Latest / Respark Your Life / EP354: G. Michael Hopf - Cries Of A Dying World

Transcript

EP354: G. Michael Hopf - Cries Of A Dying World · Respark Your Life

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: It leads you to like, what is valuable in those two weeks?
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: What is valuable to you?
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: To me, it's family and it's love.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: That's what's valuable.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: And therefore I think that's what people should seek out.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: If you know, you only have this amount of time.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Hello, this is Raymond Aaron, New York times, top 10 bestselling author,
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: bringing you re spark your life podcast, the world's premier podcast to ignite
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  Speaker 2: the fire to allow you to live life on your own terms. Every single Thursday, I bring
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• 0:52
  Speaker 2: Yes, this is Raymond Aaron, New York Times top 10 bestselling author.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: And yes, if you are playing this on its release day, it is a Thursday.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: But what you don't know is who I am interviewing, G. Michael Hoff, and why.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: I'm interviewing him, well, let me introduce him by speaking in his voice.
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  Speaker 2: He says, "I've written 40 books, and my most recent one is called "Cries of a Dying World."
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: However, I mostly want to discuss my journey of success from being a combat veteran in
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: the Marine Corps to becoming a USA Today bestselling author who has sold 2 million books and has
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  Speaker 2: gone on to own and operate a successful publishing.
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  Speaker 2: I'd also discuss overcoming adversity.
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  Speaker 2: How?
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  Speaker 2: I lost my son and I've been able to take that grief and channel it into something productive and
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  Speaker 2: Meaningful Wow, what a life G Michael Hoff. Are you here with me? I am here Raymond
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  Speaker 2: Thank you very much for having me
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  Speaker 2: Now that was a pretty big intro. You've got to live up to all that now
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do so thank you very much for that did I write that that sounds pretty good who is that guy
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  Speaker 2: So tell me about your books. Well, I've got 40 of
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  Speaker 1: my books, they're all fiction and
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  Speaker 1: I
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  Speaker 1: first started writing as a
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  Speaker 1: Sir, I first started writing apocalyptic fiction one because I actually like the genre I like science fiction
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  Speaker 1: but but people ask why apocalyptic fiction it stopped because I like to look at the chaos and
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  Speaker 1: The mayhem and everything that's happening in those situations
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  Speaker 1: I have always found it fascinating,
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  Speaker 1: people's responses to things
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  Speaker 1: and just the overall human condition.
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  Speaker 1: And it stems back to a moment in my past
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  Speaker 1: when something happened.
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  Speaker 1: I was a bodyguard at the time
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  Speaker 1: and I was working on a large detail
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  Speaker 1: and we all got fired.
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  Speaker 1: And one event, three different emotional responses to it.
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  Speaker 1: And it's always stuck with me.
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  Speaker 1: So as a big reader of apocalyptic fiction,
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  Speaker 1: I've always been looking for kind of just, again,
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  Speaker 1: not the kind of grittiness, even though my books have that.
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  Speaker 1: I wanna understand why people do, why humans do,
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  Speaker 1: why humans react the way they react.
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  Speaker 1: And because they will.
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  Speaker 1: You see it in a tense situation,
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  Speaker 1: you always have three elements.
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  Speaker 1: Say you've had mass shootings before.
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  Speaker 1: You always have the person that runs toward it,
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  Speaker 1: the person that freezes,
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  Speaker 1: and the person that runs away from it.
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  Speaker 1: What drives that person to do any of those things?
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  Speaker 1: Why do this person run toward it?
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  Speaker 1: Why do they freeze and why do they run away?
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  Speaker 1: And so there's a lot of that in my books,
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  Speaker 1: kind of exploring kind of the human emotional state
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  Speaker 1: and the human condition.
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  Speaker 1: So I started out writing apocalyptic fiction,
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  Speaker 1: done quite a few of those books.
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  Speaker 1: I've done really well with them.
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  Speaker 1: And then I dove into writing Westerns
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  Speaker 1: 'cause I've always loved the Wild West.
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  Speaker 1: And it's something that's uniquely American.
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  Speaker 1: It's definitely a very Americana.
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  Speaker 1: And I got into writing those.
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  Speaker 1: I'm just, again, I'm a big fan.
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  Speaker 1: So I write what I want to read.
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  Speaker 2: - Yes, well, I like post-apocalyptic movies
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  Speaker 2: where some horrible thing has already happened
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  Speaker 2: and now the filmmaker's exploring how people react to it.
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  Speaker 2: I just really enjoy that genre.
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  Speaker 1: - Yeah, I have always.
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  Speaker 1: I can't remember the name of the movie now.
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  Speaker 1: It was like an ABC movie.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe it was the day-- no.
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  Speaker 1: It was about nuclear war.
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  Speaker 1: I think the movie was in the '80s.
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  Speaker 1: And I just remember the scene where they're in the Midwest somewhere.
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  Speaker 1: I think they're looking at St. Louis, you'd see this large mushroom cloud.
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  Speaker 1: And I've always been intrigued by it and fascinated.
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  Speaker 1: Some of them are more science fiction based.
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  Speaker 1: Some of them are more reality based.
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  Speaker 1: My books are reality-based, in a sense you have some kind of a real situation or event
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  Speaker 1: that occurs.
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  Speaker 1: I typically take the reader – specifically with my series, The New World, I take the
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  Speaker 1: reader as society is breaking down day by day by day by day.
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  Speaker 1: You're experiencing that collapse.
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  Speaker 1: It's kind of a slow collapse when you look at the weapon of choice that I use in The
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  Speaker 1: the New World Series is an EMP.
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  Speaker 1: Specifically, I used a super EMP.
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  Speaker 1: And the crippling effects it has on the grid
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  Speaker 1: and everything that's electrical,
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  Speaker 1: anything that has a circuit is gone.
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  Speaker 1: - LSEMP, what is that?
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  Speaker 1: - Electromagnetic pulse.
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  Speaker 1: - What does it do?
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  Speaker 1: - So it fries circuitry, essentially what it does.
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  Speaker 1: So there's two ways of having an EMP.
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  Speaker 1: You can have a coronal mass ejection,
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  Speaker 1: which is essentially a solar flare from the sun,
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  Speaker 1: which supercharges the atmosphere
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  Speaker 1: and then sends down electrical pulses,
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  Speaker 1: which then essentially supercharges anything
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  Speaker 1: that has a circuit to it, which then thrives it.
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  Speaker 1: And then an EMP is created from a nuclear detonation.
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  Speaker 1: So you take a nuclear warhead and you detonate it
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  Speaker 1: in let's say low earth orbit,
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  Speaker 1: and it too creates that kind of supercharges the atmosphere
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  Speaker 1: and you get an electromagnetic pulse, which comes down
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  Speaker 1: and again, does the same thing as a CME,
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  Speaker 1: supercharges anything that's connected to a circuit
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  Speaker 1: or electrical and it fries it.
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  Speaker 1: - But it leaves humans and all animals okay.
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  Speaker 1: - Yes, exactly.
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  Speaker 1: So yeah, there's no harm essentially done
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  Speaker 1: to the physiology of the human body
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  Speaker 1: or biology of the human being or animals or anything.
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  Speaker 1: It's just anything that's electrical gets destroyed.
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  Speaker 2: - So buildings, so if I fell asleep during this event
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  Speaker 2: and woke up, I'd look around, I would be okay.
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  Speaker 2: Everyone I knew would be okay.
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  Speaker 2: My dog or cat would be okay.
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  Speaker 2: The buildings would all be okay.
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  Speaker 2: But as soon as I picked up my cell phone to do something,
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  Speaker 2: I would say, "Uh-oh, something's gone wrong."
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  Speaker 1: - Yeah, so for the most part,
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  Speaker 1: most electrical would be gone.
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  Speaker 1: Nothing is 100% universal, and at EMP,
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  Speaker 1: it really matters where you are located from the blast,
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  Speaker 1: or from where the EMP, or say if it's a CME,
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  Speaker 1: from where the solar flare hits the earth.
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  Speaker 1: And then it also matters like if you have a car
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  Speaker 1: or you're in a bunker, you're insulated here and there.
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  Speaker 1: So it's not as if everything's universal
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  Speaker 1: but there's enough systems or infrastructure that collapses
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  Speaker 1: that it causes this cascading failures all the way across.
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  Speaker 1: The main thing is the grid is it typically collapses.
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  Speaker 1: You have the transformers and things like that,
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  Speaker 1: and power stations, they go down,
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  Speaker 1: and you're not getting those back up anytime soon.
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  Speaker 1: And so what's the old saying, we're nine days away,
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  Speaker 1: or nine meals away from society collapsing.
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  Speaker 1: And that's what you would have.
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  Speaker 1: You would have this cascading failures across the board,
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  Speaker 1: which collapses the grid and the infrastructure,
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  Speaker 1: and then everything else from there is just chaos.
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  Speaker 2: - Now, how does your background as a Marine Corps,
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  Speaker 2: how does that help you in coming up with fascinating ideas
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  Speaker 2: for these 40 books?
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  Speaker 1: - Well, as a Marine, I've seen quite a bit,
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  Speaker 1: I've done quite a bit.
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  Speaker 1: I did six years in United States Marine Corps,
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  Speaker 1: three of those years, I mean,
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  Speaker 1: I did three deployments in those six years.
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  Speaker 1: I spent about half of my time forwardly deployed.
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  Speaker 1: And so you see a lot of things, you see a lot of images.
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  Speaker 1: You get put in very tense situations
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  Speaker 1: and you see how people react to them.
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  Speaker 1: You see things that people only watch on movies
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  Speaker 1: and you get to experience those.
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  Speaker 1: Some of those mainly are not very pleasant experiences.
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  Speaker 1: And that has really, they say, "Write what you know."
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  Speaker 1: And so that's what I've done with my books.
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  Speaker 1: I always had some kind of,
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  Speaker 1: I always kind of like Stephen King always does his books in Maine and you know M Night Shyamalan
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  Speaker 1: always does his movies and like around Philadelphia. I do a lot of my books in San Diego or about
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  Speaker 1: Southern California because I know it. I know it very intimately and I always tend to have a
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  Speaker 1: marine summer in there as well or marine units in the apocalypse just because that's where I came
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  Speaker 1: from. That's kind of part of my you know who I am and I understand the culture and how they operate.
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  Speaker 2: Maybe you could explain something to me. Anytime there's some horrible disaster, I'm thinking now
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  Speaker 2: of the Rodney King riots, but that was a long time ago. What I know is that ordinary people,
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  Speaker 2: people who have regular jobs, they have a spouse, they have kids, they want to protect their kids,
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  Speaker 2: they're good people. But when they're running down the street in a riot, there's a tipping point.
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  Speaker 2: and suddenly one person breaks a window and steals some cell phone or something, and then all of a
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  Speaker 2: sudden everybody feels that tipping point and feels the right to break windows and do things
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  Speaker 2: they would never do in their ordinary life. So this is a post-apocalypse event, like the judge
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  Speaker 2: said that all the white policemen were acquitted
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  Speaker 2: and the black population legitimately went berserk.
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  Speaker 2: Do you have tipping points in your novels
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  Speaker 2: or what is the power of tipping point?
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  Speaker 2: What is that thing?
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  Speaker 1: - Yeah, the tipping point, if you look at a riot,
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  Speaker 1: it tends to be, some is, I think,
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  Speaker 1: rightly so, there could be, well, I don't know,
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  Speaker 1: I mean, rightly so, I mean, at what point do you say
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  Speaker 1: to exercise violence, right?
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  Speaker 1: That's a discussion we can have.
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  Speaker 1: There's protests, which I think are legitimate.
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  Speaker 1: And then when it turns to violence and chaos and mayhem,
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  Speaker 1: I question that.
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  Speaker 1: I can understand anger that can build up
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  Speaker 1: in a population or subset or a culture.
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  Speaker 1: But regardless, so say you're asking the question,
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  Speaker 1: they're protesting and then say someone finally picks up
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  Speaker 1: a brick and throws it.
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  Speaker 1: It takes that one person to give everyone else permission
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  Speaker 1: to do something.
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  Speaker 1: So the people like to do things
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  Speaker 1: and they feel comfortable in groups.
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  Speaker 1: And they've done tests on this before
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  Speaker 1: where you essentially that,
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  Speaker 1: where you tell somebody something
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  Speaker 1: or you give one person the permission.
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  Speaker 1: And they've done it with like food.
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  Speaker 1: I know I've seen that before.
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  Speaker 1: They'll have something on the,
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  Speaker 1: they'll have a group of people go on,
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  Speaker 1: there's food sitting there
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  Speaker 1: and they tell them not to eat it.
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  Speaker 1: And then one, but they keep it in there long enough.
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  Speaker 1: one person finally does, and then it takes that one person
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  Speaker 1: to initiate it, to give everyone else the rash,
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  Speaker 1: 'cause they're already thinking it,
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  Speaker 1: then I'll do it as well.
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  Speaker 1: So these people start tend to do things,
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  Speaker 1: and they like, we're kind of herd animals, I guess.
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  Speaker 1: But then when you look at, so that occurs,
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  Speaker 1: then you have just the impulse
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  Speaker 1: for like an apocalyptic situation,
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  Speaker 1: it comes down to survival or perceived survival.
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  Speaker 1: And when you look at an event that occurs,
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  Speaker 1: So say something happens, say an EMP occurs, and most people tend to react based on panic
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  Speaker 1: because they're not prepared.
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  Speaker 1: Most people don't have the skill sets or the resources to withstand going two weeks without
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  Speaker 1: food.
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  Speaker 1: They don't have two weeks of food at their home.
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  Speaker 1: And I'm not saying it's their fault.
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  Speaker 1: I'm just saying that they just don't.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe there's a lot of the means to stockpile, whatever that is.
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  Speaker 1: And so what causes them to take to the streets then is just basic primal survival.
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  Speaker 1: They need something, some place has it, and they're going to get it.
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  Speaker 1: And they tend to act out differently because now societal norms are gone.
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  Speaker 1: When you have an event like that, I mean, we kind of have a social compact with each
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  Speaker 1: other to kind of live the way we do.
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  Speaker 1: We know that there's law enforcement out there and there's laws.
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  Speaker 1: Most people just abide by those.
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  Speaker 1: But when you remove that and you create this power vacuum,
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  Speaker 1: and then you lay, you couple in the fact that people
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  Speaker 1: are panicked and they're coming from a position of lack,
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  Speaker 1: like I need that or I'm going to die,
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  Speaker 1: then they don't have that worry about law enforcement
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  Speaker 1: or police or laws or going to jail.
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  Speaker 1: They then will go and do the things
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  Speaker 1: that they feel is necessary to,
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  Speaker 1: so they can survive or their family can survive.
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  Speaker 2: all this craziness that happens in a post-apocalyptic world
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  Speaker 2: is the fodder for your books.
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  Speaker 1: - Yes, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: What I've always found it fascinating,
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  Speaker 1: 'cause if you say you had the grid collapsed,
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  Speaker 1: there wouldn't need to be an apocalypse.
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  Speaker 1: If people, I mean, as far as the violence
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  Speaker 1: and the mayhem and the chaos and that that stems from it,
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  Speaker 1: if we all work together,
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  Speaker 1: if we all came together and coordinated
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  Speaker 1: and with the goal of finding a solution,
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  Speaker 1: there wouldn't be the violence and chaos,
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  Speaker 1: but there's always a subset of people that will panic
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  Speaker 1: and or it's two people, they panic and they react
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  Speaker 1: in a negative way, or they're opportunists
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  Speaker 1: that see something they can get and they seize on it.
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  Speaker 1: So you take those two groups of people
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  Speaker 1: and then they move in the direction of like,
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  Speaker 1: I'm going to go get it.
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  Speaker 1: Again, some people are just, they see the power vacuum
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  Speaker 1: and they swoop in,
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  Speaker 1: or the other people are just panicking
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  Speaker 1: 'cause they don't have it,
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  Speaker 1: and then they swoop in.
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  Speaker 1: And then that causes chaos,
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  Speaker 1: and then that based upon what we were talking earlier
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  Speaker 1: is that ripple of that kind of trickle down effect,
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  Speaker 1: where people see the 10% crash in the stores,
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  Speaker 1: like, "Well, I'm gonna go for it too.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: "They're doing it, I don't wanna be left behind.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: "I'm gonna go in that store and steal stuff too."
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  Speaker 1: And so then you just have people just,
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  Speaker 1: everything's just, the societal norms break down.
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  Speaker 1: - And you know, it's--
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  Speaker 1: - This is why I advocate preparedness.
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  Speaker 1: I'm a big, big, big proponent of prepping and preparing.
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  Speaker 2: - For hundreds of thousands of years,
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  Speaker 2: we haven't had electricity.
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  Speaker 2: We only had electricity for the last few hundred years.
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  Speaker 2: So if we lose electricity, you're right,
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  Speaker 2: we don't have to panic.
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  Speaker 2: But of course, your books wouldn't be interesting
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  Speaker 2: unless there was panic and opportunism.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: Oh man, that's exciting.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: You sold me on your books.
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  Speaker 2: So I think your favorite book,
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: or at least your most recent book,
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: is "Cries of a Dying World."
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: If I was to delve into this amazing
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: G. Michael Hoff author genre,
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: would I start with that book, or which is your favorite?
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  Speaker 1: - Well, my favorite is actually my very first book
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  Speaker 1: that I wrote called "The End."
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  Speaker 1: It's the first book in the series
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  Speaker 1: called the "New World" series.
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  Speaker 1: And that is the one that deals with the EMP,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Super EMP. It's a very complex book as far as lots of different POVs happening. I remember
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: when the publisher at Penguin was like, "It's very complicated. There's lots of moving parts
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: and things like that." And there is, because I wanted to give the reader not just kind
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: of a one point of view kind of way of seeing it. I wanted them to see everything that's
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: happening in the world, not just, say, from a family living in the suburbs, but also from
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: someone in the military. What happens to the military when you have an event like this?
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  Speaker 1: Well, I can tell you they're probably going to break apart. They're probably going to disintegrate.
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  Speaker 1: Most people wouldn't believe that, but I can guarantee you the military would fall apart.
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  Speaker 1: Then I also take the reader into what's happening in the halls of government or what's left of
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  Speaker 1: government and what's government's typical response to something as large as a continental
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  Speaker 1: grid down scenario.
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  Speaker 1: I just have them see what's happening everywhere and then the opportunists, and I take them
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: on a day by day by day basis as things are just completely falling apart and people's
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  Speaker 1: reactions and the violence is like this crescendo is building as things collapse.
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  Speaker 2: Wow. So I'm right now finishing Malcolm Gladwell book, which is nonfiction.
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  Speaker 2: And I'm aching to delve into a fiction book. And you're the guy. I didn't know when I started
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: this interview that I would be so sold on your books and your background. But I'm finding
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: it very, very exciting. But before we go, we need to delve on another issue. And that
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: That is how you used your amazing skills in order to overcome the grief of losing a well-loved
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: child.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: >> There's two things.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: I've been blessed and fortunate to have mentors in my life, which I think are important.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: I think everyone should have a mentor.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: I honestly am a big believer in having a coach, too.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: There are two different things.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: Coaches are different than mentors.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: We can talk about that if we want another time.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: I've been blessed.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: I've gotten lots of wisdom from mentors, as well as I really dove into, for a lot, I want
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: to have peak performance.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: I want to be able to maximize my life.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: For the past several decades, I've always focused on self-improvement, not just physically,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: but also from a mental and spiritual state.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: I always believe in what I call the trifecta, body, mind, and soul.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: I think when they're all in harmony,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: you are operating at optimal
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: and have the ability to continue to perform better
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: and level yourself up as a human being.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: And when I was faced with losing my son,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: I took time to grieve.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: I have a way of, I don't know where this came from,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: but I've always had this ability
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: to look at something pragmatically
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: while also allowing myself to grieve,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: but not allowing myself to grieve
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: where it then starts to impact others
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: that I'm responsible for.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure if that makes any sense.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: And because I have this saying,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: and I hope it doesn't come across as harsh,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: but I do have this belief, and I've had it before,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: and we have lost other people,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: that life is for the living.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: And it doesn't mean that we don't forget the dead
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: or the people that have moved on,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: or allow ourselves to grieve and process through suffering.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: But I don't think that we can stay in that state,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: that emotional state, because if you have other children,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: you have a spouse, you have other family,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: staying in that state doesn't allow you
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: to also take care of them and nurture them
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: and also provide for them.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: Being that I'm the provider,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: I'm the man in the family who provides.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: That is also a responsibility for me to do as well.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: And I was able to reframe,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: I'm able to reframe when something negative happens.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: I kind of go through, again, I allow myself to grieve.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: And by the way, it's relative how long you do that.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: But I do think there should be a moment in time
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: where you go, okay, it's time for me to like,
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: do what I need to do for my other children that are here,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: for my wife that is here.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: And so, because if not, then they suffer too.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: As well as they're already suffering too.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Like I just can't check out.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: And so I was able to process through that.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Also looking at it too is celebrating their lives.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: He was an adult when he passed away.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: And to celebrate his life, think of him that way,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: and then know that I've also got,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: I've got two daughters that also need me,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: they need their dad.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: And then to learn from that relationship I had with my son,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: like, all right, so, 'cause being a parent is hard.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: It is not, right?
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: It's not an easy thing to be a parent.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: There's all these books out there,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: we're talking about books,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: all these books about being a parent,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: but we make mistakes 'cause we're humans and we're fallible.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: to then, those moments like that also give us the time to reflect.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: And you can't go back and change things, but can I then reflect on being my two surviving children,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: what can I do to be a better dad if I wasn't for him?
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: And so this is where I reframe things and go, even in bad things, I want to reframe it.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: And is there a place in this to be better?
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: Can I learn from this?
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: I hate to use the word opportunity, but is there this opportunity for me to seize on
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: out of this horrible situation that I can take and then be a better father, to be a
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: better husband, to be a better friend?
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: And so I do that.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: I allow myself to grieve, and then I just, "Okay, it's time to get back.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: is for the living. And then that's kind of, I know it's kind of a long answer. I'm not
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: sure if it's all clear, but I think that losing anybody is difficult. Losing a child is incredibly
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: difficult because it kind of defies the order of things, how we look at life. We think that
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: we go and then they go, you don't look at, I remember it was, my grandfather's words
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: hit me when my aunt died, his daughter. I remember I found him and he was crying in
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: And he was like, and he hugged me and he goes,
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: you know, your kids aren't supposed to go before you.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: - Right.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: - And I watched him and then I watched him
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: kind of with dignity, kind of pick himself up
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: and kind of move on with his life.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: And that was kind of inspired me as well,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: 'cause it's not easy.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: And so again, life is for the living
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: and I don't wanna over say that,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: but I think it's important to know that.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: And that whoever's gone, that they've moved on,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: we love them, we remember them, we cherish them.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: And then we have to go back to living and doing the things that we have to for those who are still here
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: So what a strange dichotomy this interview is on one hand you talk about
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: Cherishing the living and on the other hand you spend your life writing books about the world the world dying
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: and
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: People dying. It's very interesting. You got both halves of the equation. Isn't that fast? Well death is a part of life
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: There's a certain thing with Ben Franklin talked about death and taxes.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: We know we all have an expiration on us.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: We're all going to, we don't like to think about it all the time, but we definitely think
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: about it as we get older.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: I'm 55 now and I think about it more than I did when I was 45, more than I was 35.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: Now I think about it more because I want longevity.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: I want to be around for my kids.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: I want to actually know my grandchildren
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: whenever they decide to show up.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: They're not here anytime soon, but I want to know them.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: I want to know them.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: Like I want to actually have them know me.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: And so I do think, I mean,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: I'm not thinking about death in a morbid way.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: I think, was it Marcus Aurelius
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: that had a thing that talked about the,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: well, I'm gonna forget this right now.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: But Marcus Aurelius talks about this in his works.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: He was a Roman emperor.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: Memento, oh, I'm gonna pull it up.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: Anyway, he talks about, he actually believed
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: that it's important.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: I think he wrote about it in Meditations.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: It's important to know that you're going to die,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: therefore you can live.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: - Aha.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: - I'm paraphrasing.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: - Michael, what I've always found funny
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: is that everybody knows that everyone who was born
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: a long time ago is already dead,
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: and that everyone who's alive today is gonna die,
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: including themselves.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: Everybody knows it, it's not a secret.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: Everybody knows it.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: And yet, when it happens, everybody denies it.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: Like, if I get a phone call saying,
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: "Your friend Alan just died,"
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: my first reaction is, "No, I just spoke to him yesterday."
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: As if somehow that undoes the death.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: It's like the strangest thing.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: Everybody can't believe it.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: Like I don't think there's anything else in life
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: that you know for sure is gonna happen,
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: but you're surprised every time.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: Maybe you fake a birthday party saying,
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: "Oh my gosh, I had no idea."
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: (both laughing)
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: So, I think it's on point.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: - But going back to like I write about it,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: I'm actually just main,
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: I'm just curious about why humans react.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: And when you look at the book "Cries of a Dying World,"
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: "Cries of a Dying World" is everyone is faced
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: with the same fact, everybody,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: 'cause there's an asteroid that's coming called Colossus,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: and they're given two weeks, it's going to impact.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: And it's an extinction level event.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: It's gonna, the world's not gonna be the same.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: It's gonna reshape the surface of the Earth.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: And so everyone's given two weeks.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: And the main question that's posed,
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: and I want the readers like, what would you do
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: if you knew you only had two weeks left to live?
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: How do you live those two weeks?
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: What do you do in those two weeks?
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: And it explores these different characters
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: once they get the news, what do they do with that time?
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: Do they forgive, right?
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: And I want, 'cause these books aren't about the event,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: they're about people.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: - Yes, I got that.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: - Right?
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: So in that book, the main protagonist's name is Ethan.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: He's estranged from his son.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: He's also a widower, and so he's already dealt with death.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: He's been trying to rekindle the relationship with his adult son who's in college.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: He makes that a point to do that.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: He drives to where he's at, and it follows other characters as they're struggling in
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: the moment, some turning to God, some turning away from God, some turning to violence, others
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: turning to just like, "Let's just sit here and just hang out."
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: They have Portnus family and all these questions are asked and you see all these people's different
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: reactions because why would somebody, there's two weeks left to live, go and destroy a Target
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: store and take a TV?
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: What are you doing with that?
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: Why are you robbing a bank?
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: There would be, I would put money on it, people that would back like that.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: I'm like, why?
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: What drives you to do that?
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: Because the value of those things is zero now.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: And so it leads you to like, what is valuable?
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: In those two weeks, what is valuable to you?
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: To me, it's family and it's love.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: That's what's valuable.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: And therefore, I think that's what people should seek out if you know you only have
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: this amount of time.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: And so that's the main point of that book.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: I think that I'm going to race right out and race to Amazon and get one of your books.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: I'll look at them all and then make my own decision, but probably the end or cries of
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: a dying world.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: I instruct my dear subscribers, I think this guy, because of his natural talent and because
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: of his background in the Marine Corps, who've seen things that you don't want to see, and
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: He brings his wisdom to his books and I can't wait to read it.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: Amazon, Cries of a Dying World, or The End, or whatever other one you want.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: G.D. Cronk, what an amazing experience this interview has been.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: I had no idea.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: We were introduced by a dear friend of both of ours, and so I loved you just because he
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: said I should.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: And so I interviewed you, and it's been fascinating, more fascinating than I've ever
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you, Ray.
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: Wow, I sure hope you enjoyed that fascinating episode.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: Please make sure you subscribe and please tell your friends, if you like it, that they will probably like it as well.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: For your information, this experience, this service, this podcast has been sponsored by the Orbit Coaching Program.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: All of my friends, all my world famous speaker friends, all have coaching programs.
• 30:11
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• 30:18
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• 30:23
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• 30:33
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• 30:36
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• 30:40
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