Speaker 1: Ah beat Force. If it doesn't work, you're just not
Speaker 1: using enough. You're listening to Software a Gradio, Special Operations,
Speaker 1: military news and straight talk with the guys and the community.
Speaker 1: Soft rep Radio on time on Target. Really excited to
Speaker 1: have Ed Derek back on with us, UM to give
Speaker 1: you some background, which I'll get into it a little bit.
Speaker 1: Ed Derek's first appearance on the show, UM, which was
Speaker 1: actually looking right now, was three fifteen. Was one of
Speaker 1: our biggest episodes. It was the second most played episode
Speaker 1: of only behind uh Sergeant Major Mike Vining. Because I
Speaker 1: think people love hearing about Extortion seventeen and Operation Red Wings.
Speaker 1: So I mean, we're gonna get into Ed's newest book.
Speaker 1: But if you want to hear all about that, listen
Speaker 1: back to three fifteen. And while I'm on the subject
Speaker 1: to that, you can listen back to all the old
Speaker 1: episodes at soft prep Radio dot com. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I got an email just recently about where's the Rob
Speaker 1: mail or episode? Because those aren't up on SoundCloud anymore
Speaker 1: or Apple podcasts, but they are up at Software Radio
Speaker 1: dot com, so that's where you could hear them. Um.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit more limited on Apple podcast and SoundCloud.
Speaker 1: I did that because of how we changed structure and
Speaker 1: that type of thing. But yeah, long story short Software
Speaker 1: Radio dot Com. Before we get into everything, I wanted
Speaker 1: to tell you all about Pelican cores. I'm so psyched
Speaker 1: because we got into the office and we have all
Speaker 1: this new stuff from Pelican. They gave us these custom
Speaker 1: Software Radio tumblers, which are incredible. Yeah, these coffee themis yep.
Speaker 1: They gave us um bigger cores. But the twenty court
Speaker 1: core that we have in studio is just super heavy duty,
Speaker 1: and that's one of the smaller ones. The bigger ones,
Speaker 1: which were sent to Scott Whittner, are incredible and they'll
Speaker 1: keep your beer cool for up to nine days, which
Speaker 1: is insane. That's for the seventy court core. Um. So
Speaker 1: these hard sided cores are all made in the USA completely.
Speaker 1: Most competitive is including Yetti, make most of their stuff
Speaker 1: overseas of an actual lifetime warranty. A wide variety of
Speaker 1: sizes and colors, and I was looking on the site,
Speaker 1: man eleven different colors, schemes, ten different sizes, easy poll
Speaker 1: hard latches that aren't rubber bands like the other guys.
Speaker 1: Pelican is a trusted brand since ninety six. They're light.
Speaker 1: Other cools weigh thirty percent more on average. They've built
Speaker 1: in bottle open er under the lid. How awesome is
Speaker 1: that ergonomic handles which make them easier to carry. And
Speaker 1: here's what we have going on. Go to Pelican Colors
Speaker 1: dot com and uh, we have promo code, but it
Speaker 1: only works at Pelican Coors dot com. I know you
Speaker 1: can get Pelican Coolers just about everywhere, but our coupon
Speaker 1: codes soft rep. What you'll get with that is you're
Speaker 1: gonna get a free twenty two tumbler. You add the
Speaker 1: tumbler to your cart with your order, whatever order that
Speaker 1: you make, use the promo code soft rep, and you'll
Speaker 1: get it absolutely free. Once again, that's Pelican Coolers dot Com.
Speaker 1: Free two tumbler with your order, but you got to
Speaker 1: add that your cart and you can find that tumbler
Speaker 1: in the drink wear section at the top and use
Speaker 1: the promo code soft rep. So get on that. I
Speaker 1: know you were impressed with everything that we got here.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is just these are the coolest schoolers, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean it's pretty cool that they have that
Speaker 1: offer that you can get a free one with your order.
Speaker 1: So yeah, everyone likes free stuff like one of those basically, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm custom made for us. I'm looking at
Speaker 1: it here in front of me. I mean it's a
Speaker 1: huge uh coffee thermis basically well screw on top and
Speaker 1: a little flap to drink. And I mean this is sweet.
Speaker 1: It's made out of like metal, it's not like uh,
Speaker 1: just like plastic e kind of stuff that's gonna break
Speaker 1: if you drop it. I mean, it's pretty hardcore. They
Speaker 1: sent us a bunch of the soft Up Radio one,
Speaker 1: so we'll give one to a lucky listener. I'll I'll
Speaker 1: get into that at the end of the show. But
Speaker 1: I'm really excited about this man. And if you want
Speaker 1: to see what this stuff is like, and and you haven't,
Speaker 1: check out our social media um on Twitter and Instagram
Speaker 1: at soft rep Radio. I'm gonna be posting all this stuff.
Speaker 1: And then for the bigger cores, which were already sent out.
Speaker 1: Like I said, the one is pretty awesome, but these
Speaker 1: massive cores they have, those will be on the load
Speaker 1: out room, and I believe Scott Whittner is going to
Speaker 1: do a review. So really excited. Once again, Go to
Speaker 1: Pelican cores dot com add the tumbler to your order
Speaker 1: whatever cooler you get, and you're gonna get it for free.
Speaker 1: It's in the drink wear section at the top. Use
Speaker 1: the promo code soft rep and get right on that.
Speaker 1: Because this is a limited time offer. I don't know
Speaker 1: how long it's gonna go, but you're gonna read it
Speaker 1: if you don't buy it, So do it. Um, getting
Speaker 1: it to everything Before we get to ed. One thing
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention. The government shutdown is still in effect,
Speaker 1: and this is probably the craziest government shutdown I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: I mean it's the longest one we've ever seen, and
Speaker 1: both sides do not show any signs of budging. And
Speaker 1: it's some at some point government workers are gonna need
Speaker 1: to be paid. So it's like, what is gonna end this? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're holding all these federal employees hostage. Um, And you know, sure,
Speaker 1: the libertarian in me is kind of like, shut it down,
Speaker 1: shut it all down. But this isn't right, This isn't
Speaker 1: the way to do it. I mean, you have these
Speaker 1: are you know, our employees working for our government, and
Speaker 1: you know we're going to get to the point where
Speaker 1: people are losing their houses and stuff. Um, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's an embarrassment. Really. Um, I think I can understand
Speaker 1: why it's happening, but it's still a disaster really, And
Speaker 1: but I just I I have no idea what's going
Speaker 1: to end it, because what's gonna what's gonna end it
Speaker 1: is that the Democrats are gonna cave in and give
Speaker 1: Trump most of what he wants. Um. You know, I
Speaker 1: keep seeing in the in the press, like people are
Speaker 1: always like Trump's breaking up, He's cracking up, He's going crazy,
Speaker 1: He's losing. It's like, no, he's not, man, don't you
Speaker 1: get it. He's having a good time. You joys this
Speaker 1: And he doesn't have a conscience. So, I mean, he
Speaker 1: doesn't give a funk if a bunch of federal employees
Speaker 1: lose their homes or can't make car payments or what like.
Speaker 1: He doesn't care about that. And as for the other side,
Speaker 1: according to at least Trump's Twitter from what he said,
Speaker 1: you know, speaking with Nancy Pelosi, they do not They
Speaker 1: refused to have you know, any wall mandate or any event,
Speaker 1: which is hysterical because you know, did you see that
Speaker 1: that clip I posted of Chuck Schumer. I've seen I've
Speaker 1: seen all those reposts where it's like ten fifteen minutes
Speaker 1: straight of him in the past talking about how we
Speaker 1: need border security and the illegals are taking our jobs.
Speaker 1: I'm like, it just shows what not just the hypocrisy
Speaker 1: of American politics. But it's all such a fucking joke.
Speaker 1: It's all just a big facade. It's like we're all
Speaker 1: rooting for sports teams. Yeah, it very much is. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: but there's real But there's real life repercussions of course. People,
Speaker 1: you know, government workers as much as like the t
Speaker 1: s A may annoy us, like it's there, it's their
Speaker 1: job and have nothing to do with and it's not
Speaker 1: their fault that Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump are having
Speaker 1: a food fight. Um, you know that there are real
Speaker 1: life repercussions. Um. You know, border security in the meantime
Speaker 1: is not getting solved. There's nothing happening with that, and
Speaker 1: all these federal employees are going without pay. Um. It
Speaker 1: just seems incredibly immoral and unethical to do this too,
Speaker 1: you know, our workers, um, and hold them hostage in
Speaker 1: this manner because uh, you know our president and uh
Speaker 1: the leaders of the Democratic Party are having Twitter wars.
Speaker 1: Also wanted to mention beyond the tumblers and all the
Speaker 1: other cool stuff that I saw when I came in
Speaker 1: the studio from uh, from Pelican Corps, which was really awesome.
Speaker 1: You came in with quite a few copies review copies
Speaker 1: of your memoir Murphy's Law, and it's it's getting me
Speaker 1: excited for the actual release date. Yeah. These are these
Speaker 1: are their galley copies. So they're um, like kind of
Speaker 1: advanced readers copies that can I bring one home? Actually
Speaker 1: you can take one, and you know, the books have
Speaker 1: to finish. Uh, Carmen Genteel's book, which I've been taking
Speaker 1: my sweet time with to be honest, but it's great
Speaker 1: so far, Um it is. Uh. So this is the
Speaker 1: the advanced copy of the book. It's just a soft cover.
Speaker 1: The when it comes out it will be a hardcover.
Speaker 1: Of course. It will also have fourteen pages. I think
Speaker 1: of pictures that this edition, this advanced reader's copy is missing.
Speaker 1: And then there's a bunch of like little typos and
Speaker 1: little things that we're cleaning up. I just finished the
Speaker 1: second past of the book yesterday, and um, I'm proud
Speaker 1: of it. I mean it's uh, it's pretty raw. There's
Speaker 1: some pretty graphic depictions of combat in this book, UM,
Speaker 1: and I think it kind of shoots from the hip
Speaker 1: and tells it like it like it was and like
Speaker 1: it is. UM. You know, when I wrote the book,
Speaker 1: I was kind of cognizant of the fa that people
Speaker 1: come home from war and tend to write these sort
Speaker 1: of um romantic retrospectives about war, and like the it
Speaker 1: goes in like one or two directions. It's either you know,
Speaker 1: the greatest men I served with, the greatest men of
Speaker 1: our generation and the honor and the flag waving, or
Speaker 1: it goes to the other side and it's like a
Speaker 1: big war apology and the horrors of war. And you know,
Speaker 1: the people write about the horrors of war typically the
Speaker 1: people who did the most killing and the most slaughtering
Speaker 1: in war and didn't give a shit about it, and
Speaker 1: then they like come back and they want to write
Speaker 1: a book like moralizing us about war. UM. I tried
Speaker 1: to write a book that it does. It kind of
Speaker 1: tries to do two things at once, in the sense
Speaker 1: that I try to tell you the difference between what
Speaker 1: I knew at the time and what I experienced and
Speaker 1: what I felt, but also updated a little bit like
Speaker 1: here's what I found out years later, or at the
Speaker 1: end of the chapter about Iraq, Uh say, this is
Speaker 1: how I've come to feel about this conflict and the
Speaker 1: years since I left Iraq or since I left the military.
Speaker 1: So I try to tell you the difference between a
Speaker 1: very real soldier's experience in that moment um versus how
Speaker 1: I came to feel about it later on. And I
Speaker 1: think that's something some some authors do a good job
Speaker 1: with it, but a lot of times I feel like
Speaker 1: that kind of gets lost in the waxing poetic that
Speaker 1: we often do about war. You know, it's interesting the
Speaker 1: second category of book that you're mentioning of, um, guys
Speaker 1: who are apologetic for war, that type of thing. Um.
Speaker 1: This was really interesting to me was that when I
Speaker 1: produced Senator Bill Bradley Show, we had in what at
Speaker 1: least we thought at the time and he thought, was
Speaker 1: the son of one of the men who raised the
Speaker 1: flag at Iwo Jima. And it was interesting because Devoura,
Speaker 1: who you met, who was the executive producers interviewing this
Speaker 1: guy about we we did that favorite Place in America's segment,
Speaker 1: but also interviewing him about the book, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: saying what a hero that his dad was, and he
Speaker 1: was extremely anti war, and he was just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't see it as heroic. I don't see it
Speaker 1: as something i'm I'm proud of. And it was actually
Speaker 1: like the complete opposite of what you thought. And he
Speaker 1: was very adamant about his anti war stance. But what
Speaker 1: came out I think a couple of years later, was
Speaker 1: that apparently his father did raise a flag at Iwo Jima,
Speaker 1: but it was not the iconic photo of the flag
Speaker 1: raised video a gemma he thought it was. It's not
Speaker 1: like he was contesting false information, but apparently there were
Speaker 1: several men who thought that they raised the flag and
Speaker 1: that iconic photo, but that it turned out it wasn't them.
Speaker 1: And he actually made a statement I remember in the
Speaker 1: article that he was like, I had my suspicions that
Speaker 1: it might have been a different one, but it's not.
Speaker 1: It's not like he was, you know. You know, I
Speaker 1: think when we we look back and we were flect
Speaker 1: back on war, particularly as veterans UM, we all have
Speaker 1: our own perspectives and some of us come to this
Speaker 1: conclusion become very anti war UM. And there's nothing necessarily
Speaker 1: wrong with that. It's okay to have that stance or
Speaker 1: have that view. Um. I just think there's something incredibly
Speaker 1: disingenuous is about you know, serving in combat um so enthusiastically, UM,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to be there. I was a volunteer, um.
Speaker 1: But then coming home and after the facts being like
Speaker 1: and now now I go to the you know, a
Speaker 1: liberal university or whatever, and now I want to fit
Speaker 1: in with that crowd. So all of a sudden, I'm
Speaker 1: an anti war activist or whatever. I don't believe that
Speaker 1: ship for a second. Um. It's like you look at
Speaker 1: people like that and you're just like, I'm not buying it,
Speaker 1: you know, although I mean people do change as absolutely.
Speaker 1: I just think it's important to distinguish the difference between
Speaker 1: you know, when you you served enthusiastically and voluntarily, but
Speaker 1: then the second you get out of the military, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, the horrors of war and all this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. It's like I can get it on
Speaker 1: some level in that. I think that's why, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's known, that's why guys are recruited at like seventeen eighteen,
Speaker 1: because you know, they're not knowledgeable that this type of stuff. Oh,
Speaker 1: I want to see some action. They're they're not well
Speaker 1: read up on politics, and then you know, they come
Speaker 1: back home and their view of this thing is completely changed.
Speaker 1: And I do get, I get absolutely, and I mean
Speaker 1: war will change you for sure. And that's why I say,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't hold it against anyone for coming
Speaker 1: back from war and having anti war sentiments. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's perfectly reasonable to feel that way. Um. I just
Speaker 1: think that some people are disingenuous and how they express it,
Speaker 1: or if nothing else, they're not honest about their own
Speaker 1: frame of mind when they served. Um, they try to
Speaker 1: make themselves out to be like victims. You know that
Speaker 1: their consent was manufactured by you know, the machine and
Speaker 1: the institutions of government. It's like, no, you're you're kind
Speaker 1: of responsible for your own actions. I And you know
Speaker 1: if you went over there and you did some things
Speaker 1: you probably shouldn't have done. Uh, you're responsible for that too,
Speaker 1: which we talked about in the world. We've talked about
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff in the past. UM. I
Speaker 1: understand the people though, who do come back for sure,
Speaker 1: and I think even you would be in this category
Speaker 1: who come back and they're adamant about you know that
Speaker 1: war is an absolute last Lastewart. Yeah, well you have
Speaker 1: a little diplomacy and if that doesn't work, then this
Speaker 1: is our last resort. And I'm I'm very much about
Speaker 1: pumping the brakes on on the wars we're fighting right now.
Speaker 1: I think it's gotten completely out of control and we
Speaker 1: now have war as an institution in this country where
Speaker 1: we're permanently at war and it seems like nothing can
Speaker 1: scale that back, nothing can stop that. And this comes
Speaker 1: out of time where we're confronting obviously the global war
Speaker 1: on terror, but at the same time we're trying to
Speaker 1: confront Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea and simultaneously fight
Speaker 1: a war against terrorism worldwide. Okay, something's gotta give. It's like,
Speaker 1: look at that list of bad guys and pick one
Speaker 1: and I don't know if you mentioned it, uh. I mean,
Speaker 1: but on top of that, even though there are ally
Speaker 1: we're almost in a war with Mexico over this border wall, well,
Speaker 1: I mean I hesitate to describe that as a war
Speaker 1: in the same way that we're we're oh for sure,
Speaker 1: but I mean, you know, it's definitely driving a wedge
Speaker 1: between who's supposed to be a great ally of ours
Speaker 1: and I get the reason why. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I mean, haven't we always been a little
Speaker 1: bit at arm's length with Mexico. I mean, but I
Speaker 1: think it's gotten more hostile than ever before. Well we've
Speaker 1: been at war with Mexico for real and and many
Speaker 1: years in the past. So I mean, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that this is the worst that's ever been I say,
Speaker 1: in my life. I see, I see your point, though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh, but I don't think Mexico is anywhere near
Speaker 1: at the level of being a global competitor the way
Speaker 1: we're competing thinking of and I know that there were
Speaker 1: people who this isn' until I go back and criticize
Speaker 1: stuff that was said on the campaign trail. But like
Speaker 1: never before this president was there a guy who spoke
Speaker 1: about the people coming from the country of our allies
Speaker 1: and say they're rapists, they're they're gang members, they're engaging
Speaker 1: that sort of fear mongering and racism, which I mean, look,
Speaker 1: some of those people coming over are But you never
Speaker 1: heard George W. Bush or Barack Obama or Bill Quintin
Speaker 1: speak about Mexico like that. It's a very different, or
Speaker 1: speak about Mexicans like that these are people. And yes,
Speaker 1: there are a certain criminal element, no, no doubt about it. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's why we have border patrol, and we we
Speaker 1: should have border security. You don't think we should get
Speaker 1: rid of Ice like Alexandria get rid of No, No,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think we need to get rid
Speaker 1: of these organizations. Um. But that said, I mean, most
Speaker 1: of the people coming across the border just families who
Speaker 1: want a better life for their kids. Uh. They're not
Speaker 1: They're not bad people. Sure. I blame the politicians more
Speaker 1: than anyone for you know, what is a problem of
Speaker 1: too many people coming over and we don't know their identities?
Speaker 1: You know, it's yeah, and the scumbag Mexican government is
Speaker 1: corrupt to its core, and they treat America as a
Speaker 1: pressure release out. They're like, oh, you're living in poverty,
Speaker 1: just go to America, go to get out, get out.
Speaker 1: Because if those people had to stay in Mexico, they'd
Speaker 1: had they'd stage a fucking revolution against their government. And
Speaker 1: who could blame them? Um. Before we get to add
Speaker 1: two other things, wanted to mention real quick season two
Speaker 1: of The Punisher, which I know is a big deal
Speaker 1: for you. Well it isn't it isn't uh you know,
Speaker 1: I I fell asleep watching the first season of The Punisher.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to bring it up because, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think we've talked about it. I'm a huge, huge
Speaker 1: fan of the comic books and have been, um since
Speaker 1: I was a teenager. I probably have every issue of
Speaker 1: the comic book um and not every appearance of The
Speaker 1: Punisher and Marvel comics, but I probably have close to
Speaker 1: every issue of The Punisher or The Punisher War Journal
Speaker 1: or some of the other spinoffs they did. UM. So
Speaker 1: A pretty big fan of the comic but watching the
Speaker 1: Netflix show. I actually liked him on when he was
Speaker 1: in Daredevil, but the first season of The Punisher it
Speaker 1: kind of put me to sleep. I thought it was
Speaker 1: really like boring. And Netflix has this tendency with these
Speaker 1: shows to like draw it out over They're like milking
Speaker 1: the content as much as they possibly kind of draw
Speaker 1: it out over you know, thirteen or fourteen episodes or
Speaker 1: whatever it is, where they could have a much tighter
Speaker 1: plot within you know, maybe eight episodes. Um. But season
Speaker 1: two is coming out it supposedly it's gonna be a
Speaker 1: lot better. According to some of the early reviews that
Speaker 1: are out but I just wrote a op ed about
Speaker 1: The Punisher because when the first season came out, there's
Speaker 1: like this deluge of like op eds and The Guardian
Speaker 1: the Atlantic. I mean almost everybody had one at the time,
Speaker 1: because I think it's because Frank Castle is a white
Speaker 1: male combat veteran who uses guns to sort out his
Speaker 1: problems and it just scares the ship out of all
Speaker 1: these like lefty newspaper editors. Um so they tried to
Speaker 1: like say Frank Castle was a Nazi, or they try
Speaker 1: to say The Punisher that that the skull symbol is
Speaker 1: used by cops and soldiers style was associated with all that. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, Chris Kyle, I believe we're the Punisher Skull,
Speaker 1: but I mean ship, so did tons of other people.
Speaker 1: I think he altered it to make it his own logo. No,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think so. I'm pretty sure Marvel
Speaker 1: could go after and like logo because I'm want to
Speaker 1: look it up. Um Craft, Chris Kyle, because I thought he.
Speaker 1: I thought he altered it, Yeah for the Craft logo. Look,
Speaker 1: that looks exactly like The Punisher Craft's logo, which was
Speaker 1: Chris Kyle's brand, or at least he was a part
Speaker 1: of the brand. But then look isn't that a O
Speaker 1: D A right? This one this one here quick on
Speaker 1: that yeah, Craft International four inter Craft International. Yes, so
Speaker 1: I mean I may maybe they didn't go after him
Speaker 1: because we look bad, I feel, I think so, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is very extremely similar, yeah, extreme heavily influenced. And
Speaker 1: you know, there's one article written I think it was
Speaker 1: like in The Guardian maybe um, and it was saying
Speaker 1: that some some right neo Nazi world a Punisher t
Speaker 1: shirt at one point, so they're like, you know, the
Speaker 1: Punisher is the alt right, like making these really childish
Speaker 1: comparisons and just stupid ship. So anyway, I wrote my
Speaker 1: love letter to Frank Castle this morning, sitting down with
Speaker 1: my coffee. That'll be up on the news rep. That'll yeah,
Speaker 1: it'll be up. I think the second season comes out
Speaker 1: on Netflix this Friday, so that op ed will be
Speaker 1: out before then. And I talked a lot about you know,
Speaker 1: the Punisher actually is forgive the terminology, but it's basically
Speaker 1: a rip off of an earlier character, Mac Boland, the Executioner,
Speaker 1: who was written by and created by Don Pendleton in
Speaker 1: nine and very similar theme that Vietna. Nom veteran comes
Speaker 1: home from war and his family has been killed by
Speaker 1: the mafia. So he declares a one man war on crime.
Speaker 1: So I get into a lot of this and what
Speaker 1: Don Pendleton intended with his character. He was trying to
Speaker 1: redignify the soldier after a very unpopular war in Vietnam,
Speaker 1: and Mack Bolan was a character that tried to Don
Speaker 1: Pendleton use this character to speak to this sort of
Speaker 1: flower power generation that was about peace and love and
Speaker 1: talk to them about you know, we live in a
Speaker 1: in a world with evil and somebody has to stand
Speaker 1: up to it. And he wasn't suggesting that we all,
Speaker 1: you know, pick up guns and become vigilantes. That wasn't
Speaker 1: the point. But that was a way to dramatize the action.
Speaker 1: For he. Don Pendleton actually coined the term action adventure,
Speaker 1: and so that that forms the drama, this one man war,
Speaker 1: this holy war on crime. Um. But I think Don
Speaker 1: Pendleton was just telling all of us in a sense
Speaker 1: that you know, evil has to be confronted. And uh,
Speaker 1: when Marvel Comics decided to create this character, the Punisher
Speaker 1: I mean is directly lifted from the pages of Don
Speaker 1: Pendleton's the Executioner series, so I talk a lot about
Speaker 1: that and where this character really came from and what
Speaker 1: he really represents. And it's not the alt right, white
Speaker 1: male combat veteran coming back home to brutalized criminals and
Speaker 1: conduct extra judicial murder. So yeah, I mean check that
Speaker 1: out on the News rep dot com. Probably by the
Speaker 1: time this is up, that'll be up. Uh. And on
Speaker 1: the Hollywood front as well. Uh, there's a new season
Speaker 1: of True Detective and the one of the stars is
Speaker 1: a former marine, so we're gonna have him on. And
Speaker 1: we're also going to finally have Max Martini on soon,
Speaker 1: so I'm excited for both of those. Um. But today
Speaker 1: we have Ed Derek on. I know he's standing by,
Speaker 1: so let's get right to him. Back on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Ed Derek author of War Moments, Images and Stories of
Speaker 1: combat in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond. As I mentioned in
Speaker 1: the intro, Ed's last appearance was three fifteen, and you know,
Speaker 1: not to boost ego too much. Ed the second biggest
Speaker 1: show OFEN only behind Sergeant Major Mike Vining, which I
Speaker 1: think was pretty cool. Um. And if you guys want
Speaker 1: to hear about Operation Red Wings and extortion seventeen. Listen
Speaker 1: back to that show today we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: the new book and some other stuff. Awesome to have
Speaker 1: you back on. It's been about a year, I believe. Yep,
Speaker 1: thank you guys so much. It's always a really great
Speaker 1: pleasure to work with you guys and communicating you guys
Speaker 1: and talk and all that kind of stuff. So I
Speaker 1: really appreciate it. Let me talk about the new book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: time Flies. Thanks for coming on the show again. Ed, Hey, Jack,
Speaker 1: how you doing. I'm good? How are you great? Super great?
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's a real thing, but I'm
Speaker 1: super great. So things are wonderful. Loving the new book
Speaker 1: and all the projects I'm working on right now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It just came out today as we're recording this. Yep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah it's and I get the advanced copies and uh,
Speaker 1: the publisher did an absolutely magnificent job. You know, photography
Speaker 1: books are tough. Um, it's hard getting the colors just
Speaker 1: right and the layout. They did a magnificent job and
Speaker 1: the layout, and I'm really really happy with It's kind
Speaker 1: of a dream project for me. Yeah, the pictures in
Speaker 1: it are really beautiful, and I, um, I hate I
Speaker 1: hate to even say this because it's not as if
Speaker 1: I'm some sort of art critic. Um. But there's a
Speaker 1: lot of wartime photography that just doesn't strike me right
Speaker 1: because I think the photographers sometimes that they're extremely talented,
Speaker 1: but the way they get the frames so perfect and
Speaker 1: the lighting is just the right way. I look at
Speaker 1: and it's just like, where does it really look like that? Um?
Speaker 1: But when I looked at you know, through the book
Speaker 1: that your publishers sent me, it's they are beautiful photographs,
Speaker 1: but they're not staged photographs. I guess that's what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to say. Yeah, that's and it's interesting you brought
Speaker 1: that up because I didn't stage any of them, but
Speaker 1: I saw the geometry of the image coming together, and
Speaker 1: I would post. I would stage myself to wait for
Speaker 1: the shot, you know, like for instance, this one called
Speaker 1: into the Pesh where I was inbedded with Marines and uh,
Speaker 1: coming down after the end of a pretty big combat operation,
Speaker 1: and you know, I wanted I like silhouette shots. I
Speaker 1: just think they're cool. And I saw, you know, this
Speaker 1: one marine was your freest side by side. I was like, man,
Speaker 1: the really lighting is it's low lighting and the backgrounds
Speaker 1: lit up really beautifully. When gonna run ahead, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get down low and it comes by, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: start shooting frames, and sure enough it came out and
Speaker 1: there's a lot like that. You know, the cover image
Speaker 1: that's that was like that. That was actually the same
Speaker 1: op And as we got up to the top of
Speaker 1: this side of the mountain, uh, on the the edge
Speaker 1: of the Petch River valley, you know, the sun was
Speaker 1: just coming up, and I was like, this is perfect.
Speaker 1: Mike was he was arresting. He's a he's a one
Speaker 1: machine gunner and he's arresting with his two forty golf
Speaker 1: over his shoulder with his pack on, and uh, I
Speaker 1: know that was like, it's like my favorite photograph I've
Speaker 1: ever taken, you know, It's just awesome. So, um, it
Speaker 1: was just a great moment. You know, That's why I
Speaker 1: call it war moments, because it was these great moments
Speaker 1: that you know, you you pre visualize as a photographer,
Speaker 1: you think, Okay, what do I want to get? And
Speaker 1: then there's also sort of images of opportunity, moments of opportunity.
Speaker 1: So what do you want to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about how this book came about? Um, Because I think
Speaker 1: as I was looking through it, it's not just pictures
Speaker 1: of Afghanistan either, m hm mm hmm. It's Afghanistan, Iraq
Speaker 1: and then training, so it's the full spectrum. And I
Speaker 1: really had this. I had this idea to come up
Speaker 1: with a unique work. A lot of people ask me, like,
Speaker 1: what's it like to go, you know, be embedded and
Speaker 1: being a war zone and you know, you get you
Speaker 1: get that and you know, not embedded but well actually
Speaker 1: have been embedded. But all so, you know, as as
Speaker 1: a member of the seventy five, you know, I'm sure
Speaker 1: people are all the time like what's it like? What's
Speaker 1: it like? I'm asking me what's it like? What's it like?
Speaker 1: And they'll be like, well, a lot of it's fun
Speaker 1: and they're like, really, how's it fun? It's fun, you know,
Speaker 1: and uh, and sometimes it's scary and inside thought, gosh,
Speaker 1: what if I put together photographs and also text because
Speaker 1: you know, like most more books are text and then
Speaker 1: they'll have a photo insert right, um and um. So
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of a break. You're reading and then
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, here's some photographs, but with this and
Speaker 1: allow you can put you each photograph is like a
Speaker 1: chapter each photograph and the associated texts, so I can
Speaker 1: have an image and then right there you can read
Speaker 1: about it. You know, it's about two words, so it's
Speaker 1: like a short little article. Uh. There's a hundred and
Speaker 1: eight teen of them in the book, and you can
Speaker 1: sort of jump into that moment right that that you know,
Speaker 1: they're just like, okay, spinning up ospreys at night. You
Speaker 1: could see it and you and like, what's going on
Speaker 1: in this picture? This is really cool? And you can
Speaker 1: read about it. You know, I put in the technical
Speaker 1: information to for people who are interested in so, and
Speaker 1: I think that's really cool. And you go from one
Speaker 1: picture you know you've got um, you know, I'm just
Speaker 1: open the book right now, Like there's a bird that
Speaker 1: made a nest in a muzzle of a howitzer. I
Speaker 1: remember that one. So we are over old Soviet artillery piece.
Speaker 1: And then you know, you turn the next page. You know,
Speaker 1: that was an Afghanistan and that's like something you wouldn't expect,
Speaker 1: and I thought, wow, I got to get this photograph.
Speaker 1: And then you turn the next page and it's a
Speaker 1: marine at the Mount Warfare Training Center in a blizzard,
Speaker 1: and you know training and that is tough training, and
Speaker 1: you look at it like I'm just looking at it
Speaker 1: right now. I can and you know, I took the photograph,
Speaker 1: so I remember, but man, it was cold and windy
Speaker 1: and hard, and then you go to the next page
Speaker 1: and then something else, and so you can, you know,
Speaker 1: you can pick it up, you know, cover cover, pick
Speaker 1: it up in the middle, or jump around, and it's
Speaker 1: just kind of a you know, it's it's an immersive
Speaker 1: I wanted it to be an immersive experience for for
Speaker 1: readers and picture lovers. So that's that's what I set
Speaker 1: out to do. And and I'm happy to report that that,
Speaker 1: at least for me, I think I achieved it. So well,
Speaker 1: we're familiar, uh, you know with your you know, written journalism.
Speaker 1: But what got you into photography? Um, that's how this
Speaker 1: all started, you know, it was photography I was. I
Speaker 1: was interested in, you know, climbing mountains in high school.
Speaker 1: And when I turned sixteen, I got a Bota X
Speaker 1: three seventy camps film camera and I had a Volkswagen
Speaker 1: Bug and I drove up to uh Mount with me
Speaker 1: and I try to climb out with me, and I
Speaker 1: just would take pictures of mountains along the way and
Speaker 1: that rolled into uh, you know, ended up at the
Speaker 1: Mount Warfare Training Center and uh but photography, and you
Speaker 1: know that's kind of where I started following the Marines
Speaker 1: around and then following you know, the d O D
Speaker 1: you know, other services around in general. That's where it
Speaker 1: all started. Um seart jumped there from the mountain or
Speaker 1: anything over to the military thing Marine Corps Mount war
Speaker 1: for a training center and yeah, I just and in college, um,
Speaker 1: I'm donna have be cause right I can't remember. Oh yeah, okay, okay, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in college I had this professor of Nigel Allen.
Speaker 1: He actually I was a geography professor and um and
Speaker 1: uh he did a lot of his work in Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: so I always would ask him about Afghanistan. Solf was
Speaker 1: fascinated with it, and he took me aside one day
Speaker 1: and he was, you know, ed, you're a funk up,
Speaker 1: but you're pretty talented sunk up as a writer. I
Speaker 1: think you should be a writer. And I thought my
Speaker 1: uncle was a writer, and I thought, yeah, I was
Speaker 1: in So I started, uh actually started a publishing company
Speaker 1: in college and published my first book about climbing Nott
Speaker 1: McKinley and so that's what set me on my path.
Speaker 1: And you know, I, um, you know, this is a
Speaker 1: book number six now and uh so I I go
Speaker 1: back and forth between you know, photography and writing and
Speaker 1: also some cartography as well. I love all those things,
Speaker 1: like to put them all together in magazine articles and books.
Speaker 1: Um but I just just you know, the Warm Moments
Speaker 1: project was just one that I thought up and and
Speaker 1: I queried a publisher and it was crazy, um like,
Speaker 1: I had a contract within seventy two hours. So well,
Speaker 1: it seems it must be incredibly important to have at
Speaker 1: least some skill as a photographer, seeing how you know,
Speaker 1: visually motivated we are nowadays, um as opposed to just
Speaker 1: coming back with a uh you know, something like a
Speaker 1: newswire piece, newswire article about what's going on in Afghanistan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's for you know, it's such a you know,
Speaker 1: a dynamic multivariate process. You know, I've used that term
Speaker 1: before and it's wordy, and but it really is true,
Speaker 1: like I mean, in so many different ways, Like I never,
Speaker 1: if I was awake, I was doing something, you know,
Speaker 1: when I was embedded. It was never just sitting there,
Speaker 1: you know, I was planning photography stuff or I was writing,
Speaker 1: and when I was out outside the wire, especially in Iraq, man,
Speaker 1: I was still fucking scared shitless of like losing a
Speaker 1: limb or getting killed, because you know, I was embedded
Speaker 1: with the second Italian Third Marines in Iraq and I'm
Speaker 1: actually writing a book about them right now and that
Speaker 1: deployment it's going to come out later this year. But uh,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, and you know it's it's indescribable. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, you were arranged, so maybe you didn't, but
Speaker 1: you know, I certainly was scared, fucking chiless. I put
Speaker 1: the I put the camera up and I'd started taking
Speaker 1: pictures and it was like some weird drug where I
Speaker 1: you know, I was aware of the danger. You know,
Speaker 1: there's no such thing as furiousness, but you know, I
Speaker 1: was aware of the danger, but I was fine, and
Speaker 1: I was taking some and I got some really pretty
Speaker 1: fantastic images out of that. You know that I was
Speaker 1: still back then, I was a late adopter. It was
Speaker 1: an OH seven and uh so there was a whole
Speaker 1: thing of like, you know, as I was going like
Speaker 1: I would be changing film and some of the Marines
Speaker 1: had laugh at me, like hey, combat Rilo, come on
Speaker 1: hur Yeah, you know, it's a legitimate fear. Head. I mean,
Speaker 1: we just had on the podcast Carmen Genteel, who pretty
Speaker 1: much was doing the same thing as you and you know,
Speaker 1: a journalist, but his eye was shattered and you know,
Speaker 1: embedded with a unit and he wrote a whole book
Speaker 1: about it. So it's it's a legitimate fear to have.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean, especially as I was in the
Speaker 1: Triad Deeta Triad and that was the second time third
Speaker 1: Marines deployment was oh six oh seven, um, and you
Speaker 1: know I was thereafter. It was really bad. They they
Speaker 1: they in a few months they got control everything, but
Speaker 1: it was still it was still it was still Harry,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean it was you know, it was
Speaker 1: one of the chapters in the book I'm right right
Speaker 1: now was uh, you know, against an army of ghosts
Speaker 1: on a battlefield of shadows because those guys like it's
Speaker 1: so frustrating, there's no clearly to find front. It's counter
Speaker 1: insurgency campaign. They would throw grenades with people and just duck,
Speaker 1: you know, uh and run and then who you shoot
Speaker 1: back at and ur I E. D S and so yeah,
Speaker 1: it is a really um it was you know I
Speaker 1: think about Afghanistan. I went there four times, and you
Speaker 1: know a lot of times I find myself grinned and
Speaker 1: I think about Iraq and my sister Clinch because you know,
Speaker 1: it was that was tough on those marines. Lost twenty
Speaker 1: three marines in that deployment. So but yeah, the the
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's dangerous. You know, once you I
Speaker 1: don't care if you're a humongous fob or some tiny
Speaker 1: little postage stamp combat outpost, you know, surrounded by taliban um.
Speaker 1: It's you see, easy step foot in the war zone
Speaker 1: is dangerous. So making it happen that day today grind
Speaker 1: starts to wear on you too. When you're going out
Speaker 1: into it every day. It's it's one thing to get
Speaker 1: shot at once, but then another thing where every other
Speaker 1: day you're getting shot at or blown up or whatever.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean it. Yeah, it's been you know,
Speaker 1: it's been a while, but some of the members are
Speaker 1: still pretty vivid. I you know, I remember, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm being on patrol with this one squad and I
Speaker 1: saw tubacock on the ground and I went to kick it,
Speaker 1: and the squadly was like, fucking don't kick that. I
Speaker 1: was like, what he goes you see this wall here,
Speaker 1: that could be a trigger for an I eat, it's
Speaker 1: hitting hitting this wall. And I was like, all right, sorry,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean anything, you know, anything or like
Speaker 1: crossing the field. I wrote about this one sprint for
Speaker 1: cover the title this one photograph where I was actually
Speaker 1: laughing because we had to sprint across this field, right,
Speaker 1: and uh and I wanted to my my you know,
Speaker 1: gut used to be like, Okay, I'm just gonna follow
Speaker 1: a core you know, he's a machine gunner, file Robert,
Speaker 1: he's a squad leader. And they're like, you can't follow
Speaker 1: any of this. You've got to be dispersed, and so
Speaker 1: just run across this field. Nobody run across the same spot.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, don't get blown up if you
Speaker 1: if you're not dispersed, it's gonna do the you know,
Speaker 1: the enemy a bigger target. That's that's who they're gonna
Speaker 1: shoot at. And uh, I was just like running my
Speaker 1: ass off and think, God, this is fucking crazy. But uh,
Speaker 1: you know that's just um, that's that's like, you know,
Speaker 1: like you said, life in the war zone and you
Speaker 1: can't ever let your card down, right, I mean it's just, uh,
Speaker 1: you've always got to be thinking all these things that
Speaker 1: all these considerations that you don't have back here in
Speaker 1: the in the normal world. Where was this was spread
Speaker 1: across the field. It was in Afghanistan and Helmet. So
Speaker 1: you know, we're hopping canals and jumping over mud walls,
Speaker 1: and you know, you look at a map and I
Speaker 1: even wrote about this where it was you're gonna mac
Speaker 1: a helmet and it's just like flat. He's like, oh,
Speaker 1: used an Afghanistan as tough as hell, you know, to
Speaker 1: all the mountains, but I take eastern Afghanistan and all
Speaker 1: this mountain any day over Helmet. Those canals that you
Speaker 1: get a jump, those are the worst. You know. You
Speaker 1: you deployed down there, right down to Helmont. Now I
Speaker 1: was never in that area. Yeah, I mean you just
Speaker 1: got these canals and I've got that one shot in
Speaker 1: there called canal jump, and you just see, um the Marines.
Speaker 1: He's holding spr what the Marines called spars like I
Speaker 1: think it said. I think it's I think it's a
Speaker 1: five five yeah, and you know it's got a supressed
Speaker 1: on it. Think way, it's like ten pounds. You's got
Speaker 1: you know, fifty pound pack on or thirty five pound
Speaker 1: pack on flat kevlar plates in it, you know, and
Speaker 1: the guys just jumping this thing. You know, if you miss,
Speaker 1: you know, you're gonna you know, you might wake your ankle,
Speaker 1: You're you know, twist your knee. And I'm thinking, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I way rather have the steeps of tun Our Province
Speaker 1: than doing this stuff. But yeah, so you know all
Speaker 1: these you know, like we're talking right now. It's kind
Speaker 1: of the way I wrote the tech in the book
Speaker 1: and there, because it's just, you know, I just wanted
Speaker 1: to have it to be real, you know, like this
Speaker 1: is what it's like, here's what it looks like, and
Speaker 1: here's what's going through my head or our heads as
Speaker 1: we're doing this stuff. And all the while, instead of
Speaker 1: carrying an spr all you got as a camera in
Speaker 1: your hand. Yeah, except a couple of times those guys
Speaker 1: let me shoot back. It was fun. I'm not gonna lie,
Speaker 1: but it was that I know what it's like to
Speaker 1: put rounds down range in a firefight, not like you do,
Speaker 1: but you know, I know it, so um um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was interesting. I've had a lot of interesting experiences,
Speaker 1: so very grateful. I wouldn't do it again, but I'm
Speaker 1: very grateful. Well, the book looks amazing. How many pictures
Speaker 1: did you say are in there? And the Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a there's a photo of me that doesn't count. And
Speaker 1: then there's a photo that's on the forward, so that
Speaker 1: would be a hundred nineteen. But there's no text with
Speaker 1: that one. That's Ross Schneiderman's. Um, that's his before he
Speaker 1: did the forward. Um. As you say, each picture is
Speaker 1: accompanied by you know, a good amount of texts, so
Speaker 1: the pictures are contextualized. Um. You know, if you go
Speaker 1: into it not knowing anything about Afghanistan or Iraq or
Speaker 1: not knowing much about the military. I mean, it does
Speaker 1: a pretty thorough job of explaining what's going on in
Speaker 1: each picture. Okay, yeah, thank you. I mean it's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and I wanted everything to be um. I
Speaker 1: wanted everything to be different, you know, like some things
Speaker 1: I write about, like, um, the the the technical aspect
Speaker 1: is something like, uh, you know, I talked about the
Speaker 1: mag tat the Marine Air Ground Task Force. UH, And
Speaker 1: sometimes I talk about like, you know, it's kind of,
Speaker 1: for lack of a better turn, touchy feely stuff. There's
Speaker 1: a photo in there of a marine holding a puppy
Speaker 1: and that was a puppy that lived once and at
Speaker 1: this little combat up post, and it was like, you
Speaker 1: know that again, not to be dramatic, but anytime you
Speaker 1: go outside the wire, especially at that little place, you
Speaker 1: know you might that might be the last time. And
Speaker 1: so it's like escape time. You know, you hold this
Speaker 1: puppy and uh pet it and um. You know it's
Speaker 1: one thing to hold a puppy and pet it back here,
Speaker 1: you know, at home. You know, it's like that's always great.
Speaker 1: The whole puppy must allergic to dogs. Uh. And another thing,
Speaker 1: it's like when you're about to go into combat. Right,
Speaker 1: So there's that, and then there's stuff, you know, I
Speaker 1: write about like the h F three Echo helicopter or
Speaker 1: c HFT be Delta expending flares and you know why,
Speaker 1: you know why they're expending flares and what the flares
Speaker 1: are for. So I try to cover a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff and uh, and I don't think it's disjointed, just
Speaker 1: because of the nature the work. It's it's my favorite
Speaker 1: photographs of war, and you know it's not like my
Speaker 1: favorite photographs of helicopter gun ships. It's you know, there's
Speaker 1: some of those in there, but it's everything so um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's uh, that's that's that's what I what I set
Speaker 1: out to do. The dog photo reminds me of not
Speaker 1: too long ago on the podcast. It was just one
Speaker 1: that I did, but we had Craig gross on and
Speaker 1: he wrote a book about his dog Fred and there
Speaker 1: was a huge seller on Amazon. And it is cool
Speaker 1: to hear about these guys who meet dogs while they're
Speaker 1: down range and adopt them, i mean, bring them home
Speaker 1: and have an attachment to them. That's pretty cool and
Speaker 1: it's something you don't often hear about in the media. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I um, the whole dogs and war thing, it's it's
Speaker 1: really interesting. I have a friend who did that. Uh,
Speaker 1: this friend of mine, Rob Rob McDonald and he, um,
Speaker 1: he was in mar Sock and he uh, he had
Speaker 1: a dog and that they just you know, he was
Speaker 1: astray in Afghanistan and they brought it back. That's the
Speaker 1: same with the Yeah. Then as of course there's the
Speaker 1: Belgian malmois who malan y I think that's how to pronounced.
Speaker 1: There's the combat of Salt dogs, and then there's also
Speaker 1: I think some of the Black Labs and I had
Speaker 1: a they were basically you know, bomb sniffing dogs. Um,
Speaker 1: and I took some good photographs of those of those
Speaker 1: animals when I was downrange with the Marines in Helmand.
Speaker 1: Have one shot in there with one of these, I
Speaker 1: think it's a black lab. I'm pretty sure it looks
Speaker 1: like a black lab of um, you know, the dog
Speaker 1: saying hi to his handler and h it's pretty cool shot. Sweet.
Speaker 1: So I've taken a look through the book. It's pretty
Speaker 1: rad I mean, honestly I got talking about before. I
Speaker 1: mean they all look like these very very professionally shot,
Speaker 1: but also very candid. Um. So I appreciated, uh, the
Speaker 1: format in the style that that you went with. That thanks,
Speaker 1: because you know, a lot of these autographs have been
Speaker 1: used because you know, I'm an author and writer, you know,
Speaker 1: I guess when you're an author and you write books
Speaker 1: and a writer when you write magazine articles. But I'm
Speaker 1: also a photographer, and uh, you know a lot of
Speaker 1: these photographs have been used on covers of magazines and books.
Speaker 1: You know. The the one was using the cover of
Speaker 1: a John krak Our book um called Where Men Win
Speaker 1: Glory about Pat Tillman, uh, you know, and another shot
Speaker 1: of mine was using the cover of stern Or. One
Speaker 1: of the shots was used on the cover of Newsweek
Speaker 1: and another on the cover of Time magazine special editions.
Speaker 1: So they you know, I kinda I looked towards what
Speaker 1: the market saw and like, okay, this is some of
Speaker 1: the market's favorite favorite images of mine. And I thought, okay,
Speaker 1: why is that? And you know they've done really well,
Speaker 1: and I thought I put them together and um, and
Speaker 1: an attached narrative to it. You know, you you you
Speaker 1: hear this, a picture tells the story, right, You've probably
Speaker 1: heard that, And I don't believe that because you know,
Speaker 1: a picture is a picture. It's like, how does it
Speaker 1: tell a story? You know, unless it's a picture of
Speaker 1: a page of a book of one page stories, it
Speaker 1: doesn't tell a story. But but there's at least a
Speaker 1: few stories behind each image, you know, like the the
Speaker 1: image on the cover that's Mike shoul and um, you
Speaker 1: know there's the story of like you know, where are we?
Speaker 1: You know, that could have been a that could have
Speaker 1: been in Los Angeles, you know, with a stage behind it,
Speaker 1: but it was in Afghanistan. And you know, is it
Speaker 1: a soldier or is it a marine? Who is you
Speaker 1: know who is this. And you know he's a marine,
Speaker 1: he's a marine machine gunner and who is it? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know, he's a member of Echo Companies, Segmentalian third Marines.
Speaker 1: And he was twenty years old at the time, and
Speaker 1: you know, as you do and war zones. We He
Speaker 1: and I became good friends quickly. Uh. And I met
Speaker 1: his wife upon when they went back to Hawaii K
Speaker 1: Bay where they were based out of. And then I
Speaker 1: saw him again and and the taxiecors are going to
Speaker 1: Comment Center when they're getting ready to go to Iraq
Speaker 1: and uh, and I never saw him again. And his
Speaker 1: daughter was born and he got blown up by an
Speaker 1: I d and they never met his daughter. So that's
Speaker 1: the story. That's a story behind that photograph, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty one years old and you know, and so which
Speaker 1: stories you choose to tell about each image, because yeah,
Speaker 1: they're striking, they're beautiful, they're candid, they're real. Uh. But
Speaker 1: you know, to really give like this immersive experience, it's
Speaker 1: it's a good thing, I think two to really um,
Speaker 1: you know, put put words to photographs, like did you
Speaker 1: hear from that? Was? I was just gonna did you
Speaker 1: hear from any of his friends or family members that
Speaker 1: you chose that image for the cover of the book. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm friends. Um. Um, you know, it's um, it's a
Speaker 1: delicate thing because sometimes you know, I was talking to
Speaker 1: a friend of mine, Rob and uh, he was telling
Speaker 1: me when he was talking to was his uncle or
Speaker 1: something like that he was in Vietnam. He he was
Speaker 1: on that deployment. And Rob was saying, when was it
Speaker 1: after you got back from Vietnam that you went a
Speaker 1: full day without thinking about it? And his uncle was
Speaker 1: like never, you know, and um, He's like, when am
Speaker 1: I not going to think about this for for a day?
Speaker 1: And so I think about the family members and you know,
Speaker 1: like that photograph was used on a on a Hallmark
Speaker 1: greeting card and some people would think that's really that's
Speaker 1: really cheesy, that's lame, but they love it. They love
Speaker 1: going to you know, it was for the Marine Corps
Speaker 1: for Memorial Day, you know, the Hallmark came out with
Speaker 1: or they have a line of cards and once for
Speaker 1: the Army for Memorial Day, once for the Navy, and
Speaker 1: that was the Marine Corps one. And it made him
Speaker 1: feel great because it's like, you know, Mike's living on
Speaker 1: and you know, I and but at the same time, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to call up and and
Speaker 1: be like, let's talk about Mike and and just I
Speaker 1: imagine I'm thinking, God, I had this moment where I
Speaker 1: didn't think about, you know, the loss, and U asked,
Speaker 1: I'll have to call up and remind me, right, So it's, uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's one of those things. But it's kind
Speaker 1: of like almost like a family type of thing at
Speaker 1: this point. So and I post the pictures and and
Speaker 1: you know, on Facebook or Twitter or whatever, and I
Speaker 1: hear from people and they love it, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's uh, you know, it's respectful. Um, you know, I
Speaker 1: I uh, you know, I'm supposed to be objective, but
Speaker 1: you know, I'm pro military, and there's no there's no
Speaker 1: there's no uh, you know, anybody who knows the stuff
Speaker 1: the work that I do. You know, I am pro military,
Speaker 1: and uh and I believe in the mission and you know,
Speaker 1: I believe, you know, and and what those guys are doing.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people don't know what they're really
Speaker 1: doing and what you guys are really doing, and and
Speaker 1: you know, they want to attach narrative to it, and
Speaker 1: you know, I don't politicized stuff or get into that.
Speaker 1: But you know it's like, here's war. Here's how it
Speaker 1: is as I saw it, you know how I experienced it.
Speaker 1: So that's that's what the book is all about. Uh.
Speaker 1: It sounds like you're a busy bee and got plenty
Speaker 1: of other books and projects in the works as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we got some Red Wings stuff going on. Two projects. One,
Speaker 1: I can't wait, Jack to get you in touch with
Speaker 1: Tony Brooks. Um. He and I are working on a book.
Speaker 1: He was in Charlie two five he recovered to Turban
Speaker 1: three three. Uh, and he was there when you know,
Speaker 1: when they were doing the rescuing the recovery on Operation
Speaker 1: Red Wings. And we're doing a book right now. Interesting,
Speaker 1: So yep, Yeah, he's a great guy. Man. I cannot
Speaker 1: wait till you get to talk to him. You know
Speaker 1: it sounds in saying yeah and then um. Also, I'm
Speaker 1: doing a project. I really can't get two into this,
Speaker 1: but it's on Danny Deets, one of the the seals
Speaker 1: of the Reconnaissance and Surveillance Foreman Team. I'm working with
Speaker 1: some people. I'm actually it's I'm doing this with the
Speaker 1: Ross who did I don't know if you remember the
Speaker 1: glob article was a cover of Newsweek that I helped
Speaker 1: he wrote it. I helped him with that, and uh,
Speaker 1: he and I are doing um, he and I are
Speaker 1: doing a project on Danny Deets because there's a lot
Speaker 1: more to him and that part of the story than
Speaker 1: people know. Uh. He hasn't necessarily been portrayed that accurately.
Speaker 1: So broken on, so on. A On a separate but
Speaker 1: somewhat related topic, what do you think about all this
Speaker 1: stuff that came out about Chapman over the last year.
Speaker 1: I think it's disgusting, you know, I mean I think that. Um,
Speaker 1: I think that you know, apparently you know from what
Speaker 1: I know, from what I've read, it seems like they
Speaker 1: try to block him getting getting an h to protect
Speaker 1: the cover story. Yeah. I just um, again, there's more
Speaker 1: to that story. I wish I could say, Um, it's
Speaker 1: um just some behind the scenes stuff. Uh what do
Speaker 1: you think about it? Curious to know your thoughts. UM.
Speaker 1: I think that it's definitely a complicated subject. I have trouble,
Speaker 1: um placing too much blame on the operators that were
Speaker 1: on the ground that day, because I know they made
Speaker 1: some difficult decisions in combat conditions. Um I, uh so,
Speaker 1: I'm very hesitant to start, you know, throwing around accusations
Speaker 1: of cowardice, that they ran away or something like that. Um.
Speaker 1: There was the one theory advanced in um in the
Speaker 1: Nailor article about it that I thought was interesting that
Speaker 1: they saw a dead body and thought it was Chapman,
Speaker 1: and so in their minds that they thought, and so
Speaker 1: they confused the bodies and that was why they As
Speaker 1: bad as it is to leave the remains of an
Speaker 1: American soldier behind, they in their minds really legitimately may
Speaker 1: have thought that he had expired, um, and they didn't
Speaker 1: realize they were leaving behind someone who is alive. So
Speaker 1: what the truth is I don't know. Um Chapman, I mean,
Speaker 1: it seems quite clear that he fought heroically to the
Speaker 1: last bullet and beyond. Um, so I absolutely deserves that
Speaker 1: a war and uh, you know, the part that discussed
Speaker 1: me is that is the is the possibility, just even
Speaker 1: the possibility discussed me that that that ward was trying
Speaker 1: to be blocked for him, you know, when he did that.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's unbelievable. It's the way, it's the waysw
Speaker 1: behaved at a political level. More than what any of
Speaker 1: those guys did on the ground that day, rightly or wrongly.
Speaker 1: From my point of view, Yeah, I agree with you.
Speaker 1: I'm I am in phase if you're thinking that one. Uh.
Speaker 1: And again, you know, it's like unless you were there
Speaker 1: to to see, um, I guess there was some predator
Speaker 1: feed that apparently some claim is inconclusive, but uh, you know,
Speaker 1: they saw a movement, so uh but I mean, I
Speaker 1: it's just unfortunate. I think one of the things that
Speaker 1: really turns my stomach, that's really come to term my stomach,
Speaker 1: is the way some of the family, what they have
Speaker 1: to endure, um in the wake of all this. Uh. Again,
Speaker 1: I can't get too into it, but one of the
Speaker 1: one of the projects I'm working on right now. You know,
Speaker 1: you see, it's just like a meat grinder what it
Speaker 1: does to the family members, you know. Um, And it's
Speaker 1: it's just a lot of people just want to be
Speaker 1: left alone. They don't want to be reminded, like I
Speaker 1: was talking about, and then it was you know, and
Speaker 1: then when when when this kind of stuff comes up,
Speaker 1: when someone has denied something that they clearly deserve, that's
Speaker 1: just I can't even I can't even have fathom that.
Speaker 1: It's just especially for the parents and the you know,
Speaker 1: the you know, the family members and friends. So it's
Speaker 1: very difficult to ascertain exactly what happens in a firefight.
Speaker 1: But the Pentagon at the same time doesn't have a
Speaker 1: very good track record. You can recall, you know, what
Speaker 1: happened to the Tillman family and how they were told
Speaker 1: that he died heroically under enemy fire and then later
Speaker 1: on find out that it was a friendly fire incident.
Speaker 1: And I mean, how do how do you think the
Speaker 1: family feels about that? How do you how much trust
Speaker 1: do you think they have left in the Pentagon after
Speaker 1: going through something like that exactly? I mean, I can't
Speaker 1: you know, I can't answer that question on you. You're
Speaker 1: just thrown it out there. But I mean, it's it's um,
Speaker 1: it's it's all. It's horrible. UM. And yeah too too,
Speaker 1: you know, I guess what do they say the first
Speaker 1: councult towards the truth. I don't know if I buy that,
Speaker 1: but in some instances it's certainly true. And you know,
Speaker 1: I was talking to a member of a unit. I
Speaker 1: won't say which one, but he was saying that in
Speaker 1: this in this world, in this particular world, it is
Speaker 1: so cut for a and you know, they eat their own,
Speaker 1: they even eat their own, not just members of other units. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's the way it is with the
Speaker 1: seventy Ranger Regiment at all. You know, from what I know,
Speaker 1: I don't know a lot, but I can definitely see
Speaker 1: how it is with others, With other ones. I mean
Speaker 1: in the Marine Corps. They jokingly say we eat their own,
Speaker 1: but they really don't. But you know, they're very competitive
Speaker 1: with each other. It's very type day. But boy, you know,
Speaker 1: it's been an eye opener. Let me I write in
Speaker 1: in my my own memoir that I'm kind of wrapping
Speaker 1: up now. I read about this incident in Iraq when
Speaker 1: I was with the Ranger Regiment and it was we
Speaker 1: killed the terrorist. Um. Well, within the r O S
Speaker 1: everything was legit. Um. I was in the first vehicle
Speaker 1: in the convoy. I was the one that had you know,
Speaker 1: eyes on him and ordered my gun or to open
Speaker 1: fire on him, so on and so forth. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then when I got back to the FOB, um, I
Speaker 1: think I remember reading about this, or I listened to
Speaker 1: a podcast. I've heard this story. I've heard this where
Speaker 1: where a guy came out of the talk and he
Speaker 1: started telling me that the terrorist had a gun and
Speaker 1: he was shooting it over his shoulder as he walked
Speaker 1: away from us. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know
Speaker 1: where I've seen that. I may I may have written
Speaker 1: something about it or said something about it, But I'm
Speaker 1: just looking at this dude, like and he said, he
Speaker 1: this was the amazing part. He's saying. We saw the
Speaker 1: whole thing. We watched the whole thing on the Predator
Speaker 1: drone feed, and we saw that he was shooting a
Speaker 1: glock over his shoulder at you. Now, motherfucker explained to
Speaker 1: me how you knew you knew the type of pistol
Speaker 1: he was shooting from the Predator feed footage. Really yeah,
Speaker 1: fromt on that flear on that L three flear ball,
Speaker 1: you can you can you can tell the difference between
Speaker 1: you an H and K and a glock. Really, So,
Speaker 1: when when people say the first casualty of war is truth,
Speaker 1: I know exactly what they mean by that. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: are we really were really really far from that? Though,
Speaker 1: because I can tell you this, I mean, it's totally
Speaker 1: different technology. But I was kind of surprised by this.
Speaker 1: People have jokingly been saying, how this new trend on
Speaker 1: Facebook this week about posting like your ten year throwback.
Speaker 1: There's been a bunch of memes going around. Oh you're
Speaker 1: helping uh Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook's facial recognition technology. But
Speaker 1: let me tell you something. My end who works at
Speaker 1: the high school, I want to send me a photo
Speaker 1: of my two thousand three yearbook. All right, it's a
Speaker 1: long time ago. My face has changed considerably. I posted
Speaker 1: that photo and without me doing anything, Facebook tag both
Speaker 1: me and my friend who was above me. So I
Speaker 1: mean if facial if facial recognition could tell me, uh
Speaker 1: you could tell what I looked like from over fifteen
Speaker 1: years ago, then I mean, are we really that far
Speaker 1: from a predator drone being able to tell what gun
Speaker 1: you're shooting? Well, I mean maybe a spy satellite or
Speaker 1: some highly developed optic could, But I mean at you know,
Speaker 1: this drone was probably a fifteen thousand feet up with
Speaker 1: a black and white screen. Um back in two thousand
Speaker 1: and five, with you know, five second delay. No, he
Speaker 1: couldn't tell what type of gun it went. And the
Speaker 1: point I was making with that story is that there
Speaker 1: was no gun like that whole thing is bullshit. He
Speaker 1: was never shooting at it. But I'm just saying, would
Speaker 1: it be possible in the near future that that will
Speaker 1: be able to sure eventually? Yeah? I mean, well look,
Speaker 1: I mean there's two great topics when I'm writing about
Speaker 1: right now in terms of um, you know resolution, Um yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there are imagers that from that altitude you
Speaker 1: could you could resolve that uh and be able to
Speaker 1: determine what type of weapon it was. Uh. And you
Speaker 1: know the others r o E and skating skating skating
Speaker 1: r o E s and it happens like you know,
Speaker 1: there's guys who know, you know, like one guy even
Speaker 1: wrote about and in extortion one step about you know,
Speaker 1: Apache pilots, they you know, they they they stayed outside
Speaker 1: of where you can hear them, and they you know,
Speaker 1: they'll watch a guy and they'll see troops and they'll
Speaker 1: throw their RPG or the p k M in the
Speaker 1: grass and then they'll just walk around. And so there's
Speaker 1: you can't pit them, you can't p I D. Then
Speaker 1: you can't possitively idea ide them. But you know, and
Speaker 1: then um, you know, you've got that that tad's pinvice
Speaker 1: that you know, target acquisition designation site pilot night business
Speaker 1: system they got on that APACHE. You now they have
Speaker 1: the impacts, the modern I version. It can see a
Speaker 1: long way off and uh, I still don't think it
Speaker 1: can do resolved the type of handgun, but it certainly
Speaker 1: can just distinguish between an a K, a p K
Speaker 1: and an RPG. And this one pile I was telling me,
Speaker 1: He's like, yeah, we just waited for him. He grabbed
Speaker 1: it and then he had a hell fire up his ass,
Speaker 1: you know, right there. So, uh, those little thermal imaging
Speaker 1: balls that they were mounting on vehicles as I was
Speaker 1: getting out of the army in two thousand and ten,
Speaker 1: which I believe they were developed for the small boats
Speaker 1: that seal teams use UM. But those things were pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: I mean, the resolution was pretty amazing on them. One
Speaker 1: of the things about UM, about those imagers, any type
Speaker 1: of UM, any type of camera system, is the gimbal
Speaker 1: and stabilization device, because you know, you look at that
Speaker 1: gun tape and it's it's as if it's bolted to
Speaker 1: the side of a building, but you know it's on
Speaker 1: an APACHE that's going like nine or UM you know,
Speaker 1: or U S that's up high UM and as you
Speaker 1: know again I don't want to. We could talk technical stuff.
Speaker 1: You get very technical, but you know, the farther you
Speaker 1: get away from something with a with a passive scanner,
Speaker 1: which is what those things are. Um. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a thing called the inverse square rule where you know,
Speaker 1: you double the distance from a source of light to
Speaker 1: where you're imaging it, and you don't have the it's
Speaker 1: not one half of the amount of photons per unit
Speaker 1: area time, it's one quarter. So the farther you get away,
Speaker 1: you really drops. That's why these these telescopes say that
Speaker 1: these really big mirrors on them to do deep space photography,
Speaker 1: but uh, are imaging. But you know there's that, and
Speaker 1: then there's just also the resolution of the sensor, um,
Speaker 1: the internal sensor. But again this is kind of going
Speaker 1: way off topic. But but they are getting better and better.
Speaker 1: Yoh yeah, I mean some of this stuff. Uh. Um.
Speaker 1: There's also some inferometry type stuff that they're doing with
Speaker 1: multiple sensors that they fuse them. Uh. And they've been
Speaker 1: doing that for a long time actually since the sixties
Speaker 1: from space maybe the sixties, but about the seventies. Um.
Speaker 1: And I just I emailed to you if you want
Speaker 1: to write an article right now about UM the atmosphere
Speaker 1: and how it um it's the component of the atmosphere
Speaker 1: and weather for reconnaissance satellites. And the n r O
Speaker 1: declassified all these documents in eleven and then they just disappeared.
Speaker 1: But I saw him on an archive site and uh,
Speaker 1: just this week and I download all these It's fucking amazing,
Speaker 1: so fascinating. They had a guy for all through the years,
Speaker 1: different guy who would write a book like the book
Speaker 1: on the history of that classified pardon that classified internal
Speaker 1: history top secret. Yeah, it was a guy who wrote
Speaker 1: a book on the history of for instance, UH Hexagon,
Speaker 1: which was the name for the Cage nine satellite, was
Speaker 1: the last film UH satellite. UM it's a constant satellite.
Speaker 1: And they printed like five copies. Its top secret, and
Speaker 1: no one ever was like, okay, I wrote a book
Speaker 1: on the history and no one's no one's gonna read it.
Speaker 1: And then they twenty five years later or thirty years later,
Speaker 1: they classified it. They let it out. But that that
Speaker 1: FOYA site, that FOYA page on n r O dot
Speaker 1: gov or whatever it is, is no longer there. But
Speaker 1: it was some take, some work, but I was able
Speaker 1: to dig around and grab an archive version of it
Speaker 1: from an archive site. So, but it is really really fascinating.
Speaker 1: A lot of stuff is redacted, but the resolution is
Speaker 1: pretty damn good at what they do from space. But
Speaker 1: then it's so much easier when you're when if you're
Speaker 1: not in denied airspace. I mean, that's the whole reason
Speaker 1: that they even have spy satellites is because denied airspace.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, if you're if you're you know,
Speaker 1: you're an air Supreme C situation or you're like an
Speaker 1: r Q one seventy and you know they can't see you,
Speaker 1: then you can get pretty low and uh and that
Speaker 1: inverse square rule thing, you know, you can you know
Speaker 1: that you need to. You can either put a much
Speaker 1: bigger sensor on it or put a lot of smaller
Speaker 1: sensors and get really low and pick up a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff. So anyway, so you can tell if it
Speaker 1: was a glock or a baretta. Well again, UM, I
Speaker 1: don't know how much time we have left. But one
Speaker 1: of the things that I love to read about and
Speaker 1: research is called massive measurement signature intelligence UM and and
Speaker 1: that's basically it's really the least known about and it's passive.
Speaker 1: There's there's some active for radio radioized topic. But you
Speaker 1: know it's it's measures, measurement and signatures. So it's like
Speaker 1: a great example is, um, you know what an IBM
Speaker 1: S electric is the typewriter. I'm kind of aging my
Speaker 1: revealing my age, but it's an electric typewriter. Yeah. It
Speaker 1: had the ball head so the revolution, you know, so
Speaker 1: basically when you hit a key, the ball flips up
Speaker 1: and it spins around and it strikes the the ribbon, uh,
Speaker 1: and each key so he has an auditory signature. They're
Speaker 1: all the same basically, you know, anyone and in the
Speaker 1: space part's got its own. So and then there's a
Speaker 1: measure between from when the there's that signature and then
Speaker 1: a certain number of tensive seconds or hundreds of seconds
Speaker 1: between hitting that and when the ball strikes. And each
Speaker 1: letter has a unique measurement because it's it's going to
Speaker 1: take the different amount of time because you know, there's
Speaker 1: space differently. So in Moscow in the seventies, internal documents
Speaker 1: were written with the US embassy with the selectric beam
Speaker 1: selectric or selectrict too, and the Soviets snuck in this
Speaker 1: thing that would measure the sound and measure you know,
Speaker 1: between the sounds and so as they're typing these internal
Speaker 1: classified documents, soviets where them in real time, knowing exactly
Speaker 1: what they're like. So that's a that's a great example
Speaker 1: of mass and aspect of mass, and where we provoke
Speaker 1: the opposition into taking an action and then we're able
Speaker 1: to measure what it is they're doing. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: that's that's that's sort of a fusion of human human
Speaker 1: you know, reaction and then the mass and um. And
Speaker 1: I'm unaware of that, but I certainly well, for instance,
Speaker 1: I mean here we can make up an example. I
Speaker 1: was just going to give the example of a Disha
Speaker 1: twelve point seven millimeter basically you know, fifty cow. I
Speaker 1: think that I think the twelve point seven is a
Speaker 1: little bit of a bigger it's a little longer, right
Speaker 1: g not that much, a little bit more energy, but
Speaker 1: they they use that as an any aircraft gun. But
Speaker 1: you know, the muzzle flash is a distinctive visual signature
Speaker 1: and the timing between those flashes that's the measurement. And
Speaker 1: so I think even from space they can see if
Speaker 1: it's a dish. I'm not sure, but you've really get
Speaker 1: to know what to look for or when I say that,
Speaker 1: I mean it's got to be zoomed right on end UM.
Speaker 1: So I can imagine that. Yeah, like you could provoke,
Speaker 1: like say in the South China, see UM, you know,
Speaker 1: you can fly one of those EC one thirty Command
Speaker 1: of solos which they stuff those things full, but all
Speaker 1: sorts of things, or you know, UM in RC twelve
Speaker 1: and n C twelve liberty flying around with UM. You know, Okay,
Speaker 1: here's a fleet of Chinese ships and we're gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: see what happens when we send in a you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, destroyer or something within houtonautical miles and
Speaker 1: see what types of UM YAM electromagica radiation you can
Speaker 1: pick up. So UM, absolutely that's UM. I think one
Speaker 1: of the things I was reading about these classified nr
Speaker 1: O documents was it was pretty fascinating. They would have
Speaker 1: UM two or three different signals intelligence satellites. You know,
Speaker 1: obviously you can't park them up their orbiting, but they
Speaker 1: would hear a transmission pick up transmission from a Soviet submarine,
Speaker 1: and if they had three of them, they would be
Speaker 1: able to trilineate, not triangulate, but trilaneate how GPS sports
Speaker 1: basically um through the timing, the exact location in depth
Speaker 1: of where the Soviet submarines are for work. So this
Speaker 1: stuff's always fascinating to me. Yeah, so getting pretty far
Speaker 1: off that's what we do here. Yeah, it's all Jack.
Speaker 1: I'll email you that link or dropbox for if you
Speaker 1: want to check out some of those those n r
Speaker 1: O docks are just fascinating, you know, going back to
Speaker 1: the sixties. It's just it's like wow. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: um yeah. But also you know, just like we're talking
Speaker 1: about getting back to Mike Show and in the family
Speaker 1: and you know, the whole like just I don't want
Speaker 1: to say just leave me alone, but it is really
Speaker 1: you know, it's delicate. I I'm I try to be
Speaker 1: a passive not active with that, like you know, put
Speaker 1: it's put it up on Facebook, or like, hey, this
Speaker 1: book's coming out, Mike's in the cover, you know, or
Speaker 1: here's uh, here's one of the here's one of the
Speaker 1: images that I got out of Jeremy. Jeremy I had
Speaker 1: some great photographs to photographs of Jeremy sand Roe in
Speaker 1: the book, and you know, same deployment. About a month
Speaker 1: before Mike passed a sniper shot Jeremy and died and
Speaker 1: uh you know, I you know, that's another thing about
Speaker 1: the book. I wanted to do is make it a
Speaker 1: memorial um to some of those who were who were lost,
Speaker 1: and uh, because I have some just really great photographs
Speaker 1: of Jeremy on patrol and the hinder cush and was
Speaker 1: really looking forward to seeing him. Um when I got
Speaker 1: to a wrap that that didn't happen. So um yeah, yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: once again, the book is war moments, images and stories
Speaker 1: of combat in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond. It's out right
Speaker 1: now in Amherst Media. Came out today as we're recording this,
Speaker 1: so as you're hearing this yesterday, I was looking right
Speaker 1: now it's number twenty five in military history on Amazon.
Speaker 1: Let's get that ranking better. I always like seeing the
Speaker 1: SOFTWAP radio audience. Um, you know, get our both the
Speaker 1: soft rep bump. Yeah. So it's like Oprah, but it's
Speaker 1: not it's not quite on that level. But it is
Speaker 1: always cool to see those books rise in the rankings
Speaker 1: because of you guys, and uh, you know, these photographs
Speaker 1: are incredible. Ed did an amazing job, So support the
Speaker 1: book and uh yeah, pick it up right there on
Speaker 1: Amazon or anywhere else war moments, images and stories of
Speaker 1: combat in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond. Uh you could follow
Speaker 1: ed on Twitter and Instagram at ed Derek ed d
Speaker 1: A R A c K which I from what I
Speaker 1: remember of the last episode, I believe I'm saying right
Speaker 1: because it looks kind of like de Rock. That's Derek
Speaker 1: Uh and Derek dot Com d A r a c k. Uh.
Speaker 1: And as you mentioned to other Red Wings projects in
Speaker 1: the works, some other stuff. You're constantly working anything else
Speaker 1: you want to get out there before we wrap things
Speaker 1: up with you. Um, The Warriors of Ambar that's coming
Speaker 1: out later this year. That's uh. Um. It's it's Perseus
Speaker 1: Books and Decapo Press. It's an imprint of Hatchet, which
Speaker 1: is one of the Big five publishers. Yeah, I've been
Speaker 1: working on this project for a long time. I love
Speaker 1: the project. It's so I'm gonna go out there and say,
Speaker 1: it's just about the greatest war story I've ever come across.
Speaker 1: It's unbelievable. It's an entire of at Tian of Marines
Speaker 1: and Uh. It covers all the companies and they did
Speaker 1: a lot of sacrifice and it was it's just it's
Speaker 1: I'm finishing it up right now. It's an amazing project.
Speaker 1: So that's what's one of the big ones. So thank
Speaker 1: you for letting me. I'll have to have you back
Speaker 1: on and that book comes out. Absolutely Jack's thank you
Speaker 1: guys so much. You great, super appreciated, super appreciate your
Speaker 1: audience and you know, listening and you know, if you
Speaker 1: ever just wanna, for the hell of it, just talk
Speaker 1: about whatever. Like let's talk about i SR stuff. I
Speaker 1: mean and get technical. I mean, people like it, I think,
Speaker 1: so I love talking about that. I'm down. I'm a
Speaker 1: total military nerds. So I go on about that for hours.
Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely, I love it too. It's very little, very
Speaker 1: little known about it. It's it's really you know, and
Speaker 1: it's it's like that guy who wrote that book for
Speaker 1: n R. Oh, it's like what you do today, honey.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I was, you know, writing stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: writing a book. Oh you wrote a book. Yah, too
Speaker 1: bad you can never read it. So but uh, anyway,
Speaker 1: all right, man, you guys are great. Thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks Ed, thank you again. Okay, take care great. Having
Speaker 1: ed back on the show, I mentioned it before, but
Speaker 1: once again, if you want to go back and listen
Speaker 1: to his first appear and you want to hear more
Speaker 1: about the operation Red Wings Extortion seventeen stuff, that's episode
Speaker 1: three fifteen. Be sure to check out Create Club. I
Speaker 1: actually just got a new package from Create Club in
Speaker 1: the mail yesterday, some really awesome stuff in it. Uh
Speaker 1: my favorite item, I mean, there's a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: in there. My favorite item is the flashlight because I
Speaker 1: think for a tiny little keychain, flashlight is pretty damn
Speaker 1: powerful and the thing is of use many times. So
Speaker 1: we have different tiers of membership depending on how prepared
Speaker 1: you want to be, and gift options are available as well.
Speaker 1: Scott Whittner from the Load Out Room, Army Ranger, Drew
Speaker 1: Wallace who you've heard on the show, and all the
Speaker 1: other guys from Hurricane involved with the Create Club are
Speaker 1: currently putting together some great gear custom products made for us,
Speaker 1: everything from sunglass cases to eat ec bags and other
Speaker 1: manly products. It's a club four men by men. You
Speaker 1: can check that all out of Create Club dot Us.
Speaker 1: Once again, that's Create Club dot Us. Also, as a
Speaker 1: reminder for those listening, now is the time to sign
Speaker 1: up for the spec Ops channel. It's our channel that
Speaker 1: offers the most exclusive shows, documentaries and interviews covering the
Speaker 1: most exciting military content today. The spec Ops Channel premier
Speaker 1: show Training Sell follows former Special Operations Forces as they
Speaker 1: participate in the most advanced training in the country, everything
Speaker 1: from shooting schools, defensive driving, jungle and winter warfare, climbing,
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Speaker 1: subscribing to the spec Ops Channel. Spec ops channel dot
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Speaker 1: up right now. Last thing I'm gonna mention here that
Speaker 1: I've been teasing out the last few shows and we
Speaker 1: really hope that you subscribe the news Rep Financial Report.
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Speaker 1: and you could sign up today. All right, As I
Speaker 1: was teasing out at the beginning of the show, we're
Speaker 1: gonna do a giveaway. I was waiting for the end
Speaker 1: to tell you all about it because I want to
Speaker 1: save it for you guys to listen to the whole show. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I know there's people probably just listen to
Speaker 1: the interview and turn it off. So for you guys
Speaker 1: who are the loyal listeners, here's what we're gonna do.
Speaker 1: We just got those soft up radio tumblers from our sponsor, Pelican.
Speaker 1: They look awesome. We're gonna give one of them away
Speaker 1: to you guys. This week, we'll give away that as
Speaker 1: well some greate club gear that we have here in
Speaker 1: the studio. I'll put together a package and we'll give
Speaker 1: it to someone who sends the best email this week
Speaker 1: to soft rep dot radio at soft rep dot com.
Speaker 1: And when I say the best email, not like a
Speaker 1: guest suggestion and not something super long that I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna be able to get to on the show. If
Speaker 1: you have a good question or a concise comment, the
Speaker 1: best this week, just this week, I'll give away that package,
Speaker 1: so to one lucky listeners soft rep dot Radio at
Speaker 1: soft rep dot com. I was originally gonna say, if
Speaker 1: you're at a five star review on Apple Podcasts, but
Speaker 1: I remember when I mentioned this to Adam and Dodd,
Speaker 1: he said that he doesn't know for allowed to do that, so,
Speaker 1: you know, giving out like gifts in exchange for positive reviews.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna give it to an email or but
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna encourage you guys to leave a review.
Speaker 1: You have nothing to do with the contest, but weave
Speaker 1: a review on Apple Podcasts. It's like if you visit
Speaker 1: a prostitute, but she doesn't say she's a prostituteous leave
Speaker 1: an envelope of money on her nightstand. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: don't talk about the money. Yeah, just go through your
Speaker 1: and then the envelope goes exactly. So we do. We'd
Speaker 1: appreciate it the letter of the law. What we do.
Speaker 1: We do appreciate it if you leave us a review.
Speaker 1: But the contest is really for an email. But leave
Speaker 1: a review on Apple podcast because it helps us with
Speaker 1: the ratings and we love Apple podcasts, So please do that.
Speaker 1: But for the email, I'll announce a winner next week.
Speaker 1: Just keep it concise and interesting, and I'll announce it
Speaker 1: on Tuesday, on really Wednesday recording Tuesday, I'll announce it
Speaker 1: on Wednesday's show. As you know, we have two shows
Speaker 1: each week, so I'll extend this for the whole week.
Speaker 1: Soft Rep dot Radio at soft rep dot com. Send
Speaker 1: us your email just you know, you know how they
Speaker 1: always say, like ship posting on Twitter, don't just send
Speaker 1: us some bullshit. If it's good, you might get something. Um.
Speaker 1: Next episode, we have Peter Gidrey coming on, which I'm
Speaker 1: personally really excited for. As I mentioned on the podcast
Speaker 1: a couple of times I watched that documentary A Leaf
Speaker 1: of Faith Peter Giddrey's a veteran and talked about the
Speaker 1: benefits of creatum. Uh. And I want to get into
Speaker 1: it because I was reading something that Ben Shapiro put
Speaker 1: up and apparently, in America right now you are as
Speaker 1: scary as this is. At least according to the article
Speaker 1: that he put up, you're more likely to die from
Speaker 1: opioids in America than die in a car crash. So
Speaker 1: if apparently so, I'll have to check the source on it,
Speaker 1: but it was an article that I saw Ben Shapiro
Speaker 1: posted yesterday. Um. And you know, at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, if anything is going to get people off
Speaker 1: opioid is whether they're veterans, whether they're civilians, if it's creatum,
Speaker 1: if it's you know, marijuana for some people, or cbeed oil,
Speaker 1: I'm all for it. I mean, I don't like to
Speaker 1: see people get alphopio is. It's probably the worst thing
Speaker 1: you could possibly have going on. So, um, I'm open
Speaker 1: to hearing about anything. And as I said on the
Speaker 1: episode with Alex, when I was in South Florida, you
Speaker 1: can't go, uh, you know, a mile without seeing one
Speaker 1: of these caba bars, which is apparently a form of
Speaker 1: creatum that you drink in a tea and when you
Speaker 1: go to South Florida, I'm telling you, everywhere you look
Speaker 1: there are advertisements or Caba bars everywhere. So if it's
Speaker 1: caught on in South Florida, which which unfortunately is like
Speaker 1: the rehab capital of the world or the rehab capital
Speaker 1: of America, I'm sure it's gonna catch on elsewhere. So
Speaker 1: I would like to talk about creat um uh and
Speaker 1: be ahead of the curve before you know, everybody's talking
Speaker 1: about it. So you know, I'd like to know the
Speaker 1: benefits of it, and um, you know, as Alex on
Speaker 1: the episode, do your own research, of course, but if
Speaker 1: it's helped Peter, I'd like to hear how it's gonna
Speaker 1: help other people. Yeah, um cool? Anything else before we
Speaker 1: get out of here, Na man, I think that's about it.
Speaker 1: Pre order Murphy's Law as always, pre orders help, thank you, um.
Speaker 1: But now just churning away on that, getting the getting
Speaker 1: the book done, getting some articles written, working on a
Speaker 1: few other things. A retired Green Berets working on an
Speaker 1: article for US UM about something I've been trying to
Speaker 1: piece together for a long time. Um about a Special
Speaker 1: Forces soldier who died back in the nineteen eighties and
Speaker 1: I've been trying to figure this thing out. But I
Speaker 1: think he's got the real story. I mean, he's covered
Speaker 1: uncovered information. It is gonna shock people. So I'm looking
Speaker 1: forward to publishing that. Um. But that's about it right now. Excellent,
Speaker 1: All right? Well, follow us at Software Up Radio on
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Speaker 1: visibility on all platforms. It helps us out. Support our sponsor, Pelican.
Speaker 1: If you need to go back to the beginning of
Speaker 1: the show to hear how to get that free tumbler
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Speaker 1: But Pelican Coolers dot com and uh, that's it, guys.
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Twitter at Ian Scotto. You
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Speaker 1: them listening to Self Reply Radio. New episodes up every
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