#2165 - Jack Carr

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Jack Collins, gentlemen. What's up, man? Good to see you, brother. What's happening?

So good to be here. This is awesome. Man, Comedy, Mothership, amazing.

You had a good time?

It was so much fun. So cool. We had a blast up there. And everybody was amazing. Ron White came up to say hi afterward.

Oh, wow. The theme song?

Yeah, the screenplay.

Oh, wow.

Somebody related to her, anyway.

Her music. Yeah, right, right.

So it was fun watching the show with her. She knows Ron White, so he came up. That's why he came up and said hi to us. But it was so, everybody killed it. It was so much fun.

We need more of that in life.

Yeah, but it was so noticeable. So you're in that VIP balcony, amazing. And then you're looking down, but it is so noticeable now that no one has their phones out. If you didn't have that, you'd look down from that balcony, and you'd certainly see somebody.

Oh, you'd see it everywhere. If you go to the movies, you just see lit up phones everywhere. now. It's crazy.

That's what I was saying. I was saying, I wish they did this in movies.

I mean, phones are cool. They do a lot of cool things. But, man, it's a massive distraction.

I'm working towards being able to hand this thing off.

Yeah? Yeah. Hand it off?

Yeah. To who? Somebody else. It's not me. Hand it off and go to the flip.

What about texting, though?

Well, you can still, remember the Blackberry?

Yeah, David Tell was in here, and he was texting. He has a flip phone. He texts with his flip phone. I'm like, what are you doing? I got pretty quick at that.

Yeah. I remember doing that, and we did it. Everybody did it. You just kind of figured it out. But it was like, what is it?

You can do-do-do-do.

But you got pretty good with it.

Yeah, you can get pretty good. But it's slow. It's slow and stupid. I mean, that's what happened when people started using the letter U instead of U and the letter R instead of A-R-E.

I can't do it. Do you do it?

No.

OK. Yeah, I don't think so. I'm trying to think of your text.

Especially you. You're an author. Nope.

I got to have commas in there. I can't have a U. None of that stuff. Right. So it's noticeable, and people send it to me.

Oh, yeah. They abbreviate things, too. I always have to ask my kid, what the fuck does that mean? IDK? Oh, I don't care.

Yeah.

What? What are you saying? I know.

I look it up sometimes. I Google it. I type it in. What does this mean? And it pops up.

Bruh. Yeah. Bruh. Bruh's a lot. Yeah.

I'm like, what is that? What does that even mean? Yeah. I saw some meme. It was like a mom texting her kid, and it says texting your 13-year-old boy is like texting someone who's about to break up with you.

I think you just have to have discipline. I think my middle ground is have a real phone, real smartphone, but discipline. You know, just no one to put it away. No one to leave it alone.

Are you good with it?

Yeah. I'm good with it. Yeah. I'm pretty good with it. It depends on if I have the day off.

Mm-hmm.

But those days are fucking awesome, man. Yeah. The nothing to do day. Oh, my God. I appreciate those so much.

Do you build one in?

Yeah. I build one in. Yeah. I never work every day. Okay.

I understand that. Do you ever feel that you have that? I can't tell. looking at it from the outside and knowing you and then watching an episode or listening to an episode. I can never tell if you're off.

I feel it could be coming, and then I don't allow it to come because I remind myself how fortunate I am and about how happy I would be to be able to do what I did if I couldn't do it. Right. Then I just put myself in that state of mind. Right. That also means a day off is necessary.

Are there really days off with family? Yeah, just chill. Isn't that exhausting too?

Family days? Nah, fun. Yesterday we did a Father's Day thing. We went and killed zombies. Nice.

Nice.

I fucking love it.

Do you go someplace for it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a place called Sandbox VR and it's out here in Austin. There was one in Woodland Hills too. This is the game. This is what it looks like.

What's a haptic feedback? Like it tightens, or you feel like it zaps?

No, it zaps you. It's like a buzz on your chest. It's really fun.

That's awesome.

Oh, I love it. They have a ton of games there too. It's not just that. They have a Squid Games one. They have a Star Trek one.

That's wild. Yeah. It's not just for kids, obviously.

No, no. It's for everybody. Well, obviously, I'm a big kid, but I fucking love it, man. I had the number three score ever in there at one point in time. Dang.

Something to be proud of right there. Fucking one hand.

One hand with the shotgun.

That's awesome. You train up for it? Yeah. We were training up with Taren.

Just a lot of coffee.

Oh, there you go.

Just get a little day. Every gun has a laser on it, so you know exactly where you're shooting and just take headshots on zombies.

I want to see if we have one of those in Salt Lake, see if we can go down there and-.

They probably do. Yeah. They have a ton of them. I know there's one, like I said, there's one in Woodland Hills that we used to have right down the studio in LA. Yeah.

Maybe they are.

Yeah. Is there one? In an area called Murray.

Nice. All right. Yeah. Taking my little guy down there.

You got to do it. It's so fun. Oh, that's perfect.

It's so fun. It's good to know.

Yeah. It's spooky, too. It's really scary.

It looks like. Yeah.

They drop out of the ceiling. Yeah. The ceiling breaks open and a ton of zombies fall down in front of you and they just run at you. Yeah. You got to blast them.

My little guy liked that. He's 13.. He loves that stuff and he loves roller coasters. There's a, in Salt Lake, they have, I forget the name of the place, but it's called a Cannibal. He made me go with him a couple of years.

I watch too many Instagram videos of those things going sideways. Yeah. People go flying off of them. Yeah. Not fun.

Don't do that. But he loves it. Yeah. He'll dig this.

I get that people like those thrills. They don't appeal to me.

No.

I used to do them a lot with my kids when they were younger, especially Disneyland. Disneyland, you know, they're pretty good. They really don't very rarely have a fuck up.

Yeah. Yeah. Good point. They're pretty...

Yeah. Yeah. Their safety record's pretty awesome. Yeah.

We did it right before we left and left California to go to Utah, and we thought, okay, we're going to do this one last kind of kid-centric thing with all these amusement parks because my wife and I are not really amusement park people, just surrounded by real sweating and just eating everything, long lines, crying, whining. So, yeah, we did that, and then I think that's it for us.

If you want to find the hazards of the American diet in full effect, go to Disneyland. It's bad. There's so many people on scooters because they can't walk, because they've got too big. Oh, yeah. It's so terrible.

Yeah. Sorry, kids. That was your last time that we're going to be at one of those places. Now it's outdoor stuff.

It's fun. It's fun for a day just to eat churros and be a pig and just fucking. just have a good time. But, you know, you have to like allow yourself to just fuck off, eat ice cream and fuck off for a day. Just say, today we're going to fuck off.

That's your day off. That energizes you when you get back into it. so you have somebody. come on the podcast.

Also, I feel guilty for fucking off and eating all that garbage.

So you hit it hard the next day. Yeah.

All right.

Well, I got that sauna after we talked last time. I think it was getting put in last time we talked and I still haven't really been in it because I've plugged it in or whatever. Electrician came and plugged that thing in. It's one of those barrel ones. And so it looks out at the mountains.

Who made your sauna?

I don't even know.

My wife. You got to get a Solution. This is the guys that did ours and they have serious heaters. Mine gets 200 degrees.

Oh, yeah. This was not-, This just gets kind of not even uncomfortably warm.

Is it infrared or is it a regular sauna?

No, it has the rocks. It has a little thing in it. It has the rocks and all that stuff.

Well, it just gets warm.

I think it's the altitude. I think it needs some sort of an adjustment for altitude because we're about just shy of 8,000 feet.

Right, but it's electric. Yeah. That doesn't make any sense. Yeah, I know. Yeah, you just- I think someone knows what they're doing.

Yeah, you need to do something. So, that sits there unused, but moving forward. So, I was hearing you talk about archery. So, I have the guys from Total Archery Challenge. They came out, and they put up 22 3D targets all around.

Well, you're cranking out basically a book a year. Yeah. Plus, you're also working on the Terminalist TV series. Yeah. That is a lot of work, my friend.

It is. My first nonfiction comes out in the fall on the 1983 Beirut Barracks bombing. So, that's a whole other thing. Oh, wow.

Okay. So, you're getting into historical stuff. Yeah.

We have a lot of history in here. I just love history. I always have, since I was a little kid anyway. But I really wanted to start down that path and explore a different terrorist event and capture the lessons learned behind that event so that hopefully, moving forward, we don't have to relearn those lessons in blood. We're not very good at that as a country.

How do you collaborate something like that with a historian? How does that work? Do you send him stuff, what you're working on, and he gives you feedback? How does it work?

So, I had the idea and I wanted one person. I wanted this guy, James Scott. Amazing guy. He has five other books out there, four on World War II, one on the USS Liberty. And I didn't know him personally and doesn't really have a social media presence.

That's awesome. Yeah.

So, it was an amazing experience and we're going to hopefully kick off another one here. So, the idea was to do one nonfiction every year. As soon as I started down that path of research, I realized it was going to be a two-year, every two-year type of a thing. Because it just so much more goes into it. You just don't create it out of your head, obviously.

How many hours a day do you work? Because I would imagine that, particularly with fiction, you have to avoid burnout, right? You have to be enthusiastic about your subject matter to get the best out of your mind.

Yeah. I mean, I'm so fired up. And so, like you, I feel so fortunate to be doing what I love. And so, it doesn't seem like work, although you're putting in hours. You're certainly putting in hours.

So, that's this one, Red Sky Morning.

Yeah, that's this one right here. So, it took a little longer than I anticipated. But that's just because the story dictates how long. Because people are trusting me with their time. They're never going to get that time back.

When James Reese continues to get older, are you going to let him get older or are you going to go James Bond?

I think I'd go James Bond. I think I'm going to do it slowly. Maybe age him slowly. So, we'll see. It's one of those things you have to think about.

Especially if they're out there kicking ass.

Yeah. So, if you start that, they're 40, when they start. They're getting up there now. Yeah. So, it's a thing, especially if you want them to keep kicking ass.

Yeah. I talked to Mark Graney about that, too. The gray man. Right, right. Same thing.

I think so. I think that's it. Yeah.

It's already a precedent, Seb. People accept it.

Do it. Exactly.

James Bond should be 1,000 years old. How the fuck is James Bond still kicking ass? And they've got a new James Bond coming out?

We'll see. We'll see. So, what they need to do for that one. What they need to do. If they asked me, after what they did at the end, and I don't know if we can say spoiler alert, because people haven't seen the last movie, but it ends.

Oh, yeah. And you're doing it.

You have all the cars. So, in the books, he's driving an old Bentley, and it's from the 30s. So, it was written in the 50s. So, it's not the Aston Martin. So, you do that, and you do it true to the books in that time period.

Ooh, that would be very expensive, though. But not really today. with CGI, with AI, what they're able to do now. Yeah. You know, Tyler Perry was building an $800 million studio, and he stopped production on it when he saw Sora, which is the new AI program that almost, I mean, really quickly can render spectacular scenes.

Is that that one, like, 3D camera they have in Australia?

No. It's a different one? No, Sora's just AI-generated video. Show him the one with Japan. It's Tokyo in the snow.

Think about it in five years from now.

Oh, it's going to be impossible.

Think about it in 10 years from now.

So, this is all AI.

People in snowy Tokyo.

Snowy Tokyo City is bustling. Camera moves through the bustling city street. This is the prompt that made AI create this, following several people. Like, look at this. Oh, wow.

That's crazy.

Sora.

Is that the one that Ashton Kutcher was talking about?

I don't know. I don't know if Ashton Kutcher was talking about that.

He was in the news yesterday, something about AI and something about Hollywood with doing this stuff. But that's killer. They're fucked.

Everyone's fucked. Actors are fucked. Everyone's fucked.

I need to read the, after the strike last year, because there was an actor strike also, as you know, and then the writer's strike as well. So, I don't know. And AI was a big part of that, but I don't know.

It was.

Where did it end up? Do you know where it ended up?

I don't know, but they don't have much to negotiate with, unfortunately. There's an inevitability with this kind of technology. It's like, would you write books with a feather? No. Would you write all the books with a feather?

Oh, man.

I really think it's a thing of the past. What they can do now.

This one got announced today.

What is this one? It's called Gen 3 Alpha, I think. I don't know. See, there's a bunch of these different competing AI programs as well. It's not just the OpenAI Sora.

That's crazy.

So, they have these graphic models now for video games, and Unreal, that's what it's called, right? Unreal Engine 5?. Unreal Engine 5 is fucking bananas. So, this is for video games. So, video games now look almost indistinguishable from a movie.

That's crazy. Do you play video games?

No, I can't. Do you used to? Yeah, I go crazy.

I can't do it. You mean you get sucked in?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll be playing it all day long. I have a real problem.

You wouldn't have a podcast?

No, I'd probably have a podcast. It probably would suck, though. I have a very addictive personality with things that are difficult to do. Yeah.

Dang.

And then when I shut them off, I always feel like shit. So, this is Unreal Engine 5.4.. I guess this is the newest version of it.

What?

Look how crazy this looks. That's cool. I mean, this is a video game. So, imagine playing a video game. Right.

Oh, I don't know. Are you going to get one? Oh, yeah, for sure. Oh, man.

Like, look at this. What? Yeah. This is bonkers.

No, I can't. No.

So, everywhere you go. That's actually a lot smaller than this room. I was incorrect. That's really small. That's like the size of this table almost.

So, you can get a workout in?

Oh, yeah. You definitely can. I mean, I remember when Dance Dance Revolution came, or Evolution. Evolution or Revolution? Revolution.

Then you get tired. Maybe you sit down on the couch and go to the other one, where you just sit there.

Right.

And then who's creating this, I don't know, who's moving the country forward?

That's a real problem, obviously. Well, also, they just announced that the former chief of NSA is going to the board of OpenAI, which has freaked a bunch of people out, including Edward Snowden. Does that freak you out, Jamie? Yeah, it's a big smile on Jamie's face. Well, I would imagine they would want to get involved in something like that.

I mean, that's why I want to get rid of this phone.

It's inevitable.

I know. Jack, it's not going to help you. That's the whole thing. We're down this path. Just like you said, I mean, the technology is increasing at an exponential rate.

It's going to be very, very quick. Apparently, what we're at now is chat GPT 4.0 or 4.0.. And the next chat, GPT 5, is going to be exponentially more powerful. And that's in the pipeline.

Well, it's the manipulation part that we're already. just with social media. I mean, you can take it back 10 years. I mean, Twitter X is similar to when it started essentially. And that's you're getting manipulated constantly.

The iPhones do. Yeah. Yeah. And I have an Android. I have this Samsung Galaxy that I'm switching over to.

Oh, man. It's been accurate?

Oh, yeah. It's really good. And it tells a lot of wild shit. Like you could circle a picture. Like, if you see Jamie, sneakers, like, oh, those are pretty fresh.

That is wild. Maybe I should feel, instead of trying to stay away from it, maybe I should embrace it and put the book in it. People can circle it and do whatever they do.

I think you're always going to want fiction. I think people are always going to want fiction. And they're also always going to want to have things that someone has created. I think that's a part of what people enjoy.

Like this. Like the artwork on the walls here that is done by a real person.

I just took a photo of the French press and circled it. And it's given me links to how to buy a French press.

Man.

It's crazy. Dude, this is complete next level.

So is that freeing up time rather than having to go French press? I don't know. It's just cool.

It's not freeing up any time. I mean maybe it is freeing up a little bit of time. I just think it's cool. That's why I like it.

You love all that stuff, though. You embrace new technologies.

I do. But, again, you've got to know what it is. It's like I like whiskey. But I don't drink it every day. I drink a little bit of whiskey every now and again.

So your personality, you can get addicted to video games and that feeling. But not to other things like whiskey or whatever else. No.

I don't think. So. it's not the same. They're like different. Well, I'm too health conscious.

That headache, right? This is crazy.

I haven't had one of those in a long time. Which is because I haven't stopped drinking caffeine in a long time. But when I used to write back in the day, I used to buy these sodas. There were these bizarre sodas that this liquor store had that were filled with caffeine. Like insane amounts of caffeine.

It's probably illegal. Probably.

I mean, I don't know what the caffeine amount was. But it was extraordinary.

Is that when you're writing comedy late at night?

I think back then I was writing a script. I was trying to write a script. And I also write comedy late at night too. And I just like to be caffeinated when I'm writing. When I'm writing, I like to be jazzed up.

Yeah, I do the same thing, I think. The only time I'm not being interrupted is like 10 a.m. still to like 3 or 4 in the morning. I pulled so many all-nighters for this one.

10 a.

4 in the morning, sometimes 6, 7.

No, I know you would.

And so it's got to be the best story it can possibly be. But that means a lot of late nights. So that goes back to the phone. Handing that off to somebody. Having other people do some things so that I can focus on the writing.

Do you think you'll ever get to a point where you say, you know what? In order to do a book the right way, I have to do one every two and a half years.

Maybe. Maybe that was like the norm in the 80s. The Tom Clancy books weren't every year. Oh, really? Yeah, so there was a couple years.

So is there pressure that comes from, does it come from the publisher? Does it come from you? Do you, like, make hay while the sun's shining?

I think maybe there's a little bit of that. But I think it became what was expected for recurring characters. So it became Clive Cussler. Maybe he was one of the first to start doing it with the Dirt Pit series that he started. I think the first one was back in the 70s, early 70s.

Yeah, people get hooked on a character. They want a new book every year. Yeah. Like Graney does a new Gray Man every year.

Yeah, exactly. So that's kind of what the audience expects. And it's fun. It's a timeline that you can hit. Two a year would be difficult to do.

Yeah. Does anybody do two a year?

I think there's a couple guys who have done it. I think when you get a little, maybe when you get a little older, like John Grisham. So kids out of the house, that sort of a thing. And you don't do all of the other things.

Trying to avoid the wife. Like podcasts. Lock yourself in your office.

Your words.

Yeah. Especially like the scripts. I mean, the amount of time. How much time does it take, or how much time do you have to spend working on The Terminalist? It's a lot.

So the first one I was learning. So I was new to Hollywood. So I was learning. But Chris Pratt wanted me involved. Antoine Foucault wanted me involved.

They nailed it, man. That show is as close to the actual book as you're probably ever going to get, without it being like 100 hours long.

That's the thing. Some people get upset that there wasn't this scene or that scene. Or these characters get morphed together or that sort of a thing.

There's a clipper on the back of it.

Oh, wow. Look at this. Oh, wow.

It's built in. No way.

How do you do this?

You flip the clipper like this.

Oh, it flips out.

Yeah. That's nice. Yeah, it's great though. Wow. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, that's fantastic.

Yeah, and shout out to Foundation Cigars for hooking us up.

Oh, nice. Oh, look at that. You've got your own cigars right there. I love it.

And they're good.

Nice. Let's check this out. Let's do that right there.

I was very skeptical when he first made it for me.

I was like, oh jeez.

I was going to suck. Yeah.

I did a whole cigar lighting scene in this one, in this book. I have. one of my favorite chapters in previous books was James Reese talking to Caroline Hastings, who's the matriarch of this Hastings family. It's just a conversation. So nothing's blowing up.

Yeah. People get real dorked out on how to light a cigar. I have had conversations. I've done it the right way. I've done it the other way.

You can tell the difference, though.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. My friend Matt is like a real wine connoisseur, though. He has like a cellar in his house. And he puts on his reading glasses when we go out to eat.

I don't know what I'm ordering.

I ask the lady at the restaurant.

Yeah, that's what they do. They're supposed to know all that stuff.

Like a full-bodied cabernet. I don't know what the fuck anything is.

I put some wine in these. I like to do that. I like to weave in food. Ian Fleming did it. It's kind of like my 007th book.

So that's your seventh book?

Seventh book. 007th.

Damn, son. That's an accomplishment. Thank you. Seven books. Seven books.

Thank you. Thank you.

I just think about how many hours it is of just sitting in front of the computer.

Oh, my eyes are gone. I mean, it's mad.

Do you still use a laptop? Mm-hmm. I would encourage you to not.

I need to not.

Yeah. You know why? For the keyboard. Keyboard. Yeah.

I'm not there yet. I do have one that Hemingway actually wrote a movable feast on. Somebody, a fan, sent it to me.

A typewriter? Yeah.

He wrote a movable feast on it. It came up for auction right before COVID. So, January of 2020.. The guy that started Newman's Own with Paul Newman. He was also kind of a manager at A.E.

That makes it funny.

It's pretty cool. So, I have that right there. But I need to get it. After we talked about this once. And so, I went out and I bought another computer.

You can get around that, though.

I'm not good at that sort of thing.

It's not that hard. It's not that hard. You just relearn it. And then, once you relearn it. You already have it in your head.

I need to get better at that sort of thing. I have notepads everywhere. Yellow stickies everywhere. It's chaos.

You don't have it on your phone?

No. For some reason I just don't. I don't know. There's something about it.

Dude, the best thing about the phones today. Is that you can talk to it. You know. Like. you can.

I need to do that. I need to get better at all that stuff. It's not. Yeah. I'm not good at it.

Like I could do this. Jack Carr is a bad motherfucker. And this is his seventh book. Bam. Look how quick that is.

Look at that. I do. It was close.

Pretty fucking close. Oh. Look at. They blocked out. bad motherfucker.

It's already controlling you.

Why is it doing that? See. It's probably. The thing about Androids, though. I should stop this.

Dude. I don't know.

And it also has a stylus.

I think that's maybe too much for me. Oh, you can pull. Oh man. Oh yeah.

And not only does it have a stylus. But the stylus. It doubles as a remote control. So like. If you want to take a picture with the family.

And those take. That has a better. Camera than iPhone, doesn't it?

I wouldn't say it's better. I would say it's just as awesome. Okay. I mean. People that debate things.

I'm learning so much today.

It syncs up. So if you have Apple TV. You scroll down like this. And you press this button right here. And it shows you the remote.

Instead of like. Instead of.

Looking for the fuck. It's like old school texting. Alright. But worse.

It's horrible. It's horrible.

This is way easier. You just type it on your phone. And then also you can slide back and forth. To wherever you want in the movie. Exactly.

Alright.

I'm going to try that. The phone is the best.

I will try that.

That's the best.

The other stuff. I don't know about. But I will try that. Because it's. Yeah.

Yeah. That's always an issue. There's a lot going on today.

That's why I like to take a breath. Go upstairs. But I do need that other. Computer. Because I'm feeling it.

The thing is. If you use. Like. A cross platform. Word processor.

I know. It's so bad.

It's not difficult. That's not difficult. We're essentially.

The same age. But you're so good. At all this stuff. I'm not that good. You are.

Jamie's better than me. And Redband's better than Jamie.

Yeah. That's energy.

It's a lot. Can I come in? Hold on.

I said that. Yeah.

Set up a competition. Oh man. Redband is a super nerd, though. They're both super nerds. It's a lot.

It's a lot. But I need to do something. I need to get. Definitely another computer. For typing.

Really?

Yeah. Just so it's all clean. And it's like a clean piece of paper. And it's blank slate. And I start again.

Yeah. No. That's a good thing to do. Rituals are good. Yeah.

Steven Pressfield?

Excuse me. Pressfield. Yeah. The War of Art.

The War of Art. Amazing.

Yeah. His book is kind of all about summoning. It's about discipline, focus, dedication. But also summoning the muse. Yeah.

Oh, exactly. It's doing the work. Sit down and do the work. You've got to do the work. Or it's not going to.

When I first read it, I felt like Pressfield was using the term the muse as like just sort of that. maybe it's not a real thing, but you treat it as if it's a real thing and it works that way. It worked because of the time and focus that you put, like it will accumulate over time. You will get creative ideas. But now, as I'm getting older, I'm not convinced that I was right.

Like almost spiritual?

I don't know if I like that word, because it's been co-opted by hippie chicks and dudes pretending to be spiritual to try to get laid. Yeah. I think a lot of spiritual hippies are being honest. Girls are being honest. The guys are.

And you've come to this over time.

Yeah.

With age experience.

I just don't know. You know, I mean, if the muse wasn't a real thing, boy, it sure behaves like a fucking real thing.

That's true.

It really does behave like a real thing. And when you're living your life right, it seems like it rewards you. It seems like it rewards you like, both mentally, emotionally, physically. Like there's some... There's a guiding force.

Well, fate's an interesting thing, obviously. I thought about it. You know, I thought about it my whole life. My daddy gave me a book a long time ago, when I was a kid, called The Bridge in St. Louis, Ray.

It is, and it's interesting hearing that from you, because you're talking about it in the most extreme environment that exists, which is war, and that, in order for you to be completely focused, you kind of had to give in to that. That's the only way you'll be able to do your job. And then also, if you're not completely focused, it could wind up costing you or your teammates' lives.

Exactly. That's the same reason. while I was in, all I focused on, and I had to talk to my wife about this, but she understood it, the pendulum's on the side of the team when you're in it. If you're bringing guys down range, maybe you're in a staff job somewhere, maybe not, but if you're taking guys down range, you do not want to be 10 years on from whatever's going to happen down range in Iraq or Afghanistan or somewhere else around the world, sitting on that couch after something goes sideways, wondering if you did everything you possibly could have done in preparation for that event to make the best decisions under fire that you possibly could. So that's why, on the weekends, I was training.

And in the margins, in the far ends, those hard days that you put in in training could be the difference between your life or life for your teammates.