Chris & Mike are joined by Brad Thor for a SPOILER filled discussion of Dead Fall.
Please subscribe, rate & review all seasons of No Limits using Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting platform. You can find us online at ThrillerPod.com and on Twitter or Instagram @thrillerpodcast.
This episode is made possible thanks to our fantastic Patrons! For less than the price of a novel a month, you can help us keep the show going and get access to exclusive content and signed book giveaways! Become a Patron today at Patreon.com/ThrillerPod
00:00:21
Hey, guys, I'm Chris. And I'm Mike, and welcome back
00:00:26
to this week's No Limits, the Scott Arvath Podcast.
00:00:30
How you doing this week, Mike? Chris, I'm doing great.
00:00:35
We just came off an incredible interview with one of the most
00:00:39
genuine people you could ever meet, Brad Thor.
00:00:44
What a guy. I can't say enough, you know,
00:00:48
going into this interview, I was already pretty hype about this
00:00:51
novel and I didn't know how I could come out of the interview
00:00:54
of being more hype about the novel.
00:00:56
But I am. He's an amazing guy you guys.
00:01:00
I I can't wait for you to listen to this podcast because you're
00:01:02
going to you're going to love it.
00:01:03
He breaks it down. We go full spoiler.
00:01:06
It's it's it's just a great podcast.
00:01:08
You know it's it's it's a great interview.
00:01:10
He's he's a great guy. Great great human being you know
00:01:13
and I kind of said a little bit on the interview but I'm, I'm
00:01:15
happy he wrote this book. I'm happy he put his two cents
00:01:19
on it and I, you know, I'm not going to summarize what he said.
00:01:21
I'll let let him say it when you listen to the to the book or to
00:01:24
the interview. But yeah, no.
00:01:26
I met a loss for words. That's how great this interview
00:01:29
was. Same here, same here.
00:01:32
It almost could be our Part 2. It's like do we even need to
00:01:34
record a Part 2? We covered so much and went in
00:01:37
so much depth. No, we got it.
00:01:39
We got to do the scorecard. But you know.
00:01:40
Absolutely right. We're definitely going to bring
00:01:43
that to you guys. I'm going to be away on vacation
00:01:45
for the next 10 days or so, but we're having to bring us on a 10
00:01:49
day vacation, so that's why we haven't reported Part 2.
00:01:52
Yeah, that's why Part 2 is delayed Before the end of August
00:01:55
though we will have Part 2 of Deadfall, including our final
00:01:58
scorecard out to you guys, the listeners.
00:02:01
But Speaking of our trips, Brad stayed on after talking to him
00:02:05
for more than an hour till 10:00 PM at night and he stayed on
00:02:09
another 5 or 6 minutes to ask us about our lives.
00:02:12
He wanted to hear about you going to Montana, you bringing
00:02:15
the kids to Yellowstone. He want to hear from me about my
00:02:18
anniversary trip in the Azores next week, 10:00 at night, a New
00:02:23
York Times bestselling author staying on to ask us about our
00:02:27
families and our vacations. It's unbelievable.
00:02:31
You can't. Can't say enough.
00:02:33
You can't say enough, you can't say enough, but equally is great
00:02:37
are our listeners, you guys, and we want to celebrate you.
00:02:40
So before we jump into this interview.
00:02:43
We will be doing a giveaway. A Brad Thor autographed book
00:02:47
giveaway. You will get a choice the winner
00:02:49
of Hidden Order, Act of War or Code of Conduct. 3 Scott Harvath
00:02:55
books we will be covering here on the podcast.
00:02:58
So you get your pick of a signed book by Brad Thor, Hidden Order,
00:03:02
Act of War, Code of Conduct, and there are three ways to enter
00:03:06
the giveaway. Make sure you go ahead into the
00:03:09
Apple Podcast app. Leave us a review with a
00:03:12
comment. Make sure you include a username
00:03:14
in that comment where we can reach out to you or on X,
00:03:19
formerly known as Twitter. You can go ahead and retweet or
00:03:22
comment on our post of this episode and on Facebook.
00:03:27
Please comment and share in the No Limits group on our episode
00:03:32
highlighting this interview. So Three ways, 3 Interactions. 3
00:03:36
Entries into a Brad Thor Signed Book Giveaway Apple Podcast
00:03:40
Review Retweet Rex Rex Retweet I know what it is.
00:03:44
What is it called now? Twitter It's called Twitter and
00:03:48
go on to Facebook. Join the No Limits group and
00:03:50
make sure you share and comment on this post.
00:03:54
Yeah. One more thing before we get to
00:03:56
our interview, just we should mention that you just, you did
00:04:01
the deed and you gave another 100 bucks to Operation
00:04:04
Paperback. Thanks to you listeners.
00:04:06
So glad our patrons are supporting us financially.
00:04:09
What we do here on the podcast and all of the surplus money is
00:04:13
going back towards Operation Paperback.
00:04:15
I was able to get 100 thriller books, various authors.
00:04:20
I had everything Coons de Mille, Vince Flynn, Brett Thor.
00:04:26
It was basically everybody. Clancy Love them From my Inlaws
00:04:30
church they did a. TEG sale, I guess you you can
00:04:33
call it. And they had set aside any
00:04:36
thriller books that were on my list of authors, mystery, crime,
00:04:39
all sorts of books. But I got 100 books from them
00:04:43
donated from this church that I was able to send to our troops
00:04:47
and veterans. So nine care packages totaling
00:04:50
100 books, approximately 11 or 12 books each, went out.
00:04:55
To our troops and vets through Operation Paperback.
00:04:58
And that brings our total of books donated from this podcast.
00:05:01
Just under 14 hundred 1400 books.
00:05:06
Wow, that's awesome. And just so you know, for the
00:05:10
less than the price of a novel a month, you two can support this
00:05:13
podcast and be the reason we can make more amazing podcasts like
00:05:17
this interview. Just head to throw the pod.com
00:05:19
and click on the Patron tab to learn more.
00:05:22
And after that, here's our interview with Brad Thor.
00:05:31
Today we welcome back a very special guest.
00:05:34
Author of this summer's blockbuster thriller Deadfall.
00:05:39
Welcome back to No Limits, the Scott Harvath podcast, Brad
00:05:43
Thor. It's great to be back, you guys.
00:05:45
Thanks for having me. Yes, welcome.
00:05:48
Well, let me just kick it off with the question.
00:05:50
Everybody's been waiting to hear from you.
00:05:53
Barbie or Oppenheimer? I haven't seen either.
00:05:57
I'm actually reading the Oppenheimer book, which is 721
00:06:01
pages. Yeah.
00:06:03
So you know, the one that I'm going to break cover for is
00:06:06
Mission Impossible. So as soon as that one is out
00:06:09
and available, then I'll rush to the theater.
00:06:11
I do want to see Oppenheimer, but I saw something.
00:06:13
I saw an interview with or read an interview with Christopher
00:06:16
Nolan recently that said, yeah, maybe I went a little bit
00:06:19
overboard on the sound and it kind of like my wife and my
00:06:22
youngest saw. But in IMAX, and Nolan was
00:06:26
saying, yeah, there is some mumbling in the movie and you
00:06:29
can't hear it. And I'm like, you know, maybe I
00:06:32
want to watch it on home, at home, on my own big screen when
00:06:34
it streams, you know, in a month or whenever it is going to be
00:06:37
released. So yeah, I haven't seen either
00:06:39
of those movies. I got a great theater.
00:06:42
I love the theater with the reclining seats.
00:06:44
And I can get a beer and take it with me into the theater and
00:06:47
that kind of stuff and get wings or pizza.
00:06:49
But no, I have not gone out and in fact I've been, you know,
00:06:52
promoting my new book. It came out.
00:06:55
So I've, I've really been just kind of buried up, covered up
00:06:58
with media. So good question now.
00:07:00
Sorry, I don't have a better answer for you than that.
00:07:02
No, no worries. It was just a joke.
00:07:04
Just a joke, all right. What about this one in a cage
00:07:06
match? Who would win?
00:07:08
Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg? You know what?
00:07:11
I hope it's Zuckerberg, because I can't stand Elon Musk that I
00:07:15
heard somebody once say that he puts the ass in Asperger's.
00:07:19
You know, I'd hate to be that guy's neighbor with the damn X
00:07:23
on top of the building and all that kind of stuff.
00:07:25
And, you know, I I just, I'm kind of tired of hearing from
00:07:28
him. There's a handful of those
00:07:29
really wealthy guys that just pop off about everything.
00:07:33
And yeah, I I'd hate to be one of his shareholders, I'll tell
00:07:36
you that much. And he's really driven Twitter
00:07:39
into the ground, which is a shame because he, I mean, it was
00:07:41
never perfect, but I think he's made it worse.
00:07:44
So I'm. I'm putting my money on
00:07:46
Zuckerberg. Plus, have you seen what shape
00:07:47
Zuckerberg's in? I mean, it's crazy.
00:07:49
He's doing 4000 calories a day to keep the truing ass up.
00:07:53
Oh, it's amazing he's gonna whoop that Jackass his ass.
00:07:57
So I'm looking forward to that fight.
00:07:59
I'd go to Vegas for that. There you go.
00:08:01
That's great. You do a little promotion while
00:08:03
you're there. Hand out cards deadfall.
00:08:05
That's it. Sign books in the lobby.
00:08:08
The whole deal. Well, Deadfall Brad.
00:08:11
Incredible book. You know Chris and I on this
00:08:13
podcast we nitpick. Everything we're going through.
00:08:16
Right down to the cover. You guys did an emergency
00:08:19
episode. Yeah, you're like, what the hell
00:08:21
is with this cover? Blah.
00:08:23
I listened to it. I've listened to the episodes.
00:08:25
Yeah, you guys went after the cover, but it's now that you've
00:08:28
read it, you're gonna appreciate it to it.
00:08:30
I love the cover. I.
00:08:32
I got goosebumps when the scene happened with the the wing of
00:08:36
the Archangel, which we had guessed that that's which
00:08:39
statue. You were using.
00:08:40
Well done, and it was. The troll looking out the window
00:08:42
at the Raven on the tip of the wing.
00:08:45
I had goosebumps because again, any apprehensiveness I had about
00:08:49
the cover it when that moment hit, it was just, I don't know
00:08:54
why that warped me into the story.
00:08:56
It was a small detail, but it had layers because the Raven and
00:09:00
the Ravens, the chaos, yet he's finding peace in this kind of
00:09:04
visual looking out the window. You killed it, Brad.
00:09:07
Listen, I wanted to respond to you guys and I'm like, no, I got
00:09:09
to hold back because I just got to let him read the book and
00:09:12
then they'll get it, you know, so.
00:09:15
Cool. I guess you know, just to kick
00:09:17
it off. Like what?
00:09:18
What inspired you to write, you know, a story about Ukraine?
00:09:21
So I grew up, There's a particular writer who I loved
00:09:24
growing up, and his name was Alistair McLean.
00:09:26
And so one of my favorite books by him, and it was a great movie
00:09:31
with a young Clint Eastwood is Where Eagles Dare.
00:09:34
He wrote some really cool World War 2 stuff.
00:09:36
He wrote some Cold War stuff like Ice Station Zebra, and you
00:09:40
know, I'd always loved his stuff.
00:09:42
I love modern takes on World War 2 like.
00:09:44
Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, Fury with Brad Pitt.
00:09:48
You know, right down. I even enjoyed tremendously
00:09:51
Monuments Men with George Clooney and and John Goodman.
00:09:54
So I'd always wanted to take Harvath and put him in one of
00:09:58
those kind of World War Two stories.
00:10:00
But mine is you know Doc and the DeLorean.
00:10:02
That wasn't going to happen because Harvath is today not,
00:10:06
you know back in the 1930s, nineteen 40s.
00:10:09
So when Ukraine? Came about, I thought, okay if
00:10:13
this. If the Russians don't make it
00:10:15
into Kiev in the initial push, if the Ukrainians are able to
00:10:19
hold on to Kiev, this thing could draw out for a while and I
00:10:22
might have some breathing room to set a book there and get it
00:10:25
to market. So that was really the impetus
00:10:27
behind it, is that I wanted to put Harvat basically in the land
00:10:30
war in Europe. And as I'm writing it, it looks
00:10:33
to me like all those bombed out villages that you saw in Saving
00:10:36
Private Ryan and Band of Brothers and Fury.
00:10:39
That was, I mean, I was, those movies were playing through my
00:10:41
head as I was writing this book that the back, the backdrops,
00:10:45
the settings, if you will. Yes, Speaking of settings,
00:10:48
something we always bring up about your books every time is
00:10:51
how we're transported to the location.
00:10:53
We call it our Traveling Heavy segment.
00:10:55
After your former life in on the Traveling Light series, the way
00:11:00
you took us into a monastery, I felt like I was there in the
00:11:03
countryside or a vineyard. And we're with the Vintners
00:11:07
family and unfortunately what happens to the children or even
00:11:10
the the Bush telegram where we're we're going village to
00:11:12
village, getting these these clues and these hints and
00:11:14
they're communicating. It felt like guerrilla warfare
00:11:19
mixed in with and then there were some urban scenes it almost
00:11:22
felt like in those little towns where they're hiding behind
00:11:24
buildings. And he sends the trap with the
00:11:26
armored convoy. What was your favorite location
00:11:29
to write? And then similarly, because it
00:11:30
goes with that your favorite action scene that you put in the
00:11:33
book. Boy, that's great.
00:11:36
Great question. You know it.
00:11:38
It's funny because the first scene where you see Harvath
00:11:42
chapter one, so there's the prologue with Anna Royco in the
00:11:46
orphanage where the The Raven show up.
00:11:50
And then I had actually gone to Harvath in Poland kind of.
00:11:56
Bopping around in Warsaw and my wife's like, Nah, you can't go
00:11:58
to that. She's like you need an action
00:12:00
scene with Harvat to start it up.
00:12:01
And so in my notes I had this thing about what was in the real
00:12:05
world going on in Belarus, which is the Iranians training the
00:12:08
Russians and how to use their drones, the Shahid drones and
00:12:11
all that kind of stuff. So that scene I put in after the
00:12:15
fact, cuz my wife's like, yeah, you need an action scene right
00:12:17
up front here. So that's why I did that with
00:12:19
chapter one with Harvat. Then he got to see his team and
00:12:22
a couple of the guys on Harvest team are based on guys I know
00:12:25
and they get all pissy if. They don't see themselves in the
00:12:27
book, you know what I mean? So I got to, I got to take care
00:12:29
of the boys and and put them in. So you know, I really liked
00:12:36
their. But each scene was different.
00:12:37
Each scene kind of scratched a different itch for me, if you
00:12:40
will, you know played upon like Harvath goes all the way to
00:12:45
Keeve and then he's supposed to be.
00:12:48
He goes on to Car Keeve and he's supposed to be meeting with what
00:12:51
he thinks is a Ukrainian intelligence officer.
00:12:54
And it's not. It is.
00:12:55
It is. Actually a Russian that is
00:12:57
swapped in and so that whole thing in the DACA and you know I
00:13:02
I when the guy jumps through the window on fire that was yeah
00:13:05
that was like my Jason like Friday the 13th kind of thing
00:13:09
that you just think it's gone and the dude just jumps through
00:13:11
the window out of the window outside.
00:13:14
So that was fun. I really liked having Harveth in
00:13:17
the APC on the 50 Cal and just raking raking the target with
00:13:23
all those rounds. You know, it's it's interesting
00:13:25
because Ukraine is the first. There was stuff in Afghanistan
00:13:31
and stuff in Iraq where there were video and stuff like that.
00:13:36
But that was. That's like organized U.S.
00:13:38
military. There's stuff that they don't
00:13:39
want their guys doing, you know, they don't want guys feeding out
00:13:42
live footage of combat and all that kind of stuff.
00:13:45
But Ukraine's a different story. So you see a lot of these
00:13:47
Western guys that are joining the International Legion in
00:13:50
their go pros are running all the time.
00:13:53
So for me as a writer, it was amazing how much stuff I got to
00:13:56
see so that when I wanted to capture some firefights or some
00:14:00
house to house stuff, I can actually look at video on
00:14:02
YouTube. It was amazing and get
00:14:04
inspiration and watch and there were.
00:14:07
There were a couple things I saw where guys are like it's here,
00:14:10
we're we're in the right place. They're looking at the grids on
00:14:13
their map and they're like, yeah, this is exactly where
00:14:14
we're supposed to be, but nothing's here, you know, So
00:14:16
that kind of war is fog of war and things get screwed up and
00:14:21
logistics and getting, you know, supplies around.
00:14:24
So each one of those action scenes I really, really enjoyed,
00:14:29
you know, whether it was taking out the Ravens as they were
00:14:32
coming by that convent, the the big scene at the end.
00:14:37
Where, you know, it's kind of a bookend from the beginning with
00:14:40
the claim wars. So you've got the claim wars in
00:14:42
the beginning in Belarus. You've got the claim wars at the
00:14:44
end, each one right down to where the, the fake, the
00:14:49
Russians posing as Ukrainian soldiers had like a roadblock
00:14:52
and the fact that had to let, yeah, the checkpoint.
00:14:54
So all that stuff was fun to write because each one of those
00:14:58
is something I could see happening in band of brothers,
00:15:00
you know what I mean? Each one of those scenarios.
00:15:03
And it's funny because when I sat down, I was like, whoa, most
00:15:06
of this happens over 24 hours for Harvat.
00:15:08
Yeah, the book happens. Yeah.
00:15:10
I mean, it's a really long day for him from, you know, having
00:15:13
his train attacked to, you know, ending up figuring out where
00:15:19
Anna is and and going in there and getting her out.
00:15:22
It's like a it's like almost like an episode of 24 you know
00:15:24
and in a sense and I felt honestly we when we were we
00:15:29
talked about the first half of the book already and I brought
00:15:31
up this thing I felt that it, you know it it read like Band of
00:15:34
Brothers. It read like Saving Private
00:15:36
Ryan. I I could feel your inspiration
00:15:38
in the book. And then also you know just
00:15:41
putting Brad in this like new. I feel like these last three
00:15:45
books that while they haven't been like super connected like
00:15:47
story wise like they've they've been putting not Brad putting.
00:15:50
I do that a lot putting Scott in these different places and
00:15:54
seeing how we can connect. And I don't know if you can
00:15:56
comment on like what you've been jumping around and they kind of
00:16:00
have, I don't know, MM you had a better way to describe this.
00:16:02
They they're kind of connected, but not in, you know, like a
00:16:05
true like one story in the second story sense.
00:16:07
Right. They're almost three separate
00:16:09
stories, yet the geopolitical like landscape behind them is
00:16:13
all interwoven. So there's this connective
00:16:16
tissue that's not necessarily plot based.
00:16:19
But as the reader, you feel like it's definitely all the same
00:16:21
universe. So when you pull Scott into one
00:16:23
from the other, that makes sense.
00:16:25
Or you pull the troll and what he's doing with the Carlton
00:16:28
Group and their Intel, Well, you're feeding off of things
00:16:30
that came 2-3 books ago that are informing the situation now.
00:16:33
How the Russians, the Chinese, or even that opening scene, how
00:16:36
the IGRC Iranians are, you know, getting the drones and trading
00:16:40
the drones. It all feels connected.
00:16:42
Yet the last three have felt like very different stories.
00:16:45
They're separate missions, right.
00:16:47
So he and the books are designed.
00:16:49
If you want to read from the beginning, which a lot of
00:16:52
purists do, that's totally cool. If you haven't read one of my
00:16:54
books before and you want to start with the latest one,
00:16:57
Deadfall, you can do that too. That's that's the whole idea
00:16:59
here. But I'm actually searching in
00:17:01
the real world every year for what's the, what's the real
00:17:05
geopolitical set piece that I'm going to actually wrap my stuff
00:17:09
around. You know.
00:17:10
So with Rising Tiger, last summer's book that was based on
00:17:14
a real attack by. Many soldiers who slipped over
00:17:17
the border into China, I'm sorry.
00:17:19
Chinese soldiers slipped over the border into India and
00:17:22
attacked all those Indian soldiers in the middle of the
00:17:24
night with homemade weapons, like stuff out of Walking Dead.
00:17:28
And it lasted That handtohand combat went on for six hours.
00:17:31
It was like something out of the Middle Ages.
00:17:34
So, and the year before that with the whole Arctic thing,
00:17:37
with Russia pushing in the Arctic and the Chinese trying to
00:17:40
get a foothold there and all that stuff.
00:17:42
So there's always a real geopolitical set piece that I'm,
00:17:45
I'm basing Harvest Mission around.
00:17:48
So that's kind of the fun thing. You're going to get that white
00:17:50
knuckle thrill ride. But when you close the book,
00:17:52
you're going to actually know a little bit more about what's
00:17:54
going on around the world just by virtue of having finished the
00:17:58
book. I mean, these are not textbooks.
00:17:59
This is entertainment. This is supposed to be fun.
00:18:01
It's the faction, right? It's faction that you can learn
00:18:05
so much. How many missions did you
00:18:06
reference from World War 2 with Poland, from the Cold War?
00:18:10
Different intelligence operations.
00:18:12
It was prime. Brad.
00:18:13
Thor, it was we call them Thorisms on the pod.
00:18:16
Every Thorism here is firing just full cylinder.
00:18:19
We talked about the setting. Now we're talking about faction.
00:18:22
We could even talk, you know, a very Thor thing is the humor and
00:18:25
and how many jokes the guys are making in the team.
00:18:28
Which is hard in a setting like this.
00:18:30
I actually think they're probably less jokes and deadfall
00:18:33
because there were less moments to have that graveyard humor,
00:18:36
And I'm always looking for a way to slide those jokes in there.
00:18:39
But I just because this was so serious and it was so intense,
00:18:44
those moments are important to give people a chance to breathe.
00:18:48
You know, but and it's obviously different last year with rising
00:18:52
Tiger and Vijay helping Harvath navigate India.
00:18:55
You know, whether it was Jaipur or Delhi, whatever you could,
00:18:59
you could get those moments in there because it wasn't intense,
00:19:02
middle of just horrific war crimes.
00:19:05
But in deadfall, it's a little bit different.
00:19:06
So I had to pick and choose very carefully where it felt like,
00:19:10
OK, one of the guys could rib the other guy, you know, and you
00:19:13
could get a joke in there and that OK, that felt like.
00:19:15
That felt like, yeah, that'd probably happen in real life.
00:19:18
Carolyn and Fields, too. That's the.
00:19:21
Yeah, Those two. Yeah, Those two as well.
00:19:23
Yeah, with the gravity being the leading cause of death, if
00:19:27
you're a critic of the Russian President.
00:19:29
Absolutely. Was this one at all harder to
00:19:33
write? Picking the, you know, Ukraine
00:19:35
as the. As the.
00:19:38
Yeah, it was to actually do the research into what the war
00:19:42
crimes were. And then I was trying to draw
00:19:44
that parallel with the that I talked about in the beginning at
00:19:48
the Nazi s s brigade that was recruited much the same way that
00:19:53
these guys in the real life Wagner group were recruited out
00:19:56
of prisons and insane asylums and things like that.
00:19:59
And the fact that Hitler set that unit loose on Warsaw and
00:20:03
different parts of Poland. You know, I mean, they just
00:20:05
hammered Poland from August of 1944 to October and some of the
00:20:09
worst war crimes committed outside a concentration camp
00:20:12
were committed there in Poland by that brigade.
00:20:15
I mean when I talk about that Nazi s s brigade taking a
00:20:18
flamethrower to a field hospital and then machine gunning any
00:20:22
survivors that ran out, that really happened.
00:20:25
I mean, sometimes truth is, is is much more disturbing than
00:20:29
than fiction. So I I really wanted to.
00:20:32
I like that line by Francis Fukuyama.
00:20:34
That history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme.
00:20:38
And there were so many there. There are so many things in real
00:20:41
life with Putin going in and taking a slice of Ukraine in
00:20:45
2014, very similar to when Hitler first went in and took a
00:20:48
slice of Czechoslovakia. And then you had the Republic of
00:20:51
France, fascist Italy in the UK saying, okay, if we let him keep
00:20:55
it, maybe he'll stop there, just like everybody did with Putin in
00:20:59
Ukraine. Well, if we, you know, we kicked
00:21:00
him out of the G8, that's why we have a G7.
00:21:02
Now The Russians got tossed out. There were a few sanctions and a
00:21:05
harshly worded letter, but you know, it's it's history
00:21:08
happening all over again. These guys, they don't, they
00:21:11
don't react to that stuff. That doesn't deter them.
00:21:13
So there there's a lot of echoes of World War 2 and what's going
00:21:16
on right now. Care to come to my history class
00:21:19
and teach the middle schoolers because they need some of the
00:21:22
kids? You know what?
00:21:24
It's really it really is funny. I you know, I, one of my kids
00:21:27
sent me a meme the other day and they said when you hit middle
00:21:29
age, if you're a dad, you have two choices.
00:21:31
Either you start smoking meats or you get into World War 2
00:21:34
history. Why can't you do both?
00:21:37
Yeah, why not do both, Right. I think the real polymath is
00:21:39
going to do both and more, so yeah.
00:21:42
That's good. Now, obviously we know this book
00:21:44
was written, you know? Quite some time ago, but when
00:21:48
the Wagner group, when that whole situation was going down a
00:21:51
couple weeks ago, what what? What's your take on that?
00:21:55
So I I guess you're probably talking about June 23rd when
00:21:58
they sent 5000 dudes roll them up towards Moscow.
00:22:01
Yeah, you're getting Pergosian, you know, and they took out
00:22:05
some, they took out a kind of a surveillance airplane and some
00:22:08
helicopters. They did some damage on the way
00:22:10
up and then all of a sudden broke off.
00:22:13
So it's interesting since then and I have seen a video of
00:22:18
Pergosian shot against like the sunset.
00:22:21
So you don't really get a good look at him.
00:22:23
There was a, yeah, deep fake still photo of him that could
00:22:26
have been ages old with some African diplomat.
00:22:29
And then there was an audio message on Telegram.
00:22:32
On his Telegram channel. There's really not been a sit
00:22:34
down, you know, confirmable. Is he still alive?
00:22:38
So I don't even know if Pergosian, the head of the
00:22:40
Wagner group, is still alive. But when I was writing this, I
00:22:44
figured Wagner was going to be around.
00:22:46
What I was worried about was all of these times the Russians have
00:22:50
gotten themselves into trouble around one of the Ukrainian nuke
00:22:53
plants, and they're they're shelling to close, they're
00:22:56
cutting off power, they're causing power to be disrupted,
00:22:59
which could cause a meltdown. That was the big thing.
00:23:02
A I was worried about just as a human being, You know, I don't
00:23:04
want to. I don't want another Chernobyl
00:23:06
over there. But from an author standpoint, I
00:23:09
was like, okay, If this happens, that's going to be interesting
00:23:11
because I'm not going to be able to work that into the book.
00:23:14
You know, they, the Russians blew up that dam, and that
00:23:16
killed 55 people. I have an animal lover, and that
00:23:19
thing wiped out an entire zoo and killed all the animals in
00:23:22
the zoo. I mean, these guys are just
00:23:24
Barbarians. They're savages.
00:23:27
So I lucked out. I lucked out.
00:23:29
It's the first time I've ever written something kind of
00:23:32
concurrent with real events running real time with my
00:23:35
writing and stuff like that. But it it didn't work.
00:23:37
And I, you know, listen, I want to create a book that you could
00:23:40
pick up 10 years from now and still have that really cool band
00:23:43
of brothers, Saving Private Ryan kind of experience.
00:23:47
It's real interesting you talk about that because I remember a
00:23:50
few weeks back cuz we're getting ready to cover Code Red.
00:23:53
We also have the Mitch Rapp podcast The last Kyle Mills.
00:23:56
Right. Last one, the transition, we
00:23:58
have to cover all that. But I saw a tweet by Kyle that
00:24:01
he was making some last minute edits based on what was going on
00:24:04
with the Wagner group and for Goshen.
00:24:05
And I think your your setting is a little easier because you've
00:24:09
already set up Peshkov. So you don't have to have a
00:24:11
Putin, you know, he's been around.
00:24:13
Right. And you have the Ravens as this
00:24:15
kind of split group. This is Wing of who left.
00:24:19
They've gone AWOL. Yeah, exactly.
00:24:21
They're they're just roaming around, just marauding through.
00:24:24
They're not even part of Wagner anymore.
00:24:26
They're not taking any direction from Wagner.
00:24:28
So yeah, these are very bad lone gunslingers.
00:24:32
In some ways that maybe makes it easier for the book to age and
00:24:36
and for you to write it and but it also gave you that creativity
00:24:39
to kind of do some crazy stuff. This is a heavy, heavy book in
00:24:43
terms of psyche and and psychology.
00:24:47
Some of the things that you have to describe with the nuns and
00:24:49
the nunnery and the children being taken and the father who
00:24:53
was disabled and what happened to them.
00:24:55
A lot of that happened in World War 2.
00:24:57
You know, it's funny. I didn't have to cast about for
00:25:00
creative inspiration. It was what do I leave out you
00:25:03
know what do I not put it. I mean there were there were
00:25:05
some things where I was like yeah I'm not going that far but
00:25:08
this this stuff what what can happen in war with bad actors
00:25:13
who don't you know it who don't subscribe to the Geneva and
00:25:17
Hague conventions and target actually intentionally target
00:25:21
civilians It's it's terrible and that's been happening since the
00:25:25
very beginning in in Ukraine just it's it's horrific with the
00:25:29
Russians have done there. I guess.
00:25:33
Transitioning a little bit to you know some of the new
00:25:35
characters that you brought to us.
00:25:37
You mentioned earlier that you always have to get you know your
00:25:39
some of your guys you write about, but we also have like a
00:25:41
new team and you know this team that is band of Americans and
00:25:46
British over there helping. Can you speak a little bit about
00:25:49
Hookah, Jacks, Kruger and Biscuit and what what inspired
00:25:51
you to write about them? Yeah, so I read a lot of
00:25:54
articles and watch videos of people who are interviewed who
00:25:56
had joined Ukraine's International Legion, and I
00:25:59
thought that was really interesting.
00:26:02
So in real life in the United States, we've been, we've been
00:26:06
hacked, some of our most sensitive databases when it
00:26:09
comes to special operations personnel, intelligence
00:26:12
personnel have been hacked by the Chinese.
00:26:14
So there's stuff that you wouldn't think is that big of a
00:26:16
deal. But so the Office of Personnel
00:26:18
Management, which is where the SF86S are filed, which are these
00:26:22
forms that it's how you get your top secret clearance.
00:26:26
You've had major insurance companies hacked.
00:26:29
IRS has been hacked. So anyway, once you've hacked
00:26:32
these places and you pulled the data out of all these spots, you
00:26:35
can start connecting dots. And so that was, that was a
00:26:38
little bit of the explanation as you saw in Deadfall, one of the
00:26:41
reasons why Harvath couldn't take any of his team members
00:26:43
over there because the Chinese would be able to, you know,
00:26:47
figure out these guys were all connected, they'd leak it to the
00:26:49
Russians. And then the Russians would
00:26:50
claim that the United States had put American boots on the ground
00:26:53
combat troops that they'd put them in there.
00:26:55
So Harvath couldn't have any of his guys.
00:26:57
I that was important to me. You can't have your guys.
00:26:59
And so I reversed engineered. How would you get in this
00:27:02
situation? How do you fix it?
00:27:03
And it's like the Ukrainians. Like we can't afford to spare
00:27:05
anybody. We'll give you a handful of guys
00:27:08
from the International Legion. They've got combat experience
00:27:11
over here. They all speak English and good
00:27:12
luck. You know, it's the running joke
00:27:14
in the book. Can I get some javelins?
00:27:16
You know, that was like the running thing.
00:27:18
How come I can't get any javelins?
00:27:19
Nobody's got any javelins, so I I I really wanted to create, Not
00:27:25
necessarily a Dirty Dozen, which was another great book that got
00:27:29
turned into a movie. It has that feel, yeah.
00:27:32
So these are guys that aren't necessarily getting sprung from
00:27:35
prison to help Harvath. That's more the, you know, the
00:27:38
the Wagner side of things where they have prisoners.
00:27:40
But it is kind of this ragtag. I hate that term, but it is this
00:27:44
mismatch group. They kind of know each other
00:27:46
from combat. They haven't been fighting
00:27:48
together long. And now Harvath drops in to make
00:27:50
Harvath a captain. And these guys, I've got to
00:27:53
answer to him, You know, there's a whole thing.
00:27:55
Harvest shows up, He's like okay, where's all the gear and
00:27:56
equipment? They're like, what Gear and
00:27:57
equipment, you know? And so it's just constant one
00:28:00
thing after another which is very very common in a in a
00:28:04
theater of war that you know this snafu situation normal, all
00:28:08
fucked up, pardon my French. We're going to get the explicit
00:28:10
rating right out of the. Carolyn wouldn't be happy.
00:28:13
Carolyn wouldn't be happy with your language.
00:28:15
You know what's funny? I got, I got interviewed by by a
00:28:19
journalist who's ex FBI and he said man, he goes and he's in
00:28:23
his. I'd say John is probably in his
00:28:25
50s and he's like, you know that Carolyn guy, he's like, I knew
00:28:28
that guy. I knew I knew that guy in
00:28:30
multiple forms, you know, that were really kind of almost, you
00:28:34
know, that too young to have been there when Hoover was
00:28:36
there, but still we're very, you know, button down, straight
00:28:38
laced, no swearing, that kind of a thing.
00:28:40
The old Guard. So, yeah, old guard.
00:28:42
Exactly. Yeah, you mentioned dropping
00:28:47
Harveth in here. I was wondering, why is he here
00:28:50
and why is he going solo across the countryside, essentially?
00:28:54
And I was wondering, even before the book came out, how were you
00:28:57
going to give me a reason to buy that he was sent there and he
00:29:01
was just? Tracking down a group in the
00:29:02
countryside, essentially by himself until he meets his team.
00:29:06
But I bought it hook, line and sinker when you had the OPM hack
00:29:10
and how he can't bring his own team because then it would look
00:29:12
like the US military authorized it.
00:29:14
And even Nicholas explaining this gave me more of the reason
00:29:17
to buy in. Because basically when Nicholas
00:29:19
breaks down the data, when he analyzes something, there's no
00:29:23
holes, it's watertight. And so you you had me hook, line
00:29:26
and sinker. But I want to talk about
00:29:28
Nicholas for a second. He was a really, really.
00:29:32
He played an important role. And I like to see while Scott's
00:29:36
on the op and he's in the field, Nicholas is doing what Nicholas
00:29:39
does, helping the GUR and doing the Intel.
00:29:42
Did you know from the beginning that Julia was going to be the
00:29:45
mole? I didn't.
00:29:47
You did. It's a good question.
00:29:48
I did not. I knew that that person was
00:29:50
going to have to exist. So I had had some ideas.
00:29:54
One of the things that I wanted Nicholas to do so the the a
00:29:57
couple of the intelligence operations that Nicholas get get
00:30:00
discussed in his chapters are real operations that the
00:30:03
Ukrainians did. So whether it was convincing the
00:30:06
wives of. Calendar.
00:30:08
That was a real calendar. Totally real.
00:30:11
What about the Ukrainians convinced the the wives of those
00:30:14
kind of high-ranking Russians to pose in boudoir photos?
00:30:17
So that was real. The sweetening the pot with lots
00:30:22
of money to get Russian pilots to give up their aircraft.
00:30:26
That was real. So I tried to I figured these
00:30:29
intelligence operations are so cool in they they exist.
00:30:32
Why would you make something up? Just just have it be Nicholas's
00:30:35
idea that he's running these types of things with the
00:30:38
Ukrainians. So that was that was kind of
00:30:40
fun. Did you know about Gretch Go?
00:30:42
Cuz that is almost the bigger cliffhanger.
00:30:44
One of the thorisms is always that cliffhanger that keeps you
00:30:47
going to the next chapter, the next book.
00:30:49
Did you know that Kretschko? Did you plan on having him
00:30:52
defect and having Sulvey meet him?
00:30:53
Because you talked about bookends?
00:30:55
I was like, where is Sulvey in the beginning with Poland?
00:30:58
And they don't meet up. But then it was a sweet ending.
00:31:00
They are going to meet up again. But now she her world is
00:31:03
colliding with Harvest World, even though neither of them know
00:31:06
it. Yeah.
00:31:07
What's going on there? So I've watched some interesting
00:31:12
things politically, and I'm not going to go political here, but
00:31:14
I've seen some politicians spend time with people who are just
00:31:20
abject morons, who get a politician's ear because they've
00:31:23
got too much money. Whatever, just because you're
00:31:25
successful in, you know, what's the John Candy character from?
00:31:31
He was the shower, shower curtain ring salesman.
00:31:34
You know, just because you've made a fortune selling shower
00:31:36
curtain rings doesn't mean you should be telling a politician
00:31:38
how to pass laws or to form domestic or international
00:31:42
policy. So when that Jackass was telling
00:31:45
Peshkov here's what you ought to do and blah blah blah, blah
00:31:48
blah, because that whole thing about the Black Sea, about
00:31:50
Turkey controlling entrance and exit from it is is totally
00:31:54
legit. It's totally true.
00:31:57
I was like, okay this has got there have got to be like decent
00:32:01
rush. Russia's full of wonderful
00:32:04
people, just like I'm convinced China's full of wonderful
00:32:06
people. They just are two countries that
00:32:08
have horrific governments that just have just feathered their
00:32:12
nests on the backs of the of the poor people that live in that in
00:32:16
those countries. So I figured my guy in Russia
00:32:19
was going to be like, you know what, I I just, this is stupid.
00:32:23
I can't believe I work for these idiots.
00:32:25
I'm out, you know, I'm out. I'm in love with this woman.
00:32:27
I should have really taken taken the chance with her.
00:32:30
She's now in the South of France and I can't believe I bumped
00:32:33
into her again. You know, that happens a lot in
00:32:35
life. You kind of you stop and you
00:32:37
look back and say what if I just done this or what if I done that
00:32:40
and Oh my gosh, I got a second chance at life.
00:32:43
I don't know, it's pretty scary. I have to risk everything to
00:32:45
grab it, but I think I am going to grab it sort of a thing.
00:32:48
So when he bumps into her and they reconnect and he's looking
00:32:52
at the idiots he works for and how badly Russia's suffering
00:32:55
because of the acts of the president of the country in my
00:32:59
fictional world, he's like, you know what?
00:33:00
F this guy, Why do I want to give my life?
00:33:03
You know, this is not the country that I signed up to be a
00:33:07
champion for. And so he decides to pull the
00:33:09
plug. And I thought, ah, there's a
00:33:11
really cool way to do this. And then it brings Solvi back at
00:33:13
the end. And he'll go to the Russia,
00:33:15
it'll go to the Norwegians. And so, yeah, it did allow me to
00:33:18
bookend it and bring Solvie back and give her a little thing in
00:33:21
that grocery store where they do that.
00:33:23
That place really exists and it's just kind of really neat.
00:33:26
So that was fun to do. And that is that connective
00:33:29
tissue because the Norway, Russia border was huge in black
00:33:33
ice. So that's coming back into play.
00:33:36
The Black Sea stuff with Turkey controlling the Darnells and
00:33:39
everything made me think of rising Tiger with the belt and
00:33:41
Rd. initiative and how China maybe has less influence in that
00:33:45
region if. Players like Turkey are propped
00:33:47
up and if they're on the right side, so it's little scenes like
00:33:51
that that make me feel these books are working together.
00:33:53
As we said before, even though they're they're plot wise very
00:33:56
different. So thanks for for sharing that.
00:33:59
You're welcome. I wanted to ask you a little bit
00:34:02
more about the title. I don't know if I I like the
00:34:06
title, it's cool. But what?
00:34:09
What were you going for with Deadfall?
00:34:11
So I'm 23 books in. It is tough to get titles.
00:34:16
I know guys that like copy. I know of authors.
00:34:20
Let me say, what's that? You know what I've tried?
00:34:25
ChatGPT. I've goofed around on it.
00:34:27
It is the most unhelpful, uninspired, robotic I I am not
00:34:31
worried about ChatGPT taking my job, because the stuff it turns
00:34:34
out is just crap. I've asked it just for fun.
00:34:37
I've been like because all my friends who are not writers are
00:34:39
like every oh ChatGPT is that good for you.
00:34:42
And I'm like, you know I've asked it to spit out a plot for
00:34:44
a novel and stuff for spy novel, counterterrorism novel.
00:34:48
And it's so trophy. It's so not even mid list.
00:34:52
It's below mid list it's it's just terrible.
00:34:55
So there's no spark. Yeah.
00:34:57
There's just there's no ingenuity.
00:34:59
There's no passion. There's no life or creativity in
00:35:01
ChatGPT and it gets reflected, reflected in in what it spits
00:35:06
back out. But the title.
00:35:08
So it's interesting. So I'm 23 books in and titles
00:35:12
are tough. I know people that kind of that
00:35:16
There's a handful of writers out there that copy Ludlum style
00:35:20
like the Doorknob conspiracy or The Light Fixture Escapade.
00:35:25
You know? And it's like, come on.
00:35:26
That stuff is just a little I just that stuff I just, I don't
00:35:31
like. I think it is.
00:35:33
To me it smacks of Ludlum. But maybe with enough time
00:35:36
passed since Ludlum was around maybe that's okay.
00:35:39
I mean it's one thing for the Ludlum estate to do it on their
00:35:41
books. It's another thing for other
00:35:43
people to kind of do that stuff. But titles are hard title.
00:35:46
You can't copyright a title, you know?
00:35:49
So I mean I I did one title once and some guy who was a director
00:35:53
of some horror movies like you're stole my title.
00:35:56
I'm like, fuck you, Hey, I've never heard of your stupid
00:35:59
horror movie, so. Did 15 other people.
00:36:01
Yeah. I mean and listen the guys
00:36:03
horror movie might be totally righteous.
00:36:04
I shouldn't say it's stupid. I never saw his horror movie.
00:36:06
But to just pop up and accuse me of stealing, I was like easy.
00:36:10
Their trigger that's a that's kind of a that's kind of a bold
00:36:15
assertion. So anyway, it's tough to find
00:36:18
title. So is actually Deadfall came
00:36:21
because I did a little. I was like Rising Tiger, Rising
00:36:23
Tiger. And I was trying, I was thinking
00:36:25
about Rising Tiger and what would be good to follow it.
00:36:28
And when my wife and my youngest were doing college visits, they
00:36:32
went to falling water, which was the Frank Lloyd Rice White
00:36:35
House. And so I was like, oh, and then
00:36:37
I kind of just did a dumb joke in my head.
00:36:38
I'm a Rising tiger followed by falling water.
00:36:40
And I'm like, yeah, I know it's not going to be falling water,
00:36:42
but could it be fall something? So you got Rising Tiger and
00:36:45
could it be something else? Fall.
00:36:47
So I started playing around with words where I could combine Fall
00:36:50
and I was particularly looking for something that's stacked
00:36:53
really well. So 4 letters on top of four
00:36:55
letters, the same way my name is 4 letters on top of four letters
00:36:59
and I got to Deadfall. And so Deadfall is, you know,
00:37:02
it's it can be a trap, it can be a deadfall trap, it can be a
00:37:05
tree that fall. So I was like, I really like
00:37:07
this and I pitched my editor on it and she she loved it.
00:37:10
She thought it was fantastic. And so that's that's how that
00:37:13
came about and that's often it's it's weak of me just made it did
00:37:18
not happen that quick. It's but it's weeks of me just
00:37:21
writing words down and trying to put things together in a cool
00:37:25
way without trying to sound like you're trying to be cool.
00:37:27
You know what I mean? Like overdoing it now, is this
00:37:31
after? Writing like you're you're
00:37:32
already like, no, no, it's I'll tell you that's kind of the
00:37:36
that's kind of the difficult part of our business.
00:37:38
You know you, me, we'd all go to the store.
00:37:41
We're like, whoa, Christmas is like it's August.
00:37:43
I'm seeing the Halloween candy out already and you know it's
00:37:46
just a couple of weeks before they'll put out the Christmas
00:37:48
stuff. They got to mark it and.
00:37:50
So that's the way it is. Like they want to know what's
00:37:53
the title and what's the story for the next book before you're
00:37:56
even done with it. So that's part of just the kind
00:37:59
of how the sausage is made sort of a thing.
00:38:01
So I often, once I've got the idea for the book, the publisher
00:38:06
wants the title as soon as possible.
00:38:08
They want to know what the book's about, and then they want
00:38:10
the title so that they can get to work on a cover.
00:38:12
And I will work with the art director right out of the gate.
00:38:15
We'll do a, we'll do a zoom, and we'll collaborate with me in
00:38:18
Nashville and and him in New York.
00:38:20
And we'll talk about, like we went through a lot of iterations
00:38:23
for Deadfall, different things that I wanted to capture.
00:38:27
You know we started out by can we do like a whole like crumbled
00:38:30
village with trees that have been desiccated and all this
00:38:33
kind of stuff And and that wasn't really capturing the
00:38:36
feel. And he's like, well let me see
00:38:38
if I can go back and take some of the stuff you've told me
00:38:40
that's in the book and let's see if we can do something that's a
00:38:42
little bit more high concept. And and that's how we came up
00:38:46
with the wing with the Raven on it, which again might not make
00:38:51
sense. It probably doesn't make sense
00:38:53
to most people. You guys were actually pretty
00:38:55
smart when you did your your emergency podcast episode and
00:38:58
you would dug into it and you figured out the art and all that
00:39:01
kind of stuff. So that was that was actually
00:39:02
the altar piece I. Remember reading on that episode
00:39:05
An article about the altarpiece hidden in the basement and split
00:39:08
up and and there it was. That's exactly so I was we
00:39:12
probably, you guys probably found similar articles to what I
00:39:17
was using as research because there's all this UNESCO stuff
00:39:21
out there. There's listen, one of my
00:39:23
favorite books is All The Light We Cannot See and it was a
00:39:28
Pulitzer Prize winner and all about the blind girl whose dad
00:39:32
worked at the Louvre in Paris and they were trying to pack up
00:39:34
the Louvre before the Nazis got there.
00:39:36
And again, Monuments Men with George Clooney and John Goodman
00:39:39
about trying to sell me the art. Even down to Indiana Jones.
00:39:43
I mean, it was funny. I just saw The Dial of Destiny
00:39:46
several weeks ago, and it opens up with Indiana Jones at this
00:39:49
like Nazi Castle. And the Nazi castle.
00:39:51
They're like loading up all the art that they had looted.
00:39:54
So that's a very big thing, and that's part of genocide.
00:39:58
It's part. And so it is something that in
00:40:00
the real world Putin is actively doing, is trying to steal the
00:40:04
art. Out of Ukraine.
00:40:05
Because that's a cultural, gentle side, yeah.
00:40:08
And it erases their culture. Or the same thing with stealing
00:40:11
the kids and saying all we're just trying to help them.
00:40:13
It's that it's bullshit. They're trying to that's they
00:40:16
are pulling the kids out. They're going to raise them as
00:40:18
Russians and make them forget that they were ever Ukrainians,
00:40:21
Right. So this like Crimea.
00:40:24
Yeah, Yeah, it's bad stuff. There's so many people.
00:40:27
Who just are accepting that that's Russian territory without
00:40:30
even knowing. Pre 2014, you know what what it
00:40:33
was like And as I said in the book and I think I I hope this
00:40:37
is something that people you know, one of the nicest
00:40:39
compliments I get is people say man, there's such cool stuff in
00:40:43
here. I have to read your books with
00:40:44
my laptop open because I got to Google and see if that's true.
00:40:48
One of the things I'm constantly doing.
00:40:49
That well, that's good. We did that with the Viagra.
00:40:52
In that emergency pod, we had to look up if that was true, and it
00:40:55
was, and that happened a UN mission, somebody.
00:40:57
Brought it up at a meeting that that was happening, yeah.
00:41:00
Yep. So one of the things that I
00:41:02
think a lot of people don't know that I've, you guys have read
00:41:04
the book now. So you know this and I've talked
00:41:07
about it in my interviews, is that in the real world when the
00:41:11
Soviet Union collapsed, a third of their their nukes were in
00:41:15
Ukraine. And it we, as America went to
00:41:18
the Ukrainians and said, you guys don't know how to maintain
00:41:21
this stuff and you certainly can't keep it safe.
00:41:23
And it was in our best interest to convince the Ukrainians to
00:41:26
give up all these nukes, because we didn't want some terrorist
00:41:30
group or rogue state to grab these nukes and use them against
00:41:34
us. Light one off in Madison or
00:41:36
Minneapolis or St. Petersburg, FL or Austin, TX.
00:41:39
Doesn't matter where it it was in our best interest to convince
00:41:42
the Ukrainians to give up the nukes.
00:41:43
And the Ukrainians said, OK, we'll give them up, but we want
00:41:46
some security assurances, and we said yes, we totally guarantee
00:41:50
you will never be invaded, you'll never lose an inch of
00:41:52
sovereign territory. And they said, OK, now get the
00:41:55
Russians to sign it. OK, the Russians signed it.
00:41:57
That's fine. That was before Putin and
00:41:59
everything. But then Fast forward to 2014,
00:42:01
and the Russians invade and they take the Dambas, eastern eastern
00:42:05
Ukraine, and all that happens is the Russians get kicked out of
00:42:08
the G8, like we talked about earlier, becomes the G7.
00:42:11
So a handful of sanctions and a harshly worded letter from the
00:42:15
then US administration, presidential administration.
00:42:20
You know, listen, I'm the son of the United States Marine.
00:42:22
I was raised that character matters, that your word matters
00:42:26
in that America honors its promises.
00:42:29
So the fact that we didn't is a is a big deal.
00:42:33
And I hear a lot about all Ukraine.
00:42:35
So corrupt. Yeah, Ukraine is very corrupt.
00:42:37
Ukraine still has a hangover from being a member of the
00:42:41
Soviet Union. You know what else is corrupt?
00:42:43
Chicago. I'm from Chicago.
00:42:45
Chicago is corrupt as hell. But I don't want the Canadians
00:42:47
to come down and steal it, OK? And you know what's even more
00:42:51
corrupt than Ukraine? The swamp.
00:42:52
Russia. Russia's even more corrupt than
00:42:55
Ukraine. I love all these people that
00:42:56
point to Ukraine and they're like, it's so corrupt.
00:42:58
I don't care if it's corrupt. That doesn't mean that you can
00:43:00
go in and invade it and take it over and steal their children
00:43:04
and rape their citizens. I mean, the men and the women
00:43:07
are getting raped over there. It's horrible.
00:43:10
I mean, I, you know, if anything, I dialed it down in my
00:43:13
book. The stuff that I read is just,
00:43:15
it's horrific. They're going to have a thing
00:43:17
like Nuremberg that is just going to go on for forever.
00:43:20
I mean, they are. It's going to take them decades
00:43:23
to go through all the war crimes that have been committed there.
00:43:25
Yeah, well. That's interesting because Chris
00:43:28
and I were were talking when we reviewed part one and not that
00:43:32
we were surprised because you've been very clear on your, your
00:43:35
personal perspective. We've been clear with Scott and
00:43:37
Nicholas and their perspective on the war.
00:43:39
So both in fiction and reality, very clear.
00:43:42
But I was a bit surprised in the book.
00:43:45
How? I guess I'll put it this way.
00:43:47
When when you when the troll mentions that originally was 12%
00:43:50
of Americans who either disagreed with the war or were
00:43:53
against funding and American supplies going and then it
00:43:56
quickly doubled and that was 24%.
00:43:58
I would say since you wrote this book before, you know when it
00:44:01
was in the can even before publication, that number has
00:44:04
probably doubled again or tripled.
00:44:05
Like we have a sizable portion of this country who is seriously
00:44:10
questioning and bringing up the corruption piece.
00:44:12
But questioning, could this be another, you know, we're giving
00:44:17
weapons to who will become the Taliban, you know, originally
00:44:19
supporting the freedom fighters. We're giving weapons to various
00:44:22
group that eventually who knows where they'll be and whose hands
00:44:24
they'll be in. Are you open to the argument of
00:44:27
people who disagree with the funding and military surplus
00:44:32
going to Ukraine or like you said with Hugh Hewitt, do you
00:44:35
still believe that was a great interview?
00:44:37
Do you still believe? Let's take everything we're
00:44:38
giving him and double it on this, double it?
00:44:40
Yeah, listen, we predicate so much.
00:44:44
We base so much of our Defense Department budget on going to
00:44:47
war with Russia. This has been an unbelievably
00:44:51
eyeopening experience for the United States military, for the
00:44:53
Pentagon. We now realize Russia is so
00:44:56
hollowed out because it's a kleptocracy, and their military
00:44:59
so hollowed out, that we don't need to fear them the way we
00:45:04
once did. It is going to change our
00:45:07
budgeting so that we can place the attention on China, which is
00:45:10
a near pure power, which is a lot more threatening to us.
00:45:14
We are falling behind and how many surface ships we have for
00:45:16
our Navy, all this kind of stuff.
00:45:18
So they're the Aleutian Islands, They just.
00:45:20
Went right next to the illusion with the Russians 2 days ago.
00:45:22
Yeah. With the Russians.
00:45:23
With the Russians, Yeah. And we sent one Coast Guard ship
00:45:25
or. Something like that the first
00:45:26
time. And yeah, so they backed off
00:45:29
when we, you know, when we, when we told them.
00:45:32
So it's I on top of the Russian military getting hollowed out in
00:45:38
Ukraine, which I think is great, and I'm going to get back to.
00:45:41
I'm going to contradict myself at the end of this because
00:45:43
there's a moral argument that takes precedence over all this.
00:45:46
We are learning so much about our weapons systems.
00:45:49
We have fielded stuff in Ukraine that is not seen active combat
00:45:52
and we're learning a ton about how it works.
00:45:55
And in fact, there's a French defense manufacturer that makes
00:45:58
a shoulder fired rocket that it said, yeah, we're retiring this,
00:46:01
they retired it, they retired it.
00:46:02
They're like this is never going to be used in modern combat
00:46:05
again. And they went, Oh my God, we're
00:46:06
bringing it back. We're firing the conveyor belts
00:46:09
and the plants up. We're bringing this particular
00:46:11
shoulder fire rocker rocket back.
00:46:14
So we are gathering incredible real time Intel on our weapons
00:46:18
systems. The Russian military is be is
00:46:21
just losing again and again and again.
00:46:23
Now that's that the the, the, the flip side of that is the
00:46:28
moral side. Okay, there are Russian kids who
00:46:31
are losing their dads. There are Russian mothers who
00:46:33
are losing their sons. There are Russian wives losing
00:46:36
their husbands in the same thing can be sent set on the Ukrainian
00:46:38
side. From a moral standpoint, we
00:46:41
should all, and I am one of those people who does, should
00:46:44
want to see this conflict ended as quickly as possible.
00:46:48
That is the correct and moral position to have on this.
00:46:51
So in my estimation, back to now Hugh Hewitt and your question
00:46:54
about my talk with you is if you believe that the morally right
00:46:58
thing to do is to end this as quickly as possible, we should
00:47:01
be given the Ukrainians everything they need to kick the
00:47:03
shit out of the Russians. Because that's the only way that
00:47:07
Putin is going to stop is if he has no choice and he's
00:47:10
threatened. And that's been now back to
00:47:12
Pergosian and Wagner going up towards Moscow.
00:47:15
I think Pergosian probably thought he had a lot more people
00:47:18
on the inside of the Kremlin. We're going to back him in a
00:47:20
coup attempt. And then it they were like,
00:47:21
yeah, second thought, yeah, sorry, bro.
00:47:24
We told you we were going to we're going to back you.
00:47:26
But no, no, okay, no, we're out. So I think it's in.
00:47:31
I think it's in the world's best interest to curb.
00:47:34
You know, this is, again, what we didn't do with Hitler.
00:47:37
And we saw where that led after he took Czechoslovakia.
00:47:40
And so I think there's a, there's a real solid case here
00:47:43
to be made for, for trying to end this in favor of Ukraine as
00:47:48
quickly as possible. And that's why I come back to
00:47:50
people. Oh, it's so corrupt.
00:47:51
Yeah, again, it's corrupt. I get it.
00:47:53
Russia's more corrupt and Ukraine has been inching towards
00:47:57
being less corrupt. I know people that were over
00:47:59
there teaching them how to improve their justice system,
00:48:02
how to run proper elections and how to improve their rule of
00:48:05
law. It's not.
00:48:07
It's baby steps. But what's great is is if
00:48:11
Ukraine can pull this out. It is such a message to other
00:48:16
countries around the world. There's a reason that the
00:48:18
Chinese hate the Taiwanese. No autocrat wants a freedom
00:48:23
loving democracy on their doorstep.
00:48:25
They just don't. It's one of the reasons China
00:48:27
doesn't like India. It's a threat to to you if
00:48:30
you're a dictator or an autocrat.
00:48:32
Clears it up. Yeah.
00:48:35
No, I don't know. I appreciate you saying this in
00:48:38
your book. Like it felt like it it needed
00:48:40
to be said. And yeah, that's one of the
00:48:42
reasons why I really, I really enjoy this novel.
00:48:44
And you know, the other side of this is too, is the Chinese
00:48:47
would love to see us drag it out over there and deplete our
00:48:50
stockpiles. I mean, so our enemy China would
00:48:53
like us and the Russians to be dragging it out.
00:48:56
It's just, it's not good. We should not want to see any
00:48:58
more people dying Russian or Ukrainian.
00:49:01
And at the end of the day, you know what this argument oh,
00:49:05
they're corrupt, is I'm sorry. It's one of the I just so they
00:49:08
deserve to be invaded. So again, like Chicago can a
00:49:11
Canada can come down. Let them try and let the
00:49:13
Canadians try and take Chicago. I'd like to see that.
00:49:16
But it's like you know what? No.
00:49:17
This is a sovereign nation. And you guys read in the book
00:49:20
where I talk about Putin wasn't so freaked out about Scandinavia
00:49:24
that he doubled his troop strength up there with their
00:49:26
NATO membership, and it's. Bullshit.
00:49:30
The Nazis. The whole thing.
00:49:32
Yeah, OK. And they're Jewish presidents.
00:49:34
A secret Nazi. That stuff is just garbage.
00:49:36
Putin wants to stitch together the old Russian Empire.
00:49:38
This is his legacy. This is why dictators,
00:49:43
autocrats, are so dangerous, because they are not answerable
00:49:47
to the people they're supposed to be serving.
00:49:50
So when Putin gets this idea that he wants to, you know, get
00:49:54
the band fully back together, there is a phrase that is used
00:49:58
that you can never reunite the Russian Empire without Ukraine
00:50:02
as part of its beating heart. So there's a, I'm butchering the
00:50:06
phrase, but there is this phrase, there's this real belief
00:50:08
that nothing else Putin would do would matter if he can't get
00:50:10
Ukraine. It's so highly symbolic.
00:50:13
So. But they're a free and
00:50:14
independent nation. They they should be allowed to
00:50:17
remain such. And here's the other thing.
00:50:19
We promised them we would never let them lose an inch of
00:50:24
territory. We need to live up to our word.
00:50:28
That's who we are as Americans. And you cannot like Zelensky,
00:50:31
you cannot like all the stuff going on, blah, blah, blah,
00:50:33
blah, blah. But we promised these guys and
00:50:36
we need to live up to our promises.
00:50:37
And if we don't, then you know what?
00:50:39
Nobody's ever going to trust us on anything.
00:50:41
And that's bad for the country, no matter where you stand on the
00:50:44
issue. And I'll climb off my soapbox.
00:50:46
The only thing to say to that. Is Slava Ukrainian?
00:50:50
There you go. That's all we.
00:50:51
Could say to that I like that rant, you know, just while we're
00:50:55
on it and the final things to close with we.
00:50:57
Got to ask you about. Some conspiracy theories here
00:51:00
because you got the Commodore Yacht Club, which clearly in my
00:51:03
mind living in DC goes to Pizza Gate.
00:51:05
Yes, I live a block away. Or, excuse me, I work a block
00:51:08
away from the pizza restaurant. And as a middle schooler, almost
00:51:11
all our families, yeah, almost all the families go to Comet
00:51:14
Ping Pong. And here's The funny thing,
00:51:15
right? You know how, like the Commodore
00:51:18
Yacht Club, there's a strain of truth to something, and it's
00:51:21
that strain that gets manipulated.
00:51:23
There is a backroom, and it's kind of weird if you don't know
00:51:26
the restaurant. It's hidden by a curtain because
00:51:28
the bar scene is very loud, but it's also a family establishment
00:51:31
in a residential neighborhood. There's a curtain.
00:51:34
You pull the curtain over, you go down steps.
00:51:36
It's almost like it feels like a warehouse kind of basement, but
00:51:39
they have ping pong tables, so all the kids hang out down there
00:51:42
as the parents are at the bar, but it's totally normal.
00:51:44
And there's a couple of dads playing ping pong with the kids.
00:51:47
But there is this, like, element.
00:51:48
When Pizza Gate came out and a dude showed up with a gun there,
00:51:51
and it was some of the families in my school who were affected
00:51:53
by that. Yeah, it was tough, but I'm
00:51:56
like, holy shit, I could see where these people take a
00:51:59
strange thing, which is a dark basement with ping pong tables
00:52:02
with kids playing and and it's just like they run with this
00:52:05
idea. I'm like, no, that's a normal
00:52:06
restaurant. I go there, my, my kids, my
00:52:08
students go there. Yet this thing happens and a
00:52:11
shooter comes in. I'm like these conspiracy nuts.
00:52:13
They got to go but. Give us a good one.
00:52:16
What is a conspiracy? That it tickles your fancy that
00:52:18
not that you believe in, but be like reading up on?
00:52:22
Well, it's funny. So because you know Comet Ping
00:52:25
Pong so well, that's why I did the Commodore Yacht Club built
00:52:29
on pilings, because the idea that they have a basement when
00:52:33
they're built over water is nonsense.
00:52:35
Yet in my book, that conspiracy. So it's a it's a total knock on
00:52:39
how dumb that conspiracy is about Comet Ping Pong.
00:52:42
And that stuff is dangerous in this is where enemies of the
00:52:45
United States are pushing on different cracks in in our
00:52:50
culture here in the United States.
00:52:52
They are trying to divide us. They want us angry at each other
00:52:56
and about all these crazy things because if they keep us pissed
00:52:59
off, they can keep us from uniting and actually achieving
00:53:01
stuff as fellow countrymen and women.
00:53:03
So I I see social media and conspiracy theories as really,
00:53:07
really dangerous. You know, I'm not a conspiracy
00:53:12
theory guy. I'm a guy that you got to you
00:53:14
got to show me proof, you know, I'm going to do, I'm going to
00:53:16
look at it. So I can't think of anything cuz
00:53:20
if I tell you it's a conspiracy theory, then I know it's not
00:53:22
true. You know, I can.
00:53:23
I can sit down here and rattle off some of the dumbest things
00:53:26
like JFK Junior's coming back and you know that these people
00:53:31
are going to be locked up in Gitmo and their double s are
00:53:34
allowed to walk around. I mean, it's just nonsense.
00:53:36
And I feel sorry for people that that kind of allow themselves
00:53:39
to, that their lives are so uninspiring that they that this
00:53:42
is their entertainment, right. They get sucked into this
00:53:44
because they need to be the hero of some sort of a story.
00:53:48
And if it's not, if their life isn't exciting enough, that's
00:53:51
how they get down the Q Anon rabbit hole and all that kind of
00:53:53
stuff. But it's just it's just it's
00:53:56
it's it's bonkers as far as I'm concerned.
00:53:58
So I'm sorry. What's that?
00:54:00
The UFO sightings are real biologics and all that kind of
00:54:05
stuff. You know it.
00:54:05
Wow. What a circus.
00:54:08
It's it's just it's it's, I mean, I won't say they're that
00:54:12
we're the only life form in the universe.
00:54:14
I mean, that would be pretty arrogant to to assume that
00:54:17
there's no life anywhere else. So who knows?
00:54:21
I've never seen anything. I've never seen any UFO's, so I
00:54:25
I can't speak directly to it. So, but that was a good line in
00:54:29
Independence Day with Will Smith when they had all that gear and
00:54:32
all that stuff. And he's like, do you really
00:54:33
think we spend $400.00 on toilet seats?
00:54:36
It's actually a cover for how we built Area 51 and get all the
00:54:39
money to do what we're doing here.
00:54:40
That was a great there's a great line.
00:54:42
That's an awesome movie too. Yeah, well, I How's the book
00:54:46
tour been going for you? This is.
00:54:48
It's almost over. It's been good.
00:54:50
Yeah, it's been a straight media tour this year.
00:54:52
Next year I'll be going out and doing signings and that kind of
00:54:54
a thing. So it's been, it's been awesome.
00:54:56
It's been great to get out. And I did a bunch of media in
00:55:01
New York last week, including the Today Show and they're
00:55:04
always so generous, you know, to have me on and allow me to, you
00:55:08
know, talk about my book in the midst of recommending, you know,
00:55:10
four or five great summer reads and that kind of a thing.
00:55:13
So it's been, it's been good. It's a, you know, it's it's the
00:55:16
fun part of the job. This is what I look forward to.
00:55:18
The books done. I can't change it.
00:55:20
It's put to bed. It's out there.
00:55:23
And so this is, this is really the fun part to talk about it
00:55:26
and talk with readers and in media folks and bloggers and
00:55:30
podcasters and things like that and just kind of dig in and what
00:55:33
you like about the process. How did it go?
00:55:34
How's this one compared to others?
00:55:36
And you know, it's kind of funny, I I never look backwards.
00:55:39
And so it's opportunities like this to say, Oh my gosh, wow, 23
00:55:43
books. This one debuted at #3 on the
00:55:46
hardcover list of the New York Times, #2 on the combined list
00:55:50
hardcover, and E, which is A, which is a big deal we are up
00:55:54
against. Speaking of aliens, we are up
00:55:55
against a book about saving Mars from being attacked and then
00:56:00
another one about dragon riders. So it was a big year for scifi
00:56:03
and fantasy so we were in a pretty supercharged horse race
00:56:08
for the spot. But think about it, 23 books in
00:56:10
and to hit at #3 with your hardcover to be at this, pardon
00:56:14
me for more than two decades. I am incredibly blessed.
00:56:17
And where I am most blessed is that I have the best readers in
00:56:21
the world. Because I love the folks at my
00:56:23
publishing house. They're awesome.
00:56:24
I dedicated the book to my publicist, David Brown.
00:56:28
Who's awesome? But at the end of the day, I
00:56:30
work for the readers. They are my employers and they
00:56:34
keep putting me back on the New York Times list every single
00:56:38
year and they leave, you know, when they leave those five
00:56:41
stars. That's my annual performance
00:56:43
review. And I want my employers to be
00:56:44
happy. I want to earn those, those
00:56:47
reviews and I and I work hard to do that every year.
00:56:50
Well, you mentioned so next. Year we should hope to see you
00:56:52
on doing the East Coast, maybe doing some book signings.
00:56:55
Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely.
00:56:57
I'm going to do. It'll be a big, big tour next
00:56:59
summer. So yeah, we'll have a, we'll
00:57:00
have a good time. Well, we'll hit a bunch of hot
00:57:02
spots, hit a bunch of places that we've always gone to.
00:57:05
We'll hit some new spots, but yeah, it doesn't take a lot to
00:57:08
Get Me Out to the East Coast in the summertime.
00:57:10
I mean, I love it. Well, we're hoping to see in the
00:57:11
swamp here. In DC, I got a lot of friends
00:57:14
that would like me to come back. So that's always, that's always
00:57:17
fun, you know, in what? When I come to DC, it becomes,
00:57:20
you know, how much time do I have and how many people can I
00:57:22
see? You know, because probably what
00:57:25
would be cool if my friends were regular folks, I could just rent
00:57:28
out like a, like a, you know, a backroom at some Tavern, right,
00:57:32
and bring everybody in. But the nature of the people
00:57:34
that I want to see, you know, it's like, I want to sit this
00:57:37
guy down and go, OK, wait, you were over in Iraq recently.
00:58:00
There you go. Tell me about that.
00:57:41
Or you were in Beijing. You know, I can't get these
00:57:43
people all going at once. A lot of them know each other.
00:57:46
But still, I kind of prefer the one-on-one or just me with two
00:57:49
people for dinner where I know they're free to talk to each
00:57:52
other because then I can kind of open my ears up and really pull
00:57:55
in some interesting things and maybe get some added inspiration
00:57:57
for the next book. Scott Harvest, 30.
00:58:02
Wow. Wow.
00:58:04
So podcasting we'll still. Be covering them How's?
00:58:08
Scott Harvath, 24 going, it's, it's well underway and it is, it
00:58:14
is, it's fun, it's fun. So I'm in, I'm at the halfway
00:58:18
point with with the new Scott Harvath in my contract with
00:58:21
Simon and Schuster and as we are doing, as we're recording this
00:58:25
podcast last night we found out that Paramount Global has found
00:58:29
a buyer for Simon Producer, a private equity group called KKR
00:58:34
they owned. Recorded books, they bought
00:58:36
recorded books and had worked with them and then sold them.
00:58:39
So and part of the KKR team is the ex CFO from Random House.
00:58:45
So there's some, there's some you know, good solid experience
00:58:49
with the book business in KKR. And I am somebody as an artist
00:58:53
who is doors wide open as far as I'm concerned to bring in tons
00:58:57
of MB A's because publishing is not like any other business, but
00:59:01
it is still a business. So I think when you can marry
00:59:03
good creative people with excellent business people, you
00:59:06
can only have success. And that's that's my my deep
00:59:10
hope and firm belief that Simon and Schuster is just these guys
00:59:14
are going to be like accelerant on a fire.
00:59:16
I mean Simon and Schuster is just killing it in the
00:59:18
publishing industry. My house, Atria and Emily
00:59:21
Bessler books in particular, is doing very, very well.
00:59:24
Probably the most successful imprint in the industry right
00:59:28
now. One of them, if not one of them,
00:59:31
the most successful. So yeah, so I'm excited.
00:59:33
It'll be a new era at Simon and Schuster.
00:59:35
We get to keep John Karp, who I love, who's the President and
00:59:39
CEO. But I think Kevin KKR on board
00:59:42
is going to be really, really good for my publishing house.
00:59:45
So I'm excited and I'm an investor in KKR.
00:59:47
So that's kind of neat for me. I've got retirement money tied
00:59:50
up with those men and women. I'm very I was a big fan before
00:59:53
they bought Simon. And more impetus to make your
00:59:55
books even better. If that's possible, I don't
00:59:57
know. If it's it and one other person
00:59:59
on the business end of things, Please keep in the loops loop.
01:00:02
I'm sure you will. Armand Schultz Oh man, isn't he
01:00:05
great. He's narrator for the books.
01:00:07
Yeah he's now he's so he's he does he does such a good job.
01:00:12
And so I've on social media, I've posted a couple of behind
01:00:16
the scenes clips of him doing speaking parts to to camera in
01:00:19
the studio, talking about what he liked about Deadfall, what he
01:00:22
likes about Scott Harvatt and stuff.
01:00:24
He's he's really cool and he's a Broadway trained actor.
01:00:28
And when Billy Elliott came to Chicago, Armand said, hey, get
01:00:32
your wife, come down the theater, see me in the play and
01:00:35
then let's go out for dinner afterwards.
01:00:37
And so we did. So it was really cool to see
01:00:39
Scott Harvath up there playing Billy Elliott's father.
01:00:41
That was a little tough for me, the voice of Scott Harvath.
01:00:46
I'll. Tell you one other funny story
01:00:47
about Armand because he does television commercials too.
01:00:49
And a couple of years ago, I was cooking breakfast and I have a
01:00:52
TV in my kitchen. I had the TV on, but my back was
01:00:54
to it. And all the sudden I heard
01:00:55
Harvath asking me how my cholesterol was.
01:00:57
And I was like, what? And I turned around and there's
01:01:00
Armand with a white doctor's coat and he's got a he's got
01:01:04
this, this portal up that in Central Park where people can
01:01:07
walk up and automatically see their cholesterol level.
01:01:09
So that was kind of a a weird thing to be cooking breakfast.
01:01:12
And here's Scott Harvath inquire about my my house.
01:01:14
How's the trolls? Cholesterol with all the.
01:01:16
Wine and cheese and snacks and the foie gras and all that kind
01:01:20
of stuff. Yeah, that little guy has
01:01:21
bulletproof he is the risotto and the Pizza.
01:01:25
Pizza Napoli, yes. And the pizza, too.
01:01:29
And the Chianti, yeah. No, that was that was kind of
01:01:32
fun because there are, you know, I actually researched that too.
01:01:35
I'm like, what do people who have to go in and do office jobs
01:01:38
and work late, what do they did they have to bring, you know,
01:01:41
lunch box with them? Whatever.
01:01:42
No, there's there's places open that do takeouts, you know, in
01:01:45
Kiev. So that was kind of cool.
01:01:48
And I believe that Pizza Napoli, I actually think that's a real
01:01:50
place. I'd have to.
01:01:51
I go back and check my notes because as long as I'm not like
01:01:54
I I used a bunch of the stuff in Moscow was real.
01:01:57
There's one that's not that's not real, but the bar with the
01:02:01
bras, there is a bar. So there is a bar in Moscow with
01:02:05
bras like that. Exactly.
01:02:06
So I use that as inspiration. But in the book it is not that
01:02:09
because I didn't want to listen. I'm not afraid.
01:02:11
Some bar in Moscow was going to get upset about what's in one of
01:02:14
my books. I got.
01:02:15
I got bigger problems than watch out for that gravity.
01:02:17
That Russian. Yeah, Yeah, the.
01:02:19
But there is a bar that is popular, that's got the bras
01:02:23
hanging from the ceiling. And so, yeah, that.
01:02:25
I mean, that bar does exist. I've never been there.
01:02:27
I've heard a lot about it. But, you know, I didn't want to
01:02:29
make it sound. I didn't want to use the real
01:02:31
name of that bar and suggest that they're, you know, pushing
01:02:34
out bootleg booze and stuff like that.
01:02:35
Because I don't want to hurt anybody's business but the bras
01:02:37
from the. And I've traveled, but you know,
01:02:39
traveling lights before I did traveling lights and me with a
01:02:42
backpack, I've been to 1000 bars with bras hanging from the
01:02:45
ceiling. And to be honest, I kind of
01:02:46
forgot that that stuff still goes on, but it still goes on.
01:02:49
So yeah, what a lovely note to end on.
01:02:53
So we actually call I'm gonna get canceled now for talking
01:02:56
about that. So let's call the time of death
01:02:58
on Brad Thor's career. We've been canceled a ton on
01:03:00
this podcast. Don't worry.
01:03:01
Yeah. Don't worry, everyone who comes
01:03:02
on gets canceled. Great, great.
01:03:05
The cancel cast Well, we can't let you go.
01:03:07
Unless we hear from you, how do you pronounce the Ukrainian
01:03:10
bread? You guys are going to kill me on
01:03:12
that because I talked to a friend of mine.
01:03:16
I I can't pronounce it, to be honest with you.
01:03:19
I cannot pronounce it. You know Palinitska.
01:03:22
Yeah, I I know somebody. Who is who grew up speaking
01:03:25
Ukrainian. So I probably should have said,
01:03:28
you know, recorded on your iPhone and send it to me.
01:03:30
So when I get asked this question, I could actually press
01:03:33
and you could hear it being spoken.
01:03:35
But the fact I had to get it spelled right, obviously for the
01:03:38
book that was the most important, but that actually is
01:03:40
real. You see shades of that in Saving
01:03:43
Private Ryan where they're yelling flash Thunder as a
01:03:46
challenge in response as they're running up on other Allied
01:03:50
soldiers and they have to prove either I'm not, I'm not a Nazi
01:03:54
or I'm making sure you guys are not a bunch of Nazis that I'm
01:03:57
running up on. So that stuff has existed for
01:03:59
for a long, long time. So I thought, that's really cool
01:04:01
that that Ukrainian peasant bread is actually a challenge in
01:04:05
response, kind of a scenario over there that's a Thorism
01:04:08
right there finding the real. Items and working.
01:04:11
Them into the books, right down to Wolverine.
01:04:13
They were really spray painting on the side of defeated Russian
01:04:16
armor. These guys had cans of white
01:04:18
spray paint and they were doing that.
01:04:20
That's authorism right there. There you go.
01:04:22
Well. Thanks, Brad.
01:04:23
We had a great time. Appreciate you coming back and
01:04:25
we can't wait to have you for. The next book and.
01:04:27
Maybe even before then. All right, all the way to #32
01:04:30
and beyond. So let's go.
01:04:31
Keep it going. Thanks, Brad.
01:04:41
Well, guys, we we hope you enjoyed that.
01:04:34
Thank you. Interview and I apologize that
01:04:44
Part 2, I know you're you're dying to hear what we thought
01:04:47
about the rest of the novel. It's going to be a little bit
01:04:49
delayed. So we're going to put this one
01:04:50
out first, probably, depending on if we can do some shenanigans
01:04:54
with recording the next couple days before Mike leaves on his
01:04:57
vacation. But yeah, so that's what's the
01:04:59
next one here. Also, go ahead and start
01:05:01
reading. Blacklist.
01:05:04
Is that the next Scott Arabeth book we're covering?
01:05:07
It is now. We are not going to get there.
01:05:10
Until December. Because listen to what we have
01:05:13
to cover December. Oh my gosh.
01:05:15
It's August, I know, but listen to what we have come in between
01:05:18
then. And now we want to get Fade Out
01:05:21
to the People attribute to Kyle Mills.
01:05:23
We want to have Kyle and Don Bentley on the podcast.
01:05:27
We then have Code Red coming out that will be on the Mitch Rapp
01:05:31
podcast. Friend of the pod, Ryan Steck
01:05:34
has agreed to come back and talk to us and his new book Lethal
01:05:38
Range. The follow up to Fields of Fire
01:05:41
is coming out actually I think it came out last week from when
01:05:44
you guys are listening to this. We've got Moscow X, David
01:05:48
McCloskey. Like I said, we're covering Don
01:05:50
Bentley, so we're going to go back to target acquired, I think
01:05:53
that's in his Clancy series. We've got Sons of Valor 3 from
01:05:57
Andrews and Wilson. More Friends of the Pod
01:06:00
Assassin's Mark. Coming from Ward Larson in the
01:06:03
Assassin series, the David Slayton series, and we've got
01:06:07
all that until we get The Blacklist back here on the Scott
01:06:10
Harveth podcast. So, Chris, you and I are going
01:06:13
to be busy reading this fall. Yes, busy, busy all.
01:06:17
Right. Well, we have to thank our
01:06:18
patrons, our special operator Sherry F, our special agents
01:06:21
Daryl, Kevin, George, Ben, Matt, Dawn, Peggy, Ray, Bridget and
01:06:24
Mark. Please subscribe right in view
01:06:26
using your favorite podcasting platform.
01:06:28
Give us that Apple rating if you want to be entered into that
01:06:31
contest when assigned. Copy.
01:06:33
You can find us.online@thrillerbot.com or on
01:06:35
Twitter X and Instagram at Thriller Podcast.
01:06:40
And as always, Slava, You Cry Me.
01:06:43
Slava.