Jack Carr
👤 PersonPodcast Appearances
Someone tattooed the crossed tomahawks on themselves.
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?
But if you buy it, there has to be a little thing on it, I don't know, that tells you.
Are people going to care like our kids?
I know you've had that with you for a while.
And if it was weird the first time, you see it.
Now it must be kind of normal because a lot of people have tattoos of you.
Put the books on, like, hey, this is made by an actual human.
I haven't used ChatGPT or anything like that.
I can barely update my Word.
That's what I want to do, like keep my Word updated.
But I know a lot of people that are using it and love it.
And I have a relationship with this.
I think if you learn to think for yourself, you think logically.
If you read, kids today, if they put 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 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.
It depends on what you got.
If you have that foundation, then you're going to be a more empathetic, compassionate person.
But you're going to have this knowledge base that other people are relying on, chat GPT, whatever it is, their phone, whatever, to do that thinking for them.
Yes, it is absolutely brutal.
Like I said about the time to enter publishing online.
I think a great time is the 90s for that because you had, let's see, Michael Crichton and then you had John Grisham.
And maybe if you got someone's name on there that's no longer a part of your life.
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.
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.
It's still fun to do all this.
It's still fun to be in Morocco doing this stuff.
There's guys like you that are still doing it.
Yep, still doable, that's for sure.
But the payday's not the same.
That's what happens for the most part.
Did you see a bad monkey with Vince Vaughn?
He's a cop that's kind of down on his luck and he's on suspension or whatever.
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 Housen is the author, and he has this very unique style.
But what he says about Hollywood is he drives to the border of California.
But yeah, the book, 1968, Vietnam.
He throws his book over the border.
They throw a bunch of money back at him, and he drives back to Florida.
And whatever happens, happens.
So it'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.
You want to make it the best show you possibly can.
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 when it comes to warfare, Vietnam in particular, those lessons.
Because you only have 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.
Yeah, and that is the hunting stuff in it.
So once again, now, I think 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 Terminalist—
Now they're taking this risk with us, just like my publisher did.
It would have been very easy as a publisher to say, hey, just do what you did in that first book.
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 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 because he has this 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 my editor and publisher would say hey cut out the first third of this book and we got something here
Good to see you, my brother.
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.
I've had the influence of popular culture when it comes to the 60s and Vietnam as well growing up.
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.
So we got this amazing, just the landscapes, beautiful landscapes.
It's probably one of the most beautiful visions of Africa that I've ever seen on film.
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.
And so he's kind of like the older guy kind of mentoring.
james reese along chris pratt and uh and he's a guy's guy like he uh i'll say his name arnold vosloo and so he's the bad guy from blood diamond and uh nice and uh the mummy and uh just such an awesome guy and he's a guy 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
So I thought I was well prepared to dive into this world.
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 him then saving the world.
But they went along with it.
And that's because they saw the numbers from the first episode.
And they'll never share those numbers with us, but we know what they are because there have been almost no notes in this one.
The first one, there was notes constantly.
They didn't want Chris to get somebody.
And I didn't want to just say that they're listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival and that it's 1968 and then essentially drop a contemporary thriller
They didn't want that to happen, and then we did it anyway, and it ended up being on every billboard in LA for the opening month.
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 or in Dark Wolf because we have that trust.
Yeah, they went through it on that one.
Yeah, Pete Berg was on here.
Pete Berg's the fucking man.
into the 60s, into Vietnam 1968.
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 thing in episode four where I have my cameo where I get stitched up the side and get killed.
I got to be part of the stunt man.
I get killed in True Believer, too, and it's a good one.
It's kind of like making a little thing about the show, like I always die somehow.
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.
I don't think he dies in them, though.
So this will be a little different.
Yeah, that's fun to do that stuff.
But Taylor had to run through these cobblestone streets through this tunnel, and that's the one where I get stitched up and fall over, so I get a little stuntman pay out of that.
Not quite $1,000, I don't think, for taking that big fall.
Seriously, those guys and girls take a friggin' beating.
They take a fuckin' beating.
this guy and the big dude um and uh and one of the girls in the show getting this this uh 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 god it was like a tiny little pad in the refrigerator and she just gets thrown into this thing
And we try to keep every fight 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 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.
I've been so looking forward to this.
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,
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.
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
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 now getting beat up and you're watching from that video village and you're like, oh, just cringing seeing this stuff.
That's why guys like Tom Cruise are so nuts.
I actually watched it on the plane back.
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 what was filmed after and what was filmed before that sequence.
It's really hard to tell how much they filmed after he shatters his ankle and limps off because you see him kind of limp off.
But then he's running again.
We've been going a thousand miles an hour for, it seems like, a long time.
Yeah, that's amazing that he does all that stuff.
Or the jumping off the cliff with the motorcycle.
Yeah, what the fuck, dude?
What kind of insurance do they have on those movies?
I think he does it probably himself.
He probably insures it himself.
I don't think anybody would actually insure that.
A lot more time than I thought.
And all the other actors say the same thing.
They're like, no, that's what the stunt people do.
I got a dictionary from 1969.
I mean, it does add a level of authenticity, and you go to explore that.
So you can see Tom Cruise doing his own stunts.
Yeah, fly the helicopter in that one, two, three of them ago.
I couldn't find the one from 1968 I wanted, so I got a dictionary from 1969 to look at how terms were defined back then.
Yeah, jumping out with Henry Cavill and him, jump out the back of the plane and fall out.
But yeah, he's jumping out of those planes.
So after I was here last time, we took a picture together, and I saw it, and I'm like, oh, my gosh, I look horrible.
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 all of this.
And I'm like, I've got to do something.
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.
A lot of maps from the era, and it took a lot longer, which is why we're here in October and not in June when the book was supposed to come out.
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.
So August 1st or something, I'm like, all right, I'm in.
And I started doing the hang, of course.
And then I have this outside workout area.
And so it's right there in the mountains.
And so I'm just all in, getting after it.
We rented a place in town that 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.
but it had an amazing sauna in it.
So I was doing that exact, what, 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, 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, probably one of the best shapes of my life.
And I was feeling so good.
I felt like I could just throw people through walls.
But I was doing everything.
I was doing the sun, I was eating right, I was not eating the bread, so I did everything.
And then I got to January 1st and I'm out there in the snow.
I 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 got to start writing.
And I haven't done anything since.
It was only writing, only screenwriting, everything else.
I need to find that balance.
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.
Because the kids still get up at the same time.
So I'm maybe an hour asleep, two hours asleep, whatever.
And then I'm up out of the cannon and it's going.
So I'm going to get on a better schedule here.
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, and he's a sweet little guy.
But that, I think, will give me a little more time to maybe find some balance with the health and the writing, because 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.
Is there a lot of difference?
I'm like, I feel like I need to do some of that just to get this done.
I'm sure there is, but I was looking at just some specific terms that I can't remember what they are right now.
I need to take a turn here.
Nicotine has been very helpful for authors.
Yeah, from what I understand.
No, coffee and coffee, water, red wine, whiskey, but not too much.
And you just wanted to look them up through that book.
A little bit every now and again.
Yeah, I feel like I should be doing something like that, but not too much.
I mean, I built a library, and 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, because I'm always writing.
Yeah, I didn't want to Google something today.
I'm always like, I could pour something, but no, this is my time.
I'm not being interrupted.
So I haven't used any performance enhancing supplements.
I need to do some like Alpha Brain or something probably.
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 asking Google machine.
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 that.
Is that the one that you see on the UFC mat?
Yeah, so I was using their creatine and just some vitamins.
I was taking one scoop, whatever it says on the bottle.
I was taking one scoop, whatever that is.
Well, when I get back after this and see myself in our photo today, I will get back to, I'll use four scoops.
So I just wanted to transport myself back in time.
Well, I was getting sleep during that time, too, which is why I didn't have a book on time.
One, I was going back to 1968.
It took a lot longer than I thought for this research.
And, yeah, that was quite the endeavor.
And then, two, I was getting in shape at the same time.
I did a playlist for it, put it on Spotify.
I was watching the Vietnam documentaries.
I was reading everything I could possibly find online.
on vietnam from the day um these old army special forces manuals that they had before the guys would go over there uh that talked about the mountain yard tribes they were going to be working with uh for those that are watching or listening it's like apocalypse now like the mountain yards like tribes and all that stuff so i was doing that um and uh then i was reading the more modern stuff too i was reading things from the 70s 80s i got um national geographic magazines from the 60s uh i think there's one from the late 50s even so i was doing everything i possibly could to transport myself back
I didn't expect at the outset.
I listened 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 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 transported myself back there for, it felt like months at a time.
I think it was a much healthier way to live in general.
That's what I'm trying to do.
I mean, I'd love to go back.
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.
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 this is not a hit on Enos Grenadiers.
This is a hit on me not being able to adapt to the current times.
I mean, I did, of course, I put every possible thing you could put on there.
So I'm like, I don't have time.
I'm like, put everything on that for me.
And then it started beeping at me, you know.
I mean, you have some faster cars than I do.
I love I mean that I love all that stuff and it's uh, it's like that what do they say?
It's like a defender 110 and G wagon had a baby for the I would say that's yeah Like the sides we can put all the jerrycans and everything.
Yeah, I got it all set up I was so excited though and then I called him I was like, hey, can I get rid of this click?
And they said yeah, and they walked me through the thing and I whatever I this is why I don't have an iPad I there's 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 like, oh, it's not doing the clicking anymore.
Immediately, it's back on again.
Click, click, click, click, click, click.
I'm like, we're getting rid of this.
I'm like, I told my wife, I'm like, let's get rid of this thing.
Yep, LS3's in there, so that's nice.
I have two 80s series now, both stock, 96.
And I love those, because they're just modern enough, but they need someone to do a little work on them.
They make some strange noises, but they work.
But my son, I can pick him up in school in it, and he's like, ah, dad.
Because it's still making this crazy, it's almost like it's going over the speed limit thing, but it's constant.
Yeah, these have over 100, both of them.
And I have a 78 FJ40 that I love.
So that's pretty, I love that one.
And it's all completely restored.
So it's all original for the most part.
I mean, you're in that slow lane.
But it's cool for zipping around town.
Yeah, they do some serious work.
I think I'm a Land Cruiser guy, and I tested out the Enos.
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 person, get one for sure.
Yeah, there's a bunch of them now that do that.
I know give me a fucking speedometer just a regular speedometer and attack put it right in front of me That's it and also make the lights so that the auxiliary lights will turn on when it's not in the off-road mode if you tried that but they're the auxiliary lights they except for the light bar on the top with the other ones in the front like you have to be in off-road mode for some legal reason and
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.
And yours is 100 series, right?
I did drive and I drove a G-Wagon yesterday.
So we landed, went right to Staccato.
And so they had a portion of G-Wagon right there.
And I was like, oh, man, 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 break down all the time.
And so I'm like, they said, well, drive it.
So it was before some changes, I guess, were made.
Yeah, the new Land Cruisers are not quite there yet.
I mean, they're probably great.
Yeah, they dropped the price on them.
What's the new one that they have?
The guys got over to Africa to start filming this thing in February or March.
Anyway, we went over there, and the advance crew went over first to get everything set up, and then Chris and I came over a little bit later when everything was all set up.
But the guys were texting back after they were doing all the advance work for the different places we're going to go shoot.
And they're like, now we understand your obsession with the Land Cruiser.
They're all driving Land Cruisers in Africa.
It's like they said, that's the Toyota of watches.
Yeah, I collected all the Sog Seikos because this is Matt Fee Sog.
Collected all those there's four of them that that they've they've seen pictures of Mac V saw guys wearing going into Laos Cambodia North Vietnam Which is what the book is 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 I Got that thing the Submariner so I could have surrounded myself with things that are like totems from the book So this is what Tom Reese and I had a cool way that he wins this how'd you get it at 68?
A buddy of mine who's a Rolex dealer out in PA found it for me.
So I like the older stuff now I'm finding.
I mean, the crystal's different and stuff like that, but the aluminum's different, that sort of thing.
And I'll see you wear something like this or like that.
Then people are 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 were in the Willard and me having those McAfee socks 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 along those lines.
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.
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, there was a rumor, so I never saw it with my own eyes.
So it's second-hand information, is that in supply, they were destroying the Tudors with hammers.
And I can't, 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.
But I did track one down recently through watches of espionage.
And so he found me a new Tudor, or an old Tudor.
But I got that, and then we did a little documentary with some old guys from the 70s and 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.
We did a documentary on it for Tudor, and it was pretty cool to talk to those guys.
Because now they're taking lives in Vietnam, and now they're just thrown into these helicopters to jump into the ocean to save lives.
It's kind of a cool juxtaposition.
I love these old ads, Rolex ads from, it must be the 60s, 70s, 80s.
I mean, there's some from the early 80s where they have a guy with a rhino, and it's like the editor of Guns and Ammo magazine with his dead rhino wears 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 Rolex people.
But that was like in the early 80s.
They were still marketing towards that.
Yeah, you know, it's something that I explore in the book.
But you got to find the one with the rhino.
Frederick Forsythe, the author, actually had one.
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 you'd never see that today.
Let's see if we can find the hunting one, a Rolex hunting or something.
And now it's tennis and it's golf.
There's Connery right there, the Thunderball action.
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 but in the books it's a Rolex he doesn't say what specific model but he wore I think with Fleming worn Explorer I think there it is there you go you hunted big game over the world Cape Buffalo there's Cape Buffalo right there looks yeah pretty cool weird yeah they don't do that today
And the benefit of hindsight, it's certainly more, it's more, not relevant, but you can draw that out for sure, the benefit of hindsight.
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 Patek Philippes and stuff like that and go back and find the Omegas, the old Rolexes and it's a thing.
Yeah, now it's gotten a little crazy, which is why I like the vintage stuff because it fits a little more, just like the cars, just like, it's my time machine.
It's not like that has a huge history to it.
It's fairly recent for those watches.
And I just launched the book tour, not last night, but the night before.
Sometimes that's how it works.
We're very intentional with all the gear in the TV shows.
Yeah, and the books as well.
You know, you see somebody with that, that tells me something about you.
You see something with the Richard Mill, whatever you say.
Richard Millet, I think it is.
And I'm trying to write this thing in 1968 from these guys.
It probably is Richard Mill, but it's like, they ain't going to sell.
When you add another zero, then it goes to Joe Derte, you know?
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 have 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.
So they're having these conversations with only that information.
Like in Dark Wolf, they have to get rid of their G-Shocks and go get something that would make it look a little more European.
And when they transition over from being these SEAL guys to being these CIA operatives and drop, get rid of the Gators.
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 Kitsch's character.
And then put a panoramic on on Rafe Hastings, Tom Hopper's character to differentiate him a bit from from Ben Edwards, the Taylor Kitsch character.
So they don't yet know who's making a ton of money.
But and also Tom's a big dude.
So you need a big watch on that guy.
I think all the all the like my wife and her friends were so excited about Taylor being in the show because the Texas forever, you know, and they were all coming up during that time frame where he's in front of that lights and all that stuff.
And then Tom Hopper gets out of the pool without a shirt on.
They're not yet knowing about Bell Helicopters and all the rest of this stuff.
And they're like, oh, Tom Hopper.
And so I told Tom that probably if we do Savage Son 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.
But he's such a good dude.
Yeah, all those guys are great.
Every time I walk on the set, I feel that way.
I feel as grateful for the most part.
I feel so much gratitude towards everyone involved.
They don't really know yet about Gulf of Tonkin.
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, 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.
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.
And Taylor's like this by nature.
Like American Primeval, any role Taylor takes on, he is just so invested in it.
Like it is it's going to now become part of his experience.
And he really looks at it through 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 at 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 DiGilio, all these guys at the top, David DiGilio's 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 work that goes into the scripts ahead of time and all the post-production.
And so during that time, people are going to get married, get divorced, lose loved ones.
And David DiGilio in particular is the 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.
It's they really feel taken care of and it's all genuine.
And I think that helps bring everybody bring their A game.
And everyone is so happy to be there on these sets.
And people tell me how different they want to make sure that I know that it's not like this on every Hollywood production.
Well, 58, over 58,000 in total.
Yeah, you know comes out comes out 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 like 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 such a great guy.
Because last night was Comedy Mothership, Kill Tony, which was amazing.
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.
Yeah, he's a normal guy, just like us.
We spend time with him, you know, outside of anything professional.
Well, I hung out with him in Huntington.
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 Romrell, who's awesome, looks like Chris, takes some crazy beatings.
He could just stand right here and do a backflip.
But, uh, Chris underwater, like, and you can have this underwater, like a communication system and they're like, all right, ready?
But over 58,000 people died in Vietnam on our side to say nothing of the Vietnamese and NVA, Viet Cong civilians, you know, all put together, but certainly a lot more than 58,000.
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.
And for anyone who's tried to hold their breath for three minutes, that's crazy.
And we were watching this thing.
And now he's just showing off.
At a certain point, we're like, cut.
And he stays down there like, what?
He's just showing off at this point.
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.
And, uh, but it looks so good.
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.
And we got to talk about the future of the show.
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 had to talk about the future of the show.
So hopefully it's Savage Son next.
And that's people's favorite, I think, of the books.
That and Red Sky Morning, the last one.
Every one has been my favorite thus far.
This Vietnam book is your favorite book you've written?
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 going to get back.
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 matters because of the number of books that are 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.
And I have to fend it off.
I have to, like, 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.
But that's a lot of pressure coming in from the outside.
And you have to fend it off.
But I can see it being very easy to just say, okay, I got to 100,000 words.
I got to wrap this thing up.
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.
So I'm trying to look at it through the lens of the day.
I don't know, because I don't look at the numbers.
I'm more of an entrepreneurial type of mind.
So just knowing that Simon & Schuster is incredibly happy across the board.
They do have numbers, yeah, and they share them, and I just see numbers.
But I couldn't tell you exactly.
And I think that's Ray Porter.
Such a good human being, too.
We use his voice in Dark Will for those listening.
They'll be able to recognize his voice in there.
And when you look at that, the domino effect, we look back and say, of course, the rest of the world wouldn't have fallen to communism.
That's a tough one for any guy.
I gave 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.
But at the time, I tried to put myself into the shoes of the people making these decisions.
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 MACV SOG.
So I fictionalized 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 at least for Southeast Asia, there was the threat of other countries falling.
And so he has to read that and come up with something like that.
I was just texting him before I came in here, actually.
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.
He's Darkseid in that Justice League.
But that's a bunch of, you can't really, you know.
So he's in Almost Famous, a bunch of sitcoms in the 90s.
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 online.
through the same medium, so over the 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 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.
Even if they did, would that have meant anything long-term for the rest of us today?
But that's, I'd be on a Kindle.
I feel that 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.
It's hard to say that it would have.
I just, I'm just that kind of guy.
Still for me, once again, like the watches, like the cars.
But, I mean, the whole thing is so heartbreaking.
How's he going to wrap this up?
You can't see it rather than I'm at 37%.
Just a different type of a deal.
But I picked up Charlie Sheen's book in the airport on the way here.
So I'm reading it about halfway through because he's coming on the podcast.
I'm going to ask him about 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 wanted to buy the book.
I wanted to physically have it and make my notes in there and all that.
Did they vet any of those people, by the way, before they come up?
But listening to him on your podcast was so interesting.
When we got back from World War II—
Yeah, that level of stardom is, especially in the 80s, before phones and everything else, when they got after it.
It was an old fentanyl laced.
They built this country into what it is today.
He looks, yeah, he looks great.
Vietnam, those guys, it was looked at like they went bankrupt.
He was a fan of the books beforehand, so he likes all this stuff, likes Dark Wolf, likes Terminal List, all that stuff.
Yeah, so that'll be fun to talk to him.
And also, I went to see Navy SEALs the day before it came out.
There was a showing at 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 uh and so i went and saw it then so it'd be fun to talk to him about that stuff and i do remember we i did meet him at a is it red sox game is that the one that they want 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 owners boxes
It was like a company going bankrupt.
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.
His dad was such a gentleman.
But Charlie Sheen was awesome, so personable.
And he stood out 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.
I'll tell them this when I see if he remembers.
But because it probably happened almost every day for him, just a line of girls down the hallway outside of the owner's box.
Yeah, but they were there for Charlie.
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.
They had all that to deal with, all that baggage to deal with.
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 them.
We're checking off the names for these Pub Boxes.
And all of a sudden her phone goes off and I heard 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.
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 uh follow him think feel like they know him essentially and i didn't get to them in time before they they saw it so our our youngest i was most concerned about uh seeing that being away from home at boarding school and uh anyway called the school one of the guys uh 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 uh it's different than seeing in the paper or on having walter cronkite report that jfk was killed that's
And that left a scar on an entire generation.
That's different, I think.
Challenger for us in school when you're 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.
You know, a lot of that started with the Kennedy assassination in 1963.
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.
And then we move on into the war and this becomes the first televised war.
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, but in real life, celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk.
So there were photographs of the Civil War.
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.
There's photographs, World War One, World War Two, 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.
and feel comfortable enough to do that, that 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, maybe I should just sit this out, even if I feel happy, maybe I should do some reevaluations, but even if that's not the case, maybe I should just sit this one out type of a thing, but instead they feel comfortable to jump on and say those things.
And I, I mean, you felt the, I mean, I could feel the evil coming through the phone, which is a strange thing to say.
And I've been like in Bagram early on in the war in Afghanistan.
because you're seeing it once a week or you're seeing a still photograph in a paper.
I remember the, uh, I forget if it was a really a black site prison, but it was like a nasty prison.
They had this smell and you could feel like this, like kind of this overriding sense of, I don't know, yeah, despair, but also like this little, 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, uh, 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,
and you know what they did there, like pulling girls off the street and that sort of thing, and you just feel dirty and you feel evil.
I mean, you sense it in some of those places, but I felt that same kind of thing coming through the phone.
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.
Then we get to Vietnam and now you're seeing it every day on the news.
And it happened to be fashion week and we weren't there for fashion week.
It just happened to be fashion week.
So it's, uh, which is still going on now, I think, but we were in this, uh, we wanted to go to one dinner where we could see some people, kind of do some people watching and I could, uh, store some of it away for books.
And that's what I'm always collecting, always collecting.
And so we wanted to want the place that, uh,
The Kardashians, again, where they stay, called, like, KOTUS.
Anyway, went into this hotel that's where a lot of the fashion people stay.
And it was interesting at first.
We're seeing some people just treat the waitstaff horribly.
And so you're kind of taking some notes on that.
You're seeing Walter Cronkite there give you that news and you're watching these guys in foxholes and you're seeing the shooting and you're seeing this chaos.
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 just, 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's their sunglasses on and they were like both dressed very similarly and both side of him and they just were looking at him like this and just it was so odd but you felt this sense of evil I hate I don't like using that word too much but you felt something odd so much so that 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 celebrating.
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.
It was, like, these black robes, and it was just the weirdest thing.
Yeah, but attached through the, like, your hoodie's on, and kind of, like, clipped to the outside or something, and coming down, like, from the outside of, like, this thin hoodie.
I mean, very rarely do I feel that anyway.
It's a very strange feeling.
But I've learned to listen to those feelings, listen to the gut, listen to the sixth sense that's kept us alive as a species for so long.
I think this is the first time where the media realizes they have not they're not just a pillar as a check on government.
That might be different if you're actually looking for it.
It's kind of a difference.
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.
They realize at this point that they actually have power to influence events and policy.
So I didn't see anything weird like that.
But I know 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 it must be – They probably don't do that anymore.
The house probably ruined the party.
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 –
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.
that was fantastic but yeah i kicked off the book tour with uh david morel 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 uh i wrote a series of books uh 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 so someone brought a baby through and asked me to sign their kid i was like that seems wrong it does and then uh
It was bell-bottom jeans and a denim shirt, like tucked in that you had to starch, you know, especially in bootcamp in a way that like, well, you hold it out flat.
And the little Dixie cup hat, like that's the uniform, like the worst uniform in the history of uniforms.
So how they report from Vietnam, very different from how reporters, even in Korea, but let's say World War II, very different from how reporters reported on that war.
Like it is nothing tough about that, but people would burn them.
And so like never going back, you know, like that sort of a thing.
But they burn their uniform.
So I think it may be something like that.
You want to burn something.
That's what I think it might be.
Most in Hell Week, but at some point along the way.
Typically 80%, give or take.
But burning that thing is kind of like burning the boats, which is not a real thing.
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 gut.
So you expel your air, turn off your air tire because it's the two hoses, super old school, tie them in a knot and 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.
I mean, your air is 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 yeah, that's what the test is all about.
So it just, it just makes you even more uncomfortable.
And where they're hitting you.
And it pounds you off the bottom.
You kind of just go limp, just relax, just like in jujitsu or something like that.
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.
And then, okay, now I'm going to get into this.
So, uh, I love, I love that sort of thing.
Cause that was the only time in buds where it was like,
mano-a-mano 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.
Same thing, it's 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 situation.
And you just relax, hold on, just like you've got someone in like a rear naked choke type thing.
And then they have to go up.
They're expending their energy keeping you down there.
They're going to have to go up and get the air.
So just wait, go 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 good.
No, but there's some similarities there.
Just some similarities with body positions and all that sort of thing.
Just being comfortable without air for a certain amount of time.
Yeah, they teach you how to.
How to grab them and how to get towards the side of the pool type of thing.
So it looks like they're out in the rice paddies or whatever, and then they're going back to their hotel for drinks.
I mean, I guess somebody could, but that doesn't sound like it.
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.
You do have some really incredible athletes that come through.
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 all of a sudden they're being treated like a Chevy, you know, and just thrown through walls or whatever and just like, meh.
But they realize during this time that they can influence policy.
Yeah, got to prove that you want to be here and that you have the mental fortitude to be here and that 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.
right there is that and then the so the standard part so even if they say that they're not lowering the standards that's how they get around it and this is military in general um 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
And so that's what we see with the Tet Offensive.
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 uh what would it be that you would get more chances doing like that pool comp thing i think you got uh you got two chances on the first day and two chances on the second day
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 I passed the first day just because I happened to be comfortable in the water.
But some guys made it through.
And that fourth one, like, oh, made it, just made it.
But they didn't get a fifth.
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 get some sort of 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.
I'm not saying that they did it.
I'm saying that's how you would get around the standards.
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 where to ask those kind of questions.
Well, did you give them more chances?
Yeah, 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.
I don't know how much of a push it is.
And the media is involved in that.
I don't know how far they've gone.
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, for me, it's, you know, I'll probably get canceled now.
And what they say now, what you have to say officially, I think, is that the standards are the same.
So they didn't know it before.
It doesn't matter if you're male or female.
Standards remain the same.
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 the room, you stand up, you open the door for a lady type of a thing like those things.
You stand up for your chivalrous, your gentleman type of a thing.
The media distorted what was going on?
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.
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.
Yeah, the media distorted what was going on and talked about this huge victory for the NBA and for North Vietnam.
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, you know, supposed to be protectors.
Yeah, supposed to be protectors.
And you're supposed to all of a sudden change because of a policy directive.
But yeah, I mean, we're going back to, I mean, it's ruffling a lot of feathers within the military right now.
uh 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 after the afghanistan withdrawal and i caught anyone on fox a bunch of times and talked about how we need to precision in 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
But it was when they reported it that way.
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.
And then we see more of America turning against this war and policy shifts and more people shipped into Vietnam.
I think they both went on town hall, I believe.
And I'd never heard anybody mention that before.
Is that what it used to be?
It used to be the Department of War?
Department of War up to the end of World War II.
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.
Yeah, I certainly talk about it in here as 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 to that time frame.
But that's what they're talking about.
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.
So it's a, I mean, the whole thing is so sad.
And it's the same conversation that we're having today.
But I wouldn't 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.
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 writing this for a reader.
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're, you can, you get a compassion there and an empathy for people because you're living a
I'm writing this for the story.
And that's the way I honor that reader.
So it's all about that story.
But the CIA was has been very nice.
We got to film the 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 at the end of the show on Episode seven.
I'm the guard that that takes the guy's ID as he's leaving the and I have a 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.
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 museum there, get a little tour of the CIA museum, all that stuff.
So they've been very helpful.
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 in the book.
So I don't think the military is that fast.
Is that really what it is, you think?
I think it probably is because we're 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 it's like in Jack Ryan and stuff.
I think they use actual military helicopters and maybe an amphib ship or something like that.
So they get some support from the.
They didn't blow anybody up.
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.
At my book signings, there's so many military, so much law enforcement, firefighters, first responders.
something through their eyes even though it's fiction uh that you don't get really through through non-fiction you can read about all these numbers you can read about 58 000 but when you read a story like this uh then you're getting to know these characters and you're going through this thing with them and that then becomes part of your experience uh so even you
The audience is full of those guys, and it's so fantastic.
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 I was influenced by popular culture growing up and that helped me on my path into the SEAL teams.
I didn't really conceptualize it any further than that.
But when it happened, I was first time, which was a couple of years ago because the first book came out in 2018.
So someone reads that at 16, 17, 18.
Now they're a few years into this career in law enforcement or in the military.
And 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 I was just one part of a lot of information that you took in in order to make this decision.
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.
I mean, it's like devastating.
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 surprised.
So it's, yeah, it does happen.
For this one in particular, that's what I wanted to do.
I wanted those guys who were not just McAfee Sog 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 people who just lived through the 60s that didn't go downrange, I wanted them to read it and say, oh, he got close.
Even if I made a mistake here or there, he put in the effort to try to capture the essence of 1968.
And that's why so much work
Say, let's say buds going through going through SEAL training.
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.
Yeah, I'm thinking back to Normandy and I'm thinking back to to Iwo Jima.
And we're seeing some more of that trench stuff in Ukraine.
I'm so glad that I didn't have to deal with that during my time in.
I'm thinking back to Vietnam and what these guys had to go through.
And then I'm realizing I can do a few more pushups in the sand here in Coronado, California.
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, worn out for your arrest.
Yeah, like those videos that we just saw that looked like Muhammad Ali's on the show.
I mean, all that sort of stuff.
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.
Those guys died and sacrificed so much so that I could be here.
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.
Or your allotment of power for your vehicle, you've used yours up for the mother.
But some of that comes through the works of fiction to the thrillers that I was reading growing up from guys who had.
Backgrounds in Vietnam or just from things they're 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 important of reading in general and The beacon of reading when we go when we look at 2003 to 2025 and the drop-off in reading that has occurred That is scary
And what happens over there?
Anytime in human history that would be called an invasion.
Like giving these speeches on the floor of Congress that today would be extremely right wing.
It's out there, but then most people don't know about it or they don't see it.
You have to look for it or something along those lines.
And it's also a manipulation of the populace through all these different platforms.
And what did you think also of the...
I don't like to call them leaders.
I like to call them elected representatives.
That's what they're supposed to be.
It's supposed to represent us.
And they get there and they represent themselves.
But how was the inauguration?
I mean, it corresponds almost directly with the rise of the smartphone.
Being in the room with all the lizard people that run the world is so...
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 the rest of it.
I mean, it's so crazy, but he's such a great politician.
How has he remained in power for so long?
That was such an easy one.
You guys, you did horrible shit.
I went to the one in 2017, so January 2017.
So we decided not to go to this last one 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 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 swearing in.
And less people reading and less people.
And so I was like, yeah, of course.
And so we went to that one.
That was really cool to be in the room with her when she got sworn in.
I don'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.
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.
There's no box office for movies anymore.
Oh, the bureaucracy is so huge, and I hope she stays in it.
I mean, she's such a great person.
I mean, I'd support her if we were friends, but, I mean, it's got to be hard to stay in that fight when you see it.
No, the worst time to get into it is tomorrow.
I mean, I would support her.
And there's a path for her.
And there is definitely a path for her to get into the White House.
She gets a little aggressive.
She's so thoughtful, so smart.
And you put her on a terrorist watch list.
And now she's the director of national intelligence.
Boy, it's weird how that happens.
But yeah, the next one it's, I haven't read the book, but it's Kamala's book where she says she didn't choose Pete Buttigieg because of his sexual orientation.
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.
Well, 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 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.
I believe that is illegal.
I don't know why she keeps saying this.
Charlie Sheen calls that winning.
But she's probably hammered.
And I think she took credit for the no tax on tips things in the book as well.
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.
Yeah, that was interesting.
I mean, it's just you repeat it and you say it and your side believes it.
It would have been interesting to hear that.
There was 200 people here for Trump.
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 open AI deals, I think it was a $1.5 billion settlement or something, and that they'd used my books.
Yeah, in three hours, you can't fake your way through a conversation like this.
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.
And I was like, well, thank you.
Still do Portland right now.
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?
And I thought, well, my attorney's going to be, is my attorney only going to take an hour to do this?
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 to people and get this stuff out of them?
Because that's about, makes it a, you know, a net.
I think you're 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 conversation?
So, but then do you not do it?
Because then they just hold them up.
But then I have to pay like $6,000 to get the $1,000.
I'm sure they're going to spend like six hours.
But you recognize an opportunity.
They can't just give it to you?
But you recognized you could plug in a laptop and you could have a video, you could have a conversation.
I mean, if I even ask the question, the $1,000 is gone.
No, no, I didn't mean it like that.
I meant like it's very, very natural.
That's 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.
Or some people do do that.
Like, hey, what can be my thing?
X, Y and Z. OK, I'll give speaking about events on this certain thing.
And OK, that's my thing now because I realize there's a gap.
I don't think it works that way.
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 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.
OK, I'm going to do that and be happy or whatever.
Instead, it was the opposite of that.
And so it's a very different thing as far as opportunity goes.
But the AR part is interesting.
I was talking to... So I was in Morocco filming True Believer.
So they take these little clips.
So we finished up filming out there with Brad and everybody.
I can never do something for clicks or for anything like that.
And from Morocco, you fly through France on the way home.
No, it's like we were talking about earlier.
Now people are trying to get that clip.
So their life and their income is reliant on trying to get that clip.
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 I think what they don't realize is that that's a blip.
That's a one thing, and then it's 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 have done, obviously.
And it's incredible to watch and to be a part of from the audience side and then to be friends and all that stuff.
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.
From my side, it's fucking weird shit.
But then we see that stuff like with Charlie Kirk and people trying to take advantage of that to get a click.
And I don't know what it is going forward.
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
But one of them is a guy named Rick Rosenfield.
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.
He started California Pizza Kitchen back in 1985.
And that's a different deal.
And that's why when I look at long term, when we're talking about it, you always remain so hopeful about the future.
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.
Okay, we got the metaglasses.
They gave me some at UFC, actually.
with them yet no because I left them under my seat and as soon as they gave them to me I knew I was going to leave them under that seat they handed it to me when I came in and I'm like I'm 100% leaving this behind put it under the seat I told the 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 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
And they were going to put one in one of the Wynn hotels in Vegas.
All glasses have to go in the pouch, just like the phones last night.
But then what happens five years from now when you can put them in anything?
Well, it's going to be contact lenses, and then it's going to be over.
And then it's going to be in the brain, some sort of implant.
And we were talking about AI, and that's how this plays in here.
Because it's going to be normal now going forward.
And he said, he told me this story, and I'll get, this is the general gist.
I judge 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, 1945, the new staccato that tells me something about that person, what kind of hat they wear, belt they wear, leather setup, kydex setup, all those things.
It might be not the exact detail, but the general gist is right.
Solomon shoes versus whatever, Oakleys versus Gators, all those things tell me something about a person.
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, Tesla, you know?
Some of those things, it seemed like they just have no soul.
They're going to put one into one of the Wynn casinos.
Did they give me something else to charge?
And so he goes in there with Steve Wynn, and they're walking through, and Waylon Jennings is with them.
I put that in the, it's in the book right here.
The Vietnam guys had them on their, on their Segos.
So I had one of those near me as I was writing the book as well.
So there's three guys, Steve Wynn, Rick Rosenfield, and Waylon Jennings.
And we put one into the show, Dark Wolf.
The guys are on 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, from Reese, from, from Chris Pratt and he opens it and it's that, that wrist compass from Vietnam.
And that scene was really cool to see.
See Jared in particular, a buddy from the SEAL teams who gives Chris the book.
He's an executive producer, a writer, wrote an episode, and technical advising for things on that show.
And he got to act a lot more in this one, and it's so good.
I hope nobody poaches him away from us.
He's so good at all of those things.
So got to keep close hold on Jared.
And they go in, and Steve Wynn says, hey, Waylon, we have this cover band.
But that scene in particular, I think a lot of people who were 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.
That was the first week of filming.
See, I'd do well with the compass and the map, but not so good with the Garmin.
We have this guy that does just your cover tunes.
I know there's a thing that you can do, but I don't know how to do it.
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.
He's a huge fan of yours, and I'd appreciate it if you said hi to him.
Yeah, no, there's something like that.
But yeah, map, compass, the sun across the sky, where it is, time of day.
Yeah, but that's obvious stuff, right?
Yeah, I think there was on, what is it, the Wild, what was it, Bear Grylls show?
I think he talked about it in one of those old shows.
But did you get out hunting this year?
Did you get hunting this year?
And Waylon Jennings is like, yeah, no problem.
I think I remember when you were there.
I was in Morocco, I think.
The last couple months, I've just been totally on the road.
We caught it right in the rut.
I haven't been out in a while.
Then been to Lanai, done that just because it's an easy flight out there.
So the cover band guy is like Jalen Wennings or something.
Day of the Four Seasons, the family loves it.
Did you bow hunt out there?
So for me, when I go out now, it's all about the kids and getting them out there on the rifle.
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.
I don't know what his real name is.
But sits down, and they're having drinks, and the guy's like...
Have you had the carpaccio there?
I've had everything there.
The other one's a Sensei Spa now up top, so they switched it up.
Yeah, it's this crazy high-end spa in the old Four Seasons.
It used to look like a hunting lodge type of a thing.
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 couple years now.
Well, you're part of the Pineapple Brothers, right?
It's pretty booked all year because the family gets to go.
It's very unique in that respect.
I hope it's okay that I'm doing these cover bands, but I just idolize you.
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.
Maybe now they might be in some places.
And Waylon Jennings is sitting there.
Well, the Axis came over from India, so it's all coming over from someplace.
He goes, oh, yeah, no problem.
Yeah, 100% chance of not getting eaten by a shark if you don't go in the water.
Only there is one problem, though, with what you're doing.
Yeah, fuck all that, dude.
Same thing with skydiving.
Like, I'm done with the skydiving.
I'd be worried they would tattoo the baby.
We can do it on the green screen now.
Yeah, so no more of that sort of thing.
The flying around was always fun, but the jumping, eh.
And the guy's like, what, what, what?
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, you know, get the backup shoot going.
But I'll go in the water, though.
I'll still go in the water with the sharks, but not munch up out of the planes.
And he said, you're always one album behind.
But, yeah, we were down in Nicaragua a few months ago.
The kids were surfing and all that stuff.
But I'm thinking about sharks the whole time.
Yeah, I don't know him personally, but I know he is.
And this guy told me this 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.
Have you seen the lady that swims with the sharks?
Have those popped up on your YouTube?
I mean, I hate to say it, but the grizzly guy, what happened to the grizzly guy?
Two new tattoos came through.
I mean, there's the SeaWorld, one member of the SeaWorld thing took that lady down.
That's amazing, and that's something that we haven't seen before, right?
Maybe, and they're like, oh yeah?
How about some of this action?
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.
Would you go down in the shark cage off of Cape Town?
And so I'm like, oh, that's fantastic.
There are always going to be a book behind.
Different than the sharks that come into the shark cage and just crunch it.
I would have done that a long time ago.
I don't know if I'd do it now.
But when it comes in, I mean, come on.
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.
Guys, people are freaking out on that boat, too.
People and 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, I worry.
Did you watch that documentary?
No, I just heard about it so many times, I feel like I've seen it.
I went up there in Alaska, going up the rivers, bear hunting.
And I mean, you're walking right by him.
Just looking for the right one.
And it's crazy how close you get and how comfortable the guides are working their way up these river systems off of both.
So I saw two new very large tattoos of Crosstown Hawks.
Staying on a boat, you go in and then you work your way up to the day and come back.
But it was wild to be so close.
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 him.
Okay, you know, here we go.
Yeah, the 375 for that one.
Just because it's going to be close.
I don't want to worry about the condensation on the canopy right down there.
I didn't take one, but we had one.
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 had a charge, and the guy came in.
My guide said, it was a female guide.
I'm like, eh, that's not what you want to hear.
You want something that's really old, and you want to be contributing to this conservation.
So it was young, so it was 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, ready to go.
And it's coming, it's coming, and then it gets close, and it stops, and it starts doing that going back and forth type thing.
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.
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.
Like in the same sentence, like there's no.
He looked like he was going to come and it was so close.
So then we made our way back out and didn't get one on that trip.
But it was beautiful up there.
My wife wouldn't, so I think we'll stay in Park City.
But I'd go up there for sure.
It's Park City on steroids.
That's what we did when the Wrangell Mountains, my last trip, I think it was my last trip up there.
Yeah, got a wolf, got a bear, got a moose all in one trip.
Yeah, big ones of everything, too.
Moose is awesome because you could eat that sucker for a whole year.
Yeah, we gave much of it to the guides and their families and all that stuff because there's so much to take back.
But, yeah, that was John Dubin and Frank Lecrone who were also in Pineapple Brothers.
We went up there just to send a guide, two guides that know what they're doing up there.
Did you guys fly in like a push plane?
Push 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.
I mean, everything's so vast.
My plan was to go to Alaska and Africa like back to every other year.
And then that didn't happen.
I mean, animals and people collide at the mountain lions in California, of course.
And Utah has changed their laws.
Yeah, I got a big one a couple years.
Our neighbor's game cam, huge one came through, which is good because well-fed.
And that's the one when they get skinny and, you know, get a little dicey.
Huge one came through right around Thanksgiving when all the families in town were up in the mountains right there, pretty remote, and everybody's 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.
Got to get those game cams up.
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.
I put about 25 different 3D targets up.
The Archery Challenge guys came up, so I have a course that I can walk that I don't usually do.
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've got 200 turkeys, it seems, probably more like 100 or 50, but a lot come through every day.
And you know if someone's up there that you know if they shouldn't be there.
You still carry that mindset now?
So we're after Charlie Kirk.
Remember the only thing we had was that this guy was in black, right?
So every reason I'm on edge, I'm like devastated by this thing.
I'm like really feeling it.
I didn't know him, but I have mutual friends who are very close to him.
So so anyway, I was just devastated by this thing.
So I'm devastated by that.
It's just, you know, it's awful all the way around.
And there's a knock at our door.
And I'm like, this is like, this is like the next day.
And I'm like, no one's supposed to be here.
So we're getting a whole new security system.
But the gate was busted then.
And, and it's been fixed now.
And I look, 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.
You have to work to get up to us.
But his car was semi-nice parked outside.
I feel like an Audi or something.
and uh he was overweight he didn't clearly didn't fit the description right but all black so i'm like on edge already and uh so i grabbed the pistol and uh 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 and because i can do some work with that thing and uh i'm like yeah and he's like oh we're doing some work around the corner with uh some some cement do you need any work with cement around here i'm like
I mean, you've had that for a while.
Like, you're just not pretty nice to people.
But I was like, and he's like, okay.
You can't just walk up people around here like that without an appointment.
Clearly the gate is meant to keep people out.
And you come up all dressed in black the day after this thing happens and you randomly knock on a door.
No, I was just like, I mean, he was doing some work on one of the other places.
You want to know if you need cement?
But in my mind, I'm like, well, I was just casing for something.
I didn't think about that.
I was more thinking about just the description of the Charlie Kirk person.
Why do you have extra cement, dude?
I think it was really somebody hustling, like trying to do some work, a candy man type stuff, whatever.
One other person came into the house when they shouldn't have, and that was like –
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 midnight.
And so that one, I put the AR by the door, had the, had the pistol.
It ends up they were looking for another house up there, but it was very bizarre.
You've had people doing that for a while for you.
So you're like, was this one of those things where you open the door and the other guys rush in?
The type of thing because it was a lady stumbling down through the snow with what I thought was a headlamp ended up being her phone.
So working on the new security system.
But it's it's if you come knocking on the door, it's you shouldn't be there.
People need to have a little more common sense.
And if that was the case, of course, I'd go out.
But then you're still thinking like, oh, they're just going to get me out of the house.
authorities up here and we'll just wait, you know, let's wait right here until they get here and they can help you with your car or whatever it was.
So trying to get a little better with the security type things.
And when we lived in town, people did come by and kind of expect it.
You live in town, there's no real security, whatever.
It's kind of more expected.
That's a little more normal.
When you're way up there, and especially on the guy dressed in black was weird.
I mean, that's the old instinct that kept us alive for so long.
Like, I need to be on edge here.
Until who's his friend or foe.
Some invading tribe member.
In the middle of the night.
Until you absolutely know you're going to err on the side of caution and protecting your life and the lives of your loved ones.
Audio available, Ray Porter.
And, yeah, audio, e-book, hardcover.
I like how you went back to James Reese's dad, too.
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.
I think people are ready for another Vietnam-style TV show or movie.
It's been a while since we've had a good one.
And this one was essentially, it's an espionage thriller set in Saigon, but set in Southeast Asia.
And no one's really done that since quiet American Graham Greene, Tears of Autumn, and Graham Greene was 1955, and Tears of Autumn was 1974, and Jean Le Carre was the Honorable Schoolboy in 1977.
You think the whole world is waiting for you to show up, and then you find out the world was busy already.
Congratulations on everything, brother.
But I remember the first time I got one, I think it was after I was on or right around the same time the first time I was on.
The trick is figuring out how to join in without losing you.
I mean, Milli Vanilli just did it a little too early.
So like 2020, the first time I saw it, I texted you and sent it.
But for the kids, at least we're aware of it.
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 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.