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Books4Guys Podcast - Dr. John Graham · Books4Guys

• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in Orange County near Disneyland.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because I saw where you have taught at CalBerkeley, USC, Irvine.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't sure exactly where you were located between everyone.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I also lived in San Diego for uh about 10 years.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: I've actually had a couple of people on the podcast over the last month or so that have recently moved to San Diego and they were like, this is the best place ever.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: What they say about the weather, it's all correct.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, we've been through Nashville too, during cross-country trips and stuff.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: So no, it's a good spot.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's a good spot to come visit.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: But John, no, I'm, man, it is a pleasure to have you on the Books for Guys podcast today.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: I've been looking forward to this conversation, primarily because you do a lot of different things.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: You teach at universities, you have both fiction and nonfiction books published.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: You're a photographer and have been all over the place.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm excited just to ask you a bunch of questions about just what you enjoy doing and all the cool things that you've you've built and have experienced in your career.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, John, if you want to jump right in.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it was funny, I was asking you before we got on here how you like how people refer to you by, because you were explaining to me, obviously, you've got your PhD.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, Dr.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Graham, I'm sure a lot of your students call you.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then you were letting me know your fiction books, you go by Lawrence, and then your nonfiction, you go by John.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: But John, how did you, I'd love to just know your story, just your career and and what led to you getting into the art of writing books, and I'd love to know more about your photography too.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm curious to know, just you do both fiction and nonfiction.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Where did the just the ideas and inspirations come from to work on both sides of the of the spectrum there?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, just real a quick diversion here.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what my students called me.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you don't want to know.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't want to know.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, I guess I I can go back to um 1970.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I finished school and I was uh immediately drafted, and I uh applied for officer candidate school in the Navy.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: This was during the Vietnam War.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I spent four years active duty, nine years in the reserves.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: The reserves were kind to me because they put me through graduate school.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: I got an MBA at San Diego State, and I worked for a company in San Diego that sold oil fill equipment all over the world.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how I got acquainted with international business.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh then I did my doctorate in marketing and anthropology combined because I wanted to focus on international negotiations.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: The company I had worked for, uh it's called Solar Turbines, it's Division of Caterpillar now.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: They had clients from around the world, and negotiation was the major expense of marketing for them.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's what I wanted to study.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: When I went off to graduate school, for my dissertation, I compared how Americans and Japanese negotiate in the 80s.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: Japan was super important.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's still super important.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: It has uh uh other there are other important customers too.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: But that timing was good.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's my first book on negotiating with the Japanese.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote a book trade book based on my dissertation research.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got some books pulled up here, or a few of them anyway.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: What book was that?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I can't remember the most recent name.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: New Japan.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: There's been most of the books are at least an edition or two.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: My textbook in international marketing, I joined that in edition 10, and we're just finishing edition 20 right now.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: So that's really been my most successful book, really.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: And because of the first author, it's the m the most popular book on the topic in the world, and it's been translated into a number of languages.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: My two favorite books right now, one is Charlotte's War, or the abridged edition is called The Hidden Front Line.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: And uh then the other one is on inventive negotiation, and that's called And.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: And both of them have separate stories, but they actually come together.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: All my writing has been on topics related to peace and building peace.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I was spent time in the military during the Vietnam War and got interested in peace, particularly when I was flying toward the toward the Philippines in 1972, and I read the Pentagon Papers.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: And uh that was frightening for me because I was pretty naive at the time politically, and I didn't realize that American presidents actually lie.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know it's quick, right?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: And particularly when it comes to war.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so I learned that lesson that on basically I've been working one of my books is on peace within the family, that's on multi-generational living.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that was my sister's idea, and so we collaborated on that book.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: I have a book called The Global Marketing of Psychoactive Substances, and that's a book on drug policy.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: And what I was trying to get at there was to get beyond the drug war and start talking about drugs in a sensible, evidence-based way.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: And marketing is a big part of it for all the drugs, from cocaine to sugar.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: Happens that of all the different drugs I looked at in that book, sugar is the worst one.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: But that's another story.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: I always wanted to write a novel.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's how I got into Charlotte's warm.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: My mother's name was Charlotte, and when I was drafted, she was very unhappy.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so the book is in a sense dedicated to my mom.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the main points of the book is when you're a soldier or a sailor or an airman, you're taking your whole family with you to the front line.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just you.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: And when I was drafted, I had a wife and a kid, and most of my classmates and also junior officers at UDT 11, some of them were married, but I was the only one with a kid.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so that gave me a different view about responsibility as I went through the military process.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: So that was important.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: So Charlotte's war is kind of autobiographical, but it starts in 1938.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: Trying to understand that war in Vietnam now, how many years later, 50 years later, 60 years later, you really have to start back in 1938 and World War II.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: We were actually Vietnam and the United States, we were on the same side in World War II.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: We were all fighting the Japanese.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so it starts there, and the book goes through the Korean War, and then most of the about half the book is about Vietnam and is slightly autobiographical.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: I talk about UDT UDT SEAL team training and things like that, and what was going on in the war 1972.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of that's the long background.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: I have a couple of kids' books that you can't see there, and those also are oriented toward multi-generational families.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: One is called The Great Squirrel Burglar, and the other one is Imagine Everywhere.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's a book of my photography, and it's trying to encourage folks, grandparents and grandkids, to sit together and think creatively about pictures.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so that's kind of the extent of it.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: I retired in 2010 and I've just been working on the books.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to decide if I'm if I'm gonna do another one, not sure yet.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm I got another one or two in mind.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this is really cool, John, because it's it's funny.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, at someone's episode I just released yesterday, TC Brown, he has a book called Maiden Taiwan, where he was in the war and uh and a military police officer and he tells his story.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I've I've actually learned a lot about this this time frame recently, which has been really interesting just to hear stories and talk about different things.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I would like to dig in a little bit more because you have a unique perspective that I've never discussed with anyone before or had anyone with the perspective that you do talking about marketing with the you wrote, you know, with your nonfiction writing of drugs and and that approach.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Can you, and I don't even know really what question to ask.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: I would just like for you to explain more your thoughts on how you're intertwining those two because it makes sense when you said it, but I've not really had any like I've taken a lot of marketing classes, never had anyone talk about that with drugs and the war on drugs in a political way.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: How did you, I don't know, research that and put your thoughts together to come up with that particular approach?
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I know your interest is marketing and degree, and then obviously being in the military, but can you just talk more about that?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because that really I'm interested to know more.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe the genesis of that was when I was in the Navy, I I did two or three different training programs.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so for my command, at one point I was uh appointed nuclear weapons officer.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, another time they sent me to MP School, which uh the person you had on before talked about that, I'm sure.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: And uh then another one is uh I was appointed, or I was chosen uh by the commanding officer to be the um uh the drug and alcohol program officer.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: So my job there was if someone was having an addiction problem, I was supposed to talk with them and make suggestions.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: I really didn't do any of that, but the first day of the class for drug and alcohol program officers, we had a lieutenant commander giving the presentation, and he said for the U.S.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: Navy, marijuana is practically it's a problem, but it's nothing compared to alcohol.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: Marijuana isn't killing people by overdoses.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: It isn't causing a lot of problems with equipment and things like that, and it's just a much more costlier problem for the U.S.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: Navy circa 1972.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so I thought, you know, that was interesting.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: Marijuana uh was running around the fraternity house I was in in 19 in the late 1960s, and there was conflicts among the brothers about some were smoking, some weren't, and I had to mediate some of those.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: I was uh actually president of my fraternity.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so it seemed that the laws to me didn't make sense.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so I built the book looking at substances that we consume that affect our brain, but that are not necessarily nutritional.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a chapter on salt, on sugar, on caffeine, on alcohol, of course, on marijuana, on cocaine, on opioids.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: It was easy to see in 19 in uh 2016 when I wrote the book that fentanyl was going to be a problem.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then we talked about the designer drugs, we looked at how drugs are handled in other countries, which is very different from the U.S.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: We looked at each chapter, it has a uh uh a little bit of the history of the drug and then and its effects and the damage it it does.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then I took a close look at the marketing, and it ends up the marketing of cocaine and the marketing of sugar, the effects on your brain are actually kind of similar.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: They're both addictive.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Cocaine marketers don't use all the tools that the sugar people have, like mixing it with food and advertising on television.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: But other than that, the personal selling is key in the process for both those drugs.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so we did a comparison of all of them and looked at the overdose deaths and the uh effects on human human health.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Sugar's the worst one.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's not even close.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: And now Kennedy is talking about super processed foods.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's not the problem.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: The problem is sugar.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: But he can't talk about sugar because the sugar companies in the US donate big time, actually to both parties.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: But uh the Republicans.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so he gets in trouble if he's specific.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: But the big problem is added sugar.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: And what's happening that I in to uh 2016 the Ozempic type gr drugs were not available.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: That seems to be an interesting approach, although we're just learning about what the side effects of that approach to reducing obesity and and uh uh the other consequences of sugar consumption.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you know the that may be your next book you need to tackle.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because I I find I find this very fascinating.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: My wife and I are both, we try to be extremely healthy.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: We're both former college athletes, we're always looking at research of caffeine, sugar, processed foods.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're always trying to figure out what's correct, what's not correct.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think your research into it, again, that's why I'm asking these questions, because it's just something I'm personally interested in.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: I just it's when I see people consuming what they consume, you're just sometimes you have to just bite your tongue because you're like, oh, that's just so bad for you.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: But a lot of people just don't know, you know.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's very interesting just how, and I I hate to call people uneducated, but people just don't know, you know, the the real effect some of this stuff's having on them, especially sugar, but it's not broadcasted because you're right, there's so much of it out there and in so many companies that have a foothold and can keep that from, I don't know, getting out, I guess.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: But I just find it extremely fascinating just how unhealthy and bad for your body that stuff can be.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, from my point of view, having looked at all this and across all the drugs and all the laws and all the countries, the solution to the sugar problem is really pretty easy.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: You just put a huge tax on sugar as an ingredient.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: You don't tax consumers directly, and then the companies will be motivated to reduce the sugar in their food processing as long as it's super and I'm talking about a 500% tax.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: And people think that sounds crazy, but that'll change behavior in the United States.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: I also one of the op-eds I've written on on uh sugar is it's just the advertising is just it starts in October with Halloween candy, then it goes to Christmas cakes, and then it goes to Valentine's, and for me, maybe the worst is Girl Scout cookies.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: And having said all this, I must admit that I had uh blueberry muffin with my coffee this morning.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: What is your John?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because now that we're on the subject, I'm curious just your opinion on this, because you I haven't really talked to anyone who's done the research or written a book on this before.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: But why do you think it just seems logical that as a country you would want your people to be more healthy instead of less healthy just from a, you know, we're we're better than the rest of the world approach.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: But it seems like it's the complete opposite.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: We end up being some of the least healthy and obesity just keeps climbing, and then we try to solve it, you know, with the drug, which we're still figuring out, like you said, what are the long-term effects of that?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's okay, maybe maybe it's not.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: But where did we lose?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: I know money plays into it and greed, but where did we lose that, I don't know, I guess that vision of wanting to be the best and and that also being the most healthy?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: What where did we lose that along the way?
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: And is it almost impossible to flip that around?
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's a really good question.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: There is an answer to it.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the problem is CEOs of food companies are compensated based on sales, and they're really focused on shareholder value.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: And CEOs will tell you, listen, I'd like to cut sugar more, but my competitors aren't gonna cut it.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm gonna lose sales.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I I can't cut sugar as an ingredient.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: And sugar is damning in food because it uh teaches us to crave sugar.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really a a a drug addiction, if you like.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: And the CEOs are stuck.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: Their job is to actually keep the value of the company and also increase shareholder value.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: But if they're given a choice, yes, I'd like to reduce the sugar content, but then I'm gonna lose to my competitors, that's where the government has to come in.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: And the government can uh uh enforce that tax because it'll manage companies, and what'll happen is there'll be a sugar bowl on American tables again, but the key is getting it out of the food, and that's that's the way to do it, to tax it.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: And we do that, we tax the hell out of alcohol, and that you can see the effects of taxing alcohol on consumption.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and again, it just seems so simple because it it's almost funny when you see these CEOs of certain companies, they're not eating what they're selling or they're not drinking what they're selling because they know how bad it is.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: There was a big, you know, the big marketing, I guess, flub recently where the CEOs are eating their own burgers, and a couple of them didn't seem to have too good of an expression when they took a bite.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people caught on to that.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: Funny marketing, you know, uh that maybe backfired a little bit.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: But nonetheless, I just again I I just find your work in that space really fascinating because it's just a personal interest of mine.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of people I'm around, you know, are like-minded in that.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it just seems, I don't know, it just it's disturbing.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: It seems like you just want people to be better, but I can see again, yeah, I see where the difficulty is when you it's when it is about money and growth, it really is a challenge at that level.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I have to do some marketing myself.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: So the name of the book is Spiced.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: S-P-I-C-E-D, the global marketing of psychoactive substances.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's available on Amazon, but it's also available for free on the university platform, the University of California platform.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so you can download it for free.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we're doing that as a public service.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad you said that.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: John, just kind of diving into more general questions around your work.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: I know I've had a couple of people on that have written both fiction and nonfiction, and they they talk about the differences between the two.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: And they, and I'm curious to know just your personal experience.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because what I've heard is when you're working on a fiction book, it's just you, your thoughts, and it can almost be while soothing, but it also can be lonely because it's just you, while the nonfiction involves a lot of research, conversations, you're kind of you're talking with people, and then it's a little bit of a different approach, obviously, as you put everything together.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: What is do you prefer working on one type of book over another?
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: And and what are those processes?
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: How do they differentiate for you?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I've only done the one novel.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so the process for all my books version, I forgot you said that.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, that's good.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm happy to that's actually my favorite book of all of them.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: But my process is I think of a uh book as I'm building a house and I do one room at a time, and I just go on to the next room and the next room.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: And uh with the drug book, I you know, each r uh cocaine had a room and tobacco had a room, all that kind of stuff.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's what that's when you think about the process.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: But I also did a lot of research.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: To give you an example, um I was been lucky enough in my teaching career to take a lot of students to a lot of countries.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: I teach international business and we take a one-week trip.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: And on most of those trips, I'll take a jaunt myself.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: And for example, in one of the key incidents in Charlotte's war is in and around Haiphong Harbor in 1972.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: The question was that I'm and it involves uh uh uh frogmen swimming on Russian ships stuck in the harbor because the harbor was blocked with mines, which we know all about mines right now.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: So the the question is uh uh and Haifon Harbor is a river harbor.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not like San Francisco Bay.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: There's a river that runs literally right through it.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so an important detail was how fast the river runs for the swimmers on that operation.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, because it makes a difference how far upriver you can get into the water.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I went to Haiphong and uh I went over to the river and I measured how fast it ran.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: Now you have to consider that if there's a lot of rain upstream, it moves faster.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: But I tried to consider all that and in planning the mission in the book, I needed to do that research.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I also looked at nautical charts.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: I knew that the river was about 25 feet deep, and that was an important consideration.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so in designing that mission uh for that frogman, the research was really important.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing that I was able to research I mentioned that I had been a n a nuclear weapons program officer, and in 1972 all that was secret.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh particularly we had a a uh suit a uh trunk sized uh nuclear weapon and um now all that's out on the internet and uh I don't feel responsible for letting that information out.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: But um I b did research on that as well uh and a lot of the weapons used during the wars.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so for me the task wasn't that different.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: And also, as I mentioned, s particularly Jack's story, that's the Vietnam War story.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: I experienced most of that.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: I was married.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: My wife was living back in San Diego with our little daughter.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: We communicated by mail.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: I won't say that we had sex by mail.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: We did but we didn't have the internet then.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, so I experienced all that family stuff.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: And that really the lesson that taught me that I hadn't thought I was at age twenty-five then is that's when I began to become a responsible person.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: When I had the kid and when I got to twenty-five and and my um the cost of uh uh driver's li uh driver's insurance goes down for males at twenty-five because we start to get our judgment.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: So that really affected the way I think about uh the decision making I was making at that point in time.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: And some of those decisions were tough ones.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: It was, you know, do I choose favor my family or do I favor my country?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: There is also a whole in integrity thing which has come up e even now, or do you do you obey an illegal order or not?
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: And actually what I learned in Officer Candidate School, it was illegal to obey in a legal order.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that makes you responsible if you obey it.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I did a post on Instagram and it had, I think, three f 3.4 million views on Instagram on that topic.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um in the book, the character makes a decision um to disobey and uh risking courts martial and things like that.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure there's so much of that happening right now.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: The military is really unhappy with the orders they're being given.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: The attorneys, military attorneys that used to be involved in that decision making and targeting, most of them were fired by Trump right away.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's really a tough job now, and there's a lot of conflict.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: And you can see it, they just fired the Navy Secretary this last week, and it's not clear exactly why, and it's not clear that anybody's saying it.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: But it all comes most of that comes from Vietnam.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: We had the Mila incident, which younger people don't know about, but American soldiers did awful things, and one was actually prosecuted, found guilty.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: His excuse was, well, I was just following orders, and the courts martial didn't buy that excuse.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, he was prosecuted, and Nixon actually pardoned him afterward.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, so those are the kind of decisions I was thinking about at that point in my life, and I tried to portray them accurately, although I'm obviously a little bit biased.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: But the tough one was leaving the family behind and knowing that the family's worried about you and all that.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: One of the we dedicated the hidden front line, the basic argument there is that the family is involved in a hidden way.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: And we dedicated uh the book to a Navy family.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: Gosh, I'm gonna I'm forgetting the name right now.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, the family lost five of their sons on one ship hit by a couple of Japanese torpedoes.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: They lost all their sons in the sinking of one ship.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: So that's who we dedicated the book to.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's beyond imagination.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, that's a long answer to a short question.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, and I I appreciate it because I'm I'm learning a lot here.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: It actually leads me to another question, John, because I'm I'm just thinking of this as you're describing things on just world events over the years, and then we're seeing it now, and it's just it people are so quick to react on, you know, you brought up Instagram, and and people are so quick to react to one clipping or another, and then they create a quick opinion and post about it.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I again I love this is kind of another purpose behind books for guys is encouraging long-form reading and learning because you can get very confused very quickly, and you can you can believe something that's not true.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm I'm you know, all that to say, I like what you have written and what you're all about, and you're just just the way you talk, I can tell you think a lot about things and you put a lot of thought into your work, especially your writing, even even your novel.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's you know, you're you're doing research, making sure you do the right things by it.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I just wish, you know, if people don't take anything else from this, is just to to take time to think and learn and figure things out instead of having a quick, you know, catching a quick tweet and being like, oh, well, you know, so-and-so's crazy.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: Look at what they're doing.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's just, I don't know.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: I just that's something that's gotten to me recently, especially, you know, we talk about our current situations and affairs.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: And every time I get on Instagram, there there's people that I've never even talked politics before, but all of a sudden they're posting something about it.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, how do you know what is going on?
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I just like that you kind of discussed your process and how you went about putting your work together.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it just seemed like you put a lot of thought into it, which I I appreciate as a a reader knowing that, and as someone that's trying to encourage that.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I just think that's a really great approach that you had.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you're bringing up a an um maybe the most important question.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm an independent.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: I was a registered Democrat.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: I actually ran for office as a Democrat.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: But both parties, almost everybody in Washington, D.C.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: lies.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: Almost everybody.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to find someone that'll always tell the truth.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: Some worse than others.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: Nixon and Kissinger both lied about the Vietnam War and they extended it for four years through their line, and they ended up at the same place they would have where they started.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: But everybody lies.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: And what consumers can do or what voters can do is during these elections, if you go to uh a presentation by somebody and they take questions, the question is the great question is very simple.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: Do donations to your campaign influence your vote?
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: And they will all lie to your face about that.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because if they tell the truth and say yes, they're breaking the law.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: So they'll all lie to your face.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I wish everyone would ask that question of every politician, particularly the sitting ones.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because they've had to weigh this.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I tell the truth, but I'll lose votes.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: And the actual truth is they will all lie to your face, and they'll say, No, of course not.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then brush it off and trick go to another subject.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's all very messy.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think we we all know that.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's frustrating, nonetheless.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: But John, to end this conversation on a high note, this has been very fascinating.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like I could talk with you for hours because I've got so many questions that I would love to get your thoughts and opinion on, and maybe we can have another discussion just so I can I can do that.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because again, I love this, and you've spent time looking at so many different things and different topics and and thinking these out.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: I just I love hearing your thoughts and opinion on them.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: But from a uh Books for Guys standpoint, always ask everyone that comes on the podcast this question, just because I'm curious.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: But always ask, what is a book or two that has meant a lot to you personally or professionally?
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then what's a book you like to recommend to others when asked?
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: Love one, right?
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: Two books.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so at Officer Cand at school back in the 70, two books got me through that.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: One was Dune.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's my favorite sci-fi book.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the other was Once in Future King.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a book about King Arthur.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: Both books, people had weapons, you know, and swords and all that kind of stuff.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: And here I'm in the Navy.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: We used to march, and I had a sword when I was in the Navy.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so that kind of made a lot of sense.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: I really, books that have influenced me, the Winds of War, I'm really, in a sense, kind of copying or inspired by Herman Moch's book about World War II, his books.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: And in the end, he says, you know, we can get rid of war.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: We got rid of slavery, and we got rid of human sacrifice.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we're on the verge of getting rid of the getting rid of war, actually.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think what's happening now is we're all appalled.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not just talking about Americans, about what's going on.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously invasions don't work anymore.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: The Russians are figuring that out the hard way.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm kind of excited about right now.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, Herman Woke predicted that Warren Remembrance was the the name of his other book.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: Gee, there's so many good books.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's a tough question.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's a mean question.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and I I always admit it's it your answer could change based off where you're at in life, what are you currently experiencing, what where do you work, what work are you doing?
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many things because I think, you know, myself, 10 years ago, I had a different favorite book than I do now.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: I've given away a certain book more than others.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many ways you could go with it.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I love that challenging question just because usually everyone answers differently.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's always different books than what someone previously has recommended.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm always adding to my list, you know, my ever-growing list of things that I'm interested in or what I should read.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's an unfair question, but I do like to ask it.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'd have to add, I'd have to add Gone with the Wind.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: The movie was great, but the book was really good.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: And that was about a big cultural change too, and a tough time.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: And anyway.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: First, and does that always say the the books are usually always better than the movies, too?
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: So we're on the same page there.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: But John, thank you so much for this conversation.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: Even in just in this last answer of yours, you've brought up something that I would love to talk with you even more about, and just the thought of wars going away, because I've had similar thoughts and discussions with people.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: So again, another topic.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to talk with you more about it sometime.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: But thank you for taking the time to do this.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think this has been such a great conversation.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: And before before we end recording, where can everyone find your work?
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: I know there's some on Amazon, but where is specifically is all your work at if someone wants to go find it?
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if you go to Graham'sBooks.com, that's Graham'sbooks.com, and Graham's Books is one word.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that lists all the books, including the kids' books, and gives some information and history and all that kind of stuff.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the best place to go.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: Another important place right now is we're using on the peace issue, we're using AI and combining that with inventive negotiation, and that's a theme through all my books.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: Even in the nonf I have in the fiction books, they're talking about inventive negotiation.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: And what we're doing uh on our website is asking AI to make suggestions about the different conflicts.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: And AI produces I mean, there's all kinds of problems with AI, but it's very good at producing ideas and breadth to issues.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so one of the one of them, for example, is um the conflict between the U.S.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: and Iran.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: What happens after the shooting?
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so um that's we talk a lot about that issue.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that book is translated now into nine languages.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: And the country it sells the best, or it down is again it's a free download, but the country where it's downloaded the most is China.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: And second is Russia.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: So we're hoping it has a global influence.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about that next time.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: No, we will.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: John, I I I've I've already decided we're gonna have to find another time to schedule and deep dive into some more of these subjects because I think people will be very interested to know more.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: I am.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so I would uh no, we will certainly do that.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: But I've got your website pulled up, so I'll make sure that is in the show notes.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: So anybody who's interested in in purchasing and finding that work, you'll be able to.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: But John, thank you so much.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate it.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: It means more than you know this conversation.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, th thank you.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to tell your audience, this guy is good at what he's doing with the interviews.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: I've done a lot of interviews and he's good.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you know that because you're a faithful listener, but anyway, I've enjoyed it too, obviously.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Chris.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, appreciate the kind words, John.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.