Latest / The Stan R. Mitchell Show / Walking 1,100 miles across the Middle East (and at least a hundred years) with author Miles Spencer

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Walking 1,100 miles across the Middle East (and at least a hundred years) with author Miles Spencer · The Stan R. Mitchell Show

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey guys, welcome to The View from the Front.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Stan, and I'm thrilled y'all have joined me.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: As I said a couple of weeks ago,
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: I am going to start doing some interviews with the podcast,
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: and tonight I am delighted to offer my first one.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: This interview is with Miles Spencer, and Miles Spencer and myself talk a lot about the Middle East.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about everything from the Crusades to how the borderlines were drawn,
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: World War I,
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: World War II...
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about oil.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about Lawrence of Arabia, the film.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about T.E.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Lawrence, who actually was the hero behind the film.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: His book, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which is back from 1926.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: And really,
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: we just cover the 100 plus most recent years of the conflict that's been happening
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: in the Middle East.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Also,
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: what some of the possibilities for peace and a reset in the Middle East is,
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: since we now have a couple of things happening with the Trump administration.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we've got a change of administrations in the United States.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: We've also got Iran, who has really been...
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: hit back pretty hard by Israel,
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: with Israel decapitating Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north,
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: and also almost appearing impervious in its ability to attack Iran's defense
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: industries and the potential to attack again.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: So there's kind of an interesting bit of timing happening in the Middle East.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought this was a perfect time to talk to someone who not only wrote a book
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: about the Middle East,
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: but Miles and his co-author...
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: literally walked 1,100 miles through the deserts of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: They know a lot about Israel and those countries,
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: and he shares some of that insight in this interview that I'm about to share with
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: you guys.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now we do jump back and forth a bit on some topics you may not be totally familiar with,
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: so I'll have some links in the episode notes about that film Lawrence of Arabia,
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: so you can glance at it if you've never seen it or have no idea what we're talking about,
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: as well as T.E.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Lawrence, who did so much work for the British Army and for the Allies back in the earlier 1900s.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I have links to those so you can find out just a bit more about them easily.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And with that out of the way,
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: I will begin the interview by just jumping into the introduction that I recorded
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: with him,
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: and then we just move right into that interview.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Got quite the business background.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'll run through it real quick.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: You've started and built three different media companies, creating over 1,100 jobs.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: You've helped mentor tech founders for the past 30 years,
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: been a senior executive at Capitol Express,
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: even hosted something that's kind of like a pre-Shark Tank show called Money Hunt
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: on PBS.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: But the main reason you're on with us today is that you apparently walked across
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: 1,100 miles of the deserts of Saudi Arabia,
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Jordan,
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: and Syria.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought you might be someone who has some expertise on the Middle East since,
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: as we both know,
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: most Americans don't travel there very often.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: They typically go maybe to Israel or, you know, maybe a Bahrain or something.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: But we interact a lot with our allies and adversaries a lot in the Middle East.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought,
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: man,
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: it'd be great to talk to someone who's almost a subject matter expert because I
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: don't think there are many people who've walked across 1,100 miles.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks for joining us.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: And tell us, first of all, why did you walk across 1,100 miles?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Stan, thanks for having me on your show.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: It really kind of boils down to your point is absolutely correct.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: Not that many people in the West,
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: aside from perhaps military or Aramco or some very intrepid travelers have been to
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: the parts of the Middle East that we spend a decent amount of time in.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I'm an expert.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: I have experience.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's personal experience.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: We chose to share that.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: But it came about because myself and Wells Jones,
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: a fellow adventure partner,
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: whose former Navy ex-parachute rescue special force specialist out of actually
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: Antarctica was his face.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: We were trying to piece together the rationale for 9-11.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: Again, as Westerners just couldn't.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: What?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: And again, strangers in a strange land.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't just didn't understand anything.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: We were reading a book.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: I was reading a book called Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: Lawrence.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: It just so happens that Wells was on his way up from Washington past my home in Connecticut.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: He said, what are you reading?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Seven Pillars.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: He said, I am too.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you reading it?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: Just trying to figure this out.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: He said, I am too.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: And how far are you along?
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I just finished.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: He said, I did too.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: He said, well, what's next?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: I said, well, we probably ought to go.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was fortunate enough to get an invitation from YPO Riyadh to talk about my book,
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Money Hunt,
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: to some entrepreneurs.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: That went fairly well.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: And as you may know,
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: at least in KSA,
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: that's Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: once you're inside the tent and welcomed,
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: you know, the world's your oyster.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: And they said, what else would you like?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: And we said,
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: well,
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: we'd love to hike 1,100 miles from the desert to Saudi Arabia,
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: starting in your port city of Jeddah.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, great, let's go.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: So we had resources,
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: we had friends,
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: and we began a trek that lasted 26 days up the Red Sea coast to basically retracing
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: the steps of T.E.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Lawrence in Seven Pillars.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: So Yenbo, Aueja, Aqaba, the deserts of Wadi Ram, through Jordan.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: As you probably know, Lawrence was a crusader castle aficionado.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: So Karak,
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Karak Chevalier,
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: all the way to Damascus,
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: which was the location that it was like the finish line.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: As you probably know, there was a treaty called Sykes-Picot.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: And this was between the French and the English.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the agreement between the French and the English as to how to divvy up
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: the Middle East post-World War I.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: Separately,
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: they needed somebody to rise up against the Ottomans,
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: and that was the Hashemite Arabs.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: And they chose Lawrence to pull those together.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: And the deal they cut was, despite Sykes-Picot,
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: If you get to Damascus with your army first, you can have a kingdom with all this sand in it, right?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: And there was some speculation that there was oil, but it wasn't proven at the time.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: So long story short, they did their job.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: You watch Lawrence of Arabia, kind of see it acted out.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, the British and the French and Sykes-Becot and some other things involved.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: It pretty much said, oh, I'm sorry.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I believe that was the beginning of 100 years of discontent.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's interesting because I don't think most people go back that far.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: I believe you have to in that region.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: You either go back 100 years or you go back 1,000.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, 100 years ago,
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mentioned Sykes-Picot as a secret agreement that became on secret longer around
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: the Paris Peace Conference,
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: slightly before that,
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: when the Russian Revolution published all those secret agreements.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: But there were some other documents flying around,
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: not the least of which was the original Valfour agreement they created.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: the impetus for the Jewish homeland in I call it Palestine some call it the Middle
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: East don't really need to argue about the proper nomenclature because at the end of
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: the day I believe people need to live somewhere so and that includes all people
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: that are getting expelled from all different places especially during the theater
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: of the Second World War so
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: That was a document that probably felt like a good idea at the time, but 100 years later, not so much.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so you have this discontent that,
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: from my perspective and Wells,
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: my co-author,
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: may have been caused to some extent by well-bred white men who know each other in
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: the clubs of England,
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: London,
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: and Paris,
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: drawing lines in the sand for
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: people 1,000 miles away to fight over,
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: at first for wells and territory and roaming and pasture,
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: but it was then magnified by the fact that the energy that has powered the growth
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: of the West in the last century mostly comes from underneath those sands.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Man, that's really deep.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's very well said.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Very well said.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, sir.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think most people,
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: as I cover things every week,
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: and I'm going to try not to put my opinions in it too much because people hear me
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: every week.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so I want to hear some of yours, especially your perspective since you've been there.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think,
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: people sometimes they go back so shallow that,
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: this agreement that,
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: the peace accords that Trump tried to hold or for,
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: they'll go back a couple of ministrations,
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Obama,
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Clinton,
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: or you go back to the 90s.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: But I like that.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: the idea that you're sharing that really this goes way back uh so a lot of people
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: go back you know four years or six years or to a previous administration or maybe
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: even back to the 90s but i like that what you're sharing it's so much further back
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: especially for the western mind we're so instant gratification we're so you know
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: microwave versus crockpot and we want easy solutions and these are very deep rooted
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: problems that go back
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Minimum centuries.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: But I really like that you're pointing that out,
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: because I think we sometimes just wonder why some of the countries over there can't
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: get along or can't resolve their differences.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: And we forget just just how far back those pains and hurts and sellouts and betrayals go.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: yeah,
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: you've got you know,
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: you've got you've got geography,
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: you've got natural resources,
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: you've got religion.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: And you have Westerners drawing lines that apply to those people, but
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: don't necessarily, they're not necessarily thought through.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: your comment brings to mind a story during the moment of,
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: it was weapons of mass destruction was the phrase,
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: was used at the UN.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: It was Colin Powell who had the portfolio there and was arguing for UN cover for wartime.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: And Jacques Chirac, great name, was the either representative to the UN or Prime Minister of France.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: But in any event, he was there.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: And his point was, you know, you don't understand.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: We have a thousand years of history here.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: You remember the Crusades rolled right through there.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: And the Crusades,
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: and it's French,
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: it's a Pope that's resident in France that has declared that anybody making a
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: pilgrimage is pre-absolved for the killing of any Arab and any Jew on the way to
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: their holy pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so...
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: To a certain extent,
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: if you look at Pope Clement's papal bull in 1093,
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: it was perhaps the first jihad,
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: but it was going the other way.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: Look,
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: the Knights Templar,
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: Knights Hospitalier were some ferocious Teutonic Knights that put together
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: phenomenal logistics and basically a hotel chain in between France and Jerusalem
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: that people could stay over at.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, that tradition is 100 years old.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: what happened in,
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: during the,
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: let's call it the Arab Revolt,
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: First World War,
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: and the unseating of the Ottoman Empire in,
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: in that area of the region.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Remember,
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: they controlled Mecca,
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: not quite Medina,
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: um,
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: and they had a railway from,
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: up the Hejaz to,
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: to Constantinople Istanbul today and so the pilgrims were making their way south
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: that way and they controlled an immense amount of territory and they were aligned
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: with the Germans and so the British had the Suez Canal geopolitically that was a
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: crucial link to trade
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: and so at the very least protection of that was crucial uh churchill had had by
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: then as vice chairman of the admiralty um switched the royal fleet or or ordered it
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: switched from coal to oil and their first alignment was with persia at the time now
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: iran
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: to get said oil so that, you know, the sun would never set on their on their empire.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think it was a good early choice.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: The Americans in the end chose best, but they chose last.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: And that was, of course, KSA Kingdom.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: So.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: So you have
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: a lot more history at stake here than just the last administration right yeah no
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: question so obviously there's been a a change in our administration that'll be
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: taking place in a couple of months what what is your you've you've talked to and
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: and you know met a lot of people over there now obviously saudi arabia had pretty
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: good ties with the trump administration but what
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have any thoughts or what's your gut tell you we could see in the coming months and years?
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, I'm not a historian, but I tell stories about history and I'm a lover of history.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not a prognosticator, but I'll give you what I think.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think Saudi sits well in the region.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Saudi was,
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: my understanding,
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: very near to signing the Abraham Accords with Israel and Egypt,
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: to a certain extent,
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: leaving Iran as the odd man out.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: Arguably, that could have been the reason for October 7th.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: And Iran has played their hand or is playing it.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure it's working out so well.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: No, I don't think it is.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think so.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so you have Saudi with the resources to sit back and let it play out.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think in my lifetime those resources are going to become any less important.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: alternative energy set aside.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's going to be an important resource to power our growth in my lifetime, for sure.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe not on the way to Mars, but I'm certainly here on this planet.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: They've still got to run ahead of them.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: And they have an implicit deal,
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: my understanding,
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: from the United States,
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: which was struck by FDR at the end of the Second World War in the Red Sea outside
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: of Jeddah,
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: on a ship where King Saud came for a visit and the deal was essentially,
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: Saud,
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: you will never be overthrown from outside or from within security and we will never
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: run out of oil.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's the deal.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: And if you look at that possibility of a handshake,
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: It sure has played out exactly that way.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: Despite the attempts of several to make it different, you know, that's the way it is.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think they're sitting pretty.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: They've done a,
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: An admirable job of dragging the country into the 21st century,
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: not without its bumps and bruises,
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: I will note,
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: and worse than that.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a clear path.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: There's clearly progress.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: There's the resources to get it done.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I can see them having another fairly good hundred years run,
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: no matter what administration is in the instance.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: it's interesting,
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: especially from Saudi Arabia's perspective,
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: because,
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: prior to that October attack and all of the consequences that followed it,
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: Iran seemed like an increasingly dominant force.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I think Saudi Arabia was probably feeling a little nervous or anxious about the future.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's crazy how things have changed in the past year as Israel has just worked,
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: decapitated Hamas and then Hezbollah.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: And now they've had the strikes back and forth.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: And you've got to think if someone's thinking sanely inside Iran,
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: that they realize their airspace has been very easily,
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: penetrated,
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: and they have to know that their oil facilities and their nuclear weapons program
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: are at risk if they were to continue to do some type of aggression.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: I know they've promised another attack,
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: and you never know how much of that is just,
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: saying what needs to be said so the population,
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: so that you appear strong.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: But there is an interesting opportunity for especially a new administration to
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: and with Iran's recent lessons,
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: it seems like there's a possibility for,
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: some level of stability in the Middle East,
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: which is something we're not used to thinking about.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: I hope for that.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: When I wrote the book with Wells, we kind of...
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: hurried it along because we felt,
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: oh,
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: gosh,
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: peace might break out in the Middle East before we get this book out.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, I'm not so sure that's going to happen in our lifetime.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: And don't forget,
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: from a global supply chain point of view,
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: a major purchaser of petroleum from Iran is both Russia and,
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: more importantly,
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: China.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so –
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: that oil production is very important to a lot of people in a lot of big guys in the world.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um,
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: and so,
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: I,
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: I,
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: my perspective,
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: which is shared in the book was that the Saudi,
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: it's not really a bellicose nation,
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: at least externally.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: They have what they have.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, look, King Saud, the original, you know, certainly mopped up on the peninsula.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: There were, you know, 100 tribes when he started and there's one today.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: But once he controlled the crescent, by and large, he was done.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: And,
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Iran seems to be the aggressor in the region for whatever reason,
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: whether itself or through its proxies.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: And, yeah, it destabilizes everybody, right?
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: Right, yeah.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, I think that –
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: they,
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: if this continues to play out,
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: there'll be some decisions to be made in Tehran,
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: but that's way above my pay grade.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's above mine too.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, tell me about the book.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um,
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: I should have mentioned that earlier.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: You obviously,
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: with your co-author,
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: wrote a fictional piece that does probably somewhat follow along with the path that
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: you guys took,
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: with the additional history that you read beforehand and also experienced there.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't you talk about the book a little bit?
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's obviously very well-rated.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: It hit one of the top categories for the Middle East, so I'm sure you guys are proud about it.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: So why don't you talk about the book some?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Dan.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it...
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: was completed in the last six months, really after October 8th, day after October 7th.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what do you do now, right?
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: What did you do?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so looking at each other and asking ourselves, so what did you do?
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: This is our contribution to that.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it is based on our personal experiences and fact,
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: begins actually in Pamplona,
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: but it covers Oxford,
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: where Lawrence went to school,
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: England itself,
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: and also Paris before arriving in the Middle East.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: But most of the book is a retracing of our steps in a fictionalized version so that
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: we can protect ourselves a bit,
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: um but 95 of the things that happened in the book was our personal experience um
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: the characters names are magnus and finn because they are uh different than than
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: myself and wells uh but as they say based on a true story the one thing that is not
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: you know that certainly makes it historical fiction not history
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: is that we were able to observe T.E.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: Lawrence in 1918 and his critical actions in a couple of places,
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: Swati Rum,
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: Damascus,
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: and Jerusalem,
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: because the characters Magnuson Finn had access to a time machine.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so in the great tradition of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure or Midnight in
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: Paris or Back to the Future or even Indiana Jones,
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: one must suspend disbelief for a moment if you don't believe in time machines or if
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: you do,
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: just play along.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: And we do get to observe things.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: those three critical moments where Lawrence made crucial decisions.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we really believe that that informed the next hundred years.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it's set in 2006 and 1918.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how we get back and forth.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Nice.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it is funny that, you know,
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: you and I are a bit older than some of the young folks over there,
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: but how short people's memory is of history.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: And while you and I grew up and knew about Lawrence and saw the movie and know some
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: of that history better,
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: especially young people,
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know that they're
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: their historical memory goes back quite that far.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I should have mentioned the name of the book is a line in the sand.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I'll make sure I'll include a link into the, uh, episode notes.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so you, you've obviously got incredible, uh, feedback as someone who is an author.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: And, uh, I certainly don't have any book that's rated 4.8 stars on Amazon.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: Amazon's tough crowd.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta be proud of it.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, who would you say is the audience for this?
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Who, who,
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: For the people listening out there.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, it's a great question, Stan.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: Anybody with a curiosity about what's happening in the Middle East,
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: about culture,
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: cuisine,
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: people and personalities,
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: and of course history,
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: beyond what's happening today,
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: There is a bigger, larger, more enduring story there that's important to capture.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so our angle was, let's entertain people.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then by the end of the book, they would realize that they've learned some history.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: Now,
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: I will also say that one of the reasons we're on and off number one in Saudi Jordan
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: and Syria for history books is that there is so little.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: written by and for a Western audience about that region.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: Plenty on Israel.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: We do cover our share of Israel because we spent our time there.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the two kids that we mentor is Jewish by way of New York, by way of Oxford, Jeremy.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: And that was a real person.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so we did get two youth perspectives.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I think the audience is anyone.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: 22 to 82 that's interested in a rip-roaring tale with two characters that are quite adventuresome,
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: and this is probably not their first or last adventure together.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, nice.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot to be learned there.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's the audience.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, that's awesome.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I know.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: You've probably read your fair share of Tom Clancy,
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: but,
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: the Tom Clancy books,
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: you're reading a great thriller and you're being educated the entire time.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I've always tried to do that with my fiction as well, so I know exactly what you're talking about.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I know we both have a hard deadline on when we have to kind of end this.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: You want to throw out any final thoughts, any questions I didn't ask, anything you want to share?
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, I'm honored to be with...
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: Someone from the military, first of all, thank you for your service.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: And to take a military perspective of this,
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: many of the service personnel that we met on the trip and afterwards had copies of
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: Seven Pillars of Wisdoms in their backpacks.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because T.E.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: Lawrence,
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: among many other things,
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: he was an archaeologist,
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: a cartographer,
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: basically a spy,
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: but a strategically brilliant man and an incredibly stoic warrior.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot to be learned from his thinking, as we did.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: But there's also a lot to be learned from getting your feet in the sand and feeling,
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: feeling what it's like and not in the protection of,
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: Fort X or Aramco's facility or one of the palaces,
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: et cetera.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: Literally.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: out with the people.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that we tried to really deliver in our book, including recipes.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's awesome.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, it's funny.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: When you get on the ground somewhere like that,
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: even if a country is trying to push a certain view or whatnot,
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: as you're with workers and guides and people you interact with and people you buy
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: stuff from,
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: you just pick up stuff
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: that you're not going to pick up any other way and certainly not in the tourist
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: areas or,
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: uh,
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: so I,
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: I,
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: I completely know what you're saying on that for sure.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: That was a wonderful experience.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm just happy to share it with you, happy to share it with your listeners.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um,
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: and,
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: hope to read the book because I think there'll be entertained,
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: but I think they'll learn something about the region in the meantime.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Hey, great talking with you.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: Might as well wrap it up there, but, um,
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: When that next book comes out on this series, we're going to talk again.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: That sounds great.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, Dan.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks, Miles.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: Appreciate it.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoyed that interview as much as I did, and I hope you learned same as I did.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: I do have in the episode notes a link to the book.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: Again, it's called A Line in the Sand from Miles Spencer and Wells Jones.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: who Wells Jones helped co-author it, but I've got the link in the episode notes.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to go check it out,
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: read some of the reviews on Amazon,
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: it is kind of crazy that it,
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: like I said earlier,
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: has a 4.8 rating on Amazon.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think the best book I have is 4.6,
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: and I consider myself a halfway decent writer,
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: so it's very impressive.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: let me know what you guys think of the interview,
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: and also if you have suggestions for future podcasts.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: guests.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: We'll make that happen from time to time on a somewhat regular basis.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks so much guys.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great day.