SPEAKER_04 0:00

Does the world owe you a living or do you owe it a life? Or something like that. I forget who said that. Welcome back to another episode of the AJ Buckley Show. I just want to say this. I am so grateful for our next guest. This man is on the busiest press tour that any American author has ever been on. Mr. Jack Carr, I met in season one on SEAL team. And since then he has absolutely just exploded. His his his books, his TV series, the things that he's doing, the impact that he's he's making, the examples that he's setting, who he is as a man. He's done things for me on a personal side. When I never asked, when my my uh um stepdad was sick, he sent him this little note because he knew was a uh a fan and a little um bookmark that said never out of the fight. And uh that really and my my stepdad's last moments, it really meant a lot. And um he also he sent uh um the trident over to this young boy, this artistic boy that had flown out to to LA and talk about it on the podcast. But uh Jack Carr took the time out of his crazy schedule to sit down and do a podcast with me. I flew up to Nashville and um man, I'm so excited for you to see it. And I love this is like I and when I flew home, I called Sean and I was like, dude, this was so fun. Uh it was just like I flew there just to interview him. And um I really at that moment knew how much, even more so, I loved being a podcast. So please welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

The big old stud himself, the man that met the lady welcome to you.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

It's good to see you, man. Great to see you. I was just commenting that you're in the same clothes as you're in the did you take that photo today?

SPEAKER_04 2:12

I did just before you came in the Superboat. The truck was out back. Um, and uh I uh I I actually uh just as a gift, I have one personally signed shirtless that I'm gonna give to you. You know, I know you want it, really. I already added to my collection for shirtless AJ Buckley photos. You know, there's many of them floating out there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Well, when I was a kid, I we got pulled pulled over for something, and a buddy had just uh gotten a fake ID and the cop like got it somehow.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Yeah, and he was looking at it and he's looking at my buddies, like, did you just get this made today?

SPEAKER_00 2:42

And he had like the same clothes, like the black eyes like in there. He's like, You guys are idiots.

SPEAKER_04 2:46

Like, get out of here. He took it and just left. I remember uh up in Canada um when I after I immigrated from Ireland, it was in Canada, and um we I got like a friend's my cousin's ID, and we like put white out on the thing and we like drew it on. And I remember getting in the first time I was like 16 or 17. Yeah, and the guy was like cool, he looked at me, he's like, All right, go in. It was like McLovin. Remember how like uh expert forger. Yeah, I went in and got in. I was like, oh my god. And I think the first shot I ever did in a bot was a Zambuka shot, and I almost barfed. I was like, I don't even remember the Zambuka. I remember the name, I can't remember what it tasted like. It tastes terrible. Yeah, it's like licorice, and and then you could get them on fire, and it like I thought that would impress the girls. You're like, you want to see you have flaming Zambuka shot? Yeah, little did I know that was that wasn't uh in in person, but I was thinking about all the when I first met. Did you remember when we met at the mall in Pittsburgh? In Pittsburgh, and I was just thinking about what a crazy journey because that was promoting your first book, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

First book, and then it was first season of CEA team, I think.

SPEAKER_04 3:45

That was our first press press thing. We flew out there, and I remember getting a text from business. He was like, Yeah, my boy's out there, you guys do the same thing. He's like, Go say what's up, and we yeah, hung out. We got a late night that night. Yeah, we did, yeah. That was a crazy burn it down. Yeah, that was it's so crazy though to like look at that moment there, right? Especially you like on your journey. Yeah, this is before you know any of it, and just you just were coming out with this this novel and you know, the life that you sort of live. And and there's been sort of things along the way too that I'm super grateful for that I, you know, I haven't never really talked about it before, but you know, that uh there was two really instrumental moments that you kind of stepped up that I was like character-wise, I was like, You're such a stud, was when I'd flown that artistic kid out to set and you had uh you sent your uh your uh trident, and Goldie, we did a whole presentation. And it was probably one of the like there wasn't a dry eye that day. And this kid Raiden who'd been bullied, and you reached out to me, like, hey dude, I want to send something really special to him, and you sent your trident. You took it off and sent it to him, and then Goldie and a couple of the guys came over to the house that we'd rented for the kid for the week, and they did the whole ceremony, and you were on the phone, and it was one of the coolest experiences I've I've I've got to witness. Uh, it was just a really special so thank you for that.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

Well, thank you for bringing to my attention and thank you for all you did for for for that kid. That was really special.

SPEAKER_04 5:13

That whole trip was awesome.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

That was just like tug it, uh, your heart strings. That was a that was a yeah, I remember I I hadn't thought about it in a long time.

SPEAKER_04 5:26

Sleep is non-negotiable. Better days, better recovery. Go to ghostbed.com forward slash buckley at the checkout, put Buckley B-U-C-K-L-E-Y for the code word. Get yourself a discount. And I'm telling you, the better days are ahead, better sleep, better everything. You're gonna wake up in the morning with a big old smile on your face because you slept through the night. Three pillars of discipline spirit, mind, body, in that order. That right there is the foundation of a company I started called Born of Discipline. It's incredibly important to me, this company incorporates my faith, the lessons I learned from my father on discipline, pain from regret, or pain from discipline is something my dad always said to me. And I've incorporated that into my life, and I want to share it with you. Go check it out at born of discipline.com. Get your merch. It's it's great stuff. Go get it now. Get it while it's good. And then when my father-in-law got sick, and I had given him um your uh two of the books, uh uh, and he started reading, he was like so he was like, This is the greatest novel I've ever read. He's like, this is, and then I I we were just texting back and forth, and I was like, hey, he's sick right now. Can you do so? And you sent him the um what is it called? A bookmark. And he wrote never out of the fight out of it. And unfortunately he passed away, but he was so moved by that one moment. It was such a great thing, and it was so sweet. So thank you for for stepping up. Like in all of the um the madness of the world, and we're pulled in so many different directions. Uh, it just says, you know, there's there's certain things that people do we go out of the way and and do and sort of slow down what's happening. So I've never got to personally, you know, and those those two things were so impactful, one for Raiden and two for my stepdad. And uh, and I'm just very grateful to to uh um to have you done that, man. It really it was really special. So I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Appreciate that. Well, yeah, anything for you, and uh, and it's uh yeah, it was an honor to do both those things. So yeah, thanks for everything.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

And now you're on your your book tour right now. Yeah, on book tour, book 10.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

Do you believe that? Book 10. Crazy since we met. You know, we met at first, yeah, that's crazy that we met at the first book and now it's 10 right now. Fourth option.

SPEAKER_04 7:38

I don't even understand how someone can write the way you write.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

It's a lot, yeah. It's a lot, especially with all the other stuff. I don't think it would be a lot it was if you were doing just one a year and didn't have to do all the other things that supported that main effort. Yeah. Like if it was 1985, 1975, 95, and you just turned in the book to your publisher, and then you maybe did a few interviews and then went on to the next book. But now it is a const because if we're getting constantly bombarded through these devices, these that addict us to scrolling that are in our pockets with us 24-7, yeah, that are next to our beds, plugged in and charging. So as soon as we wake up, we're back on.

SPEAKER_04 8:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

And uh, and there's so many other distractions that weren't there in 1965, 75, 85, 95, even 2005, even 2010, even 2015. Yeah. Uh it's just more and more distractions, and you're more and more addicted to this thing because the the platforms and the algorithm and those companies that are the most powerful companies in the history of the world get better at what they do, uh, which is keeping you on your phone. And the way to do that is either to enrage you or to show you stuff that they know will keep you scrolling. Uh and that's not getting a book and investing hours and hours and hours of reading time into it. So it's a lot, you're competing with all of that.

SPEAKER_04 8:45

And for for you, like for a generation that is that just reads headlines, you know, it it's gotta be for someone like yourself who, you know, with I remember you telling me about your your mom with she was a librarian, um, and and having that sort of, you know, being able to like physically you know, touch and hold a book. And this generation, I feel they don't read, they just read headlines, form an opinion on a headline, and and there's uh what do you think the danger is of people right now that don't actually spend time reading?

SPEAKER_01 9:19

Yeah, I mean, the biggest part of that is that you're not developing empathy and compassion that we used to get from reading because that put us in someone else's shoes. So you can get that through television and through film, but also same thing, people are addicted more to this than they are to go into the movies or waiting until their show comes on at eight, nine, ten o'clock at night, whatever it is. Everything's there all the time. And if they're watching a show or a movie, now they're also on their phone at the same time. So, really, I mean, look at the comment section on anything, anything anyone posts, essentially. It doesn't have to be political, it can be, oh, I love this photo of this, uh, let's say the architecture in this building is so beautiful. I took that picture, and someone will take issue with that and tell you how awful it is. Yeah, and it's just strange that the that this scrolling and the comment section of really any social media platform develops the opposite attribute, the opposite of empathy and compassion. So when I think about my kids and their generation and what they're developing, uh, by not reading and just by scrolling and just seeing these comments, um, I mean, that's that that that that doesn't bode well for for future generations, just with how we we treat each other. I mean, there's a reason every great religion across the the world has always had some form of the golden rule, treat others as you would like to be treated yourself. And uh it was worded a little differently, but they all had something like that because it's so important. So I think the biggest thing about just looking at those headlines and then looking at the comment section and scrolling on to the next thing, yeah, whatever that might be, is that you're not developing this empathy and compassion. So uh very hard to develop those things um any other way than by putting yourself in someone else's shoes. So I think that's the biggest thing that uh that that reading does for us.

SPEAKER_04 10:50

What was the first book your um gave you?

SPEAKER_01 10:52

Oh, the first well, I mean, there's children's books, of course.

SPEAKER_04 10:55

Like but the first one that had a real impact on you then.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

Oh, it might have been my side of the mountain. Um, but she was still she still read that that to us. Um, and then the Farley Mowit books. That's like the young adult. So first, like parents are reading those children's books. That's all it was for us, anyway. So you're reading things like Sylvester and the Magic Pebble or Tony's Hard Work Day, or like these great books. Uh, and then you go move on and you start reading those kind of to your parents, type of a thing. And actually, there was some movie tie-in, uh almost not really picture books, but there was like from Star Wars. So they'd have big pictures, you know, and then they'd have uh three or four sentences that describe that. And then you move into that. So you can go through the whole movie, and then we would pick those, and then our parents would read those back to us, and then eventually you start reading those books, and then you move into young adult, like Farley Moat type stuff. Um, and then from there, really the jump is to the same kind of books that your your parents are reading. So um, so then it was into the stuff that I'm reading and writing today, like uh Tom Clancy, Hunt for Red October came out when I was in fifth grade. And certainly, Ben, that's about the time when I was switching over from that young adult type reading, the Farley Moets, into the kind of books my parents were reading. And then sixth grade, that's when I start reading only the kind of books that my parents are reading. So uh the kind of books that uh that I read and write today. And the guys back then that were the masters were Tom Clancy and Nelson DeMille and AJ Quinnell and JC Pollock and Mark Golden and David Morrell, and they're those guys really became my professors in the art of storytelling. But I'm trying to remember the first book that I had could, I never have thrown anything, I've never thrown anything away. And if there's an early, early book, it must be in my mom's attic somewhere. I mean, there was like Robin Hood and all these books that uh, you know, from like the, and then there was like the with Errol Flynn, and so there were pictures of like the Errol Flynn movie, and then there were a few, a few lines about that. And uh that is a good question about the first book. I'll have to ask my mom if there was if she has a memory of the first book that she ever gave me.

SPEAKER_04 12:34

What was there uh was it like a uh was there a book that your that your mother gave you that taught you something that the the military later gave you through discipline?

SPEAKER_01 12:47

Ooh, I think it makes you you know, I think just reading in general, yeah, the patience and really more than anything else, the resiliency that you get by thinking about things other people have done that are a lot harder than whatever you're doing right now. Exactly. Uh so it put things puts things in their proper perspective. Um, so I mean I've heard a lot of people talk about this. Like if failing a test is the hardest thing that's ever happened to you in school, like then that's the hardest thing that's ever happened to you. Um so it's all that stuff's all relative. But for me and Buds, like I was thinking about in the during Hell Week, I'd think about, ah, you know what, we're not doing, we're not storming the beaches of Normandy right now. Yeah, I am those guys sacrificed all that. And people from the inception of this country up until today sacrificed all they did so that I could be here fulfilling my dream of testing myself on this beach in Southern California in Coronado. And I can do a few more push-ups, I can uh I can stay up a little later, I can do another ruck run or whatever we're doing. Um, and uh, and those guys gave me that opportunity. So I can certainly do that. So it puts helps put things in perspective, and so that really that really helped me, not just there, but throughout life.

SPEAKER_04 13:46

I remember so I remember you telling me that um like you always wanted to write books and you always wanted to be in the military. At what point was it that like that dream of that? When did that like become a reality? Like when did that actually when did those worlds start to really cross over?

SPEAKER_01 14:02

Yeah, well, seven, I think I wanted to be in the military. It was just in my blood. Because your grandfather was grandfather, that's right. Killed in World War II. Uh so I grew up with pictures of him and his squadron. He flew a Corsair, so that's the plane that had the gold wings that would fold up, so you could fit him on aircraft carriers. Yeah. So he was a Marine Corsair pilot. And there was a TV show, once again, the power of popular culture, power of television, uh, watching Black Sheep Squadron. It was uh first out as Baba Black Sheep, and then it was syndicated as Black Sheep Squadron. Um, and uh Robert Conrad, an actor played Pappy Boynton, who was a Medal of Honor recipient, who was a Marine Aviator who flew the same kind of plane as my grandfather. So my dad and I are watching that together, and that's our touch point, really, and other movies also with that generation because there's no Facebook. And those guys got back from World War II and just went to work. Yeah. It was very hard, let's say, for my dad to find somebody who knew his grandfather, who flew, or sorry, with his father, who flew with flew with him, knew him in the military. It was just because people came home and got back to work. Some made made uh use of the G.I. Bill, and others just got got got after it, uh, and then built this country into what it is today. So uh, so that was our touch point um with that generation. So we got to do that together from the couch, watching those TV shows, watching those films. Um, and then age seven, I found out about SEALs through the frogmen. Once again, a movie, black and white movie from from the 50s.

SPEAKER_04 15:14

And there's comic book too, like the there was a book.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

Yeah, there was a book called The Frogman as well. Here, yeah, yeah. And uh there's yeah, it has a great cover. Yeah, you might have seen the cover. Um, and so so that movie was uh, I think it was very popular at the time. But I saw these guys climbing up over the beaches and blowing up obstacles, and I thought, you know, that that I think that's the thing. That's the thing for me for whatever reason. And uh, and then off to the off to the races I went down to the library with my mom. And back then you could find the end of the internet because it was a library shelf. Yeah. And uh my takeaway from studying seals was that hey, uh, and most of it was about Vietnam. Anything you could find was like seals in Vietnam. And uh the takeaway was that uh the training was some of the toughest ever devised by a modern military, and these guys are some of our most elite special operators, and so that had me. I was in age seven.

SPEAKER_04 15:57

The Magnum PI sort of and then a couple years later, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

A couple years later, first Magnum was uh he was a naval intelligence officer in the first couple seasons. Yeah, and I was always because I was watching from that that from a very early age as well. It was so great.

SPEAKER_04 16:09

I it's like even it's I still love going back and watching like it's like such a great, it really is like it just holds like not nothing wrong with the the one that they they remade, but Tom Selleck and just the whole especially and like we all I think we talked about once like the ending is that whole, you know, how it's how you know, spoiler alert, you if you haven't watched the the original Magnum PI, but it's it's one of the best endings of uh uh of a series, I think, ever. But uh with you being as focused as you were and so uh uh disciplined, I guess, in in knowing where you're going, did you did you have to sacrifice anything at a young age to to get to where you're going? Did you feel like because it would have you know writing in military or good getting to the level that you got it is is a lot of isolation in a sense of preparing yourself. Were you always you were just built that way, you felt?

SPEAKER_01 16:59

Yeah, just built that way. I think there's something in all of us. There's this DNA in all of us, because we used to have to pass some sort of a test to show ourselves, to show that we had value to the to the tribe, to the community, uh, to your your city, state, your country, whatever it was, uh, throughout history. But you used to have to pass some certain test uh and to show them that you could add value because if you if you couldn't, uh the the the uh effects of that were gonna be dire, meaning that you weren't gonna be around that much longer. You had to be good at the fighting and you had to be good at the hunting. Uh, and then a lot of that was passed along through story, also the lessons from those things. So there's a direct line between being good at those things and then passing on the lessons to the next generation so they can build off those lessons and get even better at the hunting and better at the fighting. Um, and so there's that that piece is always there. So, as far as sacrifice, I never looked at it like that. I just looked at it as my path. And I looked at, hey, whether I'm running cross country or playing lacrosse or soccer, I always thought of it as, hey, house is going to help me as a seal later in life. Uh, endurance was the was the biggest part of that. And strength, you're trying to you know build through push-ups and sit-ups, and you're watching. There's a couple of videos out there that showed guys climbing rope, um, like the rope ladder thing and buds and all that. So I put ropes up in the trees in our backyard and I was just climbing those, or I was trying to do push-ups and or pull-ups with like weird grips well before CrossFit. Anybody that's heard of CrossFit. Um, but uh so yeah, I didn't look at his at his uh sacrificing anything. It was just as my path, just trying to do what I could uh with what we knew back then to prepare myself for what I knew I was gonna do later in life. And uh that included, I think a lot of that was also watching TV shows and movies uh that were that were inspirational, like Magnum. And uh, like I said, he was a he was a uh naval intelligence officer at first because I don't think the writers knew about seals. Yeah, and so you have Magnum like running around in tiger stripes as a naval intelligence officer in Vietnam. But as I'm watching it, I'm thinking this he looks like a lot like a seal.

SPEAKER_04 18:43

Yeah. Which tiger stripes are my favorite came. I love tiger, I think they look so awesome.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

Yeah, they are, they are awesome. And you and you have see someone in those, you like know exactly you know that hey, this is a Vietnam era uh uh situation here. But uh, but then I think season, I forget exactly what season right now, but let's say it was three or four somewhere in there, they find out about seals. So now instead of that surface warfare insignia that he was wearing in the first uh episode, first seasons, uh now the trident's there. Now they mention that he was a seal. So for the remainder of the of the series, he was a seal. Uh so you know you can do that, you can get away with that stuff in in Hollywood and in fiction.

SPEAKER_04 19:17

What do you think is as young Jack that that you understood correctly? Um but then now looking back, you you had like a misunderstanding of it, or that you learned that what what your path was or what you sort of thought that the journey was gonna be, you were like, oh, this is a lot different than in my mind what I'd sort of made my path to be. What was your sort of big your big one?

SPEAKER_01 19:40

Well, it's when we walked across, because this was before any social media platforms. Um the internet may uh existed, but I didn't have a I didn't have an account on a I didn't have an email or anything like that when I went into the military. Had never been online when I went in the military. Um, but it was that hey, as soon as we finished buds, we'd walk across the quarter decks to our first team, get issued our pagers, and uh those things would light up and we go off and save the world, save the princess, and then come back in time for beers. And like we thought that was it. And then we come in, they're like, hey, new guy, paint that wall, take out the garbage, make sure there's beer in the fridge for everybody, and like do new guy stuff. Yeah, yeah. And uh really we found out very quickly that our job was really to be prepared for war uh in case that call comes. Yeah. Uh and then the call came after September 11th, 2001. And then we got to start doing the things that we thought we were gonna do when we came in. So the misconception was that uh special operations forces are always doing things, all of super secret stuff all around the world. And uh, you know, there might have been a few things like that that uh that I wasn't aware of, but uh on the whole, yeah, that was not the case. It was just training, deploy for presence, come back, get ready to deploy again, go back, uh, and then September 11th happened and off we go to the races.

SPEAKER_04 20:48

And were you all were you already had become a SEAL by the Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

So I was a SEAL already, done one deployment pre-September 11th, and then my second deployment two months two weeks into it was September 11th, 2001. So we're in Guam and we the phones start ringing up and down the hallways. Um we didn't have cell phones on deployment back then.

SPEAKER_04 21:05

You were in Guam when uh when 9-11 happened. Yeah, yeah. And that's like that's a like Guam is this tiny little island in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, because it's all it's all military.

SPEAKER_01 21:17

Pretty much, yeah, pretty much. It's a huge military presence there. And uh so yeah, those phones start ringing up because it's like midnight, you know, I'd be off by an hour or two, but it's like the middle of the night. Um, and uh we went down to the basement and watched a bit of TV down there, and we watched the Twin Towers fall on television. So we watched those together as a platoon. And then we all thought, man, next day we're going. We are in, we're going to Afghanistan. Uh, I just I was the intel rep for the platoon, so I just read a book on Bin Laden and I was very aware of him uh in Al Qaeda and how it's called the base and why and all these things. And uh, and so I gave some briefings to some senior level people there, even though I was enlisted E5 at the time and E4, E5, anyway, something like that. And uh, and then it took a while. It took a while, like we took every long time for everybody to get organized. And by a while, I mean three weeks, a month, something like that, two weeks, maybe. I forget. But anyway, um, I went out and did some personal protection with another guy from the platoon, even though we had really no training for it. Uh went out and did some personal protection for what was then called Sink Pack Fleet. So he wanted to fly around and and uh kind of shore up um uh our relationships with different countries in the Pacific. And so we did that and then came back. And by the time we got back, all our stuff was palletized already, and we jumped on a plane and started heading for the Middle East. And we all thought that we were going to uh to Afghanistan. But uh but instead we landed in Kuwait and then we took over the shipboarding operations for team three, and those guys went to Afghanistan. And the shipboarding operations were actually interesting. It was the only time I was really on a ship my entire 20 years in the military.

SPEAKER_03 22:42

It's so crazy as a steal, you know.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

And uh so that was to enforce the UN embargo against um against Iraq. So uh Iraq would have these ships that would would head out of Iraq and take a sharp left-hand turn for Iranian waters, and it was always in the middle of the night in rough seas. Uh, they fouled the decks with things like uh barbed wire. So if you threw out a fast rope, it would get fouled on the deck, so you had to come in with the boats. And you had about 20 minutes, maybe 30, depending on sea state, to uh to get on those ships, big class three tankers, climb on board, uh, cut through because they always they welded uh metal to over the windows and the doors, so you'd have to go through with the exothermic torch and the and the quickie saw that I know that you're familiar with from the show. And uh so get through with that and then turn these ships around and bring them back to international waters and turn them over to a prize crew. So that was the only time. It was good. So I'm glad I did that then. But when we were doing it, all we wanted to do was be in Afghanistan. And then I got to Afghanistan in 2003, so which I thought was like barely making it. Yeah. I'm like, oh man, I barely made it to this show. Yeah. And uh it was a it was an incredible experience, but uh learned a ton on that one. But uh, but I thought, like, we're out of here in a year. Yeah, you know, we're gonna we'll be we'll wrap this thing up pretty quick. And little did I know, we had 20 years. Uh there was no uh really threat of missing it at that point.

SPEAKER_04 23:53

During I because even when I was filming CLTM, I always was blown away because I I'm a firm believer there's people are just born warriors. Like I think I feel like it's in your blood. You know, I I feel like there's like you can you know, I've been in fights before and you know, and I protect my family, but like when there's war, there's certain people like yourself, like a warrior has this innate alike that I am going there. You know, and I I got you know, went to the USO and uh I got to go overseas and I saw that I'm like, this is the last place that you'd ever want to go to go. Like it just like and you're like, this isn't like insane. And then um even when you would hear the stories of how different like Afghanistan was in the terrain and carrying the packs and stuff and just having to go up there and then seeing the enemy how quickly they could move and just like flip-flops and stuff. You know, I I always always was like there's courage and then there's condition conditioning, right? It's like you're you're you're you're you're in you're brave, but then you're able to take that bravery through the conditioning and use it and stay calm because there's that adrenaline dump and stuff like that. How did would you would did you ever have that or were you where you're like, okay, I have to hone in on this cur being courageous, but then able to use my training through the through all the you know, and and be able to focus on how to stay calm, you know. Um, was there ever Yeah?

SPEAKER_01 25:19

I don't know. I didn't overthink it. Um I knew that I was prepared as I could possibly do.

SPEAKER_04 25:23

Uh us actors overthink everything. Like, how did they do how do they what's my motivation here in this scene?

SPEAKER_01 25:28

So true. Have you seen that? Who's that director that has that thing? It's online and he's talking about working with different actors, and uh, oh, he's talking about Minicio del Toro. They're talking about that. You know what I'm talking about. I want you to come in the room, go over here, stand there, deliver the line, walk out. And he's like, Well, what's my motivation? Yeah, what happened when I was 12 years old and all this stuff. And so, and then he comes in, he writes like three or four other 20 pages of this backstory and then gives it to the director. And the director, of course, says, Oh, I read it all, it's fantastic. Now come in the door, walk over here, say your line, and do this. And it's uh, so it's pretty good. But I didn't, I don't think I overthought it. And you were you're as about as prepared as you can possibly be. I know I always um because also he's heard once again the power of popular culture and watching TV and film specifically in the 80s, which uh for me, it's like I think what you do between age like eight and eighteen or ten and twenty, it imprints on your soul in a different way. Um, a lot of that I think is because you don't have a family, a job, mortgage, car payment, anything like that at that point. Um, and so for me, I was reading, watching television shows, watching, watching film. And in the 80s, the the protagonist, like the hero of a lot of TV shows and movies, uh, was someone with Vietnam experience in the shows that I watched in the action genre. And uh a lot of them would show this guy like a tortured soul to give his character like depth. So you're a tortured soul for something that happened in Vietnam, and uh, and you'd show this guy like on the couch, like bottle of whiskey next to him, like pistol here, and he's just like wrestling with what happened to what the decision he made under fire, and thinking, hey, could have I made a different decision? So if I'm when I'm a kid watching all these movies, then that was kind of the the trope that was was used to give certain characters depth, uh and also explain that they had a skill set that they could use as now as a police officer, a stunt man, a private investigator, or whatever they were in the in the 80s television show or movie. And so I think that really made an impact, meaning I didn't want to be that guy asking those questions. I wanted to make sure that I did everything I possibly could do in the lead up to deployment. Um, so I wasn't sitting there on the couch, even if I made, even if something went totally south based on I made the right decision, the wrong decision, whatever it is. Um, but I knew I prepared myself as I didn't leave anything on the field when it came to training. So the pendulum was on the side of the team. My wife is on board with that, because you have to be, uh it has to be that way because those, yes, but you go the guys to your right and left, uh, to the the team, to those guys' families, yeah, uh, to the mission, to the country. And you just have to be uh focused on that and only that. So uh so I I I knew that I was prepared as I could possibly be, but you can't rest there. You have to be adapting constantly when you're down there, uh, when you're downrange, because the enemy's adapting to you, you're adapting to the enemy, really. Whoever does that first and fastest is uh usually gonna be the one that ends up on top. So you have to look for gaps in the enemy's defenses, uh, and and you have to outthink them, meaning like if they're looking at you, figuring out how you're gonna adapt to them, you have to be another step past that. Yeah, so it's uh so I was just totally focused on that for the entire time that I was in, taking guys downrange. Uh so so I guess I recognized that earlier. That was a very long way of saying that uh that uh I I you know I guess you're maybe a little nervous until you actually are in combat because you haven't done it. Yeah, but then once you do it, you're like, for me, it was a sense of relief. I was like, you know what, okay, I've been tested, I trained up, I did this, um, I was I was I was good at it, and uh, and now there's a sense of relief. It's like, okay, yeah, now I can keep going and doing this and and just but uh but really never getting complacent and uh never letting that guard down and constantly improving every single second.

SPEAKER_04 28:55

What do you what do you think that that first time when you had that thought of like, okay, I'm responsible for these men? Like what was that?

SPEAKER_01 29:02

What happened inside you when that do you remember when you had that first thought of like these are I've got a responsibility here for I think I always had that, even as uh enlisted SEAL, um, even when I was just uh like an assistant communications rep for my platoon or assistant uh intel rep for the platoon or I'm still a sniper or become a sniper or whatever, whatever it was. I always felt that way. So it wasn't like okay, now I'm an officer, and now I'm now I have this responsibility. I felt that always to the guys to my right and left. And I knew that I would have that going in. So um so there wasn't a time when I was like, oh, now I have this responsibility. I felt like I always had that the entire time. Um and it was just a very natural thing, so it wasn't like uh wasn't a surprise, it was just a part of it.

SPEAKER_04 29:41

And was there a time where during your your deployment when you were pushed to like absolute exhaustion where you know where you felt like your back was against the wall, where you had to, you know, something within you your training, all the other things that came like why did you at your worst moment what did you rely on at in those times?

SPEAKER_01 30:07

Yeah, I mean worst moment is you know not what you would think. I don't think and uh meaning like it's not really on the battlefield, it's not being on the battlefield. Got it. Um so it's like I think my worst moment um was like hearing of extortion one seven. And I'm in Iraq, that happened in Afghanistan, of course, but getting the knock on my door as a troop uh troop commander, task unit commander in Basra, Iraq, near the end of uh of the war in Iraq, and uh getting that knock at the door because we're on vampire hours, and so you're working all night, you know, from the show. Yeah, so you're you're working all night and then trying to grab a little sleep during the day. But if you're in a leadership position, you have to get up and you have to go to meetings because the regular army has their meetings during the day. So you have to get up and go to these things. So you're you're a little bit of a zombie, I guess. Um, but then those I remember them taking place not really in the morning, they take place at like one or two or something in the afternoon. I don't know if memory serves. But uh, so point being a knock on your door at 10 a.m. or 9 a.m., whenever that knock came at my door, my little hooch thing, um, I knew it wasn't good because they're waking you up during your only few hours of of rest. Um, and you have a like a skeleton crew running your tactical operations center and all that stuff. So I remember the uh the uh the operations officer who was running it at the time came over and knocked on the door and woke me up at nine or ten and uh and told me that about extortion one seven. Yeah. And so you just feel like helpless.

SPEAKER_04 31:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

Um, and it's just like when you're home and you think see something going on, you hear something going on, you know the guys are deployed and you're not there, you just feel helpless and you're not there. So um, but as far as exhaustion goes, I didn't, I mean, I felt felt exhausted a few times, but uh, but it was a good exhaustion, meaning uh Najaf, August 2004. It's like it was a two-week campaign to take the city back from the J Shaw Mauddy militia. Um, and it was in support of uh two seven calves, so big army, and they have Abrams and Bradley's, and we have Air, and we have all these things, and we have my sniper team, and we're just there to support. We're just there to support, but you're not going back somewhere, like usually, as you know, like on the show, you were going out there and you're picking the time and place of your engagement. You have a target package, uh, you've built that up, some sort of some sort of trigger, meaning uh we know that our guy we're after is here because the the blue mopeds parked outside, whatever it is, and that's corroborated by a disassociated human network. So it's not somebody just saying, hey, my buddy over here, he's outside, or whatever, you know. Uh he's my neighbor and he really stole like three goats from me, one from my family, and I want him dead. Somebody tell the Americans that uh that he's a bad guy, type of a thing. Yeah. Uh so you have to have two disassociated uh human networks at least, and then uh corroborate that with some sort of technical intelligence as well. Um, but usually you're choosing the time and place, middle of the night, two in the morning, their guards down, and you're stacking the odds in your favor. But for Najaf 2004 summer, it's just like the movies I watched with my dad, the World War II movies. It's day, night, you're running through the streets during the daytime, you're moving tanks around, Bradley's around, air is coming in at night, the AC-130's up there, you're calling in the airstrikes, and it's just uh complete. I wouldn't say chaos because it's semi-controlled, but uh it's uh very um, I guess, uh dynamic. It's so funny, even just you describing that there.

SPEAKER_04 33:10

I was like, I I know what you're talking about. You do.

SPEAKER_01 33:14

Even the show, you guys did such a good job. And I have to say, I meant to say this right off the bat. And I told you this the first time we met. The first time we met. We're we're and there were some other guys from the from the show there, but but you and I went off hanging out and drinking together. And uh and uh doesn't sound like me. But I told you then, and I told you a few times since that you were the show the guy that uh that not just me, but everybody else I talked to about the show most identify with as a seal. Thank you. Um and you just you just brought that like you are that you were that that guy. You were that seal that we all knew that was in every platoon. Um, and we all identify with your portrayal of your character. And uh, I don't know how you did it, but you were the guy that is was as close, you were the actual seal on the show. I appreciate it. And I don't know if I'm saying that quite right, but I told you that the first time we met, and uh, and and especially that ending, that first that ending of uh season one, like you've seen there, like that was pretty powerful.

SPEAKER_04 34:09

I appreciate that. Well, I I you know I can only say that you you're only as good as the people that you're surrounded by, and you know, if it wasn't for the writing and the the other actors, I got the feed off, you know, that's where I think Sonny came from. Because you know, that what I what I loved, what I I had the realization when I was, you know, like when I got to spend some time with goalie and um just this constant ball breaking and just like this the just like it it because I had this sort of an idea this of like what it's like you know, these guys are at war and blah. But then when you hang out with these guys and they're just breaking balls and like the laughter in these very stressful situations, you know, and jokes are being and I was like, that's where that's the lane I want to take with Sonny. It's like I'd find try to find the humor in these sort of dark situations, and I was grateful that they allowed me to improv a bunch and just sort of you know riff a bit, but it really was there's a real uh brotherhood within that. I felt like, you know, I mean, did did you did you guys use humor and stuff to cope with it?

SPEAKER_01 35:08

Oh yeah. I think it's just a part of uh you know military culture from the beginning of time, like we feel the clock ticking, don't we?

SPEAKER_04 35:20

It's almost summertime, which means pool parties, beach, all of the madness. You've taken the foot off of gas a little bit because you haven't had to rip the shirt off in front of anybody, right? You don't want to be the dad in the neighborhood that's got them no titties. No, no, no. You want to be jacked. So, what I would recommend is you go see my friends at PRX. Now, as a listener of the AJ Buckley show, get a little gift. If you go to aj.prx.co, you get 50% off your labs out of the gates. They'll dial you in, they know everything about hormone replacement, all the stuff just in time for summer for you to get absolutely shredded. Go to aj.prx.co, get your beach body on for daddy. If you get a truck or you do off-roading, do any sort of add-ons to some sort of pavement princess that you might have, I highly recommend going to Total Off-Road. I go to the one here in Charleston and I go see Dan and TJ and the rest of the crew there. They are the best people in the world to do anything, any modifications, any build on your four-wheeler that you have. We all work really hard for our money. And what we want at the end of the day is quality service. It's a huge honor to have them, one of the sponsors of the show. I'm forever grateful for all the work that they do. Go check out Total Off-Road. They are all across the country. Anything to do with off-roading, those are your guys.

SPEAKER_01 36:44

Uh, if you didn't, uh you'd be you're you're already like miserable from the from the outside looking in, you're cold, tired, you're maybe hot, tired, or starving, tired, whatever a combination of things that aren't great. And uh as far as feelings go, but you if you interject humor into that, you almost have to. So it's a very natural thing to uh to bring into those situations. Um, because a lot of times the only thing you can control is your attitude about something. Yeah, that's in life in general. But certainly when it's uh you know Najaf, August 2004, Iraq, it's uh a little warm outside. Yeah. Um, so a lot of times the only thing you control is your is your attitude. But um, but uh yeah, humor I think's just been a part of military culture from the beginning of time. And uh in the in the SEAL teams or in special operations, it might be a little more pointed.

SPEAKER_04 37:28

I was speaking of Iraq and the heat. Uh I remember when I was in Iraq, uh, I've never felt it felt like a hairdryer on full blast was in my face. That heat was just unbelievable. And then, and that was before I did SEAL team. I was over there. Gary Sinise had sent me over there for uh uh when I was was on CSI New York. And that was my first, it was in 2008 when you guys were making the push from uh Iraq to Afghanistan. And it hadn't been totally announced yet, but everyone they were doing we'd flown into Kuwait and there was just a lot going on there, it was very busy. And then we um we took uh uh C 130 to uh Delta Fob. We did that like strict like crazy landing. Oh, okay. Where no joke, I always pissed myself. I was like, because they'd like becoming prep you for it, no, no. He was like, he's like because I was like, I love airplanes, I love and I we were all partnered up with someone. That might be part of the military humor. Yeah, no, they did because I was also like, well, this is gonna be great. It was like the Cadillac tour of Iraq, it's gonna be so relaxing. And we did that that uh that it strategic dive where they dropped the flares and stuff, and I didn't know what was going on. Wow, but we landed um there and then we were uh we got off one that the back of the plane and I was like, I felt that wave of heat. I was like, oh my god. The first shock was like when I when we got to Kuwait and there was like a TJ Fridays and a Starbucks. Oh wow, it was like on base, probably. Yeah, and it was like there was like a camel, and like it was just wow. It was the I forget what air was we were at the Air Force Base. Yeah, I forget the name of it, but but uh and then in Iraq it was we were like we're stationed out of Camp Liberty, and then we took um Blackhawks every day to different uh um Fort Operating Bases. It was it was it was a life-changing experience, and that was way before that's probably four years before SEAL team. Yeah, but it was uh or even longer. Oh, more, yeah. Yeah, more than it, yeah. So, but it was uh I'll never forget that that heat of oh yeah, of of what that was.

SPEAKER_01 39:20

Especially on an airfield when that when that ramp goes down, then you get like the smell and like the jet fuel type thing. You know, it's kind of like a diesel-ish type of a smell, and it's and it's the wind is pushing it in, and there's engines, and there's the the engines are moving, yeah, and the whole thing you just walk out of the room.

SPEAKER_04 39:34

You know, the whole kind of it feels like that scene in Star Wars where they're you know, they're walking the where the ships are all landing and they're all like like Hansel and uh um Luke Scarf are all walking through the things and everything is happening all at once. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. Um, and it just uh there was especially when I'd never seen how big those planes are, yeah. You know, and they're just scattered through 17, yeah, just insane. You're like, wow, that thing's gonna fly. Like, how is that? It's it's a crazy thing where you see even now how much the equipment has changed. Even being at SHOT Show this past year, this was something I wanted to uh uh ask you about. Like just the from like when you were in to how the battle has changed so much with the technology and drones and all sorts of it's it's how when you look at it now for our young special operators too, what how different it was, what goes through your mind?

SPEAKER_01 40:30

Oh, um for first I'm glad to be writing about it from the outside, yeah, looking in. Um and I think my timing is bad with everything, like real estate, uh any sort of investment, you know, anything like that. You know, it's uh but for the wars, my timing was good. Yeah, like I had a good, I had a good run there. Um, but now when you're seeing, and then and a whole new generation is coming in, obviously, that is probably more that that knows how to like do a little drone for their YouTube video or something like that. And I can't do anything like that. It's very foreign to me. Um, but they're stepping into a battle space, especially now with Ukraine and seeing both the uh the drone technologies and how they're used as offensive weapons, but then also the counter drone technologies and both of those evolving over the course of these past, what is it, four years now? Yeah, whatever, whatever it is now, which is crazy to think about. So that's a lot of time where you're having, I think, uh daily um adaptations when it comes to technologies on the battlefield. So uh so and then as those things get smaller and smaller, yeah, um, which of course will happen with nanotechnologies and and everything else, and then you incorporate um AI into that, into those nanotechnologies. Um it's moving quickly. It's moving quickly. But for me, I'm glad that that stuff didn't really exist in a way that uh could turn the tide of the of the battle. Um, and it was more the uh the individual soldier with a rifle, kind of old school. Um, but uh, but yeah, it's changing. And then now we're seeing uh taking those lessons from from the Ukraine um battles uh against Russia and then movement, seeing how those are um being used against us now in in Iran, and then what's China doing is when they're looking at these things, what technologies do they have? So it's uh it's a whole new new space. But uh but certainly I feel like I I my timing was right for me and my temperament and my generation. Uh and they this next generational feel it's hey totally normal to be uh figuring out how to counter drones that are that are uh that are tracking your convoy or whatever it might be. Um so that it's just like what a crazy time to be working against, especially when you think about uh like dog-looking robots and then humanoid-looking robots that uh that are coming into yeah. Hey, I don't know. It's almost it's uh it's almost crazy to write about. That's why I went back to Vietnam 1968 for my last book, Cry Havoc. Yeah, uh, because I didn't want to have to deal with any of that stuff. I'm an old school tradecraft. I didn't want uh uh facial recognition technologies and cell phones and texting and all the things you have to think about when you're writing a contemporary political thriller. Uh so it was nice to go back to to 1968 Vietnam and just uh uh just write something that was more pure without the technology.

SPEAKER_04 43:01

Yeah. What do you think scares you more? Evil on outside of the system or evil protected on the inside of the system?

SPEAKER_01 43:08

Inside, no doubt about it. It's uh it's um, you know, when you ask a question that typically gets asked of people like that finishes up shows, uh, or hey, what keeps you up at night? And they're asking like they're the Iran expert that, oh well, he's gonna say Iran. Uh and oh, what is uh what it what what keeps you up at night to the Chinese specialist? Oh China, of course, uh or Russia to the Russian specialist, type of a thing. And uh for me, I think it's it's uh the enemy really just can step back and watch us because we're doing a pretty good job of destroying ourselves from the inside.

SPEAKER_04 43:40

Uh their forefathers say that they there was a quote.

SPEAKER_01 43:44

There was a quote, I can't pull it up right now.

SPEAKER_04 43:46

Something like the the only way you can feet defeat America is to defeat us within. Something like that.

SPEAKER_01 43:50

Yep, you know, exactly right. Exactly right. And uh I think that's true. Um, of course, we uh there's a lot of weaknesses in our system to exploit um because of the freedoms that we have. It don't exist in countries like Russia and China, North Korea. And we have those freedoms, thank goodness. And they're protected by a constitution and a bill of rights. But they can also be exploited. Yeah. And that's what the enemy does. And now they can just sit back and just nudge here or there, especially on with social media platforms. I mean, who knows uh how many bots are in the system and how many of those are controlled by uh foreign intelligence services or even political parties within our own political parties in the United States to further divide? Because uh what does a division do? Well, it it helps politicians because you can galvanize a base, uh, you can get more uh donations, uh, put more commercials out there to further divide.

SPEAKER_04 44:38

So uh good the good idea fairies.

SPEAKER_01 44:40

Oh, yeah, you see, you know all that other stuff. Yeah, there's always a good idea fair. Usually it comes from on high in the military and filters its way down. Yeah, that's in the air conditioning room that's like well, why don't we try this? That's it. That's it. Yeah, you guys, I think you guys talked about it on the show a couple times.

SPEAKER_04 44:52

Yeah, yeah. Um with your writing, your character, James Reese, what was when did he like what was it like when he first showed up in your brain? Like, I feel like you've written about like this guy's lived with you, like he's in the room smoking a cigarette right now, like just sitting there. With me every day. Like, what is that like?

SPEAKER_01 45:11

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 45:12

Like, because like this guy is eating, like he's in your DNA.

SPEAKER_01 45:15

Yeah, yeah. I think it's important to have a character that you identify with so that you can really personalize that character, because uh it that you need to break through and you have to have a connection with these readers or these listeners now, because uh audiobooks are the fastest growing segment of publishing, and have an amazing narrator, Ray Porter, Shakespearean trained actor, incredible, incredible guy, great human being as well. Um, but uh people have to identify with that character. So uh for James Reese, I wanted to humanize him. I didn't want him to be just kind of this uh this robot that was good at everything. Um, I wanted to have him, he has his coffee like uh he like I have my coffee, which is kind of like uh an 18-year-old sorority girl. Uh, because in these movies and and television shows and books, usually the protagonist be Zocseal or Army Special Forces or Ranger or Marine Recon or Raider or uh Sniper or CIA paramilitary, coffee black, like across the board. Yeah. Uh so James Reese likes his with some honey and some cream. You church that thing up a bit. You know, the guys give him a hard time about it type of a thing. That's how I like my coffee. Yeah. Uh so I wanted to humanize him. And uh I didn't, and it's it's very uh, I think today authenticity is obviously it's an overused term, but there's not a better one for it, but it's more important now than ever before. So whatever your said product is, people want to know the person behind that now. And now they can, where you couldn't before. You couldn't in 85, 95. Well, now you can. So they can know in my case, it's the author behind the series, uh, behind these characters. Um, so I think people want to get to know you these days. And that authenticity part is so because they have much more limited time than ever before because it's being um uh I guess diverted by these social media companies and platforms and and uh and the tech tech giants on the phone. So it's uh how you're gonna spend your time is and that's time you're never gonna get back. So that's something I that I take very extremely seriously as I'm writing. Uh and for me, it's all about the story. Uh, and part of that story, of course, is James Reese and his background and me taking the feelings and emotions behind what it was like to be involved in certain situations downrange and applying those to a fictional narrative. Meaning, if I didn't have those experiences, I'd have to go find somebody. Let's say uh I'm writing a book and there's uh an ambush in this book. Okay, how do I describe this? I can either just imagine what it's like and put it down, and that's that's fine. Uh, or I can find someone who's been at an ambush and now I'm questioning them and they're telling me about it. And those answers are getting going through filters, meaning preconceived notions I may have, other books that I've read, other interviews that I've done, documentaries I've watched, uh, books I've read. And then it's coming back out into this fictional narrative. So, but for me, I just remember what it was be in Baghdad 2006 to be on the receiving end of an ambush. And then I take those feelings and emotions and apply them directly to the page. Yeah. So there's no filter. And I think people, even if they don't know my background, uh, that resonates with them, they can sense it in the page because it feels so primal and visceral. Yeah. And that's because it's coming from a real place.

SPEAKER_04 48:04

So when you're writing a protagonist, do you start with then the moral code of the character, you think?

SPEAKER_01 48:09

Or no, I start with what they're what they need to do to move the plot forward. Yeah. Um, and so I know, okay, James Reese is going to be the protagonist. He's the driving force behind all of this. Okay, he needs a foil. Okay, who is that? Uh, or multiple. Uh, and then he needs, okay, maybe he needs some help from people along the way that have to have skills that he doesn't have and personality traits to differentiate them from one another. So they all have to be different. Um, so I know that coming going in, but I don't know them yet. And I get to know them when I put them in conversation as well.

SPEAKER_04 48:41

So through discovery, through other characters, you just like we get to know each other through a conversation.

SPEAKER_01 48:46

Wow. And I get to know my characters. Like I know, hey, so-and-so's the head of the KGB, so-and-so is a Russian assassin or whoever I have. So I know what they're gonna do in the story, and I know if they're good, bad, or indifferent, but I don't know them. And then I put them in conversation, then I get to know them, then therefore, just like we're having a conversation now. So essentially the reader is getting to know these characters the same way I am, because I'm writing this dialogue, but it's not that part's not plotted out. The story's plotted out, but none of the dialogue is plotted out. And so for me, getting to know these characters through dialogue is one of the most fun parts because also that means that most of the research is is done. So I have the research, the setup, all that stuff, and now it's just a conversation.

SPEAKER_04 49:24

What I love about your books is I just the detail, because I I listen to it on the all audio, but it just it paints such like I I love detail. It's like it just the way my brain works when I can really just I can I feel like I'm in the room. Like like you said, the black coffee, like I could smell, you know, like like like with all the honey in it, all the stuff. It's like it's like I wonder what that smells like, or the rooms or the characters, or just uh, you know, the heat, or there's always I feel like the elements when you write is is a character as well within the story of like because it's and it and I I I'm guessing now that just talking to you about this, like because you've lived it and the heat would be a character within or you know, that you have something you have to deal with daily. You know, it it psychologically is affecting you. It's you know, it breaks you down in certain ways, but you got this brilliant way of of just uh it's these little details that you would never even in your like your cases that come. Yeah, it's like the detail in the thing and like your pictures of like the revolvers and just the and the trucks and the all that like it's like but I I I don't I don't know another author that does that in that like in your way. There's each author like Clancy, they have their styles of do it, but you have such a way, and I think it's because you lived it, right? I mean Clancy, what's it was what was his background?

SPEAKER_01 50:43

Was he so he was oh insurance and uh yeah after the first book was Hunt for It October 1984. So he didn't have like uh Yeah, no, he's just a uh an enthusiast.

SPEAKER_04 50:52

Wow, that's so crazy because again, his he pulled you in on that, but you you lived this yeah, you know, this life and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 51:00

Yeah, but I I love using um gear to tell a story as well. So that's where the detail, some of that detail comes in. Because for me, if I see somebody and let's say they're uh let's say maybe a little bit older and they've got a leather belt on and jeans and maybe some uh some boots and okay, that tells me something. And I see maybe a shirt and it has an emblem on it of some sort, okay. That tells me something, some kind of sunglasses they're wearing, okay, the type of hat they're wearing, what that looks like. Uh, all right. And then do they have tattoos, not tattoos? Okay, got it. Uh leather belt, okay, leather holster, cocked and locked 1911. Okay, that tells me something different than somebody else with uh, let's say somebody else in flip-flops and shorts and okay, tattoos are no, whatever type of glasses there. Oh, gators, okay, gotcha. Okay, hat on backwards, okay, boom, boom, boom. Oh, let's see this kind of belt. Oh, okay, like nylon belt, maybe a kydex holster, striker fire pistol. Like that tells me something else about the the time that they came up, where they've trained, what their level of experience is. Um, so that tells me something, just like a car tells me something. That's why James Reese drives a land cruiser. That's what I drove in the SEAL team. Yeah, uh, just because I saw them used in uh Iraq and Afghanistan and then other places around the world. So uh so I I love a land cruiser. So FJ 62. So that's the same thing that uh that James Reese drives in the books and in the TV show. Um and actually Chris Pratt got to back it into me in uh episode three of the first season and got in a little shootout with him. So that was pretty that was pretty cool. Had to tell them that uh this would have ended up differently if it uh happened in real life. So, you know, yeah uh so that was cool. And it was cool to see how they did the bullets too, how they did like the bullet holes in the windows. Uh and that was, you know, I think they can do it visual effects, of course, too. But uh these were the I don't know if you've seen it this way, so the dash, and they have these little like metal tubes like taped to the bottom of the that dash so the camera can't see a little charge in the bottom with the ball bearing. So I had to wear my my gators and so they wouldn't get glass in my eyes. So I'm shooting out and Chris is shooting in, and there's somebody off to the side with like an iPad type thing, and they're like hitting the little charges, and those are going up and sending the ball bearings through the windshield, and uh, and that was pretty cool. And they wouldn't let me do that crash. Um, and I was like, I'm gonna maybe see if I can handle this. And then I saw it, and it was like a harder in the show. It was like a harder crash than it even seems in the show, and I saw it. I'm like, oh, I'm glad they didn't let me do that. And uh the guy who doubled me for that was Mick Rogers, though. Yeah, stunt man Hollywood who doubled Mel Gibson jumping off the building in Lethal Weapon, handcuffed to that uh businessman. Yeah, yeah. And uh, so that's Mick Rogers, and he was awesome. It was really cool to have somebody uh double you that you know doubled Mel Gibson in one of your favorite movies, Lethal Weapon. And uh, there's some Lethal Weapon vibes in this book in fourth option, by the way. So for uh for fans of that movie.

SPEAKER_04 53:29

How do you how did you write such like a dangerous man without glamorizing the wound that made him dangerous?

SPEAKER_01 53:37

Yeah, I mean, maybe there is some of that. I don't know, but maybe it's the loss, and we all can identify with loss.

SPEAKER_04 53:43

Um and so that's really loss humanized him in such a Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:46

I mean, we're all gonna experience it, or we're all have experienced it in one way, shape, or form. Um, it all impacts us, so it's not really glamorous. You can't really glamorize a loss.

SPEAKER_04 53:56

Because it's so I I feel like it's just such an honest, it just seems very honest, you know.

SPEAKER_01 54:01

Yeah, I mean, I try that's all I can do um is uh is write from that place, never write from a place of hey, what's gonna sell? Yeah, or is a short chapter better than a long chapter today, or uh how am I gonna alienate certain portion of the readership? If I say this, I never think of any of those things. It's always about the story if I do that.

SPEAKER_04 54:16

People coming like, maybe you shouldn't.

SPEAKER_01 54:18

No, and I didn't know if I stepped into publishing what it would be like. But my experience is my only thing I knew about agents was um Jerry Maguire, Californication, and Entourage. That's all I knew about agents. Show me the money. Nothing, yeah, nothing else. And my agent has never given me one bit of advice on how what to write, or never even hinted at anything, and neither has my publisher editor, Emily Bessler. It is 100% complete creative control with no direction whatsoever. And I like that because if I was to listen to them or they were to give me advice, now I have to take up bandwidth thinking about okay, uh, how much political capital do I have with either one of them? Um, what if this idea doesn't work out? Let's say they give me an idea and I use it and it doesn't hit, doesn't work. Then now I'm like, ugh, now there's animosity that's built up. And I'm like, I knew I shouldn't have done that, yeah, you know, type of a thing. So that doesn't exist because they never give me anything like that. But but I haven't thought of it in that way before. But I think it it's hard to glamorize a loss. And you don't, I mean, why would you want to do that anyway? But or try to, um, because it's uh it's it's something that's that that's obviously so so primal, so visceral, and we're all going to experience it. And we probably all have experienced it in one way, shape, or form, and you're bringing that to your experience as you read the book. So I think that probably probably humans him and uh humanizes him and uh doesn't glamorize the rest of it because he's so rooted in that loss in the first book.

SPEAKER_04 55:40

When when the when the mission tempo goes quiet, what um what was the the hardest part um to to transition back into normal life?

SPEAKER_01 55:50

Yeah. So this was so for me, I got I got off lucky. Uh meaning I had gotten to a certain stage where I knew that last diploma to Iraq would be the last time I'd ever tactically maneuver guys in the battlefield again. And you knew. Yeah, because I was a lieutenant commander at the time, so in 04, so that's a major in the other services. And that would my last from then it was a staff job. And if I stayed in, I'd come back maybe as an exo, then another staff job, maybe another staff job, and then maybe back as a commanding officer.

SPEAKER_04 56:16

So would you be in like Judge's character then at that time?

SPEAKER_01 56:18

Well, what's that?

SPEAKER_04 56:19

Judd, Judd who played uh Black Burn. Yeah, yeah. You would be in like Black Burn.

SPEAKER_01 56:23

Yeah, yeah. Except he never really got to go out. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 56:26

Yeah, yeah. They they kept, I know, I wanted him to get out a little bit. Yeah, yeah. And when he did get, he I know why.

SPEAKER_01 56:30

Because the guys, the guys working on that show weren't very weren't fans of the officer community in in many cases. Yeah um, so uh that's that was that was fun. I talked to Biz about that of two times, but you know, look at you.

SPEAKER_03 56:44

The judge is like, why did I always gotta stay inside?

SPEAKER_01 56:46

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, that was the last time that I would ever be in that position, like tactical level position. After that, you move up to what's called an operational level position. Uh, then the strategic level position is way above that. But um, but I would never be that person on the battlefield again. I'd always be back in that tactical operations center, which is not where I excel, um, or in garrison or in a staff job. So I think in life in general, it's important to know your capabilities and limitations. And I clearly know mine are uh good on the battlefield, not so much for garrison. Yeah. And I just a lot of that comes, I think. I mean, who knows, maybe it was just me and nothing influenced it outside. But yeah, if it there was outside influence, it certainly was popular culture. And it certainly was Black Sheep Squadron and uh and Robert Conrad's portrayal of Pappy Boynton coming back, grabbing beers with the boys, getting in fights, like stealing things, you know, like like that certainly was my style of leadership. And I think a lot of that came from Black Sheep Squadron back in the day. Um, but uh anyway, it's uh it's yeah, it's important to know those limitations, those capabilities, and where you excel. So point being, I was very lucky that I knew that time was over. And I also then I went to BUDS as our uh operations officer, which is like a COO of a company, like managing day-to-day operations. And I wasn't taking guys downrange anymore. That part of my life was over. I knew I was gonna get out in a few years, and I started looking ahead and uh started writing in December of 2014. Um, so when I had like a year and a half or so left. And uh and I saw when I was in BUDS, uh so many people get out and have a hard time with it. Meaning they built this foundation in the SEAL teams and they tried to leave, but they never really left.

SPEAKER_03 58:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:25

Uh they didn't build on that foundation, they stayed in it. Like their feet were in it. Yeah, their feet were like stuck in that cement rather than like, okay, I built this and now on the outside, nothing's ever gonna be the SEAL teams again. Yeah. And but a lot of people that I knew tried, tried to find that feeling, that same thing that they felt in the SEAL teams on the outside, and that's not gonna happen. And uh, so for me, I realized, okay, foundation's built, time to move on. I know exactly what I want to do next, and now it's time to build. Uh, so so I felt very fortunate. And I also made a uh made a physical move because I wanted to make a physical and psychological break with the military. So we moved from Coronado, California, up to the mountains in Park City, Utah.

SPEAKER_04 59:04

I mean, what you I mean you you scored there, buddy. So that's like that's like that. That's God's country up there. Now, what what does what does peace look like for somebody that's trained for war?

SPEAKER_01 59:14

Uh, you know, I think it's important it's uh if you were to always be kind of hyper-vigilant, meaning uh the same way as you're, I don't know, moving, I don't know, even not even moving through a house because you're pretty like calm doing that when you're good at it. I guess you're in the I don't know, flow state's a weird, I don't like that term, but um, but it's uh but that's your that you're that's you're playing your game. You're playing your you're in the Super Bowl uh type of a type of a thing. You trained up for it, you're on the field, you're on the field. And uh so but that piece is in a very important part of it because that's that yin and yang. And actually it plays into this this book, fourth option. And I haven't really thought of it in these terms before instead I until I started thinking about the fourth option and the theme. Each book has its own theme. And uh, and this is really abandonment and despair, but also purpose and hope. So it's that yin and yang. So it's that being able to flip that switch, but not being realizing that, hey, now we're home and I don't need to be hyper-vigilant right here. I don't need to be like clearing my house as I go through it, like playing with the kids, type of a thing. Like that's not what I'm what I'm doing right here. It's being able to flip that switch. And I was always very good at that for whatever reason. Um, I mean, one time I remember I came home and I was, I was not, but it was only lasted a couple days. Uh, and my wife was like, and it was coming up really off a very uh uh dynamic deployment to Iraq in 2005, 2006. And uh I was working for this cohort action unit with the with the CIA at the time. So my team went back and I stayed behind because I was attached to this uh this this this unit and and away from my team for a bit, and I just stayed. And finally my CO called and said, You get on this next plane after this time, get to the plane waiting, get to that plane, get on this plane. You are coming back. Yeah. And I was like, Oh, so I got home from map and my head was still in a rack because I knew that the that team that I was just with at the agency was still going out every night doing this job, and I thought I should be there. And uh, and my wife was like, What's wrong with you? And I'm like, Well, and I, you know, told her she's like, snap out of it. I'm like, Oh, yeah, I guess I guess that's it. That's it. We all need a good thing in our life, which is like obviously I'm not there, there's nothing I can do to change it. So just uh, and that was the only time uh that I ever had the slightest bit of an issue coming back. Um, but uh, but I got snapped out of that pretty quick.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:29

Is there a difference between dangerous and and being useful?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:32

Uh I mean, I think you've you've got to be dangerous, you gotta be uh prepared. I mean, we always are it's our responsibility to guard this gift of life. Yeah, um, and then it's our responsibility to protect our spouse, our kids. Yeah. Um, so that's just a very natural thing. And so in order to do that, you have to be dangerous.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:49

I agree. And it's and I think it's such these days, it's so it's such a missing part. Like there's a quote, um, I'd rather be a gardener, a warrior in a gardener than a gardener in a war. And it is true, and even more so, like once I've had kids and and and and just thinking about my own mortality, I the only time I ever thought about death was uh once I had kids. I've talked about this before, but it's it's it's that that the feeling I get inside of thinking, if there ever arms away, or or or or like you know, what what would I would be capable of doing? But it's uh it worries me too, just the the way that society is these days, that it just there's we would get our buttons get great out if we were in World War II, but this was their generation that would go there. And I think for so many reasons of just that that connection to country, that connection to to what what America is. Um it's it's something that I feel like the guys from your generation and even the generation before really were just these this warrior mindset and it and it was i it it it allowed young men to uh really connect in that way and and see like it is okay to be dangerous um dangerous and useful. It is okay to um that Jordan Peterson said he's like I want to raise uh monsters and then keep them how to teach them how to control it. Um I think maybe I'm paraphrasing it, like some some some sort of thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:22

And I and I it wherever that maybe not be a monster, not a monster, but he's I think he did say something like that.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:27

Yeah, but I know the essence of it is like teach like uh be capable.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:33

Be capable that's the word I'm capable of be an asset, be capable, um, have the skills you need to protect your family. Um that's it, that's you used to have to. You used to have to do that. Yeah. And now only very recently in human history have you been able to give that uh responsibility up to the state, uh essentially. And also when you talk about those previous generations, they had to invest in this country, they had to invest something of themselves in this country. Um, and really after World War II, that started to degrade, meaning you can uh be a citizen in this country and not invest anything, you can just take. And I think that is when we talk about danger and we talk about those things that are destroying us maybe from the inside. Um, kind of uh kind of a uh in parallel to that, um, we have a citizenry that doesn't need to invest, meaning you don't have to join the military, you don't have to uh join, do something that uh you have to don't have to start a business, you don't have to do any of these things that you used to have to do because there is this cushion, because there's this net, um, because you know that there's this nanny state that's gonna take care of you. And a lot of people have been uh been trained to uh to think of the government as owing them something and this country is owing them something rather than them owing the country something for the options and opportunities that we have because of all those people who sacrificed uh so much for us so we can be here today on this podcast. Yeah, you pursuing your dreams as an actor, me pursuing mine as an author. Um that's because of sacrifice. That's because uh people before us invested in this experiment called America, and a lot of people don't have to invest at all and don't even think of it in those terms, don't even think of it like that anymore. They just think of it as a take what's owed them.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:10

Yeah, and it's so instant. It's like you press a button and you and you you get you get it. And I think it's too the the just the lack of being around people anymore. Like we we people don't talk on the phone or or like you know, it's so awful.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:26

And there's a quote, I forget who said it. It was uh does the world owe you a living or do you owe it a life? Or something like that. I forget who said that. Uh I'm going way back in the memory banks on that one. Going back to like junior high on on that one. But uh, but yeah, there's that that's uh there's uh a lot of truth to that.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:44

Now, just switching gears slightly, so Chris Walker and the fourth option. Um, why did he need to exist outside the the James Reese?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:53

Yeah, well, the uh at first it was my looking at uh Tom Clancy from the fan perspective. It's uh Hunt for October, it's Redstorm Rising, it's Patriot Games, it's Cardinal of the Kremlin, it's Clear and Present Danger. And uh I love Patriot Games so good, so good. I was actually over and saw the um the ceremony of the keys in uh in London at the Tower of London. It's like a private ceremony thing, and the the FBI guys from the embassy um got me and my wife in there when we were in in London. They invited us to this thing. And uh so the beef eaters in there, they take you out and they do this thing. It's where password comes from. It's really special to uh to be invited to see this thing at night. I think they only missed two in the last 600 years. I might be a little off. People can get in the comments and tell me how far off I am. So uh please spend your time doing that. Don't read it, guys. And uh, and and it and it was really cool to see. But that's where we get password. They pass the word, they lock the gate. Oh wow. Um, I think two, like once during the blitz, and I think once during COVID, they uh it that didn't happen. Perhaps I might be off on that. But there is a plaque inside, and there are two honorary beef eaters. It's a long plaque, goes all the way down the wall. There's only two names on it at the top. And one is the the beef eater guy because he keeps them uh in the gin. And uh the other one, Tom Clancy. No way because he spent some time there writing. And then there's another private bar also in the Tower of London, and uh we went in there too, and he had he gave them this like I'm not gonna accept the name, some spear like ancient spear thing, and it's all refurbished and it's there, and it's a gift from Tom Clancy to the to the beef eaters. So that's what kind of drink did you have there? What did I have there? I think I mostly had beers there. Yeah, I think I must have had the beers. Beers are great over there. Yeah, they had uh I think they had one that uh was like their thing, and I think yeah, so I did that. But uh but it was fantastic. But point being I saw Tom Clancy get to the early 90s and branch out. He still had these flagships, but then he started doing co-written thrillers, then he started doing nonfiction. So we did uh Guddy and uh Studying Command and a guided tour series. So I had my first co um uh co-written uh nonfiction with James Scott, incredible guy, Pulitzer Prize finalist, historian. Uh did that about a year and a half ago. That's targeted Beirut, about Beirut 1983. Uh, the second one in that series will come out in the first quarter of 2027. So we're working on that right now. So that's Tom Clancy model, and then he branched off into co-written uh thrillers. And uh this is my first in that at MP Woodward, amazing guy, uh, author of The Handler, which is novel I really loved. Asked him if he wanted to collaborate on this. But uh the idea was that I could have two books come out in one year. Yeah. This took so much longer than I thought. And uh so now there's still one, but eventually I'm going to uh this book should have come out a few months ago, and James Reese 8 should be coming out right now, but uh just took a lot longer than I thought because I'm never gonna let something get out there unless it's ready and unless it's done. It has to be the best work that can possibly be. It's got to be better than the last book. Uh that's kind of packed with my readers, is that I'm gonna be constantly improving in my craft. That's what we want to do. Anybody can seal teams. I want to be a better leader and officer today than I was yesterday. I want to be a better author today than I was yesterday. I want the next book to be better than this one. I want the next TV show to be better than the one that's about to come out in October based on true believer. I want to be a better citizen, husband, father today than I was yesterday. So it's a ninja constant improvement.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:59

That ninja mindset to uh like you better be a little bit better every day.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:02

I have to.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:03

Have to, have to. So uh so the idea was to create these other universes because I have all these stories I want to write. And uh I'll never have time to write them all. Yeah, but uh, this is my first foray down that that path. And uh there's a few more. Actually, this came from uh one of my original ideas that I put on a table in 2014 when I was coming up with the when I was leaving the getting ready to leave the military. Uh I decided to go with a terminal list, but the fourth option just never left me. And then in the summer of 2021, we're filming Terminal List in LA, and uh I started thinking about some things outside the terminal list universe that I can develop. And so I went back to the fourth option, built that thing out, came up with a 40-page PowerPoint presentation um as like a pitch, and then it started getting some traction in Hollywood, and uh I saw it start to morph. Yeah, meaning we got a showrunner attached to it. Then there were two of them. So there were two projects uh at the same time that were outside the terminal list universe, and uh we were working on this other one, and I saw it start to morph. And I have no problem when I see the terminal list different because I know you're telling a story on screen, it's a different medium through which to tell this story. First blood of the movie, very different than first blood the book, both fantastic. Um, so it doesn't bother me when I see that change because there's still that primary source, there's still my book that's the best that I could do at the time. Yeah, and so people can still go back to that. But if it was just an idea, just a treatment, just an outline, then and then and you know how many people are get involved in scripts and it goes all the way to the top, like for you page you see. It's just craziness. So uh so I saw that and I thought, you know what, I'm gonna grab these back if I get the chance. And I had a chance to pull them both back uh and take control again. So then I decided to turn the fourth option into my first uh novel outside the James Reese Terminalist universe, and and that's uh that's Chris Walker.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:38

What do you think with Chris Walker that you're able to explore that you weren't able to explore with with Reese?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:43

Reese is uh like he was a family man before he lost his family in that in that first book. So Chris Walker is, even though he shares a similar background, and for me it's not strange to have characters with similar backgrounds because everybody that I met in the SEAL teams was different.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:56

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:56

We shared the experience of Buds, but we're still different people. So it's uh so that yeah, we have a certain skill set because we train up together, but we're not the exact same person. So uh so for me it wasn't odd, but I still wanted to differentiate him as much as I possibly could from Reese. So um, so he is an orphan. He has been abandoned also in Afghanistan um by seeing us leave the way we did. And a lot of us had feelings of abandonment um because of what was invested there, because of the friends that we lost there, the people who came home that are still dealing with the physical and emotional trauma of the that battlefield. Um, so so there's abandonment issues like I I mentioned earlier. But uh, but he is the modern incarnation of the stranger comes to town western. So this is uh uh have gun will travel. Remember that west show. It was first a radio show. Huge Western was oh nice, nice. So then it was yeah, then it was a TV show, late 50s into the 60s, and uh so that really forms the foundation of this. I have great memories watching that show with my dad and then watching other things like When a Dead Or Alive with Steve McQueen, the rifleman Chuck Connor. So all of those things that I watched growing up, and then Pale Rider, uh Hyplanes Drifter, uh Magnificent Seven, Shane. Um Change one of every favorites. Oh, nice, yeah. Nice. So this is this has the DNA of all of those. So it's my modern interpretation of the Stranger Comes to Town narrative. But instead of jumping on a horse and riding to town, yeah, Chris Walker gets in his Volkswagen bus, pop top camper, Westy from the 80s, and uh has his Belgian Malinois next to him. And the and the dog is there because one is a nod to those dogs that save so many of our friends' lives downrange over the years, but also to show that Chris Walker doesn't have any other friends. Yeah. Like that, his dog is his companion, is his friend, is his lifeline. Um, where James Reese has a lot of friends, yeah, people that owe him favors, people he owes favors. Like it's very uh Magnum-esque in that, in that sense. But Chris Walker, he's alone. And that dog is also represents that. Like that dog is his companion, is his only friend. Uh, and it's and off he goes. In this case, it's New Orleans. I really wanted to have for this series have a city, a town that forms the backdrop where James Reese books are uh geopolitical in nature, all things are happening all over the world and all kind of coalesce at the same time at the end in the penultimate scenes and chapters. But uh, this I wanted a story that had took place in one location primarily. And uh I always wanted to set something in New Orleans just because it I trained there in the SEAL teams outside in Fort Polk and we spent some time on Bourbon Street when I was a new guy, so I had some good memories of that.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:21

Uh and there's just so much uh we did the pilot of Oh, yeah, yeah. You guys filmed it out there. Yeah, that was a great pilot. Yeah, we did the that's when we remember we hired we had Jim Cavizel hired first. Yeah, I do, and then um he got replaced and Dave Boriano showed up. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I remember all the stories. Like, I I'll always remember Max texting us, he'd be like, because they're like, uh, the uh plane door isn't working today. We we've got to shut down. And Max was like, We're all going home. I'm like, what? And we're like, yeah, because at the time, what was going on? And uh then we get called down, and I'm like, there's no way I finally book a pilot of my dreams, and it's like and it at the time it was the most expensive pilot, like there was yeah, unless Moonvez was like, I'm in on this. Wow, and uh I think it was like 14 million or something, and then we'd filmed for 10 days and we had to start from scratch.

unknown 1:14:10

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:10

Oh, so it was like that's huge. Oh people don't realize that's where they just go, we're done. Yeah, like it's over. Yeah, like you got your shot and your losses, yeah, and it's over. And thank God for this Moonvez and and Viz and everybody that that just rally around and and um and then David came in and we were off to the racist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He I'll always remember he like him showing up on like the tarmac, and uh he got out of like the car and he walks up, he's got sides in his hands, and Chulak had that rule that was like no sides on set. And he's like, uh, no sides on set. He goes, No sides on set. And and Borianist looks at Chulak, he goes, dude, I got hired like 30 minutes ago. He's like, he's like, okay, all right, yeah, yeah. It was it was great. It's so cool. It's so crazy to look back, and I I gotta say, man, I absolutely love Terminal List. I think, you know, uh uh Chris Pratt's portrayal and just the the what I love about the the show is the stillness. There's some great, you know, the when the things that aren't said, I think that there's so much going on. And I really love Dark Wolf. I thought Taylor Kit Kitch did a hell of a job and Hemsworth and who's the tall big guy that uh Tom Hopper.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:20

Dude, he's he's awesome. Well, he was great. So good is Rafe. Yeah, Rafe Hastings.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:26

That had such a different look and feel. It reminded me of like Ronan like that was exactly one of our comps.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:32

We're like, we want this to be looked different and feel different than Terminalist, and Ronan was one of the things. No way. Okay, Ronan is one of my favorite movies. But I'm gonna tell him to tell the uh showrunner right after this and he's gonna be fired up instead of that.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:42

And I was and it's so Dark Wolf isn't coming back.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:44

Well, we'll see.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:45

It's so good. I know, it's so and Taylor Kitch is phenomenal in it. And like it's and I'm a huge uh I I've been passing and met Taylor Kitch a bunch of times, but what he does for the community, and like he's just a stud, man. He's a great guy, he's a stud and a great actor, and and that's a hell of a responsibility that he's taken since he's played, yeah, you know, from uh Lone Survivor. Yeah, but I think he's one of the guys that has been such a leader in that of like how to do it right and how to represent the community and show up all the time. Um, um, and for for you in in your sort of journey, um, these are some questions I always I always ask uh with each interview. Who who's been your North Star just in your life in general?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:24

Oh, I mean, my mom, my dad, my wife, of course, my kids. Um, I had uh some mentors from the special operations community uh later in life, not earlier in life, but a little bit later in life, like right before I got into the SEAL teams, uh, Army Special Forces guys from Vietnam who passed on uh a lot to me, mostly about how to think logically about things. Um it is, especially if you're not teaching it in school. It's so true. If you're not teaching that in in school, think without emotion kids aware of it. Like, how do you think how to think is really important, not what to think, but uh but how to think, if that makes sense. So those guys uh really taught me how to think at a very uh important time in my life. I don't know where I would be without without them. And then I think the memory of my grandfather like was a guiding force as well, just uh knowing that he was uh was out there, what he sacrificed uh for me and for the and what that generation sacrificed for the rest of it of us. Um I think that's been a lot of people. Uh not yet, not yet. But I'm sure there are pieces of him throughout because there's some because everything that I do, or I mean all of us do, it's uh is is all is our experience, our life experience right here. So everything that we're doing has all sorts of connections to to the past and to our past experiences, and through that to the experiences of other generations that have built our foundation. So it's uh so there he's in there somewhere. I just don't want to point to it because it's such a uh a visceral primal part that's always with me.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:52

You dropped an amazing quote during uh the earlier, but I always asked what is a quote that you've you've lived by your entire life?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:00

The one right well, uh that I that one I do I do love, but that was specific to that that other part of the conversation. But um it's it's something I there's two, and uh one that I talk to my kids about is never miss an opportunity to make somebody's day. And I think that uh we have to look uh, you know, just it doesn't mean you have to go running around like saving the day, type of a thing, like a superhero, but uh but just do those those little things, the holding the door, the walking somebody across the street, seeing somebody struggling getting the groceries into their car, an older person, whatever, whatever it is, doesn't matter what it is. Um hitting the like button. I try to do that as many people as I possibly can. Just hit that like button, say thank you to people that say they bought the book or they watched the show. I try to get on there every night and and do that um because it means so much so much to me that uh that people have taken time out of their lives to to watch the show or or read the book. So never miss an opportunity to make somebody's day. Uh and it, I mean, it worked out. I didn't even think of it this way uh at the time. But uh the reason there is a TV show is because Jared Shaw was getting out of the military and uh he I found out he was getting out, and I was the operations officer at BUDS. He was a first phase instructor, and I asked him to come in my office and uh he asked him what he was gonna do. He said, told me what he wanted to do. I introduced him to people in the private sector, and then I followed up later just to make sure everything was going okay, and then I totally forgot about it. And uh, as I was writing, and that's about the same time, I'm starting to write the terminal list, and I write my first line and I think who's gonna star in this masterpiece? Because of a chas a child of the 80s, that's you know just how I think our generation thinks. And uh I thought, ah, Chris Pratt has needs to do this because it was pre-Guardians, pre-Jurassic, and it was just Parks and Rec and Zero Dark 30 as a seal. So I got to see him as Andy Dwyer in Parks and Wreck and how different he was in Zero Dark 30 as a seal. So I thought, who's this generation's kind of uh a Tom Hanks type of a person who's done comedy and needs to do something else? And so for those listening or watching all throughout the 80s who are of a different generation, uh Tom Hanks did comedies through the 80s, and then he branches out in early 90s with Philadelphia, and then he can do whatever he wants after that, essentially. So I'm like, who's that person? Uh I know, I know it's Chris Pratt. He needs to do that for his career. He needs to play somebody darker. Uh Chris Pratt will star. And then Jared calls me about six or seven months before the book comes out, and uh, I hadn't talked to him in five years, and he says, asked if I remembered him. Of course I did, asked, remembered, asked if I remembered what I did for him in the SEAL teams. I did not. He told me what I did for him, and uh, and then he said, I heard you have a book coming out. And I said, Yeah, it's coming out in a few months. I can send you an early copy if you'd like. And and he said, I'd like that, but I'd like to give it to a friend of mine. And I said, Yeah, who's that? And he said, Chris Pratt. So sent it to Jared. Jared read it, made sure it wasn't horrible, gave it to Chris. Chris read it and then called the next week and wanted to option it. So God blessed. That was crazy.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:42

That's crazy how it works like that. And just going on what you said, how you know, just you know, make someone just go out of your way to make someone just never miss an opportunity to make somebody's day. Yeah, and well, I I really mean it, man. You you've made my day by by I I know you're on a book tour, I know your schedule is crazy, and it means so much that you told me. It really is, man. And um, you're just one of the guys, you're just like, and even just saying that how you went out of your way for for that Kater Raiden and my stepfather, and you you know, uh the success that you have is is uh is so well deserved, and I really mean it. And I I love uh listening to your books and I love seeing the success you have. I love seeing the success of the show, and then seeing the guys that worked on our show continue to go on. Kenny's over there, yeah. Kenny, like you know, and and you know, Kenny's one of our best writers. So he wrote some of the best episodes that I ever got to do. I think his his di I think his dialogue is just it's just again, it's it's it's very honest, and he finds moments in the stillness. I always love his stuff. It's like when his characters aren't aren't saying anything. He had a great episode in uh Dark Wolf. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Dark Wolf, I keep saying I want to say Lone Wolf, but Dark, I think it was episode four or yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:50

And I forget I I conflate now because we have uh uh true believer uh terminal list season two coming out October 21st, and then the Dark Wolf and the same team that we had for both. So I kind of conflate some of the names, but yeah, it's uh Frog, is it Frog? I don't say the name of it because it might be the other it might be True Believer, but uh shout out to Kenny Sheard, amazing guy. He's done and uh and then the other I'll just say the other one because I did tee up two quotes. Um so the other one is and it's not the Han Solo quote from from uh Empire Strikes Back, um, which was never tell me the odds because people are gonna tell you the odds. So my take on it is never pay attention to the odds because someone, if you tell someone you want to be an actor in Hollywood, they're like, Oh yeah, uh-huh. Hey, do you know the odds of that? You know, you're gonna be waiting tables and yeah, you might be for a while. Yeah, um, but you're never gonna know if you can do it unless you go out there and try you 100% won't do it if you don't go out and give it a shot. That's a that's for sure. Um, the same thing with uh with with buds or becoming a seal. You tell people you want to be a seal. Oh, do you know the odds of that? Uh uh 80% are gonna, what are you gonna do when that doesn't work out? That's like like even if they don't say it, that's the look that you get. Same thing. You don't know how hard it is to be a published author. Do you know how hard it is to be a number one New York Giant's best selling author? Well, I mean, I yeah, it's hard. That's why anything is hard that's worthwhile.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:58

Well, you need a you need a backup plan.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:00

Never pay attention. Yeah, yeah. Backup plans, people like to say that. Yeah, you gotta go all in and uh and give it a give it a shot. And then you know, yeah. Then when you're 90 and you're looking back, you're not wondering if you could have been an actor, and you're not wondering if you could have been an author, not wondering if you could have been a seal. Uh, you know, yeah, you know, and so you're like, hey, I gave it a shot and I didn't make it. Yeah, and that's okay. That is okay, that's life. Um, but wondering if you could have, I think that's uh you know, that's the thing that you can prevent earlier on by not paying attention to the odds, by not paying attention to those people who are gonna tell you how hard something is because maybe they didn't do it and wish they had, or whatever that is, or they they don't have the the the uh the the clarity or the mental fortitude to give it a shot, whatever that is, but it doesn't matter, you know, set that aside and uh go give it a shot. So at least when you're 90, yeah, you'll know. You'll know. So never pay attention to the odds.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:51

My dad always taught me, he said pain from regret or pain from discipline. And that was his he sort of instilled that in me as a young age. And when he was passing away and I got to spend a lot of time with him, I'm like, how should you have uh any regrets? And he was like, I don't, son. The only thing he said, which was very sweet, he was like, I wish I'd spend more time, you know, with you guys because of work and and whatnot. He's like, he's like, but that's you have to my daddy can't beat yourself up over that, you know, because he worked five jobs and you know, and then we just and my mom was very career driven, but it was just he didn't like we survived because of him. Yeah, you know, he had mallet hands, like he was a a a carpenter, he was you know, a a bricklayer, he was a tailor, like he just anything with a hands working. He just and he from that he just couldn't he put he put bread on the table. We didn't grow up with a lot of money, but that I was like, Pops, like that's we should never like have regret over that. Like we wouldn't have the life that we had, or I wouldn't have had the opportunity if it wasn't for your discipline to get up every day and choose to. I'm gonna miss this moment right now, but they're gonna have this. And I think that's such a a great thing. Well, listen, man, I know you're on a busy uh book tour. Um, I really mean it. Thank you so much. It was a little chaotic, all trying to link this up, but I'm so so grateful. I've been looking forward for this uh for a minute, man. And uh and I hope we get to work together on something again, man. We gotta hang out more, we need to have some more drinks. Appreciate it. We'll do it, man. If you're in South Carolina, brother, we'll uh take you out and uh I'll take you fishing. Let's do it. I appreciate you, brother. Thank you so much. Thank you. Awesome. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and follow. Thank you to Mr. Jack Carr um for coming onto the podcast. Uh thank you enough, brother. Um that's it. I hope you guys have a wonderful week ahead and see you this coming Friday and Friday. America.