#2390 - Jack Carr

Joe Rogan podcast, check it out!

The Joe Rogan experience.

Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.

All right, you're up.

Mommy, what's up?

Good to see you.

How are you, bro?

Great to see you.

Always great to see you.

I've been so looking forward to this.

I'm going a thousand miles an hour for it seems like.

Me too, Matt.

And I've been really looking forward to talking to you about this book because I know that you've been obsessed.

You've been obsessed by this era in human history.

Tell us about it.

Yeah, yeah.

So, this is 1968 Vietnam, and I just launched the book tour not last night, but the night before, because last night was comedy Mothership, Kill Tony, which was amazing.

We had a blast.

It was so crazy.

It's the best show to go.

Did they vet any of those people, by the way, before they come up?

Yeah, didn't look like that.

It was nice people, brilliant people, great comics, terrible comics.

That was fantastic.

That's the best show to go.

That was fantastic.

But yeah, I kicked off the book tour with David Morrell, who created Rambo back in 1972 with First Blood.

So that was a huge honor for me.

He's been an inspiration to me my whole life.

And I wrote a series of books in the 80s, Brotherhood of the Rose, Fraternity of the Stone, League of Night and Fog, which were just incredible.

And I got to kick off the book tour with him out there.

Signed a baby for the first time.

I've never signed a baby.

Someone brought a baby through and asked me to sign their kid.

I was like,

it does.

And then I realized they just wanted me to sign the shirt on the baby, which is a little better than the actual skin of the baby.

So

I did that.

I was worried they would tattoo the baby.

Two new tattoos came through.

So I saw two new very large tattoos of crossed tomb.

That's nice.

That's crazy.

I mean, you've had that for a while.

You've had people doing that for a while for you.

But I remember the first time I got one, I think it was after, I think it was after I was on, or right around the same time, the first time I was on.

So like 2020, the first time I saw it, I texted you and sent it.

And it was like, someone tattooed the cross-tom hawks on themselves.

And, you know, I knew you'd had that with you for a while.

And if it was weird the first time, you see it.

Like, now it's kind of must be kind of normal because a lot of people have tattoos of you.

It's not normal.

It's not normal.

You know, it's weird.

It's very weird.

They'll probably grow to regret them.

Never.

That doesn't happen with tattoos, does it?

No.

Not mine.

No.

I don't regret mine.

I like mine.

It's a life story.

It's a life story.

Yeah, it's awesome.

You know, it depends on what you got.

Yeah.

You know.

And timing.

And maybe if you got someone's name on there that's no longer a part of your life.

Yeah.

Maybe the wife wants you to get that removed.

Perhaps.

Turn it into a snake.

I've heard that.

Exactly.

Exactly.

But yeah, the book, 1968, Vietnam.

And I thought this was going to be

the book that was going to take me the least amount of time because I thought I had this foundation of knowledge knowledge when it comes to warfare, Vietnam in particular, those lessons.

I've had the influence of popular culture when it comes to the 60s and Vietnam as well growing up.

So I thought I was well prepared to dive into this world.

And I didn't want to just say that they're listening to Creedon's Clearwater Revival and that it's 1968 and then essentially drop a contemporary thriller into the 60s, into Vietnam, 1968.

Instead, I wanted someone who lived through that era to know that I put in the effort and any sentence had to be written through the lens of 1968 without the benefit of 50 plus years of hindsight.

So if someone is 70 years old, 50 years old, 20 years old, they only have their life experience up to that point to

make a decision for perspective on an event.

And that took a lot more time than I thought.

I got a dictionary from 1969.

I couldn't find the one from 1968 I wanted, so I got a dictionary from 1969 to look out at how terms were defined back then.

A lot of maps from the era, and it was just a, it took a lot longer, which is why we're here in October and not in January, June when the book was supposed to come out.

Oh, wow.

So, what so when you get a dictionary from 1968, what is the difference?

Well, that's what I wanted to find out.

Is there a lot of difference?

I'm sure there is, but I was looking at just some specific terms that I can't even remember what they are right now.

And you just wanted to look at it through that.

Yeah, I didn't want to Google something today.

I wanted to be doing this research as if I was in the 60s.

And so, if I needed to look something up, whether it was spelling or whatever else, I wanted to use that instead of like asking Google machine.

So, I just wanted to transport myself back in time.

And yeah,

that was quite the endeavor.

I didn't expect at the outset.

I feel like this, that war in particular is

like World War II was what we think America is.

Vietnam is what America really is.

That is a

very perceptive insight.

So World War II, we were fighting evil.

We were stopping the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich.

World War II was just.

Vietnam was fucking nonsense.

And it's still, to this day, it infuriates people that participated in it.

It infuriates people who lost family members.

It didn't make any sense.

It was birthed on a lie.

It was a complete false flag event that our own government,

they lied to us and told us that

the Gulf of Tonkin, there was an incident where one of our battleships was attacked and it wasn't.

It was all a lie.

And it was just to get us into this fucking war.

And there's a whole bunch of people that made a whole bunch of money and a bunch of people died.

And at the end of it, everybody felt broken.

And during it, there was a gigantic cultural revolution in the middle of it.

That's the real America.

Yeah, you know,

it's something that I explore in the book.

And the benefit of hindsight, it's certainly more

not relevant, but

you can draw that out for sure at the benefit of hindsight.

And I'm trying to write this thing in 1968 from these guys.

So they're having these conversations with only that information.

So they don't yet know who's making a ton of money.

They're not yet knowing about Bell helicopters and all the rest of this stuff.

They don't really know yet about Gulf of Tonkin.

They just know that 1968 is the bloodiest year thus far of the war, and it's going to be the bloodiest year of the war so far, which is why I said it in that year.

How many people died that year?

Well,

over 58,000 in total.

And I forget exactly how many for that particular year, but we lost more people that year and had more people wounded than any other year of the war.

But over 58,000 people died in Vietnam on our side, to say nothing of the Vietnamese

and NVA, Viet Cong, civilians, all put together.

But certainly a lot more than 58,000.

And over what?

Yeah, looking back, so I'm trying to look at it through the lens of the day.

And when you look at that, the domino thing, we look back and say, of course, the rest of the world wouldn't have fallen to communism.

But at the time, I'm trying to put myself into the shoes of the people making these decisions.

And

at least for Southeast Asia, there was

the threat of other countries falling.

Even if they did, would that have meant anything long-term for the rest of us today?

It's hard to say that it would have.

But I mean, the whole thing is so heartbreaking.

And you're right.

When we got back from World War II, those guys had parades.

They got back to work.

They used the GI Bill.

They built this country into what it is today.

Vietnam, those guys, it was looked at like they went bankrupt.

It was like a company going bankrupt.

And when they came back, they were called baby killers.

They were met at the airport by protesters.

They had all that to deal with, all that baggage to deal with.

And that left a scar on an entire generation.

And really, you know, a lot of that started with the Kennedy assassination in 1963.

And then we move on into the war, and this becomes the first televised war.

So there were photographs of the Civil War.

There's photographs, World War I, World War II.

We're getting the newsreels when you go to the movies on Saturday and see the matinee, and you're getting those.

But that's a very different type of way to get your news because you're seeing it once a week, or you're seeing a still photograph in a paper.

Then we get to Vietnam, and now you're seeing it every day on the news.

You're seeing Walter Cronkite there giving you that news, and you're watching these guys in foxholes, and you're seeing this shooting, and you're seeing this chaos.

And then also the media, I think this is the first time where the media realizes they have, they're not just a pillar as a check on government, they realize at this point that they actually have power to influence events and policy.

So how they report from Vietnam, very different from how reporters, even in Korea, but let's get World War II, very different from how reporters reported on that war.

And now I think in Vietnam, you have these guys in Saigon and they realize, and they're staying at these amazing hotels, and they're partying it up at night, and some of them are going to the outskirts of town.

So it looks like they're out in the rice patties or whatever, and then they're going back to their hotel for drinks.

But they realize during this time that they can influence policy, and so that's what we see with the TED Offensive.

We see that as

a complete tactical win for the United States, but it becomes a loss for us, a huge strategic loss for us because of the way that it's reported.

And the media is involved in that.

So, they didn't know it before.

What was the issue?

The media distorted what was going on.

Yeah, the media.

When something truly works for you, you want people to know about it.

AG1 Next Gen is your daily healthy drink.

Just one scoop combines your multivitamin, pre- and probiotic, superfoods, and antioxidants into one truly simple, delicious habit.

I partnered with AG-1 for so long because they're committed to constantly improving.

And their latest clinically studied formula features more vitamins and minerals for more comprehensive support while still maximizing absorption in the body.

And I know I've talked about AG1 for a long time, but if you haven't checked it out in a while, now's the time.

AG1 has a lot going on, including new flavors: berry, citrus, and tropical.

That'll make showing up for your health even better.

You can be an athlete, you could be a gym brat, you just be a normal person, and AG1 is going to help you feel your best.

When you subscribe today, you'll get a free bottle of AG D3K2 and five AG1 travel packs with your first subscription order.

Go to drinkag1.com/slash J-R-E.

That's drinkag1.com/slash slash J-R-E.

Check it out.

This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats.

Every football season, the same thing happens.

The game somehow makes everyone really hungry.

Quarterback scrambles, clearly a sign it's time for breakfast burritos.

Turnovers, suddenly dessert at 2 p.m.

Doesn't sound so crazy.

And wing formations, well, those can only mean buffalo wings, as if they're ever not in play.

Even the goalposts start looking suspiciously like french fries.

It's almost like football is sending the message to eat more food.

The good news, Uber Eats makes those cravings easy to satisfy with game day deals all season long, from wings and pizza to chips and drinks, even last-minute grocery runs.

You'll find savings on all your favorites delivered straight to your door.

Order now on Uber Eats.

David E.

Dor just ordered what was going on and

talked about this huge victory for

the NVA and

for North Vietnam.

And it wasn't really, but it was when they reported it that way.

And then we see more of America turning against this war and

policy shifts and more people shipped into Vietnam.

So it's a, I mean, the whole thing is so sad.

And I try to humanize it and personalize it in this book because you can read about, I think it's the importance of reading fiction also, because

you get a compassion there and an empathy for people because you're living something through their eyes, even though it's fiction, that you don't get really through nonfiction.

You can read about all these numbers, you can read about 58,000, but when you read a story like this, then you're getting to know these characters and you're going through this thing with them, and that then becomes a part of your experience.

So even...

say, let's say, Buds going through SEAL training.

Yeah, I'm thinking back to Normandy and I'm thinking back to

Iwo Jima.

I'm thinking back to Vietnam and what these guys had to go through.

And then I'm realizing, oh, I can do a few more push-ups in the sand here in Coronado, California.

All those guys died and sacrificed so much so that I could be here.

But some of that comes comes through the works of fiction too, the thrillers that I was reading growing up from guys who had backgrounds in Vietnam or just from things they were dealing with in contemporary thrillers of the day.

But that became part of my experience.

And I didn't have to, and it's almost like you're living it, even though it's all made up.

So that's the important of reading in general.

And

the beacon of reading.

When we look at 2003 to 2025 and the drop off.

in reading that has occurred, that is scary.

Do you think that's because of the internet?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, it's quite, it corresponds almost directly with the rise of the smartphone.

And, of course, it continues to drop today.

So I think I'm getting into publishing and Hollywood in probably one of the worst times in the last hundred years that one could decide to do something like this with AI and all and all the rest of it.

It's

and less people reading and less people.

There's no backside to there's no box office for movies anymore.

No, the worst time to get into it is tomorrow.

Yeah, good point.

I'm way better that you already have the terminalist and the dark wolf on TV.

Yeah, you're way better off.

Trying today, they'd be like, we have no use for scripts.

Oh, man.

We wrote 100 scripts in the time it took you to walk up the stairs.

Oh, man, I know.

We put in prompts.

I want a Vietnam thriller

involving a handsome football player who tries to go do the best for his country, but realizes like Pat Tillman style, gets disillusioned when he gets there.

Yeah, I mean,

it's a thing.

I think CAA, my talent agency, just sent me a thing the other day and said that one of these OpenAI deals, I think it was a $1.5 billion settlement or something, and that they'd use my books.

And I'm sure they've used this podcast.

I'm sure they've used all sorts of things.

But the settlement out of that for me is possibly $1,000.

Congratulations.

And I thought, well, thank you.

And I thought, well, my attorney's going to re-is my attorney only going to take an hour to do this?

Because that makes it a, you know,

a net.

Exactly.

So, but then do you not do it?

Because then they just hold them.

I don't know.

It's crazy.

Take the thousand.

But then I have to pay like $6,000 to get the thousand.

Do you really?

I would think.

That's hilarious.

I'm sure they're going to spend like six hours.

I don't think so.

I mean, if I even ask the question, the thousand's gone.

Cut me a check, bitch.

I don't think it works that way.

So I don't even know.

But the AR part is interesting.

I was talking to, so I was in Morocco filming, True Believer, just a couple weeks ago.

So we finished up filming out there with Pratt and everybody.

It was amazing.

And

yep, from Morocco, you fly through France on the way home.

So I stopped in Paris for a few days, met my wife out there, met some other friends out there, went to a bunch of dinners and things like that.

But one of them is a guy named Rick Rosenfield.

He started started California Pizza Kitchen back in 1985.

And they were going to put one in one of the Wynn hotels in Vegas.

And we were talking about AI, and that's how this plays in here.

And he said, he told me the story.

And I'll get, this is the general gist.

It might be not the exact detail, but the general gist is right.

They're going to put one into one of the Wynn casinos.

And so he goes in there with Steve Wynn, and they're walking through, and Waylon Jennings is with them.

So they're all, there's three, these three guys, Steve.

Wynn, Rick Rosenfeld, and Waylon Jennings.

And they go in, and Steve Wynn says, hey, Wayland, we have this cover band.

We have this guy that does just your cover tunes.

He's a huge fan of yours, and I'd appreciate it if you said, you said hi to him.

And Waylon Jennings is like, yeah, no problem.

So the cover band guy is like Jalen Wennings or something.

Let's call him that.

I don't know what his real name is, but sits down and they're having drinks.

And the guy's like,

I love all your stuff.

Thank you so much.

I hope it's okay that I'm doing these cover bands, but I just idolize you.

And Wayland Jennings is sitting there.

He goes, oh, yeah, no problem.

Only there is one problem, though, with what you're doing.

And the guy's like, what, what, what?

And he said, you're always one album behind.

And I was like, Oh.

And this guy told me the story in the context of AI and someone using my books to write another book that has a similar tone, or write this in the style of Jack Carr with some prompts.

And I was saying that I was a little concerned about this and just don't know what's going to happen in the future.

And he told me that story.

And so I'm like, Oh, that's fantastic.

They're always going to be a book behind.

Yeah, but AI is not a cover band.

AI is a lot smarter than us.

That's the problem.

The problem is,

you know, I don't know if you're paying paying attention to what it's been doing with music.

But, like, so, Jamie, show them some of the interviews.

I saw those.

Some of the interviews that you made.

I showed them up there.

Yeah, yeah.

Those are crazy.

This is crazy.

Yeah, thank you for Muhammad Ali on the podcast.

Yeah, Michael Jackson.

Yeah, Michael Jackson on the podcast.

And

it's not difficult for it to do stuff like that.

And so we're not talking about a cover band.

We're talking about someone that can do something or something that can accomplish a task that human beings can't.

Man, now I'm bummed out again.

I I was all positive a second ago.

Play that.

That's so crazy.

You got to act like it every day.

That means working with nobody, watching, staying humble, but never doubting yourself.

You still carry that mindset?

Oh, it's in me forever.

You don't stop being a champion just because the bell ain't ringing.

When you sit down like this with a microphone, you can't hide anything.

Your breathing, your hesitation, even your heartbeat comes true.

If you try to be some

smile, every handshake you weigh at this game.

That's terrible.

They might figure that one out.

That one's terrible.

It helps them.

That's terrible.

That's someone else's.

I've noticed how life sneak up on you like a bill.

You forgot your head.

One day you're cool.

Next day.

That's terrible.

Stop that.

But there are some that are good.

Stop that.

Stop that.

That's not Richard Price voice.

You think the whole world is waiting for you to show up, and then you find out the world was busy already.

The trick is figuring out how to join in without losing your.

I would say hearing it through these iPhones now.

You can hear that weird tinge.

Like, that's supposed to be Lee Harvey Oswald.

Doesn't really look like him.

A little bit, like a really young Lee Harvey Oswald.

Anyway,

we're fucked.

That's crazy.

We're fucked.

Bottom line is.

And music is really fucked.

Like, we were playing this 50 Cent cover.

They did the song Many Men, but they did it with a soul singer from the 1950s or 1960s.

It's incredible.

It's so good.

It's like one of my favorite songs.

Really?

It's not even a real person.

That's insane.

It's not even a real person.

Horilaria.

It's so good.

We were all in the green room the other night.

We're like, if this guy was a real dude, he would be the biggest star in the world right now.

Because everybody would want to hear him sing.

I mean, Millie Vanilli just did it a little too early.

Well, Millie Vanilli just lip-synced.

You know, this is a totally different experience.

This is like they're going to create stuff with your voice better than anything you can do.

It's so brutal.

But for the kids, at least we're aware of it.

So we can choose.

Maybe we can choose.

It's going to be hard to, like, some of these things, it's going to be hard to figure out at some point.

But I almost think there needs to be, remember the parental advisories in the 80s?

They put on CDs and stuff like that back then.

Like, at least you know, like, if I want to go go and I want to buy this piece of art right here, and I walk into that store and I love this thing, and I put it in my house, and it's there for 10 years, and I show everybody that comes in.

But what if that thing is, I don't know that no one actually made that, that was just AI made that.

And I find out 10 years later,

is that different?

Is that a different experience now for me?

Do I feel cheated?

I don't know.

You should feel cheated.

Yeah.

But if you buy it, there has to be a little thing on it, I don't know, that tells you.

Then you're aware.

Well, part of what art is, is someone made it.

Yeah.

You know, that's what makes it kind of cool.

Yeah.

You know, if it was made by a computer, it doesn't seem, I don't, it doesn't have a piece of a person in it, you know?

And are people going to care like our kids?

Are they going to care?

I don't know because I don't care about that song, so I don't know what to say.

I don't want to be a hypocrite, but

it's inevitable.

It's happening.

You're going to have to deal with it and adapt.

And I think what it means to be a person is going to change.

That's so brutal.

Yeah, I don't think it's possible to avoid change.

And this is the direction that change is going.

And so at your essence, like, what are you and who are you?

You have to search for that in different ways.

And you're probably not going to be able to search for it the same way through music and books if you find out that these music and books weren't actually written by like-minded people.

Or is it that

the lessons and the energy, say the energy of the music and the lessons of the books,

it is from people?

Because what AI's done is they've absorbed all of the art that everyone has ever created ever in terms of literature and music and even comedy and whatever.

And it's combined it together in a style that's completely variable.

You can have it like Amy Winehouse.

You can make it sound like Biggie Smalls.

You can make it sound like anything.

But it is all

imitating everything that humans have created and will still affect humans and maybe inspire us more and maybe put a premium on something that's created by an actual human and not by AI.

Maybe it'll become more valuable.

I hope so.

Yeah.

Hope so.

Put the books on, like, hey, this is made by an actual human.

No AI was used.

I haven't used it yet.

I haven't used Chat GPT or anything like that.

I can barely update my word.

That's what I want to do.

Like, keep my word updated.

That's the main thing.

But I know a lot of people that are using it and love it.

And I have a relationship with this.

Yeah, I use Perplexity for Questions on the show now as a sponsor.

And so, like, every time we have questions,

look, it's a valuable resource.

I feel like, especially for someone who does something like this, it'd be crazy to not use something like that.

I don't think it's everyone thinks that change is bad.

Everyone's scared of change.

They were scared of the printing press.

I mean, people have been scared of the wheel.

They were scared of the locomotive.

People are scared of everything.

I'm not scared of it.

I'm scared that it could potentially fuck up society, but I feel like that's just what's going to happen.

You know, it's just, we go through cycles.

Go to Rome.

Go look around.

What happened?

Where'd everybody go?

You know, there's still people living here, but that society that built that, that fell apart.

Same thing with Athens.

Same thing with many, many, many places in the world.

Societies crumble.

There's a cycle.

We're not immune to that cycle because we're aware of it.

They're aware of it too.

They were all aware of crumbling civilizations and once great civilizations that had fallen.

This episode is brought to you by Visible.

You know that one friend who's always the first to know about everything?

They've got a dozen tabs open constantly on their phone and in their head?

To be that friend, you need wireless that can keep up.

Visible is the ultimate wireless hack that lets you live in the know so you can follow a rabbit hole as long as you want.

Get one-line wireless with unlimited data, talk, and text for $25 a month, taxes and fees included.

Plus, Visible runs on Verizon's 5G network, so you get great coverage and a reliable connection without the premium cost.

Ready for wireless that lets you live in the know?

Make the switch at visible.com.

Terms apply.

See visible.com for planned features and network management details.

I think if you learn to, if you learn to think for yourself, you think logically, if you read kids today, if they put that down that phone and just read, that is a superpower.

They will get out there and crush.

Read, work out, do some MMA BJJ stuff do a little boxing but read you are going to excel just leave everyone else in the dust when it comes to whatever you want to do next in life out of high school out of college whatever it is if you have that foundation then you're ones you're gonna be a more empathetic compassionate person but you're gonna have this knowledge base that other people are are

relying on chat GPT, whatever it is, their phone, whatever, to do that thinking for them.

Yeah, it's amazing how many people just don't consume any non-fiction or fiction.

They don't consume anything but like TikTok and Netflix.

Yes, it is absolutely kind of nuts.

Like I said, about the time enter it to enter publishing.

If you were, I think a great time is the 90s for that because you had, let's say, Michael Crichton and then you had John Grisham.

Like every other year, there was some Michael Crichton movie and then a John Grisham movie and they had the best directors, actors of the day, producers of the day.

And then people bought books they were still reading back then because there wasn't yet the internet.

There wasn't yet all these other things that distract you.

So those guys got to crush.

That was like, I think that was maybe the golden age of being an author and adapting your stuff to film or television, mostly film back then.

But those guys got to crush.

And today, not as much.

But it's fun, though.

It's still fun to create.

It's still fun to do all this.

Still fun to be in Morocco doing this stuff.

There's guys like you that are still doing it.

You know,

it's still doable.

Yep, still doable, that's for sure.

But

heyday's not the same.

You did the right way, though.

You did it on Amazon.

They gave you a lot of creative freedom.

You got great people people to work with.

That's the right way.

I mean, I'm a big fan of the Gray Man series.

I think he does, he's a great writer, but his stuff is so much more violent and gritty than what was portrayed in the film.

Yeah, the film glossed it up and

made it a little pretty.

Right.

That's what happens for the most part.

It's like Carl Hyacinth.

Did you see a bad monkey with

Vince Vaughan?

No.

It's on Apple.

And what is it?

He's a cop that's kind of down on his luck and he's on suspension or whatever.

And he lives in the Keys.

So it has that whole Keys vibe and they film it down there.

And so you recognize if you've been there, you recognize all these places.

But Carl Highlison is the author and

he has this very unique style.

But what he says about Hollywood is he drives to the border of California.

He throws his book over the border.

They throw a bunch of money back at him and he drives back to back to Florida.

And whatever happens, happens.

So that's one way to look at it, but most authors aren't involved

in whatever happens.

They like to get rid of that author right away so you're not on set saying, you ruined my vision.

Yeah, I get that.

I could, I get that, but it seems like what you're doing is better because you're involved in it, and then it reaches your vision or as close as you're going to get.

You help add value.

Yeah.

You want to make it the best show you possibly can.

Yeah, when I saw the terminal list, I was like, this is about as close as you can get and do a TV show

and not have it rated NC 17, like

super hypergraphic.

Yeah, yeah.

But, you know,

way harder to do that in a movie.

To take a book.

You don't take an hour and a half, two hours.

Yeah, your books take hours to read.

Yeah.

And we have seven hours for Dark Wolf, eight hours for the Terminalist.

We'll have eight hours for True Believer.

That's the way to do it.

Yeah.

And that one has the hunting stuff in it.

So once again, now I think we'd like for some reason if we'd started with that or if I'd started with that as a book, then it would have been much more difficult because Amazon would have been much more hesitant.

But since we had a success with the terminal list, now they're taking this risk with us, just like my publisher did.

It would have been very easy as a publisher publisher to say, hey, just do what you did in that first book.

That was successful.

So just take that same kind of stuff and just drop it maybe internationally or something like that.

Instead, I had this whole journey across in the book, it's the Atlantic, in the show, it's going to be the Pacific, but going across this, this journey of violent redemption.

He still thinks he's going to die, gets to Mozambique, still thinks he's going to die, doesn't die yet.

And so, because he has his tumor and then uses the skills from Iraq and Afghanistan to help with the poaching problem over there.

And then the book really, this actual story kicks off from there.

But I thought it was going to be, would be disingenuous to the reader to have this character that went through all the things that he went through in the terminal list, all this traumatic stuff, losing his family, losing his whole troop in Afghanistan, and then all of a sudden he's okay and just out to save the world in the next book.

And so, I had to take him on this journey.

And I kind of thought that my editor and publisher would say, hey, cut out the first third of this book and we got something here.

Instead, they didn't say any of that.

And they took this risk with me.

And it really differentiated that book and me as an author.

And now Amazon's doing the same thing.

So we have Chris Pratt going across the ocean.

He's got this crazy long hair.

He lost a ton of weight for this thing.

He's like battling the storms and his demons and then gets to Mozambique and same thing.

Goes through this second episode where he's out there doing this poacher thing, using his skills out there.

And we filmed in Africa.

So we got these amazing, just the landscapes, beautiful.

It's probably one of the most beautiful

visions of Africa that I've ever seen on film.

It's just incredible.

And Chris is totally into it, of course.

And the guy who got to play, Rich Hastings, I don't know if we can say his name yet, but he's awesome.

He is so good.

And so he's kind of like the older guy, kind of mentoring James Rhys Along, Chris Pratt, uh and he's a guys guy like he uh i'll say his name arnold vosloo and uh so he's got the bad guy from blood diamond and uh nice and uh the mummy and uh just such an awesome guy and he's a guys he's like one of us and so you didn't need to tell him like what to do with the rifle like he knew he knew what to do with that double rifle he's not messing around yeah so uh so it was so fun to do that but that is a risk that amazon's taking is to do those first two episodes to invest all this money in this thing where yeah it has something to do with the development of the character but not really to do with the rest of the story and and him than saving the world.

But they went along with it.

And that's because they saw the numbers

from the first season.

And they'll never share those numbers with us, but we know what they are because there have been like almost no notes in this one.

Like the first one, there was notes constantly.

Like they didn't want Chris to get somebody.

They didn't want that to happen.

And then we did it anyway.

And they ended up being on every billboard in LA for the opening month.

Of course.

All that.

They didn't want the Secretary of Defense to die.

So there was all sorts of things that they were very nervous about, but they ended up going with us.

They ended up trusting us.

But now we didn't have to fight for it in the second season of Orange Dark Wolf because we have that trust.

So that's pretty cool.

That is nice.

That's the beautiful thing about a successful series.

They leave me alone.

Gives you more.

Gives you more freedom.

Don't fuck it up.

Yeah, exactly.

Instead of like, we got to make it better because it's not a hit, it's don't fuck it up.

Exactly.

Exactly.

You had Taylor and Taylor was here.

Taylor was here.

So, what a great guy.

Such a good dude.

Exactly.

He's so cool.

So, so different than like that character that he plays in American Prime Evil is so scary.

So good.

So good.

so realistic like you really believe he's a fucking savage like you really believe everything about it the way he fucks people up like what he even what he looks like like you talked about how much weight he lost for that when he takes his clothes off and you see the scars all over his body like whoa yeah they went through it on that one and they went through it too yeah pete berg was on was on here

he's awesome it's like when you see that you're like you believe that guy i'm like that guy looks like someone who would be living like that back then Oh, yeah.

And he got beat up on that.

He went right from that into our show where he gets beat up again.

And we had to do this show, this thing in episode four where I have my cameo where I get stitched up the side and get killed.

I got be part of the stuntman.

I get killed again.

Yeah, yeah.

I get killed in True Believer, too, and it's a good one.

But are people going to see that it's you this time?

You got to give yourself a fake nose.

Yeah, yeah.

It's the same.

It's kind of like

we're kind of making a little thing about the show.

Like, I always die something.

Stephen King does.

Something like that.

I don't think he dies in them, though.

I think they just kind of do a...

He's been in a bunch of his movies.

He doesn't die in his movies.

It's Not who killed Kenny.

Exactly.

So this would be a little different.

Our twist on it, our take on it.

That's awesome.

Yeah, so that's fun to do that stuff.

But Taylor had to run through this cobblestone, these cobblestone streets, through this tunnel.

And that's the one where I get stitched up and fall over.

So I get the little stuntman pay out of that.

Not quite $1,000, I don't think, for taking that big fall.

Bro, nobody works harder than stuntman.

Seriously, those guys and girls take a friggin' beating.

They take a fucking big beating.

That's horrible.

Episode five, maybe, maybe six.

There's a there's a, um, uh, with

this guy and the big dude,

and uh, and one of the girls in the show get in this fight in this apartment.

I don't know if you saw that, that episode, but the stunt person who got thrown into this refrigerator.

Oh my.

And there was like a tiny little pad in the refrigerator, and she just gets thrown into this thing.

And we try to keep every fights realistic, so we made a very deliberate decision at the beginning of the terminal list not to do the John Wick style because you just don't want to do John Wick style, but not as good.

You know, you don't want to have everything authentic and realistic, and then have this choreographed fight sequence that everyone that looks visually stunning, but is not really realistic for anybody who's ever been in a fight or watched UFC or anything like that.

So we wanted to make sure that these things are primal, visceral, and just physical and brutal.

But it's a smaller girl against this huge guy.

So we didn't want to have the girl power thing.

And all of a sudden people roll their eyes and say, you know, one punch from this guy and she's done.

So she shoots him like three times before the fight as he's rushing in on her.

So, okay, we're going to even this out.

And still some people got upset about it online.

They're like, how could she, you know, how she, you know,

best this guy in a fight?

He's huge.

And well, because she shot him three times and then in the fourth time in the middle of the fight and she takes a beating.

And but the stunt, the stunt lady who did this was amazing.

And she, she took a beating too, especially when she got thrown into that fridge.

Especially stunt women.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's even harder.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That was, and it's hard to watch because you're talking to them and then they go on set and do their thing and you're like, oh, but you feel like you know them now.

So you feel like you just know this person that's that's now getting beat up and you're watching from that video village, and you're like, oh, just cringing seeing this stuff.

But it's good.

It came out, came out fantastic.

That's why guys like Tom Cruise are so nuts.

So crazy.

Because he does his own stunts.

So crazy.

He's worth a billion dollars and he jumps off roofs.

He jumps from rooftop to rooftop and breaks his fucking ankle.

Did you ever see that?

Oh, Mission Pot.

Sure.

Shatters his ankle and then keeps running.

Yeah.

Keeps running.

From fucking side.

You can see the ankle shatter.

You see the ankle hit the side.

Yeah.

And you can see him.

You see it give in.

You see the ankle give in.

He'll go, that ankle's fucked.

And then he lands on it and he just fucking hobbles off running.

Yep.

And save the scene.

Yep.

I actually watched it on the plane back because we did a,

I got my flight like last second.

So I was in economy between two people.

And so when I do that, I can't work.

And so on like a 10-hour flight, I decided to watch the movie.

So I watched Fallout again just because of that, because I wanted to see if I could tell.

Tell what was filmed after and what was filmed before that sequence.

And it's hard to tell.

It's really hard to tell how much they filmed filmed after he shatters his ankle and limps off because you see him kind of limp off, but then he's running again.

Yeah.

You're like, what?

How did he know?

So, yeah, that's amazing.

He probably just got a court his own shot, tape it up,

dealt with the pain.

Let's go.

I don't get it.

Yeah.

He's nuts.

He did that one thing where he

lit a parachute on fire and then had to pull a second parachute.

In the last one.

And it turns out that they did that scene like four or five times.

Or the jumping off the cliff with the motorcycle.

That was a multiple.

All day they did that.

Maybe multiple days.

I don't know.

Oh, my God.

That's incredible.

So insane.

Yeah.

What kind of insurance do they have on those movies?

I don't think.

I think he does it probably himself.

He probably insures it himself.

I don't think anybody would actually ensure that.

I might be wrong.

That's just a guess.

What a nut.

Yeah.

What if maybe Scientology works?

You know what I'm saying?

I don't know.

What a fucking nut.

No one's like that guy.

No.

I mean, there's no one that is that successful

that takes those kind of risks.

Yeah.

And all the other actors say the same thing.

They're like, no, that's what the stunt people do.

He's one of one.

He gets in motorcycle races.

He does those scenes.

He does car chase scenes.

It's pretty cool.

I mean, it does add a level of authenticity, and you go to it for that.

So you can see Tom Cruise doing his own stunts.

He doesn't have to fly a helicopter.

Yeah, fly the helicopter in that one two or three of them ago.

That was killer, too.

Fucking crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jumping out with, was it Henry Cavill and him jump out the back of the plane and fall out and they're but yeah, he's jumping out of those planes and it's legitimate for him.

Yeah, there you go.

Separated his finger joints or something in this one.

Of course he did.

Oh, man.

It's fantastic.

Dude, do you know how hard it is to hang?

Just don't hang.

I do it every day.

I do a minute and 30 seconds every day.

I've decided to try this to see what it does for my back, because it decompresses your back.

And I've heard that if you just do it every day, it's like a life changer.

So I'm like, okay.

So I'm like 10 days in now.

10 days of every day, minute 30.

Yeah.

I hang.

At that minute and 20, I got to check the phone.

Oh, yeah.

Fuck.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I was doing the same.

So after I was here last time, we took a picture together and I saw it and I'm like, oh, oh, my gosh, I look horrible.

I'm so out of shape.

And it wasn't the height of my out of shapeness because I think we did that in June by late August or no.

late July.

That was about six years of not doing anything.

We talked about saunas, you know, we talked about all this.

And I'm like, I've got to do something.

Just writing.

So I've just been writing.

It's been so many projects.

And I put myself at the bottom of my priority list and focus on family and writing and then the screenwriting and all the other projects that are out there.

And it's amazing.

I feel very fortunate for that.

But I did get way out of shape and the worst shape of my life.

And it showed in that photo that we took.

I'm like, oh, look at Joe.

He looks in such great shape.

I'm like, my God.

So like August 1st or something, I'm like, all right, I'm in.

And I started doing the hang, of course, and then have my, I have this outside workout area.

It's like, it's kind of like Rocky Four style.

And so it's right there in the mountains.

And so I'm just starting, I'm just all in, getting after it.

I'm doing the sauna.

We rented a place in town that had a had a sauna to get our kids closer to school for a year because we're kind of remote.

We're kind of up there and remote.

And so we wanted him to have our son to have the experience of riding his bike to school and all that stuff.

So we rented a house, but it had an amazing sauna in it.

So I was doing that exactly, 17 minutes and 30 seconds, whatever you're supposed to do.

Whatever I heard someone on this podcast tell me I was supposed to do it, whatever you told me to do, I was doing that.

And I was going outside, getting like 10 minutes of sun here, 10 minutes of sun there, doing the workouts, doing the cardio stuff, doing all of it.

And I got in great, it's probably one of the best shapes of my life.

Really?

I was feeling so good.

I felt like I could just throw people through walls.

I was feeling so great.

And but I was doing everything.

I was doing the sun.

I was eating right.

I was not eating the bread.

So so i did i did everything and then i got to january 1st and i'm out there in the snow i've dug a path out to my thing in the gym and i'm working out in my outside gym doing the hangs all that in the snow and then i was like oh i think i had a deadline december 1st a month ago for this book i'm like i i gotta start writing so i all stop I'll stop and I haven't done anything since.

It was only only writing, only screenwriting, everything else.

So I'm finding that balance.

I need to find that balance.

I'm not quite there yet.

How many hours do you write a day?

Well, as I get closer to the, as I pass these deadlines, I should say, it becomes all-consuming.

And it's, especially for something like this, when I'm in 1968, I mean, I really felt like I had to transport myself back to that time to write this thing.

And so that was all.

As soon as I woke up, bam, I'm in, and it is all day long.

And until you go to sleep.

And until I go to sleep, until super late, and then I'm up, because the kids still get up at the same time.

And so I'm up.

So I'm maybe an hour of sleep, two hours of sleep, whatever.

And then I'm up out of the cannon and it's going.

So it's not healthy.

Not healthy.

So I'm going to get on a better, a better schedule here.

Our son's going to a boarding school now.

Our daughter's in college.

We have our middle child with severe special needs, so he's still at home with us, he'll be with us forever.

Um, and he's a sweet, sweet little guy.

But, uh, but it, that, I think, will give me a little more time to maybe find some balance with the health and the writing.

Right.

So, I need to do that at some point.

But typically, a lot of writers aren't very, especially the older ones from back in the day, they're not the healthiest of individuals.

The opposite, yeah.

I mean, we've talked about it a bunch of times in this podcast, but my favorite Stephen King books were all when he was doing Coke.

He doesn't even remember writing a couple of them, right?

No,

if I was his friend, I'd get him to do Coke in it.

I tell my publisher that, I'm like, I feel like I need to

do some of that just to

get this done.

I need to take a turn here.

A lot of guys use Adderall.

A lot of writers use Adderall.

A lot of journalists use Adderall as well.

And I think also that makes them...

like a little more impulsive.

Their work gets a little aggressive.

Yeah, like you kind of see, especially journalists when they get real shitty, like, oh, he's probably on Adderall.

Oh, interesting.

I think it contributes to the culture of journalism in the modern era, with this sort of like really shitty

attack journalism that's become very prevalent.

I don't think it's a small factor.

I think Adderall consumption has, it plays a factor in that.

I'm sure it does.

I mean, it changes something.

And social media, of course.

It changes something.

Nicotine does it.

Nicotine has been very helpful for authors.

Nicotine's great.

Yeah, from what I understand.

Do you do cigars or do you do like pouches?

What do you do?

Don't do anything.

Don't do anything.

Coffee?

Nope.

Coffee and coffee, water, red wine, whiskey.

But not too much.

Yeah, but not too much.

You know, just to...

A little bit every now and again.

Yeah, nothing too crazy.

Just to say, fuck it.

Yeah, just I feel like I should be doing something like that, but not too much.

I mean, I built a library and at one side of it was a bar, and I never got to touch anything because at book signings, people bring me a lot of whiskey.

And so I have it in my bags or I mail it from the road or whatever.

And so I have this whole wall of whiskey and other stuff, too.

But I never get to partake in it.

Cause I'm always writing.

I'm always like, I could pour something, but no, this is my time.

It's quiet.

I'm not being interrupted.

Go, go, go.

And it's just all on.

So I haven't used any performance enhancing supplements.

I need to do some like Alpha Brain or something, probably.

That helps.

Something like that.

Alpha Brain's great.

There's an Alpha Brain Black label that's a new one that's a stronger version of Alpha Brain.

I think we have some.

I'll give you some when we leave.

We also have Alpha Brain Gummies.

Do we have any on the table?

No.

Nice.

I probably should.

I eat those things like candy.

But there's a bunch of really good nootropics that you should look into.

Another one is Neuro Gum.

We have some of that stuff.

I like that because it's just, it tastes good.

It's gum and it gives you a little nootropic boost.

But I understand why authors do that.

Creatine is another great one.

And creatine is really great for people with sleep deprivation.

Oh, really?

Yes.

I was using that too.

So I did some supplements when I started working out again.

I stopped it when I stopped working out, but I think I was doing the, is it thorn?

Is that the one that you see on the UFC map?

Sure, yeah.

So I was doing that.

Yeah, so I was using that, their creatine and some, just some vitamins.

You want a lot, though.

Like people are taking five grams a day.

You really want like 20 grams a day.

And particularly when people are dealing with sleep deprivation, it also, for some reason, has like pretty great benefits

more so even for women and sleep deprivation.

There's been a bunch of different studies going, but in terms of cognitive performance after sleep deprivation and reaction time after sleep deprivation, both of those things fall off.

And there's a noticeable rise in improvement with creatine.

Yeah, I don't think I was taking one scoop.

Whatever it says on the bottle.

Yeah, I was taking one scoop, whatever that is.

probably bet it's five grams.

I do four of those scoops.

Oh, really?

Okay.

Well, when I get back after this and see myself in our photo today, I will get back to

I'll use four scoops.

Well, it'll definitely make your muscles a little stronger and larger, but the reason I'm doing it is not just for that.

It's for the brain.

It's really good for the brain.

Well, I was getting sleep during that time, too, which is why I didn't have a book on time.

One of the reasons.

One, I was going back to 1968.

It took a lot longer than I thought for this research.

And then, two, I was getting in shape at the same time.

Were you listening to like 1968 music back then and like what did how are you doing?

Did music.

I did a playlist for it, put on Spotify.

So I was doing that.

I was watching the Vietnam documentaries.

I was reading everything I could possibly find on Vietnam from the day.

These old Army Special Forces manuals that they had before the guys would go over there that talked about the Montanard tribes they were going to be working with.

For those that are watching or listening, it's like Apocalypse Now, like the Montanards, like tribes and all that stuff.

So I was doing that.

And then I was reading the more modern stuff, too.

I was reading things from the 70s, 80s.

I got National Geographic magazines from the 60s.

I think there's one from the late 50s even.

So I was doing everything I possibly could to transport myself back,

listening to some history podcasts about JFK, about

Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, things that were happening here, about the election, Nixon's elections, everything that was happening in 1968.

I was just trying to immerse myself in that world so that when I sat down to this, I didn't have to do a huge shift.

And it would be, it was already had this, I was building on this foundation, whatever foundation I already had, as then I sat down in front of the computer to write rather than watching something here contemporary, getting all upset about something that X is feeding me to keep me enraged, and then

trying to jump back to 1968.

Instead, I just like transported myself back there for, it felt like months at a time.

That's probably healthier anyway.

I think it's much healthier.

I think so.

I think it was a much healthier way to live in general.

Yeah, just live in the past, folks.

That's what I'm trying to do.

Today's too fucking confusing.

It is.

Just go live in the past.

I mean, I'd love to go back.

I know I can't, though, but I still try to go back through my vehicles, through movies, through things like that.

I tried to get two modern vehicles.

I had to turn them back in.

I know you were telling me you got a grenadier.

I did a grenadier, and I was so excited to get it.

I think I was the first person in Utah to get one.

At least they told me I was anyway.

And I got this thing.

I was so excited.

And this is not a hit on Enos Grenadiers.

This is a hit on me not being able to adapt to

the current times.

It's a great vehicle.

It was fast.

They let me borrow one for a few months.

If you're looking for an off-road vehicle that's like fully outfitted from the factory, you could do no better.

It was awesome.

I mean, I did, of course, I put every possible thing you could put on there.

I'm like, I don't have time.

I'm like, put everything on that for me.

Just do the whole thing.

And so they did.

And it showed up.

I was so excited for it.

And then it started beeping at me, you know?

And it was, I'm like,

that's my complaint.

It beeps when you go one mile an hour, just two miles an hour over the speed limit.

Yes.

I don't like that.

I don't like where the speedometer is in the dat.

It's in the screen.

Yeah, so there's no dashboard in front of you.

There's no like speedometer attack.

It's not in front of you.

You just see numbers to the right.

So you have to look over to the right to see how fast you're going, which is why they justify the beep.

So it makes you look over to let you know, like, oh, look, you're going, see the beep.

Oh, let me look.

I don't want to look to the right at a screen ever if I don't have to.

Yeah.

I want to look at it only if I'm following directions, and that's it.

I know.

I want my fucking speedometer right in front of me.

I know.

It's fast, though.

You hammered that thing.

It was fast.

I mean, you have some faster cars than I do.

It's capable.

It's capable.

And it's really capable off-road.

Like, if you drive that thing, and it's fucking built like a tank.

It is like a tank.

If you look at like an, like, the idea was that they copied a Land Rover Defender, which they definitely did.

But if you look at a Land Rover Defender, shut the doors on those things.

They feel like shit.

It feels like it's made of a Pepsi can.

They're aluminum fact.

Those are like agriculture vehicles.

Those are not vehicles for like rugged travel.

That's a G-Wagon.

A G-Wagon is like a, that was designed for military applications.

It's a fucking stamp steel.

I don't know if it's stamped steel, but whatever.

There's steel, heavy fucking doors.

When you shut those doors, like,

and that's how the Grenadier is.

Grenadier is like heavy.

Yeah.

It's like thick.

It's like a very durable vehicle.

I feel like a lot of Aussies love them.

Yeah.

Because you can kind of just get right from the factory.

And, you know, a lot of those guys like to go off-road.

And you can get your factory setting in the back where it's got all the electrical and everything, so you could set up a stove.

You can set up a little refrigerator back there.

It's all plugged in, ready to go.

Mm-hmm.

I love all that stuff.

And it's like, what do they say?

It was like a Defender 110 and G-Wagon had a baby for the 8th General?

I would say that's a good idea.

Yeah, that's kind of true.

It's like the sides where you can put all the jerry cans and everything.

It's all set up to mount stuff on it, right?

I got it all set up, man.

I was so excited.

And then I called them.

I was like, hey, can I get rid of this click?

And they said, yeah.

And they walked me through the thing.

And whatever.

this is what I don't want to have an iPad.

I just want a car.

I don't want to drive a computer.

And so I'm in there, I turn it off, and I'm like, oh, thank you so much.

I'm driving.

I'm like, oh, it's not doing the clicking anymore.

I stop, I get out, I go in and do something.

I get back in the car.

Immediately, it's back on again.

Click, click, click, click, click, click, click.

I'm like, saw it out of it.

I'm like, we're getting rid of this.

I'm like, told my wife, I'm like, let's get rid of this thing.

But it is awesome.

Old Land Cruiser guy.

The problem is, those cars have a charm.

Yeah.

There's a charm to those old land cruisers, especially the one that you have, the 60 series.

You drive one of those things, man, it's like that feels like you're involved in every part of the driving.

It is.

I love it.

I feel the steamage.

It's my time in the middle.

Yeah, it's like, yeah, yeah.

I love it.

And you have a V8 in it, too.

So you got modern power, LS V8.

Yep, LS3s in there.

So that's nice.

But that has thick doors, too.

Much thicker than the 80s.

Yeah, and I just...

I don't know what much theater, but much thicker, but thicker.

I like the 80 Series.

I have two 80 Series now, both stock, 96 and i love those because they're just modern enough but they're they need someone to do a little work on them they make some strange noises but they they work but they uh my son like pick them up in school and he's like ah dad because it's still making this crazy

it's almost like it's the it's going over the speed limit thing but it's constant so it's some of them for fucking hundreds of thousands of miles yeah these have over a hundred uh both of them but uh so i love that and i have a 78 fj40 that i love um so that's pretty I love that one and it's uh it's all completely restored so it's all all original for the most part

yeah yeah so does does that fun getting on the highway with that thing isn't it yeah you go about 40 miles an hour tops tops i mean you're in that slow lane yes so slow so slow but it's cool for zipping around town i love that and then i just need an icon to make you one of those i know it's on the list it's on the list

beasts that they make because they they make them with the giant v8s in them yeah they do some serious work fun yeah so i think i'm a land cruiser guy and i tested out that you know it didn't work out for me but that's not to say that they won't work out for someone else they're awesome vehicles and if you're a modern type of person like get one for you if you're into that style of like defender-looking car, but you don't want all the bullshit that comes with owning a defender, either get a refurbished one.

Like East Coast Defenders does a great job.

They'll put a big engine in it and do it all right.

Yeah, there's a bunch of them now that do that.

The Grenadier is a great solution.

I think they're going to come out with a new one that has

more horsepower and they'll probably improve some things.

But I would like them to just give me a fucking dashboard.

Yeah.

Is that so hard?

I mean, they're doing everything else old school.

You have all these buttons and everything.

It's all fucking all old school, looking like a jet fighter pilot All the locks are differential and I know give me a fucking speedometer, just a regular speedometer and attack, put it right in front of me,

and also make the lights so that the auxiliary lights will turn on when it's not in the off-road mode.

I don't know if you tried that, but they're the auxiliary lights.

Except for the light bar on the top, but the other ones in the front, like you have to be in off-road mode for some legal reason.

So you have to, I mean, sure, someone can bypass it somehow.

But when I come up to our house, there's no lights and it's a long drive up there into the mountains.

And I just want to hit the switch and have just

daylight in front of me.

And that was not possible with that.

I got my land cruiser set up where if I was in a dark field you would think a UFO land.

Nice.

And here's the 100 series, right?

Is that that?

No, I have an 80.

Here's the 80.

Okay.

Yeah, Icon built me that one.

Yeah, it was TLC at the time.

But they put bars all around it.

I think sick.

And bars in the back.

So like you could park and like light up the perimeter.

That's what I want.

I want daylight.

It's awesome.

I want daylight.

And then you put a tent on the roof and you're out there in nature.

I love it.

I love it.

I did drive an I drove a G-Wagon yesterday.

So we landed, went right to Staccato.

And so they had a uh

a portion of g-wagon right there and i was like oh man i was i'm i'm i think my wife's telling me i need to get something more modern that's going to be reliable we're not going to just break down all the time and uh and so i'm like they said well drive it drive this thing and so i got in it it was like a 2016 so it was before some changes i guess were made and uh i think it was nice yeah so 2016 would have two live axles i think uh they got independent front suspension later yeah i think that was like the 2022 or something like that they started doing that but i still can't do it it's too too la too Kardashian.

Yeah, it's very Kardashian.

But the reality of it is

it's a military vehicle.

The thing about G-Wagons, though, is people do take them and then they build them out for off-road.

They don't do it with like the AMG turbo fucking thing.

But the regular one is a V8 anyway.

It's got plenty of power.

I like the old ones.

Yeah, but you can get one of those old ones, and people have done amazing builds where they put like large tires on them, they raise it up a little bit, and they put like strong steel bumpers and like rock sliders on the side.

And, you know, it's a beast of a truck.

I'll probably need something new at some point.

Something newer.

Yeah, because the platform is amazing.

I mean, the platform is really designed for military application.

Yeah, the new, the new Land Cruisers, I'm not

quite there yet.

I like the old stuff, you know, like the newer ones.

I mean, they're probably great.

The new, new one is like really more modest.

Yeah, it is, yeah.

They dropped the price on them.

It's not like what they were getting to, which is basically like...

Trying to compete with Range Rover.

Rover.

But they were also fucking themselves because they have Lexus.

Yeah, yeah.

And Lexus is like the best version of that.

Right.

Is it the 550 GX?

What's the new one that they have?

I think the new one's a 600, I think it's called.

Well, they have the smaller one, which is more like land cruiser size, like 80 series size, and they have the larger one.

Okay.

I had three of the larger ones, this 570s.

I had three of those.

Yeah, there's because they never break.

They were like my favorite family car to drive around in.

It's awesome four-wheel drive.

They're great in snow and anything else.

And they fucking always work.

Yep.

Always work.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hard to beat that.

Toyota.

This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter.

Innovation is a wonderful thing.

You know, coming up with new ways to make life better.

Like with the introduction of AI, we're seeing some new breakthroughs in medicine or how in recent years Lego has started selling Braille bricks.

ZipRecruiter has also done a good job lately of looking for new ways to make life easier, at least for hiring managers.

If you haven't tried it yet, you're going to want to check out what they have going on.

Plus, you can try it for free.

Just head to ziprecruiter.com/slash Rogan.

ZipRecruiter has been a longtime supporter of the show, so you've probably heard me mention how great and fast their matching technology is.

But did you know that ZipRecruiter can help you discover candidates in your area who are a good fit for your role?

They've even got a new and improved resume database that can help you reach those candidates sooner.

See how ZipRecruiter's new hiring innovations are changing the game.

Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day.

And right now you can try it for free

at ziprecruiter.com slash Rogan.

Again, that's ziprecruiter.com/slash Rogan.

ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire.

This episode is brought to you by the farmer's dog.

I think we can all agree that eating highly processed food for every meal isn't optimal.

So why is processed food the status quo for dog food?

Because that's what kibble is, an ultra-processed food.

But a healthy alternative exists, the farmer's dog.

They make fresh food for dogs.

And what does it look like?

Real meat and vegetables that are gently cooked to retain vital nutrients and help avoid any of the bad stuff that comes with ultra-processing.

And it's not just random ingredients thrown together.

Their food is formulated by on-staff board-certified vet nutritionists.

These people are experts on dog nutrition and they're all in on fresh food.

The farmer's dog also does something unique.

They portion out the food to your dog's nutritional needs.

This ensures that you don't overfeed them, making weight management easy.

Research shows that dogs kept at a healthy weight can live up to two and a half years longer.

Head to thefarmersdog.com/slash Rogan to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping.

This offer is for new customers only.

It's so good.

I know.

They're so reliable.

I know.

The guys got over to Africa to start filming this thing in, we got there in February or March.

Anyway, we went over there and the advanced crew went over first to get everything set up.

And then Chris and I came over a little bit later and when everything was all set up, but the guys were texting back after they were doing all the

advanced work for the different places we're going to go shoot.

And they're like, now we understand your obsession with the Land Cruiser.

Yeah.

They're all driving Land Cruisers in Africa.

Oh, yeah.

Once you get over to any rough place and you realize, like, oh, you want a car that 100% is going to work for you.

There's a reason why they became so popular.

It's not

a mystery.

Yeah, yeah.

Same thing.

It's like the Seiko.

Is that a Seiko?

Yeah.

Nice.

It's like they said that's the Toyota of watches.

That's the Willard.

That's the one that Captain Willard wore in apocalypse.

It's a club now.

Absolutely, which I think came out.

I have an original.

I do too.

I have an original.

1971, I think it is.

70 or 71.

Okay.

Yeah, I collected all the SOG Seikos because this is MAC V SOG.

So I collected all those.

I think there's four of them that they've seen pictures of MAC V SOG guys wearing going into Laos, Cambodia, North Vietnam, which is what the book is focused on.

So, not only did I try to transport myself back by listening to all these things, but I had the watch right there.

Like, this is 1968 Rolex.

Like,

yeah, so I got that thing, the Submariner.

So, I surrounded myself with things that are like totems from the book.

So, this is what Tom Reese and I had of a cool way that he wins this.

How'd you get it at 68?

Where'd you find that?

Online?

A buddy of mine who's a Rolex dealer out in PA found it for me.

Wow.

That's fucking cool.

Yeah.

Yeah, so I like the older stuff now I'm finding.

Crazy, it looks exactly the same.

Yeah, pretty much.

I mean, there's

the crystal's different and stuff like that, but the alum's different, that sort of thing.

It used to be a utility watch.

That used to be a tool watch, which is crazy because you think of them today as being luxury.

But the reason why they were built so well was just for you to use them diving.

Yep.

It's actually a watch that people would dive with.

Exactly.

And I'll see you wear something like this or like that, then people, like watch people know.

They'll see it and be like, oh, okay.

It's not like some guy that went out and bought an expensive watch.

They're like, okay, if someone put a lot of thought into this, like you wearing the Willard and me having those McVeigh SOGs and this one from 1968,

it tells you put a little more thought into this sort of thing than like just what's an expensive watch or something or something along those lines.

But yeah, I mean, it tells a story.

Yeah, it's pretty dope.

It's pretty thin, too.

Yeah, it's a little thinner than I thought when it came.

And the band's a little different.

It kind of makes some noise there, but I love this.

And so it's these and the Tudors that guys were wearing back in Vietnam, the SEALs in particular.

The Tudor submariner.

So I got one of those recently.

I've been wanting to get one for years because when I got to the SEAL teams, they were, this is a rumor, so I never saw it with my own eyes.

But so it's second-hand information, is that they're in supply, they were destroying the tutors with hammers.

And I can't, then, because now we're getting issued Seikos.

And so they'd issued these to the guys that actually jumped in to get the Apollo spacecraft.

SEALs jumped in after those things, UDT SEALs, to get those guys out of the water.

And

these people in supply, I think in the 90s, were destroying the Tudors for some reason, probably because they were told to, so guys wouldn't get them and sell them or something like that.

I don't know.

But I did track one down recently through Watches of Espionage.

And

so he found me a new tutor or an old tutor.

But I got that.

And then we did a little documentary with some old guys from the 70s, from in the 60s that were SEALs in Vietnam.

And they were pulled out of Vietnam.

They were in Vietnam one day.

And then the next day they were off in the Pacific on an aircraft carrier waiting to recover the Apollo astronauts.

Whoa.

Yeah, pretty cool.

We did a documentary on it for Tudor.

and uh it was it was pretty cool to talk to those guys i mean just just amazing because now they're they're taking lives in vietnam and then they're supposed to now they're just throwing into this this on these helicopters to jump into the ocean to save lives it's kind of a cool juxtaposition yeah for sure it is interesting that their their equipment became luxury yeah weird well you can go back i love these old ads rolex ads from it must be the 60s i think they're 60 70s 80s i mean there's some from the early 80s where they have a guy like with a rhino and it's like the editor of guns and ammo magazine with his dead rhino where's a a rolex and they had at least yeah they had like two of those types of ads back then i don't like to acknowledge that today i don't think the role x yeah they don't kill rhinos but uh but they had but that was like in the early 80s that's what they were they were still marketing towards that so yeah really still rugged well think about didn't james bond always have

if you're looking for lost empires here tomorrow you'd wear a rolex there's one wow there's one crazy but you got to find the one with the rhino well there's they're so fucking dependable yeah frederick forsyth the author actually had one they used to do They used to have a relationship with him in the 70s and 80s.

And they're like, here's Frederick Forsythe who wrote Day of the Jackal wearing his jackal coat in front of this jaguar.

And it's just, you'd never see that today.

But there it is.

Yeah.

If taming oil well fires were your job, you'd wear a Rolex.

Isn't that crazy?

What?

Yeah.

Let's see if we can find the

hunting one, maybe Rolex hunting or something.

But they're just look at that racing here.

It's for anybody that's doing anything difficult.

Yeah, yeah.

It's kind of crazy.

And now now it's tennis and it's golf.

Well, now it's just like, you know, looking fancy at a restaurant over there.

There we go.

There's Connery right there, the Thunderball action.

Yeah, yeah.

Love it.

Yeah.

Fleming had one.

He doesn't say which specific model it is in the books.

Of course, Omega sponsored the movie starting with Bronson, I think.

But in the books, it's a Rolex.

He doesn't say what specific model, but he wore it, I think, with Fleming wore an Explorer, I think.

There it is.

Oh, there you go.

Have you hunted big game over the world?

Cape Buffalo.

There's Cape Buffalo right there

yeah

pretty cool weird yeah they don't do that today just weird that that became it went from being like this manly super durable thing to like when did people really start getting into watches and collecting them and when did it become like a fetish must be the 80s yeah must be the 80s i would guess i mean i think it's always been a thing because you can go back and find like amazing the paddock philippes and stuff like that and go back find the omegas the old rolexes and it's a thing so uh i think wearing them

nuts yeah now it's gotten a little little crazy which why I like the vintage stuff because it looks a little more just like the cars.

Just like it's my time machine.

Now when people have like those Richard Millet watches and hear their half a million dollars,

what are you talking about?

Why are you buying that?

Yeah.

Like what's going on here that I'm missing?

That's an amazing story.

It's not like that has a huge history to it.

It's fairly recent for those watches.

Do you know what the rumor is?

The rumor is that one of the first watches that he was supposed to sell was supposed to be $15,000, but someone put an extra zero on it.

No way.

Really?

This is what someone told me.

Hey, let's go with this.

It might not be true.

And then people bought it.

He's like, hey, hey, hey.

Let's try 300.

Sometimes that's how it works.

I mean, people love the watches.

It's a beautiful,

if you're into that style of watch.

I like simple.

Yeah.

That's what I like.

This is why I like the Seiko.

Nobody gives a shit about it.

It's not impressing anybody.

Well, if you know.

If you know.

But it's like, it's a really well-made watch.

It'll never fuck up.

I think it's got a 52-hour time reserve.

Yeah, yeah.

I love that stuff.

We're very intentional with all the gear and the TV shows.

I know you are.

And your books as well.

Yeah, in the books as well.

So it tells a story.

You see somebody with that,

that tells me something about you.

You see something with the Richard Mill, whatever you say.

I think it is.

It probably is Richard Mill, but it's like, dang,

when you add another zero, then it goes to like Joe Dirte, you know?

Yeah, exactly.

So it changes things a little bit.

But it tells me a story, just like the characters in the books.

But the watches in particular are important.

One, because it's important to me as a watch guy my whole life.

For some reason, I just had this connection with time and the value of time.

And so I've always been a watch guy my whole life.

And so putting these watches on characters that tell you something about that character, like in Dark Wolf, they have to get rid of their G-Shocks and go get something that would make look a little more European.

And for when they transition over from being these SEAL guys to being these CIA operatives and drop, get rid of the Gators.

We say, get rid of the Gators, get some sunglasses, get some expensive watches, that sort of thing.

But I still wanted something that had a connection to the SEAL team.

So I picked a tutor for Taylor Kitch's character and I got that one.

I got to keep that one.

So that was that was pretty cool.

And then put a pan of eye on Rafe Hastings, Tom Hopper's character, to differentiate him a bit from

Ben Edwards, the Taylor Kitch character.

And also Tom's a big dude, so you need a big watch on that guy.

He's huge.

He is huge.

Oh my gosh.

I think all the, all the, like my wife and her friends were so excited about Taylor being in the show because Texas Forever, you know, and they were all coming up during that time frame where he's on Friday Night Lights and all that stuff.

And then Tom Hopper gets out of the pool without a shirt on.

They're like, oh,

Tom Hopper.

Oh my God.

It is.

And so I told Tom that probably if we do Savage Sun as a movie, he's probably not going to have his shirt on much in there.

So got to expand the audience.

Got to expand the audience.

We got to sell streamers.

Exactly.

Exactly.

But he's such a good dude.

That's awesome.

Yeah, all those guys are great.

It's also, what is it like, like having this thing that you sat down by yourself, this world that you created, and now

you're not just selling books, but you're filming the visual representation of your work.

It's got to be kind of surreal.

It is surreal.

Every time I walk onto the set, I feel that way.

I feel as grateful for the most part.

I just feel so much gratitude towards everyone involved.

And, of course, the people who made it happen, most specifically Chris, because if Chris didn't want to do it, didn't want to option, it probably wouldn't happen.

It wouldn't have happened.

We wouldn't be on this journey together.

And he's so invested in it.

And you mentioned some other shows earlier.

And there's a difference between an actor who gets paid to do something, does it, and moves on to the next project, and somebody like Chris who is so invested in this.

And I think the other actors see that.

And Taylor's like this by nature.

Like American Prime Evil, any role Taylor takes on, he is just so invested in it.

It's not just a paycheck.

Like it is, it's going to now become part of his experience.

And he really looks at it through that kind of a lens.

So to have guys like that involved that are so personally connected to the material and also to the community, like the veteran community writ large, it means something to them.

And so they put so much into it.

So when I walk on set, it is surreal.

And to know that everybody is, and people come up to me all the time on set and thank me for creating this universe allowing them to be there

But not just that they can be there working on a set It's that we have created mostly through Chris Antoine Fuqua David DeGilio all these guys at the top David DeGilio is the showrunner and to build this family and people come up to me all the time and they say that they've been involved in hundreds of Hollywood productions and they've never felt this way on a set before and that's because you're filming these things for seven eight months and that doesn't count all the all the work that goes into the scripts ahead of time and all the post-production so just being on set and so during that time people are going to get married, get divorced, lose loved ones.

Life is going to happen.

And David DiGilio, in particular, is a showrunner.

He makes sure that everyone is taken care of.

And we're also bringing people along with us.

So if they're in a department this season, they're going to move their way up in that department next season.

So

they really feel taken care of.

And it's all genuine.

And I think that helps everybody bring their A-game.

And everyone is so happy to be there on these sets.

It's really cool.

And people tell me how different, they want to make sure that I know that it's it's not like this on every Hollywood production.

That's cool.

That's got to feel great.

That's cool.

It is.

And I mean, even

though it's a little bit comes down from the top.

Yeah.

You know, comes out, comes down from the top for sure.

And even at the rap party, people, these guys hang out after.

Like all the actors hang out afterward.

The cast, the crew, everybody's hanging out after hours.

They're not just...

turning into ghosts.

They're hanging out, having a great time.

Rap party, like, I've heard that a lot of the number one on the call sheets, maybe they'll make a quick appearance and leave or something like that.

I mean, Chris is there.

He's in it, having a great time.

Everyone's thanking everybody.

And

such a great guy.

He's a very normal guy.

For a movie star, he's oddly normal.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's a normal guy,

just like us.

We spent time with him, you know, outside of anything.

Well, I hung out with him in Huntington.

Yeah.

We out there together.

So it was like, he just hangs out with everybody.

He was so cool.

So normal.

Yeah.

You know, for a movie star, yeah.

Just be chilling.

Such a great guy.

Speaking of Tom Cruise and all the stunts, so the last thing that we filmed in Morocco was underwater sequences.

So it was not filmed

in a linear style.

So it's from the first episode.

So it's Chris falling off the boat and being underwater.

And he's in this pool, underwater, not a stunt double.

We had some stunt double do some falls and stuff like that.

Chris Romero, who's awesome, looks like Chris, takes some crazy beatings.

He's amazing.

And he's a huge dude.

He can just stand right here and do a backflip.

Like, it's insane.

Think of a huge dude.

It's awesome.

And such a nice guy, too.

But Chris underwater, like, and you can have this underwater communication system.

And they're like, all right, ready?

three, two, one, action.

And he takes a thing from a regulator, and then it goes away, and then we're filming.

And he was under there for like three plus minutes, holding his breath, doing this stuff.

Yeah.

And for anyone who's tried to hold their breath for three minutes, that's holding your breath for three minutes just sitting still is hard.

But underwater.

And we're like,

and we'll be watching this thing.

We're like, is he okay?

And now he's just showing off.

At certain point, we're like, cut.

And he stays down there like, what?

Like, he's just, now he's just showing off at this point.

Did he put

that?

I think he's just a bit from wrestling and from all this other stuff, breath control stuff.

He's such an athlete that I think it was just kind of natural.

I don't think he was prepping for it.

I think he just did it.

But it looks so good.

It looks crazy.

All the stuff that he gave us down there is amazing.

And that's how we finished up the show, is to finish that, all the casting crew around at night, all the lights, the underwater stuff, Chris getting yanked out of the water, and then that was the end.

And we went right to the party from there.

So that was awesome.

Yeah, yeah.

And then we had to talk about the future of the show.

We stayed up pretty late.

And me and Chris and the showrunner and Jared Shaw, who you met when we were hunting that time, who gave Chris the book, former SEAL buddy of mine.

And so we all have to talk about the future of the show.

So hopefully it's Savage Sun next.

And that's people's favorite, I think, of the books.

That and Red Sky Morning, the last one.

And mine is this one.

Everyone has been my favorite thus far.

But

this Vietnam book's your favorite book you've written?

Yep, hands down.

One, because how much I put into it.

One, I want to get better with everything.

Every book, I think, has gotten better as I go along.

And if I can say that truthfully to myself, then I feel like I'm doing my job and doing my service to the story, which in turn serves the reader people who are trusting me with this time that they're never gonna get back well it's like every other skill right the more time you invest in it and the more you hone it and the more it should be getting better attention yeah it has to it should be getting better it has to you have to get better yeah because you can tell when people start phoning it in you can tell you know they're not enthusiastic anymore and yep and this one i mean like there's a lot of pressure from publishers also to get things in on time because now i sell like maybe at the beginning it didn't matter but at this stage it it matters because of the number of books that are being being sold.

So they need to, and it's a business, and so they need to make their numbers.

And so as a creative person, they are putting a lot of pressure to get it done.

Just get it done.

And I have to fend it off.

I have to be, hey, whatever pressure is put on me from the outside, I've got to focus on this story.

And it's going to be done when it's done because it has to be the best that it can possibly be.

And but that's a lot of that's a lot of pressure coming in from the outside and you have to fend it off.

But I can see, you know, how if you're, I can see it being very easy to just say, okay, I got to 100,000 words.

I got to wrap this thing up.

Right.

And I'll never, I'll I'll never do that.

My readers mean too much to me.

The story means too much to me.

This profession means too much for me to ever do something like that.

How many, what is the percentage of audiobooks versus hard copy?

A lot more audio.

Really?

A lot more.

Like, how much more?

I don't know because I don't look at the numbers.

I'm not a business guy.

I'm more of an entrepreneurial type of mind.

So just knowing that Simon ⁇ Schuster is incredibly happy across the board.

So these hardbacks.

I can't tell you.

They do have numbers, yeah, and they share them.

And I just see numbers, but I couldn't tell you exactly what they're doing.

But it's a lot more.

Yeah, it's a lot more.

A lot more.

Interesting.

And I think that's Ray Porter.

I mean, he's incredible.

He's really good.

Fantastic.

Such a good human being, too.

We use his voice in Dark World for those listening.

They'll be able to recognize the voice.

It's a lot of skill to be able to do all those different voices and accents and then not have it jarring that a man is playing a woman.

Yep.

You know, which is weird because he has got to play a woman's voice.

That's a tough one for any guy.

It's fucking weird.

You know, it's weird because you have to kind of like, there's a suspension of disbelief.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, in the real world, you're like, hey, fuck off.

That's not a chick.

You know, you got a phone call from a lady.

So, where are we going to meet?

Yeah,

I've seen at the barber shop.

Like, what?

Yeah.

Call that a clue.

What the fuck is going on?

Yeah,

call that a clue.

Yeah.

You probably listen to it unless you're looking for it, I guess.

His girl voice is oddly believable.

Yeah.

I mean, I can know anybody else who can do it, do it better.

That's a tough one.

That's a tough position to put a person in.

It's like Rafe Sachs.

Oh, my gosh.

I give him a tough one in this one, too.

I have a guy who's actually based on a real person in the book he lives in real life he died in, I think, 1965.

But it was a Finnish officer who got the, whatever the Finnish cross is.

It's in the book.

I forget exactly what it is.

But then fought for the Germans and got like the German Mannheim cross or something.

And then after World War II, they tried to grab a bunch of people who had experience in essentially Eastern Europe to bring over to our military so that we would have experience if we went to war with the Soviets.

And so they brought all these guys in into the military.

And so then he gets a bronze star in the United States military, Army Special Forces.

His helicopter went down.

I think it was 1965, but he was part of Mac V Sog.

So I fictionalize his character in here.

So I had to give those three, so I have to have, so Finnish, German, and English kind of a morph, and Ray Porter has to do that.

And so he has to read that and come up with something like that.

And he...

He pulls it off.

It's incredible.

Wow.

I was just texting him before I came in here, actually, and he's filming a play up in Oregon waiting for Godot, I think, right now.

So I'd love to see him on stage and just see him not just doing the voice, but acting.

Yeah, I've never seen him in anything.

I don't think that's it.

He's dark side.

He's dark side in that Justice League.

So that's a bunch of, you can't really, you know,

yeah.

So he's in that.

So he's in almost famous, a bunch of sitcoms in the 90s.

But just an awesome dude.

But yeah, audiobooks.

And I think it's because of podcasts.

I think people listen to a podcast, and it is a very natural way to then get whatever you're talking about on the podcast through the same medium.

So over to audiobook.

It's just a very natural transition to listen to the audiobook.

And a lot of people are doing both, thank goodness.

So they're getting the hardcover and then they're listening on the car on the way way home, and then they get inside and they're reading a little bit before bed, get up to go to work in the morning, pick up again where they left off reading.

So a lot of people are doing both.

Well, you know, Audible, the way it works with Tinder,

Hint Kindle, rather,

there's an app where it'll pick up where you are.

What is it exactly?

What is it?

Whisper?

Whisper sync, please.

Whisper sync, something like that.

So it picks up exactly where you left off reading, and it'll pick up with the audio book.

Not a And then the audiobook will know that

you're reading at night.

Interesting.

So it'll pick up where you left off the next day.

Interesting.

But that's beyond a Kindle.

I can't do the Kindle.

I feel like I do so much work on a screen that I don't want to have something I read for enjoyment to be the same thing.

So I want it to be, I want a physical book to go through.

I'm just that kind of guy.

The dope thing about a Kindle, though, is you can get 80 books on it, or probably 80,000 instead of.

I don't even know how many you can get on them, honestly.

And then also the white paper screen where it really does look like paper, pretty fucking incredible.

Yeah, still for me, once again, like the watches, like the cars.

I have a thing, it's a theme.

Oh, listen, my wife's the same way.

She won't, she only reads book books to feel the books.

I love that.

A lot of people are like that.

It's like there's a thing that you have in your hands, and you're turning the pages.

It's like the tactile feeling, and you

know, when you're halfway into the book, like, oh my God, things are getting crazy.

I'm halfway in here.

This is how is he going to wrap this up?

You can't see it rather than I'm at 37%.

Exactly.

It's just a different

type of a deal.

But I picked up Charlie Sheen's book in the airport on the way here.

Oh, did you?

And so I'm reading it about halfway through because he's coming on the podcast.

And I want to talk to him and ask him about, you know, Apocalypse.

I'm going to keep it to Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Navy Seals, kind of like keep it in that kind of thing.

But reading that book, oh my gosh, it's amazing.

But I had to buy it.

I couldn't just get it on the PDF.

I already had the PDF.

They sent it to me, but I wanted to buy the book.

I wanted to physically have it and make my notes in there and all that.

So

I'm doing that.

But listening to him on this.

This episode is brought to you by Tommy John Underwear.

I really like these underwear.

They fit perfect, and the premium fabrics really make all the difference.

We all know fall can get crazy busy, but you need a base layer that goes above and beyond.

With up to four times more stretch than competing brands and breathable fabrics, Tommy John underwear solves the problem that every guy faces.

There's no more chafe, wedging, or riding up, just softness and support right where you need it.

They look clutch and with tons of colors and prints to choose from, you can find the perfect pair for you.

And don't forget, your first purchase is backed by Tommy Tommy John's risk-free guarantee so in the rare instance that you don't love it you'll get your money back look with 30 million pairs sold there are thousands of other guys wearing Tommy John right now that are way more comfortable than you don't settle for less I wear Tommy John and you should too upgrade your underwear this fall go to tommyjohn.com slash rogan for 25% off your first order that's tommyjohn.com slash rogan when something truly works for you you want people to know about it a g1 Next Gen is your daily healthy drink.

Just one scoop combines your multivitamin, pre and probiotic, superfoods, and antioxidants into one truly simple, delicious habit.

I partnered with AG1 for so long because they're committed to constantly improving.

And their latest clinically studied formula features more vitamins and minerals for more comprehensive support while still maximizing absorption in the body.

And I know I've talked about AG1 for a long time, but if you haven't checked it it out in a while, now's the time.

AG1 has a lot going on, including new flavors: berry, citrus, and tropical.

That'll make showing up for your health even better.

You can be an athlete, you could be a gym rat, you just be a normal person, and AG1 is going to help you feel your best.

When you subscribe today, you'll get a free bottle of AG D3K2 and five AG1 travel packs with your first subscription order.

Go to drinkag1.com/slash j-re-e.

That's drinkag1.com slash J-R-E.

Check it out.

On your podcast was so interesting.

Oh, you're a good one.

What a short guy.

Yeah.

This is what I told people.

Like, you can't be normal if you're on the set of apocalypse now when you're 10 years old and then 10 years later, you're in platoon.

Yeah.

You're the lead in platoon 10 years later.

Like,

how do you expect that guy to be normal?

Yeah.

No one can handle that.

It's not handleable.

Yeah.

That little stardom stardom is.

Especially in the 80s, before phones and everything else when they got after it.

Oh, and the drugs.

I mean, he was involved in so much drugs.

From early on.

Yeah.

And back then, you could do drugs.

You didn't die.

I didn't die.

It wasn't all fentanyl.

Well, actually, one of the ladies he talked about in the documentary that gave him a blowjob while he was smoking crack for the first time.

I saw that.

She died of an overdose.

But you got to try hard.

It's not like today you're going to accidentally do a snort of Coke and then it's ventinel-ased and you're dead.

Right.

And that's 100,000 people in America every year.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

But what he was doing was just going hog wild.

That he's alive.

And he's alive.

Yeah.

He looks good.

He looks, yeah, he looks great.

Dude, he looks a lot better than he's looked in the past.

Like when he came in here, I'm like, dude, you look healthy.

I think he said he'd almost been sober for eight years, been sober for seven plus years.

It's coming on eight years.

I think he said December.

I forget.

But it was very impressive.

And he's like, really nice guy.

Yeah.

You know, it seems like it.

He

was a fan of the books beforehand.

So he likes all this stuff, likes Dark Wolf, likes Terminalist, all that stuff.

So yeah, so that'll be fun to fun to talk to him.

And also, I went to see Navy SEALs the day before it came out.

There was a showing at like midnight on Thursday or something like that before it came out on Friday back when I was in high school and I knew I was going to be a SEAL.

So I was so excited.

I'm like, they cast Charlie Sheen, the guy from Platoon in this.

I'm like, ah, perfect casting.

And so I went and saw it.

then so it'll be fun to talk to him about that stuff.

And I do remember I did meet him at a, is it Red Sox game?

Is that the one that they watch?

Is that his team?

I think so.

But him and his dad were in a box next to us.

So I was still in the SEAL teams, and I was with some of the guys that were on the bin Laden raid, and we were in one of the owner's boxes, and Charlie Sheen was next to us with his dad, and somehow they got to talking or whatever.

And so we went over there.

He came over to us, I can't remember, with his dad and said hi, and he was fantastic.

His dad was such a gentleman.

That stands out to me.

But Charlie Sheen was awesome, so personable.

He was great, but his dad was so nice and stand like an old school type gentleman is what stood out about Martin Sheen.

And then what also stands out is then we then left there at the end of the game, and there was a line of girls down the, I'll tell him this when I

see if he remembers, he might not remember, but because it probably happened almost every day for him, just a line of girls down the hallway outside of the owner's box.

Trying to meet him.

Yeah, they weren't there for me.

Well, what are you going to do?

Yeah, yeah, but they were there for Charlie.

And that was

pretty cool.

Must be rough.

Yeah, yeah.

What a crazy life.

And then you guys came back in and had to deal with the Charlie Kirk assassination.

And I thought you guys handled that in

such a thoughtful way, real time.

That's a tough position for both you guys to be in.

I hadn't seen it yet.

I just heard and then I really didn't want to see it.

I said I wasn't going to see it, but then

someone texted it to me and I just couldn't help myself.

I clicked on it.

I'm like, oh,

I did watch that.

I know.

It's so sad.

I was signing those books.

I was signing the books right there that day with my chief of staff.

And she was passing me the books, and I'm signing, and we're checking off the names for these pub boxes.

and all of a sudden her phone goes off and I hear she screams and I was like, whoa, what happened?

And her husband is in the security field

and she said, Charlie Kirk's been shot in Utah.

I'm like, so I, of course, go to X and then see it.

And then I didn't get to my kids in time because my daughter and our youngest son are both follow him, feel like they know him, essentially.

And I didn't get to them in time before they saw it.

So

our youngest, I was most concerned about seeing that, being away from home at boarding school.

And anyway, I called the school.

One of the guys, there's like a trusted agent.

He's like a guy's guy like us and went over and tracked him down.

And he was doing fine.

But it's different than seeing in the paper or on having Walter Cronkite report that JFK was killed.

That's different, I think.

Challenger for us in school, growing up.

Like we saw it explode, but you're not seeing the people.

You're not seeing it as viscerally from all these different angles from cell phone immediately.

So graphic.

Just so heartbreaking.

So, so heartbreaking.

And, but you guys, I mean, you guys had to do it like real time.

And I thought you guys were very thoughtful about how you dealt with it.

Thanks.

It was weird.

It always feels surreal when someone dies, but when someone gets assassinated like that, and then there was the weirdness of the reactions of people.

That was the most disturbing aspect of it.

Where I was like,

what have we done?

I know.

Like, what have we done to people's minds with social media and with political discourse that you are thrilled that someone was murdered in front of his children on the internet for the world to see, and you are celebrating because you didn't like his ideas.

Yeah.

Like, that is so crazy that we've gone that far.

Yeah.

I mean, you could feel the evil, and as much as I tried not to look at all these reactions, it's being fed to me because of the algorithm and everything else.

So there were two in particular, one guy, one lady, and they were like cackling, like a witch's cackle, like out of

some sort of a fairy tale that's meant to scare kids.

That, you know, but in real life, celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk.

And I mean, that was revolting, but you could feel the evil through the cackles.

I've never felt like that before.

I mean, very few times, I should say.

I think a lot of it is very performative.

And I think a lot of people are doing it for clicks and likes.

And they think that there's a lot of like-minded people that feel the way they feel.

And then there was a wave of people that were like excited about losing someone who was a right-wing influencer.

They were happy about it.

It was real weird.

Yeah.

And continues to really kind of fuck with my head because I didn't think that that would be the case.

I had hoped it would be very few people.

I'd hoped, but it wasn't.

It was a lot.

It was a lot in real life, too.

It wasn't just social media.

You know, I've had multiple friends that encountered people celebrating in real life.

One of my friends was at a cafe writing, and this lady came in and she was on a Zoom call, and it was right after the assassination and she gets in the Zoom call and she's like, well, I don't know about you guys, but I am having a great day now.

And they were like, this is a great day.

I'm having a great day too.

I'm having a great day.

The events of the day have made me very happy.

And they were laughing and smiling and like clapping publicly, like in a cafe.

And it was very obvious what they were talking about.

Like, that's so gross.

And feel comfortable enough to do that?

Right.

Because that's acceptable.

You want that attached to you for the rest of your life?

And you don't take one second to say, ah, maybe, even from a practical standpoint, like, maybe I should just sit this out.

Even if I feel happy, maybe I should do some re-evaluations.

But even if that's not the case, like, maybe I should just sit this one out type of a thing.

But instead, they feel comfortable to jump on and say those things.

I mean, it was ridiculous.

And

I could feel the evil coming through the phone, which is a strange thing to say.

And I've been in Bagram early on in the war in Afghanistan.

I remember the, I forget if, I don't know if if it was really a black site prison, but it was like a nasty prison.

They had the smell and you could feel like this, like kind of this overriding sense of, I don't know, you had despair, but also like this little bit of a current of evil in there.

And then same thing in Baghdad where they held Saddam, like being in there.

I've been in both those places.

And you kind of feel a little, but even more so, you feel it with Saddam's kids.

And they're like, they have these little islands and palaces and you know what they did there.

They could pull in girls off the street and that sort of thing and you just feel dirty and you feel

or you feel evil.

I mean, you sense it in some of those places, but but I felt that same kind of thing coming through the phone, and then I felt it again.

It's weird to feel it so many times.

My wife and I were in Paris, like I said, right before I came out here.

So it was Morocco, finishing the show for about a month, then to Paris, and it happened to be Fashion Week.

And we weren't there for Fashion Week.

It just happened to be Fashion Week,

which is still going on now, I think.

But we were in this, we wanted to go to one dinner where we could see some people, kind of do some people watching, and I could store some of it away for books, and that's what I'm always collecting, always collecting.

And so we went to the place that Kardashians, again, where they stay, called the COTIS.

Anyway, we went to this this hotel that's that's where a lot of the fashion people stay and it was interesting at first we're seeing some people just treat the weight staff horribly

and so you're getting kind of taking some notes on that and and then this guy walks in with like two minions and you don't see his face because he's got this like hood on but there are these earrings that are attached to the outside and they're hanging down and he's this like fairly obese person and so you never saw his face the way he was he walked in and then sat in front of us with these two guys on either side that had their sunglasses on and they were like both dressed very similarly and both sides of him and they just were looking at him like this and just it it was so odd but you felt this sense of evil and i hate i i don't really like using that word too much but you felt something odd so much so that uh we paid the bill and left it was odd it was so odd and a similar thing that i felt coming across the phone with those people that celebrating

i don't know we were going to go back to our hotel and look up like try to see like who's at fashion week who dresses this way because it was very strange like these black robes and it was just the weirdest thing it was so odd yeah but attached through the, like, like your hoodies on and kind of like clipped to the outside or something and coming down like from the outside of like this thin hoodie.

It was very bizarre.

Very bizarre.

But you felt like that person was evil.

Yeah.

I've never, I mean, very rarely do you feel, do I feel that anyway?

You know, it's a very strange feeling.

But I've learned to listen to my, to those feelings, listen to the gut, listen to the sixth sense that's kept us alive as a species for so much.

If you went to Davos when they have like those W World Economic Forum conferences, I bet you'd smell brimstone.

Maybe.

I bet you wouldn't.

I'd be looking for it.

No, that might be different.

You know, that might be different if you're actually looking for it.

It's kind of a difference.

I guess

whenever you can get a bunch of billionaires together that are trying to decide the fate of the world, I bet you feel evil.

I don't know.

I'm going to have to go to one of those at some point.

I did go to Bohemian Grove.

I don't think you're supposed to talk about it, but I didn't feel that there.

It was more like guys getting away for the weekend to drink.

I've heard a lot of people say that about Bohemian Grove recently.

Yeah.

And I know people that have gone, like, that have have been invited.

Kid Rock told me he went.

A couple other guys told me they went.

They're like, I want to see what the fuck it is.

And so they went.

I'm like, but did you ever watch the Alex Jones video?

Like, when Alex Jones and John Ronson snuck in,

that's back when Alex Jones and John Ronson were united.

Who is John Ronson?

John Ronson is the British journalist.

Oh, okay.

He's the guy who wrote So You've Been Publicly Shamed.

I don't know.

I'll have to look that up.

It's about like one of the it's it's about like the first mass cancellations through social media and like this new public shaming thing that happens.

Yeah, yeah.

Very interesting guy.

But

there it is.

There's Ronson.

Okay.

And so he snuck in with Alex Jones.

Yeah, I saw something.

So I didn't see anything weird like that.

But I know what you're talking about, the burning thing.

I think that's, when I think about it, because I didn't see any of that stuff, but I'm thinking if you're not.

They mustn't do that anymore.

Maybe not.

I don't know.

Alex probably ruined the party.

Maybe.

But when I'm thinking about it, if I think about it logically, you know, when you like throw something into a fire, like at Bud's, guys would burn their dungarees, and dungarees are uh like a regular Navy uniform.

And if you make it through Buds and don't get kicked out of the teams, you'll never have to wear that uniform again.

And it's like it was awful.

It was bell-bottom jeans and a denim shirt, like tucked in that you had to starch, you know, especially in boot camp in a way that like well, you hold it out flat.

It's just, it's awful.

Um, and a little Dixie Cup hat, like that's the uniform, like the worst uniform in the history of uniforms.

Like it is nothing tough about that.

Uh, but people would burn them.

And so, like, never going back, you know, like that sort of a thing.

And then 80% would quit.

But they burn their uniform.

So I think it may be something like that.

You know, you want to burn something.

That's what I think it might be, but I don't know.

80% will quit before they get through buds.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Along the way, most in hell week, but at some point along the way, typically 80% give or take, you know, we'll make it.

But burning that thing is kind of like burning the boats, which is not a real thing.

Hell week and then they still quit?

Some.

Some.

Not many.

Not many.

Most people will be performance dropped after that for not being comfortable in the water, for pool comp when you're getting pounded off the bottom of the pool by

instructors and then you're having to go through the right procedures to get your air turned back on and continue to crawl.

And then they come and hit you again and rip your mask off and hit you in the guts.

You expel your air, turn off your air, tie your, because it's the two hoses, super old school, tie them in a knot, and then they back off to see that you're comfortable in the water and that you're going to go through the right procedures to get everything working again and continue on.

So that's about 15 minutes of doing that.

And some people just aren't comfortable in the water.

And so they'll.

Is it just a panic thing?

Yeah.

I mean, your air's cut off and it's easy to get more air.

I mean, you're only 10 feet or 15 feet, whatever it is, back to air.

So it's very easy to get that air.

But you have to go through the right procedures, and just like you've been taught, and be very comfortable.

And, you know, that's what the test is all about.

They punch you in the stomach?

Yeah.

So you lose some air.

So it just makes you even more uncomfortable.

That makes a big difference, like, who's punching you?

Yeah, instructor.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And where they're hitting you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it pounce you off the bottom.

You kind of just go limp.

Just relax, just like in jiu-jitsu or something like that.

Like, okay, relax.

And then, okay, now I'm I'm going to get into this.

So I love, I love that sort of thing because that was the only time in Buds where it was like mono-y mono against the instructor.

The rest of the time, you're just getting yelled at, being told you're worthless, push-ups, sit-ups, run, swim.

But now it's like, okay, you and me.

I love that.

Same thing.

It was called

life-saving.

So that's the other time you get to put your hands on the instructors is you have to go out and they'll act like a different type of person drowning.

So they'll fight you or they're just dead weight or something like that and they're different body types.

And so you get to go, you swim out towards them and then you have to get them back and they'll take you down to the bottom, hit you off the bottom and so they're doing the work in that in that that situation and you just relax hold on just like you've got someone in like a rear naked choke type thing and And then they have to go up they're expending their energy keeping you down there.

They're gonna have to go up and get the air.

So just wait up to the top grab a little bit of air get closer to the side of the pool then they take you down again type of a thing.

And I love that because that's the only time you can put your hands on an instructor.

So I thought that was that was good.

I like that.

So but you have to put your hands on them like you're rescuing them.

Yeah.

You can't just choke them.

No.

Because I'd be like, this dude is fucking doing it.

I'm going to put them to sleep.

Yeah, no, but there's some similarities there.

Just some similarities with body positions and all that sort of thing, just being comfortable with that.

But there's limitations on how you grab them.

Yeah, they teach you

how to grab them and how to get towards the side of the pool type of thing.

You can't keep them down if you've got better breath than they do.

No.

You can't let hold them up.

Hold on to them.

No, I don't think so.

I don't think so.

If they start coming up, you're like, not today, bad.

Not today.

Stop.

I mean, I guess somebody could, you know, but that's.

Like, if you're a world champion free diver, if you're one of those 10-minute dudes.

You do have some people like that to come through.

I bet.

You know, you do have some really incredible athletes that come through.

I bet.

And a lot of them don't make it because they're being treated like Ferraris or Lamborghinis most of their life if they're really an elite athlete.

And then all of a sudden they're being treated like a Chevy, you know, and just thrown through walls or whatever.

And it's like,

not

crazy pressure test that has to be done.

I mean, there's no real job that's similar.

other than you know rangers and other

elite special forces teams yeah where you have to get through this horrific thing to prove that you're the type of person that they want to train.

Like we're not sure if we want to train you even.

So

we don't know if we're ever going to use you.

And so we're going to try to break you.

Yeah.

Got to prove that you want to be here and that you have the mental fortitude to be here and that you have you can work as a team.

There's a few different things that they're looking for, but it's worked for a while.

It's worked for a long time.

It's a good test.

But it was getting really weird during the

wokey years where they were talking about lowering the standards.

Right, there is that.

And then so the standard part, so even if they say that they're not lowering the standards, this is how they get around it.

And this is military in general,

that they give you more chances.

So before, if you only got one or two chances, maybe three, something like that, to pass an evolution, maybe the standard remains the same.

But in order to get this person, said person through, now you get four chances, five chances, six chances, seven chances, eight chances.

So they say, the standards have not changed.

Well, okay, not really, but you gave them a lot more chances, which you didn't give other people before who were washed out of the program because they only got one chance or two chances or three.

So it's like what would it be that you would get more chances doing?

Like that pool comp thing.

I think you got

two chances on the first day and two chances on the second day.

And I passed the first day just because I happened to be comfortable in the water.

But some guys made it through in that fourth one.

Like, oh, made it, just made it.

But they didn't get a fifth.

They did not get a sixth.

And now maybe, I don't know if this is true, but this is a way around the standards.

Give somebody a fifth, give them a sixth, something like that.

Or you failed the old course.

Okay, one time you you get some sort of a like a warning or something like that, and then you do it again, second time you're out, or whatever it is.

Well, now you can just as many times as it takes.

Oh, they passed it.

They passed it once.

Let's move them on.

Were they doing that to just expand the ranks or were they doing it to get a specific demographic?

Well, I'm not saying that they did it.

I'm saying that's how you would get around the standards.

Like you'd be able to say that

we haven't lowered the standards, sir, type of a thing when you're in front of Congress and they don't know to ask those kind of questions.

Well, did you okay?

Well, did you give them more chances?

Did you change anything?

Yeah, that's something like that.

So they can get away with telling the truth-ish, but not expanding on that.

So that's just a way to do it.

So

bizarre sign of the times to make elite special forces units more easy to get into.

Yeah,

it's a thing.

Strange.

Because there was a push to lower standards.

There's a push to try to get women in it, too, right?

I don't know how much of a push it is.

Have any women ever gone through it?

I don't know how far they've gotten.

I think there were a couple that tried it and haven't made it.

I'm not sure because I'm so removed from it now.

But I think I don't know if there's a push for it, but it's open now.

And the part of that, it's for me, it's, you know, I'll probably get canceled now.

But, you know, or maybe we're past that.

I don't know.

But to me, it's, it's not.

And what they say now, what you have to say officially, I think, is that the standards are the same.

It doesn't matter if you're male or female.

Standards remain the same.

Okay, fine.

But when you get to an elite unit like that or any unit, and this might be a failing on my part, I fully admit that.

I mean, I was raised when a woman enters a room, you stand up, you open the door for a lady type of a thing, like those things.

You stand up for, you're chivalrous, you're a gentleman type of a thing.

And now all of a sudden, in a leadership position, I'm supposed to treat a female the exact same way that I treat a male going into combat.

There's no way I could possibly ever do that.

I'm going to be much more concerned about her than I am him.

And once again, that might be a failing on my part.

I fully accept that.

But I'm glad I never had to deal with it in real life.

But I see that being something that comes into play, especially if you're raised to protect as a protector, as a sentinel, as a guardian, and now all of a sudden you're supposed to treat said female who you've been raised to protect, treat them exactly the same way as a guy going into combat.

That's difficult for me.

Physical realities I feel that we just have to address when people want to talk about equality.

I understand that when you're talking about jobs that don't require shooting people and stabbing people in hand-to-hand combat.

Okay.

Because as soon as you do that and you are physically far weaker and far slower and you're, you just, you're just, you're not a man.

It's a different thing.

I feel the same way about women.

Like if you wanted to have a cross-gender combat sports, if you wanted to have biological men fighting biological women, I don't care if they're the same weight.

Like, don't, it's not fair.

Yeah.

It's not fair.

It's not smart for them to be doing that.

That said, I feel like you should be able to do what you want to do

in this life.

And I don't want to limit anybody's choices in this life, but

if you want the best people for the job, I can't see how they're going to be weaker people.

It doesn't really make sense.

And if you have a physical requirement for all the men, and that physical requirement involves a lot of heavy physical working out and labor, I don't know that a woman can pass that.

Yeah, for a better person.

I've seen what you guys had to go through to get through buds.

And like, okay.

This episode is brought to you by Rocket Money.

Guys, we know how easy it is to go a little overboard when you're hosting the gang for a game day.

It's tempting to pair some pig skin with potato skins, but that full spread can drain your wallet.

But with Rocket Money, you can have a look at your total financial picture to see what's safe to spend on your parties.

Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bill so that you can grow your savings.

It sends you alerts if your bills increase in price, if there's unusual spending activity in your accounts, if you're close to spending over your budget, and even lets you know when you're doing a good job at keeping your spending under control.

Rocket Money has saved users over $2.5 billion, including over $880 million in canceled subscriptions alone.

Their 10 million members save up to $740 a year when they use all of the app's premium features.

Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money.

Go to rocketmoney.com slash JRE today.

That's rocketmoney.com slash J-R-E.

RocketMoney.com slash J-R-E.

This episode is brought to you by Goldbelly.

This is insane.

There's a site called Goldbelly and they ship legendary food from America's best restaurants straight to your house.

Anywhere.

Doesn't matter where you live.

They'll find you.

I'm talking pastrami from New York, Terry Black's Brisket in Austin, Lou Malnati's Deep Dish from Chicago, Pat's cheese steaks from Philly, Promante Bro's sandwiches in Pittsburgh, Maine lobster rolls, the real deal, straight from these iconic mom and pop shops all across the country.

And the best part?

Anyone can make gold belly and be eating world-class food in minutes.

Game day, fight night, friends coming over.

Don't be the person with frozen frozen grocery store wings.

Show up with Texas barbecue and actual Philly cheesesteaks and people will think you teleported it in.

You're the legend of the party.

Go to goldbelly.com, use the promo code Rogan and get 20% off your first order.

That's goldbelly.com, code Rogan, for 20% off your first order.

Goldbelly, legendary food shipped anywhere.

You have to be strong.

Like you have to, there has to be a certain amount of physical strength that you have to be able to do that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

For me, it even comes, yeah, like I said, it comes down to that.

And it's probably my failing, but maybe not.

Maybe we're supposed to be.

We're supposed to be protectors.

Yeah, supposed to be protectors.

All throughout human history, that's been the case.

Yeah.

And so you're supposed to all of a sudden change because of a policy directive.

But yeah, I mean, we're going back to it.

I mean, it's causing a ruffling a lot of feathers within the military right now, changing the Department of Defense to the Department of War, which is, and I'm not saying that they got this from me.

I'm just saying that they, I've never heard anyone talk about it until I talked about it back in 2001.

And I wrote some articles articles after the Afghanistan withdrawal and I call and it went on Fox a bunch of times and talked about how we needed precision and language reflects precision and thought.

Department of Defense Defense has a sort of connotation to it, a definition to it.

And the Department of War is different than a Department of Defense, just the language of it.

And I said, it's time to change the Department of Defense back to the Department of War.

And I used the Afghanistan withdrawal as that example and put that in two articles.

I think they both went on town hall, I believe.

And then, but I talked about it.

And I'd never heard anybody mention that before.

So is that what it used to be?

It used to be the Department of War up to the end of World War II, and then it changed, and then it was official in 1947 with the reorganization of the military and our intelligence apparatus.

So 1947 onward, became the Department of Defense.

Do you take any heat in your books?

Because one of the things that you talk about,

especially in the terminal list, is horrific government corruption and the willingness to put soldiers' lives

as expendable in order to profit.

Yeah, I certainly talk about it in here.

It has a great conversation.

One of my favorite chapters is these two characters, Tom Reese and his buddy Quinn.

So, one Special Forces guy, one SEAL, and they're having this conversation on China Beach.

And it was great to write those chapters and do all this research into China Beach and Da Nang and what kind of surfboards they were using, how they were shaped, like all this stuff just to bring you back to

that time frame.

But that's what they're talking about.

So, this is about James Reese's dad.

Yeah, 1968, his dad.

And people find out where the tomahawk came from, where the watch came from, where honey and the coffee came from.

So, all these little things are kind of woven in there as well.

But exactly what you just talked about is a conversation in this book in 1968.

And it's the same conversation that we're having today.

But I don't want to say I take heat over it.

And I'm never going to worry in a chapter or a book about

who I'm going to alienate by writing something.

Here we are.

Criminals.

Or charge.

Are you going to piss off the criminals?

Exactly.

Or the people in power.

Just being honest about what we did.

Or just people in power in general

or just a part of a readership, maybe.

I'm just going to focus on that story.

I have to focus on that story.

I'm not doing this.

I'm not writing this for a reader.

I'm writing this for the story.

And that way I honor that reader.

So it's all about that story.

But the CIA has been, it was very nice.

We got to film the end of Dark Wolf at CIA headquarters.

And I hadn't been back there since I was in the SEAL team.

So I'm at CIA headquarters.

I have a cameo in there that I live through at the end of the show on episode seven.

I'm the guard that takes the guy's ID as he's leaving the, and I have one line.

I think it's, I say, I say something anyway.

But it was very cool to be there in front of that memorial wall, that wall of stars Especially knowing some of those guys that are on there that are memorialized by those stars So the CIA was very kind to let us use that lobby They didn't ask us to change anything in the show didn't put any restraints or restrictions on anything They just let us use it and that was very cool some guys came down that didn't need to come down that day Which was really cool That wanted to talk to me about some stuff that I did in Iraq and it was very very cool to talk to them very cool to see the C it's see the museum there get a little tour of the CIA museum all that stuff So they've been very very helpful.

The military, not so much.

The military does not let us use

any aircraft carriers, submarines, helicopters, anything like that, like they do for some other shows.

And I think that's probably because I blew an admiral up in his office in the first episode, first series, and in the book.

So, I don't think the military is.

Is that really what it is, you think?

I think it probably is because we were going to use, for the first show, we were going to use Camp Pendleton, and the Marines were all on board.

And then their Department of the Navy.

So, then the Navy found out about it and quashed it.

So, we did not get to use Camp Pendleton.

Yeah.

so it's uh and like in Jack Ryan and stuff.

I think they use actual military helicopters and uh maybe an amphib ship or something like that.

So they get some support from the

exactly.

They're not blowing up admirals.

They don't have corrupt admirals getting blown up in their offices with asbestos.

So

I don't think the military is a big fan.

The rank and file are.

Those guys are awesome.

At my book signings, there's so many military, so much law enforcement, firefighters, first responders.

The audience is full of those guys, and it's so fantastic.

That's fiction, though.

That seems so bitchy.

I

And it seems like also that that would be a very good recruitment tool because these guys look like badasses.

People are like, fuck, I want to be a SEAL.

Yeah.

Fucking badass.

And so a lot of guys would probably join because of that series.

And they're like, no, you

bad guy.

It's a bad guy.

Exactly.

It's not justice.

Yeah, yeah.

What are you guys going to let all the bad guys off the hook?

Exactly.

Come on.

You get a murderous bad guy that happens to be an admiral.

You don't want to see him get whacked?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

It's fiction.

Yeah.

And I knew that would happen at some point.

I knew the people would eventually come through a line, a signing line, and say, I joined the military because of you, or I became a police officer because of something I read in your books.

And because that's me.

I was influenced by popular culture growing up.

And that helped me on my path into the SEAL teams.

So I knew it would happen.

I didn't really conceptualize it any further than that.

But when it happened, I was first time, which was a couple years ago, because the first book came out in 2018.

So if someone reads that at 16, 17, 18, now they're a few years into this career in law enforcement or in the military.

And guys have come up and said that now.

And I'm always like, oh, man, I hope you made the right choice.

I'm like, oh,

I hope lie was just one part of a lot of information that you took in in order to make this decision.

But they do say it now.

And like with David Morrell in Phoenix the other night for the launch of the book, he has been through like burn units and stuff, saying hi to people as part of like USO tours and stuff.

And people like missing arms and legs are totally burned.

Say, hey, I joined the military because of Rambo.

And him, it's like, oh, he's such a nice guy.

He's just like, oh.

I it's like devastating, devastating.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, so it's, but for me, it's like, hey, it's always going to be about the story.

I knew that would happen, but it was a surprise the first time.

Kind of like the tattoo was the first surprise.

It was a surprise the first time I saw it.

Like the baby the other night was the first, I was surprised.

So it's, yeah, it's

honestly

honor the actual experiences that these people have in your books.

It's it's very

believable and realistic, and it does honor those people.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That's what I for this one in particular.

That's what I wanted to do.

I wanted those guys who were not just Mac Visog going over the borders and fighting this in denied areas where they weren't supposed to be in Cambodia, Laos, North Vietnam, but anyone who stood up and went down there to serve.

I wanted to make sure I honored them and gave my heart and soul to every word.

And I felt that responsibility as I was writing this.

I wanted those guys to read it and say, oh, he put in the effort to get it right.

And even if people just lived through the 60s, it didn't go down range.

I wanted them to read it and say, oh, he tried to, he got close.

Even if I made a mistake here or there, like he put in the effort to try to capture the essence of 1968.

And

that's why so much work went into this.

Those guys that went into the tunnels

here.

That is some of those are some of the fucking craziest stories.

Yep.

You're going into the tunnels hand to hand

with a 1911 and a flashlight.

Looking for Viet Cong and not knowing what you're going to find.

Crazy.

Not knowing who's in there.

Not knowing what's waiting for you.

What's booby trapped?

Oh, yeah.

That's got to be some of the toughest fighting one can do in the dark, in a tunnel, under the ground, essentially by yourself, because you can't fit anybody else in there with you.

Did you watch Peaky Blinders?

No, I need to watch it.

It's really awesome.

But one of the aspects of these characters is that the Peaky Blinders were all veterans.

And they were all in World War I and trench warfare.

Oh, wow.

And they were in the tunnels.

Oh, like the trenches.

Yeah.

And so, like, they came back and they have flashbacks, and there's a lot of like

waking up in the middle of the night stabbing people thinking thinking you're there again.

There's some wild scenes of them in the trenches.

Yeah.

And it's just like, Jesus.

And we're seeing some more of that trench stuff in

Ukraine.

I mean, whoa.

But live video, though.

You're seeing like 4K video off cell phones and drones.

The drone stuff is scary.

I'm so glad that I didn't have to deal with that during my time.

It's fucking nuts.

I was watching a guy, he was was in the back of a truck, and they were running, and the drone is coming at him.

He's firing at the drone and shoots it maybe three, four yards from him.

I saw that one.

That's crazy.

It's fucking nuts.

Fucking nuts.

And you realize, like, this is what they're dealing with?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Exploding drones that are whizzing towards them and someone on the other end somewhere in the world has got a fucking joystick

and trying to get you with it.

Yeah, I put that in True Believer, second book, and we put it in the show.

We filmed it in the second show.

I have a drone attack in there.

But that was a few years ago.

And just imagine when it gets to the next stage where it sends a mosquito in here, a fly, and it's looking at your face.

And it's like, oh, warrant out for your arrest.

Boom, lands on you.

Over you go.

Exactly.

And that sort of thing.

It kicks you with some toxic shit.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's a weird time.

Yeah, like those videos that we just saw that look like Muhammad Ali is on the show.

I mean, all that sort of stuff.

I mean, it's going to, we're getting to that point where it's going to identify you somehow, some sort of an identification through your eyes, through blood, through facial recognition, a combination of all three.

And then that is going to allow you to access whatever it is, information online,

credit cards, all the rest of it, of course.

But what it's really doing is allowing something, whether it's the government or big tech, more control over you.

Because eventually you're going to go in and, okay, to make sure this is you paying for, let's say, a steak.

And now all of a sudden, oh, you've had your allotment of steak because of the environment, because of how many cows and whatever they're doing.

You can't buy this steak.

Or your allotment of power for your vehicle, you've used yours up for the mother.

Gas in your car, all of those things, but it's going to know exactly because you're going to have to do it to access information online.

And we're getting closer and closer to that.

Well, Anglin's just submitted to it.

They just submitted to digital ID.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, these motherfuckers are pushing digital ID on these people.

And once they do digital ID, they're going to attach it to a social credit score.

They're going to attach it to a carbon footprint score.

And then they'll be able to control your movement and control you entirely.

And most importantly, they've already arrested 12,000 people for social media posts.

That's insane.

Above and beyond every other country, way above Russia.

Russia was like 400 last year.

The UK is 12,000.

Any criticism of immigration, any criticism of grooming gangs and people being raped, any talk about how horrible this is, they come visit you.

It's like someone's trying to destroy England.

It's literally like they've got a concerted effort to destroy England and they're getting away with it.

Yeah, and what happens over there?

It's really crazy.

It's really crazy to watch because the mass immigration is not an accident.

If I was going to destroy a country, I would do it exactly the way they're doing it.

I'd take away their freedom, take away their ability to protest, take away their guns, which they did in the 90s, and then you start tightening that noose.

Tighter and tighter, add more restrictions, More this, more that.

I mean, it's, we're getting closer.

And just the arresting people.

When you arrest 12,000 people for social media posts, you don't just arrest people for social media posts.

You change people's ability to post about things because of fear.

So they self-censor.

So you don't even, you're hitting them with like this one guy who complained about there's a famous video where this fucking idiot in a wig, he's one of them judges and they wear the wigs, the white powdered wigs, and he's sentencing this guy for 20 months for social media posts that are normal.

Like normal complaints about mass immigration of illegals from other countries that aren't assimilating and that they believe are ruining their society, which there's a real argument for.

And that's what online discourse is supposed to be about.

Like having conversations, like I'm voicing my concern for the way society is running right now because of what's happening, and no one's doing anything about it, and no one's protecting anybody.

It's nuts, man.

Anytime in human history, that would be called an invasion.

Yeah.

And now it's

not just an invasion.

It's like they're doing it.

They're letting people do it.

They're enabling these people doing it.

And they're putting them on the dole too, which is even crazier.

And you're seeing that in America as well, where they just uncovered a bunch of people that were illegals that had been given social security numbers and were already voting.

And this is nuts, man.

It's like

it's a concerted effort.

And this was one of the main focuses that a lot of people had in the 2024 campaign.

There was one side that wanted to stop that and one side that wanted to pretend that it was a good thing.

And like that you have an open border and criminals and cartel members are just flooding through.

People from foreign countries of military fighting age just flooding through.

And you're pretending there's nothing wrong with that.

Like you're setting us up for a real big fucking problem.

Yeah.

Have you seen the videos?

I'm sure you have.

It's Bill Clinton.

It's Hillary Clinton.

It's Schumer.

It's Pelosi.

Oh, yeah.

It's Biden from the 90s.

Oh, yeah.

Like giving these speeches on the floor of Congress that today

would be extremely right-wing.

Extremely.

Normal.

Hillary Clinton.

And I think it was

2012, like whatever it was where she was running for president.

And she's more MAGA than MAGA.

Yeah.

Like she is talking about if you're a criminal, you know, no if, ands, or buts, you get kicked out.

And if you're here, you pay a stiff fine because you cut the line.

Like, yeah.

That's wild.

Yeah.

Like, what happened to that?

It's out there, but then we're not getting, you know, most people don't know about it or they don't see it.

You have to look for it or something along those lines.

It lets you realize that these people that are playing these roles of leaders, they don't have principled stances on things.

They go with wherever their party's leaning and wherever the majority of people believe is the direction to go.

And they might not even implement these things, but just to say it in order to get elected and get people to vote for them.

And that's what they did.

It's insane.

I don't even like calling them.

They didn't even believe in gay marriage until 2013.

All polling, I guess, right?

But it's the manipulation.

And it's also manipulation of the populace through

all these different platforms.

And what did you think also of the,

and I don't like to call them leaders.

I like to call them elected representatives.

That's what they're supposed to be.

They're supposed to represent us.

And

they get there and they represent themselves.

But But

how's the inauguration?

I didn't get to ask you.

Being in the room with all the lizard people that run the world is so strange.

Yeah.

It's so weird.

It was like seeing Hillary and seeing Obama and seeing Kamala Harris and Biden and Bush and all those people there.

It's very weird.

It's really weird, man.

It's real weird.

It's real weird being in the Capitol and realize how strange this whole process is.

I mean, there's this public humiliation ritual where Trump goes on stage and talks shit and they're right behind him.

And they have to eat it.

And everybody cheers and claps and is very bizarre.

Yeah, very surreal.

Very surreal.

Surreal also that I'm right there too on the stage like what's going on?

Five rows back from the president's.

Like the strangest fucking thing on earth.

And it's also strange just that this is this weird ritual that they do, this changing of the control and then you know the beginning of the battle for the next four years where everybody is like slinking away to try their strategy and figure out what to do next, and who's our warrior.

And now they're trying to figure it out.

Yeah.

Now they're talking about Pete Bootig and Kamala Harris.

That's what they're going to run.

All right.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

You don't fight against that.

Apparently, they don't have any faith in Gavin Newsom.

Oh, which is kind of funny because he wants to be president so bad.

That's true.

You can't ruin a city and then go on to ruin a state and say, guys, that was just practice.

I know.

Once I get it as a president, I'm going to fix it.

I fix it all.

I mean, it's so crazy.

But he's such a great politician.

Oh, he's not.

He's so smooth.

He's not.

I don't think so.

No.

No.

I think he's terrible.

How does he remain in power for so long?

Low competition.

There's no one who's good is competing against him.

There's no sensation.

I should say he's not a good.

I should say smooth.

He comes with a lot of people.

I mean, he's a good bullshit artist.

Yeah, that's what I mean.

But it's like the things that he says when he gets confronted with the we have the highest this and the highest that.

everybody's leaving.

You have the highest unemployment, you have the highest homelessness.

And even Hollywood, money's missing.

You killed Hollywood.

Like, Hollywood doesn't exist anymore.

It's literally gone.

That was such mandated vaccines for kids that didn't need them.

You guys, you did horrible shit.

Yeah.

It's awful.

I went to the one in 2017, so January 2017.

So we decided not to go to this last one.

And because we felt like we experienced it last time, and there was all the

limos on fire and all the chain link fences as we were getting, you know, going to all this stuff.

So we decided not to go to this one, but then Tulsi called and asked if I'd go to her, her swearing in.

And so I was like, yeah, of course.

And so we went to that one, and that was really cool.

That was really cool to be in the room with her when she got sworn in.

That is cool.

That was amazing, yeah.

Have you talked to her about her experience there?

I didn't want to bother her too much, but she just posted about the book, actually.

I didn't expect her to do that, but she did that today, which is very, very kind.

But the reality of the work, the reality of being in the organization is very sobering, apparently.

I bet.

Oh, my gosh.

It's got to be like nothing.

Whatever you think it is from the outside before you step in, it's got to be a thousand times worse, at least, when you step into it.

It's bad, and it's very compartmentalized.

There's a bunch of people that run various offices, and they're all working against you.

Oh, the bureaucracy is so huge.

I hope she stays in it.

I mean, she's such a great person.

I mean, I'd support her as we were friends, but I mean, it's got to be hard to stay in that fight when you see

she's got a lot of character.

That doesn't get rewarded there.

Yeah.

I mean,

I would support her, And there's a path for her.

You know, and there is definitely a path for her to get into the White House.

Yeah, it could be.

She could be our first female president, especially after

we've seen what they tried to do to her.

They put her on the Quiet Skies thing.

So they put her on a terrorist watch list.

She was a U.S.

Congresswoman for eight fucking years.

She served overseas in

a medical unit, right?

So she was deployed twice in a medical medical unit in the middle of the fucking war, and you're labeling her a terrorist.

Like, whoever did that, like, whoever signed off on that should be in fucking jail.

Yeah.

That's crazy.

I mean,

that's such an abuse.

Yeah.

That's such an abuse of power.

Yeah.

And you want to talk about like going after your political enemies in

a sick third world country way.

That's a great example of that.

You put a congresswoman for eight years on the terrorist watch.

For what?

Right.

For what reason?

None?

No reason?

There's not like some crazy tweets where she's made, and there's nothing like she's so thoughtful.

It's not even like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who gets hog wild sometimes.

She's not like that.

It's a little aggressive.

Yeah, she's a little aggressive.

Like,

Tulsi's not like that at all.

And you put her on a terrorist watch list.

Shame on you.

Yeah, yeah.

Fucking shame on you.

Now she's the director of national intelligence.

Crazy, right?

Yeah.

Well, it's weird how that happens.

Yeah, that's fantastic.

But yeah, the next one, it's, I mean,

I haven't read the book,

but it's Kamala's book where she says she didn't choose Pete Buttigedge because of his sexual orientation.

Yeah.

I'm not sure about this.

People can correct in the comments, please.

But I believe that's illegal.

Like, if you didn't hire someone because they had a certain sexual orientation, I believe that's illegal.

But you're allowed to choose who you think is going to work the best.

But not because of.

And you'd say something else, like, oh, they're not qualified.

You cannot, I mean, I believe, well, someone can tell us if we're, if I'm wrong, we could probably look it up, but I do not think you can

discriminate against someone strictly because of that.

If they're not qualified, of course, you choose someone else, fine.

But she goes ahead and says that's the reason that she didn't hire this guy to be her VP.

Wow.

I believe that is illegal.

Wow.

I never even thought of that.

It's insane.

Well, she also has been saying something really crazy.

She's been saying that this is the closest race of the 21st century and that it wasn't a mandate.

That's just not true.

It's not true.

Gore and Bush was much closer.

Yes.

I think that was a half of a percent.

Yes.

I don't know why she keeps saying this.

It's just a lie.

And then also

she's leaving out the fact that she lost every swing state, every single one.

Yeah.

So, like, what are you talking about?

I know.

He won the popular vote and he won the Electoral College vote.

And that's a mandate.

Like, to say that it's not a mandate, it's like, but it's almost like if you say it to the converted that they're going to listen and repeat it.

Yeah, he barely won.

Right.

Like, no, he won.

He won every swing state.

He won the popular vote.

That's called winning.

You win the House and you win the Senate.

He won.

That means he won.

Charlie Shell is that winning.

This is crazy talk.

Yeah.

It's wild.

It is so brutal.

She's probably hammered.

She's probably up there drinking wine.

Fucking kick his ass next time.

Fuck him.

It's so brutal.

And I think she took credit for the no tax on tips things in the book as well.

That's hilarious because that was clearly his.

Clearly.

He said it first and they copied it.

It's amazing.

Did she really say that in the book?

I haven't read it, but

I have heard from someone who did read it that she did.

So I, you know, people had an address not coming on here in the book too, which I thought was funny.

Yeah, that was interesting.

Yeah, her team was not truthful about that encounter at all.

They never committed to doing the show ever.

They said that, you know, I said that I had a personal day, which is not true.

I said, I am not available the day that Trump was here.

I said, that day's not available.

I didn't say that I I was have a personal day.

They just made that up.

That's crazy.

And then they also said that they sent someone here to go through the studio, like sent someone to do a walkthrough.

Not true.

No.

Not true.

How can they?

I mean, it's just you repeat it and you say it and your side believes it.

But why would they do that when I can just say that's not true?

It's bizarre.

But who are they going to believe?

They're going to believe me or a person who literally says whatever the audience wants them to say,

which is what they say.

That's what they're living.

Yeah.

I'm not.

Why would I lie?

I have no reason to lie.

so is that it would have been interesting to if i fucked her over i would tell the truth yeah if i was like we lied yeah we told her i was taking a personal day but realized i wanted to get trump in not true i tried to do both of them on the same day that was my idea

my idea was to do Trump during the day and then her to come.

She had a thing she was doing in Houston.

After the thing with Houston, I go, I'll fucking do it at midnight.

I don't care.

We'll do it whenever you want to do it.

Yeah.

While you're in Texas, but I just can't do during the day because Trump's going to be here.

But they had to have known.

I mean, the Secret Service was there was 200 guys here.

They had fucking.

In Texas?

No, in this fucking studio.

No, there was 200 people here for Trump.

I mean, I'm not exaggerating.

It was packed.

Wow.

It was packed.

That's crazy.

Bro, they didn't fuck around.

They did not fuck around.

They surrounded the building.

It was nuts.

Interesting.

Yeah, they made sure that everything was safe and secure.

Wow.

So, like, someone had to know something that he was here.

It's It's not a mystery.

But I said

but I wasn't trying to be deceptive.

I said I'll do it later.

I just can't do it during this time.

That's the excuse they took.

But they want to do it.

It's like, okay, they took that excuse.

They never wanted to do the whole thing.

Never.

They wanted to do like a 45-minute thing

in a different place.

They didn't say scripted, but they did say that there were some things that she didn't want to talk about.

And then they denied that.

Yeah.

That's what I meant by scripted, yeah.

I said, I don't care.

I'll talk to you about cooking.

I don't give a fuck.

I just want to know who are you?

I'll figure you out.

I'll figure you out in a few hours.

Yeah, in three hours, you can't fake your way through the conversation.

No, I'll find you.

I'll find you.

I'll ask you controversial things.

All I have to do is ask you, why is the border open?

We could talk about that for three hours.

Oh, my gosh.

What are you trying to do?

Like, you could close that border.

Trump closed that border in a day.

Amazing.

In a day.

You could say, I hate what's going on with ICE, and I don't like it either.

I don't like this thing of taking people.

And here's the thing.

Well, they should have done it the right way.

Yeah, okay, but if you're poor and you live in a third world country, that's not an available option.

Okay, what is an available option is this one administration over four years is encouraging people to go through.

Not only are they encouraging you to go through, there's Red Cross stops along the way.

They give you maps, they tell you how to do it.

People are being funding people getting in.

They're paying for air flights.

They're flying people in.

They're moving people into swing states.

They're getting them on Medicare.

They're getting them on Social Security.

We talked about this one lady who did an interview saying she was being told to try to get people on permanent disability.

So she was told to ask them, do you have back problems?

And they're like, yes.

Okay, great.

Personal disability.

Now

she said, I was told to view them as a client now.

And so you're trying essentially to bribe people to now, once you get them in, to move to a swing state.

Then they count on the census.

Once they count on the census, it adds congressional seats.

So it's like

you're rigging elections by bringing in immigrants and then you're giving them money.

And all these people that live in these poor communities, they're like, hey, where was all this money for us?

Where was all this money for the people in Chicago?

Where was all this money to the people in Baltimore?

No, no, it's they're they're doing it because they're trying to manipulate the election.

It didn't work.

You know, it didn't work.

Like, I had an argument with someone about it.

Like, yeah, it didn't work, though.

I go, yeah, but they tried to do it.

It didn't work.

But they did move people to swing states.

They did leave the border open for four years.

They did let in millions of people.

They don't even know how many.

They don't know how many people got through.

That's crazy.

Once they got him here, they did give him EBT cards.

They did give him cell phones.

They did.

They moved him into the fucking hotel, that Roosevelt Hotel in New York City, the luxury hotel, filled with migrants.

They paid for their food.

They did do this.

They encouraged people.

They did have sanctuary cities where they weren't going to arrest them.

They let them come in.

Still do Portland right now.

It's a

bananas.

It's crazy.

Do you think you could have had that conversation, let's say, 15 years ago,

that kind of a conversation with Kamala if she was around back then?

Let's back up 15 years.

Or is talking to all these amazing people that you've talked to over

the time this podcast has been in existence has given you this incredible foundation from which to be able to ask such incredible questions of people and get this stuff out of them.

15 years ago, I would have never thought that it would have mattered at all if I had an opinion on anything.

It would be like most comics that are doing podcasts today where they're just shooting the shit to their friends and no one cares.

No one cares.

You know, I want to vote for this guy because I think we need tri-libertarianism and this is why I think it.

Like, oh, who cares?

And then interesting conversation moves on.

Not that like so many people care what my fucking opinion is.

Like that to me is a sign of the times.

Like if you're coming coming to a cage-fighting commentator and a dirty comedian, like, this is the guy that you need an opinion for, that means the media's failed you.

Like, what I am, I'm a symptom of a broken system.

Like, if I'm a source of information, like, we've got like a bit of a supply chain problem.

That's how I do it.

I don't know.

I think it's being a little humble on that as well, because where else could someone get these three hours where they can really listen to maybe two sides of a right?

But my point is, why didn't somebody else do that already?

Why didn't didn't mainstream media figure that out why did you need someone to figure it out in on a laptop in a spare bedroom of their house like how is that possibly

the number one media show in the world that's birthed out of a laptop in a spare bedroom it doesn't make any sense well it means you fail no no no it means they failed yeah because there's a lot smarter people than me a lot better people at dissecting what's actually going on in the world than me but for whatever reason they can't do it so how come how you know, and like they've like there's a bunch of people from the New York Times that try, but they're all bullshit.

Exactly.

They're never free to give their real opinion.

They're never free to say, you know what, actually,

this person that I disagree with fundamentally has a really good point about this.

You know, they have, instead of being ideologically captured, which is like most of them, most of them on the right and most of them on the left, instead of just being able to look at things and go, this is the actual reality that we're living in, that's a failure.

That's a failure of media.

It's a failure of journalism.

It's a failure.

And they say, oh, you know, he's not a journalist.

You're right.

So how come people are listening?

Like, what is that about?

You tell me why no one else can have these kind of conversations with people and break it down this way.

Well, it's because you're limited by your whole system.

If you're involved in mainstream media, you're limited by the format.

The format sucks.

You have to break for commercials.

You're sponsored by, brought to you by Pfizer.

So there's certain things you can't talk about.

You've got handcuffs on.

And if you're on the internet and you're ideologically aligned with either the left or the right, well, now you're captured by this box of predetermined opinions that you're supposed to subscribe to.

Yep.

But you recognize an opportunity throughout history.

But I didn't.

Well, you can't do that.

This is the thing.

I just kept doing this.

I'm telling you, man, this is not a plan.

I know we've talked about that.

I just kept doing it, and then all of a sudden it became what it is.

But you recognize that had to do it.

You could plug in a laptop and you could have a video, you could have a conversation.

But it was all just for fun.

See, that's why it worked.

It worked because there was no plan.

It was just like, let's do this and it'll be fun.

And then people tune in because it's fun.

And then I start getting like Graham Hancock on and Anthony Bourdain on.

I'm getting some guests and it's kind of fun and it's kind of cool.

And then it becomes a cool thing that if you know, you know.

Like, oh, you listen to podcasts?

Check this one out.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, Joe Rogan's got good guests and he asked good questions.

And then it became what it is now.

But

it's all just because I enjoy doing it.

It was never because I recognized like, oh, there's an opening.

No, no, I didn't mean it like that.

I meant like it was very natural.

That's also a part of it.

Like, it's not like you're like, what can I do?

Like, no, that's not that.

No.

Where some people do do that.

Like, hey, what can be my thing?

Oh, okay.

X, Y, and Z.

Okay, I'll give speaking about events on this certain thing.

And okay, that's my thing now because I realize there's a gap.

Okay, I'm going to do that.

That's different.

That's not moving the needle probably for anybody in that audience, maybe for one person or something like that.

And you're not looking at it like that.

You're doing it because it was this very natural thing for you to do.

And it happened to grow into what it is today, which is amazing, which makes it even more powerful that it was natural.

And then you weren't this artificial guy over here saying, what's the opportunity?

Oh, I can get make X dollars by speaking about this topic to this audience.

Okay, I'm going to do that and be happy or whatever.

Instead, it was the opposite of that.

It was very natural.

And so it's a very different thing as far as opportunity goes.

Well, that's the weirdness about today, right?

It's because you could just start a YouTube channel.

Like anybody who's a doctor or a historian could just start a YouTube channel and just start talking.

Like just think about all the stuff that you learned about Vietnam from writing this book.

You could just break down moments like Dan Carlin style about Vietnam and just sit there and talk about it.

And people would be like, that's fascinating.

Jack Carr on Vietnam, you seen this video?

And then it'll get passed around.

Next thing you know, it's got a half a million views.

Next thing you know, it's got a million.

And then everybody's sharing it in social media.

That's the most fascinating thing about today.

Like if you say something cool and it becomes a part of a clip and somebody likes it, it gets blasted all over the whole world.

It's on TikTok, it's on X, it's on Instagram, and then it's on YouTube and like a hundred different channels.

There's all these channels that pop up and they take advantage of the algorithms so they take these little clips.

I can't do that.

I can never do something for clicks or for anything like that.

I don't either.

I know.

Other people will.

I know.

You don't have to do it.

That's what's interesting.

The vast majority of our clips online have nothing to do with us.

I didn't put them up there.

I don't know who the fucking person is that's editing them and clipping them together.

Some of those cuts even put their own watermark on it.

Like, whoever you are, cut the shit.

That's not, you know?

Like, oh, I edited

mindofawinner, like dot com.

Oh, boy.

They do that stuff and they put their own little fucking website on it.

But it's just, it's a weird time.

It's a weird time for the distribution of information.

And mainstream media, they dropped the ball.

They missed these openings.

And they're not capable of being free.

There's too many cooks in the, like, all the notes that you were getting on season one, right?

You don't get them anymore because it's successful.

Like, that's kind of every show on television has got to deal with all these goddamn cooks.

Yeah.

All these chefs.

Yeah.

Oh, add a little of this and add a little of that.

Well, you can't do it.

You can't do it.

You can't do it.

No, it's like we were talking about earlier.

Now, people are trying to get that clip so their life and their their their their income is reliant on trying to get that clip but i think what they don't realize is that that's a blip you know like like that's a what's a one thing and then it's back down back down here it's not a boom and then going from there you have to continually add value to people's lives i think long term if you're going to build something of substance and that's what you you have done obviously and uh it's incredible to watch and uh you know via via parto from the audience side and then to you know the your friends and all that stuff fucking weird

weird but then we see that stuff like with charlie kirk and people trying to take advantage of that to get a click.

I know.

And it's so brutal.

And I don't know what it is, what going forward.

Like when you think about communication in general, and a long time ago, the telephone used to connect us with our grandparents, let's say, states away, used to connect us.

And now the telephone, it disconnects us from that person who's sitting right here next to us on the couch, our spouse or our kids or anything else.

So it used communication, used to connect us.

Now a communication device, which does obviously a lot more than that, is a tracking device, surveillance device, all these other things.

But it disconnects us from those that we're in the same room with.

And that's a different deal.

And that's why when I look at long-term, when we're talking about, and you always remain so hopeful about the future, and I love it, and I try to remain hopeful as well.

But when you think about it in those types of terms, like this thing's not going away.

And what's next?

Metaglasses.

Okay, we got the metaglasses.

They gave me some at UFC, actually.

Me too.

Did they?

Have you fucked with them yet?

No, because I left them under my seat.

And as soon as they gave it to me, I knew I was going to leave them under that seat.

They handed it to me when I came in.

I'm like, I'm 100% leaving this behind.

Put it under the seat.

I told them Monica, I'm like, Monica, remind me to bring these things with me.

And then we just had such a great time.

We totally forgot.

The Chicago one.

Yeah, they gave them to me as I was leaving.

So that would have made more sense.

I grabbed them.

I'm like, thank you very much.

And I have them.

Have you done it?

Have you put them on?

I put them on when they were here.

I haven't done the new ones, but I've done several versions.

I've tried them.

They're pretty fucking incredible.

It's pretty incredible.

I'm not wearing them.

Yeah.

But we've had to stop people from wearing them at the comedy club.

They try to film things with meta glasses on.

It's kind of funny.

They're adorable.

Interesting.

All glasses have to go in in the pouch, just like the phones last night.

Everybody who works there knows what a metaglass is.

Right, but now they do.

But then, what happens five years from now when you can put them in anything?

Well, it's going to be contact lenses.

Oh, and then it's going to be over.

And then it's going to be in the brain, some sort of implant.

Yeah,

there'll be some sort of a hard drive that you go by.

Yeah.

Nope.

Not for me.

Yeah.

No, not for me either.

But we're the last.

We're the last of the regular people.

Because it's going to be normal now.

Yeah, it's going to be a cyborg nation.

Yeah.

Ah, I like how you're hopeful.

You were hopeful earlier.

No, I am still hopeful.

I mean, I hope it works out well, but it's change is inevitable, and our change is technologically driven, and it's an integration.

The integration between this incredible technology that's available now to everybody through these AI platforms and then your phone and then your biology.

Like

many people are wearing them Apple Watches, and they're getting text messages and emails and making phone calls on their watch.

I know, it's awful.

I judge someone someone immediately when I see an Apple Watch, unless it's for health reasons, but I see someone with an Apple Watch, I immediately judge.

But that's the same thing, using the watch to tell a story about the person or gear, whatever it might be, 1911, 45, the new staccato that tells me something about that person, you know, what kind of hat they wear, belt they wear, leather setup,

kydeck setup, like all those things, Solomon shoes versus, you know, whatever, Oakley's versus Gators, like all those things tell me something about a person, but I immediately judge.

I make judgments based on very little information and that watch tells me something.

And then they get into the Tesla, and I'm like, oh, okay.

Apple Watch, watch tesla you know and uh it's one of those things that seem like they just have no soul you know i mean it's just like the apple watch thing is weird because it's like do you really need it all on your wrist buzzing all the time and it you have to charge it every day and then like i have a garmin and it's a digital watch it's got maps on it stuff like that but i use it when i go hunting and i can put that fucker on full charge it'll go like a month and a half and it'll charge partially because of solar i can do less than i can't i got nothing else to charge.

Did they give me something else to charge?

I can't.

But the thing about those darn, what I like about them is you could sync it up to your range finder.

There's a bunch of different things you do.

You could have maps on it.

And if you had to get out of somewhere and you're fucked and you're in the woods, you could pull up the GPS on your watch and you could figure out where the trailhead is and you can get out.

You could figure out where the road systems are and you can get out.

You can just say, okay, I just have to go due north for six miles and I'm going to hit a road.

Like,

that could save your life.

Like if you're in the middle of the woods, you don't know what the fuck is going on and something happens and you're like, okay, we have to get out of here.

We can't go back the way we came.

How do I get to some form of civilization?

I'm a map and compass guy.

I'm a map and compass guy.

That's great.

Map compass, the Waltham Compass.

I put that in the, it's in the book right here.

The Vietnam guys had them on their, on their sequence.

Yeah, yeah.

Those are awesome.

So I had one of those near me as I was writing the book as well.

And we put one into the show, Dark Wolf, the guys around the fire in the first episode.

Jared's there as Boozer and Pratt's there and Taylor's there, and Tom Hopper's there on this fire.

And that scene, I think, is one of the best ones.

And Tom gets a gift from Reese, from Chris Pratt, and he opens it, and it's that wrist compass from Vietnam.

That's really cool.

And that scene was really cool to see.

See Jared in particular, buddy from the SEAL teams, who gives Chris the book.

Now he's an actor.

He's a executive producer, a writer, wrote an episode, and technical advising.

Four things on that show.

That's awesome.

And got to act a lot.

more in this one.

And it's so, so good.

That's so cool.

I hope nobody poaches him away from us.

He's so good in this and all of those things.

So I got to keep close hold on Jared.

He's fantastic in it.

But that scene in particular, I think a lot of people who are in Iraq and Afghanistan that spent time around the fire or any warriors who spent time around a fire or hunters that spent time around a fire will identify with that scene, the sharing of stories between hunters and warriors.

And that was a powerful scene to film.

And we did that early on.

That was the first week of filming.

It was pretty cool.

That's awesome.

Most people don't know how to use a compass at all.

See, me,

I'd do well with the compass and the map, but not so so good with the garment.

I'd be like, where's my...

Have you ever figured out a way to use your watch as a compass?

I know there's a thing,

but I don't know how to do it.

Because they have dials that like...

Yeah.

So it looks like a diver dial, but it's north, south, east, west.

I think you have to wait on the shadow or something.

You can do that with a stick in the ground, also, the whole thing.

There's like a whole process to figuring out, excuse me, where east, north, west, east, and then

somehow another you use your watch.

Yeah, no, there's something like that.

But yeah, map, compass,

the sun across the sky, where it is, time of day, that's all.

That's obvious stuff, right?

Yeah,

rises in the east, sets in the west.

But

when you're looking at your watch, there's some sort of way to figure out where everything is.

I don't get it.

Yeah, I think there was on

Bear Gryll show.

I think you talked about it in one of those, those whole shows.

Yeah, I watched a whole YouTube video on it.

I'm like, I don't get it.

I still don't get it.

Oh, man.

But there's, you know, everybody has a compass on their phone now, too.

I know it.

And then that thing dies.

I don't know.

That's a problem.

I can't plug anything in.

Did you get a hunting this year?

What's that?

Did you get hunting this year?

Yeah, yeah.

Did you get to Utah?

Utah.

Nice.

Yeah.

I think I remember when you were there, and I was in Morocco, I think.

The last couple of months I've just been totally on the road, which is been a little bit more.

It was in the week of the 15th.

Oh, okay.

Right after.

Okay.

It was great.

We caught it right in the rut.

Nice.

I was in Morocco.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But it was a good time.

Yeah, we had a good time.

Yeah, it was awesome.

It was beautiful.

I haven't been out in a while.

Then been to Lanai, done that just because it's an easy flight out there, say the four seasons, the family, lovely.

Did you bo hunt?

No, right.

I went with the kids.

So for for me, when I go out now, it's all about the kids and getting them out there on the rifle.

Rifle hunting in Lanai is infinitely more effective.

Yes, agreed.

Bow hunting.

Agreed.

Bow hunting in Lanai is really hard.

And it seems crazy because there's so many animals, but the success rate is really low.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Especially those winds and swirling and everything like that.

But if you're on the timeline and you need to get back to Nobu in time for dinner, then

you use that rifle.

Yeah.

Also, it's the best way to get the meat.

And that's the best meat.

Right up there with elk almost.

Yeah, yeah.

It's just like slightly less desirable to me than elk.

Is it Axis deer?

Axis deer is really good.

So good.

It's delicious.

And that's one of the cool things about if you stay on Lanai, which is there's two Four Seasons there, and the Four Seasons that's on the water is incredible.

But they have these

Axis burger sliders.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, Axis Deer sliders are so good.

Oh.

And the Carpacho.

Have you had the Carpacho there?

I've had everything.

It's friggin' great.

Yeah, Yeah, it's great, but it's what a weird place where you can hunt deer during the day and then stay at the four seasons.

Not bad.

The other one's a Sensei Spa now, up top, so they switched it up.

And so it's this crazy.

Yeah, it's this crazy high-end spa in the old four seasons.

One that used to look like a hunting lodge type of a thing.

Right.

So that's a Sensei Spa now.

But yeah, it's a good time.

So that's the only hunting I've been doing the last 20 years.

Well, you were part of the Pineapple Brothers, right?

Like you're the organization that runs the

outfitting out there.

Alec out there, who's the.

They have a lot of people come out there every year.

Yeah, it's pretty past.

Pretty booked.

Yeah, pretty booked all year because the family gets to go.

It's very unique in that respect.

Sure.

Yeah, it's also like such a there's first of all, you have to hunt them.

There's 30,000 deer on an island with 3,000 people.

That is so crazy.

And if you see them at night in particular, when you shine a headlight out to the field, you're like, there's no way this is sustainable.

And it's not.

So they literally have to hunt them.

Yeah.

And hunting is such a big part of the Hawaiian culture, too.

People don't realize that.

They think of the beaches and everything else.

Don't realize how big a part of the culture that really is.

Oh, yeah.

That's where the luau is all about, right?

It's wild pig hunting.

They're not using farm-raised pigs.

Yeah, maybe.

Now they might be some places.

I don't know.

Yeah, I'm sure some resorts are using that, but for the traditional way, it was like you're hunting pigs.

Yeah.

And those pigs were brought over by sailors.

That's how they got on that island in the first place.

Well, the Axis came over from India, so it's all coming over from someplace.

But it's nice there's no snakes, too.

That's true.

That is nice.

And there's nothing that's an animal that can kill you on land.

That's pretty good.

Different than Australia.

But in the water.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Hence why you don't surf.

It gets a little squirrely.

Yeah.

It's a little squirrely out there than tiger sharks.

Yeah.

100% chance of not getting eaten by a shark if you don't go in the water.

Yeah, fuck all that, dude.

Same thing with skydiving.

Like, I'm done with the skydiving.

No more.

No more of that.

Please.

Yeah, that seems unnecessary at this point.

Stop, Tom Cruise.

Exactly.

Tom Cruise, we need to cut the shit.

You want more movies?

Yeah, yeah.

You can do it on the green screen now.

Come on.

Enough, buddy.

Enough.

Yeah, so no, yeah, no more of that sort of sort of thing.

As fun as it, as fun as it was, the flying around was always fun, but the jumping,

the flying around, great.

And then when you have to go to pull through that sequence, it's like that's when that's the moment of truth.

And if you know this doesn't work, then there are procedures you need to go through in order to get this secondary

get the backup shoot going.

Nightmare.

Yeah, no, no.

Not good.

No, no, I'm good.

But I'll go in the water, though.

I'll still go in the water with the sharks, but not much about the planes.

But yeah, we were down in Nicaragua last

a few months ago?

No, the kids were surfing and all that stuff.

But I'm thinking about sharks the whole time.

You know, Adam Green Tree?

Uh, yeah, I don't know personally about any of these.

Adam

told me that, um, I'm sorry if I told this story yesterday, folks, but Adam spearfishes.

He said that the sharks have learned the sound of the spear gun going off.

And so somebody gave him flippers that had scales on them because they thought it was cool to give him flippers.

And these bull sharks showed up after he shot a fish and they bit his fucking flippers off.

Stop.

Yes.

Because the flippers had scales on them.

Well, don't use those anymore.

Yeah, fuck all that.

I'm like, why did you he goes?

I was thinking about it, Mike.

This isn't good.

I'm like, yeah, it's not good.

It's not good.

He goes, then they bit him off my feet.

Yeah.

Like, oh my god.

Have you seen the lady that swims with the sharks?

Have those popped up on your YouTube?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it's like the, I mean, I hate to say it, but like the grizzly guy, what happened to the grizzly guy?

Well, I think she knows what she's doing, and I think it's a little different because sharks don't target people.

Most of the times when they're killing people, it's an accident because they think the people's a seal.

Yeah, maybe.

Maybe, I don't know.

Exactly.

Exactly.

I mean, there's like the SeaWorld one member, the SeaWorld

thing, like took that lady down.

Yeah, but that's different.

They don't ever do that in the wild.

Orcas in the wild don't kill people, they only kill people when people fuck with them.

That's all it is.

One of the things that's been happening lately is they've been sinking boats.

I saw those videos.

That's crazy.

Yeah, they decide, fuck you, and they start sinking boats.

That's amazing.

And that's something that we haven't seen before, right?

No, it's very new.

It's crazy.

It's like within this decade.

Yeah.

It's a very recent thing.

And it's one particular part of the world where it seems to be occurring over and over again.

And I don't know what happened.

Like maybe somebody fucked with a killer whale.

Like maybe somebody did something terrible.

Maybe.

And then that sonar or whatever they talk goes out.

This is like where they're attacking killer whales.

Because like you're talking about evil and wealthy people and we're getting into that thing.

You know what I mean?

Like and they're attacking yachts.

You know what I'm saying?

Like how many

cunts are on a yacht?

They're like, let's shoot the killer whale.

And they're firing rifles at killer whales.

Maybe.

And And they're like, oh, yeah.

How about some of this action?

I bet there's some shitheads out there.

Boat roaming orcas.

Oh, there's a new theory about why orcas are targeting sailboats in the Iberian Peninsula.

They're using them to practice hunting their favorite food.

I don't like your theory.

I think your theory sucks.

I bet somebody was an asshole.

I bet someone killed one of those orcas.

Would you go down with the within the shark cage off of like Take Down?

No fucking way.

No, I didn't.

I didn't do that.

I did.

I did something with my family once a long time ago.

We did,

we

not scuba dive, but snorkeled.

We snorkeled with dolphins.

Okay.

That was pretty badass.

So you find a pot of dolphins and then you jump overboard.

Nice.

And you can get, you know, within like 50, 60 yards of them and they swim around.

It's kind of cool.

You see them swimming underwater and shit.

It's pretty badass.

Yeah.

That was cool.

But they're not interested in you.

They're like, get out of here.

But if you're on a boat, they are interested in you.

It's interesting.

Like when maybe it was just the circumstance that we had, maybe sometimes they come and play with you.

But I've been on boats before where they come right up next to the boat and they jump and they're put on a show for you.

Yeah.

Like as the boat is moving its way through the water, they're flipping and they're looking at you.

They're like looking at you and they come out of the water.

And it's really clear that they're kind of playful.

Right.

And they're interacting with people.

Right.

Different than the sharks that come into the shark cage and just crunch it.

You see the one with the guy.

I would have done that a long time ago.

I don't know if I do it now.

Oh, the one guy with the shark comes in.

I mean, come on.

This is an updated article from

last month about the same group of

Jaws.

Came out again.

It was like a 50th anniversary or something.

So I saw it in the theater with my son, and it was pretty cool to see in the theater.

Okay, here it is.

While some initial reports suggested that the Iberian orcas could be carrying out revenge against the ships, this has been dismissed by many orcas experts.

Why?

The encounters often involve young orcas going straight for the rudders.

Scientists have suggested the orcas are likely just bored teenagers with more free time since Atlantic bluefin tuna populations, their favorite

prey in the region, recovered, meaning they need to spend less time hunting.

What does it say?

Click on dismissed by many orcas experts.

Click on that link.

I want to find out why they think it's dismissed.

Like, what's their rationalization?

Oh, wow.

Open letter

regarding Iberian orcas and their interactions with boats.

Undersigned are experts in biology and behavior of cetaceans with several specializing in orcas, also known as killer whales.

There's been intense public interest in interactions between orcas as the Iberian orcas and marine vessels along the coast of the Iberian Peninsula and in neighboring waters.

We are concerned that factual errors regarding these interactions are being repeated in the media, along with a narrative lacking a basis in science or reality that the animals are aggressively attacking vessels or seeking revenge against mariners.

Well, first of all, stop right there.

They are aggressively attacking vessels.

I watched it.

There's a video you can watch.

It looks like it.

These people are on the boat, and it starts slamming in the boat, and it sinks the boat.

Like, what is that?

People are freaking out on that boat, too.

Of course, you will.

I think it's probably people who are.

Oh, the whales have shown a wide range of behaviors during the interactions, many of them consistent with playful social behavior.

Yeah, because they're having a good time sinking these boats.

Like, stop.

I don't know.

People in their fucking narratives.

All I'm saying is the grizzly guy gets eaten by the grizzly.

The rattlesnake guy gets bit by the rattlesnake.

The shark person, I mean, I just worry.

It could certainly happen.

Right.

It certainly could happen.

The grizzly guy, though, I think that was suicide by bear.

Oh, yeah.

Did you watch that documentary?

No, I just heard about it so many times.

I feel like I've seen it.

It's a fun documentary.

Yeah.

It's Werner Herzog.

He's brilliant, and he turns it into a comedy.

It is kind of a comedy.

It's like an unintentional comedy about a guy who's really fucking stupid and hangs out with bears way too long and eventually gets eaten.

Man.

I went up there in Alaska going up the rivers bear hunting, and I mean, you're walking right by him.

It is insane just looking for the right one.

And uh, someone's an old one, and it's crazy how close you get and how comfortable the guides are working their way up these river systems off a boat.

Staying on a boat, you go in, and then you work your way up through the day and come back.

And um, but it was it was wild to be so close.

I'm like, I'm very nervous because you always hear about don't get between the mom and the cubs type thing, and you're walking right by them.

You're like, okay,

you know, here we go, and they're so big, yeah.

Yeah, the 375 for uh, for that one, it's iron sight, 375, ironsights, yeah, yeah, how come?

Uh, just because it's gonna be close.

Oh, Jesus.

Yeah, fog.

Yeah, yeah.

Fog.

Yeah, fog it up.

I don't want to worry about

condensation on the paper.

You're right down there.

How close was the shot?

It's very wet.

I didn't take one, but we had one.

Yeah, very wet.

Yeah, everything's just soaking wet.

And it's just fog, mist, the whole thing.

So the only one we had, we had a charge.

And I think I told you that I can't remember.

Had a charge in the thing.

A guy came in.

He was a little young.

She was like, my guide said, it was a female guy.

She's amazing.

She said, he's legal.

I'm like, yeah, that's not what you want to hear.

You want something that's really old and you want to be contributing to this, you know, conservation.

He's young, you know, I didn't want to.

Yeah, legal is not a word you want to hear when you honey.

No, no, and that, but it was curious, also.

So, it was young, so it's curious.

So, I kept coming in, kept coming in, and she's yelling at it.

And I'm just right there, just on the trigger, like ready to go.

And it's coming it, coming, and then it gets close and it stops, and it starts doing that, like, going back and forth type thing.

And it's pretty close.

I had most of it on video, and then I didn't want to be the guy that has the phone out and gets eaten.

And, and so I like, so I put it down so you can, so he gets close and then I put it down so you can still hear it because it's still running.

So I still have the video you can hear.

And

he goes like this and he starts to charge and he veers the other way though.

He veers off.

So she goes, she goes, she's yelling at him and she says, shoot.

And I start to press the trigger and she goes, no, no, no, no, no.

Like in the same sentence, like there's no.

Because he veered off.

Because he veered off.

It looked like he was going to come.

And it was so close.

I was like, oh, okay.

That's all right.

Yeah.

So then we made our way back out and didn't get, didn't get one on that trip.

But it was beautiful up there.

It was beautiful.

I love it up there.

It's the last frontier, for real.

I'd go up there.

I'd go live up there.

Would you?

Yeah, yeah.

My wife wouldn't, so I think we'll stay in Park City.

But I grew up there for sure.

It's a crazy place.

It's Park City on steroids.

It's, well, without.

I mean, not Park City, but like the Utah Mountains.

Yeah.

I mean, it is so vast.

I love it.

I love it up there.

When you're up there,

the feeling of insignificance when you realize, like, oh, that's just us.

There's no people anywhere near us Yeah.

For a long time, for like a few hours in a plane.

Yep, that's what we did.

When Wrangell Mountains, my last trip, I think it was my last trip up there.

And you guys see wolves?

Yeah.

Got a wolf, got a bear, got a moose, all in one trip.

It was crazy.

Wow.

Yeah, big ones of everything, too.

It was crazy.

The moose is awesome because you could eat that sucker for a whole year.

Yep, got a ton of it.

We gave much of it to the guides and their families and all that stuff because there's so much to you know to take back.

Oh, yeah.

But yeah, that was John Dubin and

Frank Lacrone, who were also in Pineapple Brothers.

But we went up there just this to us and a guide, two guides that know what they're doing up there.

Did you guys fly in like a bush plane?

Bush plane and into camp one night and then get on the horses and then going up into the mountains with the horses and then make camp there and then push out from that every day.

Wow.

It was fantastic.

Yeah, it was beautiful.

That was beautiful.

That was 24,

I think.

Oh, sure.

I mean, everything's so vast.

And I love Alaska.

My plan was to go to Alaska and Africa, like back to every other year, and then that didn't happen.

Well, it's the only place in this country at this point where you can hunt grizzlies.

And they really need to do something about that.

And some of these other states where they're talking about opening it up because they are not scared of people anymore.

And the interactions are getting more and more frequent.

And they're not doing anything to curb the populations.

And that's the thing we're talking about with Lanai.

And people that are not involved in hunting and don't understand the conservation aspect of it.

You can't just have an unchecked population of animals, including predators.

And

you know, all these fucking people are voting with their heart instead of like letting wildlife biologists say, no, no, this is actually bad for the animals, for the overall population of them.

And it's also going to be bad for people.

Yeah, I mean, when animals and people collide at the mountain lines in California, of course.

Preposterous.

Yeah.

Preposterous.

Utah's changed their laws.

Utah is like, they're like coyotes now.

Oh, is that right?

I didn't even know that.

Yeah, well, there's too many interactions.

Yeah, I got a big one a couple of years ago.

One came on our

neighbor's game cam, huge one came through, which is good because well-fed.

And it's the one that gets skinny and looking a little dicey.

Huge one came through right around Thanksgiving when all the family's in town.

We're up in the mountains right there, pretty remote, and everybody's there.

The kids are there.

So I'm kind of like, oh, man.

And I'm sure they've seen me a ton of times and I've never seen that.

They've probably been watching you.

I've got to get my game cams up.

Got to get those game cams up.

I have a bunch of them.

I just need to figure out how to link them all up.

I need someone to help me link them all up and the Wi-Fi and the whole thing.

Well, they get set up with cell phones now.

Yeah, exactly.

That's what's cool.

So you get text messages every time something walks through your camera.

Yeah, I need to do that.

I put the about 25 different 3D targets up.

The archer challenge guys came up, so I have a course that I can walk that I don't usually do.

That's great, though.

That's great to just have in the backyard.

Yeah, that's awesome.

That's pretty sweet.

That's awesome.

But I want to get some game cams on them to see what the interaction is because the moose come through, the elk come through, the mule deer come through, and I want to see those interactions.

We have about 200 turkeys, it seems, probably like more like 150, but a lot come through every day.

So I do love it up there and uh and you know if someone's up there that you know if they shouldn't be there right and it was crazy this uh so right after charlie kirk remember the only thing we had was that this guy was in black right so everybody's on i'm on edge i'm like devastated by this thing i'm like really feeling it i met him once uh didn't know him but i have our mutual friends who are very close to him so um

so anyway i was just devastated by this thing and the kids saw it so i'm devastated by that it's just you know it's awful all the way around and uh there's a knock at our door and I'm like, and this is like, this is like the next day.

And I'm like, no one's supposed to be here.

Our gate was busted.

So we're getting a whole new security system, but the gate was busted then.

And it's being fixed now.

So I'm like, what is this?

And I can look out from a place where no one can see me.

And it's this guy in all black.

I knew it wasn't.

In my mind, I knew this isn't the person, but you're hearing that's the only description.

This guy is head to toe black up in the mountains where I've never seen him before.

Like, you have to work to get up to us.

And, but his car was semi-nice parked outside.

I'm like, what is this?

I feel like an Audi or something.

I'm like, this is weird.

And he was overweight.

He didn't, clearly didn't fit the description, but all black.

So I'm like on edge already.

And so I grab the pistol and go down to the door.

And his back's to the door.

So you can't see his face.

So I'm like, what?

So I had the pistol behind my back, little 226 behind my back, because I can do some work with that thing.

And I'm like, yeah.

And he's like, oh, we're doing some work around the corner with some cement.

Do you need any work with cement around here?

I'm like, no.

Like, usually pretty nice to people.

But I was like,

and he's, oh, okay.

Walks by, you can't just walk up people around here like that without an appointment.

Clearly, the gate is meant to keep people out.

Right.

And you come up all dressed in black the day after this thing happens and you randomly knock on a door.

And then you turn your back to the door.

And you have your back to the door.

That's so weird.

Bizarre.

Do you know who the guy is?

No, I was just like,

he was doing some work on one of the other places.

You want to know if you need cement?

Needed some cement.

Isn't that odd?

But in my mind, I'm like, well, I was just casing for some of you.

I wonder if maybe he was like a stalker fan that found where you are and that was his excuse.

I didn't think about that.

I was more thinking about just the description of the Charlie Kirk person.

I would think immediately it'd be like, oh, you have cement?

Yeah.

Like, why do you have extra cement, dude?

Bizarre.

You knocking on people's doors, asking if they need cement?

And I think it was really somebody hustling, like, trying to do some work, like you're man type stuff, whatever.

But that was crazy.

One other person came up to the house when they shouldn't have, and uh that was like it was very strange uh and anyway

if you're in the mountains and someone visits you especially in the middle of the night like that was during the day but this other one was in the middle of the night the middle of the night like how late night like midnight oh yeah

yeah and so that one i put the ar by the door had the had the pistol and uh and went over they were looking it ends up they were looking for another house up there But it was very bizarre.

Yeah, it was late.

Late in a storm.

Oh, okay.

Coming down.

Yeah, coming down.

So you're like, was this one of those things where you open the door and the other guys rush in?

Right.

Type of a thing because it was a lady stumbling down through the snow with what I thought was a headlamp.

It ended up being her.

I saw a video like that online where this lady knocked on the door and a bunch of dudes came in.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Exactly.

So

anyway, yeah.

So

working on the new security system.

Yeah.

Get some,

but it's, it's, if you come knocking on the door, it's, uh, you shouldn't be there.

People need to have a little more common sense.

Yeah.

Or you're going to get, you know.

Isn't it terrible, though, that you have to think like that?

Like, someone could just have a car broken down and

just need help.

I know.

You have to be on edge completely.

Yeah.

And if that was the case, of course, I'd go up, but then you're still thinking like, oh, you're just going to get me out of the house.

Exactly.

Maybe someone's waiting to get you out of the house.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So it's got to be smart.

Maybe call, hey, call some authorities up here and we'll just wait.

You know, we'll just wait right here until they get here and they can help you with your car or whatever it was.

But

yeah.

So trying to get a little better with the security type things.

Yeah, there's something about the woods woods and the mountains alone when you're by yourself that you worry about people coming to visit you anyway.

You worry about people just showing up.

Right.

It's not normal.

No, and if you're a person that just shows up, you have to recognize that.

That's a very vulnerable position.

Right.

By yourself in a house in the woods or with your family in a house in the woods and you just show up while it's snowing.

Yeah.

This is the beginning of a movie.

Right.

This is a horrible movie.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So.

And when we lived in town, people did come by and kind of expect it.

You live in town, there's no role of security, whatever, you know, it's kind of like more expected.

That's more normal.

Yeah.

When you're way up there, and especially on the guy dressed up,

like when it gets darker, like when you're rather in the woods and it gets darker and then people show up, those people immediately seem like danger.

Suspect.

Yeah.

Well, that's the old woods.

Yeah.

I mean, that's the old instinct that kept us alive for so long.

Like, I need to be on edge here.

Exactly.

Until who's his friend or foe?

Yeah.

Type of a thing until you know.

Some invading tribe member.

Exactly.

Until you absolutely know you're going to to uh err on the side of caution and protecting your life and the lives of your loved ones well listen brother yeah man i'm very excited about this book i want to get into it uh is the audio available right now audio available ray porter that's uh it's out right now and uh yeah audio e-book hardcover i like how you went back to james reese's day too ah there it is yeah yeah

yeah and we're pitching this to amazon here i think in the next month or so as a series so you never know if it's going to happen or not but uh that'd be a cool one i think people are ready for a uh another Vietnam-style TV show or movie.

It's been a while.

It's been a while since we've had a good one.

At the very least, book.

I'm excited.

Yeah.

And this one was essentially, it's an espionage thriller set in Saigon, but set in Southeast Asia more specifically.

And no one's really done that since Quiet American Graham Green, Tears of Autumn, and Graham Green was 1955.

And Tears of Autumn was 1974.

And Jean-LaCarais was the honorable schoolboy in 1977.

So

it's been a while.

Yeah, cry havoc.

Available right now.

Congratulations on everything, brother.

I'm very, very happy for you.

So great to see you.

This is awesome to see you killing them out there.

Thanks, brother.

Appreciate everything.

My pleasure.

Bye, everybody.

Take care.