Brad Thor on Choke Point, Geopolitics & Why Thrillers Save America (No Spoilers)

[00:00:12] All right, guys, today we are joined by a special guest who always his presence kicks off the start of summer. And not only that, but he's also the only guest who has cursed us out live on the podcast. Welcome back, Brad Thor. Brad Thor. Brad Thor. That's funny. Yeah, that got clipped and shared around the internet a little bit. I remember that. Exactly. I was looking forward to this particular episode because I would have now been on the other side of cursing you guys out. I would have completed my last book.

[00:00:42] Brad Thor. And I wouldn't be cursing you anymore. So now I'm here. Now I'm relaxed. I'll try to keep the cursing to a minimum. Brad Thor. I remember Chris's face, his jaw dropped because you're one of his idols. You know, he was the one who was always getting me to read the Brad Thor books. And when you said it, his jaw dropped. And in the end, we're like, oh, wait, that's a compliment, I think. Brad Thor. It was a compliment. It was a big compliment. So, yep, absolutely. So you guys will maybe have to cut that in right here. You'll have to like edit that into the podcast, like what I said and what I said.

[00:01:12] And repost it maybe for those who don't know. Yeah. We're living rent free in a multiple time New York time bestselling author's head. Can I curse on this? Yeah. Uh oh. So down here in my left hand screen, f*** you and f*** you in the upper right hand screen. This has been because of one comment you guys made.

[00:01:32] Oh no. No, you, I talk about Ward pushing me as a writer. You two have stuck in the back of my mind. So guess what I am not doing in this book and it has really caused me to work my ass off.

[00:01:46] There is no get a guy to get a guy. That has echoed in my head. You didn't accuse me of that. But what you guys said is that is one thing that you see often in thrillers that you do not like. And I heard that and I internalized that. And I have been pushing this. I'm thrilled with this new Harvath. It's really, really cool.

[00:02:08] But that thing that you guys said, I was like, Jesus, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Get a guy to get a guy. And it's just it has been your voices have echoed in my head as I've been working on this book, which is tough for a cancer.

[00:02:22] Yeah, exactly. And I use that as a point of pride for the podcast and how far we've come. Well, we're back to talk choke point, the newest book coming out very soon. And you're already going to start touring the country with this one. I've already seen you on all of the television and radio circuits. Hugh Hewitt, your performance or discussions with him is always one of my favorites. So what's your favorite part about the kind of procession leading up to publication day?

[00:02:48] I'll tell you what, you guys in Hugh are definitely some of the most thorough questioners. I mean, you guys read the book, and then you ask questions based on the material from the book. And so that's really nice. It's not that it isn't great to be on other shows where people kind of read the bullet point sheet that the publicist puts out. But it's really nice when when somebody's actually devoured the book appreciates it appreciates all the work that's gone into it and has some really good questions. That that's where you get interesting questions is from.

[00:03:18] And the interviewers who've done the work, put in the work for the interview. So that's terrific. So yeah, so Hugh was fantastic. I had to school Hugh on not just Yacht Rock, but the new version of Yacht Rock, Yacht House, which is funked up Yacht Rock for the summer. That was kind of funny.

[00:03:38] I was shocked to hear you guys talk about a different genre. And yes, you're saying they're bringing a little funk into the Yacht genre, making a little subgenre out of it, but not straight through and through old school funk in this one. No, you know what? I want to do something different. We've done I've done funk so many times. I'm running out of funk songs. And listen, Yacht Rock is kind of cool because when you when you make it funkier, when you go for that Yacht House, it does have several funk elements to it.

[00:04:04] In fact, we're just about to put out a playlist for Choke Point and it's all from front to back. It's it's Yacht House. So it's kind of fun. Yeah, your playlists are groundbreaking. They're always fun to look forward to. I've seen a couple of authors wade into that territory and even a few debut authors coming out who look at that model and are preparing to launch their books with playlists. So I think you you really started something there.

[00:04:29] I started a lot of stuff. There's a lot of people, I guess. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but we're in a creative business. So it's interesting when people, you know, straight up like I'm going to do exactly what he does. I'm going to copy that. So, yeah, I mean, whatever. It's I've enjoyed doing that. It's it's a lot of fun, particularly for me as the author, because I know what kind of music is going to really, really put forth the feeling of the book and get people excited about it coming out.

[00:04:58] And everything. So I like doing those. We've been doing those for years. They're a lot of fun. Yeah, another one is your research archives. It's crazy. The book hasn't come out. And I've already seen a link on your website, your newsletter about the archives. And I thought, oh, maybe I'll read an article or two, because usually I really love the geopolitical set pieces you get into. And I have like a taste of them. The Thailand, Cambodia border dispute and the Chinese having an opportunity to come in there and exploit it. That is just so far into me. It's so beyond my understanding.

[00:05:26] But before I even read it, just from the description, I'm already intrigued to go off and do all this research. Did you expect a lot of people to maybe be slightly less familiar with this one than some other areas you've covered? Yeah, absolutely. So by by setting the book in, I think that's the differentiator with me is the geopolitical piece. I always set my thrillers against a piece of real geopolitics. So it is something that I really love.

[00:05:52] So politics are my baseball, domestic policy, foreign policy. I just really like politics. And so because this is Harvath 25. And for anybody who hasn't read me, I always tell people that my books are like the James Bond movies. If you haven't seen a Bond movie and the new ones in theaters, you can go right out and see that and start right there because you'll get caught up. And same thing with my books. So this was the 25th Harvath. I want to do something special. And I was trying to pick a place that I never had Harvath operate before.

[00:06:20] And something that would be interesting for me where I could do a bunch of research and develop a certain level of expertise with it. But the trick is obviously keep it exciting, keep those pages turning for the reader and to give particularly American readers a reason to care. Here's why this is important. Here's why you should be interested in this. Yeah, you're reading a thriller with really short, crisp cinematic chapters, but there is some there are some stakes here. There's some high stakes for the United States, particularly in this in this thriller.

[00:06:51] Yeah, it's something that strikes me that is also a strength is that so many of these books become the attack, attack of the week. You know, it's like, where's the next nuke going to go off? Can we chase down some bad guys? Can we shoot them up? And I feel like yours, particularly, I would say, Rising Tiger, when you kicked off the Indian exploration and how the Chinese are involved with the Belt and Road Initiative and how they're pushing out that way. I feel like ever since then, and boy, you can even go back further in your books.

[00:07:21] You've more hinged your plots on this shift of power, this global power dynamic. So it's interesting to think that the stakes go beyond just a singular attack that could have devastating consequences, but consequences that could last decades, if not centuries. Is that something you you've wanted to do in your writing? Yeah, absolutely, because I find this stuff fascinating in real life. It's it's very interesting because most people are looking over here when all the actions happening like over here.

[00:07:51] So you open this up by talking about Thailand and everything. What's interesting is we don't read a lot about Thailand. We don't hear a lot about Thailand. And yet, you know, one of our biggest embassy complexes in the world is in Bangkok. I mean, it's massive, this campus that we have there and the relationship that we have with the with the Thai government, the military there. What a strategic role Thailand has played going all the way back to the Vietnam War.

[00:08:15] So it's very, very interesting how kind of knitted together we are with with Thailand. And so what was fun for this book was the idea of having the Chinese set their sights on Thailand, but not wanting to put their fingerprints on all of the chaos they were about to commit there. And so that got me into a completely different type of bad guy. One that in this book, it turns out, Scott Harvath, the guy had been on Harvath CLT, which was something I hadn't explored in the past.

[00:08:43] And it comes out of a real thing in the SEAL teams where the SEALs were looking to kind of spot, assess guys in the EOD program, the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Program, that they could take these guys that were unbelievable explosives experts and then put them through SEAL training. So you could put these guys on a SEAL team. They could kick indoors and shoot bad guys in the face with the best of them. It wasn't just you were dragging along kind of some sub expert in an area.

[00:09:09] This guy was a full on pipe hitter and he could he could roll with the best of the SEALs because he is a SEAL. And so the idea of having somebody like that, that gets unceremoniously drummed out of the SEAL community, kicked out of the Navy for doing something that he thought was right to do,

[00:09:27] even though there was a ton of downside to what he did and him losing his identity and then kind of starting to farm himself out on the open market to to basically ply his to to rent out his skill set, if you will, was a really kind of neat thing for me to do. So that that helped, I think, drive some of the action and also give another American touch point while the book unfolded in Thailand. So it just wasn't Harvath and the people he was working with.

[00:09:54] It was also kind of this premier bad guy that he was chasing after who also happened to have all the same training, basically, that Harvath does. He's one of ours. We made him. He is.

[00:10:07] He's one of our friends.

[00:10:36] Funding for whatever they want to do or whatever adventures they might go off on. That's a scary thought. Yeah, it's scary. And so I thought the idea of the Chinese co-opting somebody like this and using him and putting him as the person that's on the ground so that their fingerprints aren't necessarily on everything, I thought would be really a lot of fun. And so back to the thing where I cussed you guys out.

[00:10:57] That was one of my goals in this book was I wanted to make sure that there was not a single get a guy to get a guy progression in the book. So there was no. But in all fairness, I mean, that's normally how taking apart a terrorist network or any criminal organization works is you start at the bottom and you chew your way up the food chain until you get to the person you want to go to. But I took that to heart and I thought, OK, that's kind of a that's a neat thing to do. It's fun. It's my 25th Harvath.

[00:11:23] I'm going to set the bar really high and I'm going to do a book where there's not a single I need that guy so I can get to the next guy in the chain. So that was kind of it's kind of fun. That's why it's relaxing for me to be here tonight. I'm not cursing you out because the book is in my rearview mirror and I was able to make it all the way through without any of that kind of stuff happening in the plot. Not that I think it's bad. I mean, people can do it well and it is the way the world works in all honesty. That's every single day when you're going for a terrorist organization or mafia or anything like that.

[00:11:53] That's exactly how it's done. Like I said, just climbing up that ladder. But this was a fun book to do. It was challenging. It was a big, steep learning curve for me because I had to learn a ton about how the government works over there. What are the particular fiefdoms? Who does what as far as counterterrorism is concerned? So it was it was a fun was a fun thing. And I when I write, I'm very cinematic.

[00:12:17] And so the idea of setting a book in Bangkok, it's wet streets, it's neon lights being reflected in the puddles. It's that smell of garlic and a little bit of stale cooking oil in the air, a little bit of that pungent funk from the river that runs along Bangkok, humid air. I mean, you could feel it on every page. And that was my that was my goal with this one. Yeah, that's really making me think back to how well you did it in Rising Tiger, because India is the same thing. It's a pretty foreign landscape to most readers.

[00:12:46] And you have to transport them fully with all of their senses onto the ground. And you have to combine that with an operational theater, which maybe is unfamiliar, where so many in the veterans community or just through the media. We've seen desert wars. We've seen, you know, the sandbox, the Middle East. And it's a whole different game when you're playing a spies game and a tactics game, you know, in Bangkok or where we open in the Philippines. So can we also talk about the other maybe choke point of it all? Are you referring to Thailand and its narrow peninsula?

[00:13:16] Are you referring to the Strait of Taiwan or the Strait between Taiwan and the Philippines? How about setting us over in that other part of the world? So the there's the title actually comes into play. You read the term, you read the words choke point, choke point as two words. You see it throughout the book. There's different there's different kinds of choke points. There's choke points in different places. And, you know, I picked that title. I was working on this book well before there was any Strait of Hormuz issue or whatever.

[00:13:46] And I just I got very lucky at picking that title because you turn on any any cable news program and you'll hear the words choke point, you know, 10 times at least in the first 20 minutes you've got the TV on. So it does. I don't want to ruin. I don't want to spoil the plot, I guess. But this is kind of a zone where people expect spoilers. Right. So it is OK to spoil stuff to a certain degree. But yeah, just a little. Just a little. Yeah.

[00:14:12] So, I mean, the idea, the basic idea with choke point is in real life, Thailand has had multiple military coups in real life. And so, as you talked about when I was exploring India and in Rising Tiger and this idea of maybe creating an Asian version of NATO and the Chinese not wanting that to happen. And so they killed off a guy who was there to try to get it off the ground with the Indian government.

[00:14:38] This thing that the Chinese do, this Belt and Road Initiative, where they identify infrastructure projects in different countries and say, we'll bring in the experts, we'll help finance this, is really a diplomatic way to get the camel's nose into the tent. And once the camel gets its nose in the tent, before you know it, the whole camel's inside the tent. And so I was interested, with the Chinese having been so successful exerting influence over countries through this initiative, was there ever a country that said no to China? And Thailand was one of them.

[00:15:08] Thailand said not only no, but hell no. We are not interested. And I thought, OK, that's really cool that that happened in real life. And then I got to thinking, well, if the Chinese didn't want to let it go, knowing how congenitally devious the Chinese are, if they didn't want to let it go, what ends might the Chinese go to to get what they want?

[00:15:26] And would they foment such chaos and unrest in Thailand that it would be so it would be teetering on the brink of collapse and it would trigger the Thai military to launch another coup? And then the Chinese would take advantage of the country being run by the Thai military because they think, all right, the Thai civilian government said no to us, but the military will work with us.

[00:15:51] And so if we can just get them this unstable and the military will take over, we can get whatever we want out of Thailand. And so that was the idea. And that's what kicks off in the beginning of the book is China's efforts over in that area to get what they want. And then Harvath being dispatched as kind of a backup by the president to say, OK, your plan B, you're going to go and kick over the rocks and stick your nose in places. Nobody else has got the guts nor the authority to go. So no rules.

[00:16:17] Just go figure out who's behind all this stuff that's happening because it opens with a lot of Americans being killed. And so that's that's the American stakes from the beginning is we have dead and severely injured Americans in Bangkok. And Harvath is sent in to figure out who's behind it and to settle up the score. Sounds right up to Carlton Groups, you know, and the old OIAA. Also little remnants of that back in the day. That's kind of their mission is going when no one else can put their name on on it and get the job done.

[00:16:47] It's also interesting, the regional instability. Really incredible because I feel like a similar story like that played out in Myanmar. And I don't know who was behind if the Chinese, but these kind of uprisings and revolutions and military coup and who's in charge. Is it civilly elected officials? Is it military generals? That's happened in the region. And so it's not far off to make the jump to. Could the you know, the domino be tipped in Thailand by a player like the Chinese and no one better to push that domino over than the Chinese?

[00:17:18] Absolutely. Absolutely. So it's fun because China is a near peer power. And, you know, I talk a little bit about the Thucydides trap and the idea that the biggest kid on the block is eventually going to have to fight with the next biggest kid on the block, the upcoming kid on the block. There's going to be a fight of some sort. So do you initiate it yourself? Do you wait for the fight to come to you? How do you handle that? So that's that's kind of the fun stuff. I mean, you know, my books are meant to be take it to the beach, take it to the lake, take it to the pool, enjoy it.

[00:17:47] But there's all this subtext in there. Like if you want to dive deeper, if you want to read it closely, it's all there. The book kind of exists on two different levels. So no matter what you're into the book for reading wise, there's you know, if you just want just just a yummy tasting burger, it's there. Or if you want this to be, you know, an even bigger meal that you can dig into, that's there, too.

[00:18:08] And that's also why I put those research notes up on the website and encourage people to take a peek if they want before they read the book or while they're reading the book is just to say there's a lot of facts in the faction. These are a lot of real world things that as you're reading this fun piece of fiction, this thriller, here's what inspired it. Here are the real things happening in the world that gave me the idea for the book. I mean, you're always ripped straight out of the headlines, the faction I call straight out.

[00:18:36] I just hear what was it a week ago or actually maybe even just days ago, the Philippines now complaining the Chinese have built even more artificial islands and filled in more of the South China Sea to dominate those waters. And then was it I forget if it was earlier today or yesterday, the reports of the helicopter that went down off the coast of Oman and they used a drone. Right. We use a drone. And it's it sounds like a sea water drone, a water drone to save these two guys.

[00:19:03] Yep. I mean, you just keep staying current with the times. And I've been thinking a lot about what's going on with the Strait of Hormuz. But if you escalate that to the Straits of Malacca and you want to interrupt that. I mean, the U.S. Navy, whether you like it or not, has to be the world's policeman in some situations and nowhere more right.

[00:19:23] It's why. Yeah, absolutely. And the reason that we've enjoyed such a this is what bugs me about current politics is you have people that know nothing about history that are making politics, that are making very short sighted, very poorly informed decisions. We enjoy that the standard of living we do because we set the rules. I mean, it's amazing. The dollar is the world's reserve currency. We established, dictated and set in stone the post World War Two era order, if you will.

[00:19:53] So there's all this stuff that's good. The world got safer. The world got more prosperous when we decided we would be the world's policeman. We would patrol the high seas there. It would be safe for merchants to ship things from here to there and all that kind of stuff. And it's one of my biggest you know, I've never been an Elon Musk fan because I think he's such a weirdo. But it was one of my biggest complaints about Doge, knowing what I know about national security and international diplomacy and particularly soft power, that they went after USAID so hard with Doge.

[00:20:23] And they thought, you know, you put a bunch of 22, 23 year olds in charge of this who have no idea what USAID does and why it's so valuable to the United States. They have no idea what the ROI is there. They just see money going out to foreign countries and they don't realize what we get back for that. I mean, I look at the Ebola thing and how that has just continued to mushroom over in Africa. And, you know, we we abdicated our role in helping there. You know, we used to be able to speed test kits and all this kind of stuff.

[00:20:49] And so we we stand back at our own peril. So the Chinese are not taking their foot off the gas pedal. They are they are looking to fill every vacancy. We we give up. The Chinese are zooming in there trying to take over. And we're going to wake up one day and find ourselves very, very isolated, not only from our allies. We've not not treated very well of late, but also these opportunities where it was a little bit of money going out the door.

[00:21:17] But what we got in return was so, so valuable for us. So it's it's unfortunate, but sometimes nations have to learn the hard way. And I'm afraid we're going to. So the USAID stuff is also straight out of a thriller novel. I just saw today a headline that a young, like you said, 22 year old or something, computer scientist kid gets hired to work for Doge and ends up becoming a whistleblower, ends up speaking his mind about something and just crazy stories about him getting a note on his car.

[00:21:46] They're going to come after him, his family spook him. He leaves the job. There's a lot of there's like they cut his brakes. They cut his brake lines and he almost and I think he did crash into a tree and it could have been even worse. And that's wild. That's a thriller novel headline. Yeah, I don't know how old his car was. You can't just cut brake lines anymore and have that work. It's kind of I learned that years ago as a thriller author that that doesn't work. That used to be a great old trope. So unless this guy's driving some like really old jalopy, I don't know.

[00:22:15] I haven't read about what they did to his car. So they actually hardwired it so it would it would not trigger any sort of sensors that would activate it. Like they said, they took it to a mechanic and actually saw that it was tinkered with at a high level to get around all the electronic systems to cut off the warning signals to cut off the airbags. And it's it seems like it's next level skullduggery. So, yeah. So it's like the Sopranos meets a bunch of eggheads. Right. So it's like next level tech.

[00:22:43] But it's still there's a lot of bullshit, macho, bravado nonsense from from a certain community. That's that's dangerous. That's stupid. And I hope whoever did it actually whoever's involved with that, I hope they catch them and they throw the book at them because that's that's not you know, you don't get to do that. That's I mean, that's a crime. So hopefully they'll catch them. But yeah, it's it's we are. I used to think it was a interesting thing.

[00:23:12] The old Chinese saying, may you live in interesting times. And I didn't know that that's actually a curse. Living in interesting times is not good. The markets don't like interesting. Businesses can't plan for interesting. You don't want interesting when you put your kids on the school bus in the morning. Yeah. You want your kids getting off the school bus at the end of the day. No interesting. No, no, no. No, no, no. I just want my kids back off the bus at the end of the day. Yeah. Save me the interested. Interesting. I'm not interested in interesting. So, yeah.

[00:23:41] But I mean, listen, this is what this is what we have. And this is the way it goes. And it's you know, it'll be it'll be interesting. I don't think we're getting out of Iran anytime soon. I think I think Trump thought that he was smart. Listen, it's it's no there's no I'm not breaking news here that Trump thinks he's smarter than everybody, including every president that's come before him. So he thinks the only thing is wrong that's wrong is that nobody had the balls to drop all these bombs on Iran. And he thought if he bombed the crap out of them that they would just submit.

[00:24:10] I mean, we're 100 days into this. Remember when he said it was going to be absolute regime change and he was going to pick the next leader in 100 days in. How's that going? We just lost an Apache. We've got like 13 dead. We've got hundreds wounded. The Apache went down today. I mean, this is just it's it's crazy. There's a reason no other American president did this. There's a big reason. They all knew that the Strait of Hormuz could be closed. They all knew that this was possible. But when you have a leader who has no humility, is not able.

[00:24:40] I remember that interview with Trump well before the election where instead of when he got asked what his favorite Bible verse was, he quoted from the Code of Hammurabi and he said an eye for an eye, which is not a Bible verse. It's kind of the opposite. And he got asked if he ever if he ever it is. And he got asked if he ever asked for if he ever asked God for forgiveness. And he said, well, I've never made a mistake or whatever he said. You know what I mean? So when you're looking at power and national security and things like this, you know, it

[00:25:09] was always a conceptual thing that, yes, Iran could close the Strait, but we never gave them the chance to prove it. And now we've given them the chance to prove it, that they can close the Strait. They can put an absolute stranglehold on the global economy. And that's a big deal, particularly with the Houthis in Yemen, in the fact that they can then control the other straits because the Saudis thought, OK, well, we'll pump oil through a pipeline and we'll just load it on the ships on the other side and put it out that way. It's going to cost more. It's going to take longer, whatever.

[00:25:38] So we do have a problem, I think, in that we've got a leader that kind of goes with what he doesn't know history. He doesn't have the humility to say, what if I'm wrong? What if this doesn't work? What if? And now we're seeing the what if? And I don't even think we've begun to see the pain at the gas pump. And this is so unbelievable. If I was going to write a novel, I don't think I would have written in a president who would do this because I just I don't think anybody would have ever done it because nobody had. And this is why this is exactly why no other U.S.

[00:26:07] president has decided to do this. You know, we heard back in June that the that the nuclear program was obliterated, you know, and now they use the excuse, oh, we had to go in because they were two weeks from a bomb, which is bullshit, too. So it's just it's it's very interesting from a fictional world to say I would have been laughed out of my editor's office if I couldn't have written this. You know, you could not have written this. I mean, just the clips of Netanyahu saying they're a month away from the bomb. They're a week away from the bomb for 30 years.

[00:26:35] It's like you just couldn't have scripted this up. Yeah, no, you couldn't. And, you know, and there have been multiple people from multiple administrations on both sides of the aisle that have said, yeah, you know, Netanyahu tried to sell us this billy goods, this this handful of magic beans. And we told him to go pound sand. So whether that was the Obama administration, whether it was George W. Bush's administration, you know, they they knew that now they had a really juicy piece

[00:27:01] of intel to have all those guys in one location and have a chance to drop a bomb on them and kill them all. That's true. That wasn't that that that was hard to pass up on. I don't know that I I don't know what kind of advice if if I had been the one to yeah, to get the the Iatola. I mean, that's exactly to actually smoke him. Yeah, the Iatola to get him and smoke a bunch of the people going down. I mean, that's very interesting. But their their command structure and everything, the way these guys are set up to operate on their own, it's it's it's fascinating.

[00:27:32] But there's no way of knowing how this ends. There's no way of knowing. I just know that whenever I hear the administration on the news, it's it's one of three answers. Oh, they're begging us for a deal. We're about to have a deal if they don't do the deal, we're going to then we're going to bomb them into the Stone Age. It's always, you know, lather, rinse, repeat. So we'll see what happens. Yeah, I think the only positive outcome is if our service members are people stationed in, you know, Kuwait, Emirates, you know, everywhere in the region. I think if they're safe, if they're protected, if if things do not escalate and they can

[00:28:02] come home and do their job safely to me, that's the only the only outcome I'm looking for right now. So, yeah, I really hope so, because the personal costs, just one U.S. service member getting injured is too many. And we've had a tremendous amount. And I got to be honest with you, you know, regardless of who's in power, you should not trust what is being put out as far as casualty reports are concerned and everything. I mean, you look at the Vietnam War and how much they lied during that. And, you know, Trump didn't want to test for covid because he didn't want to admit there

[00:28:32] were more covid cases. So his mentality said if we don't test, then the covid doesn't exist in people's minds. And so I'm sure that's the way he looks at service members who are injured in this because that doesn't help him if he's got dead or injured service members. So, you know, I want them out of harm's way. I don't want anything to happen to them. And then just the material cost, the amount of aircraft that we have lost that have just been bombed on tarmacs at different U.S. bases.

[00:28:57] Is we've lost a lot of equipment, not to mention driving our stockpiles of ordnance down. It's this has been very, very costly and it's super unpopular. You know, I mean, it's there's more Americans that are against this than are for it. And I think that part, you know, I think that partly has to do with Trump not prepping the American public in getting them behind this effort. He had the State of the Union. He could have mentioned it at the State of Union. He had everybody's attention and it didn't come up at all.

[00:29:24] It wasn't even hinted at in a couple of days, you know, a handful of days later, we're going into Iran and bombing the crap out of him. Our military did a kick ass job. There's nobody like them. They're the best in the world. But it's not their job to be on this every single day. At some point, the people in charge have to say, OK, this is these are our goals. This is what we want to accomplish. You know, I mean, how much is this costing you and me as taxpayers? Yeah, that's that's below the cost of human life with our service members.

[00:29:52] But the taxes are just it's insane what this is costing. And we're going to end up with a worse deal than I don't actually I actually I really wonder if the deal that eventually comes out of this will be anywhere near the JCPOA, the previous agreement that got torn up in the in the first administration. So we'll have to see. But this is Congress should step up. This is a war. Congress, you know, there's a certain amount of time. War powers. Congress has to be consulted. Ninety days.

[00:30:22] War powers act. Exactly. Yeah. So this has gone well beyond. I think it's actually 60 days. It's 60 days. And this has gone beyond because Hegseth was trying to say that if we have a ceasefire, that's a pause and it resets the clock. I mean, these guys are such spin artists. They but they're not the only ones. George W. Bush did stuff. There were kinetic operations and things like this. So it's not necessarily unique to this administration to kind of redefine the terms and things like that. Not every administration does that to skirt around having to get congressional approval.

[00:30:52] But there's a lot of money going out the door at a time where our gas costs are really high. People are having trouble making car payments, credit card payments, house payments. And Trump, you know, Trump was elected largely to bring costs down. Remember, we were talking about the price of eggs and things like that. No new wars. Yeah, this is no new wars and bringing costs down. And we are in a we are in a war, whether Trump wants to call it that. We are in a war with Iran. This is not a ceasefire. We're shooting. It's a hot war. We're shooting back and forth.

[00:31:22] And prices haven't come down. Prices have gone up. I mean, inflation is higher now than it was when Biden left office. So, I mean, that's that's just those are the facts on the ground. Yeah. So it's just even harder to swallow after all the campaign slogans and promises. So I think it's going to fracture the base. And I think that's going to have effects. Midterms are soon. And then, you know, generals two years after that. So I think we're going to find out some of the effects politically and domestically.

[00:31:51] But thinking about effects domestically, another angle where a lot of this game is being played in the shadows is right here in my hometown, D.C. And I know you know the city so well. And, you know, I like to take the book around town and find the locations. I haven't gotten to a lot of the scenes, but I hear there's a lot of D.C. coming in this book. There is. So there's I have a subplot in D.C. I have a no longer active U.S. Marine who's working in a think tank who gets let go and they kind of couch it in.

[00:32:20] His PTSD has gotten in the way of him being able to effectively do his job. And he has had some personal problems. His engagement with his fiancee who works in the White House has fallen apart. And then something happens. And it's like that moment in the Mel Gibson movie, Conspiracy Theory, where there's an attack on Mel Gibson's character. And he's like, I was right. I just don't know what I was right about. You know what I mean? And so that's kind of the fun thing.

[00:32:50] I yeah, I do return to one of my favorite places in D.C. in this book, which is the off the record bar in the basement of the Hay Adams Hotel across the street from the White House. One of my favorite places to set scenes. I've done that multiple times. It's just a really, really fun bar. And it's just a great place to have people who work at the White House. It's one of the closest places you can go get a drink, like blow off steam after work.

[00:33:17] So and it's constantly filled with, you know, hooker. I shouldn't say that there are there are probably some professional ladies that work there because there's escorts. There's a yeah, I don't want to demean it. It's a it's a lovely place. Really, really nice. Gorgeous, very elegant hotel. Lovely staff.

[00:34:01] I really like the people there. Yeah, honey traps. Yep. And we've seen that in Brad Thor books in the past. And it's effective in the real world and in fiction. It is. It is effective. And that's one of the things that they warn you about when you're in the diplomatic corps. You're working in the foreign service that if you're a six at home, you don't suddenly become a 10 when you move to Berlin. You're still a six. So just be on your guard.

[00:34:28] If someone is too interested in you, thinks you're too funny, too handsome, too good, too, too good of a dresser, too beautiful because they warn the female staff as well that they could fall prey to to those kinds of things overseas. So, yeah, it's funny. As much as we change and as much as our technology evolves, there's still some common tradecraft stuff that doesn't change. Right. Right. Right. Well, I will try to get a picture of this book in front of the Hay Adams. I'm constantly driving by.

[00:34:57] I am intentionally avoiding it the next few days because of the UFC fight. And, man, that thing, it's wild. Oh, that's the 14th. Yeah. Yep. You see this whole structure, you know, right there on the South Lawn. It's crazy. Yeah. Behind the – well, I don't know. I don't know if you've looked ahead to the weather. I heard that they may have to deal with weather. I don't know what the backup plan is for that if there's a weather event.

[00:35:26] And I know they want to do it on the 14th because it's President Trump's birthday. It's flag day. You know, I like UFC stuff. I'm not crazy about that being on the White House lawn and everything. I mean, the UFC is popular, and I like it, and I'll watch fights and stuff like that. But it really is not a – it's not a majority of Americans that enjoy UFC stuff. And I think we're so – we're just so combative as a nation right now, kind of left versus right and all that kind of stuff,

[00:35:52] that this is almost too on the nose of how emblematic it is of all the tension and the aggressiveness. But by the same token, guess what? It may be the people's house, but the president lives there. And if he wants to put on a UFC thing, not what I want to see to celebrate the nation's birthday, you know, but whatever. It's June 14th. It's not July 4th. And again, the president has the ultimate say on that. And if he wants to do it, he can do it.

[00:36:17] Although I understand – I think there's a couple of lawsuits that got filed in the last couple of days where there's been some reasons why they're trying to end it. And I also read an article, I think it was the Wall Street Journal, that the president bought stock in Dana White's company in the UFC, and then he's been pimping the whole match and everything, which drives the stock price up. And that's a whole other thing for me. I don't want politicians being – I don't care if you're a Democrat or Republican, independent.

[00:36:44] I don't want people being able to trade on insider information. And the stuff on Calci and Polymarkets where people were betting that oil was going to drop or that there was going to be an invasion in Venezuela, that SF officer. That's right. $400,000. Now this guy is going to get – that's what he made, and he destroyed his career. I mean that's just terrible.

[00:37:07] It's wild that we live in a world where insider trading has always been available, but the fact that it's so easy to do right now and potentially hide it behind cryptocurrency or one of these crazy betting markets, it's just a recipe for disaster. Like it's not going to stop unless there's some very high-level prosecutions, and they really have some tricks to prosecute it up their sleeve. Because there's – for everyone we catch like that guy who did the Venezuela thing, I bet there's a lot more doing it in other shady ways that aren't getting caught.

[00:37:37] But then in your face, propping up a UFC event is a very direct – you're benefiting or you're choosing. I think the lawsuit is you're basically selectively using government property and government services to prop up one company over another in the sporting world. Absolutely, and there was another article that was out today that said in the crypto space, the Trump family has made $2.3 billion since Trump has been back in office, which is disgusting to me.

[00:38:05] You should not be able to monetize the presidency. This should be an act of service to serve your nation. I mean the founders used to come in, do what they had to do, and return to their farms and go back to farming until they had to be back in – what was it, New York and – before the White House was even built and all that kind of stuff.

[00:38:25] So the idea that Eric and Don Jr. can have a drone company that gets a DOD contract is insane or that Kazakhstan can offer up tungsten mining to Eric and Don Jr. who have a – they set up a company to do tungsten mining.

[00:38:45] They get this huge mother load of tungsten that they get the exclusive to in Kazakhstan, and then the U.S. taxpayer helps pump in – I think it was like $1.6 billion to finance the mining of this tungsten. I mean it is – this is banana republic stuff to see how much this one family and the people around them have so enriched themselves while the rest of us are busting our butts, working, going to work, paying our taxes, raising our kids to be honest.

[00:39:13] I do – and I've got my things about Trump. I'm the son of a United States Marine. I've never cared for Trump's character, okay? But he is the president of the United States. But this enrichment is crazy. I don't think even President Trump's most loyal supporters think it's okay to be – your kids are having drone contracts with – I mean I heard all this bellyaching about Hunter Biden's paintings.

[00:39:37] Hunter Biden's paintings and now Don Jr. and Eric are selling drones to the DOD? I mean that to me is – that's crazy. That's crazy. That's just – it's so flagrant. As we said, it's in your face. And it's just – it's enraging that it's that much in your face. It really is – it's crazy. And again, if I put this in a book, nobody would have ever believed it. No. Another thing – I mean we're talking sports and the intersection of corruption and sports and all this.

[00:40:06] The World Cup debacle as well. I mean just – I heard about a referee who was turned away when he's one of the most – he's like the most respected African referee of all time. And he's supposed to be the symbol of a new generation of people who can work hard and become internationally, you know, recognized and appreciated and meet all these standards. And I think he got held in a – he got – I think he got interviewed for 11 hours.

[00:40:32] He then got put in a holding room for three or four hours and then put on a plane to Istanbul and turned around. And this is one of the premier referees who's supposed to be at a World Cup. I just – like you said, Banana Republic stuff. So we'll see how all this plays out. Ticket allocations being revoked and taken away for Iranian fans. Now they can't attend the matches. I just – when we're getting that absurd with things, I thought thrillers were ridiculous. The real world headlines make me roll my eyes even more.

[00:40:59] Yeah, it is – you know, there's – it's so myopic and it's so the opposite of how we want to show ourselves to the world. Again, I come back to soft power, right? Is that part – you know what costs us nothing? Is to lead by our example. We are supposed to be the shining city on the hill. All right, you don't want to be the world's policeman. That's fine. But can we at least – we can have that debate. We can have that discussion. And let's make sure we're both operating from the same set of facts so that we have a really good discussion.

[00:41:28] But can we at least agree that when we are the best of who we are, that that redounds to our benefit as that floats out into the world and reverberates back? You know, we were the standard bearer for the rest of the world so that we could encourage the kind of behavior by carrying ourselves and acting a certain way. We could demand that back from the rest of the world and hold other nations to a higher account. And unfortunately, that's not the way we're living right now.

[00:41:56] And, you know, the stock market is crazy. It stays high despite all of – like, you know, an Apache going down in the Strait of Hormuz would have just made oil prices spike just a handful of years ago. That would have been a massively big deal. But the stock market shrugs it off now. So it's very, very interesting. There's this disconnect. We're in this weird time that I think – I don't know. The jobs number was really, really good. The print, it was 172,000 jobs.

[00:42:25] I mean, that was really strong. It was really good that just came out. We are in this weird kind of uncharted territory. And again, we're back to the Chinese thing. May you live in interesting times. It'll be wild to see what happens. You know, does anything happen with Cuba? Is that going to be kind of the next domino to fall? I mean, they're – boy, they're hurting because they're not getting support that they used to get and all that kind of stuff.

[00:42:50] So it's going to be an interesting – just going to the end of this year, it's going to be very interesting. We've got the midterms in November. As you and I are recording this tonight, there's a lot of primaries that are going on. So you're seeing, you know, things that are happening in Maine. And we just found out who – before coming on here, we found out who the two people are who got to the runoff position in the governor's race in California. So the Republican and the Democrat there. And in California, yeah, Spencer Pratt's out in L.A.

[00:43:20] I know Spencer. I have known him for many, many years. And Heidi, his wife. So, yeah, it's going to be – listen, that's a tough place to run as a Republican. Like two of every ten people in L.A. are a Republican. So you can't just get the Republicans. I mean Pratt did as well in L.A. as Trump did. I mean he got every Republican to vote for him. But if you can't get enough people on the other side to come over to your message – yeah, and he had some great ads. He did well in that debate.

[00:43:51] But, yeah. It's the optics too. That's tough. It's just going to be the optics because now we're going to have this explosive division even widen over Election Day. Is it a day or is it a season? Can ballots be counted? Mail-in ballots, harvesting. And you know what? We're just going to have more to divide us. That's true. And you know what? Anybody who wants to bitch about California, if you're not living in California, your opinion doesn't matter. I've heard so much bellyaching from people that don't even live in California.

[00:44:21] And I'm like, so what do you care? This is all their law. If you don't like it, don't pay attention to it. It doesn't impact you. But there is nothing weird going on in California. They're slow. California is the land of laid back and lots of sun and taking it easy. I mean, yeah, surfers. I mean, are we surprised? Are we surprised that California is slow at anything? This is the way they roll. And so if you're a Californian that doesn't like that, well, then create a ballot initiative that's going to speed this up.

[00:44:51] But California doesn't owe the rest of the country a damn thing. That's why we have federalism. The states are laboratories of democracy. And if this is the way Californians, enough of them, want to do it, then this is the way it's going to be done. And they don't owe the rest of the United States getting it done. Does it take too long? I certainly think it does. But guess what? It's not up to me. It's up to the voters, the citizens who live in California. People choose to get all pissed off about stuff. The rhetoric. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter.

[00:45:20] The online rhetoric is so divisive and explosive because I'm with you. Huge fan of federalism. It's just you're giving a little too much cannon fodder to the folks who already predisposed to draw these grand conclusions and conspiracies. And now they can say, you know, Carrie Lake in Arizona. OK, well, now we're talking federal elections. They could talk about Georgia and DeKalb County and all these. And now they could talk about the L.A. race. It's almost giving more fodder to the people to draw these connections. Those nuts.

[00:45:48] You're just they're always going to find a board and this is not anything new with it taking a long time to count votes. Yeah. Well, for all the madness that we certainly got into some different topics there, let's bring it back to some close friends. We've gone nearly 40, 45 minutes. I haven't brought up Salvi. Haven't brought up Nicholas. And actually, in chapter one of this book, I'm spending time with Haney and Stalin and Palmer.

[00:46:15] I feel like that was a decision to put that crew right in chapter one operating alongside with Scott. Well, I wanted to bring I wanted to bring Harvath back in a big way and to have him with his team doing this thing in the Philippines. And it's really interesting because when I did my Hugh Hewitt interview, Hugh's like, oh, my God, you taught me about a part of the world that I he was like, I paid attention to Indo-Pacific affairs forever. And I didn't know about this island, this northernmost island in the Philippines. I didn't know that we did cross training exercises.

[00:46:44] As he said, with the between the Filipino army and the U.S. military. And it is because that island is so close to Taiwan. It's the nearest place in the Philippines to Taiwan. And so we have missile batteries that we that we move in there. So China's really got their eye on that, because what's fascinating, I didn't put this in the book. Taiwan is a really hard island to take. Like there's only so many places you can land soldiers and equipment in on Taiwan as an island.

[00:47:13] My daughter was just there when it got closed off because of the Chinese military exercises. It was really cool to be talking to her and see her photographs and stuff like that of what it was like there. But, yeah, so I wanted to kick off the I always like to start with action on page one. And I really wanted I wanted to throw Harvath into the thick of it. I wanted to have our bad guy be in the thick of his his storyline. You just start with action and explain it later. That's always a great writing tip. So it was fun to get those guys.

[00:47:43] I had actually had a bigger team around Harvath, but it was just hard to keep track of everybody. I had two more operators on that team and I eventually had to scale it back because I'm like, yeah, it's just too much to track all these people. It's just too many, too many people on the stage. I figured Harvath could do this with four people himself because I knew he was going to pick up a surprise guest a little bit later in the book that people have not seen since very early in my writing career. So I knew that there was a surprise guest coming.

[00:48:12] Yeah, so that's a that's a big Easter egg in Choke Point. I mean, Choke Point's book 25. And so I said, what can I do that's different and exciting so I can take Harvath to a different country that even I had to learn about? I can bring back a character that people have not seen for decades. I'm really curious about this. Oh, because there's two people that jump podcast. We might have because there's two people that jump to mind right now.

[00:48:41] And if I had finished the book by the time of this interview, oh, I would probably be screaming one of their names right now. I'm excited for that Easter egg. And I think our readers will be, too. Our listeners, I should say. Well, not only do we keep glitching here, so I think there's quite a delay. I'm sorry about that, Brad. I feel like we always have some technical issues as we do this. I can hear you. Yeah, just the video comes and goes, but I can hear you. Yeah. All right. I'll have to sync that up. This happens every once in a while.

[00:49:07] And I feel like it's always usually with you, which is the fate of maybe because we're talking too much politics here. Maybe it's being tapped, but maybe on the NSA or maybe I said too many things about Elon and he's got something. The Starlink is sending some bad juju down to your software. Speaking of space and one other headline, Artemis 3, the astronauts were announced today. So that's pretty exciting.

[00:49:35] But it seems like there's going to be some delays because of the Blue Origin explosion and they have one of the modules that they need to use. So anyway, space is another exciting adventure. I feel like you – have you dabbled in space at all in any of the 25 books? I feel like satellites and ISS might come. That's a little too Roger Moore for me. Okay. Yeah. I just have not put Harvath in space or done anything with space. I haven't been able to find a story.

[00:50:04] There were two things that I just have looked at and I can't do. I can't make a compelling space thriller that involves Harvath and kind of what he does, nor can I figure out a way to incorporate the undersea cables. I just don't – I can't figure out a way to get enough people to care about it. Even though the effects of cutting those cables and stuff can be really bad, I just – I've wrestled with the undersea cable thing for years and it's just like I can't – if I can't get excited about it, I'm not going to be able to get a reader excited about it.

[00:50:34] Now maybe there's going to be another author who can deal with that and it will be exciting. I just – I've kicked it around for a couple of years now and I just – I can't find a way to plug into it so that there's tension and there's high stakes, you know. I think you came close to the Arctic books. So space is not on my list. Okay. Okay. I feel like the little Arctic –

[00:50:56] Yeah, those – yeah, that was – I mean that was really cool and particularly when we talk about China and being worried about the U.S. being able to cut off the Strait of Malacca, the U.S. Navy. That was one of the big reasons I wrote Black Ice is because China has been exploring going up and over Russia to drop down. It shaves a couple – so from Shanghai to Rotterdam, it shaves off a couple of weeks, which is really cool.

[00:51:19] You just have to do it in the summer, late spring and then into the summer when the sea ice is slushy and melted enough that you can actually get through it. You can't go in the middle of winter because it's just like frozen and solid. But it is something that the Russians have been dangling for the Chinese and the Chinese are interested. So, yeah, when I did Black Ice, I was like, oh, we got to talk about this because, boy, is this kind of – is kind of cool.

[00:51:42] And it would allow the Chinese Navy potentially to come up over the top, over the North Pole and drop down onto the eastern seaboard. Yeah, it's interesting stuff. I guess that was a calculus in the Greenland talk, which seems to have died off for all the other nonsense that we brought up. The Greenland stuff, I feel like it's been a few months since I've heard anything on that front. Yeah, and it was so crazy to begin with because we already have an existing treaty that allows us to go,

[00:52:09] and they would love for us to put more service members there to go back and expand bases and stuff. In a friendly way, in a cooperative way. A cooperative way, yeah. I mean, listen, this is Denmark. They're a NATO ally and everything. We've got a longstanding treaty. And the people of Greenland would love to have more U.S. service members there that are eating in their restaurants, having a beer in their bar when they're off duty. You know, I mean, that's – they would love it. They would love it.

[00:52:33] So that idea of – listen, we have – we've spent so much blood and treasure as a nation over our 250 years to see it squandered so fast by threatening to invade an ally and all that kind of stuff. Again, it's this erosion of soft power. And I think there's a French member of government. I don't know if he's a member of their kind of parliament or what it is,

[00:52:59] but he said if there's one thing that the Europeans have learned, it's that they can't be – and I say this as someone whose dad lives in Wisconsin and who grew up with summer jobs in Wisconsin. This guy said, you know, we can't come down to being hostages in Europe to voters in Wisconsin every four years. And I don't know why the guy picked on Wisconsin. I love Wisconsin. But it is interesting that even if there is a change – and there's always a change, right? It's that pendulum that swings back and forth.

[00:53:27] We go from one party to another party and one party may get two terms in the White House. It's rare that they get three. But eventually the shoe will be on the other foot. But what does that look like? And what does it look like? You know, how badly have the bridges been burned? How much of that goodwill, which translates into soft power and all that kind of stuff, how much has that been squandered? And is it possible for us to kind of get back to the position that we had before?

[00:53:54] And you get this throughout American history where there are surges of populism. And it flares up and then it goes away and then it comes back again. And it's not just here. We've seen this kind of get rid of the incumbents around the world. It's happened in different places. It certainly happened with Maloney in Italy. And I mean it's everywhere. You see Nigel Farage and the Reform UK party. So this is a backlash. And I think it was deserved to a certain degree. I'm a capitalist. I like capitalism. I like small business.

[00:54:23] But what we did was we forgot the people who work in our factories. So when the focus went to maximizing shareholder value and they started moving factories overseas, you have somebody whose grandfather worked in a mill. Their dad worked in a mill. They were working in the mill. Oh, my God, the mill just closed. And there was never a moment where Congress or the local representatives said, what happens to these fellow Americans when there's no longer a job in their town?

[00:54:53] Where do they go? What do they do? And this nonsense about we're going to teach them how to code and stuff like that. Well, guess what? We got AI now. People who actually choose to learn how to code, they're out of a job. Yeah. And I'm the biggest small business rah-rah capitalism guy. Don't pick winners and losers you're ever going to meet. But I didn't realize the heavy price we were going to pay.

[00:55:23] And this is what happens. You get surges when there's big technological shifts. When there's big displacement of jobs, you do get surges of patriotism where certain things are popular. So it's not for nothing that Trump was able to do what he was able to do. Trump was an answer for a lot of people that felt they were being left behind. They weren't being listened to. And I think it's really important that we think about those people and what motivates them because I think that's fair.

[00:55:52] I think when we have fellow American men and women who are hurting, it's our job as their fellow Americans, as their countrymen, as their brethren to look and say, okay, you got a point. How do we fix this? How do we make it better? Because America should be a country where everybody has opportunity. What you do with it is up to you.

[00:56:11] But the idea that you're going to take some 45-year-old guy in – this isn't the 1930s where they're going to load everything into a car like the Beverly Hillbillies and drive out to Southern California to pick oranges. That's not how it works. Right. They're going to get a check that gives them barely enough to live on. And then you've got people that you layer in the opioid stuff.

[00:56:33] I mean it's not that everybody who's out of a job is on opioids, but you look at what happened and how easily people got addicted to opioids and how nobody stepped in to help with that. We have chosen to leave a certain portion of our country behind, and that's not right. These are people – these are fellow Americans, and we need to be doing all we can to take care of them and help them move forward. Nobody wants a handout, but you know what? A hand up is not a bad thing, especially when it comes from one American to another. I'm a big believer in that. Wow.

[00:57:02] So, Thrill Save America. I mean there's a podcast, Pod Save America. I feel like we just started Thrill Save America. Thriller Save America. Wow, Brad. Who knows? This could be a regular feature. Yeah, for sure, for sure. But we've got to end on Choke Point. So I haven't finished the book yet. All of our readers – I mean, come on, guys. It's how you kick off summer. You pick up a Brad Thor book. You have it done before July 4th, and then go have yourself a party for the rest of the summer. So kick it off with Brad. Pick up the book.

[00:57:30] Look, as I finish the book and as our listeners finish the book, what's your favorite scene that you wrote? Give us a little hint of something that maybe we can look out for when we get there. We'll be a little excited. Okay. All right. So I am a big Brian De Palma fan, the director. So the very end of the book, there's something – I don't want to say what's in it because I don't want to spoil it.

[00:57:54] But I think when you get there, at the very end of the book, you can envision the scene being laid out on a movie screen and De Palma being the director for it. It was great because it meant I was at the end of the book, right? So it meant, woohoo, finish line. I'm running through the tape. But I forced myself to pump the brakes. I'm like, I've got a really cool thing I'm going to do here. And it was – again, my writing is always very cinematic. It plays out across the movie screen in my mind.

[00:58:24] But when I wrote this scene, I could really, really see it. So you're going to get to the end. You're going to – it's – the final bill is being paid. And I like the way I did it. And I see it in a movie. I can't wait to watch it. I love that. That's almost exactly what we said about Cold Zero, talking about a couple of your major set action pieces. But they were super cinematic, one especially towards the end. So I'm glad to hear that you're really happy and confident that you did that again.

[00:58:52] You hit a grand slam, as you always do. So thanks for taking the time. Thanks for educating me and our audience about America, politics, and the future where we're headed. So thrill save America. And thank you, Brad. And happy 250th. Enjoy the summer. Happy 250th. And I'm looking forward to the comments section to see if people want you and me to come back and do thrill save America. We pod because we care. We pod because we're patriotic. We podcast because we care. And that's what our entertainment should do.

[00:59:22] Our entertainment, whether it's thrillers, whether it's TV shows, whether it's movies, it should have a purpose. It should move us in a common direction. It should unite people. And it should help us to see the humanity in one another. So I think our conversation has done that. Amen, brother. So thank you. Good. Good, good, good. Thanks for having me. Thank you.