Speaker 1: Loot for us.
Speaker 2: If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough. You're
Speaker 2: listening to SOFTWAB Radio Special Operations, Military Nails and straight
Speaker 2: talk with the guys in the community.
Speaker 3: Hey, what's going on? It is rad and I have
Speaker 3: a very special edition of soft Rep Radio for you today.
Speaker 3: But first I got to mention to check out our
Speaker 3: merch store. That's where we have all the things that
Speaker 3: you can purchase and support the soft Rep community and
Speaker 3: our programs and keep our lights on and the gas fireplace.
Speaker 3: It's got to have fuel, so keep that going. I
Speaker 3: also want to recommend our book club. We have soft
Speaker 3: rep dot com Forward Slash Book hyphen Club. And the
Speaker 3: reason why I want to talk about the book club
Speaker 3: and mention that is because I'm talking to author Brad
Speaker 3: Thor today and also former Red Cell member. Welcome back.
Speaker 4: Hey, it's great to be back. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: You know, it's super exciting to have you. Last time
Speaker 3: we had you, I think we were talking about Rising Tiger.
Speaker 4: Yeah, last summer's book exactly.
Speaker 3: And that's the story of Scott Harvith, who is a
Speaker 3: former Navy seal who's turned counter terrorism hunter. Like going
Speaker 3: after he just sniffs it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's just daily works for a private group kind
Speaker 1: of you know, if you took Triple Canopy or Blackwater
Speaker 1: and put.
Speaker 4: Him in the intel arena.
Speaker 1: That's what he's doing now, kind of taking contract work
Speaker 1: from the agency to go out and do some jobs
Speaker 1: that maybe the federal government doesn't want their fingerprints on.
Speaker 3: And Triple Canopy, just for my listener, may not realize
Speaker 3: as a contractor element. And the Triple Canopy is because
Speaker 3: I think they have Airborne Special Forces Ranger Canopy Triple
Speaker 3: Canopy that's on their own, so they have those three
Speaker 3: scrolls and that equals Triple Canopy, I think. But someone
Speaker 3: from Triple Canopy, why don't you correct me down below?
Speaker 3: Go ahead and comment. Now, let me take my glasses
Speaker 3: off and zoom in on what I want to read here.
Speaker 3: So I'm going to read you about this new book
Speaker 3: that's coming out to follow Rising Tiger. This is a
Speaker 3: little excerpt off Brathor dot Com went straight to you.
Speaker 3: So I say it just right, Oh perfect, this is
Speaker 3: dead Fall Fall. I got it right here on the phone. Okay,
Speaker 3: dead Fall, And let me just read you this intro
Speaker 3: and you can go there the story Lethal Operative Scott
Speaker 3: Harveth is dispatched to avenge the killing of American citizens
Speaker 3: abroad in number one New York Times and number one
Speaker 3: Wall Street Journal bestselling author Braththor's new pulse pounding thriller.
Speaker 3: In the war ravaged borderlands of Ukraine, a Russian mercenary
Speaker 3: unit has gone rogue. Its members conscripted from the worst
Speaker 3: prisons and mental asylums across Russia as the most criminally violent,
Speaker 3: psychologically dangerous combatants to ever set foot upon the modern battlefield.
Speaker 3: With all attention focused on the front lines, they have
Speaker 3: pushed deeper into the interior to wage a campaign of
Speaker 3: unspeakable barbarity. As they move from village to village, committing
Speaker 3: horrific war crimes, they meet little resistance because all able
Speaker 3: bodied men are off fighting the war. Simultaneously, a team
Speaker 3: of Russian soldiers has been dispatched by the Kremlin to
Speaker 3: loot truckloads of art and priceless cultural treasures hidden away
Speaker 3: in a host of churches, museums, and private homes. When
Speaker 3: multiple American aid workers are killed, America's top spy, Scott Harveth,
Speaker 3: is set in to settle the score. But in a
Speaker 3: country so vast will Harveth be able to find the
Speaker 3: men in question, and more important, will he be able
Speaker 3: to stop them before they kill they could kill again.
Speaker 3: I mean it, that's it. Yeah, yeah, Scott. So Scott's
Speaker 3: going into Ukraine.
Speaker 4: Yep. So that's this year's book. You know, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: Francis Fukuyama said that history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme.
Speaker 1: And as I watched the Wagner group recruit in insane
Speaker 1: asylums and real life the Russia at PMC, as I
Speaker 1: watched them recruit out of some of the worst in
Speaker 1: Russia out of insane asylums, I was reminded of a
Speaker 1: Nazi SS brigade that went into Poland at the end
Speaker 1: of World War II from August to October during the
Speaker 1: Warsaw Uprising. And these guys were horrific. They were targeting
Speaker 1: field hospitals with flamethrowers and as Polish soldiers would run out,
Speaker 1: they'd machine gun them down. They were raping nurses and
Speaker 1: hanging them on trees outside hospitals alongside the doctors. I mean,
Speaker 1: some really really bad stuff. And so I was like, oh, this,
Speaker 1: what's going on with Wagner is echoing what some of
Speaker 1: the worst SS people did at the end of World
Speaker 1: War Two.
Speaker 4: So I grew up reading like Alistair McClain.
Speaker 1: I loved Where Eagles Dare was also a great movie
Speaker 1: with Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton. And I'd always wanted
Speaker 1: to take my guy and put him in a European
Speaker 1: land war, but that would have had to have been
Speaker 1: completely fabricated.
Speaker 4: Until Ukraine happened and I thought, okay, this is really interesting.
Speaker 1: We don't want a big American footprint over there, because
Speaker 1: then the Russians will say, okay, you are officially part
Speaker 1: of the war.
Speaker 4: So my guy gets sent over.
Speaker 1: They're like, you know what, we may be able to
Speaker 1: cobble together a couple guys out of the Ukrainian International
Speaker 1: Legion that you can form a team with, but you
Speaker 1: don't get to take any of your team.
Speaker 4: Guys from the United States. You are on your own.
Speaker 3: M hm. So has never existed, it's never happened, but
Speaker 3: you're going never there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're just and basically you got to sign the
Speaker 1: contract saying that you're actually joining the International Legion. You'll
Speaker 1: get the ID all that kind of stuff. You are
Speaker 1: going to be part of that, so that if you
Speaker 1: get captured or killed. We've got plausible deniability back in
Speaker 1: the United States, you.
Speaker 3: Know, and how you're talking with this book and with
Speaker 3: what's going on in the world, and the symmetry between
Speaker 3: the actual facts and the and the fiction that you
Speaker 3: write with Scott ok going after almost the facts, right,
Speaker 3: it's like with you know, I don't really like to
Speaker 3: date my shows, but it's happening. And the Wagner Group
Speaker 3: is like supposedly erased from the earth, is what we're
Speaker 3: hearing from Putin right now, saying they don't even exist. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting because you know, my book comes out
Speaker 1: July twenty fifth, and a month earlier, July twenty third
Speaker 1: is when the Wagner Group they said about five thousand truths.
Speaker 3: Oh, June twenty third, that's right, Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: So, yes, about four weeks ago that they all marched
Speaker 1: up and got within I don't know, two hundred kilometers
Speaker 1: of Moscow. There's rumors that they actually took over a
Speaker 1: base on the way up where there were nuclear weapons.
Speaker 4: That the Kremlins denied it.
Speaker 1: But you know, all the information we're getting right now,
Speaker 1: the majority of it's coming out of the Kremlin. We
Speaker 1: haven't seen progosion. The head of the Wagner group since
Speaker 1: June twenty fourth.
Speaker 3: Belarus when he went to supposedly Belarus for like you know,
Speaker 3: your asylum for like.
Speaker 1: Five hours, and then the head of the president of
Speaker 1: Belarue City have gone back to Saint Petersburg. So we
Speaker 1: have no idea. We've not seen progosion. We haven't seen
Speaker 1: the head of the air.
Speaker 4: Force, the Russian generals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a couple of generals have gone missing, but the
Speaker 1: head of the air Force was a close associate of progosions,
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of interesting I don't think we'll
Speaker 1: ever see progosion again.
Speaker 4: The head of Wagner.
Speaker 1: I think the guy's probably room temperature or in a deep, dark,
Speaker 1: very solitary cell somewhere. But you know, God forbid he
Speaker 1: gets near an open window or needs something from a rooftop,
Speaker 1: because the greatest killer of people in Russia's gravity. If
Speaker 1: you're not in league with Putin, there's no surer death
Speaker 1: than death by falling out of an open window or
Speaker 1: off a rooftop.
Speaker 3: Really, really, I mean look at it. Put He prisons
Speaker 3: his political adversaries like Navaleni. You know who's in h
Speaker 3: In jail and exactly. You know, it may still be alive,
Speaker 3: but is in the gulag. Yeah, so you don't.
Speaker 1: I'm still surprised when we hear from navalny. I'm surprised
Speaker 1: that he's able to get messages out and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: You would think it would be an absolute and total
Speaker 1: lockdown on particularly political opponents of Putin's not bad enough
Speaker 1: to take him in jail, but I'm surprised that there
Speaker 1: is a complete blackout.
Speaker 3: Well, there was a band called like Pussy Riot, I
Speaker 3: remember that. Yeah, yeah, right, and they're out now of
Speaker 3: the prison. They got out. They were in for two
Speaker 3: years for just like trying to They said a prayer
Speaker 3: to stop Putin from going to war, I think on
Speaker 3: the stage monster. Yeah. So he threw those girls into
Speaker 3: the jail and now they're out and they're all over
Speaker 3: the place and they're still advocating for freedom. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny because a lot of people, and
Speaker 1: I'm one of them, i'd like to see Putin taken out.
Speaker 4: I don't care if.
Speaker 1: He goes out on his own accord or if the
Speaker 1: guy gets an IDEs of march, I don't care. But
Speaker 1: you know, it's funny when you look at Chavez, when
Speaker 1: you look at like Mubarik, and sometimes the worst things come.
Speaker 4: To replace them. You know, in Egypt we've got Alcci.
Speaker 1: Now, who's who's worse than Mubarak was Chaves had his
Speaker 1: issues and actually came out of it stronger because of
Speaker 1: attempts to push him out. So you you know, you've
Speaker 1: always got to worry what's going to replace these guys.
Speaker 4: But Putin is just he's a bad, bad dude, really
Speaker 4: really bad.
Speaker 1: And yeah, there's a lot of good Russian people. It's
Speaker 1: a good culture in general.
Speaker 4: The I mean, they love the arts, they love ballet,
Speaker 4: they're very literate, they love to read books. They produced
Speaker 4: some incredible authors, and I feel bad. I think the
Speaker 4: majority of people in China are good, but the CCP sucks,
Speaker 4: right exactly.
Speaker 1: North Koreans are probably wonderful people. They probably want nothing
Speaker 1: more than to get rid of the just to be.
Speaker 3: Free and like to breathe air and like, you know, yes, yeah, exactly, yeah,
Speaker 3: just be real. But they don't maybe not, they don't
Speaker 3: know anything because everything they're fed to them, like you know,
Speaker 3: media wise, newspaper wise, you know, television wise, radio wise
Speaker 3: is just one network, one channel, same reporter.
Speaker 1: Which is a big reason. And they want to keep
Speaker 1: him in the dark, which is a big reason. Putin
Speaker 1: wanted to take over Ukraine because he couldn't get a
Speaker 1: pro Russian government and stilled there. So he To have
Speaker 1: democracy on your doorstep like that is dangerous for an aumocrat.
Speaker 1: You know, the Russians look at their shitty lives and
Speaker 1: see what's going on in Ukraine and how democracy and
Speaker 1: freedom is growing.
Speaker 3: There.
Speaker 1: Not a perfect country by any stretch of the imagination.
Speaker 1: They're still living under a Soviet era hangover. There's corruption there,
Speaker 1: there's no question, but corruption isn't in the Ukrainian DNA.
Speaker 1: They got the corruption because they were part of the
Speaker 1: USSR where corruption ran rampant. So it is a big
Speaker 1: threat to Putin to have a free and growing democratic
Speaker 1: state on his doorstep.
Speaker 4: That doesn't bode well.
Speaker 3: Why did he agree to it? Do you think in
Speaker 3: the nineties when they said, lay, let's separate the nuclear
Speaker 3: prolifish okay, get rid of your nuclears, why you know,
Speaker 3: why did he agree to that in ninety three ninety four?
Speaker 1: Well, Putin's been in power for only twenty three years,
Speaker 1: so this is pre Putin that This happened when the
Speaker 1: USSR broke up in the state started splitting off. Ukraine
Speaker 1: had a third of the Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal, and
Speaker 1: we really did not want those nukes in Ukraine, and
Speaker 1: we said, listen, you've got to dismantle those.
Speaker 4: We'll help you.
Speaker 1: And in exchange, the Ukrainians said, it's something called the
Speaker 1: Budapest Memorandum. They said, okay, can you guarantee us if
Speaker 1: we give up our nukes that we will never lose
Speaker 1: an inch of territory and we'll never be invaded. And
Speaker 1: the United States said, yes, we'll sign on to that,
Speaker 1: and they say, can you get Russia to sign too,
Speaker 1: and the Russian signed, And then what happened in twenty
Speaker 1: fourteen Putin invaded the Dombas and used the little Green
Speaker 1: Men Wagner mercenaries to go Domia Crimea. And so all
Speaker 1: we did was they got kicked out of the G eight.
Speaker 1: That's why we have a G seven now.
Speaker 4: It used to be a G eight.
Speaker 1: So Russia got kicked out. There were a few other
Speaker 1: sanctions and a harshly worded letter from the Obama administration,
Speaker 1: So it was very similar to trying to placate Hitler
Speaker 1: with allowing him to take a slice of Czechoslovakia, the
Speaker 1: Sudentan Land. We thought that would we thought Devil Chamberlain
Speaker 1: and his colleagues in Parliament and the Brits thought, yeah,
Speaker 1: back back then there was a thought that that would
Speaker 1: slake Hitler's thirst for conquest. And all it did was
Speaker 1: embolden him. And that's what we've seen again history rhyming.
Speaker 3: Interesting, it's true. And so do you feel that Russia
Speaker 3: moved in with their thought that the Ukrainians were just
Speaker 3: going to, like, say, come in and take over.
Speaker 1: I think Putin's probably COVID really served to isolate him
Speaker 1: more and more and more. You know, it's funny, he
Speaker 1: just did a big public appearance. And I'm not a
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory guy, but there's been all these studies about
Speaker 1: just Putin.
Speaker 4: Have a body double. They look at the ear lobes
Speaker 4: and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But when you really see Putin, he's got a dead
Speaker 1: right arm. I mean the arm doesn't The arm just
Speaker 1: kind of swings loose at his side, and he does
Speaker 1: everything with the left hand.
Speaker 4: And so this thing.
Speaker 1: After the Wagner guys marched towards Moscow, Putin went, I
Speaker 1: believe north, to do a public appearance to kind of
Speaker 1: show strength, and he had the right arm, the dead
Speaker 1: arm was shaking hands with people on the crowd, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I have never seen like, for the last
Speaker 1: couple of years, I've not seen that right arm work
Speaker 1: at all. So, you know, there's been all these questions
Speaker 1: about his Putin sick and you saw the long tables
Speaker 1: during COVID.
Speaker 4: Where it happens true he was terrified.
Speaker 1: Of COVID, and that's allegedly because he was fighting cancer
Speaker 1: or whatever was going on. So at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, I think he probably is sick. He is
Speaker 1: a full on ravanchist. He wants to gather back those
Speaker 1: territories that used to be inside if not the USSR,
Speaker 1: the Greater Empire, if you will. And I think he's
Speaker 1: thinking legacy, you know. So, But anyway, Ukraine's not on
Speaker 1: the table for him. He doesn't get to invade a son,
Speaker 1: a sovereign foreign nation and have everybody stand.
Speaker 4: Aside and say, yeah, that's okay, because it's not. We
Speaker 4: don't want to live in a world where that kind
Speaker 4: of stuff becomes okay, because it becomes a much more
Speaker 4: danger world.
Speaker 1: For all of us, no matter how far away we are,
Speaker 1: if there's no international order kind of at least basic
Speaker 1: rules we all agree to, which is where we respect territory,
Speaker 1: we respect borders.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. Now with Putin starting the situation, because I
Speaker 3: feel that it was very unprovocative, It wasn't you know,
Speaker 3: they didn't provoke it from the you know, you went
Speaker 3: in to take this over, like you said, under Obama's watch,
Speaker 3: kind of you know, trickling in there, getting it blowing
Speaker 3: up the airliner. I just want to remind last Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: they shot down steal a civilian Emmerson just just going
Speaker 3: home to their parents and stuff, and he's like, stay
Speaker 3: out of our airspace. He had no remorse for that.
Speaker 3: He actually said, stay out of our airspace. Really you're
Speaker 3: gonna I mean civilian airliners. You're trying to make a point.
Speaker 3: And now he's just you know, hammering down on the
Speaker 3: entire area. But he has to have an end game.
Speaker 3: He had to have like some kind of like Okay,
Speaker 3: if they go with me in peace, that's my end game.
Speaker 3: I'm now over that and I move into Europe. Or
Speaker 3: the end game is I have to obliterate the entire
Speaker 3: nation and what's his win.
Speaker 1: So there is a there is a school of thought
Speaker 1: in Russia that you cannot have the Russia that Putin
Speaker 1: wants without Ukraine.
Speaker 4: And I'm blanking on. There's a there's a really good
Speaker 4: term that I've heard use for this, but basically the
Speaker 4: concept is is that what Putna's trying to achieve doesn't
Speaker 4: exist unless he's got Ukraine as part of it. That
Speaker 4: Ukraine is, you know, Russia, like Moscow is the heart
Speaker 4: of Russia, but Ukraine is part of its soul.
Speaker 1: There is some old term that gets used for that.
Speaker 1: So there is a symbolic value. Listen, Ukraine is the
Speaker 1: bread basket of Europe. I mean, there is a literal
Speaker 1: value to Ukraine and what you get there Putin obviously
Speaker 1: by taking the Crimean peninsula.
Speaker 4: You know, the majority of.
Speaker 1: Putin's fleet is iced in in the winter time. There
Speaker 1: is no way out in the north for the northern fleet.
Speaker 1: That's a big problem He's got to deal with with
Speaker 1: Syria to use their port to dock his ships, but
Speaker 1: to be able to maneuver through the Black Sea and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Crimea the peninsula was very important to him,
Speaker 1: So there's strategic advantage to him him taking Ukraine, but
Speaker 1: there's also some very long historic symbolic significance to it too,
Speaker 1: so it operates on multiple levels for him. But none
Speaker 1: of that justifies it. I give a rats ask if
Speaker 1: you don't have enough ports and all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: that's not my fucking problems. And that's not Ukraine's problem either,
Speaker 1: that's your problem. That's a geography problem. So there is
Speaker 1: no justification. There's all this BS that was thrown around about,
Speaker 1: you know, the Denazification of Ukraine and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: which is absolutely ridiculous. Even Pregosion, the head of the
Speaker 1: Wagner group came out and said Putin was lined everybody.
Speaker 1: There are no Nazis over there running this country. The
Speaker 1: president of Ukraine is Jewish, for Christ's sake. So I mean,
Speaker 1: just it's just the guy's a full on thug. He's
Speaker 1: an autocrat, you know. And I see a lot of
Speaker 1: people point the finger at oh Ukraine's corrupt. Well that
Speaker 1: doesn't justify Chicago's corrupt. I don't want the Canadians to
Speaker 1: come in and take Chicago. I'm a former Chicago guy
Speaker 1: and it's corrupt as hell. But that doesn't give anybody
Speaker 1: the right to take it.
Speaker 3: That's a good way to put it, you know, and
Speaker 3: a good way to just hear it. In Layman's term,
Speaker 3: it's like, there is corruption, doesn't mean you can come
Speaker 3: in and just like I'm here to wipe it out
Speaker 3: and take over your area. Now, no more corruption.
Speaker 1: People say, oh, Ukraine's corrupt, and then they take Russia's side.
Speaker 1: You know who's more corrupt than Ukraine?
Speaker 4: Russia?
Speaker 3: Russia. Rush is more corrupt. And it's not even like
Speaker 3: the it's not even the people, it's the people in charge.
Speaker 3: You know. It's like the doctor. I saw a documentary
Speaker 3: on a doctor and he literally has a degree and
Speaker 3: he works as a doctor, and he lives in like
Speaker 3: a one bedroom apartment with a bathtub in the middle
Speaker 3: of the kitchen and it's his table and then it
Speaker 3: turns in yeah yeah, so he puts a table over
Speaker 3: the bathtub and he's like, this is how I live,
Speaker 3: you know, anywhere else, anywhere else, a doctor, You're gonna
Speaker 3: not have just this one bedroom apartment with a bathtub
Speaker 3: in your kitchen. But over there they're just so oppressed.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: My father was a Green Beret and I de opress
Speaker 3: the liver is to free the oppressed, and so you know,
Speaker 3: I get a lot of that I think taught to
Speaker 3: me as a young man growing up in and now
Speaker 3: I'm in my forties, and it's like, you know, you
Speaker 3: have free will. I think people deserve to have free will.
Speaker 3: If you want to get a tattoo, you get your tattoo.
Speaker 3: But if you want to give me that same tattoo,
Speaker 3: we're gonna have words.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, listen, I agree, And that's been my So
Speaker 1: while Deadfall is set, my new thriller, we're talking all
Speaker 1: this stuff about Ukraine.
Speaker 4: While Brant you know, and that's totally cool. I want the.
Speaker 1: Viewers and the listeners to know that, you know, I
Speaker 1: chose this conflict to really do a very cool war story,
Speaker 1: to do a thriller and the edge of your seat,
Speaker 1: white knuckle thrill ride. I've got characters in the book
Speaker 1: with lots of different opinions, just like I have friends
Speaker 1: and family members with lots of different opinions about geopolitics,
Speaker 1: about Russia, about Ukraine.
Speaker 4: My job is to entertain you. I want you to
Speaker 4: have that white knuckle thrill ride and have a great read.
Speaker 1: The reviews, the early reviews on this book have been
Speaker 1: absolutely terrific, some of the best I've ever received as
Speaker 1: an author. And it is easily the most intense book
Speaker 1: I've ever written, because it is from like end to end,
Speaker 1: just wall to wall combat and it's all the Murphy's
Speaker 1: involved and all the things that can go wrong and
Speaker 1: the fog of war to how do you equip and
Speaker 1: get the things you need to the people who are
Speaker 1: at the front lines, all this kind of stuff. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I wanted to do my saving Private Ryan
Speaker 1: meets Band of Brothers meets Fury wrapped up and wear
Speaker 1: Eagles Dare.
Speaker 4: And that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So this was as somebody who consumes so much of
Speaker 1: that World War two history to do kind of a
Speaker 1: modern version of one of those stories. This was this
Speaker 1: was a lot of fun for me.
Speaker 3: You just are passionate. I don't even want you to
Speaker 3: stop talking, and even does our listener. No, it's like
Speaker 3: you should keep going. So so let me just ask you.
Speaker 3: Let me piggyback on your book Dead Fail. Here. You've
Speaker 3: got twenty three titles right that are out there New
Speaker 3: York Times best selling. You know Wall Street Journal talks
Speaker 3: about you. You have those clips on your on your website,
Speaker 3: it's Bradthor dot com. If you're just joining us. I'm
Speaker 3: speaking with Brad Thor right now to my listener, just
Speaker 3: joining the show. But you got TV, or you got
Speaker 3: a movie going on.
Speaker 4: Or you know what it's it's we so we have TV.
Speaker 4: It's said, Well, so we had a we had a
Speaker 4: sad thing happened this week. So we have a fabulous team.
Speaker 1: I've not been able to put out a press release
Speaker 1: about the team because the studio didn't want us to
Speaker 1: say until we landed, like at Amazon Prime or Netflix
Speaker 1: or whatever. Our writer just passed away on Sunday. Manny Coto,
Speaker 1: who was a big writer for twenty four American Horror Story,
Speaker 1: did a ton of stuff for Star Trek, but that
Speaker 1: twenty four stuff I loved.
Speaker 4: Manny.
Speaker 1: He was just sixty two years old pancreatic cancer. Had
Speaker 1: been fighting it for about a year. It's really sad.
Speaker 1: We're all we're all still in shock.
Speaker 4: But we were ready to go out and start having
Speaker 4: our meetings and the.
Speaker 1: Writer's strike happened, and so because of the writer's strike,
Speaker 1: we couldn't go and take and do those meetings at
Speaker 1: Amazon and Netflix and all that.
Speaker 4: You know, paramount. Plus we couldn't do that stuff.
Speaker 1: We had to put a pause on it, and then
Speaker 1: to so that was already you know, kind of a
Speaker 1: pain in the neck that that was happening, and then
Speaker 1: to But it's just devastating to lose Manny because he's
Speaker 1: just a wonderful.
Speaker 4: Human being, a great writer and got the genre.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a guy that loves thrillers, he
Speaker 1: loves special operations, right, he loves the military.
Speaker 4: I mean, this guy bled red, white and blue.
Speaker 1: His family was from Cuba, so this was not a
Speaker 1: fan of the Communists, you know. I mean, such a
Speaker 1: great American and to lose Manny was just devastating. So
Speaker 1: I have not spoken about the TV show out of
Speaker 1: you know, respect for the process, and I didn't want
Speaker 1: to let it out of the bag.
Speaker 4: I didn't want to say, here are the executive producers,
Speaker 4: here's the director who's.
Speaker 1: This massive Hollywood action director for films who's never done
Speaker 1: TV and is doing the Harvath Books as his first
Speaker 1: TV project.
Speaker 4: So it's really cool, and it sucks to sit here
Speaker 4: and have to, like, you know, keep it quiet. But
Speaker 4: it was tough to lose Manny. So now.
Speaker 1: So now we have to Yeah, so it'll be impossible
Speaker 1: to replace Manny. It'll be impossible. So he is irreplaceable.
Speaker 1: So now, once the writer's strike is over, we're back
Speaker 1: to square one, looking for a new writer, hopefully somebody
Speaker 1: who is a fan of the books, which I lucked
Speaker 1: out because Manny was a reader of my books. But
Speaker 1: now we're going to have to start again with a
Speaker 1: search for a writer. So it puts us back a
Speaker 1: few steps. We're in a different place than we were.
Speaker 1: None of us would have chosen to be here. I
Speaker 1: would have rather Manny had walked away and said I
Speaker 1: don't want to write anymore than to have passed away obviously.
Speaker 1: So that's that's tough if four kids and a bunch
Speaker 1: of nieces and nephews. So I hope he rests in peace.
Speaker 4: He was a wonderful American and a super guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So sorry about Manny and the loss to his
Speaker 3: friends in the community, in the industry. You know, he
Speaker 3: will be missed. So with that, I don't mean to
Speaker 3: tap into such a like kind of like an emotional
Speaker 3: can of you know, worms right there. But you know,
Speaker 3: it's good to hear that the show is on the
Speaker 3: on the proverbial burners.
Speaker 4: We're We're in the starting blocks, that's for sure.
Speaker 3: And I'm sure that Manny would like to see it
Speaker 3: go all the way through to the end. And with
Speaker 3: whoever gets involved to write it with you, he's probably
Speaker 3: going to help, kind of like shadow that you'll know,
Speaker 3: you'll know.
Speaker 1: I hope so, and hopefully we'll dedicate the pilot episode,
Speaker 1: if not the first season. I don't know how that
Speaker 1: works and who gets to decide that, but it'd be
Speaker 1: really cool if we just because we want to blow
Speaker 1: up the very first episode, the season opener, just have
Speaker 1: it be just this massive, really cool, cool thing.
Speaker 4: It'd be fun, I think, to dedicate that to Manny
Speaker 4: right out of the gate. That'd be pretty neat. We'll
Speaker 4: see what happens.
Speaker 3: That's awesome. That's awesome, But that's not the end of this.
Speaker 3: That's not the hell of you and me talking. Because
Speaker 3: Scott Harveth, you know, from Rising Tiger and now falling
Speaker 3: into the Ukraine, he is I just want to talk
Speaker 3: about the book. I just want you to tell us more,
Speaker 3: like what makes you want to write about Scott Harveth
Speaker 3: so much?
Speaker 1: Well, you know what, I've always said that he's my
Speaker 1: alter ego, just like I'm sure James Bond was for
Speaker 1: Ian Fleming and Jack Ryan was for Tom Clancy.
Speaker 4: You know, I joke that he gets to do the
Speaker 4: things my wife won't let me do.
Speaker 1: You know, she draws the line it's seducing female foreign
Speaker 1: intelligence agents. But you know, if I say, if I
Speaker 1: make that joke with an earshot of my wife, she
Speaker 1: always reminds me that she gave me the thumbs up
Speaker 1: when I wanted to go to Afghanistan back in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight and spend some time over there.
Speaker 4: She was really cool with that.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, your book, I did go three weeks or so?
Speaker 3: How long?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was over there about three weeks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know that.
Speaker 4: I know that we might have talked about it before.
Speaker 4: It was a it was a very cool experience.
Speaker 1: You know, we didn't there was no contact, so I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, every once in a while you'd hear some
Speaker 1: gunfire and stuff like that. We never came under anything.
Speaker 1: You know, we were traveling very very quietly, thin skinned
Speaker 1: vehicles moving around and stuff like that, and it.
Speaker 4: Was a pretty it was a pretty cool experience.
Speaker 3: You know, you were wearing body armor yourself, you were
Speaker 3: wearing body art, and we had it.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, you'd wear the Afghan clothes, the Sawa
Speaker 1: comzi and you'd have the hats no sunglasses, which I
Speaker 1: thought was really cool.
Speaker 4: The guys were like, yeah, get rid of those.
Speaker 1: You're not wearing those nothing marks shoes a western or
Speaker 1: quicker than having your shades on and stuff. So these
Speaker 1: guys were spent a lot of time going very deep
Speaker 1: into Indian country and so they had kind of their
Speaker 1: own set of rules and stuff.
Speaker 4: So the the idea was and they asked me to
Speaker 4: grow my beard. And I'm Scandinavian, so I can get it.
Speaker 4: I can get it.
Speaker 1: Take me a couple extra same. I didn't go as
Speaker 1: long as yours, but I got it pretty big and
Speaker 1: pretty bushy, to the fact that when I tagged up
Speaker 1: with one of the guys at the airport, I walked
Speaker 1: right up to me. It didn't recognize me because it
Speaker 1: had grown so big since they'd asked me to.
Speaker 4: But you know, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I spent some time in Cobble and then out to
Speaker 1: Jalalabad and some other parts and stuff like that, and
Speaker 1: it was a very unique experience. I was with some
Speaker 1: people who really knew what they were doing. I was
Speaker 1: stunned by how many incredible experiences I had there. They
Speaker 1: were doing a lot of hearts and mind stuff. It
Speaker 1: was a lot of developing assets and things like this
Speaker 1: to gather intelligence. And you know, there was the whole
Speaker 1: Pashtunwali code, which is if you got invited into the village,
Speaker 1: you were their guest and they would fight to the
Speaker 1: last man to protect you if you were their guest.
Speaker 1: So we did not enter villages where we were not
Speaker 1: welcome to be where we were not invited as guests.
Speaker 1: You know, I had some of the best fried chicken
Speaker 1: that I'd ever had in my life. Side Jalalabad. The
Speaker 1: food was actually good and it was really really cool.
Speaker 1: And next to being a physician, one of the most
Speaker 1: honored professions over there was author.
Speaker 4: So my guys are like, tell them you write books.
Speaker 1: Tell them, you know, we had a turp and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff, and they're like, and they're like,
Speaker 1: any questions to ask you about books or writing, answer
Speaker 1: them because they just think authors are so cool. So
Speaker 1: that was kind of a neat neat thing for me too,
Speaker 1: was to be able to sit down with just you know,
Speaker 1: I got to learn the difference between capital T Taliban
Speaker 1: and small T Taliban.
Speaker 3: Just like you've got, you know, people in what is
Speaker 3: the difference between capital T and little T.
Speaker 1: So you've got the real devout people who are really
Speaker 1: in it, who really believe in it, who are the
Speaker 1: capital T Taliman and then the people that go along
Speaker 1: to get along that. It's like, yeah, I got a
Speaker 1: side with the bloods of the crips.
Speaker 4: And it's probably safer for my family.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not gonna yeah, yeah, the church really Yeah, So.
Speaker 3: That's what it was, you know what I mean, Scott,
Speaker 3: I mean I called you Scott, you know what I mean. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, it's like if you go to church, you
Speaker 3: got those that are capital seas and then you got
Speaker 3: the we're here at church too, little lowercase sees.
Speaker 1: I went to Catholic school, and we had the joke
Speaker 1: that you either had the diehard Catholics or you had
Speaker 1: the cafeteria Catholics that would go through and go, Okay,
Speaker 1: I like that.
Speaker 4: I don't like that. I'm not taking that. I'll take this,
Speaker 4: put it on the train.
Speaker 1: You know, there are certain things within the faith for
Speaker 1: the kind of smaller sea, the cafeteria Catholic friends of mine.
Speaker 3: Certain same with me, raised Mormon here in Utah. You know,
Speaker 3: it's like you've got hardcore and then I.
Speaker 1: Lived in Utah, and then you've got the Jack Mormon.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've done some of my best knights in
Speaker 1: Vegas had been with a couple of Jack Mormon buddies
Speaker 1: who were in I go out to shot show and
Speaker 1: bottle service at the club and all that.
Speaker 4: Too.
Speaker 3: It's okay, I am who I am. You know, I'm
Speaker 3: still a nice person. I still care about you, and
Speaker 3: you drink water at my porch here you go. Just
Speaker 3: don't come at me. That's all.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 1: That's it, man, if it doesn't pick my pockets or
Speaker 1: break my legs. Like Thomas Jefferson said, I'm cool with
Speaker 1: anybody being whatever religion they want.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right, you know, And that's what makes us
Speaker 3: this red, white and blue nation the best nation is
Speaker 3: you can choose to believe what you wish to believe,
Speaker 3: right and just not even worry about it. And and
Speaker 3: I know, you know, people are having a hard time
Speaker 3: and social media really stretches it out there, you know,
Speaker 3: they really.
Speaker 4: And so do our enemies too. There is no zone
Speaker 4: in social media, they and listen particularly.
Speaker 1: That's the other interesting thing about progosion the head of
Speaker 1: the Wagner Mercenary Group is that he also founded and
Speaker 1: runs the internet research agency, the Troll Farm in Saint
Speaker 1: Petersburg that started messing around in the elections back in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen and has been an absolute poison injected into
Speaker 1: our cultural bloodstream here. They love to pressure, put pressure
Speaker 1: on all the cracks in our culture.
Speaker 3: They want to see stuff.
Speaker 1: They want to turn us against each other, right exactly,
Speaker 1: the Iranians, the North Koreans, the Russians, the Chinese. I
Speaker 1: always tell people I think when they say, what do
Speaker 1: you think is our greatest national security risk?
Speaker 4: I tell them I think it's social media.
Speaker 1: And I know a lot of people that go to
Speaker 1: where they go either a particular website or particularly people
Speaker 1: that spend a lot of time on Facebook pages and
Speaker 1: in certain groups where you let your guard down because
Speaker 1: you think everybody else.
Speaker 4: Thinks like you, and most of them do. It's a
Speaker 4: pterrifict place. It's the perfect place.
Speaker 1: For a bad actor to come in and inject disinformation,
Speaker 1: to get you worked up about stuff that doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: Then once you go out into kind of the wider ecosystem.
Speaker 1: It's driven by rage. You keep coming back to certain
Speaker 1: blog sites and websites and they get all the clicks
Speaker 1: because they're pissing you off. That's how politicians get you
Speaker 1: out to vote, is they tick you off, particularly for
Speaker 1: the primaries. Once you realize that you can be a
Speaker 1: conscientious objector to the culture wars, it relieves a lot of.
Speaker 4: Pressure and a lot of stress.
Speaker 1: It's okay to say, yeah, I don't have to get
Speaker 1: involved with this every single day. And if you're pissed,
Speaker 1: if you're constantly angry, somebody is probably manipulating you. If
Speaker 1: you are constantly ticked off, you need to take a breath,
Speaker 1: take a step back.
Speaker 3: And constantly repeating the same verbiage stuff too, like the
Speaker 3: same trite you're kids, constantly saying something that's like yep,
Speaker 3: not wanting to be heard by anybody else around you.
Speaker 3: You're like, did you know?
Speaker 4: No, just take a boak.
Speaker 3: It's like, you're not hanging out with me enough, bro.
Speaker 3: That's what I told my one friend. I was like,
Speaker 3: who you hanging out with? He's like, re mean us
Speaker 3: because you're not hanging out with me? What is this?
Speaker 3: I was like, let's focus on going in the mountains
Speaker 3: and snowboarding or like, you know, living your life.
Speaker 1: It's become this virtual replacement for real life experience, real
Speaker 1: life friendships, real life interactions. And you know, I can
Speaker 1: even remember, and I'm fifty three growing up in having
Speaker 1: being taught there's street things you don't talk about religion,
Speaker 1: sex and politics, right, and now all we talk about
Speaker 1: is religion, sex and politics.
Speaker 4: That's always talk about it.
Speaker 3: My dad told me the number one thing that I
Speaker 3: get to do is not tell you who I vote for,
Speaker 3: because I'd ask him who you vote for? Wow, And
Speaker 3: he was just like in the eighties, He's like, I
Speaker 3: don't have to tell you. That's all the way till
Speaker 3: he died, he never ever would tell me. I don't
Speaker 3: know who MyD I can assume whom my dad voted for.
Speaker 3: So I do this thing my business partner, who'd you
Speaker 3: vote for? I was like, I don't know. He's like, what, who?
Speaker 3: Who you know or whoever? And I'm just like, I
Speaker 3: don't know. I don't have to tell you. I don't.
Speaker 3: I can keep it to my chest.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the great thing about That's the great thing
Speaker 4: about the United States.
Speaker 3: You don't have to. You don't have to.
Speaker 1: I think it's you know, we are so blessed to
Speaker 1: have an all volunteer fighting force, the fact that people
Speaker 1: will volunteer to protect this nation. And then there's people
Speaker 1: that can't be bothered to get off their asses and
Speaker 1: go cast a vote. To me, I think is crazy.
Speaker 1: I don't want to force you to vote, but it
Speaker 1: is such an incredible gift, and gift is not even
Speaker 1: the right word, but it is such an honor, it's
Speaker 1: a sacred trust that we have.
Speaker 3: No idea what it's like because we're spoiled American And
Speaker 3: I say it because I am one. And I'll tell
Speaker 3: you when I saw people in Iraq get to vote
Speaker 3: and dip their finger inside of that purple ink, and
Speaker 3: it was shared with the world that they got to vote,
Speaker 3: and they were like, this is what this was for?
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is it isn't I tell people all the time,
Speaker 1: we don't you and me, everybody listening, everybody watching.
Speaker 4: We don't own this country.
Speaker 1: We're stewards of this republic. We merely hang on to
Speaker 1: it until we pass it down to the next generation.
Speaker 1: And it's incumbent upon us to give a freer more successful,
Speaker 1: more prosperous, better country to the next generation than was
Speaker 1: handed to us.
Speaker 4: That's our job as stewards. Again, we don't own it.
Speaker 1: Our job is to make it better, to take care,
Speaker 1: to be caretakers, and to hand it on stronger than
Speaker 1: the way we got it.
Speaker 4: And a lot of us don't take that job seriously.
Speaker 1: We love all the benefits of being an American citizen,
Speaker 1: but too many of us don't want to take any
Speaker 1: of the responsibility.
Speaker 4: And what could be easier than voting, Oh my god,
Speaker 4: and being informed. You have to be a formed voter.
Speaker 4: It's not just go, you know, hit, push the button
Speaker 4: or punch wherever you want.
Speaker 3: Can I ask you a question about voting and people
Speaker 3: who might have a felony. Can I ask you somebody,
Speaker 3: do you think that felonies on somebody's record should stop
Speaker 3: them and from being able to vote in our elections?
Speaker 1: You know, it's a really good question because and I
Speaker 1: haven't done a lot of research on this, so I know,
Speaker 1: you know, there is part of me who believes in redemption.
Speaker 1: And if you do the crime and you do the time,
Speaker 1: I mean, and there's certain things where I think there
Speaker 1: are certain things that I think should be mandatory sentencing.
Speaker 4: There are some horrific.
Speaker 3: Things as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, when you've got women and kids and things
Speaker 1: like situations. Yeah, but at some point, we are a
Speaker 1: nation that believes in second chances, believes in redemption, and
Speaker 1: shouldn't somebody be able to And again, this is this
Speaker 1: is my big mouth, not having done any research into this,
Speaker 1: so I'll let you take all the incoming. But seriously,
Speaker 1: I would like to think that we're a nation where
Speaker 1: somebody who made a mistake because I don't like cancel culture.
Speaker 1: I don't like the idea that somebody can make a
Speaker 1: bad joke and lose their career or say something I did.
Speaker 1: I did a podcast yesterday and the host was very opinionated,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh shit, if I publicly go
Speaker 1: against him, his viewers are gonna hate me because they
Speaker 1: obviously love this stuff. But if I sit here and
Speaker 1: say nothing, is the other side of this argument going
Speaker 1: to come after me for not standing up to what
Speaker 1: he said? You know, I was kind of in this,
Speaker 1: so I'm a big believer in that people should be
Speaker 1: should be able to earn their way back in. You
Speaker 1: make a mistake, you should be able to earn your
Speaker 1: way back in with certain things that I think are
Speaker 1: not I certain I think some things are beyond redemption.
Speaker 4: So anyway, that's a that's a big yeah.
Speaker 3: And about let me pick up some of your pieces.
Speaker 3: My thought is that if you've done the time and
Speaker 3: you were judged by your peers, which is what the
Speaker 3: court system is supposed to do, and then you go
Speaker 3: and serve your time, and you get out and there's
Speaker 3: rehabilitation or whatever the case is, you should you're back out.
Speaker 3: You're back, you're you know, you're here, you go And uh,
Speaker 3: I just think that I have some friends in the
Speaker 3: community that I that are around here who just wish
Speaker 3: that they could vote. And that's why I brought that up.
Speaker 3: They are somebody who has done some offenses and you know,
Speaker 3: you can get it a felony for speeding.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, I mean, I think we'll
Speaker 4: get there.
Speaker 1: To be honest with you, I mean, you know, I
Speaker 1: can remember growing up where people, you know, I had
Speaker 1: friends who were gay, We had family members who were
Speaker 1: gay that you know, never thought they'd see, you know,
Speaker 1: the ability to marry and have their spouse, their partner,
Speaker 1: their their significant other come into the hospital room and
Speaker 1: he was able to be with them or pass down
Speaker 1: property inherited property, you know. So listen, I've got a
Speaker 1: big libertarian streak in me. I want the government involved
Speaker 1: in my life as little as possible. I believe it
Speaker 1: has a role, but I think it's a limited role.
Speaker 1: And that's part of being a good citizen too, is
Speaker 1: paying attention that the government doesn't overstep their bounds and
Speaker 1: that we don't as citizens create a void into which
Speaker 1: the government needs to step right.
Speaker 4: So it's the Robert Putnam's book Bowling Alone.
Speaker 1: He was a sociologist out of Harvard, and he had
Speaker 1: this great thing, did this study and then based a
Speaker 1: book on kind of the United States, saying that if
Speaker 1: you find a middle aged man today is more likely
Speaker 1: to be bowling by himself than in a league. That
Speaker 1: we've lost the l clubs and going to these different
Speaker 1: organizations and working together. Yeah, but particularly as adults, we
Speaker 1: have a loneliness epidemic in this country where men don't
Speaker 1: have friends, and men are not spending time with other men.
Speaker 1: We're sitting in front of computer screens. We're not getting out,
Speaker 1: we're not being productive, helpful members in our communities, and
Speaker 1: we're not setting good examples for younger men. This is
Speaker 1: how you're a good father, It's how your a good husband,
Speaker 1: this is how you treat women. This is how you
Speaker 1: disagree with people in a polite, in productive way.
Speaker 4: It's not fuck you and all this stuff. There's a
Speaker 4: way to disagree, and I'll tell you.
Speaker 1: My bottom line is is that there is more for
Speaker 1: us as American citizens that unites us than divides us.
Speaker 1: But there's such an industry that profits over fracturing us
Speaker 1: and dividing us and basically balkanizing us, that we're all
Speaker 1: getting this poison thrown at us all the time. It's
Speaker 1: hard to love thy neighbor. I get it, but it's
Speaker 1: hard to do anything that's worthwhile and productive. It's like
Speaker 1: Jocko will nick It talks about all the time, scipline
Speaker 1: is freedom, you know. So the more discipline you are,
Speaker 1: the more freedom you're going to enjoy.
Speaker 4: And I believe in that.
Speaker 1: I think the good things in life come to those
Speaker 1: who work hard and are willing to exhibit discipline. I
Speaker 1: try to show that to my kids. Doesn't mean I'm
Speaker 1: at the office till midnight every night. I mean sometimes
Speaker 1: I got a book that's due, that's required but it's
Speaker 1: it's about striking a healthy balance. And listen, there's been
Speaker 1: no greater nation in the history of the world than
Speaker 1: the United States. We freed more and fed more people
Speaker 1: than any nation in history. And as President Reagan said
Speaker 1: in his first inaugural address, there has never.
Speaker 4: Been a nation in history that has unleashed.
Speaker 1: The creativeness in the individuality of mankind as it has
Speaker 1: been in the United States. I joke with friends, I say,
Speaker 1: seventeen seventy six, who do you think had more manpower
Speaker 1: and natural resources at that point in their history? The
Speaker 1: United States or the Romans as long as they've been around.
Speaker 1: And look what happened after the Founding Fathers and the
Speaker 1: Founding documents. Look how quick we accelerated with inventions and
Speaker 1: all of the revolutions and technology. We went farther in
Speaker 1: two hundred years than the Romans did. And god knows
Speaker 1: how many aliens aliens built the pyramids, and it still
Speaker 1: didn't help the ships.
Speaker 3: No, right, right, right, aliens.
Speaker 1: No, I had alien help, and they still couldn't get
Speaker 1: as far as we did by unleashing the individual.
Speaker 3: No, no, exactly, we had really, you know, just the
Speaker 3: naves that lived here that I decided to work alongside,
Speaker 3: you know, if they could have. I know that there
Speaker 3: was some colonization here in America, and I understand that
Speaker 3: I don't know how to atone for that. So any
Speaker 3: of my listeners just know that I'm sorry that happened.
Speaker 3: But here I am today, and so I'm going to
Speaker 3: do my best to be a steward of this nation
Speaker 3: that I'm a part of along with Brad. And I'm gonna,
Speaker 3: you know, be that, and I hope I have been
Speaker 3: doing that, and so I'm going to continue to be
Speaker 3: that and as best as I can. And as my
Speaker 3: business partner, Ajax always says, Hey, Rad, I'm all what
Speaker 3: He's like, do more. I'm like, I'm doing so much.
Speaker 3: He's like, do more, But I'm doing all this. He's like,
Speaker 3: do more. I'm like, I get it. Oh, I get it.
Speaker 3: Just do more? Right, have you done any good in
Speaker 3: the world today? Just do more?
Speaker 4: Nobody cares.
Speaker 3: Work harder, Yeah, exactly, work harder. Nobody cares. It's me
Speaker 3: getting up and going to the gym every.
Speaker 4: Morning and grind exactly.
Speaker 3: Seriously, That's where I get these curls from. Is every
Speaker 3: shower from the gym. I'm like, hey, it's I got
Speaker 3: my curls for Brad today. Okay, rocking the main of
Speaker 3: the Viking right here for you, my friend. Now, do
Speaker 3: you have any thoughts of Scott like finding his roots
Speaker 3: and you know, maybe saying he had like an ancestor
Speaker 3: that is this badass grandpa?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I've got him dating a very attractive
Speaker 1: Norwegian woman right now, which is playing to my Scandinavian heritage.
Speaker 4: You know what, It's funny.
Speaker 1: I just did a panel at the International Thriller Writers
Speaker 1: Convention where I sat.
Speaker 4: With some great authors.
Speaker 1: So on one side I had Jack Carr, on the
Speaker 1: other side I had Mark Greene, and then there was
Speaker 1: Michael Connolly. And it was funny because we got asked
Speaker 1: a question and they said, all right, how do you
Speaker 1: decide you got all this stuff about your main character,
Speaker 1: how much? How do you decide how much to put
Speaker 1: into the novel this novel and then hold back you
Speaker 1: can use it the next one. And we all cracked
Speaker 1: up because we are never thinking that far ahead. You know,
Speaker 1: we're putting out a book a year and it's everything
Speaker 1: we can do to get that book done. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm holding nothing back if I get a great idea.
Speaker 1: I mean, I collect hotel pads and I got pens
Speaker 1: and they're all around the house, and I'll write it
Speaker 1: down because I don't want to lose it, and I'll
Speaker 1: bring it to work in the morning and then I'll
Speaker 1: pound it out.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, as far as Harvat discovering something of his past,
Speaker 1: I mean that would be kind of neat. At some point,
Speaker 1: I kind of want to do his first assignment, the
Speaker 1: first time he was ever unleashed, when he was back
Speaker 1: in the seal teams and stuff. I think that would
Speaker 1: be cool.
Speaker 4: I've alluded to it in books.
Speaker 1: But listen, this guy's been very good to me, very
Speaker 1: good to my family. I got a lot of Army
Speaker 1: buddies that would love to see him drown in about
Speaker 1: three inches of water and a.
Speaker 3: Right, because he's a seat of some fishies.
Speaker 1: You know, I've got I've got Fifth Group guys that
Speaker 1: say there's nothing worse than a you know, combat qualified diver,
Speaker 1: and they'd like to drown them in the pool. Got
Speaker 1: John I got John Wayne skills. Yeah, yeah, that Ballad
Speaker 1: of the Green Berets and John John Wayne. So so yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's like we're sitting here now, my book's
Speaker 1: about to come out, and I don't know what next
Speaker 1: year's book's going to be. I mean, I'm a voracious
Speaker 1: consumer of the news. I'm always trying to beat the headlines.
Speaker 1: I always want, you know, my thrillers to be something
Speaker 1: that's about to explode on your doorstep, because my job
Speaker 1: is to give you just this great entertainment book in
Speaker 1: the hand, toes in the sand.
Speaker 4: You take it to the beach, take it to the lake,
Speaker 4: and just have fun.
Speaker 3: You want to take it. I just want to have
Speaker 3: it in your hand, just like where's my book. I'm
Speaker 3: not done yet exactly, and have.
Speaker 4: A really good time. And if you close one of
Speaker 4: my thrillers and you're like, wow, you know I learned
Speaker 4: something in there. I didn't know that or I want
Speaker 4: to know more about that. For me, that's the icing
Speaker 4: on the cake.
Speaker 1: You know, my dad is a no longer act United
Speaker 1: States Marine because there's no such thing as a former marine,
Speaker 1: right so my dad, you know, my dad raised us.
Speaker 1: If you're going to push a broom, you may be
Speaker 1: the best broom pusher that ever was.
Speaker 4: You don't phone it in. So every year I'm pushing myself.
Speaker 1: I'm raising the bar for myself and maybe you notice
Speaker 1: it as a reader that wow, there was just a
Speaker 1: little bit more I noticed in this book.
Speaker 4: That's the way I was raised by my dad. The
Speaker 4: marine is to just keep picking it up.
Speaker 1: Raise the bar, raise the bar, raise the bar. Even
Speaker 1: if nobody else notices. You notice, and you know that
Speaker 1: you're doing it for your customer. And by the way,
Speaker 1: rad I don't work for Simon and Schuster. I work
Speaker 1: for the readers. They are my employers. So when they
Speaker 1: leave those five stars, that's my annual performance review. So
Speaker 1: when they go on Amazon and all those places, so
Speaker 1: they are the people that I need to keep happy.
Speaker 1: They are the people I want to interact with on
Speaker 1: social media. I want to hear everything they liked about
Speaker 1: the book, something they'd like to see different in the
Speaker 1: next book. That to me is invaluable because without those people,
Speaker 1: I don't exist as an author.
Speaker 3: No, the reader, the reader who has their own interpretation
Speaker 3: of what you've written. It's like a language where in
Speaker 3: our mind, you know, it's one way. That's why I
Speaker 3: was asking earlier about a TV show or a film,
Speaker 3: because sometimes it doesn't come out how you Jack.
Speaker 1: Jack Carr talks about that with the Terminal List because
Speaker 1: it's he and he's told people it's gonna look different
Speaker 1: than it looks in your head the way you read it,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna be different than the way I wrote
Speaker 1: it on the page. It's just Hollywood's interpretation of the
Speaker 1: of the source materials.
Speaker 3: So people are really technical and some people are just
Speaker 3: really like, show me the action, right, And so I
Speaker 3: got it.
Speaker 1: I jump that once they buy the rights, they could
Speaker 1: turn it into Hitler on Ice, oh, you know, or
Speaker 1: a Japanese anime.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's nothing I can do at that point.
Speaker 1: You try to stay involved and you try to negotiate
Speaker 1: the best deal you can. And that's what we've done
Speaker 1: on my stuff so that I can be involved because
Speaker 1: they're you know, I've got twenty three books, and I
Speaker 1: tell people it's like the James Bond movies. If you've
Speaker 1: never read a Brad Thorpe book before, you can buy
Speaker 1: this year's book, dead Fall.
Speaker 3: You're good.
Speaker 1: Like going into a movie theater and seeing a Bond
Speaker 1: movie if you've never seen one before, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 4: You just go and see this one. You're gonna be good.
Speaker 3: It's on experience, it is.
Speaker 1: And I've now sold to this movie studio in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: I've sold basically my version of the Marvel universe. I've
Speaker 1: got twenty three books. Nobody knows it better than I do.
Speaker 4: It would be silly not to have me involved.
Speaker 3: Yeah, with the writing and with the producing continuity. And
Speaker 3: just like, you know, what are you talking about in here?
Speaker 3: This is the scene? You know, can you tell the
Speaker 3: actor how you felt this?
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not going to tell you how to
Speaker 1: make the shows, that's your business. But I can tell
Speaker 1: you about the ip the underlying source materialation. If you
Speaker 1: do this with this character here and you guys think
Speaker 1: we're going here two seasons from now, here's the Ripple's
Speaker 1: I say that writing is like a still pool of
Speaker 1: water and you drop a stone in and it ripples outwards.
Speaker 1: But anytime you're telling a story, there's multiple stones, So
Speaker 1: there's multiple ripples, and you have to be cognizant of
Speaker 1: where they intersect because that's going to have an impact.
Speaker 3: It will. It will because you know part one, part two,
Speaker 3: and they've got to intersect, you know, if you in
Speaker 3: part one, let's talk back to the future, the fire
Speaker 3: going off into the distance. Yeah, okay, there you go.
Speaker 3: What's going to happen in the second one? Right, and
Speaker 3: then the third one? Fire off in the distance.
Speaker 1: Baby by the way, Small small world. It got the
Speaker 1: actor Crispin Glover that plays his dad. That's my cousin
Speaker 1: A couple of times removed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, on my.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have no idea. I don't talk to him.
Speaker 1: I got when I lived in la and went to college.
Speaker 1: I got introduced to him. But his grandmother and my
Speaker 1: grandmother were very very close. But that's the Norwegian side
Speaker 1: of my of my family is We've got this distant
Speaker 1: relationship me and Crispin Glover, which is kind.
Speaker 3: Of funny, interesting, you know. And I'm also from my
Speaker 3: mom's from the Friezelands of Norway and all of that area,
Speaker 3: like sixty eight percent Scandinavian in my blood. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: want to go there. I'd like to go there and
Speaker 3: check it out. Yeah, exactly. I read a book and
Speaker 3: it was all about Iceland. Brandon Webb, who runs Soft
Speaker 3: Rep Has Cold Fear. That was out and I do
Speaker 3: the voice I served it.
Speaker 1: I learned both those him and John Mann. In fact,
Speaker 1: you know, it's funny, I'm gonna say this on this podcast.
Speaker 1: I apologize to Brandon's co author, John He emailed me
Speaker 1: a while ago to tell me he was coming through
Speaker 1: Nashville and I was out of town and I owe him,
Speaker 1: so John, if you're watching, I apologize. Rad just reminded me.
Speaker 1: I've got an email sitting in my feel terrible. But
Speaker 1: those are great books, and they've got Iceland and.
Speaker 3: Exactly, and I read I read that I was the
Speaker 3: voice for Finn, right, and so I read that really yeah,
Speaker 3: and so there's blind fears coming out and so that
Speaker 3: that's another thing. But Finn I had to learn all
Speaker 3: of these Icelandic words, and when I started learning them,
Speaker 3: I just started saying them just came Now. You just
Speaker 3: started coming out like the Field, yeah, exactly, Rakovic and
Speaker 3: all these different names. And I was just say, I
Speaker 3: gotta go there, even if it's not there's no casino.
Speaker 3: I want to go see.
Speaker 4: There's no anything in the Hot Springs you can do.
Speaker 4: They make those bad ass SUVs. They've got all those
Speaker 4: Toyota High Lux pickups where they flare out the wheel
Speaker 4: wells and all this kind of stuff, and they're all
Speaker 4: jacked up and you can do these great off road
Speaker 4: trips up there. I want to go too, there's you
Speaker 4: can get there. You can bounce from New York really,
Speaker 4: really easily. So you're in Salt Lake. I used to
Speaker 4: live in Park City or not Talta. You're in Utah.
Speaker 3: I used to live Sandy.
Speaker 4: I'm in san but you're in Sandy.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: Both my kids were born in Salt Lake. My wife
Speaker 1: was a doctor for the US ski team and for
Speaker 1: the University of Utah health System. So I spent about
Speaker 1: eight years out there.
Speaker 4: Was great. And it's funny because that's where Jack Carr
Speaker 4: lives now is just Park City.
Speaker 3: He's my neighbor.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, just down the road.
Speaker 3: We both have a rock chimney. I'm sure everybody in
Speaker 3: Utah rock chimney fireplace all day, every day, even in July.
Speaker 3: What is in July? It's one hundred and four outside.
Speaker 3: But you know what, that's a real background. Okay, that's
Speaker 3: why you know, just for you the fire is going
Speaker 3: at home, but and the snowboards are right there. I'm
Speaker 3: ready to go ride any day anytime, you know. You know, Brad,
Speaker 3: this is what I love about what I get to
Speaker 3: do and why Brandon I think asked me to host
Speaker 3: these engagements with you guys coming on the shows and authors,
Speaker 3: and I really appreciate having these candid, open conversations talking
Speaker 3: just about a little bit of everything, showing that you're
Speaker 3: a real person. I'm a real person. You put your
Speaker 3: mind to what you want to do and you get
Speaker 3: it done. And I saw somebody show luck and it
Speaker 3: was them working out. They're like, oh this body, Oh
Speaker 3: what luck do I have? Let me show you my luck.
Speaker 3: And it's just them trudging along and sweating with luck.
Speaker 3: And so, like you said, you called out Jocko, He's like,
Speaker 3: work harder, grind harder, do it, do what you want.
Speaker 4: Nobody cares work harder.
Speaker 3: Yep, no one cares more about you than you.
Speaker 1: So yeah, don't complain. Work harder exactly the average person,
Speaker 1: the average personal. Complain the above average personal work harder.
Speaker 3: It's that simple, that's right. So I'm just gonna wind
Speaker 3: us down and let you get back. I know you
Speaker 3: got book signings to do, and we're gonna hand it
Speaker 3: back Friday. I gotta Friday.
Speaker 1: I gotta pick. I gotta pick a magic uh magic guy.
Speaker 1: These are too deep. Here one in the middle, the
Speaker 1: one in the middle right there, Okay, so the.
Speaker 4: One behind it. You've got expensive taste.
Speaker 3: That's a.
Speaker 1: One of those is a Pappy van Winkle in the
Speaker 1: back row, So I think that's writer's tears.
Speaker 3: I think Japanese right there, look at the helmet on
Speaker 3: the Oh yeah, huh hey, right here, here's my cup.
Speaker 3: Just go ahead and just put a little bit.
Speaker 1: But I got that for I got that for Father's Day,
Speaker 1: that Japanese whiskey. And it's really cool because it's got
Speaker 1: this samurai armor.
Speaker 4: So he's got the full.
Speaker 1: Mask and he's got the top part coming up, so
Speaker 1: you have to take the helmet off to actually get
Speaker 1: into the booze.
Speaker 4: It's really cool. My daughter gave me that for Father's Day,
Speaker 4: so I did something right as a dad.
Speaker 3: Oh no, that's legit. That's the legit. You can hear
Speaker 3: you go, dad, see, I'll see you in the morning.
Speaker 4: It beats a tie. It beats the old Father's.
Speaker 3: Day tile exactly. Samurai whiskey.
Speaker 1: Bro very cool.
Speaker 3: Well, Brad, you're a wonderful guest. You're a very nice person.
Speaker 3: I'm glad I've gotten to know you over these last
Speaker 3: couple of segments that we've done together. There's more ahead,
Speaker 3: so thank you for being a part of Soft rep everybody,
Speaker 3: go check out bradthor dot com and check out Deadfall,
Speaker 3: which is his book coming out July twenty fifth. It'll
Speaker 3: probably be out by the time this comes out, so
Speaker 3: go find it anywhere books are sold, especially local bookstores
Speaker 3: if they're carrying it. And you never know, these guys
Speaker 3: like to travel around the country and do these book
Speaker 3: signings without knowing around, and they sign these things in
Speaker 3: the airport, so you might just want to stop off
Speaker 3: at the airports and see if his book is there
Speaker 3: and get it because a flight with that book is
Speaker 3: probably going to be the best. So thanks aaan, You're
Speaker 3: very welcome, Brad, and thanks to your people for sending
Speaker 3: you my way again. I really appreciate it. And this
Speaker 3: is rad saying check out our merch store. Thanks Brandon Webb.
Speaker 2: Peace use the listening to a sink red Radia