Malcolm Gladwell: Guns, Writing, and Revisionist History - Danger Close with Jack Carr

foreign this is the danger close podcast beyond the books with me Jack Carr [Music] welcome to the danger close podcast an ironclad original presented by Navy Federal Credit Union my guest today Malcolm Gladwell Malcolm Gladwell is the author of Tipping Point blink outliers What the Dog Saw David and Goliath talking to strangers and the bomber Mafia he is also the host of The revisionist History Podcast and an all-around great and thoughtful guy so now without further ado Malcolm Gladwell you might see that I collaborate with Ironclad on a lot of different projects in fact I have worked with them on my book trailers this podcast as well as a few other exciting Endeavors that are currently in development Ironclad teams up with some of the biggest brands in the world to create Dynamic films series podcasts and AD campaigns if you are a brand or individual looking to elevate your content or start a podcast don't hesitate to reach out through their website this is ironclad.com and make sure you follow them on all major platforms at this is Ironclad hey Malcolm how are you I'm very well how are you oh wonderful thank you so much for taking the time to do this it uh it really means the world to me um so so I sincerely appreciate it not at all I'm looking forward to it and is this uh is this Pushkin world headquarters that you're in right now or are you uh are you at home well I live in um a bunch of us work out of Hudson New York so I'm in the Hudson New York offices okay um so but the rest everyone else is in the city um but we're the uh we're the we're the Exiles got it out in the country where are you no I love it I'm in Park City Utah so okay I finished up uh military time in San Diego uh on the SEAL Teams out there and then we wanted to make a physical and psychological break with the military and I knew I was gonna gonna write because that's what I wanted to do since I was a little kid my mom was a librarian grew up surrounded by books and a love of reading and so I prepared myself my whole life for that really next step and that transition out of the military so we decided to uh raise our kids in a ski town so we packed up and moved up to Park City Utah so so here we are you know I know it well I've been there many times oh nice for uh do you ski no I go there just conferences there but most memorably I went there because there was a time when um a bunch of athletes run I'm a runner and you know the lots of Runners train up there oh yeah and um I remember when I went to do a to interview um uh Alberto Salazar who was then coaching three of the greatest distance runners in the world they're all in Park City and it was like you could drive around you could see you know mo Farah and you know Galen Rupp and these kind of Legends just kind of cruising along that was kind of cool yeah we have the altitude a lot of trails so you don't have to really run on the road unless you uh really want to so it's a it's a great it's a great spot of course the Utah Olympic Training Center Utah Olympic Park up here for the for the kids that's mostly skiing and snowboarding and things things like that but that was the one thing we noticed my wife and I we got out of the car and we we thought we were in pretty good shape coming from San Diego and the SEAL Teams and the beach and all that stuff and we stepped out of the car in the Smith's grocery store parking lot and looked around and where we looked at each other and said oh my goodness we need to get into the gym because people up here are insane about their Fitness it is crazy and then it'll change they don't go home and like shower and after the gym they go all day they're in the workout clothes you know making sure that everyone knows that you know how that yeah I'd be a lot healthier if I had oh I don't know I need to get back into I'm doing lot more writing lately than I've been doing working out so which is one of the things I want to talk to you about actually and find it but I'll get there um but I know your your books are on a lot of reading lists but I don't know if you know that your books are on the naval special Warfare Seal Team professional reading list because I put it together as I was leaving the SEAL Teams they asked manual as a reader and interested in history and all that so they asked me to put uh put a reading list together for professional development so at that point you had uh uh four books out so those four books were under the leadership section that's where I put them under under there but uh but yeah so they're on the the naval special Warfare professional reading list not sure if it ever went anywhere because I sent it and then sent left the military essentially so not not sure what happened to it but uh uh and we also have a few things in common so we are both have a love of the Dick Cavett Show and I love I could spend um days just looking at those old episodes and uh amazing because because you didn't have a TV growing up I know that um so where did you discover the Dick Cavett Show I mean like online you know in the last 10 years I mean I knew vaguely who he was but I would never have grown up in Canada without a TV I would never have watched any Dick Cavett um I mean I would have read about him I guess but um no I just realized you know it's this incredibly wonderful um repository of American cultural history and the amazing thing is you know it's that it's that era in television when the interviews are 45 minutes long yeah so it's like podcasts you know it's funny podcast is a circling back to a role that television used to play yeah which was you sit and get comfortable with somebody and you have a real conversation yeah and then TV like now it's like you know you'll be watching late night and you're three minutes into someone who you want to hear for 40 minutes and then it's over okay it's like why yep come back it's much more controlled and I noticed that too and I made the correlation to podcasts uh as well because it's long-form conversation uh very out of control I don't think uh it would come back to that today with publicists and managers and everybody wanted to control what these celebrities say on stage they want them to get on get introduced uh talk about their project and maybe tell one story uh antidote something and then off and that's what you get you get three a couple maybe a couple three minute segments four minute segments maybe but I mean dick habit show yours I mean and some of these are uncomfortable as you know you've covered a few on your podcast on revisionist history but even just sitting down like I love um I love movies and storytelling and and the interviews with like Charles Bronson that those are awkward those are tough interviews what he's talking to some serious tough guys that served in World War II that are now you know at the height of their and it's it's it's interesting especially in that time frame what they felt comfortable talking about uh those those celebrities without fear of backlash I guess or maybe not caring about anything it's amazing and yeah weirdly you know that's a time when celebrity culture is different back then but in some ways you could argue it's more powerful I mean a movie star that was an era of movie stars where you know now the movie stars of today don't really are not really in the same plane as those of the and similarly with rock stars I mean that was an ERA when Paul Simon goes on Dick Cavett in 19 whatever it was 73 or 74. he's a rock star I mean today there's only a handful of people who fit that category back then there were like 10 15 20 people who were you know walked down the street and you know people would Swoon and you're right though back in those days I think it's probably connected when you had people stars were allowed to be them to be their charismatic selves on in mass media and that that sustained their stardom um and when you don't allow when all I see of it's really hard for me to kind of fall in love with you know pick some 35 year old actor or actress if all I'm ever seeing of them is a controlled three-minute clip on morning Television right no it certainly is and I love Truman Capote uh there I mean multiple times I think he's he's going on there right now outrageous stories on there uh Alfred Hitchcock is on there Salvador Dali Marlon Brando Muhammad Ali I just did a quick uh Kirk Douglas his word fascinating Lee Marvin love that he talks about his time in the military in World War II I mean it is it's insane it's the it's everyone went on that show uh and you're right it is Lee Marvin as legit a tough guy in real life as he was in the movies I think even more so uh especially if you just look at I don't know about outside the military but World War II and and uh certainly um and but they didn't they they talked about it every now and again but mostly on Dick Cavett I don't know if there any other places I've read a couple of things but I mean in person on TV that sort of a thing and it was live I don't know how if they had a 15 second thing back then or a 20-second thing I think it was all recorded live I think yeah oh yeah oh absolutely I mean absolutely fascinating do you have a favorite uh guest or episode I think it probably was those Paul Simon episodes there's one where he's which we used in our we did a little audiobook with Paul Simon called Miracle wonder and we used clip of one where he's um uh he is halfway through the song God which one it was it um one of his most famous songs he's written half of it and he can't figure out how to finish the song okay so he goes on oh it's um uh oh my God it's anyways so he goes and he sings the first basically three lines and then he stops and says um I don't know what to do next what do you think I should do are they and then he plays like a couple of versions and ideas about how to um about how to fix it it's really it's like a kind of magical moment because he's giving he's he's he has the courage to take you inside his creative process yeah um and uh it's really I've I just I can't get and cavett's kind of patience Kevin has no idea where it's going uh and he's fine with that yeah that's what makes it so um uh so so much oh yeah it's um that signed up because I met my old lover on the street last night still crazy after all these years and he's written it seems so set she seems so glad to see me I just smiled and I and then he goes and I can't go I don't know what happens next and then they try and then because we know we're looking at listening to that you know we know if you know Paul Simon how the story ends and we're getting this little glimpse of him when when he was still figuring that out it's fantastic uh yeah that is crazy it's still crazy after all these years yeah yeah a lot of those interviews aren't and uh Cavett is so quick I mean he is so sharp uh that's another thing that stands out to me it's uh you know you know that I've done these bootleg videos with him no if you go on YouTube no one has watched them we did two of them with he's got a we share a friend called Dave Hill as a comedian and we did two I think they're hilarious but I'm biased we shot them in my in my living room and we just and you know Dave just called up dick and said we're doing this nutty thing we want you to join us come so he like gets hit a taxi and comes down to my apartment and we shot we shot one of them was a spoof about Amazon hilarious but anyway like that was years ago but it was really good it was really fun I will be watching those as soon as this is over that is hilarious because I mean as you're I mean exceptionally funny as well I mean people with uh people haven't listened to revisionist history um even from reading the books you'll get it but but certain episodes of revisionist History are certainly listening to you speak anything on online or you're uh where you're speaking somewhere um so you and Cabot together that that is gonna be a treat and I'm looking forward to that Dave Hillary comedian I don't know if I've heard him before but I'm looking forward to that um we also share a love of spy Thrillers and uh I always feel like when I read that I think I read it maybe in one of the one of the books that I read over the years but you talk about it on your on revisionist History um and I know one of your prized possessions is The Spy Who Came in from the cold um first edition yeah yeah I'm collecting all these first editions now the paperbacks that I read growing up so all that David morels and Nelson de Mills AJ Quinnell JC Pollock Mark Olden Tom Clancy uh all these guys who in the early 80s and into the the 90s before Daniel Silva before Vince Flynn before that that yeah that kind of crowd oh I love that era yeah it's fascinating and now I'm collecting all the sign first editions as well but I kept all the paper back so I have all those memories and I love that smell I remember exactly where I was when I read all those books um you can get I remember once uh I was on a plane from New York to uh LA and I decided I wanted to buy a bunch of first editions of the Spy Thrillers I loved reading growing up in the 70s and 80s went online and I bought I was on Amazon and between you know on the duration of that flight I basically bought a library and like you can get a pristine first edition of you know uh uh John no maybe not Johnny carries a good example but of a you know one of those classic novels in that era for like five bucks yeah they put together this fantastic life which is still in my one of my prized possessions the whole thing was like it was a hundred books for a couple hundred bucks it was sort of amazing they get expensive when you get the signed first editions especially once the authors passed away like uh yeah Fleming or now uh but it's the sign first editions where they get you so so they're yeah they're they're getting me so my collection might be a tad bit um yeah they're definitely less expensive ways to do it uh to do it are you a big I'm a huge Demon Hunter Fan oh yeah huge and he's a great guy he's a great guy he is I've never I've emailed with him I've never met him and I I think there's a whole there's about like he's written many many books there's about 10 of them I think our really first class and there are sections of each of those that are as incredibly written evocative I mean quite apart from the fact that he's got compelling characters and and is knows more about guns I don't know whether he knows more about what guns than you but he knows a lot about guns he does he does we just emailed last night actually we were just emailing back and forth he has a new book coming out uh three novellas so from each of the three Swagger generations and I think the cover just uh just dropped maybe yesterday so uh we were emailing back and forth about that swaggers the Swagger family is one of the great families in American fiction no I mean I I don't these guys don't get enough love some of these writers because mine is like Hunter you know he people they they say oh he's a genre writer and they kind of push him off to the side no no he's legit brilliant literary fiction writer who happens to write about you know right in the Thriller genre it's but he's a he's as as gifted a stylist and as brilliant a plotter as anyone who's who's writing novels oh yes and I love that I can tell his works I'm reading him for so long and I told him this story we talked about everything I had him on my podcast we talked about it but I was reading an article but I didn't see who the article was by and I was reading it and I said oh this this has got to be Stephen Hunter and I flipped the page back and sure enough it was by Stephen Hunter he's one of those those authors who you can you can you recognize their writing by that style uh and it's nobody else no one else is even close to that you can do it with Daniel Silva um I think Stephen Hunter and Daniel Silva like those two guys if I was to to pick a combination of people that I've like most aspire to write like even though I want to write like myself and I have my my own style which I I hope I do yeah but uh but those two guys stand out to me in the ma in in this in the modern living generation of Thriller writers but uh Stephen Hunter is great he's Gruff uh you know an opinionated and uh he's also Pulitzer Prize uh winner and uh just an incredible Global guy oh yeah he's blurbed my book out of the gate and he was very kind to me um and uh and he's fascinating but where did your love of Thrillers come from did uh did you pick one out of the library when you were younger or did one of your parents hand you one where did that come from my dad used to read books to us every night before we went to bed and there was a he read all of the Sherlock Holmes stories to us and that got me hooked on mystery you know Mysteries and then I was also as a kid absolutely you know I was like a you know a classic boy I was obsessed with war and read endless books about wars and military history and things and so you know the place where those two things meet where Mysteries and or books made is is spies dwellers um and so I kind of began to consume them in all of these the Kerry was the first to make me realize took me a long time to like lookary because it's grown-up stuff yeah it's not really a these are books you should read when you're 13. yeah um but as a when I and I realized oh you could this is not like I said this is not genre work this is this guy's a serious novelist um who's dealing with real and um uh I it was right around the time I started it I became obsessed with Germany and would go to Germany all the time um and so I loved reading books set in Cold War Germany and so that could have been even more because that's the kind of you know the symbolic heart of the Spy Thriller genre is Cold War Germany right it's like so um or Moscow or some version of that but um so that I I got um that was sort of how it how it happened yeah well I love that you're a uh you're not afraid because there are a lot of um uh closet Thriller lovers out there readers out there but they they like to just say that they only read non-fiction um at uh like let's say you know who doesn't get enough love is um which is weird to say because he's sold my books than anyone is Grisham oh yeah because these he has some shortcomings as a writer but as a his ability to put together a beautifully structured plot is without parallel those books structurally are perfect yeah they just like the stories are so economically told they're compelling their there's something about it he that man has gotten and just an insane gift and I also love the way that there's in many of his books there's a real kind of um moral Center to them as well they're not he I don't know I feel like he's had an you know when the history of the last hundred years is written I hope that they give him do credit I feel like he's influenced an enormous number of people in the way they think about their society and how um I don't know how it works now it doesn't work and all that kind of stuff um but anyway yeah he's always someone I've admired yeah I know he's fascinating and actually he was a an influence on me for well a few different ways but one in that I always knew that well the story of him writing A Time to Kill first and not being able to give that book away and then writing the firm and then that one of course skyrockets worldwide International bestseller Tom Cruise stars in the movie then they go back and public again they publish A Time to Kill which I think and I haven't read some of the newer things but all through the 90s I'm reading him early 2000s I'm reading everything that that he writes um but I think the Time to Kill is one of his best Works um yeah and it's and it's his first one but if he'd given up after that first one we wouldn't have a John Grisham novel every year uh so I think of him now maybe making partner in a law firm or whatever else and just thinking back to oh man I should have written that other book called The Firm I really should have done that and so yeah I was so I thought you know it's a great what if yeah it's always always I said okay if the first book doesn't work I'm still writing the second so even before I sent my first book to Simon Schuster I was on a plane to Mozambique to put boots on the ground over there and do research for my second novel because of that John Grisham story so uh so I owe him a little debt of gratitude there the first one did did work but um but if it hadn't and then if the second one hadn't worked then I was going to reevaluate some of my uh choices um but uh but that's the John Grisham story in his uh the way he started out with uh with the time to kill him people haven't read it uh they should definitely read that novel and then it'll start you down the path of all things Grisham uh have you read Charles McCary uh tears of autumn I mean amazing many of in fact my fate my um my favorite Charles McCurry one is is um is not the uh what's his name Christopher uh yeah Christopher Paul Christopher Paul Christopher is his hero it's the one he wrote he writes one um is it the oh lucky bastard which is really about Clinton oh I'm gonna read that one okay oh you got to be lucky about it's not Apocrypha one okay is it kind of one-off yeah it's really good it's like yeah he's a he's a he is an or he is an honestly talented um did you meet him before he passed away no I never did okay the 2019 I think he passed away yeah and there's a guy have you ever heard any um uh Robert Mattel yes yes I don't know how many books does he have I have I think two a lot yeah a lot they're they're kind of once you can't read yet you have to limit yourself yes you can't read them all but if you read three you're a happier person as yourself I I agree I agree they're different you have to you have to give it some time you have to commit um to at least getting through uh one of those um we also share well I guess I love our fascination with vehicles and I know you're a car person um yes wait what do you what do you what do you drive well I know you don't like SUVs but I don't know that's not true oh good let's let's my feelings have evolved oh wow there's a time and place for every automobile so it depends on what you're using it for oh okay I like this they're living in Park City Utah I'm not gonna say you should be driving a Prius okay I mean come on okay good a little nervous about this subject um but uh I like classic SU he's from the 80s the ones I grew up with so I have an 88 Land Cruiser which I also put in my novel and we've been put into the show so I have a 88 Land Cruiser a 78 fj40 um but I really like the 97 Land Cruiser so the 80 series um because it's that that mix before everything went too modern there's not a big computer screen on there I can still twist some dials it has a key it's modern enough if you keep it up and so 97 40th anniversary uh 80 series Land Cruiser is the one that I drive more often than not but they seem to be multiplying the Land Cruisers anyway um fixation I do yes I do yeah so that's honorable I think that's honorable I have no issue with that um I like sports sedans so I have a uh 2003 BMW M5 okay nice uh manual transmission V8 um I have a a black Cadillac ct4 Blackwing which is I think is the greatest sports sedan I've ever I've ever driven I mean it's an extraordinary car I don't understand that's another that's another brand that doesn't get enough love I think they make the best can I mix the best cars in the world they make for seventy thousand dollars they'll sell you a car that if you wanted to buy the near equivalent not as good the near equivalent from a German manufacturer would be twice as much no kidding right interesting like or a Corvette the Corvettes are essentially as good as McLarens and McLaren's cost 250 300 000 and you can get a Corvette for under 100. people don't do that calculation they don't understand like making something great for fifty thousand dollars as in a car um that your competitor can only make for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars is an insane accomplishment yeah right and you got to reward that like that so I feel I feel like you have to understand the constraints what makes a car interesting is the constraint that it was operating under okay so when I drive my black Wing the constraint was that they did not want to they didn't want to price it so high that no one except the top one percent could afford it yeah right that's a really interesting constraint yeah and how they resolve that is what makes the car fascinating okay if you it's boring if I say to you build a car and sell for a million dollars that's a completely uninteresting automobile yeah who cares like you could give you a million of course you of course it's great it's not interesting it's like wasn't hard but you and I you and I could start a car company tomorrow and if we were told we had a thousand dedicated buyers at a million dollars each we could pull it off yeah no no question yeah if we were told we had a hundred thousand buyers at 35 000 each there is no chance we could pull it off zero oh where did this come from for you did you I said I love the story that you tell in one of your the podcasts about your dad and you're going down the uh taking the off ramp or the on-ramp and you guys my dad was a speed demon he uh he yeah he's taken he's taken the off ramp on the in the middle of the winner way too fast that's what I just want and it's I see hits black ice slides down the slope until he's facing the wrong way on the on-ramp my mother is like screaming my brothers are like you know their hearts I actually thought it was really cool and then he'd say drives off the on-ramp spins around in the road and says turns around and says to us oh this is where I wanted to go all along I love I love those stories about your your dad what kind of car was that back then that if memory serves was a Peugeot 405. oh wow four probably getting that that completely fits with the image that I have of you and your family and you know I've learned of your dad through your podcasts and then writing so he this is the interesting thing about my dad which will resonate with you um uh because I think it's very similar because this is the only this is the only similarity between my dad and Navy Seals but so my dad had a had a resting heart rate of it was it was very very low 40s or high 30s and if you think about that physiologically that means that you know if you in times of stress if his heart rate doubles he's at 80. yeah which is what most people are normally okay so my dad under conditions of extraordinary stress still appears to be and is physiologically as calm as most people are walking down the street right and I you know I am a hundred percent convinced that if you and you would know this for a fact but if I took a group of Navy SEALS or Rangers or whatever and I looked at their resting heart rates and compared them to their heart rate under stress nobody is over in positions of stress is over 75 or 80 and at resting they're in the 40s that's what the heart of the prerequisite to be that type is you cannot be in a in a in a position of high stress and have your have your heart be jumping out of your chest you just can't function right and one of the things you learn over time like again I feel like I'm telling this to someone who knows normal than I do one of the things you obviously learned at a time is how to control your physiological responses in high stress and that was my dad was just really really really good at that you just couldn't even you know I he was a story of him once he's in his 70s late 70s he and my mom are vacationing in a little um Cottage on the coast of Jamaica he goes take a shower he hears my mother's scream he comes out and he sees a man holding a machete to my mother's throat who says give me all your money honestly my dad's probably 78 or 79. he is Stark naked dripping wet this guy's like 25 years old he looks at the guy points at him and says get out now the guy leaves runs away wow so like and for people who are listening your dad is a mathematician he's a mathematician with a big bushy beard and he's 160 pounds five nine or five ten he's not physically imposing but in that moment what so what's terrifying that guy with the machete in that moment it is the notion of a 79 year old guy who's 150 pounds and naked and dripping wet who is not showing the slightest trace of fear or apprehension wow that's I'm sorry [ __ ] terrifying wow if you're that guy you're like holy [ __ ] what is this guy gonna do next right I mean he's not even he is the love of his life is like sitting with us machete to his neck and he's completely unfazed that's crazy wow that's amazing I've not heard you tell that story up before I might have missed it up but I've never heard that before that is amazing but that's but that's what you're yeah that's what we're trying to teach people in your old world right is that yeah it becomes normal becomes your your normal living in that kind of a world and environment and some people adapt to it and uh and others others do not and some people compensate and have issues and yeah there's so there's a a lot to it but um but yeah that's that's wild that story is pretty crazy I I love that so I wonder where that came from if it's just natural or um I know he was uh he was in World War II him he has memories or had memories of uh bombings and and all that hiding when the Germans are bombing and also maybe at an early age I don't know if it was just natural he just was not I think a lot of that was he's just not so he's just someone who was like I said he naturally had this really low rest you know heart rate and he was super rational kind of it wasn't someone who was um and his he never kind of lost he wasn't someone who I think you know he also realized as a husband and parent it um it didn't help if he was perceived as having lost his cool yeah right no good came of that it was his job to be the one who was um and I think that's that's probably a lot of it as well I like that hence the spinning off the interstate and and uh that's right um it's fantastic it is amazing service isn't just what Navy Federal Credit Union does it's who they are that's why Navy Federal created tools to help you earn and save more make your financial goals a reality with great rates and low fees members enjoy earnings and savings of 473 dollars per year by banking with Navy Federal an average credit card APR that's six percent lower than the industry average a market-leading regular savings rate nearly two times the industry average learn more at navyfederal.org offers I've been a member of Navy Federal since I enlisted in the Navy in 1996 and have had nothing but positive experiences with them for what is now closing in on 30 years wherever we were stationed whether at home or abroad Navy Federal was by our side Navy Federal has made it their mission to help military members and their families tackle home ownership with their new no refi rate drop option you can buy a home now and if rates drop later you can then lower your rate without refinancing plus they also offer mortgage options with zero down payment so you don't need to wait years to save at Navy Federal our members are the mission find out more at navyfederal.org Navy Federal is insured by ncua membership required Equal Housing lender open to the armed forces the dod veterans and their families navyfederal.org we also share an obsession with endings um and uh and I hadn't really thought of it that way until I heard you articulate it as such and then I realized that I have this as well because you can get to love a movie love a book and then get to that ending and all of a sudden now you do not you're not recommending this book you don't like this book anymore or you frame it as oh I loved it except the ending uh yeah and that you can't can you check can you say that is it possible to say of something I loved it except for the ending because what you're really saying is you don't love it I don't know because uh and the one that my mind jumps to um is uh is Denzel Washington in Man on Fire Tony Scott film oh that's the second one of my favorite isn't it great I love that movie have you watched the alternate ending there's an alternate ending and almost never and I can't even think of an example where I've watched the alternate ending and liked it better usually there's a reason that that alternate ending was not used um in this case I like the alternate ending much better and I didn't know there was an alternate ending when I saw it the first time in 2004 whenever it came out five time frame whatever that was and I just watched the movie and I read the book I read it in the 80s I'd reread it and I'd watched the first film that they did in the 80s with um Scott Glenn and um and and I thought there was a I thought they just might have missed the ending although I love the whole movie and maybe it's because I read the book and I'd seen the other the other adaptation in the 80s um which isn't great the Denzel Washington one is is wonderful but yeah the alternate ending is really good whatever now I now I don't I don't want you to tell me what it is because now wait where do I find the ultimate ending it was a DVD and I don't even know where you'd find it today unless you had the DVD because you could go through that you know the menu and go down and click on the alternate ending thing and and watch it and usually it wasn't color treated yet and didn't have those you know it wouldn't look like the movie but you could you could see it I did like it better but it's one of those things where I feel comfortable saying I love that movie and uh but that ending I think the alternate is a little better it's a dangerous thing though to tell the reader or to to let the reader or The Listener or the viewer um know that there might be another possibility you don't want to because they're gonna lose faith in you as a Storyteller if they think oh you're ending it this way but actually there's a better one out there it's like it kind of ruins it I want to know that I'm in the I'm incapable hands yeah and someone's given someone has resolved the problem in the best possible way and I don't you know it's like I worry that if I saw the alternate ending of Man on Fire it would in some way impair my enjoyment of the Tony Scott movie I don't know I didn't feel that I didn't I didn't get that that I didn't that wasn't my experience uh but maybe it's because I've read all the books that have Creasy as the main character as well I know there's there's more that he survives and goes on to these other uh through these other narratives and um so so that's that's that's one but usually yeah I can't think of another um you know book or or film but uh but the ending's important and I start with the ending um so oh you actually do I know where I'm going I shouldn't say I start with it I know the ending and I have it outlined so I start with a theme I have that title so I'm not wasting bandwidth thinking of it worried about a a title even if it's Gonna Change later I do a one-page executive summary um and I ask myself is this worth the next year of my life um and the answer is yes I read it again and I say if someone was to be walking by Hudson News and was to pull this book off the shelf and read the back would they be willing to invest time that they're never going to get back in these pages and if the answer is yes or a reasonable person or I would uh then that's my that's my next book and I turn that one page executive summary into the outline but at uh part of that outline is the end and I know where I'm going I don't write but I'm not a pantser writing by the seat of my pants there might be sections or chapters where I'm a pantser but I know where I'm going I know that ending and I like that I there was a I thought of this when um I'm a big fan of Thomas Perry and oh yeah who is a b he plots beautifully but they did a movie adaptation or a TV adaptation of one and I forgotten what it was called The Old Man The Old Man and which I really really liked but I think it fell apart in the last when I say fell apart the last couple of episodes were not as strong as I thought it was going to be as strong and it kind of fell off interesting and it really it what disappointed me about that was that when you when you watch on television adaptation of someone you really love as a writer you want them to honor the writer's strengths you know if you're if you're gonna do a movie version of Jack Reacher Jack reach has got to be he's got to be six foot six can't have much that I love Tom Cruise Tom Cruise is not Jack Reacher yeah right it's just a violation yeah a guy who's my size five foot nine yeah feature creature like no part of Jack is five foot nine I'm sorry it's like the whole thing is he's a big block of granite yes people had a big issue with that I heard the child say I heard the child say uh in an interview he said there are worse things in life than having one of the most popular movie stars in the world portray your character and that's kind of how he so I which I understand but um but the same thing with that with the old man it was like oh I was like you're adapting Tom Perry who's just brilliant at endings right he just ties them up so elegantly and and in this one it's like we had the love interest and then she kind of disappeared did she I didn't watch the last couple episodes something happened I think we went somewhere and I didn't finish I think I think we're gonna see another season in which is maybe I'm gonna give them another but I did love the whole that whole idea of you know this old man who kind of yeah from another era oh yeah I'm back that's just fantastic yeah did you read the book also you know they changed obviously it's an adaptation it's a different different medium um but uh but yeah both fantastic it's a good case study in an adaptation I think as is the sun do you read the Sun by Philip Meyer about Texas history of Texas should I oh it's fantastic it's one of the best books that I've read over you've read I am Pilgrim right um oh yeah yeah oh yeah so very different obviously one's a Espionage you know Thriller like we're talking about now and then the sun is the history of Texas kind of like uh uh like Warren remembrance or Winds of War by Hermann Wilk would be a history of of uh uh of World War II Through The Eyes of of a family but uh but this is the history of Texas multi-generational told in a non-linear fashion um incredible and then it's adapted I think EMC did it um Pierce Brosnan stars as the protagonist absolutely they that's probably one of the best adaptations that I've seen at least season one um so it is definitely worth I'm writing this down yeah all right yeah oh it's fantastic uh and I think I might know your least favorite ending is it A Star is Born movie or is it only because or is it only because you researched it and know that well I did that one no I mean I I would never say that was there's a variety you know um that story is so rich and that's why the movie's been made so many times it's very hard to criticize it um it's what's my I can't on the top of my head what I don't like is multiple endings where it's you feel like there's six of them and then and the book could have ended 20 Pages before it actually ends that I don't like I don't like going to movies either where you say wait a minute if I left for the bathroom with 10 minutes to go I would have had a more satisfying oh um that that's the thing that really annoys me it's almost like they and I feel like people Thriller writers think that they need to give you an Ever more elaborate payoff but sometimes a quiet emotionally important payoff is the biggest payoff of all I don't Nest I don't always need to have massive pyrotechnics in order to feel satisfied um that's my biggest um if you've taken me on the journey I'm I'm there I've I've invested I'm on page 358 I'm not leaving you I'm you know I love you like this just make me happy don't don't act like you're all skittish and kind of nervous about what I'll Stick Around yeah you know I love hearing that I love hearing that because I do feel a lot of thought into endings and I love so it's like the art of it I think is that enough resolution um where that the the reader feels like they're getting that that return on that investment but then also uh I want to read the next one so if it's a series yes uh so that's kind of what I'm what I'm thinking about as I'm doing the ending but I do like the non-typical Hollywood endings if we're talking film like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid uh the freeze frame coming out the shots like I love that as a kid I remember great memories watching that as a kid No Way Out Kevin Costner at the end when he starts a spoiler alert for anybody have you seen it yes of course so when he starts speaking we start speaking Russian at the end like those types of one I love that of course Usual Suspects like I love those endings but then I also like Hollywood endings wait I have a question a few about Usual Suspects did you anticipate in any of those cases you just given did you anticipate the twist um I was very young for Bush casting the Sundance Kid so I didn't know that yeah no way out no because I was in my like maybe freshman or maybe eighth grade or something something like that so I'm still thinking that uh classic like everything's gonna be the classic Robin Hood or Errol Flynn ending like that's the end of all all movies to me at that at that stage um but uh did I did I anticipate Usual Suspects and I don't think so I was a little older obviously when that came out I saw that in the theater um no I don't I don't think so but because of your podcast free Brian Williams on memory so oftentimes I think about the conflation and memory and uh so I I like to be very careful about what I say I remember and things that uh possibly that also applies to that movie that movie is a is a movie about memory and part about like that kind of and it's playing on our expectations about the stories people tell it's um I didn't see that although I I I deliberately disable my um critical faculties when I'm watching um because I I feel it ruins it yes and I'm gonna enjoy it um yeah and I as a result I often missed things the first time around and I have to kind of go back and pick up on on um I think little clues that I missed yeah because I'm just kind of in in non-thinking enjoying mode but yeah yeah no that's a good I love doing the same thing and not picking things apart while I'm enjoying it because that's my time to sit there and enjoy it so police officers firefighters people in the military are typically the worst people to watch films with because they'll point out every single thing that is wrong with the police procedural or whatever it might be yeah that you're you're watching tactics or you know all those things so I put I try to put that aside unless it's completely egregious um I try to put all that aside to enjoy it but I also like regular Hollywood endings um because probably because of those movies I watched growing up uh maybe the 60s Bond films the endings of those ones uh you know those are always fun um of course the arrow Flynn ones of course uh Rocky 3 Freeze Frame right there with uh uh you know Apollo Creed and Stallone right there that comment you made about um police officers military people are the toughest to watch it reminds me I did this some in the upcoming Visions history series uh season um we have a bunch of things on a bunch of shows on guns and one of them is one where I go and to arrange and shoot uh a um AR I listen to it oh you did I listen to them all oh you're so good oh I didn't realize that so that's about this in the sense that one of the things that's maddening about assault rifle bans is that they are they they they kind of traffic on the they're predicated on the ignorance that is too strong a word but the lack of knowledge that most people have of guns one of my things is you know I one of the issues I have with any kind of government regulation but particularly in this area is you cannot predicate any kind of law regulation change on exploiting people's lack of understanding you've got to be honest if I really want to convince um gun owners and supports the second amendment that I would like them to uh modify their rights I need to be honest and I think with the the whole episode that whole episode is all about the consequences of our dishonesty so the the the gun control tabs you know realize that most people don't know the difference between a semi-automatic weapon and an automatic weapon and they use that to say hey this particular kind of weapon is uniquely dangerous and it's not true and it you know I imagine that at some point you and I might have differences when it comes to gun control but I think we would be in agreement that you can't have an argument in America where one side is deliberately lying like it just offends me so I mean you heard of that episode oh yeah you've got very contentious there I was I was surprised I was like he so I just for those listening in that in the episode where I episode four five episode four is that it I think it's episode four at the end I go and I interview one of the leading gun control advocates in Washington the guy who's been pushing assault rifle bans for God knows how many years and he basically admits that an assault rifle ban is is based on the fact that most people don't know the difference between an automatic and semi-autical rifle weapon and he pissed me off I wasn't after interviewing I was Furious I was like this am I allowed to throw in this point absolutely okay this [ __ ] clown and like you know he sets back a legitimate what I consider to be in part of the legitimate cause or at least he sets back the honest attempt by many people in this country to reach a compromise on this issue by just flat out lying and also as it the more I talk to him we cut out a lot of that interview it was clear he didn't know the slightest thing about guns yeah I'm sorry if you want to be an advocate of gun control will you please educate yourself first on what a gun is yeah it just the whole thing was like and I feel like people who are big who are big you know gun enthusiasts hear that and roll their eyes and just disengage and just say true how am I supposed to have a how my choice to trust these people that they'll do what they'll what they say they're going to do when they're flat out lying from the get-go yeah that's a big part of it I think so there's like there's no attempt to to um to repair I think that um uh that trust anyway that was that sort of got me that episode really radicalized me in a in a certain number in a certain way it made me realize that there's a lot of bad faith on all sides of that issue yeah well what I appreciate about you always always have well before this because I've been uh well reading the books from the from the beginning and I think I was one of the as soon as I found out there was a podcast which was right when I got out of the military I remember making my family listening to season one as we're driving our daughter up the coast of California it's a camp in Northern California from San Diego I'm making them all listen to revisionist history in 2016 because I was like this is amazing oh I know and I know I I mean incredible I mean I still think when I think about the Hallelujah um episode oh my gosh I mean I just get like emotional thinking about a lot of the episodes I think are I mean some of them are funny some of them are serious um some of them are just so emotional and hard-hitting all of them are thoughtful and that's what I've always appreciated about you I've tried to to be that way and whether it's just the way I live my life try to be thoughtful and anything that I do and especially now I feel like that's what I what I owe my readers listeners is to uh perspective how many do you how many kids do you have three three and I know you have a new one and I was gonna ask you if that's true I don't know if I'm gonna go for three but it's two maybe where I don't know how you by the way you know separately how you did three I'd be very curious to know how that's possible chaos constant exhaustion uh prioritizing things that uh or de-prioritizing things that are like exercise Health Sleep uh eating right like those things still completely uh not just the bottom of the list but off the list when it comes to making deadlines and writing scripts and doing all these things that have going on any of your kids interested in um the military if there's one so what we have our daughter just left for college um two days ago and so she's off to off to college and I was going to talk to you that too because she was born in 2005. so that means that uh outliers came out in 2008 so in kindergarten the book had been out oh and by the way for those who haven't read these books you should read them all but outliers this week as of yesterday 366 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list that's like seven years that's uh that's incredible I mean and it's on the business section too um uh almost as good as Diary of a Wimpy Kid that's that you're close to that they're they're at 750. I'm in good company they're pretty close pretty close also that's also a book about me yeah but it's one of our one of our youngest favorite he's uh he's he's 12. um now but our so our daughter went to was going to kindergarten and everyone had read outliers so all these parents are talking about it and they're holding their kids back they're doing the red shirt thing at that time um we our daughter we kept she's uh 18 now so we kept we didn't we didn't hold her back but I'd say maybe half the class at that at that point did um and I think more it's been the years later why didn't the schools observe this and say oh wait a minute let's just divide up classes by a month of birth but it's just so easy or the testing you go to school with three first grade classes make one grade for January to March and one from April to June and one from you know like this is not that hard why should a January kid be in the same first grade classroom as a December kid that's nuts yeah and instead they just have never done that and I to this day I cannot figure out why yeah so and what they do when they don't do that is they force parents then to adjust you know if you if you've got a December kid you have a decision to make do I is my kid Tough Enough and will it benefit from being the youngest or if your kid has got vulnerabilities you're adding another significant vulnerability if you're making them the youngest in the class yeah and is your kid can your kid deal with that some kids can't right and I like schools can so easily address this and they don't yeah it drives me bananas I think that yeah last year we did a backup Pakistan and this guy pointed out that even something as simple as when we do standardized assessment tests for kids we have them all take it on the same day and we try to compare the results that's crazy yeah you have a group of seventh graders all taking the test on you know May 1st there are some kids who are 12 months older than the others how can you compare there how can you compare their their test scores yeah yeah we do some of them have been around for 10 longer I mean it's just it's just like this kind of thing and I just know when my kids get to school age it's gonna drive me crazy I was going to ask you what your your plan is because we did my wife and I have a similar experience we were uh you know what back then would have been the normal age to go through through school so um uh there are younger kids or older kids you're right kind of in the middle but the things that I did where they were older kids whether it was camps or Sports Camps or school or whatever I look back and even at the time I liked that I liked going to a camp that had older kids because it forced me to up my game so even back then I liked that I realized not everybody is going to be in the same the same boat there but um so we just let our daughter go through as one quote unquote normally normally would um but what are your plans have you thought about this for when you're uh your kids get together my two girls are both August um so they're going to be depending on when the cutoff is they'll either be in the middle or if it's cut off so September 1st they're going to be the youngest um and I'm I mean I think my concern in writing that part of ours was for kids who had a lot of existing vulnerabilities who maybe had a learning disorder who one parent home lower income background and adding on if you already have those disadvantages and you add the disadvantage of being the youngest in your class life is hard yeah um if you're a kid from a privileged background it's not that much of an issue so you know my kids you know thankfully do not come from it will not come from a disadvantaged background hopefully they won't have a learning disorder knock on wood and so in that case I'm not going to worry about it and I think you're right there ultimately it can be a real advantage to be the youngest because you have to like you said you got up your game and is it the smallest on the field you know uh that means that you have to learn how to to strategize and outthink your opponents and use your weaknesses to your advantages so it's like if your kid is capable of compensating in that way they're going to be better off the problem is that not everybody is so it'll just be a um it'll just be a judgment call yeah um based on what you know my perception of how tough they are I've been trying to I've been trying to I've been trying to instill some toughness oh yeah what have you been doing yeah I I go running with her and whenever she slows down I yell at her my coach used to yell at me strong body makes a strong mind hey there it's yeah there's a lot to that there's a lot to that's one of the other things we have in common is that uh that Iran growing up and I ran Hills and uh I wouldn't know it today but it actually I think it really helped me when I got to the the SEAL Teams and when hell week is really just about not quitting I mean there's things you have to do and you have to pass leading up and then things you have to do after that but hell week portion when you're awake for the whole week and you're just moving and running with the logs and the boats and doing all these things just don't quit and uh so I thought back to the time running cross country running these Hills and then yeah running it with the team so you have people in front of you behind you and that sort of a thing but also training on my own which I think was even more valuable cool because I could run those same Hills and I did by myself and it would have been easy to stop no one would have known coach wouldn't know peers wouldn't know and I could have stopped because it's for those who run and you run up hills and it can be painful and I didn't so I always and even on the beach all those years later when I'm running with the boat over my head or doing whatever I'm doing in hell week I thought back to those times in fifth sixth seventh eighth grade when I'm doing those things that it would have been easy to quit in the middle of and no one would have known but I didn't and I remember not stopping um yeah and so I thought so running is so valuable wait Jack at your most fit how fast could you run a mile oh I don't know because we stopped running just a mile and there was no running just a mile in soft sand so it's three miles soft sand bud so much oh I see so there's no wait did you did you see that thing do you think it's about about um about uh Mark Zuckerberg who's now become obsessed with the military training no I just I saw them marshmallow martial arts stuff I haven't seen the military training she does this workout he posted it on on his social on on Facebook he does a workout I don't think it's a seal workout but it's an equivalent military workout where you do uh is it a hundred pull-ups a hundred push-ups and then you run is it two miles with a 25 pound weight yeah and you have to see what your total time is I think there's one more thing in there but uh it's the merch the Murph challenge is probably what it is I've never I had no context for a value how good it was but he posts his time and a lot of serious people say oh my goodness that's pretty good yeah so he's not he's I guess what 40 probably right around his mid-foice he's fit yeah I mean he's not massive fit but impressively sure I was I saw that it was like my first thought of course like any former competitive athlete was wait what would what how come I don't think I can do the pull-ups of the problem for me yeah especially with the weight that you could because you do it with the weight fast oh you do it with the weight desk yeah so you do 20 oh my God so you're taking time so you're doing maybe five at a time dropping another five drop whatever your strategy is um to get through those hundred pull-ups and then it gets 100 sit-ups 100 push-ups and then you run the mile come back in or three miles whatever whatever that is it's been a while since I've what's the weight how much is the weight fast 25 I think it's 25. I'm not sure I remember doing it in Baghdad In the Heat of the well not here this summer I guess I did it in the spring so it'll be two thousand and there's no calls there's no cool Baghdad there can be there can be in the winter that it can get cool but the summer oh my God goodness oh my but uh yeah that was the first time I did it because it was uh it was designed um uh for Michael you have to wait Jake you have to look this up and tell me just please look it up and tell me whether how impressive you think zuck's time I will I will I'll have to go because I did keep my notebooks that have my time from back then and then so I have notebooks here where that kept track of the most part it's called walk me through this what's the hardest in that routine I should look it up so I don't mess it up uh but uh so it's pull-ups I think sit-ups we have to look this up and uh and push-ups and the run and I think you so the hardest part I guess is going to be you know different for everybody some people are just amazing oh for me it's gonna be well now it's all going to be very difficult for me but uh I think the pull-ups yeah pull-ups yeah I think it's because I looked I could I looked at Zuckerberg's breakdown and I said I think I could run that faster the running is fine I don't I've never done it but I don't perceive I do workouts with a 25 pound weight sometimes and it doesn't strike me I feel like an easy run nine minute miles or yeah even in the eights with 25 pounds it was only three miles and I could do the sit-ups easy the pull-ups would be impossible yeah possible you can do them like I'd have to spend a lot of time yeah and the push-ups would be I just don't have the upper body and they as you know they fight against each other the stronger my upper body is more I'm gonna take a hit on the running so like it's it's that balance it's like it's like um it's like Iron Man try I mean you're it's just all compromises if I want to be better a swimmer I have to compromise on my well the biking running is a that's a con in some sense is contradictory yeah um and you have to decide what you what the kind of middle middle route is yeah you know so I did a little experiment I did um I went to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey California for six months uh they wanted me to learn French um so I thought I was going to do some a mission in North Africa West Africa which I did but I had an interpreter with me the whole time so now my French is gone first it mixed with my Spanish and then then I got the French and was very confident then I went and did the the thing in Africa and then I had interpreter the whole time and never used it again so anyway but while I was there I went up to do the escape from Alcatraz triathlon and I wanted to see if what I was doing as a functional fitness training just to be good at essentially moving with my body armor and my rifle and all these things through through different types of terrain in and out of Windows that sort of a sort of something that was going to prepare me for that how that would translate over to the triathlon and so I did but I did swim because I'm a seal and I'm swimming also that's just so I did that but no bike so I got up there and I went and rented a bike and I hadn't really ridden a bike probably since high school and uh so I remember I didn't I was my I was doing something with a family so I rented this thing and I just put it where I was supposed to put it and did my sign in the day before and I didn't even write it I just picked it up and I just you know kind of like looked at it and okay and so swim great run great bike no no all those it was awful one because I hadn't trained for that specific you got to do it yeah specific training Jack even a week on the bike would have improved your performance 50 yeah I did zero and but also Not only was I just physically not prepared for the bike yeah but I I didn't know how to change the gears because I hadn't done it in 15 years and I get on this thing and I'm like and I'm at the base of the first Hill I'm just doing circles as everyone's flying past me because I got out of the water very quickly um and I think the bike came next and then the run I think but anyway I'm at the base of this hill and it's in San Francisco because you just swam from Alcatraz and a spectator tells me how to change the gears yells at me and tell I'm like oh because I thought it was going to be you know breaking away you know the movie from the most embarrassing story you could every time steel goes into a try unprepared this is like all every instructor you ever had is like it's like saying no and I'm a big prepared person like I'm all about being prepared like we're talking about obsessions and the bomber Mafia you talk about obsessions yours and the people in the Bible you know that you're talking you're you're writing about but uh I'm I guess an obsession is being prepared but I specifically didn't want to be prepared for this I wanted to see if what I was doing um just my regular workouts would prepare me for a triathlon and the swim in the Run yes bike no um yeah but I still remember that lady yelling at me and telling me how to switch the game was this an Iron Man or was this an Olympic uh it's called Escape from Alcatraz triathlon and I'm not sure if it fits into any category it's more I'm not possibly because I'm not a triathlete yeah but I don't know if it fits I think it would be more of an Olympic my hat is off to you though for for just do it that's like that's awesome I always wanted to do it since I was a little kid since watching uh those movies about Clint Eastwood and Alcatraz and the guys that escaped and you know all that so I always wanted to do it since I was a little kid so that opportunity presented those guys are so good time to get back training in case I get a field this fall as I've been doing a lot more writing than I've been doing working out lately which is why I was so fired up for this care package from first form I tried the protein meat sticks right away and absolutely love them protein meat sticks from first form are similar to protein bars as far as benefits first form protein meat sticks are delicious and very convenient way to get more protein throughout the day protein is essential to any health or Fitness goal no other meat stick like it on the market packed with a full 20 grams of protein in each stick and only 200 calories or less total it comes in five incredible flavors original Smokehouse seasoned barbecue Cajun style jalapeno heat and breakfast sausage great for a snack at the office in the car on a hike or anywhere you're on the go check them out I've also been drinking the Opti greens 50. from first form optigreens 50 is a precisely formulated greens superfood powder meant for overall immune system support and digestive health 50 hand chosen ingredients in precise and effective amounts with non-GMO and non-synthetic superfoods that provide a well-rounded blend of vitamins plus antioxidant packed ingredients for overall immune health support and defense against toxins in the air and in the foods we eat to keep us as healthy as possible all year long go to firstform.com Jack Carr That's the number one s t p h o r m.com slash Jack Carr to receive free shipping on any orders over 75 dollars once again that's firstform.com Jack Carr remember once I had a long conversation with you know Lance Armstrong really wanted to be a triathlete and he was a I think he was All-State swimmer in Texas growing up so he's he is you know on the bike one of the greatest ever as a swimmer Allstate in Texas so he's like that's one person he's top one percent and you would think oh that guy must would have easily been one of the greatest triathletes in the world no he was very very good yeah but he says it is a sign of just how insanely talented the top translates are that even a guy who was one of the world's greatest ever cyclists and an incredible swimmer I mean he's just the the on the Running part those guys the very best of those guys are running close to world-class times in the in the marathon of the 10K especially in the 10 in the Olympic tribe they're running 28 minute 29 minute 10ks that's insane on top of being you know you know these these extraordinary swimmers and I I don't I can't wrap my mind around how they do that it's not it's to me it's the most baffling I understand specialization yeah I do unders do not understand those people who have this kind of broad array of in some sense contradictory uh skills I mean they're training for that you know for that that event uh multiple events three um but specific with the Transitions and how fast they are and all the the techniques behind just transitioning out of there it is pretty incredible yeah it's it's really amazing yeah but uh back to the kiddo so we have uh so 18 year old just left for college uh 15 year old who has uh really severe special needs and needs 24 7 full-time care forever so really my mission in life is making sure that he has that care forever but he's a sweet little sweet little guy and then we have our 12 year old so it's uh it's constant chaos around here and uh for me uh being able to to write and do a podcast and write scripts and do all the rest of these things it's that prioritization side of it so luckily you already had seven books out or six by the time uh these kids came I came along like I should just I should just do nothing it sounds like that's the best strategy I had a glimpse of a strategy this morning so it's my job to get the two-year-old up so I wake her up at seven and today I was like you know what what I'm going to do is give her a dad focused morning okay so we did the most dad focused set of activities okay the first thing we did is I we read a car a car magazine actually this British magazine called car okay great greatest we read car magazine together and we looked at cars then we looked at the the world uh track and field championships are going on and she's really interested in the Jamaica she's part Jamaican in the Jamaican Runner so we watched some Jamaican Runners win the Sprints and then she's obsessed you know those Thera guns those massage oh I've seen them yes she's obsessed with that really so and I use them every day I'm on my legs wow so we took out the Thera gun and I gave her and it was like it was like I said I was like this is my strategy I'm gonna have her be into all the things I'm into this is my way to get through the next 15 years to see if it's to see if it works yeah see if it sticks see if it sticks that's that's a bold strategy and I I've heard that from a few different people uh who knows I think she might be in the she she talks a lot about cars oh good she's very car focused okay and I'm hoping this this this remains oh that's good to be pretty happy yeah no that that's a that's not a bad way to go that's for sure um because yeah it's just been it's been chaos but it's sadly it's it's I've seen our daughter leave the other day and pack up her car and head off um and it was going far away not too far she's going to be close to us uh but not about seven hours so uh far enough let's see over under if you're if you're an 18 year old what's the overrun do you want to be far enough away if Mom doesn't come and bother you on the weekend every day yeah but not so far that you can't go home so is the overrunner what do you think it is like four hours is that the I think maybe a little less I think yeah I think it's a little less uh probably three-ish I think you'd be close yeah right in there right in there it's right in there I would love to do a big survey and figure out the optimum yeah you want to balance it if you if it's a plane ride yeah every time then it's too far A little tougher a little tougher even tougher for Thanksgiving and Christmas and and all those things so far enough way to spread your wings and be independent um but not so far away where it's a huge hassle to get home and you don't come home for those kind of holidays or events or because it's a plane flat ride or something like that so so I think we have we hit uh we hit it just right with uh with the distance and uh so I'm excited for her but it's uh it is sad sad to see her go but you know that's that's a natural I can't even I can't even imagine that it's like yeah it's hard to it's crazy because like I mean I remember well obviously uh you know that kindergarten class we already talked about and her going in there and holding my hand on the way in and then seeing her go off to school on her bike and me she didn't know this for years but uh first we go together on the bikes in Coronado California and then when she started going on her own I would go one street over and I would just Shadow the whole way and when I told her even when she got a little older she got upset with me that I did that because she it was like I was ruining something when she thought she was on her own I thought she was old enough for me to be able to say that I was I followed it so this is a good parenting tip I actually I back what you did and the idea that it's really important for them to have the illusion at least at the beginning of the illusion of Independence but too scary to give them I like so what were you you're running one sheet over and you're liking between the brakes and the houses you're looking through it is nature she's okay exactly because Coronado California is a grid and it's pretty easy to go well one block over and zip up to the next one and kind of watch her go by and then go to the next one are you on a bike running no I'm on I'm on a beach cruiser yeah beach cruiser so it's uh that's what that's that's so hilarious if I have to wait because I I'd wait to see her take the turn at the end of war with the street where we lived and then I just hop on and make my move um but uh yeah I did that for for years luckily she was at that age when I was already not when I was not taking platoons downrange I wasn't going to train you know training anymore that sort of a sort of a thing so I so that's uh that's but it was sad uh it was definitely sad to see her go as you know an adult would pay good money for that kind of protection this is true this is true it uh but uh yeah I it I I but I love doing that and I and it was I have good memories of of doing that and then you know and my wife liked it I did it as well so that's uh you know what it worked out yeah some points but I should have waited a couple more years till I told her maybe wait until she was out of college or something because I think you should have waited until she was 50 years old probably yeah I think I I jumped the gun on telling her about that I didn't expect the reaction that I that I got from that but uh oh my goodness that's just how it goes when she has kids of her own she would appreciate it you should have at least waited this is by the way Jack this is damning as a Storyteller you should know that it's all about when you review that right yeah you should have known known that until she has school-aged children she's not going to appreciate the genius of what you did you blew a great story but through simple and patience yes yes I over I I tend to overthink things and I did not overthink this uh yeah I I completely jumped the gun I think it was spur of the moment she mentioned the writing to school thing in Coronado and I jumped in with the yeah it was that's that's another this is the second damning admission I know I'm going to edit some of this out my goodness a reputation oh my goodness um but uh but I do want to encourage everybody to read all these books and listen to revisionist history um but as I was going through these right before this um but as I go through books I typically I'll write page numbers here that I can then go back and and I was curious because it was so long ago since I since I when I read these I was curious what I had highlighted and I had some pages turned down and I and uh in blink yeah I I highlighted this and it's um so Paul Van Ripper here and some of these new thinkers say if we have better intelligence we can see everything we can't lose Colonel van Ripper said well my brother always says is hey say you're looking at a chess board is there anything you can't see no but are you guaranteed to win not at all because you can't see what the other guy is thinking so when I read this in the SEAL Teams where that stood out to me so this is the this is the time of ongoing war in Afghanistan of uh leaving Iraq to then come back dealing with Insurgency figuring out what our mission is and what our responsibility is in Afghanistan and Iraq as we committed and all these things so that really stood out for me at the time as did the key to good decision making and this is you good decision making is not knowledge it is understanding and at the time I was thinking a lot about how we did our senior level military leaders and and politicians didn't necessarily understand the conflict in which they were about to commit U.S forces although we had the Russian involvement in Afghanistan from 79 to 89 to look at we had three British incursions we didn't have to go back to Alexander the greater Genghis Khan we had much more recent experience to study and for whatever reason and I tend to think of it as an imperial hubris we neglected to take those lessons or we took the wrong lessons from from those experiences in Afghanistan so that's why that's why I think that one in particular stood out it's a really interesting one because I I think that there's a before think about how history would have been different if there had been a series of very simple exercises prior to the decisions we made about entering in to those two conflicts Iraq and Afghanistan imagine if you just had you book a hotel somewhere nice for a weekend you're the president and you're the National Security advisor and you're the secretary of the you know uh and you invite a kind of cross-section of people who know something about the culture some historians some State Department people some people on the who've been over there on the ground and won some some non-profit people who worked there for 10 years whatever and you just have a conversation for a couple of days with no real agenda you just want to find out what what do people feel about this place what do they know about it what are their instincts about what we're doing you don't have to take you don't have to do what they think you just need to be exposed to the full realm of possibilities yeah right just so you know in the back of your mind that oh there's this 84 year old historian at you know Penn State who spent in the 1960s spent 10 years in Afghanistan and you know this is what he has been back 10 times ever since and this is what he thinks yeah like oh that's interesting or this is a 23 year old who did her Peace Corps work on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan and she this is what she says let's just that kind of stuff I feel like it's a very very simple step that we jump over um it doesn't solve the problem but it just helps you I think be smart about what the pit balls are in any in any approach you're gonna take oh sure I can put uh decisions are upcoming possible decisions into a greater context or I mean that's what you owe the people at that level that's what you owe the people in the chain of command who you're about to commit to these areas is putting this thought into it um and I think we we didn't do we neglected to do that for for whatever reason um and also this one stood out to me and it has something to do with uh with thinking uh when making a decision this is Freud you're quoting Freud when making a decision of minor importance I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons in vital matters however such as the choice of a mate or a profession the decision should come from the unconscious from somewhere within ourselves in the important decisions of personal life we should be governed I think by the Deep inner needs of our nature and uh and I like this because I also thought of the podcast you did when you talked about your and went back and interviewed your assistance and your first assistant and that one was fantastic because I'm in the middle of hiring a chief of staff because there's just so much going on and I can't possibly you know do some of these uh these things um so I need to write and so in listening to that podcast and it's so fantastic because your first assistant um and you don't it has that memory thing to it as well because you're asking what her experience was with you and I think she said she had it scheduled for like an hour half hour or something you sat down for 10 or 15 minutes at a coffee shop and you asked her what did I ask you and you said they talked about something that had nothing to do with being an assistant and you said well I'm gonna I'm gonna interview a bunch of people and and I'll get back to you and you left and you ran off to do something and then call her 10 minutes later or something like that and say you've got the job and turn over your credit cards into the passwords and all the rest to this person that you barely know and I thought that was fascinating and also made me a lot less anxious about hiring someone well you know that that's actually I've thought more about that and I realized the reason I think this way is that and it has a lot to do with my um the years I spent in competitive running when I was a kid and I realized in running that there are two separate things one is talent and one is motivation yeah and in the very best people they overlap but in most of us we have a bit of both or more one and less of the other and we think a lot about talent and way too little about motivation yeah and motivation is really what gets you you know seventy percent of the way even the most talented person in the world if they're not willing to get up every morning and train they can't you they're not going to be an effective Runner like up but on the contrary someone with a little less talented who is very motivated can be very can have a wonderful running career yeah and I just realized I'm just not going to make that mistake I'm not going to get hung up on searching for the most brilliant person or the most qualified person or what I really want is someone who is motivated wants to work wants to show up enjoys himself you know like as flexible is resilient that's all I really and I I gotta VI you can get I think you can get a Vibe about motivation pretty quickly that's really what you know someone shows up on time they're they're presentable they're enjoying themselves they're not like you know they're laughing and talking during the interview they show signs of life I'm like all right right it's not the hardest thing in the world I need the right attitude yeah yeah oh attitude sometimes that's the only thing we could control and I talk to my kids about that I talk to my guys in the SEAL Teams about that uh as well of that into training um but uh but that made me hearing you say this right now makes me feel even better about the person that I've interviewed on just on a video teleconference now and then she's coming up here on on Monday and and uh have an in-person interview but it makes me feel even better about this uh this uh potential Choice slash candidate um and uh I think it's gonna yeah I'm getting I'm getting that same type of a type of a feeling because it's uh it's well past the time that uh that I need someone to help manage all the other stuff so that I can that I can write um and I just want to talk a little bit also just because I want people to read these books and I want people to listen to the podcast uh particularly the season coming up right now uh which is season nine how does that feel to be season nine of revision eight this this six episodes are part of the uh off season of season eight they're not a it's a it's say we're positioning it as the real season the rest was just kind of prologue okay I listened to season eight already I thought yeah no no it was when the the this this is the that's hence the confusion yes and these ones drop on August 31st I think is that right next August 31st and it's this sixth part yeah series um and then a little fun one at the end a seventh one at the end okay um uh but yeah this I think it's his um you know we deliberately tackled this controversial issue of guns in their place in society and I was just my my the thing that motivated it was I just don't think we have a very honest and thoughtful conversation about guns I think that like there's a ton of things like there's one idea that I'm totally fascinated by which is which I'd never thought about before but it never explored in any kind of detail which is that the number of the homicide rate in a society is a function of two things the level of lethal violence and how good we are at saving the lives of people who are the victims of potentially lethal violence right so when you observe the homicide rate going down as it has over the last 30 years quite dramatically is that because there's less lethal violence on the streets or is it because when someone gets to the hospital we do a better job of saving their life and the answer is not all of it but a lot of it is that ER docs are just better and so someone who would have been a murder victim 25 years ago survives today and this is all stuff we learned you know this we learned this this is what we this was the only Silver Lining of Iraq and Afghanistan is we learn how to save people's lives yeah I mean the the the survival rates from what would once have been fatal injuries Battlefield injuries were insane in yeah in those two conflicts that's now come home yeah and now so now we say if we look at a city like New York city where the murder rates are by historical terms right now really really low and we say oh wow we've solved the problem of violence well actually no we've we built something really amazing Trauma Centers filled in with really skilled people and you're if you can get to the hospital in time they'll probably save your life unless it's a head shot um and that's like that was really interesting because I was like oh so we're having this kind of fake conversation where we're we're The Meta where you know the credit really goes to doctors not to politicians who passed laws or other people you know it's and we're fooling ourselves into thinking we've solved a problem that is actually in some ways as bad as ever yeah that was a really like is that kind of stuff that I wanted to explore and I think it's really worth um talking about because it clarifies things well I was looking forward to So I listened to those all I haven't listened to that seventh uh bonus episode yet um but uh listen to them them all and for this audience in particular um as I listed I listen to them all in a row and I think for that I wouldn't usually say this but listening to episode six with Abdullah Pratt um I I mean and the music at the end by the way was was incredible but um listening to that episode with him and his story and what he's doing is I almost want to recommend that that this audience um listened to that one first uh and then go back and listen to I wouldn't recommend to everyone but to to people that um a majority probably of my of my audience here um I if they haven't listened if they haven't read all your books and listened to your podcast and aren't uh aren't you know don't know you and aren't a fan and aren't invested in what you're doing next um then I think I would recommend to them to listen to that Abdullah Pratt episode so they're all powerful but that one in particular I think that allows you to go back and start from the beginning with an appreciation of your thoughtful nature that you might not have if you just jump in to uh the litigation and the in the Supreme Court and then Gunsmoke and then this going to the range and then the interview with the gun control person and all that um but uh but if they have listened to all your all the revisionist history episodes and they are a fan and they've read the books and they they know you then I'd say start from the beginning but I think that Abdullah Pratt one is I mean it's just incredible uh and what he's doing and I love the I think we need to wrap up here because I think you have somewhere else to go but uh something that you thought a lot about with that one um sin is the failure to bother to care I wanted to make sure that I asked you about that before we before we left that was something that was said to me by a Jesuit priest in Rome like eight years ago I was doing a series of podcasts about the way the Jesuits think about problems I think is really an interesting and I went to see this guy named father Keenan in this you know thousand-year-old Monastery in Rome and that was something that he said that I've never forgotten which was you know he was talking about the story of the Good Samaritan and you know the Pharisees see this man by the side of the road and they go they cross to the other side and hustle on by and don't look um and they're not evil they're not they would never have beaten up that man they would never commit an act of violence or do anything but they just can't be bothered and he said like so much of what passes foreseen in our society is that it's just like a failure to engage your moral sense when it's called for um and I just I you know I thought about that line over and over and over and over and over again ever since and I I thought it um that episode you're talking about of with this guy um Abdullah Abdullah Pratt um he's in ER doc at the University of Chicago who grew up on the south side and people some of the people coming into his ER people that he grew up with and it's all about his response to that insane position to be in and how he kind of grapples with that what does it mean to care when you're um and uh yeah anyway that was a that you you're it is the most powerful of the six and I see that I see your argument about if you're unfamiliar maybe that's the best place to start yeah yeah but I want people to listen to revisionist history all of them uh I went back and listened to Saigon 1965 for another project that I'm working on um and uh so I so I got to go back and listen to that of course I get distracted by other episodes as well to re-listen to when I when I went back a few weeks ago to listen to Saigon uh 1965 which has some implications too obviously what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan and anyway it's just um but uh yeah it's all fascinating so I had all these things so we didn't even get to do my first page by the way I think when I talked about over overthinking things I have well this is I don't know how many pages is this Jack just have me just have me back so much fun it was so much fun it was such a daughter yeah I have all this all this here um and yeah let's do it again I'd love that uh thank you so much for taking this time today and can't recommend your your books and and podcasts enough and uh before we go I know now you have two daughters but uh next book are there a few different footnotes from other uh things that you've done that you're thinking two things on the way one is I'm doing a revision of the Tipping Point because this is 25th anniversary and I'm writing a kind of sequel wow um and then I'm doing this another book about I'm halfway through it but I had to put it aside to the Tipping Point thing about um what it means to be black what it meant to be black in Los Angeles in the 30s and 40s okay um the story of Tom Bradley the first black mayor of La you've talked about him on the podcast really a remarkable guy um and uh in his world and I'm interested in the question of uh if you're angry what are the various strategies available to you to make use of your anger that's really what the book's about okay um and I I'm hopeful that it um like I say I'm halfway through but um that'll be it'll be the new Tipping Point first and then it'll be that book those are my two big projects fantastic fantastic well thank you for doing this we'll hit bomber Mafia all these other things uh the next time that we that we talk but uh yeah uh one last thing here before you go uh well two last things real quick did you rethink your headstone um you you mentioned one big idea is that there was one big idea to explain everything have you put more thought into into that one I think I think there might be something else uh to remember well there was one time when I thought I thought over the years I've had there was one time when I wanted my headstone to be um uh to to those who looked at the world and said no way he had the courage to say way that was what I did for headstone I haven't thought of one right here okay I haven't thought of one recently but uh no I think people are not clever enough on their headstones you can get a laugh out of what your headstone says I think you're ahead of the game no I'll let you know if I update that one sounds good well I'll ask you again next time uh thank you so much again for for this it uh really did mean mean the world to me such an honor and uh take care and please reach out if you ever need anything thanks Jack welcome to the Gear highlight portion of the danger close podcast I'm going to start over here today uh Eric Wind Watch connoisseur vintage watch expert follow him on Instagram at Eric M wind and go to his website wind vintage.com windvintage.com also check him out on YouTube some amazing lectures on vintage watches there and he was kind enough to send me this Blazer Seiko that he co-designed and sincerely appreciate the gift um the gift of a watch if you've followed me for a while or read my novels you know how much that means to me so Eric thank you so much that is uh sincerely appreciated and moving over here right here Lucas O'Hara Grizzly Forge that is at Grizzly underscore forge on Instagram or the grizzlyforge.com right here check out what he has going on he recently moved he was on the podcast not too long ago but check out these blades right here and be sure and follow him on Instagram to find out when the next knife drop is and look at that Damascus one right there whole so nice so awesome so Lucas man thank you for these and everybody else be sure and follow him on Instagram and go to the grizzlyforge.com hit that website up as well all right wood cabin Candle Company and that is wood cabin candle company.com right here really cool group of people over there if you can see that or not but they make some really cool candles and uh yeah I've been lighting these things for the past few years especially around the holidays these are just awesome so check them out wood cabin candle company.com and this right here this is a really cool gift really looking forward to reading this it's called Daddy's diary the War Journal of a B-17 pilot Lieutenant Edwin snake walk up and this is by Helen walk up Carnes right here and this is this is the diary that uh that she had had published from World War II uh enclosed you'll find a copy of my father's diary from World War II right there he flew B17 dropping bombs on Germany he was an old guy then 27 most of the boys were 19 to 20. and uh yeah looking forward to this those types of journals uh I wonder how many journals are just locked away in attics and boxes from from World War II but this goes takes you day by day right here so there is the cover be sure and check that out and thank you so much for this gift sincerely appreciate that and what oh Toyotas of War check them out on Instagram on this past podcast I was talking about Land Cruisers my fj62 and 80 and 40 but check that out Toyotas of War great content over there on Instagram all right that does it for today out there thank you for tuning in to the danger close podcast an ironclad original presented by Navy Federal Credit Union to find out more about Malcolm Gladwell follow him on Instagram at Malcolm Gladwell and be sure to visit his website Gladwell books.com you can follow me on the social channels at Jack carrusa official jackcar.com is the website click on shop in the upper right hand corner for the merch and if you enjoyed this conversation be sure to leave a five-star rating and review wherever you get your podcasts until the next time take care out there stay safe be strong keep fighting [Music]

Channel: JackCarrUSA

Views: 16,390

Keywords: danger close, jack carr, ironclad, this is ironclad, malcolm gladwell, revisionist history, tipping point, pushkin, Outliers, blink, writing advice, the bomber mafia, gladwell, terminal list, 2nd amendment, 2A, gun control

Id: Kr6BuBRt-N4

Length: 94min 30sec (5670 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 06 2023