Green Beret & SOF Operator | Alex Dekker

Alex Dekker looks back on his path from conventional infantry in Ramadi to 5th Special Forces Group, combat in Afghanistan, the Special Forces Combat Diver course, the fight against ISIS, and his final decade in a more specialized Army special operations unit. We also discuss his transition out of the military and how his experiences in Special Forces, intelligence, archaeology, and the Middle East shaped his debut novel, Desert Heist. Grab Alex's book here: https://a.co/d/00h03vHa Find Alex here: https://www.alexdekkerofficial.com/ Today's Sponsors: VAER Watches ⬇️ https://www.vaerwatches.com/theteamhouse get a free watch roll with your purchase. 20% for active duty, veteran, leo, & first responders GhostBed ⬇️ https://www.ghostbed.com/house FOR 10% off! BaerSkin Tactical ⬇️ Text 'HOUSE' to 39612 to get a free rain jacket when you purchase 2 hoodies! Mars Men⬇️ For a limited time, our listeners get 50% off for life plus Free Shipping AND 3 Free Gifts at Men Go To Mars dot com. That’s MenGoToMars.com for 50% Off AND 3 Free Gifts when you checkout. For ad free video and audio and access to live streams... Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse ___________________________________________________ GRAB JACK'S NEW BOOK "THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN" ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/803651/the-most-dangerous-man-by-jack-murphy/paperback/ Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️ https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured "Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio" 00:00 – Start 00:53 – Alex Dekker’s Interest in Archaeology 02:17 – Growing Up as an Army Brat 03:43 – His Father’s Career in Military Intelligence 04:00 – Why Special Operations Was Always the Goal 05:29 – Starting Out in the Conventional Army 06:39 – Deploying to Ramadi With 1st Infantry Division 07:20 – Seeing Special Forces in Iraq for the First Time 08:52 – What Conventional Infantry Life Was Really Like 10:32 – Leaving the Army & Going Back to College 11:00 – Returning on an 18X Contract 12:48 – Passing SFAS & Starting the Q Course 13:58 – Learning Arabic for 5th Special Forces Group 14:41 – Joining a Combat Dive Team 16:28 – Deploying to Afghanistan Six Weeks After Arriving 17:00 – His First Special Forces Deployment 18:16 – The Taliban Ambush That Nearly Killed Him 20:34 – Taking Over After the Team Was Wounded 22:53 – Fighting Through the Ambush With Shrapnel in His Leg 24:44 – Recovering & Returning to Afghanistan With a Cane 26:54 – Preparing for Combat Diver School After Being Wounded 29:06 – Inside the Special Forces Combat Diver Course 31:13 – Drown Proofing & Learning Not to Panic Underwater 32:26 – The 5th Group Guys Watching Everyone Else Deploy Somewhere Nice 33:41 – Sitting in Kuwait as the ISIS War Begins 35:30 – The Early U. S. Response to ISIS in Iraq 36:53 – Training While Waiting for the Mission to Expand 38:28 – Returning Home & Preparing for the Next Deployment 39:10 – Becoming an 18 Fox Intelligence Sergeant 41:15 – Targeting, Intelligence & Building the Battlefield Picture 43:04 – Working the Syria Problem as an 18 Fox 44:41 – Training Partner Forces Against ISIS 46:17 – Why ISIS Struggled Against Professional Forces 48:48 – What Special Forces Is Actually Designed to Do 50:15 – Looking for the Next Step Beyond 5th Group 52:03 – Moving Into a More Specialized Army Special Operations Unit 53:13 – What He Can Say About the Final Decade of His Career 54:48 – Retiring From the Secret Side of the Military 56:39 – The Honor Foundation & Transitioning Special Operators 57:34 – Why Networking Matters More Than Blind Job Applications 59:28 – Meeting His Wife, a Former CIA Operations Officer 1:00:09 – Leaving Two Secretive Careers Behind 1:01:52 – Why Intelligence Officers Struggle With Transition Too 1:03:34 – Writing Desert Heist in Three Months 1:05:32 – Finding a Literary Agent 1:08:00 – Combining Indiana Jones, Special Forces & Real History 1:09:22 – Building Characters From Real ODA Personalities 1:11:06 – Why Veterans Sometimes Miss the Chaos 1:13:03 – The Lost City at the Center of Desert Heist 1:14:28 – Green Berets, Russian Mercenaries & the Bigger Conspiracy 1:16:21 – Turning Desert Heist Into a Series 1:17:25 – What to Expect From the Next Nate Wilde Book 1:19:07 – Where to Find Alex & Desert Heist 1:20:21 – Jack & Alex Compare the Fiction Publishing Process 1:22:27 – Planning Storylines Several Books in Advance 1:23:31 – What Comes Next for Both Series 1:24:07 – Keeping Survival & Combat Realistic in Fiction 1:25:23 – Closing Thoughts Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:59Speaker 03

  Hey, Jack.

• 1:01Jack Murphy?

  What's going on?

• 1:03Speaker 03

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• 1:06Jack Murphy?

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• 1:49Jack Murphy?

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• 2:30Speaker 03

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• 3:10Speaker 03

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• 3:29Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, it's nice. I really like the, like, nice big watch face.

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• 4:02Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 4:04Jack Murphy?

  Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy, and our guest on today's show is Alex Decker. He is the author of Desert Heist. You can go and pick this novel up today. It's out now. Alex served in Fifth Special Forces Group and Army Special Operations Command, and has an interest in archaeology. I mean, I noticed in your bio that you majored in intelligence, but I guess just off the bat, where does the archaeology interest come from?

• 4:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's a great question. So I love history. I've always loved history, archaeology in particular. I think, you know, you can't, you can never ignore the influence of fiction. So like a lot of people, I think Indiana Jones turned me on to it when I was a kid. And, you know, I think I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark, and I was hooked. Looked into archaeology, learned that it wasn't all just punching Nazis in the face, and, you know, discovering lost treasures, but it's still pretty cool. And so I found it super fascinating and just kind of always have. So, you know, I say that I've had a lot of time for hobbies in the last like 20 years or so, but if I had a hobby, it's probably studying history and reading historical nonfiction,

• 5:20Speaker 05

  things like that. So archaeology sort of goes hand in hand with all that.

• 5:24Jack Murphy?

  Are you one of these dudes that like volunteers to go out to dig sites and like sift through the layers of?

• 5:30Speaker 05

  I have, yeah. I haven't, I haven't in a long time, but I used to for sure. Yeah. It's just fascinating to be around. I love going to ancient sites anyhow. And whenever I travel, whether it's for in the military or independently, I always try to go to interesting places and visit some of these locations. So as much time as I can spend with them, the better.

• 5:51Jack Murphy?

  So to kind of rewind a little bit, tell us a bit about, you know, where you grew up and sort of what was the path that sort of took you to the military?

• 6:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, so I, like a lot of people in the military, was, I was an Army brat. So, yeah, the transition to the military was a pretty simple one. I grew up all around, lived overseas. I think I moved probably over a dozen times in my 18 years at home. So like the military is probably always a foregone conclusion for me. Like a lot of people that are my age or our age or similar in that GWOT era, you know, 9/11 happened while I was in high school, and that was kind of the impetus to say, "Okay, I want to do something sooner rather than later." And so, original plan was go to college, and I went to college for about a year.

• 6:42Speaker 05

  Hated it. Felt like I was sitting around doing nothing, so I actually dropped out and enlisted, and that kind of started me on the whole path forward.

• 6:52Jack Murphy?

  Cool. So, I mean, what MOS did you come into the Army on?

• 6:57Speaker 05

  So I was originally, I came in, I originally went Reserve under 31 Bravo as an NP. Figured out what that was, was not a good thing, what I wanted to do. And then, so I made the transition over to 11 Bravo, and then from 11 Bravo, you know, 18 Echo, 18 Fox, 18 Zulu.

• 7:19Jack Murphy?

  Got you, yeah.

• 7:20Speaker 05

  I just have the whole smattering of MOSs.

• 7:23Jack Murphy?

  So what did your folks do in the military?

• 7:26Speaker 05

  So my dad was an MI officer. So he was military intelligence, then he was a foreign area officer. So he was Defense Attache, ended up.

• 7:34Jack Murphy?

  Oh, cool.

• 7:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, so he ended up being the Army Attache over in Israel for a bit, and then the Defense Attache in Africa, so.

• 7:44Jack Murphy?

  So that didn't, you know, immediately interest you, though, when you joined?

• 7:50Speaker 05

  I think, I think going Special Operations was always kind of the route that I wanted to go. I think I had it in my head, and again, I'm gonna, I'll probably hit on it more, more than I am for a second time here, but the importance of fiction. I grew up with these stories, reading these books, watching these movies, and, you know, kind of, I think I saw like Predator in fifth grade, you know, and Commando. And it was like, "All right, I want to go do this kind of stuff." I think I was super badass. And so that was always kind of the goal, I think, was to go down that route for sure. I think I had originally planned on like finishing college at that point. I ended up going back and finishing, but I planned on finishing at that point.

• 8:31Speaker 05

  I just, I had this kind of concept, you know, especially whenever Afghanistan was going on, and then you have Iraq kicking off, and it sounds super ridiculous now, but I had this concern that the wars would be over, and I would have missed them, and nothing would do my part. And, you know, if anybody told us they'd go on for 20 years, maybe I would have taken my time. I don't know, probably not. But definitely, definitely pushed me in that direction. And then, once I, once I got in the military and I kind of learned about the special in the Special Operations and learned kind of that difference and what it is that most of the guy does and what an officer does, and especially in Special Operations as an officer, how your operational time is very, very limited. You know, I think I had made the right choice and didn't have any desire to switch.

• 9:18Jack Murphy?

  So you came in as 11 Bravo infantry. Did you do some time in the conventional forces? Or were you able to like volunteer for SFAS and basic training? Or how did that work out?

• 9:31Speaker 05

  So I actually did some conventional time. I did a year long deployment to Iraq, which was also another one that was terrible. It was by far my worst deployment. You know, give it up to the grunts and the regular army and the Marines and all these guys. They, I learned a lot about, you know, throughout my career. I'm very grateful for having that conventional army.

• 9:57Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:58Speaker 05

  Because it really does make you appreciate some things that maybe like 18 x-rays, those making x-rays. And, you know, it'd be a rough day and they'd be complaining about how terrible things are. And it's like, hey, man, you're not raking rocks on a fob in Iraq because your platoon sergeant thinks you need to stay busy. While you're not on, on missions, you know, and so it definitely gave me like a perspective there.

• 10:20Jack Murphy?

  What, uh, what unit was that?

• 10:22Speaker 05

  Uh, let's see, oh, four to oh, seven.

• 10:26Jack Murphy?

  Oh, no, I mean, what, what unit were you with?

• 10:28Speaker 05

  Oh, uh, first ID, I was out of Fort Riley.

• 10:30Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 10:31Speaker 05

  And, um.

• 10:32Jack Murphy?

  And where, where in Iraq did they send you?

• 10:35Speaker 05

  Uh, so Ramadi. So I was in Ramadi like oh, five, oh, six.

• 10:39Jack Murphy?

  I mean, that was a hot area.

• 10:40Speaker 05

  That was a hot area. And, um, you know, I can remember, again, a couple of things that stick out. I never seen the real, the SEALs rolling around and I ever seen SF rolling around. And I think at the time it was like, uh, I might be getting it wrong, but I think it was like a four vehicle convoy minimum to leave the wire. You know, and there was this whole, all these things that go on. And I've never seen the SF guys just rolling out in like two vehicles and, you know, going out and doing whatever they were doing, you know, guys with backwards baseball caps and stuff. And I thought, man, it looks like they're, as I'm sitting there at the clearing barrel, waiting for someone to clear my rifle, you know? I thought these guys are having a much better time than I am. And, uh, and for sure they were.

• 11:22Speaker 05

  And so, uh, the other thing too is, you know, we talk about that it's those conventional units that handle the brunt of

• 11:29Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:30Speaker 05

  Everything, right? And so like I remember, you know, whether you're driving around on Route Michigan or Tampa or wherever, you're doing a patrol and you're, it always kind of felt like you were living at a cop outside in the town. Like you always felt like you were just waiting to get attacked, you know? And, uh, always thought of the defensive. And then I can remember switching over to, to special forces. And it was the opposite. You're always on the offensive. You always had the initiative. Whereas things were a little more serious. It was a little bit more like, you know, war is kind of like an arena. And we're the best at it. And just a complete and total different shift in mindset. Which, which I obviously enjoy a lot more too.

• 12:10Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, you, you hear that from a lot of the guys, which is understandable due to who served in a conventional unit, EOD, or combat engineer or infantry, that they want to like take the fight to the enemy. And they didn't feel like they were really doing that in those units. But I mean, on the other hand, um, like you said, you know, the conventional forces do the brunt of the work.

• 12:30Speaker 05

  They do.

• 12:30Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. I mean, what, what was your unit doing other than your platoon sergeant having you on? I think in the, I've heard that, you know, they used to call it in the old days like fatigue labor or fatigue duty, which is literally what you, you know, you described, like just keep them from getting in trouble.

• 12:47Speaker 05

  Exactly. Yeah. Keep them from thinking too much and, you know, idle hands and all of that. Yeah. So we were, you know, we had a couple of different things. And the other thing too is that, uh, you know, when you're a lower enlisted, you don't know what you're doing half the time or why you're doing things half the time, I guess. You just kind of do them. And so I can remember, uh, you know, I was involved in, uh, like the major clearing operation, um, Murphy's Borough, I think it was called. And, um, I had no idea until years later. I think I picked up a book. I might've been like the sheriff of Ramadi or something. I'm reading through, I was like, I was in there during that time. Oh, is that why we did all that stuff? Like, I had no idea, you know? And so, uh, it just, you know, you're, a lot of times you're treated like a mushroom, you know? Kept, kept in the dark and fed shit.

• 13:28Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 13:28Speaker 05

  Has kind of the thing. So, uh, but, uh, you know, we, we did, we did patrols, we did presence patrols. We lived out of combat outposts or down in the government center downtown. And, uh, it felt like a lot of just being there and a lot of presence. We worked a little bit with like the, um, the Iraqi police and things like that. So, um, a smattering of different things. But, uh, definitely an interesting time. And like I said, uh, not one that I enjoyed, one that I'm grateful for because of the perspective it lent me for years later.

• 14:00Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, this is, this is one of those deployments where like your DCUs are rotting off your body by the time you get home.

• 14:05Speaker 05

  All right. Yeah.

• 14:06Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, so, I mean, when you did redeploy back to the States, I, I take it you put your hand up pretty fast to go to selection.

• 14:15Speaker 05

  Uh, you know, I actually took a break and went back to school.

• 14:18Jack Murphy?

  Oh, really? You, you were breaking service?

• 14:21Speaker 05

  What's that? I had a break in service. Yeah.

• 14:22Jack Murphy?

  Interesting. Okay.

• 14:23Speaker 05

  And so I thought, I was like, all right, that was not the best experience. I'm going to go back to school, do that. And as I was going to school, as I was starting to finish up, um, I, uh,

• 14:35Speaker 05

  started thinking more back about, you know, I should have just gone to selection. I should have just done it then. And so I had a buddy who was actually a recruiter who was able to, um, essentially hook me up with an 18 x-ray contract. So I go back in 18 x-ray prior service with that pipeline, airborne, and then, uh, SFAS and, and go that route. So, um, and off I was and I kind of had, had a, had a plan. I knew where I wanted to go. I knew I wanted to go to fifth group. So I volunteered for, volunteered for Arabic. You know, volunteered, I figured I'd get fifth group, which I did. Cause a lot of guys who didn't get it, a lot of guys are Russian speakers. And, you know, whatever else got fifth group as well. So.

• 15:18Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, there's no way that, uh, you were not going to get a fifth group in Arabic if you requested it.

• 15:24Speaker 05

  For sure. A hundred percent.

• 15:27Jack Murphy?

  Um, so I mean, your major in college was intel, was it intelligence studies?

• 15:32Speaker 05

  No. So I was, I originally went for archaeology and then I ended up switching when I went back to, uh, political science. Intelligence was, um, I went back for, uh,

• 15:42Jack Murphy?

  Grad school.

• 15:42Speaker 05

  Grad school at Georgetown for.

• 15:46Jack Murphy?

  Okay. So yeah, I mean, that's great. I mean, the x-ray program is a great deal, especially I think for people who have, um, previous work experience or got some college or kind of like in that sort of vein.

• 15:59Speaker 05

  We joke that it's the, uh, the great pipeline for, uh, prior service Marines.

• 16:06Speaker 05

  So many prior service Marines you get going through.

• 16:09Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. No, after I got out of the, out of the military and I was like going to college, like I'd meet those guys. And they're like getting their degree and they're like, yeah, I'm going to go back in. I'm going to do SF. I'm like, dude, are you crazy? What are you, what are you talking about? Uh, but yeah, they have, they have that dream. So I mean, it's, it's a, it is a great opportunity for them to jump on.

• 16:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, for sure.

• 16:30Jack Murphy?

  Um, okay. So you go back in, uh, you didn't have a big enough break in service that you had to go back through basic training and all that stuff again. So you're kind of going like straight to airborne school and then selection?

• 16:43Speaker 05

  Yep. Essentially, yeah. So did that. Was fortunate enough to get one shot through selection.

• 16:51Speaker 05

  And then I, I picked 18 Echo, which is also what I got. Um, and so went through the Q course. Had, uh, you know, as good a time in the Q course as everybody else does. And, uh, then I graduated. And I, I ended up, um, shooting myself in the foot. I did Arabic so well that I got picked up for, they were trying out that 18 Lima program. Essentially like an additional year of language school. And, uh, so I got to do that. So I, I.

• 17:19Jack Murphy?

  Did you get to go to DLI or was that right there at SWIC?

• 17:22Speaker 05

  No, is that SWIC? They had the idea of like.

• 17:24Jack Murphy?

  You got screwed, bro.

• 17:26Speaker 05

  Yeah. The important DLI to SWIC and then finding instructors to teach it. I think the whole thing ended up being a mess and they, they tanked it after a couple of years or, or whatever. But, uh, as a result, you know, that Arabic always stuck with me.

• 17:41Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, that's great. So you were, you were a three, three in Arabic?

• 17:44Speaker 05

  Uh, two, two. Still notoriously hard. But, uh, but I could do, you know, I could, uh, whatever I needed to accomplish, I could accomplish. If I don't have quite a vocabulary, I could talk.

• 17:55Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. That, that really only. Do like course instruction with, you know, soldiers over there.

• 18:01Speaker 05

  For sure. Yeah. I was able to hold meetings and do things like that. So, um, it was good. And it was.

• 18:06Jack Murphy?

  Great.

• 18:07Speaker 05

  And then of course being a fifth group, I got a chance to, to practice it. And essentially, you know, I experienced immersion for a fair amount of the time. So that also I think really helps make it stick in your head.

• 18:18Jack Murphy?

  So, uh, which, uh, battalion company team do you get assigned to when you got the group?

• 18:24Speaker 05

  So I showed up, uh, so I was an Echo and I showed up with another Echo. Um, we went to Charlie Company, Third Battalion. And there was two slots, um, for Echos. Um, one of them was on the dive team.

• 18:41Speaker 05

  I was twenty-five or twenty-six, whatever it was. The other guy, I think, was like thirty-six or thirty-seven. So I think they were looking at the two of us and they were like, young guy, you're going to the dive team. So I showed up the dive team and I met my, met my team sergeant, which is everything I had expected a dive team sergeant to be. And, you know, they asked me, he's like, I only have one question. Do you want to be a combat diver? I was like, ah, but I never really thought about it, but like, I'll give it a shot, you know? And he was, he was like, yeah, I know you will. You don't really have a choice.

• 19:18Speaker 05

  And so I showed up and kind of into the, the dream scenario everybody wants, because I went straight to a team. I didn't get put on a B-team or, you know, SIGDET or something like that. And we were leaving for Afghanistan in a couple of weeks to go do the commando mission. So it was like a great on-ramp into SF, you know, trial by fire for sure. I think I showed up and he was like, you know, hey, we're doing, we're going, so get all your stuff packed. I showed up, I was, I ended up showed up as the senior echo. And so he was like, get all the combo stuff packed, get down to SIGDET, make sure all the crypto is good.

• 19:57Speaker 05

  You know, we're doing a jump next week and you're going to be the shoot NCOIC or what, you know, just all the, just pile it all on and very fast learning, but but as a byproduct to that, I got comfortable with everything pretty quick. So definitely a good intro.

• 20:11Jack Murphy?

  So how fast were you guys at the door?

• 20:15Speaker 05

  I want to say six or seven weeks, something along that.

• 20:19Jack Murphy?

  Wow, okay. Yeah. So you're flying and you, you could get a dive qualified later, because there wasn't a lot of water where you were going.

• 20:27Speaker 05

  No, there was not. So, yeah, and I came back and I did, I went through the whole pre-scooper process and then.

• 20:33Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. No, I'll, I'll ask you about that. You talk about that in the book too, a bit about dive school. But tell us about that first deployment with SF doing the commando mission.

• 20:43Speaker 05

  It was good. You know, it was a

• 20:49Speaker 05

  it was, it was a good introduction to SF and how it does things and a completely different turnaround from what I was used to with like my, my previous experience. So, you know, we were essentially the hammer. And so we'd have other teams that are out there doing VSO mission or things like that. And if they, you know, if they had a problem here, some intel, there's Taliban presence here, or, you know, a, a target there. We would just load up our commandos and fly in at night and just do, you know, a couple, a couple raids a week and you get very comfortable with that whole process and

• 21:22Speaker 05

  and kind of, kind of, kind of work out all those, all those kinks. And it's like, oh, you're a fluid, nice operating machine, you know? And so it was, it was great. It, that deployment was, I also got injured on that deployment. And so I ended up getting medevac during that trip down out to launch stool. I spent about a month in a launch stool, came back stateside, did some recovery stateside, but was actually able to come back and and join the team towards the tail end of the deployment. So.

• 21:55Jack Murphy?

  Oh, wow. Was this a, you know, like a combat operation or like an accident?

• 22:00Speaker 05

  It was. So we were, we had some intel about a, like a mid-level Taliban guy. And so we did the, the normal mission that we usually do. And there was just, there like, what happened was there was a larger presence than we had anticipated. And so we ran up against some pretty steep resistance. We also, we landed, we had kind of two, two main efforts and they, the idea was to land in close proximity. The landing didn't, didn't allow that. The reality on the ground as, as often the case was unmarked LZs. And so we were kind of separated in this village and as we were moving to link up, we had our, you know, some of the challenges of working with a partner force. So we had our Afghan commandos and they had sent kind of a recon element forward.

• 22:45Speaker 05

  Lost communication with them. And so they didn't want to advance farther because they were afraid of like a friendly fire incident. But we were in kind of a bad spot. And so we're telling them like, look, we can't stay here. We got to move. Let's go. And as we're trying to get them moving, it just, it was enough time that it allowed, you know, some, some of the bad guys to maneuver on us to a, a, a point, advantageous point. And they opened up with a couple of, throwing a couple of grenades, I had a grenade land about three feet from me. And went off and kind of shredded my right leg and I took some, some of my left and then some of my back. And, and then opened up with a pretty, pretty close, you know, probably about

• 23:30Speaker 05

  five, five, six, seven meters with a couple of, you know, two or three, something heavy like a PKM and then a couple of AKs. And they just, you know, we had, I think, four Americans in the element and then our, our, our commandos. And I think in the opening salvo, everybody was injured at least. And so, you know, it was a bad, bad experience. I remember feeling like I just got hit with a baseball bat, you know? I don't really understand what just occurred. And there was a couple of guys that were worse off than I was. And so we, you know, we were able to take, take cover behind a wall, return fire. You know, call it in and then try to basically extricate ourselves

• 24:12Speaker 05

  out of this scenario, drag our wounded out, which again was another, you know, it was me, it was our, like our senior Bravo, our senior Delta, and then one of our Navy EOD guys. And so I instantly went from being the junior guy in the team to the only guy that was able to be cognizant and kind of make calls. And so I'm like, calling it in, I'm trying to get us out of there. You know, we're, our, our senior Bravo got, you know, managed to get out of the, out of the kill zone and then collapsed. And within, you know, a minute or two, our Delta had, I think, four tourniquets on him because he was just hit all over. And so he's actively there, you know, trying to, trying to save his life.

• 24:56Speaker 05

  And I can remember our, our American interpreter that we had, I remember picking him up and walking him out and thinking for sure that, that, you know, we were going to, one of those rounds that was coming was going to catch us. It didn't. We were very fortunate, got out of the area, found our way down into a wadi. Equally, you know,

• 25:14Speaker 05

  suspicious and because now you don't know where anything is and, you know, it's just, it's just dense foliage. And we ended up finding like a little, a shelter kind of down in that wadi where we were able to bring the wounded inside. Kind of put the, the wounded commandos in a, a perimeter of some kind. And then, you know, go between doing, doing first aid on everyone to try to walk the other element onto our location. They had contact in different parts of the village. So they were fighting their way to us. And it was probably, I don't know, about maybe an hour and a half until, until they were able to get to us. And then we were able to fight our way out of that wadi down to an emergency HLZ and, and get everybody out. So, yeah, definitely like a, one of those nights that sticks with you and, and

• 25:59Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 26:00Speaker 05

  Bad, in a bad and good way. Because

• 26:03Speaker 05

  you know, you're trying to look at the, the, the positive outlook of things. And I was, I was able to make a recovery and, you know, continue to have a career in special forces. But I also, that was my first SF deployment and I had many after. But that was something I could, I could take with me and say, okay, I've been in the worst circumstances. I did okay. I rose to the occasion. I did what I needed to do. You know, I was the team guy that I was supposed to be. I know that moving forward, if something else happens, I'll be able to do that again. So, you know, like a curse and a blessing.

• 26:36Jack Murphy?

  I mean, yeah, it's wild that you were ambulatory throughout that.

• 26:42Jack Murphy?

  Taking shrapnel in the leg.

• 26:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know, so I remember, I was, I mean, at first you're just angry. I saw red, was super angry. I think I just loaded in a fresh mag, put it on auto, just, I saw silhouettes that were firing. I sprayed a mag, you know, sprayed a second mag. You start thinking about what you're doing and, you know, we got out of there, adrenaline's pumping. It wasn't until we got to that little farmhouse in the wadi that, you know, my leg really started hurting. And I was like, okay, I think that I, I originally I thought maybe it kicked some rocks up and some rocks had hit me and, you know, you don't know. And so that's when I realized that, okay, I think maybe it's a little worse than I, than I thought it was.

• 27:21Speaker 05

  But I, I didn't have any fast bleeders or anything like that. So I was able to slap a bandage on it and just kind of keep, keep going, try to, you know, we had a guy who had taken shrapnel in the face and his eyes were, you know, and some shrapnel in his eyes. Yeah, I can remember, I can remember that night. I'll tell you, I, the appreciation I got for eighteen deltas that night, especially good eighteen deltas is one that sticks with me and has always stuck with me as well. Because worst case scenario, our eighteen delta was, was injured and he's over there doing field surgery by headlamp. You know, actively saving, you know, our, our guy's life. And I'm trying to dress some other wounds on people. And I remember asking him,

• 28:03Speaker 05

  you know, like, oh, like, what do I do for his eyes? And he's like, nothing you can do for his eyes, man. Keep going. Check for other bleeders. Check for, you know, just cool as a cucumber, very calm. Just, I had ultimate respect for eighteen deltas, the training they go through, the training they continuously go through and how those guys are able to rise to the occasion. Zero bedside manner. Never any bedside, you don't want them for clinical stuff, but in an emergency, those guys are, are top notch.

• 28:28Jack Murphy?

  The operator feels no pain.

• 28:29Speaker 05

  Operator feels no pain.

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• 30:17Jack Murphy?

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• 30:58Jack Murphy?

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• 35:08Speaker 03

  Uh, no, that is, that is incredible. Uh, and you said you did some recovery stateside and you actually went back to Afghanistan on the tail end of that deployment?

• 35:18Speaker 05

  I did. So, um, I was on a launch stool for about a month. Um, had a couple surgeries and stuff there and then they, um, I was in a good spot to move, went back, um, did some recovery there and then, uh, you know, I, I was, I, I graduated from walking from a, from a wheelchair to walking with crutches, to walking with a cane and figured the cane was good enough. And so I went to, you know, I went to the commander's office essentially. I was like, all right, like team's still there. You know, not having a good time thinking about the team being there, me not being there. I was like, give me back on the first thing smoking. I'll go play house mouse. I'll watch the radio or something. I just want to be back to the team and, you know, I was kind of like, all right, calm down.

• 35:59Speaker 05

  You know, let's, let's, uh, you know, let's figure this out. And, uh, they ended up coming up with a, um, like a battery of tests, physical tests that I should go through to, that I could redeploy to combat zones. They don't really have something in place for that time. Um, I think I probably failed most of them. I think they just greenlit it anyway and said, okay, it's probably better for him and the team if he's back there. And so I got my, you know, four month supply of, uh, you know, meds and had my cane and flew, uh, flew commercial part of the way and then hopped on a plane and flew back in and got a meet back up with the team. So.

• 36:37Speaker 03

  Wow, that's awesome.

• 36:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was great. It was, uh, we could have asked for anything better in, in that regard. Um, and then, you know, the recovery process, the 18 deltas, again, I'll sing their praises. You know, they were there for, for, for my recovery and to help me like gain function and strength and all that kind of stuff. And kind of like my physical therapists in that regard. And it took a little while for me to, you know, walk without a limp and then to be able to run again, um, and do all that. Um, but again, eventually recovered to what, what I call my new 100% uh, to be able to keep on going. So.

• 37:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was going to ask, I mean, you had to get ready for dive school and I mean, that's one of the tougher schools in the entire military, physically speaking.

• 37:23Speaker 05

  Yeah. So we used to, everybody used to laugh and call, uh, my, my right leg, my Nemo fin, um, which if you haven't seen Finding Nemo, he's got kind of a, a gimp fin. So it was kind of the, the running joke, but, uh, you know, what was challenging was I was always, you know, like most guys in the organizations, like a pretty, pretty athletic and a pretty good runner and a good swimmer. And that changed a little bit. And so, uh, I wasn't as fast as I was. I wasn't as strong as I was, but I was good enough. And so, um, when it came to swimming, I would finish, you know, somewhere around the middle of the pack, um, which was good enough. And when it came to all

• 38:04Speaker 05

  the land-based stuff like running, I finished at the end of the pack. Um, but I finished and I finished in time. Um, so dive school, you have to do, uh, you know, five miler in 40 minutes, uh, the, the soft standard, use soft standard, whatever it is. Um, uh, and then running, doing it in Key West is a, uh, somehow you, you run along the, the coastline and you have a headwind both ways for however that works. Um, and, uh, I think I probably finished that. I think my time was like 39 minutes and 52 seconds or something. I mean, I just finished the land portion, but I finished. And, you know, uh, the other stuff, again, water-based stuff, uh, you know, it was about

• 38:45Speaker 05

  the middle of the pack, which, um, was with an okay place to be as far as getting through dive school. So.

• 38:51Speaker 03

  How, how long after that deployment was it that they sent you to the dive course?

• 38:58Speaker 05

  I guess probably maybe about a year, maybe a little over a year.

• 39:02Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, okay.

• 39:03Speaker 05

  That, yeah, then I went.

• 39:04Jack Murphy?

  So you do another deployment in between?

• 39:07Speaker 05

  I didn't. We had, we were, we were on whatever that rotation was at that point. We didn't have one yet. So.

• 39:14Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 39:15Speaker 05

  Shortly after we did, and I think I got back from dive school and then I go some another maybe two or three months or something like that along those lines we deployed again. So.

• 39:25Jack Murphy?

  So tell folks a little bit about the combat diver course because I think some people don't understand that special forces has dive teams or what they do.

• 39:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, so they do. The, the difference, I guess, you know, I talked about like what's worse combat diver and was that compared to a SEAL? I mean, SEALs are meant to be kind of a maritime amphibious, you know, they, they do vehicle boarding, search of seizures, you know, they.

• 39:53Jack Murphy?

  All the UDT.

• 39:54Speaker 05

  Do all the UDT stuff and things like that. SF uses it as an infiltration method and that's kind of the idea. We've done some cross training where we've practiced those things, but that's not, that's not what we're meant to do. The idea is that you can look at the core special forces mission among conventional warfare, you're going into a denied area, you're working with a partner force or resistance force to force disrupt or overthrow government or occupying power. So there's a lot of, you know, covert and then low visibility stuff in that, right? And so the idea is that how do you get in undetected? And that's why, you know, do you jump in? Do you, you know, ride in the back of a

• 40:35Speaker 05

  sheep farmer's truck or whatever it might be diving when you consider how much of the, the world is coastline diving is a feasible method to get in. And so that's kind of the idea of putting these teams through, through that. And then it's, it's grown in recent years where that's not just diving, but like water infiltration. And so you have like WIC teams that just train on, they're not necessarily diving, but they get in by boat and they practice that kind of stuff as well. So that's, that's kind of the idea of it. The combat diver course is down in Key West, Florida. It's, I think it varies a little bit, but it's usually about six weeks, I think. And the, the focus is really on that. So you go through all the, first off, it's, it's diving, it's, you know,

• 41:17Speaker 05

  a lot of it's scuba diving and then you do your closed circuit, but they take, the army is able to suck the thot of everything. So they take something that, you know, people in their sixties do for fun on vacation. And they turn it into something that's excruciating and unenjoyable. And so, you know, you go through a full week where that's all the kind of standard stuff where people have seen where you're, you know, tied at the ankles, tied with your wrists behind your back and you do the drown proofing bobbing, you know, you do weight belt swims and ditching down, ditching your equipment and recovering it. And it's, it's all these like tests to show that you can accomplish these things that you're comfortable in the water, that you won't panic because when you start getting into farther sections of dive school, that becomes important because

• 42:01Speaker 05

  you know, the ocean is very unforgiving. So you got to be appropriately trained for that.

• 42:07Jack Murphy?

  I mean, the other thing is that because you're special forces that you can go to other countries and train them as combat divers.

• 42:15Speaker 05

  For sure. Yeah. I've never had a chance to do that. I never actually got a chance to do a J set. But, you know, we've had guys that go work with, you know, like the maritime commandos in Lebanon or wherever it might be, you know, whatever, whoever they work with and they're able to train those partners as well.

• 42:32Jack Murphy?

  I had a, I knew a guy in one, one of the national guard groups and he had a pretty cush gig going where every summer they'd go down to Jamaica and train some Jamaican military or police dive unit.

• 42:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, that reminds me of when I went to the 18 Fox course and we were gearing up for Syria. And so you build this intelligence estimate, you know, it's kind of like your big thing at the end of the course. And so I'm doing mine on Syria. And when you go to these schools, obviously you, you are around guys from different groups. And, you know, I remember seeing like the seventh group guy doing his on Brazil and the 10th group guy doing his on Norway. And I was like, how, how do we have the same job? Cause everything, everything we do is Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria. We live in these terrible places and you know, these guys are going to Singapore or whatever. Like, maybe I chose poorly when I chose fifth group. I don't know.

• 43:26Jack Murphy?

  I, so you get back from dive school and you said you deployed like three months later?

• 43:31Speaker 05

  I think so, yeah.

• 43:33Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. Where were you going this time?

• 43:35Speaker 05

  Um, so I think, so we were meant to go,

• 43:41Speaker 05

  I think to Jordan for a J set and it was kind of, you know, the, the front end of the ISIS stuff. And so we kind of got, I think like 48 hours out. They're like, you guys are packed. You got a plane. You're not going there. You're going to go to Kuwait and then you're going to go to Iraq and you know, we'll use you for whatever we got to use you for. And we ended up sitting around in Kuwait for quite a while with a lot of other ODAs. And then, you know, there's like a, a boots on ground cap at the time. And so, yeah, they were like filtering the people into Iraq, you know, there, but yeah, it was, it was an interesting, interesting time. It was one of those things where the

• 44:18Speaker 05

  that base was not built to have a bunch of ODAs with time on their hands running around. So that was, that was an interesting portion as well.

• 44:27Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. So this, well, I'm guessing this was like 2014 and I, I believe if I remember correctly that the fifth group commander kind of got very proactive and forward deploying the teams. But like the administration had not necessarily yet authorized, which is completely fine for a, a military commander to prepare his forces for what's expected. But I, I think what you maybe experienced there was some of like the back and forth with the White House about like, what are we doing about this ISIS thing?

• 45:01Speaker 05

  That's certainly what it seemed like. Yeah. And so it was, it was interesting to see just, you know, what, what ODAs do when they have a lot of time on their hands and nobody likes that. And.

• 45:11Jack Murphy?

  Guys were getting in trouble out there in Kuwait?

• 45:13Speaker 05

  Uh, you know, it was just, there was, there was arguments in the chow hall, you know, they, they started making like, uh, like rules started going up about like no ranger panties in the chow hall, you know, no combat tops in the chow hall, no sunglasses on the head and, you know, and it felt maybe a little bit targeted and I think a lot of guys took it that way.

• 45:32Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, if, if the guys are there long enough, like you end up with like a sheet of rules for how to use the shower, how to use the coffee maker. And it's like, oh my God.

• 45:42Speaker 05

  Exactly, yeah.

• 45:44Jack Murphy?

  So did you guys make it to Iraq eventually?

• 45:47Speaker 05

  Eventually, yeah.

• 45:48Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. And so what, I mean, could you tell us a little bit about like what that was like in those early days of the fight against ISIS and how that kind of like spooled up and escalated?

• 46:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know,

• 46:05Speaker 05

  it's one of those things where, you know, there's people have strategy, people have whatever the, the political strategy is and it affects,

• 46:17Speaker 05

  you know, what you do on the ground. And that's one of those instances where there's not like a lot of times, I think, especially during like those days where you, you, you immediately felt it on the ground. This is one of those times where you did immediately feel it where there's a lot of restrictions. There's a lot of things that you couldn't do. You know, there were teams that were going out and they'd go to, go check out a unit and maybe get turned around by some local militias or things and you know, couldn't, couldn't engage and, and, or do anything about it. And so I think it was probably, probably a bit of a frustrating time.

• 46:52Speaker 05

  I don't know. I, the, the political side of things, I try to, I try to stay less, less involved in those and just focus on what, what I'm able to control than my sphere of, of influence. And so, you know, we just did what we could do, where we could do it.

• 47:07Jack Murphy?

  Was that mostly like a strike cell and JTAC type stuff?

• 47:12Speaker 05

  There was a lot of that. There's a lot of, there's a lot of preparation too, you know, and that's, especially, you know, you talk about being stuck in Kuwait for all that time. That was, I think how we and a lot of other teams tried to fill the time was take advantage of the ranges that are out there, take advantage of the training and just get yourself as sharp. And I will say again, on a positive note, because I always look for these, the, the positive silver linings. That was probably the, the, the tightest team that I've been on as far as like tactically extremely sharp. Everyone knew exactly what they were doing, what the next guy was doing. I mean, we were able to run, you know,

• 47:49Speaker 05

  unlimited iterations of whatever we wanted. And so if nothing else, it was a good, it was a good training time. Yeah.

• 47:57Jack Murphy?

  I, and then what else was I, I going to ask you about? So were you there when Masool fell and all of that?

• 48:05Speaker 05

  Uh, so no, not, that was, what year was that?

• 48:10Jack Murphy?

  2014, maybe?

• 48:14Speaker 05

  I don't think so. We weren't, we weren't, I wasn't, or we weren't involved in that. I can't, I don't know if we were in country or in theater when that happened though.

• 48:24Speaker 05

  I don't remember when, I don't remember when.

• 48:26Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. Cause yeah, Masool went and then they were moving on Erbil. And that's when I think the administration finally was like, okay, we have to get involved in this reluctantly.

• 48:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 48:39Jack Murphy?

  Um, anything else about that, that deployment before you guys rotated back home?

• 48:47Speaker 05

  Uh, you know, nothing really, you know, when we were back in Kuwait, we lost a kickball match to an aviation unit. I think that's the last thing we did before they finally told us we could go home. So.

• 49:00Jack Murphy?

  So what uh, what were you guys up to when you got back to uh, Fort Campbell?

• 49:05Speaker 05

  Um, it's a good question. Yes, a lot of great questions. My uh, my memory timeline of how everything unfolded over those years.

• 49:12Jack Murphy?

  I know it all blends together.

• 49:13Speaker 05

  A little shaky. I think, I think I went to the 18 Fox course around that time.

• 49:17Jack Murphy?

  Okay, okay.

• 49:19Speaker 05

  You know, it's like anything else. When you go back, you know, within those deployments, it's, it's like, okay, you get back, you're reset for a little bit. And then, um, you know, you have that narrow window of what schools can I go to? I have to knock out my professional military education on this level or whatever it is. But like, what do I want to go to or need to go to? And to try to pack all those in before you start gearing back up and doing pre-mission training for the next, the next thing. And it was, it was pretty busy during those times. Uh, uh, you know, we were, there's a lot of, if it wasn't, um, you know, Afghanistan or, um, Iraq focused, it was gearing up towards Syria. And even if it wasn't Syria, it was Syria adjacent to, to a country to start to. So, you know, there was just a lot of things. Uh,

• 50:03Speaker 05

  it was busy and there, um, I think it was around that time. Again, I don't want to, I don't want to get it wrong, but I think like fifth group started outsourcing some of its J sets to other groups or National Guard teams because they didn't have enough and like there's, we're just getting blood dry. There's, you're deploying every year. And, you know, I think it was, if it wasn't one to one, it was pretty, pretty close uh, ratio.

• 50:28Jack Murphy?

  Uh, do you want to tell people about the 18 Fox course? Because that's another thing that probably the public doesn't understand as far as some of the capabilities that the teams bring to the table.

• 50:39Speaker 05

  Yeah. So, uh, you know, special forces team, operational attachment, Alpha ODA is meant to be kind of a self-sustaining unit. Again, within that unconventional warfare mission, the, the idea is you can drop them off to go work with a, a guerrilla force or whatever it might be. And they can have everything they needed with all the, all the functions and stuff. And, you know, they can get, um, supported and supplied by, um, you know, a, a larger force outside of the country or whatever that might be. And so, um, within that, you have specific jobs, um, and the job of the 18 Fox, he's special forces intelligence sergeant. And that's kind of your, um, your intelligence hub for the team, uh, for military folks. It's like your S2 essentially. Um, and not that you're

• 51:21Speaker 05

  necessarily, um, doing hands-on collection, so to speak, but that everything flows through you. So your 18 Fox is the guy that's reading all the intelligence reports. He's, uh, you know, depending on what you're doing, if you're going after a terrorist cell or, uh, you know, whatever you're, you know, conduct his link analysis charts, try to figure out who everybody is, how they connect, where the players are, try to help build those, um, uh, enemy attempts to understand like what the situation is, where's the enemy, where's the friendly? And then, um, kind of put all of that together to understand what's going on in the broader picture. And then also how the team fits in and use that to kind of drive where the team is going and what the team's missions are going to be.

• 52:02Speaker 05

  It's kind of like the collection manager and, uh, a targeter and an analyst kind of all, all rolled into one essentially. Um, and so it's, if, if you enjoy that kind of stuff, which I did, it's a great job. It's, it's, it's, it's super interesting. You kind of understand the bigger picture, everything going on and how it plugs in and how you plug in and you can help drive those missions. Um, and I'd, I very much enjoyed being an 18 Fox.

• 52:27Jack Murphy?

  And that's a position for kind of a more senior guy or seasoned guy on the team. And, and sort of like for the enlisted guys, that's like a stepping stone. I mean, it's, it's a step up, a step upwards towards, you know, your role becoming a team sergeant down the line.

• 52:42Speaker 05

  For sure. I think traditionally or doctrinally, maybe I think the, the 18 Fox is supposed to be like the assistant operations sergeant, like assistant team sergeant. Doesn't always work that way. Oh, you know, it's usually really seems like a lot of times a lot of teams that go on seniority. Um, but that was kind of the idea of what, how it was, it was created. It used to be the O and I course, the operations and intelligence sergeant course. And so, um, kind of a ramp up. Like you said, it's not entry level, entry level. You can be a weapons guy, an engineer, a medic or a combo guy. And then you do a little bit of time in there. I think the qualifications vary, but, um, you do that for a little bit and then you can go to the, to the 18 Fox course.

• 53:21Jack Murphy?

  That's cool.

• 53:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:23Jack Murphy?

  So where did you first go as an 18 Fox?

• 53:27Speaker 05

  So 18, so 18 Fox time is all, was all, um, focused on Syria and the Syria problem, um, and all of that, which is fascinating. And it was interesting because that was probably the closest thing, um, that I saw at my time at group to like a true unconventional warfare mission set. Um, everything else was kind of, uh, a little bit of plug and play for, for a lot of it. You know, maybe like the, the VSOs, village stability operations, I think were a little bit more. And I've had a chance to do one of those. Um, uh, but it's the first thing that I saw that was really geared towards where you're, you're really taking people that don't maybe probably don't have any military experience. They, you know, they were selling falafel a year ago and, and now they're doing this. And

• 54:11Speaker 05

  so you have to teach them and train them, um, and, and equip them. And then, um, you know, we are, our thing was counter ISIS. So you're focusing them against the ISIS fight essentially. Um, so it was, it was a very, very cool experience, um, to be able to, to do things within that realm of it that, um, because the idea, you know, the people get a lot of, a lot of ideas about special forces and they think special forces are meant to be kind of like Rangers essentially, um, where you're just a direct action element. And that's a part of it, but that's not the, it's not the point. UW is the point, which is what makes them special and specific. And so, uh, to get a chance to do something more closely aligned to that was great.

• 54:54Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. And so did you end up in Northeast Syria with the partner forces?

• 55:00Speaker 05

  Um, so we, we focused on some different stuff. I actually don't know how much of it I can talk about because there was some weird sensitivities there. Um, but we, we focused, um, a little bit. We got to focus on some of the southern portion as well and uh, do some, some interesting things along in, in that like counter ISIS fight that had some, some good broad, you know, strategic and regional impacts. So.

• 55:23Jack Murphy?

  Like the, the train and equip type stuff. Yeah. Um, what, what was your impression of, you know, sort of that ISIS problem that you described and how the fifth group and the larger special operations community was going to meet it?

• 55:40Speaker 05

  So, uh, you know, you, I, I had the advantage of being able to see things on the ground and talk to the people and, and, and understand those, those networks and, and things like that. Um, to see where the, the picture was ranging maybe more than if you do it a distance, which is always, always kind of the case. Um, and I can remember saying it then, that ISIS is a terrible problem. It needs to be eliminated. I don't know what happens next because running a counter ISIS fight, you had the US, you had the Syrian government, you had the Russians, you had Turkey, you had the Kurds, you had the Syrian Defense Forces, and most of these don't like each other. And so they all have

• 56:24Speaker 05

  this common enemy that they're, they're addressing. What happened to that common enemy is gone. Uh, what is that? What kind of like political quagmire does that turn into? And that's essentially what we saw. So.

• 56:36Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. A, a, as time went on, did you, what was sort of your perception about how that fight against ISIS was going?

• 56:45Speaker 05

  Uh.

• 56:46Jack Murphy?

  Were there any like key moments of like progress? Any breakthroughs?

• 56:51Speaker 05

  I think the thing about ISIS was that, um,

• 56:58Speaker 05

  they, they created the, the, they have the caliphate and all of these things, right? And they had this big PR pushing campaign, but they weren't, they weren't like an organized fighting force of the Taliban was or, or is. They were a little bit, um, whenever they were met with an actual professional force, it generally didn't go, didn't go well for them and didn't go well for them pretty, pretty quickly, you know? Um, and so I think restraint ended up being the thing that allowed them to thrive for so long. And had there been no restraint from the outset, or had you just thrown a full force at them, I think it probably would have collapsed pretty quickly. That's kind of what it seems.

• 57:42Speaker 05

  And I think looking back, you can kind of see that and say, okay, there's, there is enough, um, you know, they were, they, they were able to thrive because they were given the space to thrive, not because they were doing things that allow, you know, that.

• 57:54Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, no, absolutely.

• 57:57Jack Murphy?

  I, any other moments from that period of your life that, uh, that you can talk about as far as, you know, running around the periphery of Syria?

• 58:07Speaker 05

  Uh, you know, I think it was just, again, a, a good experience and one that I learned a lot. I also learned things on a little bit more of a strategic level, I guess, and, and how those work and how they, how they operate and the role that SF plays and, you know, the role that SF plays, maybe the role that SF should play and how, how willing we are as a, as a country and a government to let SF play that role, you know? Um, that like tomorrow, today or tomorrow, I think is like the, the anniversary, right? The 25th anniversary of the fifth group teams inserting into Afghanistan in 2001, um, to

• 58:48Speaker 05

  do, you know, one of those last true unconventional warfare mission sets that we, that we've seen. And, uh, they crushed it. A handful of green berets and then some other else elements as well, but, uh, really had the Taliban on the run in a very short period of time by doing what the mission set is and how powerful of a tool that is, um, one used correctly.

• 59:11Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. I mean, there's definitely a, a bigger story maybe to tell about Syria. I mean, you had JSOC involved, you had, uh, conventional military, conventional artillery involved, uh, Rangers were over there for a while. Um, but yeah, I mean, this is, this is a debate that has been in special forces, I think, since its inception of like the UW mission and how it's going to work and how SF teams are employed.

• 59:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, for sure. And I think it's ongoing. And now it seems the conversation has turned back to that and maybe a little more serious manner as we move out of the GWOT into the strategic competition and where do special operations sit within a conventional fight? And that's for special forces, that's where they sit and that's where they would be used to their most effect.

• 1:00:05Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I mean, I think there's maybe a little bit of consternation on the surface that in a future fight, special operations would not be the main element. They would not be the main effort. They would be the supporting element. But I mean, that's what they were during World War II. They were the Jedbergs, they were the OSS. And so that's not a bad mission at all.

• 1:00:24Speaker 05

  No, and they can have outsized strategic effects when used correctly. And that's that's kind of the idea, for sure.

• 1:00:32Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. So what was next for you in your career?

• 1:00:37Speaker 05

  So I, around that time, I can recall seeing that the global war on terrorism deployments can start slowing down a little bit. You've kind of seen the writing on the wall. I don't know what conventional, I guess, not conventional, but what a life at group would look like whenever you didn't have that. And I wasn't sure that I was keen to find out. I also, I can recall in 18 Fox course, actually, going to a lot of the different government agencies and, you know, State Department and everybody else as well, and being asked repeatedly who we were or something that were Army Special Forces. And they didn't

• 1:01:21Speaker 05

  really, there's a lot of people didn't really understand that. Didn't understand what Green Berets do or what the mission was. And that's kind of when it dawned on me that these are the people that advise the people that make the decisions. And if they don't know who we are, then probably people at the chain don't know much about us or what we do either.

• 1:01:41Jack Murphy?

  Right.

• 1:01:43Speaker 05

  And so I, at that point, had kind of decided that maybe I wanted to look for a place I could go that they did know, or that they would, you know, give, give that serious thought to, to, to employ in these, in these broader strategic type ways. And so I looked at some different opportunities and some different specialized units. Had one come to my attention that I didn't understand a lot about. And so I took a League of Faith, went to that, that selection course, made it, and then spent the last about decade of my career in that organization.

• 1:02:22Jack Murphy?

  What can you tell us about that as far as like, I guess specifically, like, how did that differed from being an 18 Fox?

• 1:02:30Speaker 05

  Quite a bit.

• 1:02:32Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:33Speaker 05

  It, it differed, it differed in a lot of ways. And one of them was that as an 18 Fox, you're, you're still doing things that are very, like, very, very team-driven and very, you're, you're gathering all that information, you're creating these intelligent products, you're building these, these pictures, and then your team is going out and doing it. So it's like an instant kind of circular rinse and repeat type thing. This was a bit different in that, that wasn't your, that wasn't part of the job. There's, there's people that do that kind of stuff. Your job is to go out and do work. And so, not to say that having those 18 Fox skills didn't come in handy, because they certainly, certainly

• 1:03:15Speaker 05

  did. Those 18 Fox skills came in handy for, for writing desert heists. You know, it's useful for a lot of, a lot of different things, but a very different experience, for sure.

• 1:03:27Jack Murphy?

  So the difference was like, kind of getting your hands directly on like, the human stuff?

• 1:03:32Speaker 05

  Um, kind of, not even, it's a different, I'll say this, I didn't really know anything about the organization. When I learned about the organization after, I didn't know much about the organization until I honestly had gone through the entire process. And when I learned about the organization at that point, I learned that it's different than a lot of the preconceived notions that people have.

• 1:03:57Jack Murphy?

  Sure.

• 1:03:58Speaker 05

  So you can do some, but you can do some interesting stuff. And it was definitely a great experience and definitely rewarding one.

• 1:04:06Jack Murphy?

  So you found what you were looking for there?

• 1:04:08Speaker 05

  I'd say so, yeah.

• 1:04:09Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. And about how long were you there?

• 1:04:14Speaker 05

  About a decade.

• 1:04:16Jack Murphy?

  Okay, so yeah, you were there the entire second half of your career.

• 1:04:19Speaker 05

  Yeah. So I actually recently, or just retired this year, so.

• 1:04:24Jack Murphy?

  Okay. Um, cool. Anything else you want to say about that? I mean, that's a big blank spot on, on your resume, unfortunately.

• 1:04:35Speaker 05

  It's a blank spot.

• 1:04:36Jack Murphy?

  But that's, so I mean, I understand there's certain things you can't really get into.

• 1:04:41Speaker 05

  But it's, I'll say this, what's one of those things where it, I got a chance to do a lot of great stuff and get some good wins for America. There's still guys out there getting good wins for America. And I think anything that I say is going to jeopardize that or their safety or whatever else. And, you know, so I just try to leave it, leave it at that, essentially, you know. But there's good people out there doing good stuff. So, you know, America can rest easy on that, bro.

• 1:05:07Jack Murphy?

  And maybe it would be cool to, or interesting for folks, if you can talk a little bit about like, that retirement process, because I've heard stories about how difficult it is to come off of, I mean, we call it DASER, but I mean, there's, you know, like, essentially, you're on the secret roster of the US military. And I've heard guys say, you know, coming off of that and going into the civilian world and having this big black spot on your resume, it's sometimes kind of difficult.

• 1:05:37Speaker 05

  I think coming out of the, going through the retirement process is difficult anyway. I think, you know, there, there are things put in place, whether it's the, I even forget the name now. The Army has like, the Army, oh, TAP, I think, the transition.

• 1:05:53Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:54Speaker 05

  So, you know, they have that. And I went through that. And you can debate its efficacy. The intention is good. I think it just, it varies on how useful it is for people.

• 1:06:12Speaker 05

  Going through the retirement process is a lot like the rest of the experience, which is you're, you're kind of on your own to kind of figure that out and to get things going. Fortunately, there are great, you know, organizations like Honor Foundation, SODIF, all these things that you can, that you can jump on. And they, they really bridge that gap and fill it and, you know, help you figure out what your, your next goals are, you know, how to get a resume put together, what that looks like. And if you say, you know, look, I have certain experiences I can't talk about. Okay, well, then let's, let's find a way to talk about what we can and put that in a structure that's going to make sense to a potential employer that's reading it. So shameless plug for those organizations, those guys.

• 1:06:57Jack Murphy?

  Oh, yeah. We've had a couple guys that work at the Honor Foundation on the podcast before. And I mean, that's an organization that does incredible work, I think, for guys who are retiring and veterans. That stuff didn't exist when, when I got out of the military. I went to that two-day, three-day TAPS workshop, which is completely worthless.

• 1:07:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:07:17Jack Murphy?

  The story I tell people, when this is true story, is they have a computer, or back in those days, they had a computer at TAPS. You'd put in your MOS into it and it would tell you what kind of jobs you're qualified for. Okay, so go to the computer, I type in 18 Bravo, slam enter. One job comes up, security guard.

• 1:07:37Speaker 05

  There you go.

• 1:07:40Jack Murphy?

  So, so yes, the Honor Foundation is great that they take those experiences and help you kind of like, shape that and format into something that's digestible by the civilian world. Because whoever it is, I mean, people coming out of special forces have way more to offer than, you know, being a security guard at a checkout counter somewhere. I mean, come on.

• 1:08:02Speaker 05

  Right. And they also, they offer that, the network, right? Because that's essentially how you get jobs. I, you know, I had looked around at other jobs. And I've had people, you know, buddies of mine that got out around the same time or a little bit earlier that looked at jobs and they, they'd blind apply, right? They'd see the job listing and you put it out there. You send in a resume and fill out whatever, and get rejected by everybody, you know. A 20-year special operator with tons of experience, guys have degrees, advanced degrees, MBAs, and they're getting turned down by some of the top defense contractors, you know, for, for mid-level jobs and things. And that's, you learn a little bit about

• 1:08:44Speaker 05

  how it really is who you know. And a lot of these jobs are seemingly created for people they know. And so I think there's like a, some kind of federal law or something where you have to list certain jobs.

• 1:08:57Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:58Speaker 05

  But that job's already assigned to somebody. They're just going through the.

• 1:09:01Jack Murphy?

  They make the requirements so specific that they only match one person.

• 1:09:04Speaker 05

  Exactly. So getting into these kind of groups, expanding your network, and then they find the guy that you talk to that gets you the job type thing. They're also really great for that.

• 1:09:15Jack Murphy?

  And was this when you went to graduate school?

• 1:09:18Speaker 05

  Uh.

• 1:09:19Jack Murphy?

  After retirement?

• 1:09:21Speaker 05

  No, I went while I was in.

• 1:09:22Jack Murphy?

  Oh, okay. So yeah, I mean, good for you, man, that you were able to, you know, have a career like that and also pound out graduate school.

• 1:09:29Speaker 05

  So the last, the last year of retiring from the Army is pretty, pretty low-key, you know. There's a lot to do, but it's, there's, if you're resourceful, you have, you finally have some downtime, if you can do certain things. And so I was able to get it knocked out.

• 1:09:47Jack Murphy?

  And you're married at this time?

• 1:09:49Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:50Jack Murphy?

  It says in your flap here that your wife is a former CIA Ops officer?

• 1:09:57Speaker 05

  She is, yeah.

• 1:09:58Jack Murphy?

  So you guys meet on the job somewhere, I take it?

• 1:10:01Speaker 05

  We did meet on the job. We met overseas, yeah.

• 1:10:04Jack Murphy?

  That's awesome.

• 1:10:05Speaker 05

  Yeah. We met overseas and pretty quickly, it was, okay, you know, we're going to do this, we're going to build a life together. What does that look like? And it looks like, that's a very difficult thing to do when I'm in my job and she's in her job. Sure, they require us to go to places and do different things. And, you know, not very compatible. So she was about mid-career. I was close to retirement. So we said, okay, I'm going to retire. She's going to get out and then we'll try to build this, build this life together.

• 1:10:37Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:38Speaker 05

  Of these jobs.

• 1:10:39Jack Murphy?

  If it's okay, I mean, if you wouldn't tell us a little bit about how that went? Because I mean, that's a big transition for both of you guys.

• 1:10:46Speaker 05

  It's, it's a huge transition. It's interesting. It's nice because, you know, some of the closest relationships I think you ever have are with guys on your team or guys in your platoon or, or whatever it is. Because they're, they're there, they experience it, they're with you. We got to experience each other's stuff and understand what they're doing. She knew where I come from and what I do. And so there's no, there's no mysteries there. Uh, so it makes it a lot easier. It's almost like you have that, that, uh, she's not just my wife with all the things going on with that. She also kind of like the bro who has been there and understands those things. Uh, and where you're coming from and this and those experiences. So, uh, that part of it is great. Uh, it's a transition.

• 1:11:29Speaker 05

  It, when you do a job like this for two decades, um, I, I think it's,

• 1:11:38Speaker 05

  it's not a, uh, there's no revelation there. Every military veteran that gets out, retires, gets out earlier or whatever, does a couple of years and gets out, whatever it is, that transition is, is daunting and, and can be, can be difficult and, uh, and very jarring. The same is true of people in the intelligence community, you know, they don't get, uh, I think there is, there, well, there is like an intelligence officers day or whatever, but I don't think it's widely celebrated like veterans day. They don't get, they do, they go through a lot of different stuff. They serve in war zones. They do things. They don't get kind of the same, uh, rec, there's no SOTF or honor foundation, you know, for,

• 1:12:15Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, they, they also don't have like the badges and awards and stuff like that, that people come out of the military with.

• 1:12:21Speaker 05

  Right. So, you know, you leave, you just leave and that's it. And generally don't, yeah, you don't have any of those, any of those types of things. So on that side, it's also daunting. The, the good news is that we can kind of talk about it together and, and, uh,

• 1:12:34Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. No, when you explain it like that, it totally makes sense because I mean, imagine if you married a, you know, a woman you met in grad school and at some point you're having to explain to her, I was on a special forces team and then I was in this compartmentalized unit. Like, man, that's going to be very hard. That's an uphill battle for them to understand. Um, so I can see that, you know, you guys were able to flow into it a little bit easier.

• 1:12:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's definitely nice. Definitely a plus and, uh,

• 1:13:04Jack Murphy?

  And it goes both ways because you know a little bit about her job also.

• 1:13:07Speaker 05

  For sure. For sure. So we have, having those shared experiences, I think probably makes it easier.

• 1:13:13Jack Murphy?

  So where did you land after you transitioned out of the military? Uh, what did you do for work?

• 1:13:19Speaker 05

  So, um,

• 1:13:23Speaker 05

  I

• 1:13:26Speaker 05

  had, uh, a couple of years back, I had a wall in between deployments, which is where I actually wrote Desert Heist. I've been, I've been gone for so long, my dwell time was shot. I think the waiver was, I don't even know what level, but basically they were like, go home, do absolutely nothing. Like don't even bother coming to work, just like decompress, chill, we're going to get in trouble. And, uh, so I went home and was instantly bored and I just had this idea for a story. And so I, I sat down, I wrote Desert Heist in about three months, give or take.

• 1:13:57Jack Murphy?

  Wow.

• 1:13:58Speaker 05

  And I put it away and, uh, didn't really think about it again. Um, and I, when I met my wife, um, well, as we got to know each other, it came up that I had written this book. And so she wanted to read it. And so I was, I was kind of like, I don't know, you know, it's, that's kind of, that's kind of a vulnerable thing to do as, as I know you now. Um, and, uh, okay. So I, as I let her read it and she was like, this is actually pretty good. You should do something with it. And, you know, once, once I pulled the trigger and made the decision, okay, I'm going to retire and, and, uh, we started looking at, well, what is that process for, um,

• 1:14:40Speaker 05

  getting a book published? What does that even, you know, so I, I, first off, I let a couple of guys at, at the, the unit read it and I got some pretty good feedback and one of them wound up giving it to, um, a literary agency. That's cool. He just had a connection with and they were like, oh, this is great. We mostly do nonfiction, but we really like this. We think it could be something. And that was kind of the, oh, maybe, maybe there is something here that that could happen with this book. And so I, you know, Googled what, how do you get a literary agent, looked up query letters, um, figured out all that, um, went to the, the bookstore and picked up Jack Carr and Vince Flynn and Mark Grady and Brad Taylor and, uh, James Rollins and Dan Brown and looked you all there.

• 1:15:23Speaker 05

  Go to the acknowledgements, you know, who are their literary agents? Okay. I'm going to reach out to these guys and just kind of shoot my shot. Um, heard back from a couple, heard some no's, heard some interest, heard some silence. Um, and then my agent now, well, so I had, I had

• 1:15:42Speaker 05

  had interest from the, the one agency. I was like, all right, I'm going to go with these guys, I think, but I'll give out a broad, okay. If anybody's interested, this is kind of the last call.

• 1:15:50Jack Murphy?

  And I did like, Like you said, they mostly do nonfiction, but they were interested. Was that like Osprey or Casemate or one of those?

• 1:15:57Speaker 05

  No, they were, um, I don't want to say their name, I guess, but they, um, they did a lot of like, um, nonfiction, a lot of biographies, a lot of, you know, whether it's like Dan Crenshaw's book or Nancy Pelosi or whoever type, type stuff. Um, and so I reached out to my, so I, I sent that, that email out to, to people I hadn't heard from and my agent now shot back and she was like, I, I think this must've got pushed to my inbox, like the bottom of my inbox. Can you send me the manuscript? I'll read it over the weekend. And if I like it, I'll, I'll let you know. And, uh, I think it was Sunday. I got an email from her. She was like, let's talk. We talked on Monday and she was like, great. Love the book. Let's do it.

• 1:16:39Jack Murphy?

  That's awesome.

• 1:16:40Speaker 05

  And so it was like, okay, this is, I don't understand anything about the publishing world, but this seems like a good thing. Um, and she said, you know, I have somebody in mind that I want to give it to, which needs to be the right time. And that person's busy right now. Um, and it was about six or seven months later. And then I got a call and, um, it was, uh, you know, I have Emily Bessler here. She is really interested in your book. Do you have time to talk to her? And, uh, so I did, had a great conversation with Emily and that was kind of the going from there. So it then became, what am I going to do for work, uh, after I retire? I think I'm going to write books.

• 1:17:23Speaker 05

  Um, is the long, the long way of saying that. And, um, so I signed a book deal with Emily Bessler Books. Um, and, and then a couple of months later, my agent called again and um, Michael Joseph, an imprint of Penguin Random House UK was interested in and they ended up buying the UK rights. And so it, uh, also came out overseas in a lot of places. And so that, that really became a reality of, um, I'm fortunate that I have a, a military retirement. I have, uh, disability. I have things to, that help essentially make up a salary anyhow. Um, can I write full time? And it turns out that, that I can. And so, um, that's, that's kind of career number two.

• 1:18:06Jack Murphy?

  So you had, uh, been, you know, it sounds like you had basically a, a complete draft to kind of like give to them like, hey, take, take a look at this. Um, I mean, and you, you said that you kind of wrote this out of boredom in between deployments, which I totally understand. You're going like a hundred miles an hour and then you just stopped to zero. And it's like, what do I do with myself?

• 1:18:25Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:18:26Jack Murphy?

  But I mean, beyond that, beyond the boredom, I mean, the, this also came from somewhere inside yourself. Like what, what was this inspired by? Uh, what it, why did it come out of you?

• 1:18:37Speaker 05

  Uh, that's a great question. Um,

• 1:18:42Speaker 05

  apparently I have a creative streak, uh, and, and I have these stories and I, I love the history aspect of it. I've always said, I've always loved Indiana Jones. I've always loved that good, like high adventure type thing. And I had this idea of twofold. One, what if that adventure was grounded in real, like deep, real history, kind of like a, a Dan Brown novel is where you don't know where the fiction stops, uh, or the nonfiction stops and the fiction starts. Um, and then what if the person or the people doing this had a background that allowed them to make their way through this adventure and to get their way out of places, you know, they're not, they're not one man wrecking machines or killing armies or instructable, but they have

• 1:19:27Speaker 05

  enough of a background and skills, they can plausibly carry their own weight and, and, and, and work their way through this stuff. And so that I had that concept in my head. And having spent the first, you know, part of my career at Fifth Group, I'm an Arabic speaker, I've been in the Middle East a lot. Um, so I thought that'd be a, a good location for it. If I had heard these stories of the lost city of Ubar. And so that just seemed to be a good focal point for what they're going after. As I started building that together, um, you know, the rest of it kind of came out. What, what came out naturally was, um, uh, the character of Nate Wild working with his old SF buddies and, uh, the interactions and the camaraderie and they kind of get back together.

• 1:20:11Speaker 05

  Um, and what that looks like, you know, you spend so long on an ODA or a troop or, or whatever it might be. And you just, that becomes second nature. And so I get a lot of feedback from people like, oh, these characters seem so lifelike. And I like the, the, the, you know, the way they interact each other. And it's like, well, it's because it's, it's fiction, but it's not really fiction because I've seen this play out a thousand times. Yeah. I, I, I know uh, exactly what the, the, the Bravo is going to say to the Charlie to give him crap about whatever it is. Um, because I've seen it, I've seen it play out. And so, um, that was very natural and very fun to write. Um, what I didn't realize, because I hadn't experienced it yet, I just knew people who had

• 1:20:52Speaker 05

  was the kind of the underlying tones of transition essentially where these guys leave the military behind for one reason or another, and they're not, they're doing okay, but they're not doing great. They have some, some, some problems and they don't really know them or have the self-awareness to identify them like, like a lot of us don't. Um, but they're, they're there and what they need is to come back together. You kind of start relying on one another.

• 1:21:20Jack Murphy?

  Right, right.

• 1:21:21Speaker 05

  To get through these issues.

• 1:21:21Jack Murphy?

  Part of your book is about like getting the team back together.

• 1:21:25Speaker 05

  It is, it is. And it's, it's about getting the team back together and it's about them all searching for something that they need. They're getting something out of it to, to hop on this journey. It's kind of ridiculous. Um, they're doing it because they're drawn back in for, for one reason or another. Part of it's they miss that camaraderie. Part of it is they're looking for, for something within themselves. Part of it is, uh, I've, I've, I've, I've learned about the, um, you know, they, you have the operational psychologists that talk about. People in high-stress jobs and soft in particular, and they become

• 1:21:58Speaker 05

  kind of numb to a lot of these extremes. And so when they're living in chaos, whether it's deployments or training for deployments, or jumping, or diving, or any of these, these high-stress things, that becomes kind of their new normal baseline where they, they live their life essentially. And whenever that's removed and it's just peace and quiet, that's where they have problems. And they always kind of start trying to find their way back into that chaos one way or the other. A lot of it's creating your own problems, whatever that looks like. And so for these guys, finding their way back to the chaos is, okay, yeah, I'll go on this adventure. Absolutely. Let me get a chance to go do this again. It's been missing from my life this whole time. So there's kind of that aspect to it as well.

• 1:22:42Jack Murphy?

  So the listeners have it. Do you want to kind of complete the synopsis of the story? Because you, you started it, but the second, you know, what are these guys trying to accomplish? What's the mission in Desert Heist?

• 1:22:53Speaker 05

  Sure. So Nate Wild, he's a Green Beret. They have kind of a, a rough deployment. They lose a lot of their teammates and it just kind of disillusioned him. So he leaves the military, he leaves that world behind, and he has this passion for, for history and archaeology. And so he goes to follow along to try to complete his advanced degree and get a PhD in archaeology. His dissertation is based on this lost city of Ubar, or it's known as Arama the Pillars, Atlantis of the Sands. And it's essentially this supposed fabled lost city in the Arabian desert. He's heard about it from a Saudi officer that he was working with back in the day. He believes it exists. He's dived deep into the, the readings of Bertrand Thomas and Sinjin Philby

• 1:23:37Speaker 05

  and Thysenger and all these other guys who believed the city exists and searched for it. And so he decides this is what my dissertation will be. This is what I'm going to go after. He essentially gets told by the university that he, one, doesn't quite have enough to go on. And two, there's a lot of stuff going on in the Middle East right now. Getting a permit to go do this is probably going to be difficult. Decides he's going to do it anyway. And going into that dangerous situation, he's, he's kind of planning to go through Yemen into Saudi Arabia. He's going to need some guys that he trusts to go along with him. And so he enlists some of his former teammates to kind of go on this adventure with him.

• 1:24:19Speaker 05

  They, they join him, they go, there's some other aspects at play.

• 1:24:24Jack Murphy?

  The Ruski's are involved.

• 1:24:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, there's a Russian mercenary who doesn't want

• 1:24:32Speaker 05

  him poking around in the desert for one reason or another. There's some larger geopolitical aspects at play. Nate thinks he's finding a lost city. Nate is being hunted by an unknown entity. And he has no idea that he's involved in this larger geopolitical kind of structure that's going on. So that's in a nutshell, that's, that's, that's kind of the, the book is former Green Beret, searching for a lost city in the desert, get some of his teammates to go along with them, and high adventure ensues.

• 1:25:00Jack Murphy?

  And so what was the rest of the publication process like? You have an agent, you have an editor that's interested in it. Was there a lot of work to get it to the finish line?

• 1:25:11Speaker 05

  Yeah. So, you know, we go through the, the edits with, with the editor first. So in my case with Emily Bessler, and there wasn't too much structural changes. There was just, you know, some, some tweaks here or there. There's some questions, right? Because there are things that are, that are native to the subculture of Army Special Forces. And so there's some of those questions and things like that, but not too much. The copy editors had more to say, just as far as more of those questions as well. And so it's, it was kind of a learning moment for both of us back and forth on learning how copy editing works. They're learning about, you know, what, what life in the special operations is like and what these things are called and things like that. So it was interesting. It was a lot of fun. The edits were a lot of fun.

• 1:25:56Speaker 05

  The copy edits, I think, are the first time that I felt like I was working. The copy edits was, okay, this is a job and this is maybe not the most enjoyable part of the job. And I just need to get through it and, and do all that. But so we did a round of edits, a couple of rounds of copy edits. And then from there, it's, it's in the, the hands of Atria Simon and Schuster. And, you know, I was able to, to consult and go back and forth a little bit about cover design and provide kind of the, the synopsis on the cover jacket. And I kind of really, really go from there. So pretty, pretty interesting learning on it.

• 1:26:36Speaker 05

  The second book is now, I just sent Emily's edits back to her recently. And so doing, doing the process the second time around is interesting. It's a much quicker pace. You have all the time in the world for that first book, the second one, when it's like, okay, the next one's coming out exactly a year after the first, everything is kind of accelerated. So it's been interesting to.

• 1:26:58Jack Murphy?

  Is, uh, is it going to be a sequel?

• 1:27:01Speaker 05

  It is. Yeah. The, the second one in the Nate Wild series. So ideally, the Nate Wild series will continue as long as people are interested in reading them.

• 1:27:10Jack Murphy?

  Uh, what, what are you willing to reveal about the second book?

• 1:27:14Speaker 05

  Oh, okay. I'll say that it takes place in a different geographical portion of the world, which Nate Wild is less experienced in. So I guess he needs to contend with that. It's not another, he's hunting for a lost treasure. There is a deep history portion that's involved, but he gets pulled into it rather than being the one that's kind of leading the charge or having the initiative for it.

• 1:27:44Speaker 05

  And the title reveal and cover reveal, I think, happened next week. So.

• 1:27:52Jack Murphy?

  Oh, cool. Okay. Uh, so it'll be available, at least the, the promo, the preview will be available when a lot of people are listening to this podcast. And Desert Heist, if you see it here, is out now. You guys can go and find it on Amazon or wherever books are sold.

• 1:28:11Jack Murphy?

  Anything else you want to tell people about the book, Alex?

• 1:28:15Speaker 05

  Sure. So, um, one of the things that I've, I've heard said and throughout the entire publishing process, and then as I've gone on different podcasts or people have read it, is that it doesn't fit neatly into one particular category. If you're looking at like a military thriller, it's not just a military thriller. If you're looking at kind of a historical fiction, mystery, kind of like a Dan Brown, it's not really that either. It's sort of a fusion of that. And so what you can expect when you read it is there's going to be this historical mystery that Nate Wild is kind of unraveling as he goes.

• 1:28:53Speaker 05

  He's using his skills as a former 18 Fox to kind of do that, to kind of build this picture and put it all together. And kind of solve that mystery, but the, his past profession and the past profession of, of his former teammates allow them to do things that expand it into whenever there is some of those more tenuous situations or some, some action pieces, that's going to be a lot more like a military thriller. So kind of just like a fusion, a fusion of the genre is a little bit.

• 1:29:26Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. No, that's cool. And where can people find you? Are you on social media at all?

• 1:29:32Speaker 05

  I am. I, uh, my handle on most of social media is Alex Dekker. Alex Dekker was taken. And then I have a website, alexdekkerofficial.com. So you can find me there. And then Desert Heist, and when the next book is out and available, you can get those really anywhere books are sold, Amazon and Barnes and Noble, anywhere else.

• 1:29:56Jack Murphy?

  Cool. Cool. I'm looking forward to it.

• 1:29:59Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, great. I mean, anything else before we get going, Alex? Anything I didn't ask that you wish I had?

• 1:30:05Speaker 05

  No, I'm curious, how was your publishing process with The Most Dangerous Man?

• 1:30:11Jack Murphy?

  Oh, uh, geez, that was, yeah, same thing is you. I wrote it very quickly, the draft. I probably wrote in like three months. Um, and it was sort of a, a little bit of the other way around, that the publisher, I think, was looking for like, you know, action-adventure, uh, military fiction stuff. And my agent brought it to me, like, would you be interested in this? And I pitched them like, maybe like 12 different premises. And this sort of take on The Most Dangerous Game was the one they were the most interested in. So jumped on that and I was returning the fiction for the first time in like maybe nine years. So I had a lot of energy for it, you know, and that's why I wrote it very quickly.

• 1:30:55Jack Murphy?

  Uh, and after that, I mean, yeah, the copy editing process, the, you know, was pretty straightforward. My editor, um, was, uh, he, he had some good suggestions that got incorporated into the book. So it was, it was pretty, pretty seamless for the most part. But as you know, I mean, by the time you get to the publication date, like you have just looked at that book so many times from so many different, you're just like sick of seeing it. Like, oh my God, just get this away from me.

• 1:31:25Speaker 05

  Uh, I joked that by the end of it, I hate my own books.

• 1:31:28Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:28Speaker 05

  I don't want to read this thing again. I've read it 50 times.

• 1:31:31Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I don't want to see it again.

• 1:31:32Speaker 05

  And the only thing that's worse than reading a book multiple times is reading a book that you wrote multiple times. Um, so yeah, I completely, completely agree with that.

• 1:31:41Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I've heard actors in interviews say like, I would never watch one of my own movies. What are you crazy? Like, like a year working on it? Like, no, I don't want to see it.

• 1:31:50Speaker 05

  I've heard that as well. And it's, it's interesting to, um, because we're, we're sitting here talking about Desert Heist. I'm in the editing process of the second book and, and getting that out the door. And I'm in the process of writing the third. So as you talk about these things, it's, I'm already, my head is already two books ahead. Um, and we haven't even released the second one to be able to talk about it.

• 1:32:14Jack Murphy?

  That's good.

• 1:32:15Speaker 05

  It's like, it's a very interesting.

• 1:32:18Jack Murphy?

  It's a good problem to have, though.

• 1:32:19Speaker 05

  It is a good problem to have. It's a great problem to have. And it's also nice because I have these things planned out so far in advance that.

• 1:32:27Speaker 05

  Every book has its own standalone adventure, but there is a series trajectory and one of those is kind of the, um, the lost history that Nate Wild is uncovering. And so what I am able to do is because I have it so, I know where the series is going for the next dozen or so of books, um, I'm able to put things in the early books that will then come into play several books down the line later. So there's things in, in Desert Heist that you'll read that won't have, hold any significance until you get to, you know, book six or whatever. And then you'll realize, yeah, if you go back and look at it, you'll realize it was there the whole time.

• 1:33:04Jack Murphy?

  That's cool.

• 1:33:05Speaker 05

  It just didn't hold the meaning, but now it will. So it's fun to be able to, to do that and weave it in as well.

• 1:33:10Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. No, it's good that you're thinking about all of that. Um, writing a series and how to do that is a, a, a skill that I'm still working on.

• 1:33:19Speaker 05

  Are we gonna see a next, a sequel?

• 1:33:22Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, there's a, the, the draft I finished last month. Um, it just needs a publisher now. Uh, I can't get a straight yes or no from my publisher. Uh, I, I have no problem putting them on blast because, uh, they've been ghosting me for so long. So, yeah, I think, uh, are you gonna be at BoucherCon?

• 1:33:39Speaker 05

  I am, yeah.

• 1:33:40Jack Murphy?

  Okay, I'll see you there.

• 1:33:41Speaker 05

  Oh, okay, awesome.

• 1:33:42Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. So I'm gonna be hunting around for a new publisher, I think. Um, but, um, yeah, the, the book is coming one way or the other.

• 1:33:50Speaker 05

  Nice. No, that's great. That's, I, and it says, it's the same character and everything, right?

• 1:33:55Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's the same character, but this one is in Russia for the most part.

• 1:34:01Speaker 05

  Okay. I liked, I liked the, the premise of the first one, cause it's, it's not quite the same, but you look at everything through your lens of experience. And so I always think like, um, horror movies, you know, if you got a horror movie, but the guy was a Navy SEAL or a Green Beret or a Ranger or whatever, how would that turn out? This is like a fun, this guy gets put in this spot, but.

• 1:34:20Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:34:21Speaker 05

  You know, he's the guy, he's, he's not the guy that you'll want if you're, if you're on the other end of it.

• 1:34:26Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. And I kinda incorporate some of those like things that you learn in Sear School and stuff like that, like to make like some elaborate trap out in the wilderness. Like that takes days and days of your time and energy that you don't, you have neither of while you're out there, you know, to like build a bow and arrow. That's like days of,

• 1:34:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:34:45Jack Murphy?

  You know, the fletching for the arrows and everything. So I kinda kept it pretty grounded as far as like, that's concerned, you know, I think he uses like a piece of wood as a club and sharpen some sticks into some spears.

• 1:34:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:34:58Jack Murphy?

  Sets up like a very basic Pungji pit trap at one point in the book, but I mean, I, I didn't do anything like super elaborate like Arnie does at the end of Predator.

• 1:35:09Jack Murphy?

  Don't get me wrong, it's a great movie.

• 1:35:11Speaker 05

  Great, great movie. But yeah, uh, he accomplished a lot in a very small amount of time.

• 1:35:16Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, cool, man. So, uh, yeah, I'll see you in Canada next week then. Um, sure we'll run in, I'll, I'll, I'll shoot you my, uh, my contact info anyways. So you have it.

• 1:35:26Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:35:27Jack Murphy?

  Um, and for everyone who joined us on the show today, thank you. Uh, hope you go pick up the book. Again, it's Desert Heist out now. Um, and Alex, thanks for joining us on the show.

• 1:35:38Speaker 05

  Hey, thanks for having me.

• 1:35:41Jack Murphy?

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• 1:38:04Jack Murphy?

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• 1:44:08Speaker 07

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:44:14Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 1:44:34Speaker 01

  ChatGPT for teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 1:45:02Jack Murphy?

  Yo, it's Bluff here. I've been giving out king-size candy bars to all the kids all day. And luckily karma was right around the corner. This Halloween, Spinquest is giving away a scary good deal, thirty for ten-dollar coin pack. They have over a thousand games available and with instant cash prize redemptions, there's no waiting like those other schmucks. Don't miss out. Go to spinquest.com or download the app right now.

• 1:45:25Speaker 01

  Spinquest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 1:45:31Speaker 02

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:46:09Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:46:24Speaker 01

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:46:35Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 1:46:40Speaker 07

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:46:46Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 1:47:06Speaker 01

  ChatGPT for teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 1:47:33Jack Murphy?

  You know what? It sucks to be bored. But when I get on my phone and play real casino games on spinquest.com, the time flies by. That two-hour wait at the DMV seems like ten minutes. Play your favorite spots, live blackjack, live craps with a live dealer. New players, thirty-dollar coin packs are on sale for ten bucks. Play spinquest.com and you'll never be bored again.

• 1:47:57Speaker 01

  Spinquest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:48:42Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:48:56Speaker 01

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:49:07Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 1:49:13Speaker 07

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:49:18Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 1:49:38Speaker 01

  ChatGPT for teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com/parents to learn more.

• 1:50:06Jack Murphy?

  Yo, it's Bluff here. I've been giving out king-size candy bars to all the kids all day. And luckily karma was right around the corner. This Halloween, Spinquest is giving away a scary good deal, thirty for ten-dollar coin pack. They have over a thousand games available and with instant cash prize redemptions, there's no waiting like those other schmucks. Don't miss out. Go to spinquest.com or download the app right now.

• 1:50:29Speaker 01

  Spinquest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:51:14Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:51:29Speaker 01

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:51:40Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 1:51:45Speaker 07

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:51:51Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 1:52:11Speaker 01

  ChatGPT for teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. ChatGPT for teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate Get feedback. Safety protections are on by default. And parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com PARENTS to learn more.

• 1:52:38Speaker 00

  Hey guys, Lady Luck here. I just love the fall season. Kris Mornings Pumpkin Spice Latte. And it's the best time to cozy up and play Spin Quest. They have over a thousand different slots in all my favorite casino style games. And they're running a deal for all new players. A $30 coin package for just 10 bucks. So this fall, grab your favorite blanket, visit spinquest.com and download the app today.

• 1:53:03Speaker 01

  Spin Quest is a free to play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 1:53:09Jack Murphy?

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A plus by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five star Trust Pilot Reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:53:46Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:54:01Jack Murphy?

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant. So I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:54:12Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 1:54:17Speaker 07

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:54:23Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 1:54:43Speaker 01

  Chat GPT for teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. Chat GPT for teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default. And parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com PARENTS to learn more.

• 1:55:11Jack Murphy?

  Hanging out at the pool is great. Relaxing and playing Vegas style games on my phone at the same time. Drinking one hand and a blackjack in the other. It's all at Spin Quest. Over a thousand games, including your favorite slots and table games. Be cool with this summer special. New players get $30 coin packs for 10 at spinquest.com.

• 1:55:34Speaker 01

  Spin Quest is a free to play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 1:55:41Speaker 02

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A plus by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five star Trust Pilot Reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:56:18Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:56:33Jack Murphy?

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant. So I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:56:44Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 1:56:49Speaker 07

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:56:55Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 1:57:15Speaker 01

  Chat GPT for teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. Chat GPT for teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default. And parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com PARENTS to learn more.

• 1:57:43Jack Murphy?

  Hanging out at the pool is great. Relaxing and playing Vegas style games on my phone at the same time. Drinking one hand and a blackjack in the other. It's all at Spin Quest. Over a thousand games, including your favorite slots and table games. Be cool with this summer special. New players get $30 coin packs for 10 at spinquest.com.

• 1:58:06Speaker 01

  Spin Quest is a free to play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 1:58:13Jack Murphy?

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A plus by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five star Trust Pilot Reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:58:49Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:59:03Jack Murphy?

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant. So I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:59:14Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 1:59:19Speaker 07

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:59:25Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 1:59:45Speaker 01

  Chat GPT for teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. Chat GPT for teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default. And parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com PARENTS to learn more.

• 2:00:13Jack Murphy?

  Happy birthday, America. It's time to celebrate and play your favorite Las Vegas casino games by American owned spinquest.com. What's better than fireworks and American pie? Hitting a blackjack in the palm of your hand and you won't lose your fingers. Over a thousand games, including slots and live dealers and $30 coin packs are on sale for 10. Spinquest.com. Buy American players for American players.

• 2:00:37Speaker 01

  Spin Quest is a free to play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 2:00:43Jack Murphy?

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 2:01:20Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 2:01:35Jack Murphy?

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant. So I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 2:01:46Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 2:01:51Speaker 07

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 2:01:57Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 2:02:16Speaker 01

  Chat GPT for teens is designed to help teens learn, think critically, and grow their skills. Chat GPT for teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer. Study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback. Safety protections are on by default. And parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours. Visit chatgpt.com PARENTS to learn more.

• 2:02:44Jack Murphy?

  You know what? It sucks to be bored. But when I get on my phone and play real casino games on spinquest.com, the time flies by. That two hour wait at the DMV seems like 10 minutes. Play your favorite slots, live blackjack, live craps with a live dealer. New players, $30 coin packs are on sale for 10 bucks. Play spinquest.com and you'll never be bored again.

• 2:03:08Speaker 01

  Spin Quest is a free to play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 2:03:14Jack Murphy?

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast rated A plus by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five star trust pilot reviews on deck delivers funding you can count on apply in minutes at on deck.com depending on certain loan attributes your business loan may be issued by on deck or Celtic bank on deck does not lend in North Dakota all loans and amounts subject to lender approval

• 2:03:42Speaker 00

  she's been thinking about this sleepover all week but I think about her food allergies all the time fortunately her doctor prescribed solar omelezumab it's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens

• 2:03:55Speaker 01

  solar 150 milligrams is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods while taking solar you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic don't use if you are allergic to solar solar may cause a severe life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue solar should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions including anaphylaxis solar is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions including anaphylaxis while avoiding food allergens serious side effects such as cancer fever muscle aches and rash parasitic infection or hardened circulation problems have been reported please see ziller.com for full prescribing information ask an allergist about solar this is an advertisement for solar

• 2:04:40Speaker 01

  paid for by genentech and Novartis chat gpt for teens is designed to help teens learn think critically and grow their skills chat gpt for teens supports active learning by breaking concepts down rather than giving teens the answer study mode helps teens work through problems and interactive quizzes test their knowledge and provide immediate feedback safety protections are on by default and parental controls offer families additional options like setting study hours and quiet hours visit chat gpt.com slash parents to learn more

• 2:05:10Jack Murphy?

  you know what it sucks to be bored but when I get on my phone and play real casino games on spinquest.com the time flies by that two-hour wait at the DMV seems like 10 minutes play your favorite spots live blackjack live craps with a live dealer new players $30 coin packs are on sale for 10 bucks play spinquest.com and you'll never be bored again

• 2:05:33Speaker 01

  spinquest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited visit spinquest.com for more details

• 2:05:40Jack Murphy?

  on deck is built to back small businesses like yours whether you're buying equipment expanding your team or bridging cash flow gaps on deck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast rated A plus by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star trust pilot reviews on deck delivers funding you can count on apply in minutes at on deck.com depending on certain loan attributes your business loan may be issued by on deck or Celtic bank on deck does not lend in North Dakota all loans and amounts subject to lender approval Monday night brings one more big matchup to settle into and when every play matters the last thing you want to do is step away to figure out dinner that's where DiGiorno comes in get a DiGiorno pizza ready before kickoff then enjoy restaurant quality taste fresh from your own oven

• 2:06:22Jack Murphy?

  while you stay locked into every play stock up on DiGiorno over the weekend so when Monday night rolls around the only thing you sweat is the game shop now at the link in the episode description it's not delivery it's DiGiorno