of water, and left it. It's like a $500 thing. So I take a picture of myself next to the retainer and write a little story and put it on Facebook and three million people read it. All right. So the next day, I'm out for another jug and the retainer's still there. I'm like, well, that's weird. A thousands of people go by this water fountain. And I guess it's not weird. Like who would touch it? But it's a retainer. And so I write another little story and I post it again. Then people start sending me photos of them with the retainer, right? So it turns into a thing that's so weird. I don't know what to do about it. So yesterday I go out again, day four, it's still there. So I make a video and I put this on Facebook and that goes around the world. Now this morning, I just got back 15 minutes ago from my jog.

The retainer's gone, but there's an envelope. taped to the water fountain with this note inside. Oh, my goodness. And the note is from the retainer, which apparently is a sentient being. Says, I heard you were a big fan of mine, Mike Row. I appreciate all your love and support. I wasn't sure who you were at first,

but then someone told me you do dirty jobs. I had a mighty dirty job myself, brother, but now I'm looking forward to enjoying retirement. Anyway, keep at it, big guy. I'm sure things will work out for you. Here's where it gets weird. I got to move on to my next spot, but I hope you enjoy your shirtless strolls out here on the beautiful ORT. If you feel like staying in touch, you can follow me on Instagram at Tibby Teeth as I've started a page to document this next stage of my life.

So anyway, man, it's nice to meet you, but I just wanted to bring you up to speed with my morning. A couple of photographs with somebody's random retainer has led to a new Instagram page where this literal mouthpiece. is dispensing advice to total strangers. How's your day going? It's a new world. It's a brave new world. And I think maybe only in California would that have happened. Maybe a couple other places here and there, a hot spot.

But I can't really imagine that anywhere other than maybe down south and Venice and up north where you are. It could happen. Very interesting. Very interesting. Thank you for indulging that ridiculous story, but it was on my mind. First things first, I'm going to start with the stupidest question I can think of. You've got five best-selling novels.

Your first one has just been turned into the number one streaming success on Amazon, starring Chris Pratt. So my question is, how's it going? Busy, I guess, is the first word that comes to mind. But it was busy before all this happened. It was busy in the SEAL teams for those first 20 years because you're waking up every day, trying to make yourself a better operator, a better leader. And then same thing, making that.

transition to writing, want to be the best writer I can possibly be, get better at the craft with each and every sentence. It never stopped. My wife kind of says, I thought we're going to take a breath maybe after the Navy. And I thought maybe that too, because I pictured an author going up to the mountains where we live now, living in a cabin, sending a manuscript to New York, maybe, maybe, doing an interview here or there, one or two maybe, and then going back to writing where no one bothers you. And that's not how it is. Very quickly, I found out that it is just like any other job, especially if you're an entrepreneur, starting something yourself. And you have to do all the things you would have to do for any other business.

You have to have the best product you possibly can, but then people have to know about it. So you have to do the marketing and the budgets and the advertising. You have to learn about this thing called social media and figure that piece out. Have a website, an agent, like all these things. I didn't really anticipate that until about two months maybe before the first book came out in 2018. Then it became readily apparent that you have to do all these things. And it's like a startup in your garage, like a computer company in 1978 in your garage. and you're there, you're making the product, you're telling people about it, you're showing them

how it works, you're trying, you're doing interviews, trying to kind of grow. In my case, I'll readership, but in their case, really make people aware that they exist and get them to then use it. It's been busy, but I feel extremely fortunate to be where I am today, that's for sure. How important is it to you and to your success to be uncomfortable? I think it's always, because you want to be a student. So whether that was growing up, whether that in the SEAL teams, I've always, no matter how high I got in rank or how many deployments I did, or how many engagements I was in Iraq and Afghanistan, I always remained the student. And I think that keeps you, keeps you humble, keeps you grounded because that's what you owe, in this case,

my readership back then, the guys to my right and left, their families, the mission, to always be learning, always be improving. So that's kind of what I do today as well. A student of the craft, always trying to get better, these things, this foundation of reading from growing up, my mom's librarians. I grew up with this love of reading. So I have this foundation reading thrillers. I'm also studying warfare at the same time because I know where I'm going. I want to serve my country in uniform. None of those things have ever stopped. And then I have this practical application of warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. And all those things kind of come together at the last, as I'm getting out of the military during my last year, year and a half as I start writing.

So I had a good solid foundation. But really, for me, it's always about being a student. Same thing in screenwriting. Taking this step into screenwriting and just learning about the process over the last couple years as we developed the terminal list. I was very lucky that the team that we put together trusted one another. We had the best team possible, I think. And they included me in every part of this process, which is unusual for an author. Usually they get rid of that author because you ruined my vision. Unheard of. It was pretty amazing this whole last couple of years. I read your book and I watched the entire thing on Amazon. Oh, thank you. I share your interest and your passion, both in reading and writing, thrillers in particular.

I'm especially enamored of the continuing character. If you can create a character that can actually live through multiple novels, then you've done something, that's some pretty high cotton, right? That's Nelson DeMille. That's John D. McDonald. That's, you know, all of them. So I guess the thing I want to say to you is you're not the only guy I know. who spent a big chunk of his life in the armed forces and then went on to writing.

But you're the only guy I've ever read about or heard of who knew from the jump exactly what he was going to do. And then somehow did it. So I don't want to blow too much sunshine. We could talk for a while. You finished as a lieutenant commander. Is that right? That's right. I started enlisted for the first six and a half years, enlisted seal sniper.

then became an officer and finished up as a lieutenant commander, which is really the last time that you'll tactically maneuver guys on the battlefield. After that, you can come back after a staff job here or there as a commanding officer, which sounds impressive, but really in today's day and age, you're back in a tactical operations center. You're allocating assets, that sort of a thing. So I've done what I set out to do in the SEAL teams and really couldn't go any higher at the tactical level. And also my family needed me. We have a middle child with some severe special needs who needs 24-7 full-time care forever. It was clear to me that it was time to move on and follow this next passion. But I never really thought about the odds of not writing a number one

New York Times best-selling novel and getting it on the screen with an A-list star and director. I didn't really spend any time worried about that. And I think that's because I wanted to do it from such an early age. It's like that dream you have when you're five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, and then you just never let it go and never let anything. It's just natural, especially growing up in the 80s without all these inputs telling you how hard everything is. You just watch a movie, you read a book, and you think, well, I'm going to do that too. And that's about all the thought that you put into it. You don't think about, oh.

Or maybe, Jack, when you're engaged in the business of being a sniper or swimming with a rebreathing unit, you know, 50 feet underwater, or deployed in various theaters, God knows how many tours, maybe that's really not the time to reflect on your future as a writer so much as, oh, how do they say, not getting your ass shot off? Yeah, that's important. That's probably the main thing right there, not get anybody else shot or killed as well. But there's a lot to that because when I was in, I just knew that next I would write fiction. Boom, that was it. I didn't practice. I didn't put it. I just read the same books I was reading growing up on warfare and terrorism and insurgencies and counterinsurgencies. And then the thrillers by authors who I love, Nelson DeMille, David Morel, A.J. Quinell, J. C. Pollock, Mark Olden, Stephen Hunter, all these guys who had protagonists in the 80s and 90s that typically had a military back. background in Vietnam. If you guys remember, it was like the 80s action hero, early 90s action hero. They always were a Marine sniper in Vietnam, a Navy SEAL in Vietnam, Army Special Forces in Vietnam, CIA paramilitary Vietnam. That was the guy. And before the internet, when you could

actually read almost everything written about SEALs, well, I trusted these authors to have done their research into Army Special Forces, into Navy SEALs, into Marine snipers. So I was getting information from these novels, from these guys that I trusted with my time that I was never going to get back. So I was learning at the same time. So I was learning about the profession I thought, but I was also getting an early education in the art of storytelling. Isn't it amazing how much you can learn from fiction? Oh yeah, no doubt about it. And that's why historical fiction is so great. Sometimes they're a little thick, so a little intimidating at first, like once an eagle by Anton Meyer, Winds of War, War and Remembrance by Herman Woke. You can learn

so much in a very relatable way because you're visiting real world events through. the eyes of a fictional family in the case of Winds of Ward and Warren remembrance. And so you're learning a lot about World War II, but it's written as a novel, essentially, even though it's historical fiction. I love historical fiction, but not just the fiction, those thriller authors that I mentioned earlier, I learned so much from them. And I love that I got to read those books without, let's say, all the experience, like reading them at 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, or I didn't have biases or this experience or this

cynicism built up. I got to read them just purely unadulterated without fact-checking them or anything like that. I just got to enjoy them for the stories and they were magical and they had this thing, this intangible thing called heart. And you can't really describe what that is, but you know it when you watch a movie, when you watch a series or you read a book, these things that are great, they have heart. And so that's what I really took away from those authors. Okay. Here's a question I bet you haven't got before. What's more important? Heart or authenticity? Ooh, I had not gotten that question before. Today, I would say that that authenticity piece and that heart piece go hand in hand. Back when you couldn't really check on anything in 1985, 86, 87, 88,

okay, we're going to like ask a question to you? You don't know a Navy SEAL. You can't reach out to somebody to ask. Well, today there are multiple ways you can find out information and check things. So I think that these stories came like, I started writing at a time when that authenticity piece became so much more important than it had been 30 years ago, 20 years ago, even and 15 years ago. I was very fortunate in that respect because I didn't have to find a sniper from Murmadi in 2006, sit down with that person, ask them questions, and then translate those answers through other interviews I'd done or seen or read about movies I'd seen, books I've read, preconceived notions. It just all came from right here, from my heart, from my soul, right onto the page.

So even though my protagonist might get ambushed in Los Angeles, California, I think back to Baghdad 2006 and being in an ambush. And then I take those feelings and emotions and apply them directly to a fictional narrative. So there's nothing, no filters that it has, those feelings have to pass through before it hits that fictional narrative. I think that authenticity piece then really became a lot more important than it had been in the past. So I was very fortunate to have had those experiences and now use them in a positive way. Well, it's clear. I really enjoy reading some of my favorite author's first books because you can see how they set the table and what skills they bring. More to the point, you can see what's really important to them. Some really lean into character. Some really lead into plot. You, my sense with Terminalist anyway, was that, okay, you're going to take a lot of swings and a lot of different things. but one thing's for sure, you're not going to screw up the details. You're not going to get the caliber wrong.

Right. You're not going to get the year of the land cruiser wrong. Right. Those things, you know, it's easy to get lost in the details, but if you become dedicated to getting the details right, then people start to trust you, I think, in a lot of other ways, and they'll cut you some slack that they might not otherwise cut.

otherwise cut. So I guess that's a long way of saying, you know, the old adage is write what you know. Well, you seem to know what you're writing about. No, there's a lot to that for sure. And that trust piece is really, really the most important aspect, not just of writing, but anything in life. And I didn't get a chance to think about that until I got home from my last deployment to Iraq, took a breath, looked around, realizes that my, hey, my family needs me. This is the last time I'm going to lead guys tactically on the battlefield. It's time to start gearing up for transition. What do I want to do next? Well, I want to write. But as I was doing that and I was taking that breath, I went to Buds to our training facility. It's in Coronado, California. I was the operations officer, which is like a CEO of a company. And then I did the junior officer training course as well for new officers that are coming in. So I got to pass some information along to them. But in thinking about it, and I hadn't done this before because I'd been so busy, taking guys downrange doing the best job I possibly could for them. That's what I owe them. And I want them to do it better for the next generation than I did it for them. That's all. always my goal. And I took that breath and thought about what I wanted to pass along. It was really

trust and the importance of trust in leadership, importance of trust in life, and how any interaction, no matter how small, how large, is an opportunity to build that trust. So it's interesting that you brought that up. So whether it's a two-minute conversation in the hallway at the SEAL team, or it's getting out there on a training exercise or getting out to the range, maybe I didn't even need to go to the range because I worked my way up and rank and I need to go to another meeting or something like that, well, getting out there, getting out on the range, and maybe not being the best, but being close to the top. So those younger guys can look up to you and say, wow, how's this guy doing it? He's been in for 15 years now or 16 years. I heard he did this or that in Iraq and

Afghanistan. And he's still out here doing this, even though maybe he doesn't need to be doing it. So you're building that trust at every opportunity. And the same thing with my readers, which is why I put as much thought into any Instagram post or tweet as I do into a sentence in the novel, because now Well, readers and listeners with audiobooks are trusting me with time. And they're never going to get that time back. And they don't know if they have five minutes left on this planet, five days, five years, 50, whatever it might be, you don't know. But that time is limited.

And you get to choose how you're going to spend that time. Isn't it funny how that gets more and more important the older you get? I mean, there was a time. If I started a book, I had to finish it. even if I felt like it was just crap into bed, I couldn't walk out of a theater halfway through a movie I wasn't enjoying. Today, see you. Yeah.

You know, life's too short for bad music, unsatisfying films, and poorly written novels, right? It's cool that you think of it in a transactional way that isn't just money. It is time. It is. That's an important aspect. And that's why I don't just, if you go to my Instagram, you won't see just a, funny meme. I mean, I enjoy a funny meme as much as the next guy, but I don't need to be posting those. So I'm going to really think about something before. I'm going to put thought into those

sentences, into that photo. I want to add value to people's lives. And that's what I think about right before I do a post, is this going to add value to someone's life or with the book? And that's how I start all the books as well. I start with a title, so I'm not worried about it. A theme, a one-page executive summary. And I read that one-page executive summary. I ask the question, is this worth one year of my life? The answer is yes. then I read it again. And I say, well, if someone else were to read this, like the back, kind of like a back of a book jacket, kind of like a one page thing like that. And if someone else were to read this, would they then trust me with that time, they're never going to get back? And would it add value to

their life? So if both those answers are yes, then that's my next book. But it's really all about adding value to people's lives in every interaction because once again, as you said, it becomes more important as you get older because you start to think about it a little more because that clock is ticking and every second that goes by we're not getting back. I love stories like this. Seven years ago, a guy named Ben Still was a musician. He had zero interest in running a food company, but he was annoyed that so much imported meat was being deceptively marketed and labeled as domestic and decided to fix the problem. The result was a company called Good Ranchers.

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Or are you more interested in making sure you are as a writer? Well, I think they're both, those are going to go hand in hand. If I'm interested, then my assumption, maybe faulty, we'll see at some point. Up to this point, it's been a pretty good track record. But if I'm interested in it, then odds are somebody else is going to be interested in it as well. So I'm thinking about that year that I'm going to spend. But really, it is about me at a certain level. But what's really at the forefront is that other person.

because I get to choose how I spend my time, and I'm very fortunate that I have these options and opportunities now. But somebody else might be getting up at five in the morning, going to that job, slaving away all day, going to a second job, whatever else. And then they get to choose what they're going to listen to on the way home in that car. And they choose the terminal list. And they're listening to it in their commute to and from that job when they get home and maybe have 10 minutes with the kids, five minutes with the kids. Maybe that kid's already in bed. Who knows? But that person is trusting me with that time.

And what are they getting out of that? Is it just the story? Okay, that's great if it's just the story. That's fine too. If it's just a decompression, great. Everybody's going to read or listen to these things on a few different levels. But what really is fulfilling is when someone comes up to me at a book signing or something like that and tells me that I change the course of their life through these fictional novels.

People have quit jobs, started businesses, moved, ended relationships, started relationships, all these things that I didn't really think about when I started down the path, but it really does impact people in a way that is beyond just a good story. Yeah, so it's a lot of responsibility there, but at the same time, that reader is really who I'm thinking about. It's a privilege. You know what I like? You said some very earnest things just now, right?

When you talk about heart and you talk about authenticity and you talk about the responsibility of really nourishing your reader and writing something, even if it's just an Instagram, post, something that's thoughtful and deliberate. And fundamentally, maybe this is the wrong word, but virtuous, right? And yet, you've created a morally ambivalent character in Reese. Your first novel, I mean, you say it's straight up, as I recall. And one of the, I think there's a whole page dedicated to this sentence.

You know, this is a novel of revenge. This is what can happen when a finally, tuned, highly trained, servants of the country is completely and utterly betrayed and suddenly finds himself with absolutely nothing to lose, even his own life. So what happens when you put a guy like that into a situation? Well, obviously, the answer to that is your book and the series, But the question is, in order to tap into some of those virtues that are obviously important to you, you had to create a character who was really driven by an undisputed yet very satisfying vice, i.e. vengeance. That must have been kind of fun to toggle back and forth with.

It really is. And in my latest novel, in the blood, I have my favorite chapter I've ever written. It's chapter three in my latest novel. And it's not a gunfighter or a knife fighter, no tomahawks flying. it's a conversation between Reese, my protagonist, and the matriarch of the Hastings family. Caroline Hastings is her name, and she's passing along some wisdom to James Reese. And she's a generation older, of course, comes from Africa to the United States. And she's passing, she wants him to think about forgiveness and the power in forgiveness. And that's something that I found as I've grown older to be one of the most powerful things that we can do is forgive others. Forgive yourself in many cases.

And both those things are where I'm exploring through this journey that James Reese is on. Because he's not the same character, just plopped up, and now he's going to solve a bio-weapons thing in this next one. And I picked up, next book, OK, a nuclear thing. Okay, picked up, boom. He's on a journey, just like all of us are. And hopefully, we're all learning from our successes, from our failures, more importantly, and we're moving forward and we're taking those lessons and then applying them as wisdom going forward. So I think even more so than those feelings and emotions behind things that I was involved with in Iraq and Afghanistan,

coming from the page, what really is making this character resonate is that he's on a journey, that he's learning, that he's adapting, hopefully getting wiser and applying those lessons forward as wisdom. So I get to explore all that through this fictional character. But at the same time, yeah, he has a particular skill set. He is very good. And he's been drawn into these different conspiracies, particularly in the first one. And I was inspired by the church hearings in the 70s, reading through those transcripts and looking at these vast overreaches of certain elements of the government, certain particularly the central intelligence agents. and what was put in place to kind of keep them from doing some of these things that they'd

been doing from the 50s, 60s, and into the 70s. It is a story of revenge, but more than that, I think if you read it at another level, it's about someone becoming an insurgent, essentially becoming a terrorist, the person, the people that he'd been fighting for 20 years at war, 16 years when I wrote the book, and bringing that war home to the front doors of people who have been sending young men and women to their deaths for 20 years. So it's more than just a revenge story. And then you can talk about the moral ambiguity or the anti-hero, which I think is too simplistic of a term to apply. It's just kind of a popular term to apply to someone who's a dark character. But I think there's a little more to him than that.

And I needed him also to think he was dying in that first book. And I go back to the samurai and Basuto and how they would go into battle thinking they were already dead because it made them more effective. Already dead. So I thought, how do I apply that to a modern day warrior? And that's where the church hearings and the tumors and all of that came into play. I needed to free him up to do the things that might have kept him in check through laws and societal norms had he not been dying. But now he is completely free. Is he an amalgam of people you met in the SEALs, people you've met along the way?

Or is he a complete fictional construct? He's a fictional construct, but he also, we share a similar career path, I guess you could say. He's a prior enlisted sniper, as was I. He becomes an officer, drives an FJ62 Land Cruiser. as do I. He's a student of warfare. His bookshelf looks very similar to mine. In fact, the books in the beginning of the show are from my shelf that I sent out to L.A. when they filmed the opening credits. So we share a lot of similarities, which allow, but he's better at everything. He's a much better shot, much faster, much stronger, a little wittier than I could have hoped to.

That's a good one. I'm not to explore that a little bit. Maybe there's a psychological reason why I haven't talked about that in the novels yet. I don't think I've ever talked about him writing. It's very interesting. If you turn Reese into a writer, then book then I might suggest things have gone a bit meta. Yeah, I might have to switch to a new character. Who knows? I thoroughly enjoy writing all of these things. But the reader, maybe it's not such a coincidence that the reader meets James Reese

when he's getting back from what he thinks is going to be his last deployment. He's going to get out, take care of his family. That's what he's thinking. And then disaster strikes, of course, and the conspiracy boils to the surface. And he goes on this path of vengeance where I get to be very creative. But a lot of it also is very therapeutic to write. And I didn't realize that when I sat down to start. typing, I thought, I'm going to write a very good story. I'll get the sniper stuff right. I'll get

those calibers right. And if I've forgotten something, I at least have a fairly robust rolodex and can reach out to people who know the answers. But as soon as I started typing those first words, and it wasn't in the executive summary, wasn't in the outline. It was only when I started to write that I realized, oh, wow, this is going to be a very personal writing experience. And all the novels have been thus far that's played out through all of them. So very therapeutic to turn all these experiences in a positive direction. I wrote a book a couple years ago, and the thing that struck me, aside from the fact that deadlines, you hate them and you need them, right? Aside from that, was the weird way that it compresses time.

I don't know if you experienced this. So many times I would sit down on the tarmac at SFO and start writing something. And a few minutes later, I'd look up and I'm on the tarmac at JFK. it warped time. Did that happen for you when you were deep into this? Oh, yeah. Every time to include this last novel as well. I need quiet and uninterrupted time. Those are the two things that are most important. I have three kids, dog, wife. It's a little crazy around here. I do an Airbnb in town, so I'm not too far away. The kids can actually see me through binos and I can flip the light on and off and say good night. But I get up in the morning and I just go all day uninterrupted and it's like that. It's done.

and that happens pretty much every time I sit down to write. Don't know what that is. Don't know what that space-time continuum is, but it's a real thing, and I can only imagine. It is a thing. Mommy, Daddy's talking to us in Morse Cote again with the blinds and the binoculars. Yeah, yeah. Where are you? Park City? Park City, Utah.

Yeah, so it came up here pretty much right after I got out of the military, and we love it up here. I wanted to raise the kids in a ski town, make a physical and psychological break from the military that had been such a important part of our lives for 20 years. I noticed a lot of people have a hard time letting it go. And even though I knew exactly what I wanted to do, I wanted to go that extra step also and physically remove myself from the same bars and restaurants and grocery stores and schools that people that were still in going down range or preparing to go down range were sending their kids to the same schools, drinking at the same bars.

It was very clear to me that it was time to start a new chapter and to turn that page. And so off we came to the mountains and we love it up here. I want to talk to you a lot more about writing and about Hollywood and the adaption of this because that all is near and dear to both Chuck and me and I'm super interested. But you just said something too that really makes me want to ask and I really want to get your thoughts on what I call an overwhelming pressing need for something like a reverse boot camp, something that can prepare men and women who are coming back for what oftentimes is a really hard entry into polite society. We spend what, eight weeks, 12 weeks,

I don't even know how long the Seals thing is to get you ready to do a very specific thing and virtually no time at all, preparing you to adapt to civilized life. So if you could, you came home seemingly fully formed, fully whole, three kids, wife picked up with your second career like that. How come so many others aren't able to make that pivot? Yeah, well, I think there's quite a few reasons. One, I was very fortunate and that I knew exactly what I wanted to do. And it didn't come from, let's say, wanting to be a lawyer because you watched a few good men or JAG or Law and Order or something like that. It became from being a student and reading and knowing that I loved to write and I was going to do these things. It was very

natural. So I think there's a lot of that. You think you know what you want to do when you get out and then you start down that path and you realize that it's not really what you want to do and you're miserable, but you have wife, kids, mortgage, responsibility. And so you're just on this path and maybe you're afraid to get off because maybe a paycheck's coming in. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's just the hint of a possibility of a paycheck to take care of those you're responsible for, but you can't get off that track. So it's not about you. It's about them because it's about the team when you're in and it's about when you get out. It's hard to think about it really any other way. This family here, we're a team, and it's about the mission really

is taking care of our child with special needs, and my passion is writing, and those two things together gave me my purpose. So for anyone making that transition, whether it's military or professional sports, death of a loved one, divorce, whatever it might be, just a job transition in general, being able to clearly articulate what your mission is in life, what your passion is in life, and figuring out a way to combine those two so you have purpose moving forward. And that's not the easiest thing to do if you don't know that passion. I was fortunate that I did. When we talk about transition programs or what we can do as far as a reverse boot camp for people that are making a transition out, I think those internships at places like your last year in the

military should be probably an internship for two months in different professions. So you can really find out, oh, she's maybe I really don't want to be a general contractor. This is crazy. Or maybe I really don't want to go to law school and spend these three years and then go to the DA's office. This wasn't like I saw in Law & Order. I'm going to shift gears here and find something else that I really love doing. But if you get to test some waters through internship programs, I think that's a really good way to kind of start opening the aperture and you can meet some people, develop some relationships, and start exploring where you really want to go in life and what makes sense for you and your family. Most people don't. They just go to this military mandated transition class, which is

100% useless. I shouldn't say 100%. 99.99.9.9.9.000. percent useless and then boom you're out and you're in the real world and what you thought it was going to look like isn't really what it is and now you're like okay well maybe I'll just go back to contracting where can I do that are people still going to Blackwater where are they still doing how much are they paying like all those sorts of things and you kind of go back to what's familiar and then it gets even harder when you have a guy who's downrange and you're on vampire hours so you're up all night maybe sleeping a little bit during the day but you have to go up to coordinate with conventional military units who are up during the day. Maybe you have some traumatic brain injury. Maybe you're on taking

ambient, then you get home when there's some marital problems, and you add some alcohol to that, and maybe some post-traumatic stress. And all of that is just a cost of cocktail that doesn't really lend itself towards a solid transition out into the private sector, especially if you're not sure what you want to do. So there's a lot of issues there, and people do have a hard time making that transition, and I am definitely one of the lucky ones. Well, I think you're an example of what's possible. And I think the more success you have in this new chapter of your life, the more relevant and germane your service is going to become to a lot of people who are looking at this. In other words, you write what you know, which means had you not done 20 years with the SEALs,

what would you be writing about? Who are you without that? I mean, it seems like such a fundamental thing that shaped and informed everything you're doing now. It just must be impossible to imagine a future without your past. Yeah, and it's all foundational, though. I mean, even before the military, I was preparing for the military, physically, mentally, spiritually, even. And I was reading. So I was doing both. I was building this foundation going all the way back.

But once again, I was lucky that I knew exactly what I wanted to do. And I also, I guess what's the best way to put it, if somebody else did it, it can be done. And can I do it better than them? Like that's kind of how I think about things. Not just, oh, it's been done. I guess I can do it too in the exact same way. No, no. Someone else has done it.

Okay. Well, I can do it and I can do it better. That's what I meant to say, Jack. It's like you look at Roger Bannister, right? You look at the four minute mile, right? It simply wasn't possible. Right. Couldn't be done until he did it.

And then 50 people did it right over the next couple of years. And now yawn, four minute mile, whatever. So, right? It usually takes one person to break the seal. And when I say seal, you know what I'm talking about. I hear you. Shameless plug. Long before she was Peggy Roe, my mom was Peggy Noble,

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But it goes back to that time, that time again, knowing that we have one ride on this planet. So how are you going to spend that time? It's up to you. And then you also have to know that you're going to get knocked down. It seems trite to say it, but you're going to get hit, you're going to get knocked down. And then in some cases, you know, if you're actually physically hurt,

maybe it does take you a little while to get back up. But eventually you're going to have to get back up somehow and move forward. Okay, that's the given. but what isn't the given is how you do that. And if you're going to get back up whining and complaining and talking about how you didn't get this fair shake and all that, or you can get back up and be an inspiration to those around you, no matter that if it's a spouse, if it's a spouse in your family, is it 10 followers on social media?

Is it 35 million? It doesn't matter. But they can see you get back up after getting hit hard and that can be an inspiration to those around you or exact same situation, exact same person getting up whining and complaining and telling him his family how hard this was and how he got a bad shake and it was bad luck. And this person was against him and that person was against him. And that's why I'm never getting exact same scenario to very different outcomes and impacts on those around you that in the case of a family is going to have multi-generational impacts.

So there's that piece to it too. We have to go into these things expecting don't be surprised, which is why Marine boot camp, Army Special Forces Q-Course, buds, some sort of a crucible fairly early on in life, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 seems to be typically where most societies have this crucible that people go through to become part of that society. And now you've invested in that society. You've been accepted into this tribe and you have a shared experience with other members of that tribe or society. Boot camps do that. Marine boot camp for sure does that. And we've kind of lost that over the years, which is why we have these people searching, I think, in those ages and kind of lost now. And social media certainly

does not help with that. But I think there's a lot to. having a crucible testing yourself, knowing that, oh, I'm going to get hit hard. Even if you don't make it through these things, you learn lessons. 80% of the people don't make it through buds, but they learn something from it. And then they get to choose if that's going to be a positive experience going forward as they apply those lessons later in life or not. But again, it comes down to the individual. 80%, Jack.

It's still 80? Still 80. And interesting, they won more seals mid, let's say 2006, 7, 8. it might be off. So they invested untold millions of dollars in this post boot camp type of a prep course where you learn how to carry the logs and the boats and you learn the technique for swimming and you get leadership courses and resiliency courses. And then you go off to Buds in California. And they thought, well, we're going to get more people out the other end now. And what we got was fitter quitters. So once again, you're looking for this intangible. You're looking for this thing

called grit. And you can't really fill out a bubble sheet or give somebody a class about it. Once again, you have to go through that crucible first. And we're looking for certain things. I mean, we're looking for moral courage, physical courage, resiliency, team ability, which isn't a real word, but we had to make it up. You're looking for these things. And you're looking really for that person with grit. And but once again, the bubble sheet's not going to tell you.

I have a question regarding buds. We once met some seals from San Diego and went shooting with them, which was an awesome experience. And one of the guys said that he couldn't go through Buds again if he knew how hard it was. Does that make sense to you? Yeah, maybe, maybe, which also goes back to if you know too much about it beforehand, is that a benefit or not? Because when I was coming in, I knew about as much as you could in 1997 when I showed up at Buds. I think I was about as prepared as you could be. But once again, you can prepare yourself almost too much, I think.

And you could be like, oh, geez, Sunday night, hell week. I'm not going to get really to sleep until Friday. I know this thing called Steel Pier is coming up because I read about it online. And man, they got a lot of quitters during that. I'm just going to go ahead and quit now. And that bell is right there within view for that week. We make it very easy to self-select out of this program. So I don't know if it's a benefit in this case to really have every single piece of information as you go on into it.

I think it's better maybe just to jump in there and say whatever they throw at me, I'm going to crush. That's why I'm here. And let's do this. That's what this guy said. He said that he couldn't do it if he knew how hard it was. was going to be. And after he'd already done it, he's like, well, there's no way I could do it again because he definitely would quit. He said that the only way that he got through it was to say, oh, you know what, I'm going to ring that bell in 15 minutes. And then once the 15 minutes,

he just kept adding time to it. He just kept adding time. And he said, that's the only way he did it. Yeah. Yeah, there's a few people that have different ways to get through, Buds. I just went to evolution to evolution. I'm going to do this. And then they switch it up and it's time to run the O course. Okay, I'm going to do that. Some people go meal to meal. Some people say I'm not going to quit. So that person quit, that person would quit and they just switch people, hoping that not everyone in the class quit. But really what I did is I thought about all the people who sacrificed everything from the inception of this country up until today or at the time, 1997, to give me the option and opportunity to follow my dreams and be there on the beach in Coronado, California, specifically a World War II generation.

I thought of those guys storming the beaches at Normandy, running across these beaches and into machine gun fire from elevated positions, no cover, no concealment. I thought about the guys Iwo Jima, and I thought, you know what, I can do a couple more push-ups here in the San Diego, California. So that really pretty much in perspective. That's the answer I was expecting to my first question, which was how important is it to be uncomfortable? And this is going to sound way weirder than it is. But after my run where I found the crazy retainer, I ran upstairs and I did something for the 10th day in a row now. I thought of you in the shower, Jack, and the reason is, you had to make it weird. Stay with me.

The reason is because I've committed to standing under freezing cold water for at least three minutes a day. Yeah. I still get in and I take a hot shower and then I turn it as cold as it can be. And that's when I wash my hair and I just stand there under the water. And I started doing this because a week or so ago I was in Tahoe and every morning I'd dive into this freezing mountain lake. And it was so jarring. And then it was so invigorating.

And then once I got out, it's so great. I mean, that freezing cold water does something. I don't know if it's capillaries or heart or whatever it is. I just thought, I wonder if Jack was having a good time lying there locking arms with his buddies as the surf rolled over him. You know, what is that, 65 degrees probably. Yeah, a little chilly, a little chilly down there, high 50s. and then you have the wind chill and all the rest of it.

And it's, but hey, that's part of the test. And they call it surf conditioning now. They used to call it surf torture and then kind of that's the same thing. It has a new name. You know, that's the bureaucracy for you. You must love looking at, as a writer, to see what's happened to our language over the last 20 years. The softening of it, the needless complexity of it. Remember, George Carlin used to have a thing where he talked about, you know,

traumatic stress disorder. Well, you know, 100 years ago, it was shell shock. We all knew what that meant, right? So what thoughts, if any, do you have on the way the language has changed and the way that's changed people in the armed forces, as well as society overall? Oh, yeah, society overall, for sure. You see it. You every day, if you turn on the news. The guy told me a long time ago. He was an Army Special Forces sniper in Vietnam and a part of something called Project Delta. And he said, precision in language reflects precision in thought. And I switched that over for the novel. I said precision with a rifle reflects precision and thought. It requires precision and thought. So I morphed it a little bit and put it in the novel as a tribute to him. And I have that

as a message from James Reese's, my protagonist's father, to him through a note. But really, I've never forgotten that. Precision in language reflects precision and thought. And I passed it on to everyone that I've worked with in the military sense. I talk about it when it comes up naturally, but it is very clear that we've lost that or are losing that. And it may be a losing battle. But it does stand out to people when I bring it up. It is so important. And I think about that as I'm writing. I think about that as I'm speaking. I think about that before an Instagram or post or a tweet. And I think if more people would learn to think logically earlier on in life, learn about the importance of thinking rather than having whatever's getting crammed down their throat, or even

just regular math and all the rest of it, but learning to think logically. And that was what was so important for ancient Greek philosophers talk about that. But it's the important of learning how to learn, learning how to think, because then we can apply that to our decisions going forward and make better decisions. Sometimes for those who are under us, if you're talking about the military or even other jobs, that are going to have an impact on their life, sometimes life or death, and then impact those families as well. So learning to think logically and thinking, about things in terms of language really helps with that if you frame. It seems like just calling a thing what it is, is job one.

It's surf torture. That's what it is. To call it conditioning in no way changes the experience of the moment. But somewhere it checks a box for somebody with some kind of an agenda. And I just think the unintended consequences of doing that a thousand times over with virtually every single thing. Not to get all political, but right now, you know, we simply can't answer questions like what a woman is

without tying ourselves in knots and tiptoeing, right? So I think what you're saying is a muddied mind is often the result of a cluttered and muddy vocabulary. Oh, that is for sure what it is. And that pendulum, people talk about the pendulum swinging back. And, you know, I don't know, it's an easy thing to say, if you're hopeful, but they just kind of look back through the pages of history and see where we're where we are and where we're going, where we have been just 20 years ago and the pace of

which things have accelerated and I don't mean that in a good way. I mean, try to remain hopeful publicly. But when my wife and I sit down at the end of the night with a glass of wine on the couch and talk to each other about the day and talk about our kids in the world that we're leaving to them, because really when we go in, we vote or when we make some sort of a decision like that, it's not for us. It is for the next generation. And we talked about the world. World War II generation and those really from the inception of this country all the way through today who sacrificed so much so we could have these freedoms and options and opportunities. And now we're actively taking steps to take those freedoms away to curtail some of those

freedoms, some of those options. And it's not for us. It's not for what we're going to do tomorrow or next week. It's for our kids and our grandkids and those future generations. And so we have a responsibility both to them and to those generations who sacrificed everything. People that didn't come home, people who came home missing arms and legs. people that came home dealing with the stress and emotions of the battlefield. We owe both of those generations, those future in the past, to make good decisions today. But precision and language,

reflecting precision and thought certainly is a good place to start. I didn't realize how right he was when Reagan said freedom is a generation away. So as you look around, what worries you the most? And what, if anything, do you think is correctable in our generation, in our lifetime? Yeah, that second one is tough. The second one is tough, especially with essentially a tech monopoly that can influence not just what you do as far as like an advertising, but how you think can influence behaviors. So all this power that is now really consolidated up with a very few companies, let's say, And at the top of this, if you think of it in terms of a pyramid as far as wealth and influence, that is a tough one when you think about it in those terms.

But that's really what it is. In my fourth book, The Devil's Hand, I put myself on the enemy's shoes. And I did that in the military. I do that as a citizen today. But I wanted to do that for this particular book. And so I thought, hey, what if I'm Iran, if I'm China, if I'm North Korea, Russia, a super empowered individual, a terrorist organization? What would I have learned from the United States on the battlefield over the last 20 years?

and then what I apply to my future battle plans going forward. So that's how I started. That was my premise. And then as I was writing, COVID hit. And I thought, well, I'm in the enemy shoes here. What are terrorist organizations? What is China? What is Russia?

What are those countries learning from our response to COVID? Because they're learning something. They're just not casually watching the news and then going about their day. They're drawing lessons and applying it to future battle plans. And then a summer of civil unrest hits. Same thing. I'm in the enemy shoes as I'm writing this book. They're certainly learning something from our response to that summer

that obviously continues to this day. And my takeaway, as horrible as it was, was that, geez, if I was one of these countries or a terrorist organization, I might not do very much right now because we're doing a pretty good job of destroying ourselves from the inside. And that was a horrible conclusion to come to and not a very uplifting way to right. It doesn't really push the plot forward. So I had to come up with a creative way in which to make it necessary for a person to do something to drive that plot forward. So I really like that challenge of coming up with that especially because my personal takeaway was that I wouldn't do too much if I was them. I just watch for a little bit and see what we do.

Make popcorn. Yeah, exactly. Make popcorn and watch. Maybe a little stoke things a little bit here and there as you can, but nothing big. That part is tough to think about because I don't see it getting better because who benefits when we're divided, politicians and the tech companies. So both of those groups benefit from a divided country. We certainly don't.

As citizens, as a country as a whole, it does not make us strong. stronger, but those elected representatives, and I don't say leaders for a reason, because they're elected representatives, and these tech companies certainly benefit. And they're also in bed together, of course, with lobbyists and all these other, all the dollars that flow back and forth there. So how do you correct that? That's the question. And I don't have a good answer. Sometimes it's a cataclysmic type event that forces you, and we thought maybe COVID was that at the beginning. And people were worried, hey, what if I call 911? And no one answers. What if I go to the grocery store and there's nothing there. And then we kind of fell right back into, oh, they'll always be someone,

the government will figure it out for us. There'll always be somebody on the end of that call. But really, only a small portion of human history have we been able to outsource those things, able to outsource our protection by calling 911 or having someone else serve in the military, or go to the grocery store. You had to be good at hunting, good at farming, good at defense of self, family, community, and really the slim portion of human history. And people think it's normal. People think that there's always going to be food in that grocery score. There's always going to be police out there. That is the slimmest part of human history.

For the rest of human history, you had to be good at the fighting and good at the hunting if you wanted to survive. And we all have ancestors that were good at those things or else we would not be here today. So I think at some point, it goes back to that. And that's really what my third book is about Savage Son. Well, it only takes a generation to forget that, too. I mean, isn't it amazing how quickly we can become coddled and spoiled? Isn't it amazing how quickly we can flick on the light and not be impressed by the fact that it actually comes on or flush the toilet and watch the crap go away and not go, man, that's so much better, right?

I mean, I was talking to your friend, Evan. A couple of weeks ago, he was talking about, you know, taking a crap in the Philippines while people are shooting at him. It's like, well, that's utterly unimaginable to the vast majority of bipeds. walking around right now. And yet, my guess is, you probably had a shot or two taken at you in a similar situation. People, if they don't go through it, they just can't know it until it happens. So that's an extreme weird example, but the baby formula is not on the shelf, Jack. Yeah. And the price of diesel all of a sudden is prohibitive. And down the list it goes, and you can see and kind of feel a kind of unraveling. And we did both of those things to ourselves.

but it wasn't outside influence. So that's the hardest part about thinking these things through. But also, yes, you can experience those things and realize, oh, I should, when I flip this light on a ride on a plane, I mean, when people get on a plane, they're like, my Wi-Fi is slow. Well, you're in a plane. You are flying in the air. Like, that's a miracle.

And so we've gotten so soft. And we talk about being uncomfortable and how important that is to be comfortable, being uncomfortable. Expect to be uncomfortable in life. Thrive in that. expect that it's possibly coming. Sometimes you can see it coming. Oftentimes, you can't. And instead of having to experience it, we do have books. We can go back and study history. And we can take those lessons. And I have this thing I like to say as much as I can. Stop tweeting, start reading, and go back into those pages, learn those lessons, apply them going forward.

We tend to think in terms of four-year election cycles, eight-year election cycles for the real deep thinkers among us. But really, when we talk about our enemy, we talk about China or we talk about these other things. countries they're thinking generationally and we are not thinking generationally in this country and we also go back I mean when we talked about the World War two generation what do they do when they got back from World War II they got to work and they went to work man into the greatest country with the most opportunity and freedom in the history of the planet and now we're squandering that gift and it really is a gift just like the gift of life and if you think of

things in terms of that gift of life and your responsibility to protect it and then to protect those around you who you're responsible for Well, that translates over into thinking about those people who did the same things and sacrificed so much so that you could. So that World War II generation, my hat is off to them. And my daughter and I got to spend some time in Normandy this past June. She's 16. We went back there with 23 veterans. One guy was the first out of his stick jumping into Normandy with 101st airborne.

Another guy crashed. He's 101 years old. crashed in a glider with the 82nd airborne. I asked him if it felt like a, well, he was a landing. And I asked him it felt like a crash. And he said, son, it was a crash. that guy first out of the landing craft in the back through the surf and under the beach and we're spending time with those guys and I'm seeing my 16-year-old daughter sit across the table

from these guys and we're there as volunteers so we're helping them in and out of wheelchairs on and off the buses to the events to their rooms making sure they're taking their medications I think it was really a turning point we did it for for the Pearl Harbor commemorative events in December as well but to see a 16-year-old across from a World War II veteran and just totally engaged in this conversation had that World War II veteran have a 16-year-year-old year old that is genuinely interested in what they have to say in listening to these stories was so powerful. I mean, the books are amazing and reading those things, particularly historical fiction. Historical fiction is a gateway to reading other, because it's a little easier to digest,

even if it's kind of big like winds of war and war and remembrance, but you learn so much and you realize this sacrifice and then maybe you go and read some other things, and it takes you on this journey that helps you lead a fuller, richer life, but also make a little bit better decisions for future generations because you put in that requisite time, energy, and effort into that study to realize that sacrifice and realize how lucky we are and that really were the guardians of those freedoms. So we have a responsibility as citizens to pay that forward for these future generations and we're squandering it as a whole, I think. The federal government is not going to close America's skills gap.

They have an important role to play for sure, but if we're serious about reinvigorating the skilled trades on a national level, we need more organizations like Skills USA, making a real difference on a local level. These guys have been around since 1965, and today they are relevant like never before, with hundreds of chapters in schools all over the country and hundreds of thousands of students participating and competing every year. Nobody is doing more to train the next generation of skilled workers than Skills USA. And I'm encouraging you to at least consider being a part of this movement. Skills USA advisors and volunteers aren't just teaching trades.

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USA. The idea that the key to moving forward lives in historical fiction or just books in general, I think is super empowering. So if you could flick your fingers and immediately have three or four or five books automatically downloaded into every American's prefrontal cortex, what would they be. What book do you wish every single person in this country had read, aside from Terminalist, which is fantastic? Available now in all formats. Yeah. So I'm glad you asked about five, because some really do compliment one another and need to be read not just as a singular work,

but in conjunction with other books as well. Once an Eagle by Anton Meyer in 1968, which is really an anti-war novel for the time, but it's historical fiction and it follows two guys from before World War I up to Vietnam. And one guy is always an officer. And then one guy gets a battlefield commission in World War I. And he's just one step behind this kind of political guy, political monster I'll say, whose name is Massengale. And I put Massengale into my first novel. Just one line in there, just a little hat tip to it, to follow these guys up to Vietnam. So you're learning World War I. You're learning those inner war years in there, then World War II. And you're learning about the history and what happened in all these different places around the world where

they had touch points, but it's really a case study in leadership. And the central theme to the novel is to see your character and your reputation will take care of itself. And I used to give that book, actually, that's crazy. It's right here. Because I was just talking about it. And it's on the shelf in the terminalist intro in those opening credits. But what I would do in the seal teams, I would give that book to guys who were coming up behind me. And I'd write a letter and I'd put it in the front. And that letter, I'd explain why I was giving them this book. And then I'd say, hey, there's another letter at the back, but you can't open it until you read this thing. And if you saw how thick this was, it doubles as a blunt impact weapon or a doorstop. And it's some two-use technology.

But so they had to read to get to the, because I didn't want to pollute their reading experience with my take on it ahead of time. So once they got through reading this book, then they could open that letter in the back. So it's an important book to me. So once an eagle, Anton Meyer, Atlas shrugged in the fountain head, Ein Rand, and Winds of War and Warren remembrance by Herman woke. So I think those five right there, you will not be poorly served by spending time in the pages of those novels. And hopefully that becomes a foundation from which to go out and explore some of the themes from those books, but they'll serve you well throughout life. So I think those are the five that I would recommend. That's a great list. I've read four of the five. I haven't read once an eagle.

But as you might tell, my questions tend to revert back to an Ayn Randian sort of position, which basically is a suspicion of altruism and the belief that doing a good thing, doing the right thing, is not at all inconsistent with doing the selfish thing, right? If she were still around, she would point to the masks coming down in the plane. And what do they tell you to do first? Put yours on. If you want to be of any use to anybody, you'd need to get the O2 to your brain first. And so that lesson, in my view, has been lost. And there are a lot of well-intended people out there trying real hard to do the right thing. But they're all twisted up.

They haven't taken care of their own self. first and now that you mention it, Reese gets it, you know, Reese understands that. Reid read all five of those. I love it. All right. There's a lot to that where she came from also. I'm Rand, I wish more people would read her and watch her interviews with Donahue from what was it back in the secondies, last one in the early 80s, I think maybe. Fantastic. Yeah. And while you're doing that, make sure you watch

Milton Friedman with Donahue. I don't think I see that one. Oh my gosh. There's quite a few. There's so many. Donahue, you know, I mean, he's a jagged little pill and you could fill a book with what we don't agree on. But holy cow, did he do one of the most important TV shows in the history of the medium? Those conversations with that level of thought and that kind of robust inquiry is so screamingly absent from the landscape today, part of, I think, podcast's incredible appeal is an attempt

to fill up the smoking crater that we're missing left. Yeah. No, absolutely right. And in that case, you know, you were part of that studio audience. I'd say there was 100 people in there. Well, you were the 101st person in that audience as you watched it. Same here. There's a fourth person on this. And that's however many people are watching it. They're all the fourth person in this conversation. If it was just the two of us, it would be that third person. You feel like you're engaged in it. And you don't really think about all the other people that are listening to it. But Donahue, maybe at the time it didn't seem like it was that culturally significant, although it was obviously incredibly successful. Looking back, now we can see how culturally

significant it was. And the history that was captured through those conversations, particularly with Thion Rand, those are fascinating. Her history, where she came from, obviously that informs her life view, something that we seem to be hurtling towards getting to for whatever reason as we give up some of these freedoms and opportunities in this country. Once again, if we had studied those lessons, listened to her, read her books, just studied history in general, we'd be making different decisions today rather than just trying to remain divided because it's going to benefit us in the short term in a four-year or an eight-year election cycle.

Or it's going to make us a bunch more money because we're going to get a bunch more data from these people that are clicking on things, and now we know what they click on and how often they spend it. They spent looking at one certain thing as compared to another, and now we can manipulate behaviors. So if you become aware of all that, and maybe it's a little bit cynical, they're not really giving us a choice of those tech companies and these politicians to look at this skeptical. Jack, I got to recommend a book to you. Chuck's probably sick me hearing me talk about it, but it's called Everybody Lies. And it's written by a data scientist and an economist named Seth, I think his last name's Davidson with a hyphen somewhere in there.

But anyway, he was the first guy to look at polls and realize their fatal flaw. He wrote it after the 2016 election, and he was curious in part to understand why so many polls got so much wrong about Trump. But what he uses as his source material are literally trillions of searches on Google. because when you search for something on Google, you are affirmatively looking for an answer, which means you are going to be uncharacteristically candid in revealing who you are and what you're interested in. And the result of that is a kind of digital truth serum that has wildly changed and challenged a lot of things. we think we know, whether it's the wisdom of having kids, views on the environment, racism,

abortion, patriotism. It's extraordinary. And you learn some things you wish you probably didn't know. It confirms some things. You're glad you did. But by and large, it makes every poll I've ever seen a laughing stock. Oh, wow. I'm going to get them and order this today and read it. You'll probably find its influence in my next book. That's typically how it. I'll probably see it on a shelf. Yeah, you'll see it myself. What is your next book? I'm working on it right now. The title is still classified, but I think it gets revealed in a, no, this summer sometime.

It'll come out next spring. So working on that right now and working on season two of Amazon calls and wants to do it. I want to be prepared. So I have an eight-episode season already outlined out, ready to go. So we'll see. I know they are very pleased with how the Terminalist is doing around the world, not just in this country. So they could not be more pleased. So, yeah, we'll see.

Well, let's talk about that. Oh, but let me be clear. Your next book is not called still classified. It's simply still classified. That's correct. Precision in language, yes, yes. But I can see it on using to some. For avoidance of doubt.

It's still classified as, you know, if it comes out, God damn it, and it's called still classified. You and I are going to have a talk. It's a joke, yeah. Hey, I got to tell you, I did everything backwards. When I knew that you were going to be on this show, I went and got your new book in the blood and read that, which was great, by the way. But there was like so much in there that I was like, oh, wow, there's other stuff I don't know. There's so much I don't know here. So I really got to go back. So I don't recommend people do that. I recommend starting with the

terminal list, which by the way was a great series. And the last 15 minutes of the pilot episode are redonculus, just in terms of action and heart-wrenching drag. Emma. Let's just leave that. We took a lot of risks in there. I learned a lot about screenwriting over the last couple of years. Took a lot of risks, broke a lot of rules. And Amazon was nervous about a few of them. But in the end, they took those risks right with us. We had a great team. And then when they screened it for test audiences, I think they were still nervous, but then it tested off the charts. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say that, but it tested off the charts. They infused it with some marketing and advertising dollars after those initial test audiences

got back. And now we have what we have today, which is you know, 95% I think on Rotten Tomatoes and very low on the critic score, but that was expected. And once again, we didn't make it for the critics. Well, I want to talk about that too, but I also want to say, I wanted to talk to you for an hour, at least just in general, before we talked about your incredible good fortune, because I don't want people to envy you or hate you. I'm sure you know that what happened to you in getting this book turned into a series does not happen. ever. In our crazy jacked-up industry, you are an outlier with a capital of. People don't believe

the story of dirty jobs and how that got on the air. But compared to what you did with this book, it's almost unthinkable, Jack, and I wonder if you're aware of that. People tell me that quite frequently, especially in Hollywood, because I always, you know, when they ask the story, I'm sitting down, because I have some other projects out there right now. And if they, you know, if they never come to fruition, that's fun. It's just fun. And I'll turn those ideas into novels. When I'm talking to these guys in Hollywood and they ask about the story and how this all worked out and how Chris Pratt got the book and Antoine Fuku wanted to make it. Like, how did you do this? And these are serious people who have made a lot of things in the past. And I'm just, I say it's your typical Hollywood story. You know, it just said, they're like, no, it's,

it's not. It's not. It happens every day in this town. So no, I just kind of joke, but I am aware. I'm extremely fortunate. You know, it goes back to something I tell my kids. And I tell them, you never miss an opportunity to make somebody's day. And it really doesn't mean like go running around and spend your whole life in a frenzy trying to make somebody's day. But as you go through the course of the day, never miss an opportunity to do that. And I only started articulating it that way more recently because that's how this all came about. It came about because as the book was coming to print, dude, about five months, that is galley copy, which is, for those listening, it's like a rough draft that comes out ahead of time that goes to reviewers typically so that they can talk to you about it on interviews.

beforehand. It was November of 2017. Book was coming out March of 2018, and I got a call from someone in the SEAL teams who I had not spoken to in five years. And he calls me and says, do you remember me? And I said, of course, I remember you. Jared, how are you? And he said, do you remember what you did for me in the SEAL teams? And I said, nope. And he said, you're the only person who sat me down in your office, talked to me about transitioning out of the military. You introduced me to people in the private sector. You followed up and checked on me. Always wanted to thank you. And I said, no problem. And he said, uh, mutual frank. told me you have a book coming out. And I said, yeah, it's coming out in a few months. I have

this galley copy. I can send you if you want to check it out. And he said, I'd like to read it, but I'd like to give it to a friend of mine. And I said, yeah, who's that? And he said, Chris Pratt. I was like, oh, that's convenient because I was thinking of Chris Pratt as I wrote this, which is odd because back in December 2014 and then through 2015, as I'm writing, he had not been in Guardians of the Galaxy, had not been in Avengers, had not been in Jurassic World. He was Andy Dwyer in Parks and Rec. And he had a very small part as A seal in 30. So I saw that transformation from this guy, you know, lovable Andy Dwyer to the seal operator.

And this is me in my rental house with my family at between 10 at night and 3 in the morning writing, writing, writing, right? It's the only time it was quiet in that house. Remains very similar writing experience here in the house today, actually. It was very natural for me to think who's going to play this role. And I thought Chris Pratt's the guy. I thought of Tom Hanks in the 80s playing, doing all comedy and then taking your risk with Philadelphia in the early 90s.

and then being able to do anything he wanted after that. So I knew I wanted someone who hadn't done these types of roles before, who had potential, who is inherently likable on and off screen because I was writing something that was exceedingly violent, and I thought Chris Pratt's the guy. So I decided that Chris Pratt would play my character. And at the same time, since I was choosing my A-List actor, or soon-to-be A-Lis actor, because he wasn't quite there yet,

I thought, who will direct this? And I thought Antoine Fuqua. I love Training Day. I love Tears of the Sun. I love all these things that he's done, shooter. I thought Antoine will direct. And then I thought, who will be my editor? And I thought, okay, I went to the back of books by Vince Flynn and Brad Thor and saw they were both thanking someone named Emily Bessler in New York at Simon & Schuster.

So I decided that she would be my editor and publisher. And now all those things have happened. And I had no connection to Hollywood and no connect. I didn't think I did. And no connection to New York or didn't think I did. So all my energy and effort went into making it the best book that I could possibly make it. So it's very convenient that a friend that I helped out in the SEAL teams reconnected with me and happens to be best friends with Chris Pratt. I had no idea.

And now he's a... You understand why I did this the way I did it, right? I don't want people to hate you. And you come right out of the gate with, yeah, you know, I always wanted to write a book, so I did. And I always wanted Chris Pratt to star in it, so he did. And I always wanted Antoine Fuqua to direct. So he did.

And I thought it's like, no. But tell me about a guy who spent 20 years in Harms Way on my behalf. Tell me about a guy who helped his brother. they're out when he needed help and how that favor got returned. Okay, that's a guy I would like to see the universe smile upon. And Jack, the universe is smiling at you. I mean, that's why I started with how's it going, because I just really can't quite square. Of course Amazon is going to want another chunk. Of course you're going to write more books. Of course Simon and Schuster is going to give you a five book deal if you want to stay with them. It's all happened.

And I just personally, I just don't think it could have happened to a nicer guy. And I think there's probably some of that at play here. Here's my question. Sorry for the ramble. Chris Pratt isn't Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks is loved not just by the masses, but by the critics, by the industry. Chris Pratt broke a few eggs. Yeah.

And he's still breaking them. Now, personally, I love it. And I'm guessing you do too. Yeah. There's really the only guy, when we talk about that authenticity piece, you can have some other actors out there that maybe can pull it off on screen, but you're not really with them, especially if they slip up, because you know what they're like, especially nowadays, in real life. Chris, something happens on there. Maybe we'll give him a pass and we'll give the show a pass if there's some light in the tunnels in this first episode, because if it was all dark, well, you would have to have a black screen. Or if, you know, something tactically, oh, you wouldn't maybe have done it exactly like, would have taken a slightly different angle, whatever it might be, because Chris is all in. And he believes some of these things, and he's a good guy. Someone you want to have a beer with. He's somebody that you want to have a coffee with.

He's a guy's guy, and you know that. Some of the other people that are portraying stars that are out there portraying characters with similar backgrounds, I mean, you're like, I don't know if I really want to have a beer with that guy. That guy, I don't know. Chris, you do. So, yeah, he did, you know, people know that, well, he gave his speech at the MTV Awards, which is a fantastic speech, really about personal responsibility

and all these things. He talked about God in that speech in Hollywood these days. That's, you know, hey, the critics aren't going to love you for that for whatever reason. But imagine today, if we went back in time, or imagine if we were in 1980, whatever it was, let's say one, and then we fast forwarded with the same show and had Tom Hanks and bosom buddies today. Pretty sure that would not draw the applause of the critics today. Timing. There's a little bit of timing involved in some of these things as well. Hey, we can't make blazing saddles, right?

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American giant American made. American giant American made. I mean, seriously, though, we hear about it all of the time. We know there is all kinds of different biases at play. But the disparity on Rotten Tomatoes is fascinating. It is. 95% of the people who watch this are loving it. And that is not true among the critics.

So what do you think about the criticism? Is any of it fair? And do you give a damn? I love what it shows. And I love that maybe to open some other doors for other streaming services for Amazon to realize, okay, we have these very loud voices, these loud critical voices, whether it's an actual critic or a comment on Twitter or Facebook from someone with one follower or it's someone who has a huge following that's angry about something who probably didn't put in that requisite time, energy, and effort to study. the issue, but they're outraged anyway. And then that makes the base of their followers retweet and be angry as well. What I hope it does and what I think it does is Amazon, obviously, just like any other streaming service or tech company, they have the data. Like they know the truth. They'll never share that, but they've got it. So they know exactly who's watching it. They know exactly who's watching everything and for how long. And they know when a certain person comes on a screen and whatever show it might be, how long you watch that person. So it really kind of takes some of the art out of it.

And I don't think they've applied that yet, but I can see them in the future pasting together something based on an algorithm that they've created and essentially putting something together just to get eyeballs on it and to keep your eyeballs glued to it and to their subscription service. I don't think we're there quite yet, but the data would allow for that in the future in the next, let's say, 10 years or something along those lines. But I think what it shows is that, hey, there's a market here. And no matter how loud some of these critical voices are, who are we making this for? And some things you might make for the critics, some things you might want to make

because you want to get this award for a production team or a director or an actor, and that's the point of the project. That was not the point of this project. We wanted to make something that spoke to those who have been downrange in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places, something special for them. And that's what we set out to do with that authenticity piece that guided our every move and to have Amazon Goal along with us. That's saying something.

Yeah, it is. A lot of people took a bet, but it's a good bet. I want to be respectful of your time, but I got to ask you, who wrote First Blood? I'm drawing on a blank. David Morel wrote it back in 1972. It's never been out of print. And this last May actually was the 50th anniversary. Very unusual to have a book that's been out for 50 years that's never been out of print. And then the movie came out in 1983 with Sylvester Stallone. So you know where I'm going. I read the book years ago and then I saw the movie. I really enjoyed both. But I wasn't on the ride I thought I was on. Right? I was on a different ride. And at At first, it was a little jarring because you read the book and that's the thing in your head.

So as the guy who wrote the book, obviously two totally different mediums and you have to make a lot of hard decisions in order to get that story told in eight hours versus 50 chapters. What was that experience like? And were you along for that ride? Were you cool with all the creative decisions that had to be made? I was. And in particular because of First Blood, because I had read that, because I'd said. seen the show because I've read everything else David Morel has ever written. Because I read Man on Fire back in the 80s by A.J. Quinell, I saw the 80s adaptation and the Denzel Washington

one that came out in the early 2000s. I loved the book, loved the adaptation, both very different. So I went into it understanding that you're telling a story now through a visual mediums, and that means that things are going to need to change. I can't just be writing and tell you what someone thinks. We have to now show that. And we have a story arc. And we have eight hours. I just can't keep writing until whenever it ends. No, you have eight hours. So each episode has to move that plot forward, give a little bit of resolution, but keep people wanting to move to that next episode, kind of with a chapter, or kind of like the end of a book. I want people to get the next book. So giving them resolution to a point, but also making them want to get that next book.

So I went into it as a student, and I went into it knowing that things were going to change. And Antoine and Chris wanted me involved from the get-go. So I talked to the showrunner, David Agilio, And for those listening, a showrunner in a series is like a director and a feature, meaning they're the singular point of contact for really everything that's going on there. And we had our first conversation the day after he was hired in December of 2019. And we've talked every day since. And it's been an amazing partnership. And I've just been a student. I've been listening.

I've been soaking it all in, learning, advising at all stages, all the way from that initial pilot that Chris and Antoine and David then went to sell to Amazon and Netflix and showtime. Got in a bidding war between Netflix. Amazon ended up with it. all the way through the writer's room, advising on those scripts, being on set, and seeing the continual development of those scripts as we go along, because now we have actors coming in, and they're bringing things to these roles that maybe we didn't anticipate in the writer's room. And that's going to affect, oh, if he did something here in episode one or two,

that affects 5, 6, 7, and 8 because of X, Y, or Z. So you have that, you have situation and terrain, getting out there with a script on these locations and saying, oh, this is not going to work here the way we thought it was going to work when we were back in that nice air-conditioned office writing this thing out. So it's been, you're continually adapting, and I just have loved being part of every part of this process, to conclude the edits, and now hopefully with season two, but we shall see.

But point being, I knew there were going to be changes. I'm always a student, always learning. And I like the changes because they are rooted in the foundation of the novel. We have that authenticity piece also in there, and any change is still rooted there. But if you've read the book, there's surprises in the show. Oh, yeah. the other way around going backwards.

I think in some cases, it made the book better. What do your best friends make of this? What does your wife say? Right? I mean, as these things started to come together, you must have been surrounded by people who were just shaking their heads. Or did they know, too?

Like, do you guys all have some crystal ball that everybody have the same clarity that you seem to have been born with? No, you get the same looks when you tell someone you want to be an author as you do when you tell them you want to be a seal. It's kind of like, you'll grow out of it, kid. Even if they're like, that's great, yeah. But it's in that tone, you can sense it.

You know that they're just like kind of patronizing you. And you're not really going to make it. You're not going to, you might not even sign up. You certainly won't make it through this hell weak thing that I've seen on Discovery Channel. Oh, that's nice. You want to be an author. Okay. And then their head, they're thinking, do you know, the odds of actually getting published

or actually getting on the New York Times list? And, you know, I never really thought about any of those things other than, hey, it's hard. That's part of the draw. Not the only draw, but it's certainly part of it. So people have known me my whole life. Two friends from kindergarten texted me yesterday, about three days before that from preschool texted me. And, you know, they said, you're still the same person

that you were on that slide in preschool or in that, on that playground. You know, they've learned a little more over the years. So I'm still friends with them. My wife and I have known each other since we're 18 years old. She knew I wanted to be a seal. She knew that I wanted to write after that. I don't think she really thought about it any differently than I did. But those around you, you can tell.

You know, those other people you can tell. And that's kind of fuel. That's a little bit of fuel. You don't spend too much time worrying about it because then you're taking that bandwidth and it's limited. And now you're worried about what someone else thinks or how hard it is because someone else maybe failed or they didn't even take that first step because someone told them how hard it was.

But that takes up a little bandwidth, which means that is not going into preparing yourself to be an operator in the SEAL teams or not working on your novel to make it the best that it can possibly be. So for me, that was just fuel for the fire. It wasn't the main driving force. but it's something I didn't really pay attention to because I knew I was always on this path and I never really thought about not making it. You paid your dues.

You put in that work. I can tell you for sure that if you have a goal, I can tell you if you don't put in the work, for sure you will not make it to where you want to go. But if you put in the work, you still might not. But for sure, if you don't put in the work, you're not making it. So that's the given. You have to be prepared when someone offers that hand or cracks that door. You can't all of a sudden scramble.

You have to have put in the work. One, because then people will trust you and say, oh, I see, I noticed the work that this person is doing. Guess what? I'm going to crack this door because I can. I can maybe pay it for, whatever my reasons are. But you've got to be ready to kick that door in. So it's about that preparation. Just like preparing for war in the SEAL teams, your job is not to go to war is to be prepared to go to war when that call comes.

And then you go and you do it. So same thing with anything in life. You have to put in that foundation. I think today, Instagram certainly does not help because all you're seeing is that second snapshot of someone's life. And that's what you're looking at. You're not thinking about all the work that went in to that snapshot. And that's not the most healthy way. So I got to look at everything on Instagram.

I tell the kids, look at it as an advertisement, even if it is someone's personal account. It's an advertisement for whatever they want you to see personal or professional. Put it in that category and think about it in those terms. Don't dwell on it. Get back to work. You know, it's interesting. I agree. But I differ slightly with, I'm a box of chocolates guy when it comes to social.

I use social very, very deliberately for my foundation. I use it in a very mercenary way to sell my grandfather's whiskey and to promote my projects. But I try and remember the importance of occasionally stopping on a jog to take a picture of somebody's retainer on a water fountain. Because that's life and that's weird. And when you share the absurd parts of your existence, with six, seven million people, what comes back over the net is a very unusual type of appreciation. And so I agree with you. It's a hot mess. It's a bullia base of craven disappointment. But it's also just a tool, as surely as a Barrett 50 Cal. And in the hands of somebody who

understands what to do with it, you know, you can accomplish some things. Or you can shoot your foot off. Yeah, exactly. Up to the end user. But once again, we came back to the retainer. You help somebody out. You use that power of social media. And oftentimes, you can help. There are connections that have been made, all sorts of positive relationships, foundations that have been forged online. And there is that piece. But you got that retainer. Back to its owner, we think. Yeah, who knows? Because it is a sentient being. It's a new owner who now is literally going to launch their own Instagram page. They're going to use

this retainer as a vehicle through which to dispense advice, which may or may not be good or bad. I don't know. Time will tell. But it goes to the weirdness of the world. So does this, by the way. I got a lot of cool stuff on my own. Oh, nice. Awesome. Yeah, man.

Very cool. Very cool. I love this thing. It was a seal came by the office a few years ago and just wanted to thank me for doing whatever I did with them. And I mean, it's a flipper. I mean, I've got

stuff on walls. You got a paddle too, don't you? I love it. Yeah, I've got a paddle back there. Oh, yeah, yeah. I got a priding around here. Where is it, Chuck? You see it? I don't see it. I know you have it. It's hanging in the bathroom, I think. It's with my copy of Once an Eagle. It'll turn out. I only

mention that because my final question is about the Tomahawks, both behind you and on your lid. What do they signify? And I can't help but notice. They made their way into the show. They certainly did. So as I was writing, I knew I needed, you know,

just being a child of the 80s and a student of all this. Of course, I grew up in a time when the Rambo Survival Knife was a big thing in the 80s. And I thought, what is something? And I've studied how Sylvester Stallone understands the importance of props, even in a story. And I thought, okay, what's something different that hasn't been done? It has to speak to the character.

It can't be just to be different. It really has to drive, be a character development tool. This is a student of warfare. So what's something that harkens back to that in ancient times, but has the modern elements that allows you to continue to use it today? It'll stand out to people. And the tomahawk was it. I've just been a tomahawk person since I was a little kid for whatever reason.

I had Rogers Rangers rules on my wall. For those who know what that is, there's a couple specifically that point out tomahawks. keeping them sharp and that sort of a thing. I was buying Tomahawks at an early age through, I think it was U.S. Calvary Magazine, a brigade quartermaster that was out there during the mid-80s, late 80s, back of Soldier of Fortune magazine and gung-ho magazine. I was always interested in these things. And very early on, then when I started writing, it was readily apparent. I'd just given my kids actually gifts at my retirement ceremony from the military. And I gave them a Bible with their

name on it and an antique brass compass. And I said, These are things to guide you. And then I gave them a leatherbound copy of the Constitution. And I said, hey, these are your rights. These are your natural rights. And then I handed them this tomahawk. Actually, I got one right here. And I handed them this.

And I said, here's the means to defend them. So they got those four gifts. And then I was back that day or two later, probably typing away in that same office off the bedroom in our corner rental. And I was thinking, gosh, you know what? Books getting kind of close to the end. I need a logo. And I had the gifts from the kids right there. in my office. And so I took the two tomahawks and I put them on the ground and I looked at

them. And then I snapped a photo and I sent it to Daniel Winkler who makes these. He's a great friend in North Carolina. He did the tomahawks and the knives for the last of the Mohicans. And I said, hey, do you mind if I use this as my symbol? And he said, it would be an honor, do that. And then I sent it to Simon & Schuster. Or no, I hadn't sent it to Simon Schuster yet. That's right. That's right. So I sent it to Simon & Schuster months later. And I said, what do you think about this? And they loved it as well. So it's really become associated with the character now, especially because it's on every billboard in Los Angeles. And once again, Amazon was a little nervous about some of these things.

And one of the scenes they were nervous about is one that's now on every billboard in LA with Chris Pratt holding this. For me, it worked out, you know, kind of like I planned it or like I was hoping. It's a better way to put it. So weird. It's so weird, Jack, that something you wanted to see come to pass came to pass. It just seems just. A lot of thought went into that.

Obviously, it's a lifetime of studying these things and thinking about tomahawks and thinking about that connection to ancient weapons and how they've developed over time. So it seemed like a natural thing for my character to embrace as well. So now it seems to be working. Well, you know what? Somehow you got it past the cultural appropriation police. Don't know how you did it, but you did it. He envisioned it, Mike. He imagined it and it became so. That's how he did it. Yeah. I can't wait to see what you do next. Obviously, we're fans, not just of your writing, but of your service. and the weird way that those two things together, truly, the whole is greater than the sum of those parts.

I applaud your clarity of purpose, your hard work, your willingness to be uncomfortable, your reading list, your tomahawks, all of it, man. Congratulations. You're having a hell of a run. Oh, well, thank you so much and you too. You know, you've been essentially a part of this family since we first saw you on TV,

and you're doing so many great things with the platform that you've created as well. inspiring generations, and I can't think really of anybody else who's doing it in the way that you are in such a positive way, but not just the positivity. It's a practical application of that as well. You tie those world. Oh, thanks, man. And that positive, inspiring message. So thank you for doing what you do. It means a lot, not just to me, but to a whole segment of society. Well, thanks, ma'am. Coming from you, it means a lot. And I hope it goes without saying, if by some strange chance a character evolves in one of your

future novels or shows that is of a certain age, bitter, broken, world weary, but still hoping to make a difference in some small way, ideally with a crisp, well-modulated baritone. Think of me. I'm available, and I'm a fan. Well, I sincerely appreciate that, and you'll know it if there's a character there who's reading Everybody Lies. That might be the... Yeah, in a book called Still Classified.

That's what I'm waiting for. Perfect. Still classified, number one with a bullet. That's it. All right, brother. Thank you again for your time. Thank you so much. We sure appreciate it.

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