Latest / The Joe Rogan Recap / Jack Carr (2025) - Vietnam War, The Terminal List and Media Failure

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Jack Carr (2025) - Vietnam War, The Terminal List and Media Failure · The Joe Rogan Recap

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  Welcome to the Joe Rogan recap. And welcome to the Deep Dive.
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  We're here to break down these huge conversations, pulling out
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  the key stuff you really need to know.
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  Yeah, today we're digging into the source material involving
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  author Jack Carr. It's really interesting, covers
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  how he builds historical fiction, the fights you have in
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  Hollywood, and maybe the biggest one, this looming threat of AI
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  to art to thinking itself. Definitely.
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  So our goal here is basically to give you the shortcut, right?
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  Why does getting the history right, Why does sticking to your
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  creative guns matter so much now when we're just flooded with
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  information and tech is changing everything so fast?
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  And what really jumps out from the start is cars.
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  Well, his discipline. Oh, absolutely.
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  It wasn't just what he wrote, but how he approached it.
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  Almost obsessive, you could say. OK, well let's unpack that
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  discipline part first. His Vietnam book The Goal was,
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  and he said this explicitly, to write it without the benefit of
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  50 plus years of hindsight. Right.
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  And that's a huge challenge. I mean, especially for something
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  as loaded as Vietnam. Even now, it's like the key
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  thing was purging, you know, the way we talk now, the politics of
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  now from the story. He even talked about specific
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  things he did, like needing to track down a dictionary from
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  1969. Wait, 69, not 68?
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  Yeah, apparently he couldn't find a 68 edition, but just to
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  check word definitions, make sure he wasn't using some modern
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  term that would just, like pull you right out of that time.
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  That's wild. It's beyond check checking.
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  It's almost. Yeah.
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  Yeah. Linguistic anthropology or
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  something. Uh huh.
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  And it shows how tough it was. The sources mentioned the book
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  was meant for June. Yeah, I saw.
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  That, but getting that level of historical feel, that
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  authenticity took way longer. They had to push it to October.
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  Which says a lot about the effort, right, to really try and
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  honor what those guys went through.
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  And the sources draw this really sharp line between how we view
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  different wars. Think about World War 2.
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  It's almost always framed as, you know, the necessary war
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  fighting pure evil. Right, stopping Hitler.
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  Very clear moral lines. But Vietnam?
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  Totally different perspective from many who were there and
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  later historians too. Carr's description was blunt
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  fucking nonsense, something birthed on a lie.
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  Birthed on a lie That points straight at the Gulf of Tonkin
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  incident, doesn't it? That whole disputed event that
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  became the official reason for ramping everything up.
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  Exactly. That feeling of being misled, it
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  just changes everything about how that time is remembered by
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  the people involved. And he picked 1968 specifically
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  for the setting. Why 68?
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  Yeah, because that was the peak, the absolute height of the
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  fighting. 1968 was the bloodiest year, more US casualties, more
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  wounded than any other single year in that war.
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  The total number is staggering. Over 58,000 Americans died in
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  the war, but 68 was the worst concentration of.
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  It, and the trauma, didn't stop at the battlefield.
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  No, the sources really hit hard on how differently veterans were
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  treated. WWII vets got parades, the GI
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  Bill, huge support. Vietnam vets met by protesters
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  called baby killers. I mean, the source material
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  calls it a scar on an entire generation A.
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  Scar that got amplified big time by new technology.
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  OK, so we've got the the raw historical wounds of 68, but how
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  did that trauma, that military stuff spreads so fast to
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  everyone back home? Television, right?
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  That was the game changer. Absolutely.
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  Vietnam was the first televised war.
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  Before that you had still photos, maybe newsreels in a
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  cinema days later. Right, like Civil war photos or
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  WWI footage. With Vietnam, it was chaos.
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  Combat body bags often on the Evening News every Night Live
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  almost. And this wasn't just about
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  reporting anymore. The sources pinpoint this as the
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  moment the media realized, hey, we don't just check the
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  government, we can actually influence things, influence
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  policy. The Tet Offensive, that's the
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  classic case study they bring up militarily.
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  Tactically, it was a complete tactical win for the US.
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  They really hammered the Vietcong.
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  But that's not how it played out on TV screens back home.
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  Not at all. It was reported as this massive
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  defeat, a huge strategic loss and boom, public opinion flips.
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  Policy changes follow that power to shape perception, sometimes
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  completely separate from reality.
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  It's immense. And that kind of ties into why
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  telling stories, why fiction matters so much here.
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  How so? Well, you could read a number
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  like 58,000 deaths in a history book.
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  It's abstract. Right statistic.
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  But Carr talked about how fiction builds empathy.
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  You live it through the characters.
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  OK, got you. You feel the journey, the loss.
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  It connects you emotionally in a way that just facts and figures
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  often can't. Makes the number human.
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  Which brings us from the jungles of Vietnam to the maybe equally
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  vicious jungles of Hollywood. Car's own fight to get his stuff
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  adapted authentically. The terminalist.
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  That Amazon show its success was key.
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  Yeah, it build credibility, the sources say.
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  The execs were pretty nervous first season, killing the
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  Secretary of Defense, stuff like that.
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  Big risks, I bet. But it hit, and that success
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  meant more freedom, more trust for the next series.
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  Dark Wolf. And then Amazon actually took a
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  pretty big swing with that follow up.
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  The 1st 2 episodes of Dark Wolf. They spend time showing the main
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  character's journey, like this violent redemption trip across
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  the ocean to Mozambique. Mozambique to fight poachers?
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  That's not your standard thriller opening.
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  Exactly. But it was crucial for the
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  character, for the author's vision, and they actually put
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  the money behind it, spent the time to set up that personal
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  story. That's pretty rare for studio
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  stuff. And that commitment to
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  authenticity, it went right down to the fights, didn't it?
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  They deliberately kept them primal, visceral, brutal.
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  Yeah, realistic for the former Seals involved, they
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  specifically wanted to avoid that.
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  The John Wick style, that hyper choreographed thing.
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  Right, he didn't want. That that seems like a risk
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  though. Doesn't the market kind of love
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  that stylized action right now? Was it hard to sell the slower,
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  more real violence? Oh, I'm sure it was a fight, but
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  that's where conviction comes in, right?
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  Carr shared this quote, comparing the usual adaptation
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  process to Carl IAS and just chucking his book over the
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  California border and getting money thrown back.
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  Yeah. Totally detached.
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  But the terminalist team was deeply involved.
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  It shows you can keep the integrity if you've got the
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  clout from success and the trust.
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  OK, so fighting for human authenticity in history and
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  creativity, that fight now faces something May bigger existential
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  even. Let's talk about attention
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  spans. Focus.
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  Yeah, the sources hit this hard, this steep drop in reading
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  between like 2003 and 2025. It lines up almost perfectly
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  with smartphones taking over. I feel that it's tough to pick
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  up a dense book when that little dopamine hit is right there in
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  your pocket. Feels like we're losing the
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  muscle for deep focus. And AI kind of feeds on that
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  while also just consuming everything humans have ever
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  made. The scary part is its capacity
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  it's trained on. And the source literally says
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  all of the art that everyone has ever created, ever.
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  Books, music, comedy, everything.
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  And it can mash it up and spit out something that's, well,
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  sometimes better than what a human can do if.
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  It can perfectly copy any style. Then uniqueness, intellectual
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  property, it kind of becomes worthless, doesn't it?
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  Why pay a writer an artist if a machine does it instantly?
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  Yeah. And what's the value then of art
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  made by a machine if there's no, like, piece of a person in it?
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  Yeah. Exactly.
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  We heard about those deep fake audio clips.
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  Muhammad Ali and Michael Jackson having a chat on a modern
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  podcast. Whoa.
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  That's deeply weird. If it can mimic voices styles
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  perfectly, then what's real? What's identity?
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  Does truth even matter? And will people care in 10 years
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  you find out your favorite song was AI, do you stop liking it?
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  Man, that's the big question. Someone suggested maybe we need
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  like parental advisories on AI stuff.
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  Could be, but the worry shifts pretty fast from art to control.
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  Because the same tech that powers the AI artist.
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  It's perfect for the digital surveillance state, right?
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  That's where it gets really concerning.
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  Digital IDs, social credit scores, maybe carbon footprint
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  scores all tied to your access if.
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  They can track everything, what you buy, where you go, what you
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  click. Controlling you becomes easy
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  allotments, right? You've used your power quota for
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  the month or your stake allowance based on your eco
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  score. That sounds like sci-fi but
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  maybe not that far off and we're seeing hints of the self
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  censorship it creates. The UK example was chilling.
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  12,000 arrests for social media posts.
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  Yeah, way higher than other Western countries.
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  When people see that, they just stop saying what they think out
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  of fear. It's induced silence.
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  And the final twist, These devices are phones that were
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  supposed to connect us. Yeah.
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  Talk to family far away. Now they disconnect us from the
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  person sitting right next to us. It's isolating.
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  It all paints a pretty challenging picture, this
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  algorithm driven future. So quite the journey we've
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  taken, the hard work of getting history right, the fight for
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  creative integrity against the Hollywood machine, and now this
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  huge challenge from AI and digital control.
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  Yeah, and the thread connecting it all really is the absolute
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  need for independent thought, critical thinking, because all
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  these systems, media narratives, government, tech, AI, they're
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  increasingly trying to do the thinking for you.
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  So if the constant buzz from our devices, the AI churning out
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  content, makes everyone else kind of stop flexing their own
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  mental muscles, how much more vital does actual reading become
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  that deep dive into knowledge, into different perspectives?
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  It becomes a superpower almost, that ability to read, to build
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  empathy, understand complexity. Think for yourself.
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  That's your core toolkit for whatever is coming.
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  It's how you understand the past.
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  Stay independent now. And maybe even, you know, crush
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  the challenges ahead. Use it, develop it.
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  That's the message. OK, that's our deep dive.
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  For today, we'll catch you on the next one.