Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 436: Getting Revenge with Jack Carr

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Ep. 436: Getting Revenge with Jack Carr · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: If this is the me Eater podcast coming at you, shirtless, severely,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Listeningst you can't predict anything presented by First Light creating
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: proven versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: For every hunt, First Light Go Farther, stay longer, Little
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: inside scoop here for listeners. Brody was just telling me
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: that Brody was just hunting with Hayden Sam. How many
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: times has he won trivia three?
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: No, he was on a hot streak and it's it's
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: been cold for a while.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, because he was the emerging threat and then
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: he became the receiving threat or what was waning champ,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: the waning championing champion. So Brody's telling me a story
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: in which in private between me and.
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: Brody, so we're gonna talk abouts.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Have been open. I don't know, yep, because Brody's telling
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: me about him overcalling Turkey Hunt. And I just stepped
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: outside and he's sitting out there and goes to hey, man,
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: talk to you know. I wasn't overcalling. He's gonna be
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: So it's like, uh were having a private conversation in there.
• 1:21
  Speaker 4: It sounded like I heard it where he was at.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: He's eaves dropping. He's got like a recording device. It's
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: like the surveillance state. You know, whould appreciate that, Jack
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: car great transition, that.
• 1:36
  Speaker 5: Is, I've never had a transition.
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, what are your opinions on eves dropping?
• 1:40
  Speaker 5: You don't like it? Be careful. Yeah, I'm not a
• 1:42
  Speaker 5: big fan, but this is probably the most heavily bugged
• 1:44
  Speaker 5: room in Bozeman.
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's Steve's paranoia as well.
• 1:49
  Speaker 5: Uh huh, I get it, I get it. Be careful,
• 1:51
  Speaker 5: that's what I say.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: No, what we're gonna I'm gonna ask you a little
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: bit about that. Uh, Jack Cars here, New York Times
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: best selling author, like multiple times.
• 2:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah, all of them now, all of them, all of them. Crazy,
• 2:04
  Speaker 5: damn it, man, crazy.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: No, I don't want to have mine. That's a good
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: track record, New York Times best selling author. Every time
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: a new book out releases on you can order you
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: can pre order it now, but releases on May sixteenth only.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: The Dead five other previous titles Terminal list. If you
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: guys sit around watching Amazon Prime and you happen to
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: see Chris Pratt and a thing called Terminal list that
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: is and has been for a long time. That's Jack
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Carr's book that's based off your book now that Jack
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: card I was surprised when we had dinner last night.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Not surprised, but pleased to hear when we had dinner
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: last night that you get to be involved in all that. Yeah,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Like from a writing from a writing standpoint, yeah, becau.
• 2:54
  Speaker 5: Usually they get rid of the author right away. They
• 2:55
  Speaker 5: don't want the author to be there and on sat
• 2:58
  Speaker 5: and see what's going on and start and you ruined
• 3:00
  Speaker 5: my vision. And so I like to kind of move
• 3:03
  Speaker 5: the author to the side right away and then bring
• 3:05
  Speaker 5: the writing team in and get going. But I went
• 3:07
  Speaker 5: into it kind of being a kid of the eighties.
• 3:09
  Speaker 5: I grew up reading all these thrillers growing up, and
• 3:11
  Speaker 5: then watching the movies that were adapted from those books
• 3:14
  Speaker 5: and noting the differences and what worked and what didn't,
• 3:16
  Speaker 5: but more so realizing that there was gonna be changes
• 3:19
  Speaker 5: because you are telling a story now through a different medium.
• 3:21
  Speaker 5: You are telling that story visually, so it's going to change.
• 3:25
  Speaker 5: And you have a writer's.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Room and your people are gonna it's gonna be two
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: hours long, and.
• 3:29
  Speaker 5: It's gonna be this one is six, so sorry eight.
• 3:31
  Speaker 5: So every episode is about an hour, so those eight episodes.
• 3:34
  Speaker 5: But yeah, you can't tell everything. You have to kind
• 3:37
  Speaker 5: of morph things a little bit. You have to add
• 3:40
  Speaker 5: to things that weren't in the book. So it's just
• 3:43
  Speaker 5: how it goes. But I always thought back when I
• 3:44
  Speaker 5: my first conversation with the show runner, who's like in
• 3:47
  Speaker 5: series television. He's like the director of a feature film,
• 3:49
  Speaker 5: so he's managing multiple directors and he's like the single
• 3:51
  Speaker 5: point of contact for all these different things that go
• 3:54
  Speaker 5: into making a TV show. We had our first conversation
• 3:57
  Speaker 5: in December of twenty nineteen. His name is David Digilio,
• 4:00
  Speaker 5: amazing guy, and I think I put him at ease
• 4:02
  Speaker 5: by talking about First Blood and how First Blood and
• 4:04
  Speaker 5: that came out in nineteen seventy two, it's never been
• 4:07
  Speaker 5: out of print since, written by David Morrell, and the
• 4:10
  Speaker 5: movie with Syvester Stallone in the early eighties. Those are
• 4:12
  Speaker 5: two very different animals, but they're both awesome, but very different.
• 4:16
  Speaker 5: So I knew that there was going to be changes,
• 4:18
  Speaker 5: and more so it was important to Chris and to
• 4:21
  Speaker 5: Antwine and to me was keeping the theme of the book,
• 4:24
  Speaker 5: keep in that spirit alive, even if there were going
• 4:27
  Speaker 5: to be changes. So that's what we did.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: As as someone who traffics an intrigue and espionage and whatnot.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: You're familiar with John is does he lock Lacar Leacre?
• 4:38
  Speaker 5: How does he lare? So it is Lacar Yeah, I
• 4:40
  Speaker 5: think so. That's how I've always said it in the
• 4:42
  Speaker 5: last almost fifty years.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: He's got a great quote where he said, watching your
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: book get made into a movie, this isn't your experience,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: but he said, watching your book get made into a
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: movie is like watching an ox turned into a bowllyon cube.
• 4:57
  Speaker 5: Interesting, I've not heard him say that one. I've heard
• 4:59
  Speaker 5: similar ones, but not in say that those exact words.
• 5:02
  Speaker 5: But yeah, he and his have been since the seventies.
• 5:04
  Speaker 5: They've been making those into the films and TV shows.
• 5:07
  Speaker 5: And but I mean, what an amazing track record that
• 5:10
  Speaker 5: guy had. He had a good run, you have a
• 5:12
  Speaker 5: solid run, and they'll continue to make his books into
• 5:14
  Speaker 5: films and TV shows going forward. I'm sure what E
• 5:18
  Speaker 5: was I.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Going to tell you about? Something about that another film quote. Oh,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: there's a there's a comedy. You're you're with the comedy
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: the producers I haven't seen Broadway.
• 5:29
  Speaker 5: I know what it is, but I haven't seen it.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a line in there where the producers are
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: producing and they get so sick of the writer. As
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: they're making this play, they get so sick of the writer.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: One of them says, next time, no writers.
• 5:40
  Speaker 5: No writers, have to watch it now because now I
• 5:43
  Speaker 5: can see how that can happen. But now, I was
• 5:45
  Speaker 5: very fortunate the team we put together, starting with Antoine
• 5:47
  Speaker 5: Fuqua and Chris Pratt and that show runner David Gillio.
• 5:50
  Speaker 5: We put such a solid team together, and now we're
• 5:53
  Speaker 5: continuing that into this next spin off, So working on
• 5:55
  Speaker 5: those right now, and I'm writing one of those episodes,
• 5:58
  Speaker 5: and then we'll go right from that into True Believer,
• 6:00
  Speaker 5: which is the second book in the series. So we'll
• 6:02
  Speaker 5: just keep keep going. That's great, Fingers crossed. You never know.
• 6:06
  Speaker 5: So it's actually on the screen, though, So you can't
• 6:08
  Speaker 5: really get too excited till you actually see it on
• 6:10
  Speaker 5: the screen because there's so many things that can derail
• 6:12
  Speaker 5: throughout the whole process. Sure, So it's uh yeah, And
• 6:16
  Speaker 5: so I never really talked even talked about it too
• 6:17
  Speaker 5: much until it actually came out, or until until they
• 6:20
  Speaker 5: started putting commercials on TV and they put a commercial
• 6:23
  Speaker 5: in front of Top Gun Maverick in the theaters for it,
• 6:25
  Speaker 5: and uh so when they started doing that, I'm like, Okay,
• 6:27
  Speaker 5: I'm pretty certain this is going to come out on
• 6:29
  Speaker 5: July first now, But even so, I still, you know,
• 6:31
  Speaker 5: still a little nervous until it actually hits screens.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: You got to have a lot of mega fans who
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: who are just pissed.
• 6:40
  Speaker 5: When you compare Yeah, yeah, that happens.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: That's not what happened, because you.
• 6:46
  Speaker 5: Know, I tried to prep as much as I possibly
• 6:48
  Speaker 5: could through my podcast and social posts and stuff and
• 6:50
  Speaker 5: just kind of prep people, kind of slowly getting them
• 6:52
  Speaker 5: used to the idea of it being a little different.
• 6:55
  Speaker 5: But still regardless when it comes out, there are those
• 6:57
  Speaker 5: people who will take your book, watch the show. This
• 6:59
  Speaker 5: was different, that was different, that was different. I hate
• 7:02
  Speaker 5: it and that's just gonna gonna happen. Which is what's
• 7:04
  Speaker 5: great about the spin off is that there's no book
• 7:06
  Speaker 5: to compare it to Yeat, so so it's just creating.
• 7:10
  Speaker 5: There's characters that that I've created, but it's a backstory,
• 7:13
  Speaker 5: so there's no book about the backstory. So there's nothing
• 7:15
  Speaker 5: for someone to sit there and just compare it to
• 7:17
  Speaker 5: just looking for something to nitpick or someone looking for
• 7:20
  Speaker 5: a reason to hate it, you know, And that's just
• 7:22
  Speaker 5: kind of the world we live in today.
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: People love backstory. See yes, your position perfectly, wait a
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: few years and then be like little little guy growing
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: up on the farm.
• 7:36
  Speaker 5: There it is.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Did you know that Michael Man did? Was it like
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: after you?
• 7:43
  Speaker 6: It's by my bedside?
• 7:44
  Speaker 5: It's awesome.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, here's like this phenomenal. It's it's it's it's a
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: little bit more than a cult classic, but at this
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: point has a very like cultish. Yeah, like I make
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: a point to watch Heat every two three years.
• 7:58
  Speaker 5: Me too.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: But but he's a director, he's not a writer. So
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: the fact that he went and wrote this, but is
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: it after before?
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: It's like a prequel sequel.
• 8:07
  Speaker 5: I think, Yeah, it's a great book. Have you ever
• 8:10
  Speaker 5: read it yet? It is amazing. Meg Gardner wrote it
• 8:13
  Speaker 5: with Michael Mann, and she's an incredible author, and I
• 8:16
  Speaker 5: had her on my podcast we talked about it and
• 8:18
  Speaker 5: she's just amazing. But the book it exceeded expectations and
• 8:21
  Speaker 5: that's hard to do. Moe Heat two. Oh yeah, and
• 8:26
  Speaker 5: that the cover looks like the movie poster.
• 8:28
  Speaker 7: Essentially, Tarantino did something similar with Once Upon a Time
• 8:31
  Speaker 7: in Hollywood. He wrote, he wrote his own novelization of
• 8:33
  Speaker 7: this movie, but he added scenes and changed dialogue and
• 8:36
  Speaker 7: made it a little bit different, like it's kind of fun.
• 8:39
  Speaker 5: Yeah, novelizations used to be a big, big thing in
• 8:41
  Speaker 5: the eighties into the nineties. So you read a book
• 8:43
  Speaker 5: based on a screenplay, but it kind of fell out
• 8:46
  Speaker 5: out of favor here.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: It seems aspect for sure.
• 8:49
  Speaker 5: Man. Yeah, there's so. David Morrell wrote a novelization based
• 8:53
  Speaker 5: on the screenplay for Rambo First Blood Part two and
• 8:55
  Speaker 5: for Rambo three, and they're fantastic, They're really good. And
• 8:58
  Speaker 5: they at least Rambo First Blood Part two made the
• 9:01
  Speaker 5: New York Times list for quite a few weeks when
• 9:03
  Speaker 5: it came out in conjunction with the movie in eighteen
• 9:05
  Speaker 5: eighty five. And yeah, David Morrel is just something incredible talent,
• 9:09
  Speaker 5: amazing guy. I'm proud to call him a friend now,
• 9:12
  Speaker 5: just honor to know him. But yeah, so we did
• 9:14
  Speaker 5: those novelizations and I'm collecting them. Actually, that's why I'm
• 9:17
  Speaker 5: so up on the novelization. So I'm collecting the old
• 9:19
  Speaker 5: ones from the eighties that I've that I had back
• 9:21
  Speaker 5: then that I've kind of misplaced over the years. So
• 9:23
  Speaker 5: I'm collecting all those novelizations and some that I didn't
• 9:26
  Speaker 5: know existed.
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: That's cool. Yeah, So my buddies and I still on
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: occasion say I just wanted a cup of coffee from
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: Rambow first.
• 9:35
  Speaker 5: He was just looking for something, to just look for something.
• 9:38
  Speaker 7: That's what it is.
• 9:38
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I put I put a little nod to uh
• 9:41
  Speaker 5: will teasel in this upcoming novel and only the Dead.
• 9:43
  Speaker 5: So for for fans such as yourself, you'll be reading
• 9:46
  Speaker 5: through it and be like, so I try to throw
• 9:49
  Speaker 5: a few things in there. This one I through, Like
• 9:51
  Speaker 5: fans of Magnum will recognize in all my books, I
• 9:54
  Speaker 5: throw a little something in there. They're pretty subtle. So
• 9:56
  Speaker 5: I get those in there. This one, I have some
• 9:58
  Speaker 5: Magnum stuff in there. It's all very subtle. Bond stuff
• 10:00
  Speaker 5: in there, lethal weapon in there, and First Blood there. Yeah,
• 10:05
  Speaker 5: you have. You have to be on your toes though,
• 10:07
  Speaker 5: you know, it's not just it's not it's not doesn't
• 10:09
  Speaker 5: say the thing and then say from the movie First
• 10:11
  Speaker 5: Blood or anything like that. It's just it's just woven
• 10:13
  Speaker 5: in and to the fabric for for people that pretty
• 10:16
  Speaker 5: much the Preey grew up in the eighties. Excellent, Yeah,
• 10:18
  Speaker 5: I love it.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: We're gonna in a little bit, we're gonna talk about
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: how your mom was a library and which I love.
• 10:23
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 10:23
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it all starts with books. All started with books.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Uh, speaking of show business and books. God, man, it's
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: another great transition. Did you catch that I did?
• 10:32
  Speaker 5: That was smooth?
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Speaking of show business? Or so here's here's a little show.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Here's a little show business lesson for you. When when
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: I sold my books a Random House, like, they buy
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: world rights to the book, and so they can then
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: sell they can then sell the audio rights to someone else.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: And a long time ago, a decade ago, they weren't
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: doing a bunch of audio. Audio just wasn't what it
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: is now, so they I think. So when I sold
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: me Eater Ventures from the Life of an American Hunter
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: to Random House, they turned around and sold the audio
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: rights to Brilliance and had some I mean, man, you know,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: I don't know, if he's listening, probably is a feller.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: They get someone to read it and it's just not
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: how it's it just it's wrong, it's immoral. But they
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: got someone to read it, but they only had the
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: audio rights for ten years, so we just got back
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: the audio rights, so I was able to go. This
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: happened with my Buffalo book too. A decade went by
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: and I was able to get back my publisher got
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: back the audio rights, and then I a couple of
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: weeks ago, went back into the studio and read ten
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: years later, Wow, my own damn book.
• 11:54
  Speaker 5: Did you learn anything?
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's what I'm gonna get to, a lot of things,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: like I had a lot of like not a lot,
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: like opinions I had that I don't really have anymore,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: or opinions I had that were accentuated that that just
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: have gotten more complicated. And when I did my Buffalo book,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: there was there was stuff. There was like scientific understandings
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: about about from like genetics work, stuff about the first Americans,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: stuff about when waves of animal migrations came and how
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: things died out and didn't just had just changed and
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: became like objectively different. And I fixed some of the
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: objectively different things. But yeah, and reading it, there's everything.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: So I'm like, I don't know if I'd put it
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: that way now, but we're going to tack on to
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: the end of this episode, We're gonna tack on a
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: chapter of it's just gonna be like glued right on
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: to the end of the show. We're gonna tack on
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: a chapter of a book I wrote a long time
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: ago and just recorded the audio now. And if you
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: want to go find that audio book, I don't know,
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: can you put a link in there? Or yeah, if
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: you want to go find the whole audiobook and pick
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: it up, go find the whole audiobook and you listen
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: to the whole damn thing. If you don't like to read. Also,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: at the end of the show, just transitions, keep coming man.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Also at the end of the show, we put so
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: there's a song a lot of love and hate? Is
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: it mostly hatred?
• 13:28
  Speaker 6: There's some love, there's some not knowing what the hell
• 13:31
  Speaker 6: it is, There's some like this is awful.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: Musicians. Is a musician, Christopher Denny. I understand he has
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: a he likes to pull a cork.
• 13:40
  Speaker 6: This is about our new outro song.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: I understand likes the pull of cork, and I understand
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: he's got it. He's had a lot of uh. He
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: likes to party.
• 13:50
  Speaker 7: Steve, I've noticed a lot of your favorite musicians have
• 13:52
  Speaker 7: like crippling drug or alcohol addiction.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: That's very true. Yeah, I don't know why as someone
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: who doesn't, I don't know why. Uh yeah, likes the party.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: That's a euphemism for like to you know, like to
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: party as a Houston vism for likes to do. Yeah,
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: I don't know where he's at on it right now.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: Christopher Danny. One day we had a podcast episode where
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: we like argued about a thing way too.
• 14:19
  Speaker 6: Long that's probably not the the only and it was.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Like someone there was a comment like, you'd like beat
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: the horse to death. There's a Christopher Danny song where
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: in the end of the song he says, we've done
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: beat this horse to death. It's time to ride on.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: And I wanted to glue it onto the end of
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: that episode but never got around to it. It's not
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: it's glued onto the end of every episode.
• 14:47
  Speaker 5: Somehow seems appropriate.
• 14:49
  Speaker 6: Yet we still beat dead horses into the underworld.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: So if you're listening at the end of the show
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: and you're annoyed by Chris Danny, who my kids feel
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: is a woman, but it's not.
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: Is it just a clip or the whole song?
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's a clips. The end of his song ride
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: on it's about having beat a horse to death.
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: I wonder if that song is going to get a
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: bump on Spotify.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: Uh, I would suggest people go listen to the whole album.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: If the Roses don't kill us.
• 15:21
  Speaker 5: Mhm, local how do you?
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: How do you? Guys? I don't know about them. I
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: just found out about them, probably on Spotify. I don't
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: know how I found out about Christopher Danny. You ever
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: a hundred alligators?
• 15:32
  Speaker 5: I have?
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: Oh? I have?
• 15:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah? Where'd you hunt hey in Texas?
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: Okay?
• 15:37
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, it was a little a little while ago,
• 15:39
  Speaker 5: but uh yeah, about ten years ago now, I guess.
• 15:42
  Speaker 5: But yeah, it was an interesting experience. It was quite
• 15:44
  Speaker 5: an interesting experience.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: I appreciate this. A few episodes ago, on an episode
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: titled Wrestling Gators, we had a crocodilian biologist on a
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: lot of folks rode in and I said, the bio.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: You know, biologists always like very measured. They don't want
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: to say stuff that isn't for positive And I said, man,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: our listeners are gonna have a lot of comments that
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: would begin with shit, right like shit. He doesn't know
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: what he's talking about. So I said, if you got
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: any if you have a lot of comments that begin
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: with shit send them to us, a number of them.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: I'm a bit disappointed at a crock biologist didn't have
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: a good answer for how to easily tell the difference
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: between the crock and an alligator. It's really quite easy.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: One will see you later, the other after a while.
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: But embarrassed really.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Even included many.
• 16:46
  Speaker 5: The alligator experience though for me, wasn't more. It was
• 16:48
  Speaker 5: less hunting and more fishing and execution. That hook, yeah,
• 16:56
  Speaker 5: that was the one on jugs with the chicking, this
• 17:00
  Speaker 5: sitting out in the sun for a while, you know
• 17:01
  Speaker 5: that sort of a So I was just kind of
• 17:04
  Speaker 5: just observing. I hadn't done that that before, so it's interesting.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: I know a few folks on the Floorida side that
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: have an area where where alligators like the sun, and
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: they'll slip up on them with and half of them
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: hunt with recurves and and stick them on the beach.
• 17:23
  Speaker 5: No kidding, Yeah, I think I gotta be a little
• 17:25
  Speaker 5: more sporting.
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: Perhaps it feels a little more like the hunting than
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: the fish house.
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: So you know, how are they killing him fast enough
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: with a boat to like get the.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Probably hit him with a bang stick once they get
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: him in. It's like bowtfish and rig.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: I know it's not a boat fishing, but they're just
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: whacking them in the back of the head from what
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: I understand. No, sounds like a mediater episode. Bro go
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: check it out.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Sounds like I was going to write in an email
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: exactly exactly.
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: I'd like to know more details.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: Well, I really not not putting a rope onto him.
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: No, but I mean, you know they also they do
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: like the spin of death and stuff like that. I imagine. Yeah,
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: there's there's technique behind all of it. The people who
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: do it, well.
• 18:13
  Speaker 5: A couple of people just got munched in the last week.
• 18:15
  Speaker 5: Then yes they did that well guy and the guy And.
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: The only thing that makes golf courses intriguing to me exactly.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: The senior citizen goud is. Last week a senior citizen
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: got his leg tore off when they showed up. The
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: alligator sought his foot in his mouth.
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: Golf course.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: There's another thing that I don't want to talk about
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: because it involves kids and that kind of stuff I
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: don't like to talk about. Uh. On that episode, we
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: were talking about indigenous uses for alligators, and the listener
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: wrote in that when he was at Texas Tech University.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: He worked on a project about the karen Kawa Indians
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: from East Texas and West Louisiana. They used gator fat
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: as a repellent, mosquito repellent.
• 19:00
  Speaker 5: Interesting.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: They'd render it down and spread it over their bodies
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: and European explorers would comment that you could smell them
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: quite a ways off because of that gator fat. Here's
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: a crazy one they had. So for whatever reason, the
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: they have these gator These crocodile mummies from Egypt, okay,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: which I had no idea. So you have thousands of
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: year old crocodile mummies and they were doing them with
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: CT scans in twenty ten. And here they're looking at
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: a thousands of year old crocodile mummy with a CT
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: scan and he's got a fishing hook in his gut.
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: Oh that's amazing. Yeah, I love that.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: And there's pictures of crocodile mummies. They're crazy looking beautiful.
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: They didn't say what the hook was made out of.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: You know, that's where the email just if that person's listening,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: that's where the email really fell short.
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: Because it's like it makes it sound like it's like
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: a modern looking metal fish hook. Kind of an old
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: ass hook, I know, but like it says, we notice
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: a perfect fish hook, but I like, I don't know
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: what that means.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Like like he felt, I don't want to criticize him,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: but since you brought it up, yeah, listener, pull it together.
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: He he it's a deep barbed circle hook.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: He acknowledges that he didn't include he includes a picture
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: of their crocodile mummy. But does he acknowledges not including
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: a picture of the hook.
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, you'd think it'd be bone, yeah, something, depending
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: on how old it is. But I said, iron edge.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: I said this to Crind the other day. Just this
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: defies understanding a Texas dairy farm. Yeah, okay, it defies understanding.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Eighteen thousand dairy cows.
• 21:10
  Speaker 5: I'll repeat that.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: Eighteen thousand dairy cows killed in an explosion at a
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Texas dairy farm.
• 21:19
  Speaker 6: And that's about twenty percent of cattle slaughtered in this
• 21:22
  Speaker 6: country on any given day.
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the largest like loss of cattle life since
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: like the Galveston hurricane or something like that. Or no,
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: I think it is.
• 21:32
  Speaker 6: Even more than that.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Eighteen thousand stinky, I don't even know what to say,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say anything.
• 21:44
  Speaker 6: During a hard time.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: I told that Doug Darren carcases. I told the Doug,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: to which Doug said, well, why would you have eighteen
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: thousand cows together? Anyways, Wolverine sighting four times outside of Portland,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Oregon for the first time in three decades. I have
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: a feeling they're seeing the same wolverine.
• 22:09
  Speaker 6: They think so, but then for the fourth time, they're
• 22:11
  Speaker 6: not sure. I think that it is.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: Thirty years goes by, no wolverine, and then all of
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: a sudden there's four outside of Portland.
• 22:21
  Speaker 5: No.
• 22:21
  Speaker 6: They I mean they think it's probably the same, the
• 22:24
  Speaker 6: same one going around.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: Nike and Puma to stop using kangaroo leather or if
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: that company. Remember when I was a little kid, they
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: had a shoe company called Ruse.
• 22:33
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: Man, they had the little pocket hocket.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Are they fixing the stop? I don't even Maybe they
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: never did use kangaro I.
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: Think they're called Ruse because of the pocket, not because
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: of leather.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Oh, they're phasing it out by the end of twenty
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: twenty three. I don't know. You know, I take anything
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: like this like I take anything. I don't like anything
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: like this.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: Well, there's a massive population issue with with kangaroos, like
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: they breed like crazy, and that these are like free
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: range animals, not farmed animals that they're rounding up. So
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: it's like whoa who's going to pay for taking care
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: of the over a London.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: So I shouldn't conclude that, And we've talked about that
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: in the past, as they kill absurd numbers of kangaroos
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: every year as agricultural control.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: Yeahs control is and somebody else is paying to have
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: it done.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: So Oregon, Oregon. This comes after the introduction of a
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: bill in mid January and Oregon, where Nike is headquartered,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: that would ban the sale of any part of a
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: dead kangaroo or any product containing a part of a
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: dead kangaroo. The punishment would include up to a year
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: in prison, a six and fifty dollars fine, or both.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: There's also a bipartisan bill that was introduced in the
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: House of Representatives, the Kangaroo Protection Act.
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: My god, Yeah, it seems like.
• 23:56
  Speaker 5: They got other things they could be focusing on here.
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: No, they have everything else apped up. Everything else is perfect,
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: so now they get to focus on the nitpicky stuff.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Yes, the global commercial kangaroo product industry was worth roughly
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: two hundred million dollars annually to Australia. The US was
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: its second largest global market at eighty.
• 24:15
  Speaker 6: Million twenty twenty one figures more or less. But was
• 24:19
  Speaker 6: kind of staggering is that the government estimated the Australian
• 24:23
  Speaker 6: government estimated that there were forty two point seven million
• 24:29
  Speaker 6: kangaroos for twenty six million Australians.
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: And you get a kangaroo, and you get a kangaroo. Yeah,
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: here's learning so much.
• 24:40
  Speaker 5: This is great. I'm learning so much.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: Here's who all has ditched k leather Versace's how you
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: pronounce that? For sach, Diane von Furstenberg not sound like
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: a thing that I would buy a Diane von Furstenburg.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: That sounds like a person.
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: Sounds like a Nazi Allien.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: It sounds like someone who It sounds like someone who
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: inherited a lot of money.
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: If your name.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: Is von Furstenberg, you probably just get money.
• 25:09
  Speaker 5: I thought it was.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: Like like no, no, no, no, no, hold hear me out.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: My last name is von Furstenberg.
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: You know the maybe cord manufacturer.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: Uh, Victoria Beckham, Salvator Farragamo and Paul Smith that just
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: seems like your you're h vat guy Paul Smith, all
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: have gone unlike Salvator Farra Gamo and Diane von Fursusberg.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: Even Paul Smith has gone k free, k leather free.
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: I wonder if how many of those people are associated
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: with Pete as well.
• 25:48
  Speaker 5: I'm a sleep better tonight knowing all.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: This, this is the last thing. This is the last
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: thing Jack, I know.
• 25:55
  Speaker 5: Takeing notes.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: This is hot off, this is hot off the press
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: because I just okay, So I was just in Wisconsin.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: I think from my fourth annual spring for my fourth
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: annual the fourth annual time I've taken my kids two
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin hunt turkeys, but the third annual youth turkey season,
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: in which my older boy, who already thinks he's invincible,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: I catch like a turk. I see a strutter coming
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: and it's like he's not gonna get closer. And I
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: see a strutter coming, and I just compute my head
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: that it's pretty far away. But we have like a
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: you know, we got a good turkey choke iron sights
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: spend a lot of time patterning the gun. Uh, and
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: I already know it's like a stretch.
• 26:45
  Speaker 5: And I'm like shot him, shoot, shoot him.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: So by the time he gets around to getting everything
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: lined up and shoots and the turkey just goes down.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: But I stand up and that turkey is way out there.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: I pasted off. That turkey was seventy yards way what
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: oh wow. So I would have never if I'd known that.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: I stood up and this turkey is like a spec
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: He got lucky. So now he's like, I'm gonna start
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: taking all the He's got the shell and he wants
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: to put the beard in the shell. He's like, I'm
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: going to write the distance on the shell.
• 27:18
  Speaker 5: And I'm.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: Nice. Anyhow, spring Turkey Wisconsin two days long, and you
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: can get boned by the weather, like two days. You
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: can have two days of bad weather. So as I'm there,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: I realized that there's this thing. I asked Dirk, and
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: do it. Pat Dirkin to explain this a little bit. Okay,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: ready for this, I am ready. Wisconsin had Okay, Wisconsin
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: has a peculiar way. Okay, here here's how to get
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: into this. If you listen, you remember we were talking
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: about how how it was put to sort of like
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: a public vote of sorts to determine whether you'd be
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: able to start spearing nor the in Wisconsin. I was
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: surprised that you can't spare northerns in Wisconsin, but you
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: cannot spear northerns in Wisconsin, the thinking being I guess
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: that people will accidentally spear muskies. Pat Diurkin points out,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: how can you be trusted to hit ducks flying through
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: the air and know what they are in the rain
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: and sleep. You're trusted to identify flying ducks, but you
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: can't be trusted to look down a hole in the
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: ice and identify a Northern and a muskie, which is
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: a great point. I think that you could trust people
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: to do this, and I was surprised by how Wisconsin
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: sets these things. And there's a thing called I don't
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: want to criticize it before I even explain it, but
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: there's a thing called Aldo Leopold's Worst Idea. Some people
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: know it as but there's a thing called the Wisconsin
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: Conservation Congress. It consists of five elected men members from
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: each county, so there are seventy two members in all
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: of Doug duran is one of these from Richland County.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: He is one of Richland Counties, our very own Doug
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Durren is one of Richland County's citizen representatives. Everyone listening
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: could learn a lesson from Doug. Many lessons from Doug Durren.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: What you shouldn't pick up from Doug is the idea
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: that it makes sense to drive around listening to Grateful
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: Dead concerts on satellite radio. That is a bad idea
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: of Dougs. Most everything else that Doug says is good. Doug,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: instead of sitting around bitching and moaning about the fishing
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: game laws in the DNR, Doug gets in there and
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: gets in there always. If there's like a public comment period,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: he makes a public comment. He's on a citizens advisory panel.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: He's on the deer Citizens Advisory Panel. If he's mad,
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: he be mad. He's got a right to be mad
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: because he got in there and got involved.
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: And he's constantly harassed by people who do nothing but
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: bitch and don't do any of these things.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: But the idea behind this board is they're tackling issues
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: and then they take what they think to the Game Commission,
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: who should then implement these suggestions.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 30:24
  Speaker 5: So which they may or may not do.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's such a peculiar way to handle things. I'm
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna dig in a little bit. Dirk can
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: kind of explain it. The Wisconsin already said that. So
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: it's got five elected members from each county, So seventy
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: two and all is that possible? Could something times five
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: be seventy two? Someone's lying or someone died. The WCC
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: holds a joint hearing each April with the Department of
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: Natural Resources to propose changes improvements to hunting, fishing, and
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: trapping rules, and other conservation matters, air, water and other
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: environmental issues. This year's ballot, so the Congress puts together questions.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: The questions then go to a public vote so they
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: can sort of ascertain how the public feels about certain
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: fishing game issues. This year's ballot had seventy six questions,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: thirty eight fish and wildlife rule changes, and thirty eight
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: WCC advisory questions. To become a state rule, a citizen's
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: proposal must go through a five step process, so on,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: on and on. I'm going to get to the main
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: part of this. So it's interesting because you can take
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: these little you can take these ideas and put them
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: like very nuanced fishing game ideas and put them to
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: a public opinion and It's interesting because you can start
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: getting idea of what the public thinks about stuff. Since
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: we talked about we talked about the spearfishing thing in Wisconsin.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Should you be able to spear northern through the ice?
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: Here's the here's the results. Yes. Three and forty three
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: wisconsinights said you should. No. Three thousand, three hundred and
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: fifty five said no, So it got beat by a
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: narrow margin and no opinion. Three thousand, five hundred and
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: two had no opinion. So they had ten thousand wisconsinights
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: weighed in on their opinion about this, and so I
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: think this has a low likelihood of advancing. Now here's
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: an interesting way to measure public sentiment. There's a two
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: day youth dear season. They put that to a vote.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: Should we expand it to four days?
• 33:01
  Speaker 5: Youth deer?
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: Should we expand youth e to four Doug was Doug
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: was imagining the people down there who are opposed. If
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: the kids are gonna hunt, I'm gonna hunt, And that
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: is true. Should youth deer season be four days instead
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: of two Yes, three thousand, four hundred and ninety two
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: forty four percent No, three thousand, six hundred and forty
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: nine or forty six percent no opinion, eight hundred and
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: twenty five. A lot more people had an opinion, but
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: it got shot down. Now this is the last one
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: we're gonna touch on, because here's how nuanced it is.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: How about youth turkey season? Should we move that from
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: two days to four? Yes? Four? Eight hundred and seventy two,
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: now eight hundred and fifty five. So there's some bit
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: where you're like, ah, turkeys, sure, dear, uh.
• 34:09
  Speaker 5: Huh, these kids are gonna get them all.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: This is this so just a little glimpse into the
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: psychology of of and and and you'll like, here's the thing.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: When it comes to wildlife management, people are always in
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: myself included Rise ridiculing ballot box biology, right like, leave
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: it to the professionals. Leave it to the professionals. And
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: it shouldn't go to votes, right like reintroducing wolves in Colorado.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: You shouldn't put that to a vote. Leave it to
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: the professionals. But here, I don't know, there's like an
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: elegance to it. But I but I think it should
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: be taken as a It's part of a process, it's
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: part of a step. It's not the end all be
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: all It's not like they just vote in everything. But
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: when you go to set the law, uh, it gives
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: you who as a law makes through the process, it's
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: like an interesting to get a sense of public opinion.
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, And like when we talk about making scientific management,
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: the assumption is is like, well, that scientific management is
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: going to be on behalf of the hunting community, right,
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: But often that scientific management takes into account the hunting perspective,
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: but also like the rangeland ecology perspective of all these
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: ranchers out there with animals on state ground and on
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: public ground that borders state, WMAs, et cetera, and how
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: they are going to be affected by those deer elk
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: populations as well. So, and everybody's a voter.
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: Well, part of making the rules is keeping you know,
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: people happy and interested and out in the field.
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: Too, providing opportunity. What is opportunity? Quality? Opportunity is a huge,
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: huge phrase.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: My view on that youth Turkey deal, which I'm following
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: closely and I have really leaned on Doug to push
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: on that hard, is that I think it comes down
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: to who's got kids. I was just kidding, I got kids.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: So I'm a super big supporter if I didn't have kids,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: I'd be like, screw those kids. And then but as
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: soon as it'll get enacted as twenty twenty five, so
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: we're still gonna be well, we're still gonna be weather
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: vulnerable next year. So your mom was a librarian, yeahs
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: transitions speak is a library.
• 36:45
  Speaker 5: Yeah. Before we get to that, though, did you see
• 36:47
  Speaker 5: that the wolves in northern California? Have you seen that yet?
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: I know about them, Yeah, just migrating through Do they
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: have an established breeding I don't know, shafts.
• 36:58
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah, trail cams catching them.
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: There's plenty of good interesting I interviewed a very very
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: nice lady who runs of a big operation. I apologize
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: if you're listening. I can't remember your name, but they
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: do a lot of like the noxious weed mitigation with
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: sheep and goats, and they had one of the wolves
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: that came through a few years ago knocked out some
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: of their some of theirstation crew a few years.
• 37:30
  Speaker 5: Ago in California. Yeah, oh wow.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they've been like for a while. Yeah, probably, I
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: don't know, probably originating from that Frank church group.
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it got into Oregon, California. Yeah, probably.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's hard to I don't picture California firing up
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: a wolf season anytime soon. Maybe people surprise you that,
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: oh man, this is gone too far.
• 37:57
  Speaker 5: And in your book if you can your book though,
• 37:58
  Speaker 5: by the way, when you read it, have you read
• 38:00
  Speaker 5: the other ones? Or was this the first time you've
• 38:02
  Speaker 5: read the full I've read three, you've read three, but one.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: You're good at it.
• 38:05
  Speaker 5: You seem like you'd be good at it, just from
• 38:07
  Speaker 5: reading right here, because I only read the new forward
• 38:11
  Speaker 5: to a new edition of the Terminal List. So I
• 38:13
  Speaker 5: wrote about So it's a new one about how the
• 38:16
  Speaker 5: show came to be and how I got to dance one.
• 38:19
  Speaker 5: So it's the one with Chris Pratt on the cover,
• 38:21
  Speaker 5: and we put in some pictures from the from the
• 38:22
  Speaker 5: show in there and stuff like that to make a
• 38:24
  Speaker 5: special limited edition thing. And instead of Ray Porter, who's
• 38:27
  Speaker 5: my narrator, reading that, we decided I do it. So
• 38:29
  Speaker 5: I ran the cord into the closet and the house
• 38:32
  Speaker 5: and I put a bunch of clothes on hangers everywhere
• 38:34
  Speaker 5: until it sounded okay. So had the direction you know
• 38:38
  Speaker 5: what I'm talking about? Yeah, it looked very similar to this.
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: That's the direction.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: Exactly what it was Jack's close.
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah exactly, you use like a trained voice actor for yours.
• 38:51
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, so Ray Porter, he's a he's an amazing guy,
• 38:54
  Speaker 5: Shakespeare trained actor who does it because you're because it's
• 38:58
  Speaker 5: like it's like accidents.
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: Really, it's like a thriller too though, so it's got
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: to have like it's got to be a delivery exactly.
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: He had felt that a like a flunky soap opera actor.
• 39:09
  Speaker 5: Had read one of his books, not that I felt
• 39:12
  Speaker 5: I know, that's fantastic, but it was hard. I mean,
• 39:16
  Speaker 5: it was only like five pages, maybe six, and I
• 39:19
  Speaker 5: hadn't written it years ago. I had written it days ago,
• 39:22
  Speaker 5: and I'm reading it and it was difficult. So I
• 39:25
  Speaker 5: now I have. I had an appreciation for Ray and
• 39:27
  Speaker 5: all those guys who do this narration, but now I
• 39:30
  Speaker 5: even appreciate it even more. And they have to do
• 39:32
  Speaker 5: those accents too. I'm just reading my own voice, my
• 39:34
  Speaker 5: own words, just setting up what's coming and how the
• 39:37
  Speaker 5: show came to be and everything. And that was difficult
• 39:40
  Speaker 5: enough for whatever reason. But now now so now when
• 39:43
  Speaker 5: I'm writing, I think about, oh, I should probably put
• 39:45
  Speaker 5: the accent, the Russian accent up front instead of mentioning
• 39:47
  Speaker 5: it like halfway down the page. So he has to
• 39:50
  Speaker 5: now go back and like part Russian accent in with
• 39:53
  Speaker 5: a hint of this or that, so you know, it's uh, yeah,
• 39:57
  Speaker 5: the German from with the Berlin accent or whatever that
• 39:59
  Speaker 5: sort of thing. So he has to go figure with
• 40:01
  Speaker 5: what that is. Better to let him know upfront, But anyway,
• 40:04
  Speaker 5: it was difficult. So anyway, I was just curious if
• 40:06
  Speaker 5: you had written read all your books out loud like that.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I used to. Yeah, I used to not
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: be allowed to, but now you know, now I'm allowed to. Hey,
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: I like, I don't like doing it, but love, I mean,
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: I don't you get a sore of throat?
• 40:19
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that's long, he said about he said it was
• 40:21
  Speaker 5: about double. So if it's a fourteen hour read fourteen
• 40:24
  Speaker 5: hour book, it's about double that what it took him
• 40:27
  Speaker 5: to actually read it and actually do it, so about
• 40:30
  Speaker 5: thirty hour.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: Deal.
• 40:31
  Speaker 6: Does he read it at the pace that we hear it?
• 40:33
  Speaker 6: Because I heard the prologue of your new book, But
• 40:38
  Speaker 6: does he read at the pace that we hear it?
• 40:42
  Speaker 6: Or is there any kind of good messing with you know,
• 40:46
  Speaker 6: just just think.
• 40:47
  Speaker 5: It's the cadence that he in some people's speed books
• 40:49
  Speaker 5: up just to get through them faster, which is kind
• 40:51
  Speaker 5: of don't know, kind of strange if you're listening to
• 40:53
  Speaker 5: accents and all that sort of thing, and the dramatic
• 40:56
  Speaker 5: pauses and all that. But I think he read he
• 40:58
  Speaker 5: likes to read it. He just goes, he said, he
• 41:00
  Speaker 5: just like skims it a tiny bit, just kind of
• 41:02
  Speaker 5: get the feel, and then he reads it for the
• 41:04
  Speaker 5: first time recording, so that you're hearing it the way
• 41:07
  Speaker 5: you would read it for the first time. So yeah,
• 41:10
  Speaker 5: it's not practiced yet. I think other different narrators do
• 41:13
  Speaker 5: different things, but that's the way. The way he does
• 41:15
  Speaker 5: it probably saves a little bit of time as well,
• 41:17
  Speaker 5: rather than reading a whole thing and then going back.
• 41:19
  Speaker 5: But but yeah, I try to give him the acronyms,
• 41:21
  Speaker 5: you know, so it's not you see n O d's capitalized,
• 41:27
  Speaker 5: you say n O ds, but it's really nods, you know,
• 41:29
  Speaker 5: things like that instead a J S O C would
• 41:31
  Speaker 5: be jaysack like that. That's sort of a sort of
• 41:33
  Speaker 5: a thing. So yeah, there's always those those types of
• 41:36
  Speaker 5: things come up as well. But it's tough. I mean,
• 41:38
  Speaker 5: that's that's serious business. Being a narrator reading all these books.
• 41:41
  Speaker 5: That's a lot of hours in a room by yourself
• 41:43
  Speaker 5: just for reading. I don't know. But more, I mean,
• 41:47
  Speaker 5: he does a great job, so it's good, more than
• 41:49
  Speaker 5: happy that to have him doing it rather than me.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: I like, how you don't disparage You don't like to
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: disparage the people you work with.
• 41:57
  Speaker 5: I haven't had the cause. Really, Yeah, I pick up
• 42:01
  Speaker 5: on that man in a different round.
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: I'll be like, man, Phil just does a phenomenal job.
• 42:10
  Speaker 5: Hayden calls just the right amount, the perfect amount.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: Hey, I want to go back farther than I do.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: Want to get to your mom being a library, but
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: I want to go back farther than that. Uh. We
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: took a little walk last night, we did. You're uh
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: your grandfather was killed off Okinawan World War two.
• 42:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, nineteen forty five. Never met his kid, never
• 42:32
  Speaker 5: met I never met my dad. So we grew up.
• 42:35
  Speaker 5: He grew up with the same things that I grew
• 42:36
  Speaker 5: up with from my grandfather, which were those photos of
• 42:38
  Speaker 5: him with his plane. He threw the course air which
• 42:40
  Speaker 5: is a cooling that had the gold wings that you'd
• 42:41
  Speaker 5: fold up like that put on aircraft carriers, and there
• 42:44
  Speaker 5: was a show in the late seventies and I caught
• 42:46
  Speaker 5: it in syndication with my dad in the early eighties
• 42:47
  Speaker 5: called Black Sheep Squadron based off Happy Point and had
• 42:50
  Speaker 5: Robert Conrad playing Pappy Point. And I think I had
• 42:52
  Speaker 5: a lot of my leadership traits from that show. He
• 42:55
  Speaker 5: was just a drinker and a fighter and it was awesome.
• 42:58
  Speaker 5: I loved it. I thought, that's you. But yeah, it
• 43:00
  Speaker 5: was perfect. Yeah, exactly. That's how you settle things. You
• 43:04
  Speaker 5: settle it with your fists outside and you go out
• 43:06
  Speaker 5: and then shoot down a bunch of Japanese zeros and
• 43:08
  Speaker 5: have a few beers. And I was like, that's awesome,
• 43:11
  Speaker 5: That's what I'm gonna do. But I knew it was
• 43:13
  Speaker 5: just kind of in my blood to join the military,
• 43:16
  Speaker 5: follow his footsteps into the military. I had those those photos.
• 43:19
  Speaker 5: I had his his marine aviator wings. I had the
• 43:23
  Speaker 5: silk maps they used to give aviators back then, because
• 43:25
  Speaker 5: if you hit the water with a paper map, it
• 43:27
  Speaker 5: would disintegrate in the water. But milk maps, Yeah, it's beautiful.
• 43:30
  Speaker 5: I mean they're beautiful maps. Have them a frame now.
• 43:33
  Speaker 5: But so I had all those those things, his medals,
• 43:36
  Speaker 5: and that's the only touch point that and this show
• 43:38
  Speaker 5: Black Sheep Squadron with only touch points because you couldn't
• 43:41
  Speaker 5: get online back then, and go to the Facebook group
• 43:43
  Speaker 5: from that squadron and try to meet your dad all
• 43:45
  Speaker 5: these years later, like he had no touch points with
• 43:48
  Speaker 5: anybody from his dad's squadron, nothing like that.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: So what was it that you took What was it
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: that you took your family to to show them your
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: grandfather's name.
• 43:57
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so it's the the Mia wall because they never
• 43:59
  Speaker 5: found found his body.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: But that's what you mentioned. I didn't know that makes sense.
• 44:04
  Speaker 5: So there's a punch Bowl National Cemetery of the Pacific
• 44:07
  Speaker 5: is overlooks punch Bowl Crater overlooks Honolulu.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: Dad.
• 44:12
  Speaker 5: It's so powerful, so powerful. Going to national cemeteries, no
• 44:15
  Speaker 5: matter which one, is very important for for kids especially
• 44:19
  Speaker 5: and this was middle school, high school years, just to
• 44:21
  Speaker 5: appreciate and kind of see have a kind of a
• 44:25
  Speaker 5: have a viscial real reaction to seeing those headstones, seeing
• 44:28
  Speaker 5: those those stones in the ground, seeing those names on
• 44:31
  Speaker 5: the wall. So you realize what was sacrificed so that
• 44:34
  Speaker 5: we could have these freedoms and options and opportunities that
• 44:36
  Speaker 5: we have. So maybe before we make a snap judgment
• 44:38
  Speaker 5: on something based off somebody's tweet, Maybe take a breath,
• 44:42
  Speaker 5: research it a little more and then make that decision.
• 44:45
  Speaker 5: So it's I think it's important to take take kids there.
• 44:48
  Speaker 5: So that's what we did with our youngest who's twelve,
• 44:50
  Speaker 5: brought him up there this past week and showed him
• 44:52
  Speaker 5: his grandfather's name up there on that is that wall.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: It's it's massive numbers.
• 44:59
  Speaker 5: Massive number and it's all they works their way up
• 45:03
  Speaker 5: this slope of the crater and it's just wall after
• 45:06
  Speaker 5: wall after wall after wall that leads to the top,
• 45:08
  Speaker 5: and at the top there's a statue and a chapel,
• 45:11
  Speaker 5: and then there's the history of World War two on
• 45:13
  Speaker 5: these beautiful murals that spell it all out, all the
• 45:15
  Speaker 5: battles in order up there, so you can walk through
• 45:17
  Speaker 5: the history of World War two in the Pacific. And
• 45:19
  Speaker 5: then you can turn around and look out and just
• 45:21
  Speaker 5: see all those walls with all those names of the
• 45:23
  Speaker 5: bodies that were never recovered, and then you see all
• 45:26
  Speaker 5: the grass where they have all the people that were
• 45:27
  Speaker 5: buried for the bodies that were recovered. So it's pretty
• 45:30
  Speaker 5: powerful place.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: So if you're like with your grandfather, they don't then
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: he's on the m I A. But there's no tombston't
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: there's no tombstone marker.
• 45:39
  Speaker 5: Right right when they do recover the bodies, because we're
• 45:42
  Speaker 5: actively still out there looking for bodies from multiple past conflicts.
• 45:46
  Speaker 5: So when they do find the remains, then they make
• 45:48
  Speaker 5: up put a mark and they have this star that
• 45:50
  Speaker 5: goes next to the name that lets you know that, hey,
• 45:53
  Speaker 5: this body has now been recovered. And there's a lot
• 45:55
  Speaker 5: more now than there were when I was a kid
• 45:56
  Speaker 5: up there, you can definitely tell. But yeah, something that's
• 46:00
  Speaker 5: something I alway wanted to do in the military that
• 46:01
  Speaker 5: I ever got to do because we got so busy
• 46:03
  Speaker 5: after after nine to eleven was be part of that
• 46:06
  Speaker 5: m recovery group that would go out you got to Vietnam.
• 46:10
  Speaker 5: You'd really go out to a bunch of different places
• 46:12
  Speaker 5: and look for the remains of these in Vietnam, a
• 46:14
  Speaker 5: lot of pilots but people that were not recovered. So
• 46:17
  Speaker 5: it's a it's a large operation. You should be headquartered
• 46:19
  Speaker 5: in Hawaii. I'm not sure where it's headquartered now.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: So now we'll get to your mom.
• 46:23
  Speaker 5: Yes, librarians did where was she a library? So multiple
• 46:28
  Speaker 5: different different libraries growing up. But so when I wanted
• 46:32
  Speaker 5: to let her know, I wanted to be a seal.
• 46:33
  Speaker 5: So I found out what seals were from my dad
• 46:35
  Speaker 5: watching these war movies. So he called them frogmen, so
• 46:37
  Speaker 5: he did because that was because it was the name
• 46:40
  Speaker 5: of the movie. So we'd be watching football, So football
• 46:44
  Speaker 5: was big on Sundays in our household. But I was
• 46:46
  Speaker 5: really interested in football because even back then, at age five,
• 46:49
  Speaker 5: six seven, I wanted anyone I want to join the military.
• 46:51
  Speaker 5: So there was those few channels back then there's CBS, NBC, ABC,
• 46:56
  Speaker 5: and then there's the outlier, and that outlier channel always
• 46:59
  Speaker 5: had a war movie on on Sundays. So we'd been
• 47:01
  Speaker 5: watching football, and when the commercial came on, my dad
• 47:04
  Speaker 5: look at his watch and say go And I was
• 47:05
  Speaker 5: the remote control back in those days, so I'd run
• 47:07
  Speaker 5: up and I'd switch it to that outlier channel, that
• 47:09
  Speaker 5: fourth channel, and there was always a war movie on,
• 47:12
  Speaker 5: so I'd watched that. He'd be looking at his watch
• 47:14
  Speaker 5: for your two or two and a half minutes and
• 47:15
  Speaker 5: then say turn it back and turn Then we continue
• 47:19
  Speaker 5: watching football and I just kind of wait till the
• 47:21
  Speaker 5: next commercial, wonder what's happened in exactly, So I had
• 47:25
  Speaker 5: a lot of one of the guys, isn't there just
• 47:28
  Speaker 5: gone gone?
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: Yep? And uh connect, Yeah.
• 47:32
  Speaker 5: One of those was the Frogmen, and there was show
• 47:34
  Speaker 5: these guys climbing up over the beach and putting explosives
• 47:37
  Speaker 5: on obstacles and blowing them up. And I asked my dad, Hey,
• 47:39
  Speaker 5: who are these guys? And he said those were Frogmen
• 47:42
  Speaker 5: the name of the movie. And I sort of pestering
• 47:45
  Speaker 5: him all about what frog who frogmen were and then
• 47:47
  Speaker 5: he's like, change it back, change it back. So back
• 47:49
  Speaker 5: to football. And someone asked my mom, uh, and she said, well,
• 47:53
  Speaker 5: let's go for a trip, so down to the library.
• 47:55
  Speaker 5: And she took every opportunity to we had when we
• 47:57
  Speaker 5: had questions, to take us down to that library and
• 47:59
  Speaker 5: show out of research and all that sort of things.
• 48:01
  Speaker 5: So this is early eighties, and you could essentially get
• 48:03
  Speaker 5: through everything written about seals in about an hour, maybe
• 48:06
  Speaker 5: hour and a half if you're a slow reader. There
• 48:08
  Speaker 5: just wasn't that much. And then there's more written about
• 48:11
  Speaker 5: army special forces back then, typically about Vietnam, but you'd
• 48:14
  Speaker 5: still you can get through that in a couple hours too,
• 48:16
  Speaker 5: So you could potentially find the end of the Internet
• 48:19
  Speaker 5: in the library back then as a kid. But then
• 48:22
  Speaker 5: I started reading those same types of books that my
• 48:25
  Speaker 5: parents were reading. So it's let's say fifth grade's one
• 48:28
  Speaker 5: Hunt for a October comes out, and by sixth grade,
• 48:31
  Speaker 5: for sure, when I'm eleven, that's when I start for
• 48:33
  Speaker 5: sure reading all the same kind of thrillers that I
• 48:35
  Speaker 5: still read today. So I'm reading books by David Morrell,
• 48:38
  Speaker 5: Nelson to mill A, J. Quinnell, J. C. Pollock, Markold
• 48:40
  Speaker 5: and Louis Lamore, Stephen Hunter and back then, all these
• 48:44
  Speaker 5: guys and if you remember movies and television in the
• 48:45
  Speaker 5: eighties that protagonists usually had a background in Vietnam, and
• 48:49
  Speaker 5: it was either a Navy seal or Army Special Forces
• 48:51
  Speaker 5: or Marine sniper or CIA PEL paramilitary. And now he's
• 48:55
  Speaker 5: in the eighties and he's like a private investigator or
• 48:57
  Speaker 5: he's a.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: Cop or whatever follows at those No Country for Old Men,
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: they what is the guy? All those guys so in
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: No Count for Old Men. Josh Brolin's character lou Ellen,
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: lou Ellen, he did you know, you don't know, you're
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: not quite sure what, but did something heavy duty in Vietnam.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: The assassin did something you gather really heavy in Vietnam
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: and was you know, like a you gather some kind
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: of ultimate badass from Vietnam. And because it was its
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: about eight the eighties, and so it is these guys.
• 49:34
  Speaker 5: That were the timeline worked kind of a skill set
• 49:37
  Speaker 5: that made sense, kind of like.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: Crazy warriors that were wandering the drug lands of the
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: Texas Mexico boarder.
• 49:46
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean it makes sense, it makes sense.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: And I never really thought about that formula.
• 49:50
  Speaker 5: But when you mentioned that, oh, yeah, they were all
• 49:52
  Speaker 5: they all had backgrounds like that, and so that's the
• 49:54
  Speaker 5: background I went in real life. One day, so I figure, hey,
• 49:57
  Speaker 5: if I'm reading about this uh seal in a book
• 50:00
  Speaker 5: by David Morrell, I'm reading about this Air Force pair
• 50:04
  Speaker 5: of rescue guy in the book by so and so, well,
• 50:06
  Speaker 5: they must have done their research somehow, they must have
• 50:08
  Speaker 5: connections in there somehow. So as a kid to age ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,
• 50:13
  Speaker 5: I'm just having such a good time in the pages
• 50:15
  Speaker 5: of these novels. I know that after my time in
• 50:17
  Speaker 5: the military, that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna write these.
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: Get to books. Okay, let's say, here's here's what I
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: don't get it though. If someone had said you will
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: not like like God says, you cannot be a writer ever,
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: would you have been not going in the military.
• 50:35
  Speaker 5: I would have probably said why.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: He said somebody did it? He said because somebody?
• 50:41
  Speaker 5: Because because I said so, yeah.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: So whatever, Like, would you have not done it? Research stint?
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: And that's a high risk research stint.
• 50:52
  Speaker 5: I didn't realize how high risk it.
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: A lot of writers like I spent six months walking,
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: you know, you're like, I spent ten years in urban combat. Yeah,
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: so it could be a writer. Yeah, so it would
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: be like that doesn't sound that sounded very practical.
• 51:08
  Speaker 5: I thought of them. I thought of the seal side,
• 51:11
  Speaker 5: and the writing side is totally distinctly different. I didn't
• 51:14
  Speaker 5: think of one leading to the other. I just knew that, Hey,
• 51:17
  Speaker 5: if I want to do these two things with my
• 51:18
  Speaker 5: life because of time and aging, you have to do
• 51:22
  Speaker 5: the military side first. So yeah, there's no really like,
• 51:26
  Speaker 5: what am I going to do first? It's like, no,
• 51:27
  Speaker 5: you're gonna you have to do this first. But I
• 51:29
  Speaker 5: was reading all those guys and then I found Joseph
• 51:31
  Speaker 5: Campbell through here with a thousand faces and a series
• 51:33
  Speaker 5: of interviews he did with Bill Moyer's on PBS in
• 51:36
  Speaker 5: nineteen eighty eight called The Power of Myth, and then
• 51:38
  Speaker 5: they had some books that came out based on that
• 51:39
  Speaker 5: called the Power of Myth as well, and I saw
• 51:42
  Speaker 5: that with my mom. She introduced me to that and
• 51:44
  Speaker 5: he talked about how his hero's journey was in inspiration
• 51:48
  Speaker 5: for George Lucas and Star Wars, and of course, as
• 51:50
  Speaker 5: a kid of the eighties, you know, that really stood
• 51:52
  Speaker 5: out to me. So I started applying that hero's journey
• 51:54
  Speaker 5: in Joseph Campbell's Thoughts and Vision and Philosophy to books
• 51:58
  Speaker 5: I would read, to movies i'd the TV shows i'd see,
• 52:01
  Speaker 5: and even though I didn't think of it specifically in
• 52:04
  Speaker 5: these terms, I just thought, oh, that movie didn't work
• 52:07
  Speaker 5: because of that, that that hero missed a part of
• 52:09
  Speaker 5: that journey. It didn't really take you what is going
• 52:12
  Speaker 5: in for for James Reese, what is going into the cave?
• 52:17
  Speaker 5: So there's distinct language that I'll use in the book,
• 52:21
  Speaker 5: even if it's just a cabin or it's something and
• 52:24
  Speaker 5: I'll put cavern like something, so I'll describe something. I'll
• 52:28
  Speaker 5: throw that in there, cave of like cavern like something
• 52:30
  Speaker 5: like that dark. So I'll describe a cave even I
• 52:33
  Speaker 5: don't use those words because I'm thinking about that journey
• 52:37
  Speaker 5: and he's getting some sort of information in there.
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: Also, you go into a cave repeatedly, and there's there'll
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: be one. I probably do.
• 52:44
  Speaker 5: But there's one distinct part of each book that I
• 52:47
  Speaker 5: think of as I'm writing. That is his time to
• 52:50
  Speaker 5: change a little bit or learn something a little bit,
• 52:52
  Speaker 5: emerge a little different so that he can solve this problem,
• 52:55
  Speaker 5: usually very aggressively and violently in my novels.
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: But well, yeah, with like so you think a bunch
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: of where Luke Skywalker when he has to go to
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: that little Yeah, he goes that whole swampy island and
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: hangs out with Yoda.
• 53:09
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that's it.
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: It comes back, leaves early, but comes out ready to
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: That's right exactly, that's right.
• 53:15
  Speaker 5: First it goes into the cave. There's rats all over them.
• 53:17
  Speaker 5: You know, he's throwing those things off there the cave there.
• 53:20
  Speaker 5: So so you'll notice it if you if you read
• 53:23
  Speaker 5: here with a thousand faces and then start watching films
• 53:26
  Speaker 5: that take you on a journey through a protagonist's size,
• 53:29
  Speaker 5: then then you start noticing that some of these elements
• 53:32
  Speaker 5: are are in some of probably your favorite films. It
• 53:35
  Speaker 5: resonates for a reason, like there's a mentor along the way.
• 53:37
  Speaker 5: We have Obi wan Kenobe, we have we have Yoda.
• 53:40
  Speaker 5: We have someone that helps train, that's older and wiser,
• 53:42
  Speaker 5: that passes along some training or some information along the
• 53:45
  Speaker 5: way as well. So there's that there's that person in
• 53:48
  Speaker 5: in books and movies and television, and it's just it's
• 53:50
  Speaker 5: a very natural way to tell a story because our
• 53:53
  Speaker 5: first stories around the campfire, and they're about the hunt,
• 53:56
  Speaker 5: and they're about warfare, because you're passing down lessons from
• 53:58
  Speaker 5: both the hunt and combat to that next generation through
• 54:01
  Speaker 5: a story that you can remember.
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: And why doesn't that get boring? It is used over
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: and over and over again, like.
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: That's in your they would say. It's it's like already,
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: it's already wired into your brain.
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: I love it every day. Every single boxing movie, every
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: single one. It's like, I'm not going to train that kid.
• 54:24
  Speaker 5: Exactly.
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: It takes.
• 54:28
  Speaker 5: I do, yeah, for sure. Then you get the montage
• 54:31
  Speaker 5: and you come out stronger and wiser and get that
• 54:34
  Speaker 5: ring and get it done.
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: Not only am I going to prove it to you,
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: I'm going to prove it to all of them.
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: That's right, But you know there's but there's other things
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: that are wired into the India the human head. Like
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: if you look globally, if you look at world religion,
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: the idea that a bad flood came and wiped out
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: most everything is a recurring I mean, it's it's in
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: like Native American mythologies from the primary like monotheistic religions.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: It's just like this idea that probably because you're I
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: don't know, you're looking at stuff doesn't make that doesn't
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: make sense to you anymore. You find like dinosaur bones whatever,
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: and you're like, I don't know, must have been right.
• 55:15
  Speaker 5: Well, all those different different cultures that had never had
• 55:17
  Speaker 5: any interaction with one another, China, Native American philosophies, Christianity,
• 55:22
  Speaker 5: all these different religions and different cultures really is better
• 55:25
  Speaker 5: way to put it, had very similar stories, very similar mythologies,
• 55:29
  Speaker 5: very similar heroes, journeys that they would pass on to
• 55:31
  Speaker 5: that next generation. So across cultures that never had any interaction,
• 55:35
  Speaker 5: they had these very similar stories because they're passing on
• 55:38
  Speaker 5: some of those same things. It was about survival, and
• 55:40
  Speaker 5: not only was it about survival, it was about prevailing
• 55:41
  Speaker 5: because we're just gonna survive. That's a that's a rough
• 55:44
  Speaker 5: way to go, but you need to prevail. That's the goal.
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: You you like to put elements of hunting in I
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: do is that now? Is that is that psychology too?
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: Or is that just because you like hunting?
• 55:56
  Speaker 5: That's because I like hunting, and it's because other people
• 55:59
  Speaker 5: either don't or can't do that, and so it's different.
• 56:03
  Speaker 5: And it's also a way for me to kind of
• 56:05
  Speaker 5: give back to this community, the hunting community, really, because
• 56:08
  Speaker 5: someone's going through the airport and they see this thing
• 56:11
  Speaker 5: they think as a spy sponage thriller on the shelf,
• 56:13
  Speaker 5: and they grab it. But what they're really getting is
• 56:15
  Speaker 5: an education in hunting a conservation along the way, because
• 56:18
  Speaker 5: it's woven in. There's hunting in all the stories, but
• 56:20
  Speaker 5: in particular the second one true Believer, So it'll be
• 56:22
  Speaker 5: interesting to see how we deal with that in the
• 56:26
  Speaker 5: visual adaptation of it. And then the third one really
• 56:29
  Speaker 5: has his savage Sun and that's really about the dark
• 56:33
  Speaker 5: side of man through the dynamic of hunter and hunted.
• 56:36
  Speaker 5: So the inspiration for that was back in sixth grade
• 56:38
  Speaker 5: when I read The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell,
• 56:40
  Speaker 5: and even back in sixth grade, I said, one day,
• 56:42
  Speaker 5: I'll write the novel that pays tribute to the short story,
• 56:45
  Speaker 5: and it was the one that I wanted to start with.
• 56:46
  Speaker 5: When I started writing, I wrote now, six, seven, eight,
• 56:49
  Speaker 5: nine different ideas, different one page executive summaris, and laid
• 56:51
  Speaker 5: them all out on the table, and Savage Son was
• 56:53
  Speaker 5: the one I wanted to start with because that's the
• 56:55
  Speaker 5: theme that I wanted to explore, and that's the one
• 56:57
  Speaker 5: I've been thinking about writing since the sixth grade. But
• 56:59
  Speaker 5: I knew that the characters weren't developed enough to tell
• 57:01
  Speaker 5: that story yet. So I had to introduce everyone to
• 57:04
  Speaker 5: these characters in the first book, in the Terminal List,
• 57:08
  Speaker 5: and then even at the end of that one, I
• 57:09
  Speaker 5: was like, no, not quite ready yet. I still need
• 57:11
  Speaker 5: to take him now on this journey of redemption, because
• 57:14
  Speaker 5: it would be disingenuous to the reader or to the
• 57:17
  Speaker 5: listener to take him after these traumatic events in the
• 57:20
  Speaker 5: first novel and then just drop him into this second
• 57:22
  Speaker 5: in this second one as Savage Son. He couldn't do it,
• 57:25
  Speaker 5: and I'm surprised that Simon and Schuster actionly, my editor
• 57:28
  Speaker 5: there didn't ask me to change anything about that second one,
• 57:30
  Speaker 5: because it I take him on a pretty long journey
• 57:33
  Speaker 5: where he learns to live agangs. He thinks he's dying,
• 57:35
  Speaker 5: and he finds this next mission, this purpose in Africa,
• 57:38
  Speaker 5: in Mozambique, taking his skills from the battlefield and turning
• 57:41
  Speaker 5: those into something positive against the poachers out in Africa.
• 57:44
  Speaker 5: So he finds this new mission, and of course that's
• 57:46
  Speaker 5: when the CIA finds him and plucks him back out
• 57:48
  Speaker 5: for a new mission. But that's a long part of
• 57:51
  Speaker 5: the story, and that's probably people that really of my novels,
• 57:54
  Speaker 5: Savage Son is probably people's favorite, and In the Blood,
• 57:57
  Speaker 5: which was the last one. Those are the two favorites.
• 57:59
  Speaker 5: But people that like True Believer love True Believer love
• 58:03
  Speaker 5: that second one because of the hunting and because it's
• 58:05
  Speaker 5: a slower story, a slower build up, because this guy's
• 58:08
  Speaker 5: damaged and he needs to find that a reason to
• 58:11
  Speaker 5: live again, and he finds that in Africa and Mozambique.
• 58:14
  Speaker 5: And most people don't explore Mozambique and and hunting in
• 58:16
  Speaker 5: modern thrillers as well. Most people don't put boots on
• 58:20
  Speaker 5: the ground over there doing their research, which I did,
• 58:22
  Speaker 5: and I didn't even have my deal yet. So I
• 58:23
  Speaker 5: finished my first novel, hadn't sent it Simon and Schuster yet,
• 58:27
  Speaker 5: got out of the military, and knew that I was
• 58:29
  Speaker 5: always going to write too, because of the John Grisham story.
• 58:31
  Speaker 5: He wrote A Time to Kill first, and he couldn't
• 58:33
  Speaker 5: give that book away, and then he writes The Firm
• 58:35
  Speaker 5: and that thing takes off, and John Grisham novel every
• 58:38
  Speaker 5: year since. But if he thought this one didn't really work,
• 58:42
  Speaker 5: I'm just going to go back to practice of law,
• 58:44
  Speaker 5: like he'd probably just be retiring now for would probably
• 58:45
  Speaker 5: be a partner to law firm and just be just
• 58:48
  Speaker 5: be getting out still be thinking about that book that
• 58:50
  Speaker 5: didn't work, called The Time to Kill, which I think
• 58:52
  Speaker 5: is his best work actually, because they republished it after
• 58:54
  Speaker 5: The Firm came out and hit it so big they
• 58:56
  Speaker 5: went back and republished it, and then Matthew McConaughey started
• 58:58
  Speaker 5: in that movie. But it's fantastic if you haven't read
• 59:01
  Speaker 5: A Time to Kill for those listening and watching, it's amazing,
• 59:03
  Speaker 5: amazing book. But so I was always gonna write too,
• 59:05
  Speaker 5: So before i'd even sent it to to Simon and Schuster,
• 59:07
  Speaker 5: before I had an agent or anything, I was on
• 59:09
  Speaker 5: a plane in Africa to Mo'sambique, but boots on the
• 59:11
  Speaker 5: ground over there had lists of questions to ask the
• 59:14
  Speaker 5: professional hunters and the trackers and skinners and everybody else,
• 59:17
  Speaker 5: how do you say things? And the different languages over there?
• 59:19
  Speaker 5: What are the different languages that they're speaking over there?
• 59:22
  Speaker 5: Of course looking at the rocks and the dirt, how
• 59:24
  Speaker 5: am I going to describe that? And what's the situation
• 59:27
  Speaker 5: like over there with hunting and poaching in China and
• 59:29
  Speaker 5: minerals and exploitation and all the rest of it. So yeah,
• 59:32
  Speaker 5: I was doing that research while I was over there,
• 59:34
  Speaker 5: before I had any sort of a deal.
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: But so you just you're just spending money out of pocket.
• 59:38
  Speaker 5: Yeah oh yeah, And as I going in, you have
• 59:42
  Speaker 5: to write your occupation in those those forms and so
• 59:45
  Speaker 5: it sells you know, your name and all that stuff
• 59:47
  Speaker 5: and has occupation. And I wrote author even though I
• 59:50
  Speaker 5: didn't have any probably deal.
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: Well the other option would have been probably not that helpful.
• 59:56
  Speaker 5: So so yeah, so I wrote that. But I got
• 59:58
  Speaker 5: that from Stephen Pressfield for his books on creativity that
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 5: he writes the world of art turning pro authentic swing
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 5: and he said, you know, you're a professional. Flip that switch,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 5: turn pro and write, And so I wrote author before
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 5: I didn't met anyone from Simon and Schuster or had
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 5: any cause I was gonna write too, and if both
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 5: of them didn't work, then I was like, well, think
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 5: about some fallbacks, but I didn't really want to.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: I never get to the point where I felt like
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: I could legitimately, for occupation put down right. And I
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: loved it. Man nice because for a lot of time
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: I was like, I wrote, probably shouldn't put that down.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: I did it well before, like a tree surgeon. Yeah,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: I did it well well before.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 5: Yeah I was if you're looking at things professionally as like, oh,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 5: professionally you make money at it. Well, yeah, I jumped
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 5: the gun. But I still thought of myself at first
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 5: it was a professional soldier, a special operator, and now
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 5: not that anymore. Now I'm an author. So I just
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 5: flipped that switch and came up became a professional author.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 4: So before you, before you became an author, was there
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: like external pressure in the military for you to be
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 4: like a lifer, stay in and.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 5: Train people or yeah, so there is that, but once
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 5: you less so at twenty years, as you're creeping up
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 5: on twenty. That's kind of like because if you stay in,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 5: a lot of people say you're working for half pay essentially,
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 5: type of a panel if that's was really true, because
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 5: you could get out and get your retirement, which is
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 5: it's not really half. It's way less than half because
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 5: they don't include your special pays like your demo pay
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 5: and your jump pay and your combat pay and all
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 5: that sort of thing. So it's yeah, it's not It
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 5: doesn't really work out that way. But I understand what
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 5: people mean when they say it. But no, I was
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 5: twenty was good, it was a good run. If I
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 5: stayed in, it was I'd done everything that I wanted
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 5: to do at that point, and if I stayed in,
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 5: it would be staff job and then come back as
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 5: a commanding officer at some point, which sounds really impressive
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 5: if you say your commanding officer or something, But in
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 5: today's day and age, as a commanding officer, you're really
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 5: back in attach cole operation center when the guys are
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 5: out there kicking in the doors doing the job that
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 5: you really came in to do. And it's good you
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 5: need good people to do that. But that just wasn't
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 5: my thing. I was there for to be a tactical
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 5: level leader on the battlefield, and that time was essentially done.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 5: So it was time to flip that switch and take
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 5: care of my family. And we have three kids and
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 5: one of them had some severe special needs, so that
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 5: was like they needed me, So it was time to
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 5: move on. It was very clear to me that it
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 5: was time to get out, and it was also very
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 5: clear to me what I needed to do now.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 4: And you never had, and like then or now, any
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 4: interest in nonfiction.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 5: It was always funny you should ask, but not in
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 5: the same way that most people think of nonfiction from
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 5: someone coming out of the military. So I have a
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 5: not from My first non fiction book comes out in
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 5: fall of twenty twenty four, so about a year and
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 5: a half and writing with a historian James Scott. He's
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 5: written five books, most of them on World War Two.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 5: Amazing guy, And for my plan was always to write
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 5: nonfiction on terrorist events. So this first one is about
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 5: the nineteen eighty three Bay Rout Barracks bombing, and so
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 5: it just hasn't really been the seminal work on that
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 5: get and there's been something what.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: He said to me last that I was like kind
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: of genius man, because there's like nothing about there's a
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: few days revisited as commonly as other right seminal moment
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: exactly in military.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 5: History exactly, And I have those. I mean, I remember
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 5: distinctly some of my first memories of the nineteen seventy
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 5: nine hostage crisis, and I remember going to church and
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 5: praying for those people over there. I remember Walter Cronkite
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 5: counting down the days that they'd been held hostage over there.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 5: I remember wondering why we hadn't gone to rescue them yet,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 5: So that some of my earliest memories are those black
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 5: and white photos of the people from the embassy with
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 5: their their eyes, you know, taped, tapped over and blindfolded
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 5: and all that. But yeah, it made sense when I'm
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 5: looking at all those events that were so impactful during
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 5: the eighties. In eighteen eighty three Bairit Barricks bombing, and
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 5: today actually is the anniversary of the embassy bombing in
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 5: April of eighty three, and that's how we're looking into
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 5: that first, and then everything that leads up to the
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 5: October bombing of the marine barracks in Beirut. But I'm
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 5: thinking about t w A eight four seven, I think
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 5: you have, Achille Laurel. I'm thinking of panem one O three,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 5: thinking of all these different attacks in Europe at whether
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 5: it's a cafe or a nightclub or whatever it might be.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 5: In airports, multiple airports, which one to start with. And
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 5: the nineteen eighty three Barys bombing was so significant because
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 5: it showed Hesbela in particular, that terrorism worked, and everyone
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 5: else that was watching that isn't Hesbla that a terrorism worked.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 5: What did they want? They wanted us to leave Beirut?
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: What do we do?
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 5: We talked tough for a couple months afterward, and then
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 5: we left more quietly in early eighty four. So there's
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 5: the geopolitical aspect of it that continues to shadow our
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 5: foreign policy today. So there's a lot to explore there.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 5: And then there's recently declassified documents about what was going
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 5: on in the White House. Who was advocating for Marines
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 5: to go ashore, who's advocating that they should stay on
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 5: an AMPTHIB ship offshore, and how that decision got made,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 5: And so we get to explore all that in detail.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 5: Interview survivors, interview people that came to identify the bodies,
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 5: which is the same group that identified the bodies at
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 5: Jonestown and so it's a there's lots of lots of
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 5: unpack there, so that'll be the that'll be the first one.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 5: So that was a very long way to answer that
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 5: nonfiction question. So, yeah, nonfiction's coming and uh in fall
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 5: of twenty twenty.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: Four, how do you how do you reconcile.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 5: That you.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: Spent so many years uh as a federal employee in
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: a chain of command that flowed down from from the
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: commander in chief, so like a democratically elected individual, and
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: that flows down through all this stuff to the point
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: where you and your guys are have enough faith in
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: that system where you're not only putting your lives at risk,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: but your colleagues and frienziers are dying.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 5: Okay, so you have this, you've you've.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: Completely bought into or are supportive of this, and then
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: your work has like a conspiratorial tone. You know that
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: that not everything from up above is to be trusted.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 5: Yeah?
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: Is that? Did you did you feel that way?
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 5: Or is that? Like?
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: Is that the writer?
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 5: Well, I certainly feel that way. Now, the government has
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 5: not done a very good job of showing us as
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 5: citizens that they can be trusted over time. And I'm
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 5: not just talking about recent history, it's throughout throughout our
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 5: history and throughout history in general. So I thought about it,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 5: but not so much that would overshadow what my job was,
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 5: which is to accomplish this mission and bring my guys home.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 5: But you certainly think about it when you're over there.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 5: Let's say Iraq, and you're there in two thousand and four,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 5: and then you come back in two thousand and five,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 5: a year later, and you're like, Wow, things have gotten
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 5: a lot worse here. Yeah, nothing is better than when
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 5: I left. Then you come back and they're still there
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 5: in two thousand and six and looking around like miscontinues
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 5: to get worse. We continue to do the same things.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 5: And if you're a student of history and you're student
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 5: of Vietnam and you're wondering what lessons we took from
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 5: that that we're applying to this, or if you're in Afghanistan,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 5: like in the early days, which I thought were the
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 5: late days in two thousand and three, I thought, oh,
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 5: I'm going to miss this thing, and that didn't end
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 5: up being the case. But what lessons do we take
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 5: from the Soviets? Did we take the right ones we
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 5: have nineteen seventy nine to eighty nine, and we can
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 5: look at all these everything that happened there, and we
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 5: can draw lessons and we can apply them, hopefully as wisdom.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 5: And we neglected to do that, or we took the
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 5: wrong lessons. I think we took the wrong lessons. We
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 5: didn't even have to go back to the three British incursions.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 5: We now have to go back to Alexander the Great
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 5: or Genghis Khan, like there was more recent history.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: Is it like Kipling? Everybody's always talking about everything you
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: know about Afghanistans?
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 5: Yeah, there's Yeah, it's great, great poem. It was on
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 5: the wall of one of our CIA houses over there,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 5: and I have a picture of it that I posted
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 5: on on social and I don't call out the quote people,
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 5: some people will. I have always curious who's going to
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 5: notice the quote in the background written on the on
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 5: the wall. But yeah, we had these lessons, We had
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 5: history we could have looked at, and we neglected to
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 5: do that and ended up being there for for twenty
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 5: years and then leaving in the way that we did,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 5: and then we have just was it just last week
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 5: we have officials appointed officials talking about it was a
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 5: huge success the way we left Afghanistan. And then you
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 5: can chextapose that with the photos of people hanging off
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 5: jets and babies getting thrown over the walls and secured
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 5: and barbed wire and okay, that's your death. That doesn't
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 5: quite look like So you have twenty years to prepare
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 5: for this, guys, twenty years and this is your only job,
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 5: and this is what you get. This is the best
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 5: you can do. But there's no I told them accountable
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 5: in the pages of my novels, because don't differ accountable really.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: Like inept Oh there's anod there's but there's a neptitude.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: But then there's mail in tent.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think a lot of ineptitude is the way
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 5: is if you have to blame something, because there hasn't
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 5: been accountability really since Vietnam, since well before Vietnam. World
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 5: War Two, there was a lot of accountability. George. People
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 5: know George Marshall for the Marshall Plan rebuilding Europe, But
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 5: really what George Marshall did and a lead up to
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 5: World War two and during World War two was hold
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 5: leaders accountable and remove them. He'd give them a one chance,
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 5: maybe two not a third out of the way. Put
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 5: someone in there that can get this job done. And
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 5: all those names that we know, from Nimitz to MacArthur
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 5: to Patent, all those guys got there because someone in
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 5: front of them failed and they were held accountable, they
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 5: were removed, and we put somebody else in place to
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 5: see if they could do it. Back to the Civil War,
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 5: Lincoln replaced after general after general after general until he
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 5: got to Grant. Then somehow those things start to change.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 5: Maybe it's in Korea, but for sure by Vietnam. Now
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 5: we have failure on the battlefield and what happens, well,
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 5: they are not held accountable, they get out, they sit
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 5: on boards of these different companies, and that has been
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 5: pervasive all the way through today. There's a great book
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 5: called the Afghanistan Papers by Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 5: who got these interviews through two Freedom of Information Act
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 5: lawsuits with the I think Department of Defense. But it
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 5: was these officers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan being
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 5: interviewed in a way that they thought was going to
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 5: remain classified. And then he juxtaposes what they said in
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 5: those interviews with what they said in front of Congress,
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 5: so essentially to the American people, to their troops, to
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 5: our elected representatives, and it's one to eighty out. And
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 5: there's one guy, I think it's a two thousand and
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 5: nine one general or admiral that says something it's not
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 5: even that bad. And he's like, hey, things aren't really
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 5: going as well over there as we think. If you've
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 5: been led to believe, that's about as bad as it got.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 5: And he was quietly removed a few months later. Yeah,
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 5: So it's that non accountability that is really I think
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 5: killing us as a nation.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: I got a friend that spent a lot of years
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: fighting in Afghanistan and he had mentioned that before he
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: went there, his some commanding officer had wanted to have
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: a lecturer come to talk about Afghan history and it
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: wasn't condoned. And he always admired this officer because they
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: paid for the speaker out of their own pocket and
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: flew the speaker out to come, and they basically came
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: in ten years in advance, he said, looking back, they
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: came and told us what would happen. Yeah, and this
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: was this was an uncondoned perspective, but it was it was.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: It was an Afghan it was in the US and
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: they were I can't remember. They were professors somewhere, and
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: he said, looking back, they came and basically said, here's
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: what will happen ten years from now. And when when
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: when we pulled out and cobble fell, I texted to say, like, man,
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: it's got to be emotional for you or in some way,
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: and he just said, I've for a long time, I
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: just haven't been able to see any other outcome. There's
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: nothing we've done on like assessments that would suggest otherwise
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: to act like this is a surprise as bullshit. Yeah,
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: it was his take, his take on and now someone
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: has spent a lot of years there.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 5: Yeah, no, we had all those years to study, all
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 5: those years to prepare. You could see from the spring
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 5: end of the summer, province by province falling and it's yeah,
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 5: it's really remarkable being aptitude amongst our senior level leaders
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 5: that allowed them to put these eighteen nineteen twenty twenty
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 5: two year old kids at this gate at Kabo Airport
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 5: in a tactically dis advantageous position when we held the
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 5: tactically advantageous position for twenty years at Bogram And it's
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 5: just for those who have been there, they'll know exactly
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 5: what I'm talking about, the standoff distances and everything else
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 5: involved in securing an area or an airport. In this case,
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 5: I mean, it's it's criminal, and yet no one's held accountable,
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 5: no one was no one was even quiet moved aside.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 5: At those senior levels, they just continue to do their
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 5: job and they'll retire with a full pension and then
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 5: sit on a board, go to a couple of meetings
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 5: a year for some of these defense contracting companies, and
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 5: the machine rolls on. Unfortunately, this is.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: So far removed from anything to do with hunting and
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: fish and whatnot. But there's a lot of parallels, but
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: I don't even care. Yeah, in hindsight, Okay, with the
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: gift of hindsight, do you have any idea of what,
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: when and what should have been done in Afghanistan overall? Yeah?
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 5: I mean you can go back to December of twenty
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 5: twenty one, that's what I mean. Yeah, And when I
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 5: talk about those lessons that we learned from the Soviets,
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 5: I think our senior level leaders took, hey, we need
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 5: a small footprint there. The Soviets went in with too
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 5: many people, too many targets too heavy handed and it
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 5: ended up being their their Vietnam is what they you know,
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 5: like to they like determin it for ten years.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: I think they maybe found a new one.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, they to find a new one. We'll see,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 5: they've got nine years to see if that's and yeah
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 5: they yeah, it's uh and they haven't even started. Really,
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 5: I don't think as far as they're throwing bodies at
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 5: that problem.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 3: But not if you look at history, Yeah that their
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 3: previous commitments and manpower.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 5: Exactly, yeah, exactly. But yeah, December twenty twenty one, multiple
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 5: requests from guys on the ground requesting either rangers or
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 5: tenth Mountain Division Marines, somebody come in, block off these
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 5: passes into Pakistan. We have Asama bin Laden right here
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 5: in these mountains. All those requests denied and slips away
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 5: and we get the next twenty years for whatever reason.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 5: So there's one. So there's there's one. But then now
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 5: that you're in this thing, now what do you do?
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 5: And now why are we there? And then well we
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 5: get distracted by Iraq and all those resources that were
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 5: focused on Afghanistan shift over to Iraq in two thousand
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 5: and three, and you could see it on the ground
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 5: in Afghanistan, you could see all these assets kind of
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 5: pick up and and all these people that were doing
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 5: all these jobs before just aren't there anymore. Just to
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 5: a few people to keep things kind of keep things moving,
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 5: keep these outstations supplied, keep this air overhead in case
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 5: people need it. So, yeah, there are so many lessons
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 5: that we can take and apply going forward. And that's
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 5: what we're not so good at it as a country
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 5: is taking those lessons and applying them going forward as
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 5: wisdom because we're looking at for your election cycles, eight
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 5: your election cycles for the real deep thinkers among us,
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 5: But we're really not honoring all those people that either
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 5: died or came home damaged from the wars in Iraq
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 5: and Afghanistan. And the way we can now honor them
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 5: is by taking those lessons and applying them going forward
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 5: to this next generation. So these next these kids don't
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 5: have to do the same things or don't have to
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 5: suffer and through another twenty year war because of the
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 5: ineptitude of senior level leadership. But really, in the military,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 5: as long as you don't pop positive on a piss test,
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 5: as long as you don't get arrested, too many times
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 5: or get arrested for like domestic violence or something like that.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 5: You're going to pretty much rise to the top if
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 5: you just remain quiet, and you're going to see people
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 5: that are kind of those go getters, those hard chargers.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 5: A lot of those people get to a certain level
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 5: and move on out, either because they just want to
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 5: do something in the private sect, or they they're kind
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 5: of disenfranchised by what they what they see at senior
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 5: level leaders or see their path ahead and they're like,
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 5: I'm not gonna go work for that guy. I'm out.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 5: So really he's It's not the best and the brightest
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 5: that are in my experien I'm sure there are exceptions
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 5: for those that are listening. Yes, there are exceptions, but
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 5: for the most part, if you just kind of keep
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 5: your nose clean and stay out of trouble, you can
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 5: rise up in any in government service in general.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: Do you I don't mean to keep beating this one
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: into the ground, but do you think that do you
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: think that the Afghanistans should have just been to focus
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: on al Qaeda and then just that and had that
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: be it.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 5: Yeah, we definitely did not understand that al Qaeda was
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 5: a guest that there are guests of the Taliban, and
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 5: over there, if you were the guests of someone, well,
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 5: guess what that person or that tribe is now obligated
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 5: to defend you. And we stepped right into that. And
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 5: so we made enemies of the Taliban. Who I mean,
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 5: they're not, yeah, not the greater. They're just destroying these
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 5: the Buddhist statues or earlier on. And obviously they weren't
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 5: in New York City. They're not. Well maybe now it's
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 5: a little closer from what I've seen on the news
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 5: and videos I'm seeing, but we definitely made an enemy
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 5: of someone. The accidental Gorilla is a good way to
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 5: put a David cookol And has a great book called
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 5: The Accidental Gorilla, and we made a lot. It's also
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 5: called insurgent math. So you go in and kill somebody
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 5: and guess what his kid sees you do that. And
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 5: but what's that kid going to do? Well, he's probably
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 5: going to join the Taliban or whatever organization that's going
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 5: to allow him to now also honor his tribe by
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 5: getting revenge, because that's part of the culture as well,
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 5: deeply embedded. It's deeply meted in a lot of cultures.
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 5: Not just not just Afghan not just Taliban, but we
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 5: made a lot of enemies for sure. In twenty years
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 5: we had ample opportunity to do that. So if we'd
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 5: gone in with taken a little more lessons from the
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 5: Soviets and realized that if we went in heavy handed,
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 5: did the job and got out, we would accomplish that goal.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 5: But for some reason we stayed and then for some
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 5: reason we got out the way we did. So not
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 5: a big nation building guy, no expeditionary counterinsurgency is very difficult.
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 5: So if you have a counterinsurgency campaign on your own soil,
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 5: it's different than doing it overseas, doing it on someone
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 5: else's turf, which can prove to be There are a
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 5: couple instances of long term commitments playing out Malayia places
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 5: like that, but that's a long term commitment with a
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 5: cohesive strategy, not shifting here and there and not rewarding
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 5: people for failure, which is what we do. People keep
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 5: failing up in our system.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: You mentioned me last night that when you got when
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: you finally got done at the military, you were looking
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: for I'm sorry, I don't think this would be private.
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: You were looking for.
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 5: Physical and physical and psychological step, psychological separation. Yeah, I
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 5: just saw so many during my last couple of years
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 5: in I was at BUDS, so I was at our
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 5: seal training commands, so I wasn't taking guys down range anymore.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 5: And I had all this leave built up from all
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 5: these all these years that I wasn't really taking leave
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 5: because I was so focused on being the best leader
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 5: operator I possibly could. I was so focused and I
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 5: think being honest with my wife about that, realizing that, hey,
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 5: the team is coming first, and that's just how it
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 5: has to be because you're responsible for those guys' lives downrange,
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 5: so youhowe it to them, their families, the country, the
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 5: mission to team. That's just how it's going to be. Eventually,
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 5: when we're out, it'll it'll switch back. So when I
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 5: got to Buds and I wasn't taking guys down range anymore,
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 5: I could kind of take a breath and look around.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 5: I realized that I was going to get out. The
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 5: pendulum started to just swing back. Because Buds is a machine,
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 5: and it's push ups, it's sit ups, it's pull ups,
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 5: it's runs, it's swims, it's it's what it has been
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 5: for a long time.
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: Oh, well, we know all about that because we have
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: a thing now and then where you have to do
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: one hundred push ups.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 5: In a day. Oh my goodness, you got to all
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 5: about that.
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: It's called the club.
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 5: How many guys have you lost called the club? Well,
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 5: it kind of comes was like, well, we'll.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: Have it be that we're gonna have the Hondole Club
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: every day, but it winds up being like now and
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: then we'll do a hondle club.
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 5: So I completely understand now by the way you get it,
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 5: I get for sure, But but I got to see
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 5: people getting out and is My role is the operations officer,
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 5: which is like a COO of a company, so you're
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 5: kind of running day to day operations. But at BUDS,
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 5: they're really running themselves because you have an officer and
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 5: a master chief or a senior chief in every phase
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 5: of training, and they've got it. Like they don't, they've
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 5: got it. So you kind of have some some time.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 5: And I saw people get out of the military and
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 5: have a hard time leaving it behind because you have
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 5: this mission, you're so dedicated to it, You're best friends
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 5: are a part of it. When you're downranged there to
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 5: your right and your left and you're not worried about
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 5: paying bills or leaky faucets or anything like that. You're
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 5: solely focused on building target packages and going and executing
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 5: those missions. Then you come home and you transition out
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 5: and you think maybe you can recreate that in the
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 5: private sector or something similar, and for some reason it's
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 5: a surprise that you can't. And either you try to
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 5: get back in or you're calling me as the operations
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 5: officer saying, hey, can I bring my new boss buy
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 5: for a tour? And I was always like absolutely, you
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 5: know for sure, Even when I got told no by
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 5: senior level leadership, I was always like, yeah, I just
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 5: come by when at this time, because I know that
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 5: guy is going to be gone and you know we'll
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 5: get this, get this done for you. So I was
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 5: always trying to hook up good guys in the teams
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 5: or or out.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: But at the point being away.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 5: It was hard. It was hard for a lot of
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 5: people to stay away all these foundation events that you
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 5: have to support military families, you know, continuing to go
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 5: to those going to the same grocery stores, the same bars,
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 5: dropping your kids off at the same schools where you're seeing, uh,
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 5: either somebody that was on your team before dropping their
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 5: kid off because they happened to be at a shore duty,
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 5: or you see the wife dropping the kid off and
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 5: wondering where the husband's down range in a racker Afghanistan
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 5: and you're feeling guilty about not being there. So I
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 5: saw that those couple of years that I was at
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 5: Buds at the end of my time in the military
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 5: and decided that Okay, it's ull probably be healthy to
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 5: make this physical and psychological break and head up to
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 5: Park City, Utah raise our kids in a ski town.
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 5: And I think that was a good decision.
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because talking about that, you know, you're like, your
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: boy likes the ski, your daughter likes the hunt. I mean,
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: do you at night feel like you need to at
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: the end of the day be like, you know, I
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: want to remind you that there are are horrible things
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: happened to people around this world. Or are you like
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: that that the point of this is that that's not
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: part of everyday life.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 6: No.
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 5: I think about it and we talk about it, and
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 5: I see that sun setting over the mountains and I
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 5: think that it's going down here, but it's coming up
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 5: somewhere else, that somewhere else may have a group of
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 5: special Operators or sa PERI military guys just coming back
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 5: from a mission or getting ready to go do some
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 5: sort of daylight op somewhere. They're fixing gear from the
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 5: night before, they're loading magazines, they're treating wounded, they're gassing
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 5: up vehicles, or whatever they're doing. They will never hear
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 5: about unless something goes wrong, and then we'll hear about
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 5: it in the news. But if it goes well enough
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 5: that no one dies, we're probably not going to hear
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 5: about it. So I think about that. I think about
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 5: that every day, but I don't dwell on it. I
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 5: appreciate that they're out there doing that job so I
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 5: can be back here doing what I love, which is
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 5: which is writing. But I never forget it. I never
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 5: forget they're out there.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: Did you get to it with writing? Did you also
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: one day be like okay, because you knew you're gonna
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: you know, you wanted to write since you were a kid.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: Did you one day be like okay, now now it begins,
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, just said a typewriter.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 5: Yep, yep, sat down my computer.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: Here's a movie. It'll be a type yeah exactly.
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 5: I collect old typewriters now, actually at Havyway. Somebody gifted
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 5: it to me in early twenty twenty. Yeah, he wrote
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 5: a movable feast on it, published after after he died.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 5: But but yeah, so I have that. That's I really.
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 5: A bunch of his stuff went up for sale. Yeah,
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 5: the guy that started Newman's Owne with Paul Newman also
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 5: was part of that that that crowd and had had
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 5: purchased this typewriter for Hemingway to write a move Wolf
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 5: east On in New York. Actually, and all his this
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 5: stuff went up for sale when he passed away, and
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 5: I was early twenty twenty, and a fan reached out
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 5: and said that they wanted me to have it. So,
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 5: I mean, waste typewriter now, but I don't work. I
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 5: typed one thing on it. I wrote one Hemingway quote
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 5: and I put it on there, and and I write
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 5: everything on my MacBook.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: Cred. Do you think I should put him in his
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: place and tell him about how we have that knife
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: that was used to get the weights out of the
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: walleye at the Walleye cheating scandal.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 5: Oh wow, I feel like this is a story that's
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 5: been told him this podcast before anyway, typewriter.
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm not.
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 5: Sure the two campaigns.
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: That's cool, but yes I did.
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 5: I sat down, looked around after I was at buds
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 5: and was like, Okay, my family needs me, son needs me.
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 5: It's time to make this stay and I'm not going
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 5: to go through this, uh this next ten years. So
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 5: essentially come back as a commanding officer somewhere. It's time
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 5: to get out. It was a good run. Started enlisted,
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 5: did all the things I wanted to do, became an officer,
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 5: got out as a troop commander at the end of
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 5: when we got out a rack in twenty eleven, and
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 5: now got home, looked around, realized that was a good
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 5: run to time to get out.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: Did your wife think you were nuts? No, No, I
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: will become a famous writer.
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 5: We known each other since we were eighteen, and so
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 5: the whole time I wanted to be a seal and
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 5: an author. And so she's seen all these books travel
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 5: with us from the days that I was eighteen, I
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 5: still had books all over the place, and I still
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 5: have those books. So she's been she's used to it,
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 5: and she just knows that, yeah, this was my plan,
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 5: so she's not she's not surprised by it. When when
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 5: it was.
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 4: Time to write like before that, like, leading up to
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 4: that point, had you done anything to train yourself or
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 4: school yourself in writing or you were just like, I'm
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 4: going to write a damn book.
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 5: Yeah, all that reading that I did, but no, like
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 5: formal you didn't take any like didn't take a cloist
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 5: or anything like that. I read On Writing by Stephen King,
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 5: The Successful Novelist by David Morrell, all those Stephen Hunter
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 5: books that were out at the time, on creativity. There's
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 5: more of the mount now, there's maybe three or four
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 5: of them out then, it's probably seven of them out now.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 5: So I read those and then I decided, okay, that's
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 5: enough because today you can essentially study how to do
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 5: something forever. You can take multiple online classes, multiple master classes.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 5: You can just essentially research until the end of time
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 5: on the internet. Eventually, if you want to get something done,
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 5: you have to execute.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 4: So oh some people that's just what they do.
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and that's fine, and that's fine. But I was
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 5: ready to write. But more so and on writing for
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 5: people that have read it, is more autobiography than on
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 5: how to book by Stephen King. But I love reading
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 5: autobiography as by authors, and typically they write them later
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 5: later in life. There's a few more of them out
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 5: now that weren't out at the time that I started writing.
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 5: If they had been, I would have read those as well.
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 5: But yeah, read those, But luckily I had that foundation
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 5: already built and then sat down and wrote. But really
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 5: I started with the title, and this is how it's
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 5: been for every book thus far. I like to have
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 5: the title right out of the gate, so I'm not worried,
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 5: I'm not wasting bandwidth, worried about coming up with a
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 5: good title. So even if it's a working title, I
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 5: like to have that down, even if it's going to
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 5: change eventually. I like to have that not just book six,
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 5: but a title, a theme that's going to guide the
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 5: writing process. So each book has a distinctive theme that's
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 5: just a sentence. And I got that from Stephen Pressfield
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 5: misinterpretation of something that Stephen Pressfield said on Rogan But
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 5: I'm glad that I misinterpreted it, and I interpreted it
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 5: as he would take a yellow sticky next to his
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 5: typewriter and write a one word theme. So I was like, ah,
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 5: wonderful revenge, and then I changed that to revenge without constraint.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 5: I cheated a little bit.
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: What did he mean?
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 5: He was telling a story about a playwright in New
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 5: York who would write a few sentences about a theme
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 5: that would guide his writing process, and somehow in your
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 5: head yeah one word, yeah, well done, hurt to be concise? No, no,
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 5: And now I have the same thing, but it's a
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 5: little more wordy, not not much, but it's definitely not
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 5: more than a say. So start with that, and then
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 5: one page executive summary, and I write that out and
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 5: then I ask myself two questions. I say, would is
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 5: this worth a year of my life or a year
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 5: and a half of my life? And if it's yes,
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 5: then I ask another question. I say, if someone were
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 5: to read this like walking through airport, going into Hudson News,
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 5: pulling the book off and reading the back or the
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 5: flap jacket, would they be willing to invest time that
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 5: they're never going to get back in this story. And
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 5: if the answer to both of those is yes, then boom,
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 5: I'm all in. And then I take that, turn that
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 5: into an outline, and then take that outline turn it
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 5: into a narrative. But what I don't do is get
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 5: stuck on the outline, because if I get to a
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 5: place in that outline where I'm like, oh, how he
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 5: is ever going to get out of this? Is anyone
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 5: ever going to believe this? This is going to be terrible.
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 5: I'm never going to figure this out. If I get
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 5: to that, I just put a bunch of x's and
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 5: go around it, and I keep writing, knowing that I
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 5: have a year and a half to figure this out.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 5: And on the battlefield, you had seconds to make decisions.
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 5: Now I have a year a year and a half
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 5: that first book.
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 4: Or are you working completely solo or did you have
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 4: an editor or anyone?
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 6: Ye?
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so nobody yet. I sent it to twenty people
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 5: or so maybe twenty five even maybe twenty seven May
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 5: thirty when it was done, when I thought I got
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 5: it to the place where I got it to being
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 5: the best that I could get it, and I told myself, Hey,
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 5: if one person says comes back and says, hey, I
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 5: really didn't like this part, this part didn't make sense,
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 5: you need to do this, I would discount it two three, Yeah,
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 5: discount those two. But if it was like five, six,
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 5: seven of those twenty five or thirty people were like,
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 5: you should think about writing this part again, or I
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 5: didn't really understand this. Then I've been okay, Roger that,
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 5: but now I sent it to four people ahead of time.
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 5: They were part of that original original group, but now
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 5: it's four and I sent it to them before I
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 5: send it to my editor, and they give me different
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 5: things back and there it's all super valuable and they're
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 5: they're amazing. I thank them and the acknowledgments of my books,
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 5: and then I make those make those changes or I
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 5: discard them, and then send it to my editor and
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 5: so they're so she's getting the best product that me
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 5: and a little bit of feedback from like a fan base.
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 5: And three of those four guys are lawyers, so they're
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 5: good at finding things in written documents, so they're good
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 5: at finding finding things need to be explained a little
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 5: more exactly, yeah, exactly, and usually it's fixed with just
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 5: a sentence here or there. So I do that and
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 5: then send it to New York and Emily Butler, my
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 5: editor Simon and Schuster. Emily Butler Books was imprint of Atria,
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 5: so she has her own imprint and she's amazing, and
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 5: she's the only person I ever wanted to be my editor.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 5: And the reason I found her is that I looked
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 5: in the back of books people in my genre, and
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 5: I'm like, why is Vince Flynn thanking this person named
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 5: Emily Butler? Why is Brad Thor thanking this person named
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 5: Emily Butler? And I decided, Emily Butsler will be my publisher,
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 5: so I should probably. Yeah, she didn't know this. She
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 5: didn't know this yet, she had no idea I existed.
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 5: And same thing as I started writing. Being a child
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 5: of the eighties, it only makes sense to pick the
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 5: star that's going to star in your adaptation of this
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 5: book that you have a sentence written of. And I thought,
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 5: you know what, Chris Pratt's the guy and in Guardians
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 5: of the Galaxy, yet hadn't been in Jurassic World yet.
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 5: He had a very small role in Zero Dark thirty
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 5: as a seal, and he was in Parks and Rec.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 5: So I saw this transformation from Andy Dwyer in Parks
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 5: and Rec to this seal operator. And I also thought, Hey,
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 5: I need someone who's likable on and off screen because
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 5: this role is going to require an audience to forgive him,
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 5: possibly for a lot of the things that I'm about
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 5: to write about. And I thought about Magnum back in
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 5: the back in the eighties, and I thought everybody loved Magnum,
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 5: all the all the wives love Magnum, all the dads
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 5: love Magnum. Everybody loved Magnum because he was funny. You
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 5: wanted to sit down have a beer with him. He'd
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 5: sit down and to have beers with his buddies at
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 5: the King Command Maa club. But then he could flip
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 5: that switch. And there were episodes. It was the first
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 5: time that protagonist in in primetime television had killed an
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 5: unarmed bad guy, and that was in Have You Seen
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 5: the Sunrise? And yeah, so I love that episode.
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: It's just my dad that I don't remember, So I
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: don't remember. I just remember, like the shirt anything, yeah,
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: very short shorts.
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yep. So I thought about that. I thought, Chris
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 5: Prats the guy he'll start. And then I'm like, well,
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 5: I'm choosing my star, might as well choose my director.
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 5: And I thought Antoine Fuqua. I love everything that that
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 5: he's done. He's amazing. Training day, training day, incredible with
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 5: Denzel Washington, of course, and I did shoot her, which
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 5: is an adaptation of a Point of Impact by Stephen Hunter,
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 5: and uh like yep uh. Antoine will direct and that's
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 5: who ended up starring and directing. So it's uh so
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 5: it worked out, which happens all the time. He lives
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 5: in Utah, doesn't he Nope, no, he doesn't in California.
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 5: He's California, but from uh moved around, but from Washington State.
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 5: But but he's somebody you want to sit down, have
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 5: coffee with, have a beer with, and just an awesome guy.
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 5: When he optioned it, he came out to Utah, he
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 5: spent a week together out in the in the back country,
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 5: and he's just a solid dude. And being on set
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 5: with him, you can tell like everybody is happy to
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 5: be there on that set because he's set in the
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 5: tone him and Antoine. Antoine's like the commanding officer and
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 5: Chris is like the troop commander, and they are setting
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 5: that tone for the entire three hundred and fifty other
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 5: people on that set. And so many people came up
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 5: to me that didn't have to to tell me that
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 5: they'd been on hundreds of Hollywood sets before, whether it
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 5: was hair and makeup people or stunt people or whoever
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 5: it was, and they'd say, I've never felt the way
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 5: I have on this set. But that's all due to
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 5: Antoine and all due to Chris setting this tone of positivity,
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 5: and they're mentoring people along and everybody wants to be
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 5: there doing their best work. But I can see how
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 5: it would be the opposite too, if you had a
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 5: crazy director. I can see how that could totally set
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 5: a negative tone, or had a star though I number
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 5: one on the call sheet, who was just crazy person,
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 5: and how that could set the tone and how people
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 5: would be like, Oh, I can't believe I have to
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 5: go into work today and work with this crazy person.
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 5: So we had the opposite of that.
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 3: It kind of goes back to our earlier conversation about government.
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 3: It's like, well, why do you put up with those
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 3: people in Hollywood?
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 5: Yeah? I guess these they're employing so many people, I guess.
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 5: But it doesn't have to be that way. You get
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 5: to choose, and Antoine and Chris choose to be positive
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 5: and choose to be encouraging and choose to mentor people along.
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 5: And it's just really cool to see that. And again
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 5: the only reason that came to be is because of
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 5: a good buddy, Jared Shaw, who in the Seal teams
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 5: was getting out and it was when I was at
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 5: BUDS and I said, hell, hey, you're getting out. Oh,
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 5: come come see me in my office at some point
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 5: and just let me know what your plans are and
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 5: let me know if I can can help you in anyway.
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 5: So we sat down and talked, and I introduced him
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 5: to some people in the private sector in the industry
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 5: he wanted to get into, and followed up with him,
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 5: and then I forgot all about it. And then five
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 5: years later, about six months before my first book comes out,
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 5: he calls and I hadn't talked to him in years,
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 5: and he says, hey, do you remember me? And I said, yeah,
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 5: of course, Jared, how are you? And he said, hey, man,
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 5: I always wanted to call and thank you for what
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 5: you did for me. The Seal teams, nobody else sat
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 5: me down in their office. No one talked to me
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 5: about transitioning out. No one introduced me to people in
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 5: the private sector, no one followed up with me. I
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 5: was just kind of brushed aside by senior level leadership.
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 5: When I told him I was getting out, and I
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 5: was like, oh, man, hey, my pleasure. How's it going.
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 5: You know, how do everything work out? And he said
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 5: everything's great, But I heard you have a book coming out,
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 5: and I said, yep, come out a few months. I
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 5: can send you a gally copy, which is like a
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 5: I just learned what a gally copy was like a
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 5: week earlier. It's like a rough draft, and I can
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 5: send that to you if you'd like. And he said, yeah,
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 5: I like that, but I'd like to give it to
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 5: a friend of mine. And I said, who's that and
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 5: he said Chris Pratt, Like, oh, that's convenient for me.
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 5: So I sent it to Jared. He read it in November.
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 5: He gave it to Chris in December. Chris read it
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 5: in the at the end of December and then called
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 5: a week later, want an option it? So yeah, do
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 5: you have.
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 3: People who are non like acronym pros that read your
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 3: early drafts and kind of go be like, I don't
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 3: know about this? Or do people just get on board
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 3: with the vernacular so fast? And that's my assumption as
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 3: people they do, They just like snap into those It's something.
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 5: As you can tell from the context, like I pulled
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 5: down my nods and now I can see it night
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 5: type of thing. You're like, yo, a nod must be
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 5: some sort of a night vision type of a thing.
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 5: So a lot of times some context you can get it,
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 5: but my editor will say, hey, can you describe what
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 5: this is? Then I'll just put like little parentheses and
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 5: say what it is. But I also brought back I
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 5: don't know if I brought it back. I shouldn't say that,
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 5: but I thought of it as bringing it back because
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 5: before the Internet, glossaries in the back of books in
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 5: the eighties were so much fun for me to go through,
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 5: and I could go through the extra were I was like, Oh,
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 5: this is so awesome. So I wanted to bring that
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 5: back the book.
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 3: It was just like an extra thing.
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 5: So I put the glossary in the back. And some
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 5: things are funny. I put some some funny things in there,
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 5: and some things are actual definitions. But so I put
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 5: that in the back for anybody that needs help with
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 5: the acronyms. But otherwise you can pretty much get it,
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 5: and you know, if not, maybe's not the book for you.
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 5: You know, I don't know.
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 3: I mean I think once people get into a story, yeah,
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 3: it also is like it's just like language.
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 5: Some people are like, oh cool, what is this? You
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 5: can look it up? And now you can look it up.
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 5: You know, you don't have to go to the labor anymore,
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 5: you can like look it up like oh that's so cool, Okay,
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 5: got it. But I try to describe at least what
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 5: it is. But sometimes I do. Sometimes I'm just everybody
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 5: knows what it not is now. Everybody knows what an
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 5: idea is now after twenty years at war, but I
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 5: might have to spell it out, improvise explosive device or
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 5: explosively form penetrator or whatever it might might be. So
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 5: so sometimes I make assumptions that that people are only
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 5: to understand, and then I go back and I'll add
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 5: a little something to describe what that means, because they
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 5: are a little acronym heavy at times.
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 3: Well I mean that's an acronym heavy profession. Like you
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 3: listen to a group of you guys getting together.
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 5: Like what language are they speaking?
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I find that certain conservation meetings similar like that
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: with the departments and then the package of the Yeah,
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: it's just like yeah, absolutely, But you know, I'd say.
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 5: I.
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 3: Mediated a panel at Pheasants Forever this year and it
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 3: was the it was the governance the governance board for
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 3: p f q F, you know, an open forum. We're
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 3: talking about the farm bill. And I kept asking the
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 3: questions and they kind of pause, and I was like,
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 3: what is going on with this group? And then they
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 3: told me ended up telling the whole crowd that they
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 3: had a bet between the three of them that basically,
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 3: if you used an acronym, you had to buy the
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 3: other two a beer. Oh that's rough, because they were
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 3: trying so hard to make it user friendly, make the
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 3: whole conversation user friendly, and there was a lot of failures. Oh,
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 3: a lot of failures. Yeah, it was tough.
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 5: That was the thing I knew i'd get right in
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 5: the books, was like the acronyms and describing snapper weapons
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 5: systems and that sort of a thing.
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a cool factor of that stuff in
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: a way that there's not around then, the way there's
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: not around federal policy.
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, you might have to work a little harder
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 5: at the federal policy because you could do it. But yeah,
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 5: it may be a little harder. But I knew i'd
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 5: get that stuff. And what I didn't realize was how
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 5: much of the feelings and emotions behind what I've done
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 5: down range would make it in to the novel and
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 5: now novels. But in that first one, even through that
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 5: whole process I just talked about. Until I started turning
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 5: that outline into the narrative, I still didn't really think
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 5: about those feelings and emotions weaving their way in to
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 5: the storyline. But as soon as I started changing that
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 5: outline into the narrative, it was very apparent right off
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 5: the bat that this was going to be an extremely
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 5: personal writing experience, because I'm going to be describing taking
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 5: the feelings behind things that happened downrange and applying them
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 5: to this completely fictional narrative. So if my character gets
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 5: ambushed in Los Angeles, California, I go back and remember
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 5: what was like to get ambushed in Baghdad in two
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 5: thousand and six, and then I take those feelings and
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 5: emotions and I apply them to my protagonist in Los Angeles,
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 5: California in present day. Same thing with the sniper stuff.
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 5: I don't have to go seek out a sniper out
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 5: there and find a guy who was in Remady at
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 5: the height of the war and say, hey, what was
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 5: it like to set up and pull that trigger? And
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 5: then if I'm taking notes, I'm comparing his answers with
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 5: someone else. I might have interviewed another book, I might
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 5: have read another interview I saw on TV another book
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 5: I might have read fiction or non movies that I've
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 5: seen biases, I have whatever filters I have in place,
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 5: and then putting it onto the page into my story.
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 5: It all comes right from my heart and soul directly.
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's no substitute for a first person. Yeah right,
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 3: It's like, because we have so much input coming in
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 3: all the time. Yeah, it's kind of impossible to block
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 3: that stuff out after a while.
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 5: And I really think that's what stood out to Simon
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 5: and Schuster because they see thousands of these things every
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 5: year come across their desks, and I think that's what
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 5: made stand out. With those feelings and emotions, that's what
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 5: made it different from some of the other books out
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 5: there that they had read, and why they decided to
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 5: publish me, which is humbling.
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: Uh T de late people on your next book, Only
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: the Dead.
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 5: So it's sixth novel in the James Reese series and
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 5: it's the most brutal to date, which is saying it
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 5: is the most brutal to date. And I didn't start
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 5: out that way. I didn't say, all right, I'm gonna
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 5: write the most brutal one. Now it's just kind of
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 5: naturally happened that way. But yeah, that one comes out
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 5: May sixteenth, And.
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: Give the base, just give the basic, give the basic gist.
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 5: There are some unanswered questions from my last novel, so
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 5: for those who have read it, they'll know what I'm
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 5: what I am talking about here. But really it's a
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 5: novel of truth and consequences. That's the theme to this one,
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 5: and in my novels James Reese he holds those people
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 5: that we talked about earlier accountable those people that don't.
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 5: You can't really hold accountable in real life because if
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 5: you do, you'll go to jail for doing the things
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 5: that my character you'll probably be executed in many states.
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 5: But you can do it through fiction. You can do
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 5: it in a thriller, which is very therapeutic to write
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 5: and hopefully to read for some of us. But it's
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 5: him uncovering a lot of his past and his father's past.
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 5: Then all connects in present day in a of course,
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 5: a conspiracy. I love a good conspiracy, especially in the
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 5: pages of my novels. That's what I loved about some
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 5: of the books I read growing up was the conspiratorial
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 5: element to them. So I try to weave that in
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 5: to my novels as well. So he tends to a
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 5: he's a thinking man, but he also is someone very
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 5: comfortable with violence because it's just a natural part of
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 5: his life, and some people need to be dealt with
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 5: in a very harsh way in this book.
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: So when you mentioned therapeutic, I'm at, yeah, you get
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: to be as the author, you get to be judged
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: jury and execution.
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 5: Yeah, oh yeah, it's fantastic.
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: Guilty.
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 5: It was so different about writing screenplays versus this is
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 5: that I can do anything. I don't have to worry
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 5: about the cost of a set piece. I don't have
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 5: to worry about flying them to Siberia or down to
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 5: South America, up to Alaska wherever. I can just do it.
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 5: There's no no problem. I can have huge set action
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 5: set pieces, and I have to worry about the cost.
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 5: Now when you get talked to start talking to Amazon
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 5: and start breaking things down where you're gonna film and
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 5: what these set pieces are gonna cost, Well, now you
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 5: have to factor that in. You can't just directly take
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 5: what you have on the page and transferred over onto
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 5: the screen because there are there costs involved to a
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 5: lot of that. So you have to work through some
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 5: of that. But I love the freedom to be able
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 5: to do anything that I want on that page, and
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 5: I didn't know how it was gonna be. When I
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 5: got into this. I thought, as Simon and Schuster might
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 5: ask me to kind of take you really need to
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 5: have all that hunting stuff in there? Or does it
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 5: need to be so violent or do you really need
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 5: to mention this about concealed carry in here? It seems unnecessary.
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 5: Can you? Never have they even hinted that I need
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 5: to take any of that out. It's been one hundred
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 5: percent creative control the entire time, which is which I love.
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, little bits of political.
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 5: In there, yeah, yeah, yeah, But a lot of authors don't,
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 5: and you know, I didn't. Really you don't really get
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 5: to know them those characters in the same way as
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 5: you do from authors that give you a glimpse into
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 5: their protagonist through how he feels about certain things. So
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 5: my character is carrying a pistol in Washington, d C.
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 5: He's not just carrying a pistol in Washington, d C.
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 5: He has to think about the consequences of getting cut.
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: Warren's coming.
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 5: Yes, because if I'm doing that, or if I if
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 5: I was to do that, I would need to. I
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 5: would think about it and realize, Okay, here's the consequences
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 5: to doing this. So my character does as well, and
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 5: he has thoughts on it. But a lot of authors
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 5: don't do that, but but I do, and I feel
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 5: it gives people greater insight into his character. And because
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 5: you're going to think about it. If you're doing something
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 5: like that, you're thinking about rules and regulations as we
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 5: head into the field, and these different states and things
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 5: that are you can do in some one state you
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 5: can't do in another. And I mean, you're gonna follow
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 5: the follow those rules. You're not gonna not think about it.
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 5: And just all of a sudden, if I was a
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 5: writer talking about hunting and I'm putting them in the
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 5: springtime in somewhere else, and I have him going deer
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 5: hunting in a state where you can't do that in
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 5: that area in the springtime or whatever whatever it is,
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 5: you're gonna lose that hunting audience. And you're like, if
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 5: he's doing that, he should at least be thinking about it,
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 5: he should least be thinking about why he's poaching, and
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 5: it should make sense for the story. But a lot
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 5: of times you don't. You don't get that, so I
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 5: try to give the give what I'd be thinking in
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 5: a lot of these situations.
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: Do you read Box?
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 5: I have read CJ. Box, not all of them, because
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 5: he's a lot of books out there and he's amazing.
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 5: Oh my goodness, yeah, yeah, very good, very very interesting
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 5: writer and very popular.
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: Is h a lot of hunting in there?
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 6: You know?
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 4: Is this character going to be around for a while?
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 4: Are you getting the antsy to explore a different character.
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: Nope.
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 5: I feel so fortunate that a readership and audience is
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 5: connected with this character. Uh So the first one, as
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 5: you're writing it, people don't know. They think it could
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 5: be just a one off book. So your first one
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 5: as people are reading it now, people find that first
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 5: book today they or watched the show first, they realize, oh,
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 5: or even if they haven't seen the show, they realize, oh,
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 5: there's four other books, five other books out there. He's
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 5: probably gonna survived exactly. Yeah, he's gonna shake it off.
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 5: He's gonna shake that thing right off. But the first one.
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 5: That's why the first one is so fun, because if
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 5: you're reading that and don't know that it can continue,
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 5: then you and the way that I end that one.
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 5: I kind of leave it up in the air. It's
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 5: it's interesting, but now that they're out there, you kind
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 5: of know that it's going.
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 4: It's a serious just wondering if this guy had a
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 4: life span yet or if he's gonna be around for
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 4: a while.
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think around for a while. It's I've for
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 5: other authors talk about how they you know, they kind
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 5: of get connected to their character and they're not thinkfully
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 5: aren't allowed to do anything else, almost, But I don't
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 5: feel that way. Love. I just feel so fortunate.
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: So the twentieth book will be like kicking it and relax, Yeah, we.
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 3: Get to that twentieth book, or I kind of think
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 3: about it in terms of Indiana Jones, Right, there's a
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 3: lot there's a lot crossover there, Like people are like,
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 3: oh yeah, and he can go back in his story
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 3: and go forward in a story and he has that longevity, right,
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 3: And there's a lot of those Yeah.
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean I'm familiar with the main one, but
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: I didn't know that there was a lot to it.
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 3: Well in every it's like dad son, Oh yeah, you know,
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 3: it's like there's a lot there.
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 5: I very intentionally wrote things into the novels that I'd
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 5: be able to explore later different families. Explore the Hastings
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 5: family in Africa. A lot of people want me to
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 5: do that, and I explore the Salut Scouts and all that,
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 5: So that'll be something I'm looking at doing in the future.
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 5: James Reese's dad in Vietnam, his transition from seal into
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 5: the CIA back in the seventies, so there's a lot
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 5: to explore there into the eighties. What did he do
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 5: in the eighties, So I and his grand grandfather's on
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 5: both sides, So I throw that stuff in there too,
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 5: sometimes with the history of the firearms that they use
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 5: that have been passed down. So I put all that
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 5: stuff in there very intentionally so that I can I
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 5: can go back and also it gone a little interest
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 5: ahead of time.
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 3: And you can turn it into a family business. You
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 3: can get those kids get back on the on.
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 5: The computers and be like, listen, some people have yeah,
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 5: Clive Custler, his son, Dirt Custler, Stephen to.
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: Leave them all those executive summ reasons.
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 5: There you go here they are.
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 5: So yeah, there's like there's a couple of people have
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 5: done that. Nelson de mill Is working on his second
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 5: book with his uh, his son, So that has that
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 5: has happened, that has that has been a thing. But yeah,
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 5: I just feel fortunate that it's connected and people are
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 5: reading these things and want more and and now there's
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 5: and there's a responsibility also because uh, people are trusting
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 5: me with this time that they're never going to get back.
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 5: So whether it's a Instagram post or a blog post,
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 5: that those sentences get as much thought as any sentence
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 5: in my novel. Because people are trusting me with my
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 5: time there on the social channels as well on those blogs,
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 5: on my podcast, whatever it might be, they're never getting
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 5: that getting that back.
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 3: Do you ever read the book Misery? Stephen King Misery?
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 5: I only saw the movie. I should, I should?
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: I should read book.
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 3: Sure, you should read the book for sure. But that's
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 3: that's the other trap you're getting yourself into. At some point,
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 3: you're gonna have some rabid fan who's like, I demand
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 3: to know what happens to your character. Yeah, because I'm
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 3: so dedicated to them.
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 5: Yeah, there's a book. Landon Beach has a book out
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 5: called Narrator where he does something similar with a narrator
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 5: and it's it's really it's really good book. It's really clever,
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 5: really well done. But but yeah, no, I think I
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 5: take some security measures. I tend to still think things
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 5: that way I did before I went to the military,
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 5: and I continue to think that way today. This is
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 5: a natural way for me to think, so I do
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 5: take a little precautions here and there. It only only
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 5: makes sense today where it's so easy to find somebody.
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: Sure. Yeah, all right, guys, well me order it now.
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: Can you pre order the book in the audio right now?
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 5: You sure can? You sure can? Yeah? Audio, ebook and
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 5: hardcover all come out on May sixteenth. Rayporter is narrating
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 5: again and uh yeah, coming in to Hot May sixteen.
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: Order it now comes out May sixteenth. Find it, I'm
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: assuming anywhere everywhere, but everywhere book are sold. Only The Dead,
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: the sixth book from our guest today, Jack car Available
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: from Simon and Schuster. Yep, Only the Dead. It'll ship
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: to you soon. You buy it now. Thank you very much,
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: Jack car.
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 5: Man, Thank you so much for having me. This has
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 5: been awesome. This has been awesome, and I can't wait
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 5: to see the new studio. Not that this one is
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 5: lacking in any way, shape or form, but I'm really
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 5: looking forward to seeing the new one.
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 6: Here.
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 5: It is awesome. Thank you guys, appreciate everything.
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 6: Ride on.
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: Seal gray, shine like silver in the sun, right.
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 6: Right alone.
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 5: Wait, done, beat this damn horse today, taking a new one, rive.
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 6: With it.
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 5: Done, beat this damn horse today. So take your new
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 5: one and ride on.
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: Chapter ten, Killing proper. There is a right way and
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: a wrong way to kill a wild animal, and I
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: don't mean that in a practical sense. An explanation of
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: this is tricky, similar to explaining why it's more pleasurable
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: to spend money earned through hard work than money earned
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: through dubious means. It comes down to metaphysical issues, things
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: of the heart. I was thinking about this one day
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: while I was hunting mountain lions with a pack of
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: about a dozen dogs in southeastern Arizona. They were tall,
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: lanky hounds, most of walker bloodlines, owned by my companions,
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: Floyd Green and Joe Mitty, two well known mountain lion
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: of hunters with a combined lion hunting experience spanning about
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: sixty years and five hundred cats. Many of their dogs
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: showed physical evidence of past skirmishes with lions, including slit ears,
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: lacerated noses, and scarred muzzles. The injuries were usually suffered
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: when they brought a lion to bay, a term for
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: when hounds chased their quarry into a tree or corner
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 1: against the cliff, or trap it in a cave, and
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: then hold it there until their master shows up to
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: deal with the beast. Earlier, I had mentioned to Floyd
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: that it seemed as though a dog would lose his
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: taste for hunting lions once he got scratched a time
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: or two. It's the opposite of what you'd think, replied Floyd.
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: It just makes them hungrier. I was camped with Floyd
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 1: and Joe at an old abandoned ranch house not far
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: from ara vip A Canyon, at the end of a
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: driveway that takes more than an hour to travel along
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: this route. On our way in, we saw where something
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: had been dragged across the road from west to east
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: and then down into a dry arroyo. At the end
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: of the drag marks was a dead buck with pick
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: clean bones that had been buried with leaves and dirt
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: beneath the scrubby little oak. The hide was in pieces,
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: but still connected to the carcass here and there, like
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: a person who passed out drunk in bed without getting
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: completely free of his clothes. Floyd tipped his cowboy hat
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: and peeled back the deer's skin to show me the
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: blood clots and teeth marks around the animal's neck. He
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: also showed me where the spine had been wrung around
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: in circles three or four times. There wasn't a doubt
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: in his mind that we were looking at a lion kill.
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: Though it was at least a week old. This was
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: good news. We'd come to hunt this area because a
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: local ranger had lost fifty calves to lions here the
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: previous spring, about nine months earlier, and this was proof
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: that at least one lion was still hanging around. If
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: you had asked me ten years earlier, I would have
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: told you that I'd never want to hunt a mountain lion.
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: What's the challenge? I would have asked in shooting a
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: cat out of a tree. The notion of challenge is
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: one of the most hotly debated aspects of hunting. Definitions
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: of the word evolve so constantly and are so subjective
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: that it's hard to find two hunters who define it
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: in the same way. As a way of dealing with
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: the confusion, Some of us abide by a more readily
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: definable synonym known as fair chase. It's an ethical term
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: that provides hunters with a guiding principle to abide by.
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: Jim Posowitz, the founder of Oryan, the Hunter's Institute, writes
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: that fair chase addresses the balance between the hunter and
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: the hunted. It is a balance that allows hunters to
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: occasionally succeed while animals generally avoid being taken. Some hunting
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 1: strategies are such an affront to the idea of fair
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: chase that hunters share in almost universal disdain for them.
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: For example, most hunters would agree that dynamite shouldn't be
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 1: used for duck hung because it would take away the challenge.
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: Most hunters would also agree that night vision goggles shouldn't
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: be used in deer hunting for the same reason. Often,
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: as is the case with these examples, our notions of
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 1: fair chase are enforced by law. It's illegal to kill
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: ducks with dynamite. It's also illegal to hunt deer with
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: the aid of artificial lights. However, fair chase is not
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: universally legislated. Certain activities that are definitely not fair chase,
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: such as the pathetic practice of hunting animals inside high
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: wire fences is permissible in many regions as long as
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: it's done on private property and with the proper legal permits.
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: Whether or not a hunter chooses to participate in this
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: limp dict activity comes down to personal choice. Other issues
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: of personal choice are much more nuanced than this example,
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: though they're taken no less seriously by many sportsmen over
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 1: the years. I've met hunters who eskew rifles with telescopic
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: scopes because they I prefer the challenge of using rifles
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: with open or iron sights. I've met hunters who don't
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: use rifles because they favor the additional challenge presented by
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: compound bows. And I've met hunters who gave up on
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 1: compound bows in order to take on the even more
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: difficult challenge of hunting with a handmade long bow. However,
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: some hunters who use handmade long bows hunt dear by
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: sitting in a tree stand next to a bait pile,
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 1: a practice that is considered unchallenging by many guys who
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: prefer hunting on foot in open country with a rifle
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: and a telescopic scope. I generally believe these differentiations to
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: be positive, however, nitpicky because they demonstrate that hunters are
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: thinking people who struggle to define the limits of their world.
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 1: I know that I certainly do, though I've come to
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: realize that rigid boundaries are sometimes hard to determine. Consider
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: something that happened to me while I was living for
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: about nine months along the Big Horn River in Wyoming.
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: While there, I became friends with a hay farm whom
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 1: we'll call Bill. He had a side business raising game birds.
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: He would buy pheasant and chucker hatchlings from a wholesaler
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: for around a dollar apiece and then raise the birds
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: to maturity inside huge tent light structures made of netting.
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: Hawks and falcons would dive at the birds from above
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: and hit the netting so hard that they'd blast through
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: it like it was wet and newsprint, so the upper
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 1: portions were reinforced with wire fencing. Bill fitted each bird
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 1: with a little piece of plastic called the blinder, which
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 1: worked like the blinders you see on draft animals. But
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 1: while the blinder on draft animals keeps them from getting
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 1: spooked or distracted by objects in its peripheral vision, the
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: blinder on a pen raised game bird is meant to
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: keep him from seeing clearly enough to maul his penmates
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: out of the frustration and anxiety that are hallmarks of
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: wild animals that are forced to live in tight confines.
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: When the birds were mature, Bill would sell them to
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 1: want to be hunters for nine or ten dollars each.
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 1: When a client called, he'd go into his bird tent
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: and collect the number of birds that the guy wanted
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: to shoot. He'd put the birds into cage and load
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: the cage on his ATV, and then drive them out
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: into a field one at a time. He'd pick out
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: the birds and twirl them around with a windmill motion
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 1: that Pete Townshend from the who famously used to play
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 1: his guitar. This would put the birds to sleep, or
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: at least something resembling sleep. Then Bill would form a
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: little hut out of field grass and tuck the bird
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: into it. The timing of this was delicate. He wanted
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 1: the birds to come to their senses soon enough that
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: they'd fly away when the clients came along, but not
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 1: so soon that they'd wander off in search of food.
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: Before that happened. When the clients came out, their activities
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: certainly hinted at hunting. They would lead dogs and carry
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 1: shotguns and shoot at edible birds that were flying through
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 1: the air. But while game farm hunting does have these
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: attributes of actual hunting, lacks the beautiful essence of uncertainty
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: that is to hunting what pan drippings are to gravy.
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 1: The hunter's success did not come from the fact that
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 1: they'd studied the species and learned its ways and scouted
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: its habitat. Instead, it came because they paid some guy
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: to raise the birds and then make sure they were
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: put out in the field where the hunters almost couldn't
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 1: help but find them. One day, Bill invited me to
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: hunt his place. This seemed like a strange choice of
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 1: words for him to use. While Bill definitely advertised his
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: business as hunting, he in no way actually thought of
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 1: it as hunting.
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 5: For him, hunting was.
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: Packing his horses twenty miles into the upper Gray Bowl
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: region of the Absorca Mountains to chase mule, deer, elk,
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: and sometimes big horned sheep on a landscape defined by
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 1: craggy peaks, narrow trails, and big grizzlies. When I asked
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 1: him about this, he explained that his season was winding down,
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: and that they were months worth of runaway birds on
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 1: the property that had either eluded his clients or escaped
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 1: his nets. At first I told him that I couldn't
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 1: with all due respect, I said it ran contrary to
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: my ethics. But then I got to thinking about it.
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: I thought about how these bird species were not indigenous
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: to this region or even to the continent, about how
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: they'd probably never survived the winter, and about how if
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: they did, their presence on the land was at least
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 1: as false a concept as hunting for them would be.
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 1: I also considered how tasty they'd be, so I went
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: out with Bill, shot a few birds, boned them out,
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 1: and cooked them in a stir fry. To this day
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 1: I find myself thinking about the rightness and wrongness of
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: that hunt, and I only mention it now so that
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: I don't come across as overly cocky about the certitude
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: of my own moral compass. It's helpful to think of
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 1: the ethics of hunting as a form of religion, and
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 1: that most people's beliefs are influenced as much by where
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 1: they were born as bout what they've learned since leaving home.
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 1: I grew up in an area where hunting deer over
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 1: bait was the normal way of doing things. In late September,
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 1: we'd sometimes drive to a carrot processing facility near Grant, Michigan,
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: where we could buy a pickup load of oversized and
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 1: misshapen carrot rejects for five dollars. We'd then go to
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 1: our hunting areas and shovel these carrots into a duluthe
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 1: pack and lug them into the woods near the intersection
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 1: of deer trails. Once a pile started getting hit by deer,
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 1: we'd add more carrots and hang a tree stand in
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 1: a nearby tree. Hunting over bait, I spent an incalculable
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 1: amount of cold and miserable hours without seeing a single deer.
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 1: Sometimes the bow season would pass without my getting a
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 1: shot at an animal, except maybe a squirrel or grouse
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: that passed beneath my tree. The limited number of deer
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: that lived in my hunting area had adapted to the
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 1: absurd abundance of bait piles in the woods and had
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: learned to simply avoid them during daylight hours. After all,
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 1: there were plenty of other foods for them to eat,
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: such as the apples and corn, and the orchards and
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: fields that were often within a few hundred yards of
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 1: our bait. So by using a strategy that some might
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: describe as cheating or as taking away the challenge of
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: the hunt, we were doing something that, in hindsight, had
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: the effect of making deer hunting almost too challenging. Twenty
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 1: something years later, I no longer hunt over bait at all.
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: My reasons for this are not based entirely on ethics. Instead,
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 1: I am not interested in using artificial bait because I
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 1: am not interested in hunting animals that are doing artificial things.
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: To go out and find a deer by solving the
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 1: riddle of its natural patterns is far more enticing to
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 1: me than finding a deer by interrupting those patterns. Baiting
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: is not, in my opinion, a type of hunting that
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: fosters an intelligent understanding of animals. But if you enjoy it,
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: go ahead. My impression of hunting animals with hounds was
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: formed through an equally subjective and haphazard set of experiences.
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 1: My introduction to this kind of hunting came when I
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 1: was about eighteen years old and was invited to accompany
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 1: a raccoon hunter whom we'll call Dave. It was the
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 1: late summer training season, when you're allowed to exercise your
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 1: coon dogs in the woods, but you're not allowed to
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: kill any raccoons. We went out at about eleven PM
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: and turned the dogs out of the truck along a
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: two track. We then drove along with the dogs running
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 1: out ahead of us, the way you see some lazy
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 1: people exercise their pets. We hadn't gone a mile when
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 1: the dogs struck a hot trail and bellowed their way
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 1: down a slope and across a creek and into the darkness.
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 1: Dave cut the truck's engine and we listened to the dogs.
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: He could tell from the pitch and intensity of their
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 1: barks that they had already brought the raccoon to bay.
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: With headlamps, we walked down the slope and across the
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 1: creek and found the hounds scratching at a small oak.
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 1: Up in the limbs were a female raccoon in several
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 1: of her young cubs. Dave then explained to me that
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 1: it wasn't good to pull the dogs away from the
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 1: raccoons without killing one, because they might lose interest in
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 1: hunting if they weren't properly rewarded. So he raised up
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 1: a twenty two pistol that I didn't even know he
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 1: had and shot one of the raccoon cubs dead out
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 1: of the tree. After that, I told him I was
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 1: done for the night, and I honestly figured that I
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be hanging around any more houndsmen for at least
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: a long time. But now in the deserts of Arizona,
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: I was not only hanging out with a pair of houndsmen,
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 1: I was doing everything I could to help them, And
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: as I was learning, the pursuit of a lion is
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: much more complicated than simply shooting an animal out of
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 1: a tree. The real challenge was getting an animal into
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 1: a tree in the first place. Doing that required finding
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 1: something known in the parlance of lion hunters as an
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 1: overnight track. That means a lion track that was made
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 1: within the past eight or nine hours, when conditions are right,
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 1: not too windy, not too dewey, not too rare. A
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 1: track of that vintage is likely to retain enough of
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 1: the lion's residual odor for dogs to be able to
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 1: pick up the scent and trail it. Yet, despite the
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 1: slaughter of calves that had occurred here, the previous spring,
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 1: and despite the recently killed deer that we found, we
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 1: had yet to locate a promising overnight track after days
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 1: of searching for one. Every day, Floyd and I would
• 2:04:24
  Speaker 1: wake up well before sunrise. Joe would already be gone,
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 1: having left so early in the morning that it was
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: more like nighttime. Floyd and I would head into the
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 1: desert with some predetermined landscape feature as our ultimate destination,
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 1: masas rocky buttes, deeply in sized canyons, high ridge lines,
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 1: saddles passes, all places where lions are likely to either hunt, sleep,
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 1: or travel through. Floyd is in his mid fifties, and
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 1: his appearance brings to mind Robert Redford when the actor
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 1: was about that same age. He's part owner of Western
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 1: Hunter and Elk Hunter magazines and full owner of Outdoorsman's,
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 1: an iconic Phoenix sporting goods store that specializes in high
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 1: end European made optics, as well as Outdoorsman's own line
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 1: of American made backpacking tripod systems. His line of work
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 1: allows him to think of chasing lions as a business
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 1: related activity, which means he can hunt as much as
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 1: he wants to without having to feel guilty about it
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 1: some years ago. He and his girlfriend owned and operated
• 2:05:28
  Speaker 1: an aerial photography company. This required Floyd to buy a helicopter.
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 1: I learned to fly a helicopter in a month, he
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 1: told me. Meanwhile, I've been hunting lions for twenty years
• 2:05:39
  Speaker 1: and I'm still learning stuff. Lion hunting is the hardest
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 1: thing I've ever done, At least on this hunt, Floyd
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 1: mostly preferred to look for overnight tracks without the assistance
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 1: of his dogs. For one thing, he didn't want them
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 1: to get tired out before it was time to actually
• 2:05:55
  Speaker 1: chase a lion. For another thing, the passage of all
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 1: those dogs pause has the potential to disturb the delicate
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 1: evidence that a lion might leave while traveling over a
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 1: portion of the Earth's surface that is covered predominantly in rock, cactus,
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 1: and grass, surfaces that do not readily collect the tracks
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 1: of a passing animal. Floyd calls himself a bare ground
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 1: lion hunter, a description that differentiates him from guys who
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 1: hunt colder and wetter regions with predictable and frequent dosages
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 1: of snow, the world's most track friendly substance. While a
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 1: big lion can weigh up to one hundred and fifty pounds.
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 1: It can kill an elk weighing four times as much.
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 1: They seem to walk about as gently as a balloon
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 1: hitting the ground. The only place that they'll leave a
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 1: track is in the sand, and around here sand occurs
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 1: primarily in the same places creek beds. Game trails that
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 1: attract a lot of competing traffic from mule deer, havevelina, cattle, quail, bobcats, coyotes,
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 1: big horn sheep, and dogs if you let them run
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 1: out ahead of you. Floyd spends so much time studying
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 1: the ground for lion tracks that has begun to affect
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 1: his posture. His natural stance has his eyes staring at
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 1: the ground directly ahead of his boots. He's trained himself
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 1: to tune out everything on the ground except for the
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 1: tracks of lions. On average, these measure about three and
• 2:07:18
  Speaker 1: a half inches from front to back and side to side.
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 1: Perfect complete lion tracks are far less common than imperfect
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 1: partial lion tracks. You might just see the imprint of
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 1: a few toes in the sand, or the outline of
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 1: a track that's interrupted by a flat piece of rock.
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 1: The important part of a lion track, the part that
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 1: eliminates impostors, is the trailing edge of the heel pad.
• 2:07:43
  Speaker 1: It leaves an impression in the sand that looks like
• 2:07:46
  Speaker 1: the bottom of three letter us placed together. When we
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 1: were out looking for tracks, Floyd and I had many
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 1: conversations that went like this, here's something interesting. I'd say,
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 1: this has got to be a lion. Looks a little
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 1: like a dog, but it's a lot rounder. You should
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 1: check it out. Can you see the heel pad? Floyd
• 2:08:06
  Speaker 1: would ask, No, I'd say, look for another one, he'd say.
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 1: Then finally it happened. After five long days of doing
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 1: little bit walking and looking for tracks, I found what
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 1: we were searching for. It was blow a large butte
• 2:08:21
  Speaker 1: in a dry creek bed where a few boulders funneled
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 1: the animal traffic into a narrow gap. Here you go,
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 1: I called out to Floyd, here's a heel pad. Sure
• 2:08:30
  Speaker 1: than hell. Floyd walked over to have a look. His
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 1: face registered a moment of interest, but then his enthusiasm waned.
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 1: Looks to me like a coyote track where he spun
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 1: around in the sand, so it looks bigger than normal.
• 2:08:43
  Speaker 1: He said. Then to have Alena step down the back
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 1: of it. That's what gives it a lobed. Look and
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 1: notice how you don't see any more good tracks ahead
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 1: of it or behind it. Just coyote and have Alena
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 1: keep in mind. He went on, anything can make a
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 1: lion track once it takes a line to do it. Twice,
• 2:09:01
  Speaker 1: you find me two good tracks with lob pads, and
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 1: then you've got something worth looking at. While I was
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 1: disappointed by our inability to find a good lion track,
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 1: I was hardly surprised. Prior to my visit to Arizona,
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 1: I had had only three physical encounters with wild mountain lions.
• 2:09:19
  Speaker 1: Each of those encounters reinforced my notion of the animal
• 2:09:22
  Speaker 1: as a secretive and elusive creature. The first encounter stands
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 1: out in my mind most visibly. It happened near Clearwater
• 2:09:30
  Speaker 1: Lake in Montana's Swan Mountains, just after I moved out west.
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 1: That night, i'd been fly fishing for cutthroat trout, and
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 1: I stayed on the water until a little past dark.
• 2:09:41
  Speaker 1: When I was done, I hiked three quarters of a
• 2:09:43
  Speaker 1: mile through the woods back to where my van was
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 1: parked on a forest service road. It was pitch black
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 1: by the time I began to long and bumpy drive
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 1: out toward Highway eighty three. About halfway along, I came
• 2:09:55
  Speaker 1: to a place where the forest service road had been
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 1: cut into the side of a steep hillside. I rounded
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 1: the corner and there was a gang of meal, deeer,
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 1: doze and fawns, all bunched up in the middle of
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 1: the road. When I got close, they ran to the
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 1: right and struggled up the steeply pitched hillside in a
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 1: whirl of hoofs and falling rocks. Just as this was happening,
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 1: I caught in my side view mire a sudden flash
• 2:10:19
  Speaker 1: of movement and the halo of the brake lights. I
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 1: shoved the shifter upward into reverse so that the van's
• 2:10:25
  Speaker 1: backup lights would come on, and then I stuck my
• 2:10:28
  Speaker 1: head out the window to look. There it was, standing
• 2:10:31
  Speaker 1: within inches of the rear bumper, the first mountain lion
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 1: I ever saw. He spun himself in a turn that
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 1: seemed like wine swirling in the glass. With that, the
• 2:10:42
  Speaker 1: lion vanished into the dark. Over the next few weeks,
• 2:10:46
  Speaker 1: I thought about that mountain lion far more than I've
• 2:10:49
  Speaker 1: ever thought about any single living creature, besides a dog
• 2:10:52
  Speaker 1: named Duchess that my family owned for about thirteen years.
• 2:10:56
  Speaker 1: I did a fair bit of thinking about what the
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 1: lion was doing before interrupted its hunt that night, but
• 2:11:02
  Speaker 1: I did a lot more thinking about what it did afterward.
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 1: To the north of where I saw the cat was
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 1: the largest tract of contiguous wilderness in the lower forty
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 1: eight I was baffled by the mystery of that lion
• 2:11:15
  Speaker 1: amid all that country. What did it do over the
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 1: next few days? Where did it hunt? What did it eat?
• 2:11:21
  Speaker 5: Where did it sleep? How did it react to the
• 2:11:24
  Speaker 5: world that it encountered? Where did it go?
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 1: As I pondered these questions and research the answers, I
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 1: realized that the people with the most sophisticated understanding of
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 1: mountain lions were the men and women who hunted them
• 2:11:38
  Speaker 1: with hounds. By following their hounds as they track a lion,
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 1: houndsmen get to literally walk in the trail of their quarry.
• 2:11:45
  Speaker 1: They see where the lion hunts, They see where the
• 2:11:48
  Speaker 1: lion eats, They see where the lion sleeps. They experience
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 1: the land on the terms of the lion. They know
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 1: where the lion goes. The lion hunter is also I
• 2:11:59
  Speaker 1: found out one of the most hated types of hunters
• 2:12:02
  Speaker 1: in the country. If you think of the conflict between
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 1: hunters and anti hunters as a long term war, the
• 2:12:08
  Speaker 1: right to hunt lions with hounds is the current front
• 2:12:12
  Speaker 1: line battlefield in many Western states. This would have been
• 2:12:15
  Speaker 1: unforseeable just one hundred years ago, when it was common
• 2:12:19
  Speaker 1: practice for states to offer bounties on mountain lions because
• 2:12:22
  Speaker 1: of the cats tendencies to prey on livestock. In Arizona,
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 1: killing a lion would earn you fifty dollars. In the
• 2:12:30
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixties and seventies, Western states began to recognize mountain
• 2:12:34
  Speaker 1: lions as an important part of the ecosystem and also
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 1: as a species of interest to big game hunters. Most
• 2:12:41
  Speaker 1: states reclassified lions as a game species and made it
• 2:12:45
  Speaker 1: necessary for hunters to buy a legal hunting license in
• 2:12:48
  Speaker 1: a mountain lion permit in order to kill one. There
• 2:12:52
  Speaker 1: are several ways to hunt lions. You can attract them
• 2:12:55
  Speaker 1: with a predator call, which typically mimics the sounds of
• 2:12:58
  Speaker 1: wounded deer or rabbit. Or you can hang around in
• 2:13:01
  Speaker 1: good lion country hoping that one of the cats happens
• 2:13:04
  Speaker 1: to come along. But by far the most effective way
• 2:13:07
  Speaker 1: to hunt mountain lions is through the use of dogs.
• 2:13:10
  Speaker 1: In Montana, eighty nine percent of lion hunters used dogs,
• 2:13:14
  Speaker 1: and Wyoming it's ninety percent. Over the last twenty five years,
• 2:13:19
  Speaker 1: sixty five percent of all lions harvested by hunters in
• 2:13:22
  Speaker 1: Arizona were killed with the help of dogs. Anti hunters
• 2:13:27
  Speaker 1: have long recognized the importance of dogs and hunting lions.
• 2:13:31
  Speaker 1: I believe that the more organized factions of anti hunters
• 2:13:35
  Speaker 1: camouflage their opposition to hunting in general as a more
• 2:13:39
  Speaker 1: specific opposition to hunting lions with dogs. It allows them
• 2:13:43
  Speaker 1: to wage small scale legal battles against the broader spectrum
• 2:13:47
  Speaker 1: of hunting without having to conquer the issue had on.
• 2:13:51
  Speaker 1: Some of these battles have proved winnable, as it's easy
• 2:13:55
  Speaker 1: to convince people who have never once hunted or laid
• 2:13:57
  Speaker 1: eyes on a wild lion that hunt Hunting animals with
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 1: dogs is somehow a perverse activity. In nineteen ninety four,
• 2:14:05
  Speaker 1: Oregon voters passed an initiative that banned hunting lions with dogs.
• 2:14:09
  Speaker 1: The hunting lions by other means remains legal. The same
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 1: thing is true in Washington and South Dakota. Hunt lions, yes,
• 2:14:17
  Speaker 1: with dogs no. If you're puzzled about how such laws
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 1: could ever come into existence. Consider the results of a
• 2:14:25
  Speaker 1: two thousand and one pole of Arizona residents. While only
• 2:14:29
  Speaker 1: twenty nine percent of those polled indicated that hunting should
• 2:14:32
  Speaker 1: be banned outright, sixty two percent indicated that the use
• 2:14:36
  Speaker 1: of hounds two hunt lions should be illegal. To be
• 2:14:41
  Speaker 1: perfectly honest, I was inspired by my personal lion experience
• 2:14:46
  Speaker 1: to reconsider my own suspicions about the practice of hunting
• 2:14:49
  Speaker 1: them with hounds. I wanted to see one of the
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 1: animals up close and to experience the thrill of eating
• 2:14:55
  Speaker 1: its flesh, and the only realistic way for me to
• 2:14:58
  Speaker 1: do this was to join up with some high hensman
• 2:15:00
  Speaker 1: and head into the hills in search of a track.
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 1: If we got one into a tree and I didn't
• 2:15:05
  Speaker 1: like the way it felt, I could always walk away
• 2:15:07
  Speaker 1: without killing it. While we were hunting lions, Floyd's partner, Joe,
• 2:15:13
  Speaker 1: slept in the back of his pickup on a pad
• 2:15:15
  Speaker 1: of carpet. He kept his dogs tethered outside of the truck,
• 2:15:19
  Speaker 1: scattered apart so that they didn't fight or get tangled up.
• 2:15:23
  Speaker 1: When he got up at three am, he would pull
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 1: on a pair of faded Levi's Danner hunting boots in
• 2:15:28
  Speaker 1: one of Floyd's outdoorsmen's backpacks, and then he would unclip
• 2:15:32
  Speaker 1: the pack of hounds and they would take off together
• 2:15:34
  Speaker 1: into the darkness. They would cover several miles before it
• 2:15:38
  Speaker 1: got light out, and then another six or seven miles
• 2:15:41
  Speaker 1: after daybreak. This was an impressive bit of walking for
• 2:15:45
  Speaker 1: a man who'd retired from the concrete laying business, with
• 2:15:47
  Speaker 1: pass injuries including but not limited to a shattered Sternham
• 2:15:52
  Speaker 1: concrete finisher, a gnawed leg, mountain lion, and a gunshot
• 2:15:56
  Speaker 1: wound sustained after dropping a three point fifty seven revolve
• 2:16:00
  Speaker 1: in such a way that the hammer hit the concrete
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 1: and discharged around. As Joe walked, he would use a
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 1: headlamp to study the earth in front of him for tracks.
• 2:16:10
  Speaker 1: His dogs would range out to the sides and ahead
• 2:16:12
  Speaker 1: of his line of travel with their noses to the ground.
• 2:16:15
  Speaker 1: By their specific barks, he could tell whether they were
• 2:16:18
  Speaker 1: detecting the recent passage of a lion. He spent five
• 2:16:23
  Speaker 1: whole days this way without any significant strokes of luck. Then,
• 2:16:28
  Speaker 1: on our last day of hunting, Floyd and I were
• 2:16:30
  Speaker 1: getting ready to leave camp when we heard a cacophony
• 2:16:33
  Speaker 1: of bellows coming from Joe's dogs high on the mountain
• 2:16:36
  Speaker 1: above us. It sounded like someone torturing a gang of
• 2:16:40
  Speaker 1: opera singers. Even from a great distance, Floyd knew exactly
• 2:16:43
  Speaker 1: what Joe's dogs were saying. That dog you hear there
• 2:16:47
  Speaker 1: with the low bellow. He doesn't make noise on an
• 2:16:50
  Speaker 1: old lion trail, said Floyd. He's too old and wise
• 2:16:54
  Speaker 1: for that. He only makes noise on a good overnight track.
• 2:16:59
  Speaker 1: We studied the mountainside where the barking was coming from,
• 2:17:02
  Speaker 1: and soon spotted the flickers of light from Joe's headlamp.
• 2:17:06
  Speaker 1: He was moving quickly across the face of the mountain.
• 2:17:09
  Speaker 1: There was a notch in the skyline that marked the
• 2:17:11
  Speaker 1: entrance to a canyon, and soon Joe's light disappeared into
• 2:17:15
  Speaker 1: that notch. The sound from the dog's barking began to
• 2:17:18
  Speaker 1: fade as the distance increased. Joe's voice then came over
• 2:17:22
  Speaker 1: the walkie talking. He implored Floyd to cut loose some
• 2:17:26
  Speaker 1: of his dogs. Have you seen a track yet, asked Floyd,
• 2:17:29
  Speaker 1: Any idea? What way the lion's going? Is it a tom?
• 2:17:33
  Speaker 1: No tracks yet, said Joe, But they're really moving the trail.
• 2:17:36
  Speaker 1: Just get some dogs loose and get them up here.
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 1: Floyd unleashed six of his own dogs, who immediately headed
• 2:17:43
  Speaker 1: uphill towards the source of the barking. Floyd then turned
• 2:17:47
  Speaker 1: to me and said, we better get moving. The canyon
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 1: that Joe and the dogs entered described a long arc.
• 2:17:53
  Speaker 1: Floyd explained he figured that we might catch up with
• 2:17:56
  Speaker 1: them by following a neighboring canyon through a straight or route.
• 2:18:01
  Speaker 1: We headed across a sage patch, passed them sauaro cactuses,
• 2:18:05
  Speaker 1: and then into the mouth of the canyon. The daylight
• 2:18:08
  Speaker 1: grew as we made our way into the dry brown mountains.
• 2:18:11
  Speaker 1: As we walked, Floyd explained the trouble of chasing a
• 2:18:14
  Speaker 1: lion that the dogs could smell, but that you haven't
• 2:18:17
  Speaker 1: seen a track from. While the dogs can certainly tell
• 2:18:20
  Speaker 1: that a lion has passed through, they are not able
• 2:18:23
  Speaker 1: to determine which direction it is traveling. This can lead
• 2:18:27
  Speaker 1: to obvious and considerable confusion. As Floyd put it, there's
• 2:18:30
  Speaker 1: a fifty to fifty chance that the dogs are taking
• 2:18:33
  Speaker 1: to you in the wrong direction. After a mile of walking,
• 2:18:37
  Speaker 1: we still hadn't heard the dogs, and we couldn't tell
• 2:18:39
  Speaker 1: where Joe had gone. We were unable to reach him
• 2:18:42
  Speaker 1: on the walkie talkie as the deeply cut topography interfered
• 2:18:46
  Speaker 1: with the transmissions. We traveled another mile and then left
• 2:18:50
  Speaker 1: the canyon bottom and started walking uphill toward a ridgeline.
• 2:18:53
  Speaker 1: When we got up there, we still couldn't hear anything.
• 2:18:56
  Speaker 1: I noticed a high, thumb shaped spire of rock that
• 2:19:00
  Speaker 1: rose out of the mountains like a city skyscraper, rising
• 2:19:03
  Speaker 1: above buildings half its height. I commented to Floyd that
• 2:19:07
  Speaker 1: the lion was probably headed that way, or at least
• 2:19:09
  Speaker 1: that's where I'd had if I were being chased and
• 2:19:12
  Speaker 1: wanted to elude my pursuers. Floyd replied that the lion
• 2:19:15
  Speaker 1: still didn't know it was being chased. He'd been here
• 2:19:19
  Speaker 1: hours earlier and was probably off sleeping somewhere oblivious to
• 2:19:23
  Speaker 1: our presence in the world. We pressed on. Hours went by,
• 2:19:28
  Speaker 1: and the day passed into afternoon. As it would turn out,
• 2:19:32
  Speaker 1: the line had indeed headed toward the thumb shaped spire
• 2:19:35
  Speaker 1: of rock, whether or not he knew he was being followed. Later,
• 2:19:40
  Speaker 1: Floyd and I would finally meet up with Joe near
• 2:19:42
  Speaker 1: its base. By then, the dogs would have lost the
• 2:19:45
  Speaker 1: lion's trail, and they'd be too exhausted to follow it.
• 2:19:48
  Speaker 1: Even if they hadn't, we would find them lolling around
• 2:19:51
  Speaker 1: on a jumble of rocks. Now and then one of
• 2:19:54
  Speaker 1: the dogs would lick a certain rock and bellow it's saliva,
• 2:19:57
  Speaker 1: having released some trace of a lion's order. Then it
• 2:20:01
  Speaker 1: would head off in some direction or another, making a ruckus.
• 2:20:05
  Speaker 1: I would get excited all over again, thinking that I
• 2:20:07
  Speaker 1: might still get my chance to see a lion up close.
• 2:20:10
  Speaker 1: But each time the dog would return, having lost interest
• 2:20:14
  Speaker 1: in what was becoming an increasingly cold trail. Finally, Joe
• 2:20:19
  Speaker 1: and Floyd suggested that we start the long walk back
• 2:20:22
  Speaker 1: toward camp. We all had to be somewhere the next day.
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 1: I walked away in silence, disappointed that I was unable
• 2:20:30
  Speaker 1: to learn whether it was challenging to shoot a lion
• 2:20:33
  Speaker 1: out of a tree. Getting to that final moment of
• 2:20:36
  Speaker 1: truth had been quite simply too challenging.