Gary Sinise Talks Forrest Gump, His Son Mac & Helping Veterans | Unsubscribe Podcast 257

The legendary Gary Sinise joins us this week to tell us all about working as an actor, the amazing work he is doing with his foundation and the tragic loss of his son Mac. Buy Mac’s music: https://store.garysinisefoundation.org/collections/merchandise Watch this episode ad-free and uncensored on Pepperbox! https://www.pepperbox.tv/ WATCH THE AFTERSHOW & BTS ON PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/UnsubscribePodcast 👕 Merch & Shoes https://bunkerbranding.com/pages/unsubscribe-podcast 🔋 Energy Drinks https://drinkechelon.com P. O BOX: Unsubscribe Podcast 17503 La Cantera Pkwy Ste 104 Box 624 San Antonio TX 78257 ------------------------------ THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS! SUPERPOWER Head to https://www.superpower.com/unsub and use code UNSUB at checkout for $20 off your membership. Unlock your new health intelligence. 100+ biomarkers. Every year. Detect early signs of 1,000+ conditions. #superpowerpod HARRY’S Get the Harry's Plus Trial Set for only $10 at https://www. Harrys.com/UNSUB #Harryspod HELLO FRESH Go to https://hellofresh.com/unsub10fm to get 10 free meals plus a free Zwilling Knife ($144.99 value) on your third box; offer valid while supplies last, new subscribers only. FUM Head to https://www.tryfum.com/UNSUB to get your free gift with purchase, and start The Good Habit today! GHOSTBED Get an extra 10% off already reduced prices at https://ghostbed.com/unsubscribe with code UNSUBSCRIBE at checkout. ------------------------------ FOLLOW OUR SOCIALS! Unsubscribe Podcast https://www.instagram.com/unsubscribepodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@unsubscribepodcast https://x.com/unsubscribecast Eli Doubletap https://www.instagram.com/eli_doubletap/ https://x.com/Eli_Doubletap https://www.youtube.com/c/EliDoubletap Brandon Herrera https://www.youtube.com/@BrandonHerrera https://x.com/TheAKGuy https://www.instagram.com/realbrandonherrera Donut Operator https://www.youtube.com/@DonutOperator https://x.com/DonutOperator https://www.instagram.com/donutoperator The Fat Electrician https://www.youtube.com/@the_fat_electrician https://thefatelectrician.com/ https://www.instagram.com/the_fat_electrician https://www.tiktok.com/@the_fat_electrician ------------------------------ unsubscribe pod podcast episode ep unsub funny comedy military army comedian texas podcasts #podcast #comedy #funnypodcast Chapters: 0:00 Welcome To Unsub! 2:01 Gary Sinise’s Military Family 10:43 Gary’s Acting Career & Forrest Gump 17:14 Brandon’s Congress Run 23:20 Gary’s Acting Career 27:30 The Importance Of Community After War 39:18 Major Capers Got His Medal Of Honor! 43:31 Gary’s Theatre Acting 49:26 Post 9/11 & The Gary Sinise Foundation 53:24 Gary’s USO Trips During GWOT 1:11:30 The Gary Sinise Foundation 1:29:50 The Lt. Dan Band & Gary’s Son Mac Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Network freedom and flexibility. That's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals, no kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  You were in Forrest Gump?

• 0:31Speaker 02

  I was the guy with no legs.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  Oh, that guy? That guy, okay.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  What's Forrest Gump? Hollywood got very anti-war, anti-Iraq. I have a role to play here in supporting the folks that are serving out there.

• 0:42Speaker 03

  Sure you've had to deal with a lot of politicians in your life?

• 0:44Speaker 02

  A fair amount.

• 0:44The Fat Electrician?

  I'm gonna go ahead and guess everyone since the movie Forrest Gump came out?

• 0:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  I'm among friends here now.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Unsubscribe Podcast. I'm joined today by Eli Doubletap, Fat Electrician, our very special guest, Gary Sinise. We're in his office, like, we're his guests, honestly. Brandon Herrera, myself, Donut Operator. Thank you so much for being here.

• 1:27Speaker 05

  Mr. Gary, holy crap, we've been excited for this one for months now.

• 1:33Speaker 05

  Like, since last year, I think we've been trying to set something up, and finally, everything worked out. And now, we are here, and we are stoked, because, I mean...

• 1:43The Fat Electrician?

  Cody's upset. He's got more challenge coins than all of us combined.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  I'm a little upset by it. I thought I had the biggest challenge coin collection in the world, and then I walk into here, and I tell Gary, I'm like, "Dude, you have so many challenge coins." He's like, "Well, you haven't seen the other room full of challenge coins."

• 1:58Speaker 02

  We have to have some place to put them all, yeah.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  You know Eli's being...

• 2:02Speaker 02

  Thanks for coming.

• 2:02Speaker 03

  Eli's being extra respectful when he's not swearing intentionally.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  I know. I won't even curse right now.

• 2:09Speaker 05

  You're probably used to it.

• 2:11Speaker 02

  Thanks for coming, guys.

• 2:12Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  So much for having us here.

• 2:14Speaker 05

  So, for a quick... I don't even know how to start this one because you've done so much work in the veteran space and that's what is awesome to see from all our ends is just the sheer amount of work and good you do and how to change the lives and that's tell the people what got you on that journey because I think that's a super important one because you have a family you come from like a line of veterans in your entire family history right

• 2:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, that that's where it would start with me I mean that's that's my dad right there uh he was in the Navy during Korea uh Navy guy is up up there that's my Uncle Jack he was a navigator on a B-17 bomber in in World War II and this is my Uncle Jerry on the left uh he was in the Navy during World War II my grandfather right there who served in the Army during World War I and I've got a great uncle cousins all this stuff lots lots of military in the family and then my wife also uh on her side of the family Vietnam veterans uh her two brothers served in Vietnam her sister's husband served in

• 3:28Speaker 02

  Vietnam her sister served in the Army married a Vietnam veteran they had a son he was in the Army he's now a cop up in Washington State so a lot of service I would I would say that that's kind of the you know that's the family history that kind of laid the groundwork for me getting so involved but then there's a series of things that happened over the years that just got me more tuned up and more invested and more active with all of it

• 4:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, because I I mean I don't know if it's an exaggeration to say but your work specifically I think you're probably the biggest veteran advocate as far as dollars raised in the country's history I mean I can't think of anybody bigger I mean what is it now 400 million

• 4:18Speaker 02

  Uh we're over 650 million dollars

• 4:21Speaker 05

  Oh my god

• 4:22Speaker 02

  In the in the 15 in the 15 year history of the foundation we're in our 15th year right now so started with one donor and then we we started branching you know just as the foundation got more uh busier and more well-known you know people started hearing about it The donor base grew and we have a tremendous philanthropy team. We're, you know, operating many, many different spaces now. And so we're able to raise a good amount of money. But that's, that's a fair amount there.

• 4:58Speaker 03

  I would say.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Over the last several years.

• 5:00Speaker 03

  Amazing.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  It's incredible.

• 5:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's insane.

• 5:04Speaker 05

  That's a, that's a number right there. Guys, we need to step it up.

• 5:10Speaker 05

  You said that was your grandfather?

• 5:11Speaker 02

  So this is my grandfather right here. Yeah. And he was in, in the army in World War One. He drove an ambulance in France. So he, in fact, I have a, you see, you can see across there, there's a, an album cover on the wall over there. That's a picture of my grandfather on a horse training in Yuma, Arizona to go off to World War One. And he ended up, he was in the army. He ended up driving an ambulance in France. Um, during the Battle of the Musergon and that, you know, that, that battle, we lost over 26,000 in that one single battle.

• 5:52Speaker 02

  And he was back and forth from the front line to the rear, just taking the wounded back. And there's one story from my grandfather where he was in a convoy of ambulances. They all had that red cross painted on the side. I don't know why they did that, but.

• 6:10Speaker 05

  Supposed to mean you can't shoot at us.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  The Ger- yeah, well, the Germans did that. They started targeting the ambulances. And the one in front of them got blown up and the one behind them got blown up and he, he was spared. He just kept driving. So he got very lucky during that. I didn't, I didn't talk to my grandfather too much when I was a kid. He died when I was in my early twenties. And I, you know, of course, when I got more active with military support and veteran support and all of that, I started looking back at those days and just wished that I'd been, you know, not such a dopey kid that I actually paid attention to what my grandfather had done.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  Thankfully, my uncle, this one, Uncle Jerry, he was on a ship in the Pacific during World War II. He became a writer after he got home from the war. And so he was able to get my grandfather to talk a little bit, and he wrote down some of the things he said. That's where I know about the story about the ambulances from my uncle, just interviewing my grandfather and trying to get him to talk.

• 7:20Speaker 03

  There's a shocking amount of notable people who were ambulance drivers in World War I as well.

• 7:25The Fat Electrician?

  I was thinking that too.

• 7:26Speaker 03

  It's like Hemingway, Ray Kroc, Walt Disney, like, there's a lot of, lot of notable folks.

• 7:31Speaker 05

  I didn't even know that.

• 7:32The Fat Electrician?

  Was it, was it Elvis too?

• 7:34Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 7:35The Fat Electrician?

  It might have been World War II. Yeah.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Elvis drove an ambulance?

• 7:39The Fat Electrician?

  I guess.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  In World War II?

• 7:41The Fat Electrician?

  I swear that's what it was.

• 7:42Speaker 05

  He did something.

• 7:43The Fat Electrician?

  I thought it was, I know it was something with an ambulance.

• 7:45Speaker 03

  I think you might be right.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  No, I think, I think he was, Elvis was after World War II.

• 7:50Speaker 05

  I swore he was during, or is it, where when, yeah, when did he join?

• 7:55Speaker 02

  Well, let's check.

• 7:56The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  Ah, that is.

• 7:58Speaker 03

  Let's pull it up on the phone. The nightmare brick in our pocket might have the answer.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 8:04The Fat Electrician?

  It was it?

• 8:05Speaker 05

  Uh, I mean, a lot of that old generation, they really didn't talk about their service, especially if they were in World War I, World War II. Your uncle getting as much information, did he only grab a couple pieces or a couple stories from your grandpa or great grandpa at that time?

• 8:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, just, you know, very, very limited because my grandfather just didn't want to talk about it too much, you know? But he did share a couple little stories like that with my uncle. And my uncle, again, he was, he wrote books and he wrote articles and whatnot, and he was able to document my grandpa and what he had done. And so when I, I wrote a book that came out in 2019, and I talk about my family history, and I pull some of my uncle's stories about my grandfather and just stuck them in the book, you know, because that's what, what I know. But I wish, you know, I'd been aware as a kid.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  To um, to just talk to my, even, even my Uncle Jerry, I never really talked to him much about his service. He was on a ship in the Pacific during the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. And then he was part of the occupying force in Japan, uh, after the surrender. But he lived in Texas and I, you know, I just never engaged with him very much.

• 9:30The Fat Electrician?

  Do you know what ship he was on? Cause it looks like a battleship?

• 9:33Speaker 02

  He, no, that, that's, that's just a superimposed picture. Uh, we just grabbed a ship and put him in front of it. But he was on a landing ship tank. So those were the ships that would roll in and the ramp would drop down and a tank would roll out.

• 9:48The Fat Electrician?

  LST?

• 9:49Speaker 02

  And he, yeah, LST. And so he was on, uh, he was on two, uh, eight eleven and eight seventy. I have those documented. Uh, and you know, I got to hear some pretty good stories from him about what he had done. Cause he wrote about his service a bit. Uh, the family history is important. It sets up, you know, a lot. And you know, I'll tell you when, but when I was a kid, I wasn't paying attention to any of it. It, it all happened later when I started getting more involved with supporting Vietnam veterans. And then I, I played the Vietnam veteran in Forrest Gump and he was a wounded veteran, of course.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  You were in Forrest Gump?

• 10:33Speaker 02

  I was the guy with no legs.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. Oh, that guy.

• 10:39The Fat Electrician?

  That guy, okay.

• 10:40Speaker 05

  What's Forrest Gump?

• 10:41Speaker 02

  The guy, yeah. It was before your time, I think, probably.

• 10:46Speaker 03

  We were all joking before the podcast. We're like, wouldn't it be funny if we all pretended like none of us knew what Forrest Gump was?

• 10:51Speaker 05

  We just thought you were, we didn't even know you're an actor. You're just really in the veteran community. We're like, we just heard really good stuff about you.

• 10:58Speaker 02

  They said we should come over with cameras.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  The Garry S. Nice Foundation raised 600 million dollars for veterans and thought he was a cool guy. Dang.

• 11:08Speaker 03

  I had to.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  You act?

• 11:10Speaker 02

  Don't, don't make me take you through it.

• 11:12Speaker 03

  I had to throw this out there. Everybody knows you from, you know, Forrest Gump and things like that. I knew you first from, uh, Disney World Mission Space. The command center thing.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 11:27Speaker 03

  That's, it's kind of a wild throwback.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  The ride.

• 11:30Speaker 03

  Yes, sir.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  The ride that goes to Mars.

• 11:32Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  Yes, okay.

• 11:34Speaker 03

  I didn't even get that it was a reference to your other Mars movie. But I just immediately. As a, as a kid, I was just like, oh, wait, hold on. That's the, that's the Mission Space guy.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  So when did you go, when did you go on that ride? How, how old were you?

• 11:48Speaker 03

  Oh, man, I was a kid. I have no idea.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  So, yeah, I did a movie for Disney, Mission to Mars, about going to Mars. And when they were building the ride, we had a great technical advisor on Mission to Mars. He, you know, this is an astronaut who'd been up six times on the space shuttle. Uh, Story Musgrave, brilliant, brilliant guy. They hired Story to be kind of the technical advisor when they were building the ride to go to Mars. And I got to, I got to do the movie and then they asked me to be the Capcom on the ride. So what he's talking about, you come in to the ride and there's somebody on the on the screen and they say, hi, welcome to Mission Space and here's what you're gonna do and

• 12:34Speaker 02

  watch out, don't vomit, all that stuff.

• 12:37Speaker 03

  Advice that some people don't take.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  But it's, it's a good ride.

• 12:44Speaker 03

  Brandon, could you tell me what Superpower does? Not draws. Let me step in for Brandon, Eli. Superpower sends a medically licensed professional to your home to conduct a lab test. You can choose to either do it at your home or visit a nearby lab to get the test done. It's one simple lab draw. Are you here for my hundred biomarkers? I am here for more than just your hundred biomarkers. They're pulling out your biomarker. Yeah, this is how you learn if you're fucked up or not. All jokes aside, uh, tests like this are one of the reasons why I found out I have lead poisoning, which is a very serious issue that I wish I'd paid more attention to. I thought I had cancer and then found out I don't. That was a heavyweight off my shoulders. And off of your.

• 13:26Speaker 05

  It actually presents all your information on. App that you can just check everything, literally everything.

• 13:33Speaker 03

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• 13:40Speaker 05

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• 13:52Speaker 03

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• 14:00Speaker 05

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• 14:09Speaker 06

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• 14:11Speaker 05

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• 14:13Speaker 06

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• 14:24Speaker 03

  After you sign up, they're going to ask how you heard about superpower.

• 14:27Speaker 06

  Tell them it was us.

• 14:28The Fat Electrician?

  On a, on the way here in, in Forrest Gump, Lieutenant Dan invests their money in a quote unquote fruit company, Apple.

• 14:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:38The Fat Electrician?

  And it got me thinking, how good of advice would that have been if you just invested in Apple? When the movie Forrest Gump came out?

• 14:45Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 14:46The Fat Electrician?

  I did the math of you to put a thousand dollars in Apple after watching Forrest Gump in the movie theater, it'd be worth 1.1 million dollars.

• 14:59The Fat Electrician?

  Should have taken your advice and have his five.

• 15:03Speaker 03

  It was like 11.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  I wonder how many people did that.

• 15:09The Fat Electrician?

  You might've changed some lives with your, your advice.

• 15:12Speaker 03

  And only 80% of that is inflation.

• 15:15The Fat Electrician?

  Well, you know.

• 15:18Speaker 05

  During the first Gump, you actually did like bootcamp or they had you do different kind of training for the military, right?

• 15:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. We, we went and lived in the woods and did all that, did some training.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  I think we were out there for three, three or four nights and slept out there, did all the bootcamp stuff, you know, war games, you know, live with the snakes, all that kind of stuff. And it was, it was great because right after we finished that.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  We went right into the Vietnam sequences. So I had shot already some of the, some of the shrimp boat stuff we had done. I think in the beginning of when I started shooting. And then, and that was with like a long hair wig. You know, because we had to go back and forth between like long hair scenes and short hair scenes. So I had a long hair wig for, you know, and scruffy stuff on my face. Then I went and took the wig off, shaved, and then we went into the woods and lived in the woods. And then we went and started shooting the Vietnam stuff after that. So it was very, the, the timing was good because by the time we marched in to start shooting

• 16:41Speaker 02

  all the Vietnam stuff, we were, we were ready to go.

• 16:44Speaker 05

  And you.

• 16:44Speaker 00

  Network freedom and flexibility. That's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals, no kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 17:14Speaker 05

  Now you did this with even Apollo 13. Uh, what was the hardest training you did, like preparing for a role?

• 17:23Speaker 02

  Preparing for any, any role?

• 17:25Speaker 05

  Yeah. Cause Apollo 13, okay, you did space camp for X amount of days, correct?

• 17:30Speaker 02

  I did, yeah.

• 17:32Speaker 05

  Yeah. So what was the hard one where you're like, okay, this actually sucked way more than I thought it would.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, it wasn't fun to, you know. I, I remember when we were training for Forrest Gump, I went down into an anthill. You know, it was like they had some mortars set up. We were marching across this field and they had planted like mortars out there.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Um, so, you know, special effects stuff. So they set these mortars off, you know, and we all hit the deck, right? And I went right into an anthill and just like, ah, you know, ants everywhere, snakes. So that wasn't fun. I didn't like that, any of that. That was, I, I, I would have rather been back in my hotel room. At that, at that, at that point.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  What, uh, what area was that in?

• 18:25Speaker 02

  South Carolina.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 18:27Speaker 02

  Beaufort.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Uh, Beaufort? Old Beaufort, I'm familiar with that. I was a police officer in South Carolina.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  Okay, you know, um, they, I, I really liked it there, actually. I, I, I loved it down there. I loved being there. I loved shooting there. Years later, uh, they started something, uh, where we were supporting our wounded. And, uh, a lot of our wounded would come down for the weekend and they had, they named, they had this thing called Lieutenant Dan Weekend. And my band would come and play and they'd have, you know, dozens of, of wounded service members would come down. We raised money. We were supporting something called the Independence Fund.

• 19:07Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 19:08Speaker 02

  And so.

• 19:09Speaker 03

  Raised money for that too?

• 19:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I supported them for a long time. And, uh, they, they wanted to do Lieutenant Dan Weekend, so I came down. And it was great to be able to visit that. Uh, I went back year after year and I loved the area.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  Charleston?

• 19:23Speaker 02

  Yep, then, then, we moved the, the event from Beaufort. We used to do it right in the town square, right on the water. And my band would play right there and it got so big, they had to move it up to Charleston.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I saw, I saw you jamming out in Charleston. So, I, I love that area, man.

• 19:39Speaker 03

  You're about to get married there.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  I'm getting married there in, uh, thirty-five days.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  Congratulations.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  Love you.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  Congratulations. Yes.

• 19:49Speaker 05

  And we haven't got to say this on camera, Brandon, congratulations. He just won a congress seat.

• 19:54Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, well.

• 19:55Speaker 05

  Primary for it.

• 19:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, primary, yeah. Um, yeah, I forgot. We haven't done a podcast since, but yeah, I just, I beat out, uh, Tony Gonzalez in District twenty-three.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  Where, where's that?

• 20:03Speaker 03

  So it's, uh, basically all of West Texas. It's, uh, the western side of San Antonio, all the way out to El Paso.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  Well, congratulations.

• 20:11Speaker 03

  Appreciate it, brother. Thank you.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  Sitting with a politician.

• 20:14Speaker 03

  I know, it sucks, right?

• 20:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. I didn't know.

• 20:17Speaker 03

  Run you. Yeah. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll take statesman. I don't think I'll ever be a politician.

• 20:23The Fat Electrician?

  Okay, that's good. That's good.

• 20:25Speaker 03

  I hope not.

• 20:26Speaker 05

  Well, congratulations.

• 20:27The Fat Electrician?

  Congrats on that. Yeah.

• 20:29Speaker 05

  I was like, oh yeah, we got the news after the fact because that was a weird. That was weird timing.

• 20:35Speaker 03

  That was very, very odd.

• 20:37Speaker 05

  His opponent dropped. Well, you explain it.

• 20:39Speaker 03

  Well, yeah. So, um, March 3rd was the primary and this was a rematch. I had run against him last time. We had lost by, in a runoff. Uh, 407 votes. And so this time I was hoping he would get better. He didn't. Um, actually things got a lot worse. And he, um, we, we, so I ran again this cycle.

• 21:01Speaker 03

  We were already looking pretty good in the polls and then it dropped. He was in a very, very serious scandal where he pressured a subordinate into a sexual relationship. Can't do that.

• 21:13The Fat Electrician?

  That's not good.

• 21:13Speaker 03

  And then afterward, basically broke up her home to the point where she committed via self-immolation. So.

• 21:22The Fat Electrician?

  Oh my God.

• 21:22Speaker 03

  It's a, it was a wild story. The entire, the entire thing was wild. And then, uh, he lied to cover it up. He lied the entire time, lied to media, lied to the voters and then. So we, we shell act him on, on Tuesday. But neither one of us got above 50%, which means in the state of Texas, you have to go to then a runoff election. So there were four people in the race. Uh, we were both in the forties. We beat him, but not by enough to take it outright. And then two days later, so I'm expecting to go into a three month runoff election, like another election, which I was pretty confident we were going to win. Two days later, he announced he was dropping out.

• 21:59The Fat Electrician?

  Well, well, he went, he went on somebody else's podcast and after he had been for six months at this point, saying that these were all rumors and they weren't true.

• 22:09Speaker 03

  Calling me a liar.

• 22:10The Fat Electrician?

  Political hit job. He went on a podcast and said, well, actually it is true, but it's not my fault. And then after that, the Speaker of the House basically told him he needs to step down. So he dropped out of his reelection bid. So Brandon kinda took that by default being most votes.

• 22:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was sitting at my, my house bar playing blackjack with, with Connor or just like screwing around like just, you know, trying to like decompress a little bit like, okay, we got a big fight to, to win. It's like 11 o'clock at night and then I just get my phone. It's just over in the corner on the side of my bar. Just mm, mm, mm, mm, like, oh shit, what? Oh, oh.

• 22:50The Fat Electrician?

  Oh.

• 22:51Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 22:52The Fat Electrician?

  Stress.

• 22:52Speaker 03

  I think I'm the nominee now.

• 22:53Speaker 02

  Big news. Yeah.

• 22:54Speaker 03

  So it's, it's been a wild, wild journey, but.

• 22:57Speaker 02

  He got 50% even, even with that going on.

• 23:01Speaker 03

  Uh, he got like 41% I think. So.

• 23:04Speaker 02

  But that was all, that was all being exposed.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  It was aired out, man.

• 23:08The Fat Electrician?

  That had, uh, the confirmation that it was true didn't hit the news until early voting had already started.

• 23:15Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 23:16The Fat Electrician?

  So then it was kinda like the voting was already happening when it was getting pushed out. So it was a matter of like, how many voters could actually, how many voters that are A, already voted and B, how many voters weren't gonna see or realize that's who it was.

• 23:29Speaker 03

  Right.

• 23:29The Fat Electrician?

  Until that point in time, because on, on the ballot, he's still seen as the Republican incumbent. So everybody, if you don't, if you're not super into politics, you kinda just vote for the incumbent because that's what everybody does. They have the highest chance of winning. So I think that's where a lot of the votes came from.

• 23:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, we had people that came to us like our, our, uh, like sign waving teams and whatnot. People came up later saying, I, I cast my vote on the first day of early voting. I didn't know. Is there anything I can do to help? Which, you know, that's pretty indicative that, you know, that's, it's a major shift. Cause he really did. He, he, he said that I was lying. He tried to defame my character, saying that, oh no, he's just smearing me politically. I'm like, no, I'm, I'm doing the same thing I've been doing since day one, which is tell the truth about you.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, little, little background on this guy here. I gotta, I gotta give him praise.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Firearms manufacturer, started a YouTube channel, YouTube channel, pretty big. And we moved to San Antonio. His family's from Texas originally and he, one day he just said, hey, I don't like this guy. I don't like my congressman, started running and now. You might, you got it, buddy.

• 24:38Speaker 03

  We'll see, we'll see. And all self-funded and with the help of, you know, the audience and everything like that. No special interests, no, no big DC money. Just gave it the best race we could and it was enough to take down a sitting congressman.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Well, sounds like he needed to be taken down.

• 24:55Speaker 03

  I think it's pretty fair to say at this point.

• 24:58Speaker 03

  There was an argument before. I don't know if there is one now.

• 25:01Speaker 02

  Right. And he finally, it finally was so clear there was no ducking around it and he couldn't get it. Get away with it.

• 25:08The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah, he basically had to come out and admit it.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Now our friend's a politician.

• 25:13Speaker 03

  Ew, I still hate that. That word still sounds like a slur.

• 25:17The Fat Electrician?

  It's because it is.

• 25:19Speaker 06

  Connor, how do you shave your chest? How do I shave my chest?

• 25:24Speaker 03

  He doesn't have certain genes like me and Eli do.

• 25:28Speaker 06

  Yes, I am a Caucasoid.

• 25:31Speaker 03

  Oh, well, okay. He doesn't have certain genes like I do. Oh, and actually, this smells really good. It looks smooth. Feels smooth. Simba.

• 25:41Speaker 06

  It does say, "We highly encourage the hosts to get creative."

• 25:45Speaker 03

  Oh, that is a mistake.

• 25:47Speaker 05

  I'd shave me. Would you shave me?

• 25:50Speaker 06

  Why does he have forehead hair?

• 25:52Speaker 03

  You gotta keep it under control, which is why I trust people like Harry's. Actually, that is remarkably smooth.

• 25:57Speaker 06

  Those are, I use those. They're cheaper than a majority of razors and they're really good.

• 26:02Speaker 03

  I didn't lube myself up like other folks.

• 26:05Speaker 06

  So Harry owns its own world-class blade factory in Germany. Harry's has launched their most advanced razor ever. Why is he putting deodorant on his neck?

• 26:16Speaker 03

  Harry's Plus is Harry's heaviest razor handle ever.

• 26:19Speaker 06

  How heavy is it?

• 26:21Speaker 03

  Uh, made of entirely metal, no plastic.

• 26:23Speaker 06

  How's it feel?

• 26:24Speaker 03

  Refreshing.

• 26:25Speaker 06

  Harry's doesn't make just razors.

• 26:28Speaker 03

  They've got a full line of grooming essentials. All of Harry's blades and grooming equipment can be delivered directly to your door.

• 26:35Speaker 06

  For a limited time, our listeners can get the Harry's Plus trial set for only $10 at harrys.com/ unsub. This set includes the all-new Harry's Plus razor.

• 26:45Speaker 03

  One refined five-blade cartridge.

• 26:47Speaker 06

  And a two-ounce can of foaming shave gel. And a travel cover to protect your razor on the go.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  harrys.com/unsub to claim this offer. And after you purchase, they're gonna ask you, huh, how'd you hear about us? Tell them unsub or I'll shave you. Well, that'll be an interesting life change, I'm sure, if you, if you get in there.

• 27:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's gonna be a negative one for me. Um, I'm sure you've had to deal with a lot of politicians in your life.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  A fair amount, you know.

• 27:15Speaker 03

  A couple.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  I've seen, I've seen the pictures, Gary.

• 27:19Speaker 03

  You got a casual photo of W.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  I was gonna say W is over there hanging out with you.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, that, I wonder where that was.

• 27:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I've, I've, I've met a few.

• 27:33The Fat Electrician?

  I'm gonna go ahead and guess everyone since the movie Forrest Gump came out.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, that changed, that changed a lot. I mean, I hadn't done that many movies before that, so I wasn't well known. I had done a lot of theater. And, but Forrest Gump was maybe, I don't know, what, third, third movie or?

• 28:01The Fat Electrician?

  Which is?

• 28:01Speaker 02

  Third or fourth movie, something like that.

• 28:03The Fat Electrician?

  I mean, wild.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  Third, yeah, movie. Third or fourth, you know, I did like ninety, my first real good part in a movie. I did three movies in ninety-one.

• 28:20Speaker 02

  And then ninety-two, uh, Of Mice and Men came out. I did that as a film and the producers for Forrest Gump saw that and they invited me to come and audition.

• 28:33Speaker 03

  And that was with John Malkovich, right?

• 28:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then I auditioned for it and I got a couple of good parts that year. Well, you know, when you're in a movie like that, that's so popular, uh, and you're not that well known and you play a good part, you know, and things are gonna change for you. So I got some good parts after that.

• 28:52The Fat Electrician?

  Did you have any idea, like, during the filming, that it was gonna be as big as it ended up being?

• 28:59Speaker 02

  No, no, no, you, I mean, I, you know, so I'm working with Tom Hanks, that's, that's, he was a big movie star. So that was a good thing. Bob Zemeckis was top director, really, you know, a lot of success. The script was good, so you got three things going for you there that give you an indication like, oh, you're involved in something that could be pretty cool. But the nature of the, if you remember that, the nature of the way that story was told is you've got Forrest Gump interacting with all these different characters, right? Like there's the Jenny story, and there's the Bubba story, and there's the Lieutenant Dan story, and the Mama story.

• 29:42Speaker 02

  And we didn't really interact with each other, you know, all those other characters. It wasn't like we were all in the same scene. So I didn't really know what Robin Wright was doing as Jenny. I didn't know what... I knew a couple of things about Michael T. Williamson because I was in some scenes with him. But Sally Field, I didn't really know what was going on. Tom was doing all these scenes with everybody else. I didn't know what they were doing. So I didn't know what the movie is gonna turn out like until I saw it.

• 30:11Speaker 05

  Did you have a script that showed, or was it just primarily your...

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, you have the whole script.

• 30:18The Fat Electrician?

  Oh, that was my question, because I've heard like some, obviously every movie's different, but I've heard some people that are like, "I don't know what the script even is. I just show up and do what the director says," which would have been very funny from your perspective at the time, because you're showing up, "All right, today you don't have any legs." And then like, tomorrow you're gonna have no legs, you're gonna be clean shaven, today you've got long hair and a beard.

• 30:41Speaker 03

  All right, guess I'm putting on the green socks.

• 30:43Speaker 02

  Wheeling around.

• 30:44Speaker 03

  Relax, shrimp.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  No, I read the whole script. I like to know what the story is.

• 30:50Speaker 05

  That's good.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  You know, but the nature of the Lieutenant Dan story is just these little, you know, these little moments, you know? He's in Vietnam, and then he's in the hospital in Vietnam, then he's gone. You see him in New York, and then you see him on the shrimp boat, and then it's just these little segments. So, I mean, the story just... What I like about that story is the way it ends up for our veterans, right? I have a lot of Vietnam veterans in my family. I remember what that was like. I've met so many wounded folks over the years.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  And we want, we want that story to be the story of success that our wounded have, right? They, they're able to move on from life. It's a happy ending and we hadn't really seen the story of a Vietnam veteran have a happy ending in a movie up until that point. But that is a happy ending and we want that happy ending for everybody who serves our country.

• 31:53Speaker 05

  I think you talked about, um, one of your interviews, you were discussing how important community is for the veterans when they get out and a lot of them just didn't have that. Vietnam veterans, wild because that is, you're coming back, you are hated, which none of us have seen or experienced that.

• 32:13Speaker 03

  We were still drinking on the community thing.

• 32:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

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• 32:47Speaker 05

  But as you said, I think it was family or friends that they had more success if they were still with that community, the veteran community, or they stayed active duty during that transition period versus the people that got out and just went into civilian world. They were lost a lot of the times.

• 33:05Speaker 02

  Well, my, my wife's two brothers are two, two different stories like that. One stayed in the army, career army guy. Um, Silver Star recipient in Vietnam, two tours in Vietnam, very, uh, uh, West Pointer, high profile guy.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  Unfortunately, he got cancer in eighty-three and died of cancer. But he was very, very, profound impact on the army kind of person. He rewrote the entire leadership manual for the army. He was very invested in the army, gonna have a career. If he had lived, he would have been a four-star, there's no question about it. He would have been in the Iraq War and Afghanistan conflicts, all of that. He was that career army guy. Then the second brother, the younger of the two brothers, was a helicopter pilot.

• 34:06Speaker 02

  Who, who went in, he was like the second son, you know. The first son was, the father really looked to him as, you know, he was very proud of him going to West Point and all that. The second son wanted to kind of, I think, be a part of that. And so he, he joined the army, helicopter pilot, eight hundred combat hours. But it was, it was rough on him. It was rough on him and he came back and got out of the army and he struggled. Still struggles, you know, he survived, he's still alive, but still struggles.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  I mean, he kind of withdrew from life in a way, kind of recluse a bit. And I think, and for my other brother-in-law, who served in combat, as a combat medic, he stayed in the army too, after Vietnam. And I think it was just easier for folks to, to come back from Vietnam and still be amongst their fellow Vietnam veterans who were still serving in the army. They had this community of support, they'd all been through it. You know, they weren't, they were still serving their country. It was a bit different for them, I think, than somebody who came home, got out of the service and tried to.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  Just disappear and forget about it.

• 35:35Speaker 03

  I also wonder, I, I, I, I don't know what the answer to this is, but I'm just kind of like, I don't know, pontificating. If it was a little bit easier for guys after World War II was over. Because that was something that if you were a red-blooded male. You know, you, you went and you served, like that was, that was kind of a universal experience for everyone. Whereas GWAT, that's not the case. Yeah, stuff like that, like it's, it was something that if there was another guy that was your age, out in public. Odds are, we served together, we did the same thing. And that's just not the case anymore. And I wonder if that makes it harder on, on veterans nowadays.

• 36:10The Fat Electrician?

  Um, like even in the TV show, The Pacific, it like, the ending of that show touches on it. Cause like, even, uh, the Pacific war veterans were treated a lot different than the European war veterans for World War II, just because like, the, the general consensus back home, when World War II, like, a lot of people on the civilian side, and especially like Europeans too.

• 36:36The Fat Electrician?

  When Hitler surrendered, that was the end of World War II, in a lot of people's minds. Like, the, the Pacific theater was like a side quest to a lot of people. So like, and I'll get it in my comment sections on like the history videos I do, like I've had Europeans comment like, this guy thinks World War II ended when Japan surrendered, what's he talking about? And it's like,

• 36:54Speaker 03

  It, cause it did.

• 36:55The Fat Electrician?

  Cause it, cause it did, but to them, it was, it was just the European theater. And the end of the Pacific shows that where the Pacific war veterans were coming home, you know, six, eight months, a year later after the occupation of Japan. And they're looking for a job and they're like, I just got back from the service and they're like, what, what do you, the war ended a year ago, what are you talking about? Why are you just now looking for a job? And he's like, no, I was, I was in the Pacific and like the civilians are genuinely confused. Because they thought the war had been over for like way longer.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  They weren't thinking about that we occupied Japan for as long as we did.

• 37:29The Fat Electrician?

  Exactly. And the other crazy part to me, it's like, doing war history and hearing even people like you talking about your families where it's like, America's really, really young, cause like,

• 37:42The Fat Electrician?

  I wouldn't have thought that your grandfather would have been old enough to have fought in World War I. Makes sense if I look at the timeline, but like it seems so long ago to me. Versus, you know, and then his grandfather easily could have fought in the Civil War. So it's like, you're like eight, we're eight.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  Well, no, no, he was in the, he was in, he's an Italian.

• 38:02Speaker 02

  So my, my, my great grandfather, and there's a picture of him over there. He came over from, uh, from Italy, probably in the late 1800s. And my, uh, my grandfather was one of nine kids. Five were born in Italy and then his father moved to, uh, to Chicago from Italy and four more children were born. So maybe the Civil War in Italy.

• 38:35Speaker 03

  It's funny, it's funny though to see those timelines, those things that you wouldn't think would work out, uh, like, cause we have videos, like actual videos of Civil War veterans, like speaking and like talking to each other and things like that. It's also like, it's, it's one of those where you, you just segment these things in your mind. Um, but you don't actually think about, okay, where this, where this went. Like, for example, I know the meme that gets shared around is, uh, Rosa Parks lived to see the movie Shrek.

• 38:59The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah.

• 39:00Speaker 03

  It's like things that in your mind don't make sense. Well, like, oh, well, hell, I guess that's true.

• 39:04The Fat Electrician?

  Even, even like what he just said about how, you know, if he had stayed in, he would have been a four star general. He would have been in Iraq as a Vietnam veteran, like, it doesn't sound, but then like I read up on war heroes and it's like, oh, this guy got his Medal of Honor in Vietnam, but he also jumped into Normandy. Like, that seems crazy to me that you fought in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. The timeline makes sense.

• 39:26Speaker 03

  My great grandfather did that.

• 39:27The Fat Electrician?

  But it's just weird to me or like, uh, we did, it's been clipped to oblivion on the internet, but we were talking about the, um, God, what is his name? General Clint, um, he was the, the nine-year-old drummer boy in the Civil War. He was a nine-year-old drummer boy in the Civil War was when he started his service and he served his entire life and he ended up being a general in World War One. Like, it's just crazy. Somebody can see that many different stages of war, especially that going from

• 39:54Speaker 03

  That's a big job.

• 39:55The Fat Electrician?

  muskets to machine guns and tanks.

• 39:57Speaker 03

  And, and, and planes.

• 39:59The Fat Electrician?

  And planes.

• 39:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, in a different country.

• 40:01The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah.

• 40:02Speaker 03

  That's crazy. I like my, uh, yeah, my, my grandfather was a combat, uh, combat dozer or, uh, combat engineer.

• 40:09The Fat Electrician?

  Yep.

• 40:10Speaker 03

  Um, in the Pacific in World War Two, then fought in Korea and then was, did some like spooky advisory stuff in, in Vietnam. And so the way that it was described to me anyway, was that, uh, in Vietnam, his role was, uh, we'll go up in a plane. He was a pilot, uh, and he, we'd go up in a plane. We'd take pictures of things with the locals.

• 40:32Speaker 03

  And then the next day when we went up in that plane again, the things we took pictures of weren't there anymore.

• 40:36The Fat Electrician?

  Then we had to take the topographer up to update maps.

• 40:43Speaker 03

  It was kind of one of those, I heard that there was like a family gathering. It's like, oh, yeah, I was in Vietnam from this time to this time. Grandpa, we weren't in Vietnam then. He's like,

• 40:52The Fat Electrician?

  I was.

• 40:56Speaker 07

  Hey, do you know what's better than anything, brother? Homemade cooking. Oh God, Eli, are we doing this bit again? Yes, we are. I'm not doing the macho man bit. I've got HelloFresh for three minutes. HelloFresh rises to the top. Oh yeah.

• 41:13Speaker 06

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• 41:24Speaker 01

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• 41:37Speaker 03

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• 41:39Speaker 06

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• 41:41Speaker 03

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• 41:41Speaker 06

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• 41:48Speaker 01

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• 42:01Speaker 03

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• 42:05Speaker 03

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• 42:20Speaker 06

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• 42:26Speaker 03

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• 42:30Speaker 03

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• 42:34Speaker 05

  It sucks that we don't have those interviews of those World War One veterans because those are the stories. It's all those stories that are lost throughout history because we don't have that many.

• 42:44Speaker 03

  We do have some.

• 42:45Speaker 05

  How many one on ones with World War One veterans? Are there that many?

• 42:48Speaker 03

  I'm sure there has to be.

• 42:50The Fat Electrician?

  It gets, it gets a lot harder after World War Two to find personal accounts. I mean, as far as like actual like writing books and like recording war experiences.

• 43:03The Fat Electrician?

  It gets a lot tougher. Once you get past like Audie Murphy, like Audie Murphy's book to hell and back was like one of the first big books where a war hero actually wrote down their perspective and their story.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, there weren't Navy SEALs back then, so there's not, there's not a lot of books.

• 43:21Speaker 03

  Damn it.

• 43:23Speaker 03

  I mean, that's, that's one of the reasons why I like not to, you know, break my wrist or anything, but like it was why I like what we do on unsub with bringing on so many World War Two vets. Because I remember, you know, in my lifetime, growing up, the moment I saw the headline that the world's last World War One veteran died. And thinking like, wow, okay, those are stories that can never be told now. And so giving them the platform, the opportunity to be able to tell those stories is super important.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, be like, you told Gary who we had on? Uh, we had Papa Jake.

• 43:55The Fat Electrician?

  Don Graves.

• 43:55Speaker 03

  Don Graves, Al.

• 43:57Speaker 05

  Al. We've had three World War II veterans and one was at the raising of the flag at Hiroshima. Like, he was there during that. And then Grandpa Jake was Battle Gold, yeah, and Normandy.

• 44:08The Fat Electrician?

  Hearing his version of the story is hilarious because he's like, yeah, we raised the first one up on some drainage pipe we found, but then they said the flag wasn't big enough. So they had to go grab one off of one of the battleships and bring it over. We had to do it again for the picture.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  Gary, I'll tell you, Papa Jake, he was trying to steal our girls the entire time. He was, he was, dude, he was, he was rizzling up the ladies the whole time.

• 44:30Speaker 03

  He was not interested in any of the guys at all.

• 44:32The Fat Electrician?

  Smile on your fiance's face right now. What do you mean trying?

• 44:37Speaker 05

  He's at that old man.

• 44:38The Fat Electrician?

  He was succeeding.

• 44:41Speaker 02

  Don Graves is pretty, pretty frisky too.

• 44:45Speaker 03

  You had to have known Don.

• 44:48Speaker 03

  Which I don't think we.

• 44:49Speaker 02

  He's pretty wild. I mean, he's, he's got more energy than, geez. We've had Don on some trips and that kind of thing.

• 44:56The Fat Electrician?

  Don is awesome.

• 44:57Speaker 02

  Very special guy.

• 44:58Speaker 03

  Any excuse that man has to sing.

• 45:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:00Speaker 03

  He'll, he'll do it.

• 45:01Speaker 02

  Don, he loves that.

• 45:03The Fat Electrician?

  God, I remember, because I think I was one of the first people to sit down at the table with Don and like Eli was getting the cameras ready. You guys were like getting the drinks ready or whatever. And I was just sitting there with him and he just starts rattling off like pure gold. And I'm like, Eli, turn the cameras on, turn the cameras on right now.

• 45:20Speaker 03

  We're gonna have to bleep half of this.

• 45:22The Fat Electrician?

  This is amazing. No, it wasn't even that. It's just like, the dude just sits down and just starts dropping like incredible stories just off the top of his head. And it's like, oh my God, everything he says is so cool.

• 45:32Speaker 03

  I don't know if we've gotten a chance to say it on the podcast yet, but rest in peace Papa Jake.

• 45:37The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah.

• 45:37Speaker 05

  Yep. Papa Jake passed.

• 45:38Speaker 03

  We lost him a couple of months ago.

• 45:40Speaker 05

  We helped with their statue of Papa Jake though.

• 45:43Speaker 03

  Did we?

• 45:43Speaker 05

  So they'll have an unsub thing under it stoned because we, we threw some money towards it for them to get erected.

• 45:50Speaker 03

  That's awesome.

• 45:51Speaker 05

  We had him and then Major Capers actually just got his, I think he got approved for the Medal of Honor, right?

• 45:56The Fat Electrician?

  Did he get approved? I haven't heard that.

• 45:59Speaker 05

  I think that.

• 45:59Speaker 03

  I hope so.

• 46:00The Fat Electrician?

  I hope so. Awesome.

• 46:03Speaker 05

  Do you know who Major Capers is?

• 46:07The Fat Electrician?

  He was a He was a not Marine Raider.

• 46:13Speaker 03

  Force recon.

• 46:14The Fat Electrician?

  Force recon Marine during Vietnam and led a team. And basically, he'd been recommended for the Medal of Honor, but he was what I believe he was the first black officer in American history to receive a field promotion, like in theater. And he is, he has this incredible story, this humongous military career, and he basically kind of got shafted for the Medal of Honor. And there's been a humongous push to get that retroactively fixed and

• 46:43Speaker 03

  Got approved.

• 46:44The Fat Electrician?

  You got approved?

• 46:44Speaker 03

  Very nice.

• 46:45The Fat Electrician?

  Yes.

• 46:45Speaker 03

  Hell, yeah.

• 46:46Speaker 05

  Congressman Norman Bills is to award Major James Capers with the Medal of Honor.

• 46:50Speaker 03

  I'm excited for it. He deserves it. He really does. There's a, there's also a thing about him being like one of the first, I don't know what the qualifications called, but black combat divers.

• 47:02The Fat Electrician?

  Yep. Yeah, because his story on that, when he was going to dive school was crazy because he showed up to dive school and the person, I don't know if it was a literal doctor, but the, the medical person in charge of the program didn't even want to let him go through the course. Because according to what Major James Capers was told was he has medical evidence that black people can't swim. Is what they told him. And he's like, no, I can, I can swim. And he ended up like passing the course and performed, I think he said three combat dives.

• 47:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:34The Fat Electrician?

  And yeah, it's just a crazy military career.

• 47:38Speaker 03

  Is that what they told you in BUDs?

• 47:39The Fat Electrician?

  Yeah.

• 47:42Speaker 01

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• 48:14Speaker 01

  They just sink, dude. I don't know what to tell you. The fastest swimmers we had in BUDS were the black dudes.

• 48:21The Fat Electrician?

  One of my favorite moments, we've done hundreds of these podcasts. One of my favorite moments is, I had read his book prior to him coming on and he has a story about when they were in, they were in Vietnam on a mission.

• 48:34Speaker 01

  I know where this is going.

• 48:35The Fat Electrician?

  And on their way back up to their, their fob, which is on top of this big hill slash mountain. They had to cross a river and they found a 26 foot long python that weighed like 300 pounds. And they couldn't carry it across this river, but they were, they told everybody up on the fob that they found this gigantic snake. And they're like, no, you didn't. That's not true. Whatever. So one of the helicopter pilots flew them back down and they captured the snake and kept it as a pet. And they named it Gomer. And they were, they ran into town and they were feeding it ducks. Well, he tells this whole story and it's hilarious. And then we, we have his book on the table and we flip through it. And in the pictures, there's a picture of him and his guys, like six dudes to hold up this snake. It's humongous.

• 49:18The Fat Electrician?

  And there's two pictures like that. And one picture says Gomer number one, and the other picture says Gomer number two. And I was like, how many snakes did you catch? He's like, oh yeah, we caught, we caught another one in Panama too. So he's just catching these gigantic pythons while he's out on missions for fun.

• 49:36Speaker 05

  This is in operations, like.

• 49:38Speaker 03

  That's awesome.

• 49:39Speaker 05

  Pulling back from a mission and be like, wow. Fuck.

• 49:44The Fat Electrician?

  Grab that 300 pound snake. This is gonna be cool.

• 49:46Speaker 05

  And they put a bag over his head.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  Dude thing I've ever heard of.

• 49:50Speaker 03

  That guy's gotta have something to do. They didn't have Xboxes on the fob yet.

• 49:55Speaker 05

  Oh man, what?

• 49:59Speaker 05

  You've been in many, many movies, but as you said, Forrest Gump was number three or four?

• 50:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, early on, yeah.

• 50:08Speaker 05

  And then it was just big movie after big movie. Cause you've done three with Tom Hanks or?

• 50:15Speaker 02

  He, um, yeah, Apollo 13 was, was one I did right after.

• 50:20Speaker 05

  Never heard of it?

• 50:21Speaker 02

  Um, and I did The Green Mile with him.

• 50:25Speaker 03

  It was American propaganda to make it look like we went to the moon.

• 50:28Speaker 05

  Oh, thank you, thank you.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  Fake, fake stuff, yeah.

• 50:32Speaker 03

  They used the same studio, actually.

• 50:34The Fat Electrician?

  Were you, cause you say you didn't know how big your, you know, Forrest Gump would be, especially your role with Lieutenant Dan. Were you at all concerned, like after it did blow up and got as big as it did, that you were gonna kind of be typecasted into that military type role? Cause I mean, I, I don't think you were. You went and every role's significantly different. You're not just like the army guy in every movie. Were you concerned?

• 50:56Speaker 02

  No, I wasn't worried about that.

• 50:57The Fat Electrician?

  Okay.

• 50:58Speaker 02

  No, um, I ended up, you know, you might get offered some things, but I, I just was looking for the, the best projects that were, were coming my way at the time. And ended up played Harry Truman in a, in a movie for HBO. That was, that was an interesting project, cause you know, it's a historical figure. Footage of him, you know, lots of documentation, a lot of books. So the, the, the trick there is you're creating an impression of somebody who really lived, right? So you've got to do believable enough impression that people kind of go with it and forget, forget it's you.

• 51:43Speaker 02

  So that was a good, that was a good acting challenge that

• 51:47Speaker 02

  right after, I started shooting that right after the Oscars for Forrest Gump. I, I left like the next day and went and started shooting Harry Truman. So some really good projects started coming my way at the time. The nineties were very, very good. Good, good time.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm curious, what, what got you into acting? Like what, what made you want to, want to get it? Cause you said you did theater first. What made you want to do all that?

• 52:13Speaker 02

  Well, I was, I was a, um, bad student in, uh, high school.

• 52:20Speaker 03

  Uh.

• 52:21Speaker 02

  I'm among friends. I'm among friends here now. Yeah, bad student in high school, failing a lot of classes, not doing well, playing in a rock band. Um, getting into trouble, all that kinda stuff. Um, and I, I just stumbled into auditioning for a play. For the hell of it. I saw all the pretty girls walking in and I followed them in and I, you know, thought, okay, give me the script, I'll try it, you know, and I auditioned for West Side Story.

• 52:54Speaker 03

  No kidding.

• 52:54Speaker 02

  Musical, and I got in it. I got a little tiny part in it. And, you know, here I was, I was probably getting ready to get kicked out of school at the time, and that whole theater community and the fun that I had doing that show and everything, just changed everything for me. It really was a turning point. And the teacher that I had was unlike any teacher I'd ever had before. She's, she, she just was different, and she saw something in me that was, that, you know, that she kind of encouraged, and I was,

• 53:34Speaker 02

  you know, and then after, after that play, I just wanted to be in all these shows and I ended up doing really well in theater. Ended up starting a theater company when I got out of high school, um, called Steppenwolf, and that, that theater company is now old, over fifty years old. It's, we ended up, we were little kids. We ended up building a, a building that takes an entire city block. So it really is a great American dream story where you start with absolutely nothing, just kids wanting to do some plays, and it turns into something special. These caricatures up here on the wall

• 54:17Speaker 02

  are from different Steppenwolf plays that we moved to New York and did on Broadway or off Broadway. And we started moving our shows to New York. That gave us a lot of international recognition. And because of the international recognition, we were able to raise the amount of money that we needed to raise to build a building. And we ended up building a building.

• 54:43Speaker 03

  That's awesome. Are you still like very heavily involved in that?

• 54:46Speaker 02

  No, no, I'm, you know, I support, I support, but September 11th changed everything for me. I was, I was in New York that year doing one of our shows.

• 55:01Speaker 02

  And it was, it was a Broadway show, big hit, all of that. It closed about six weeks before the attack of 9/11. And I was profoundly impacted by that whole incident. And everything changed for me. I just decided that's when I got super heavily involved in all this. And I didn't go back and do, do plays after that. That was the last play I did, because I turned towards service and volunteerism and raising money for our veterans and entertaining them and building houses for wounded.

• 55:46Speaker 02

  All these different things that we do, that became the mission. I ended up getting a TV series after that, which was lucrative and very, very good at the time. To have a television series right at the time that I was getting so involved in all of this was a great benefit. Not only financially, but when you have a public platform like that, you're on television every week and it's a hit show and it's doing well. I had a, I had a megaphone. I could get up and talk about what I was doing on USO tours and visiting the hospitals and talking about all that. And it gave me a good reputation in the community.

• 56:29Speaker 02

  And I got so busy with all of that, I haven't been back to do theater since. Connor, what are you doing?

• 56:37Speaker 06

  I'm fuming, brother.

• 56:38Speaker 02

  You fuming okay?

• 56:41Speaker 03

  Fume responsibly. Look at Connor. I'm cured. From what? My oral fixation. I would have something else in my mouth right now, but thanks to fume, it's not made of human flesh.

• 56:54Speaker 03

  Can I have that, please? You want to hit my fume, bro? I do want to. Dude, let me pass it. It's also got a fidget movement on it. For those who are tactically challenged. Made that shit up. Tactically is a rare, often non-standard adverb of the form tactile, used to describe interacting with or understanding something through the sense of touch, physical feel, or haptic feedback. Fuck you. Pass me my fume, bro. We're fuming it up. Dude, look at how fucking cool he looks. He's getting fumed out of his mind.

• 57:24Speaker 03

  I'm out of fume too much, bro. My favorite flavor is orange vanilla, because it tastes like somebody near you at a coffee shop ordered an Earl Grey tea. Crismit. Yeah, one time I was really, really fiending for something, something I legally cannot say in this advertisement, but instead I reached for my fume and boyo.

• 57:47Speaker 03

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• 58:07Speaker 01

  Did Hollywood ever have a problem with your involvement with like how passionate you are about the US military?

• 58:14Speaker 02

  A problem in what way, wouldn't it?

• 58:17Speaker 01

  It's like there's a lot of, you know, like anti-war actors or producers or things like that. Did anyone ever, like, did you ever have a problem with that?

• 58:25Speaker 02

  No, um, not me, but I was, I was actually, I know what you're talking about, like during the Iraq war, uh, you know, everything, you know, we were kind of a nation that came together after September 11th, right? We were, we wanted to do something about what had happened to us as a nation, but as time went on and we went into Iraq after that and everything like that, things started to splinter again, and Hollywood got very anti-Bush, anti-war, anti-Iraq stuff. I didn't feel that way, and I'll tell you why, because as I said, I've got Vietnam veterans in my family.

• 59:07Speaker 02

  I could sense that, hey, what's happening right now in the country is very similar to what was happening to our Vietnam veterans. The media and folks are turning against the war. The soldiers, the Marines, the people that are serving, they're gonna get caught in the middle of all that. Uh, and I don't want that to happen. So, I just started to go on tours and go overseas and go to the war zones and go to the hospitals and, you know, support organizations that were helping our service members. And I, the more I sensed all that stuff coming, you know, like,

• 59:51Speaker 02

  I, it just motivated me to do a lot more. Did that affect me in the movie and television business? No. I was the lead in a hit show. So, what are they gonna do about it?

• 1:00:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:00:07Speaker 02

  I mean, you know, I had a television.

• 1:00:09Speaker 05

  I know, I love it.

• 1:00:11Speaker 02

  You know, had a TV show. Every week, the show was doing well. Um, like I said, it gave me financial security that was beneficial and I could start a foundation with that and all that. But I also had that public platform. And so, I'd do interviews and I'd say, and people would ask me about what you've been doing, and I'd say, "Well, I just went to Afghanistan or something, and here's what I saw, here's what I, here's the people that are serving our country, this is what they're doing, this is why we should support them." Um, I got to see a lot of things on the inside that, you know, the average American doesn't get to see what gets done, right?

• 1:00:52Speaker 02

  I mean, they don't see the people that serve in the way that somebody who may be related to somebody, you know, you have a personal relationship to somebody who's serving in the military or on the police force or something. So, you see it in a different way than the average American who may not have a personal connection. So, I felt like I was kind of a little bit of a bridge. I could go to the war zones and I could go see what people do and... You know, train with the special forces, see what they actually do, and then come back and talk about it. And, and let people know how fortunate we are that we have such exceptional people serving our country.

• 1:01:36Speaker 02

  And so, somebody like me is saying that kind of stuff. I mean, some people paid attention. Others probably thought it was, you know, I was, you know, it wasn't what they wanted to hear, but, um, I felt like that's my role. My role is to, uh, I have a role to play here uh, in, in supporting, uh, the folks that are serving out there. And it turned into a full-time thing.

• 1:02:00Speaker 03

  Speaking of which, with your, your trips to like Iraq and Afghanistan, things like that with the USO, how did that transition work? You, you know, it's one of those things. You wake up one day, you're like, I think I want to do something. I want to make a difference. How did that conversation go?

• 1:02:16Speaker 02

  Well, I wanted, you know, after September 11th, like I said, I just felt heartbroken and crushed by that. And I wanted to do something. I wanted to get involved. And, um, so what, what do you do, you know? Um, I had been involved a little bit with the Disabled American Veterans Organization because of, uh, because of Forrest Gump.

• 1:02:41Speaker 02

  And I'd been supporting the DAV for a little while. But how do I support our active-duty folks that are now deploying to Afghanistan and Iraq? And we're in a war now, you know? And they're getting hurt. And they're getting killed. And families are losing loved ones. And people are really banged up. You know, they need some support. So, one of the first things I did was contact the USO and just say, hey, I want to go on a trip. And it's funny, I've told this story before, but I left some messages on their machine. I called the USO and said, I'm Gary Sinise, I want to go on a tour. And then I didn't hear anything back. And then I called them back again.

• 1:03:25Speaker 02

  I said, uh, hi, I'm Gary Sinise. I really love to go on a USO tour. Uh, go to Iraq or whatever. Didn't hear anything back. Then I started to think.

• 1:03:37Speaker 05

  Oh, you dropped the Lieutenant Dan on him, didn't you?

• 1:03:40Speaker 02

  They don't know who Gary Sinise is. So I better call back. I said, I'm the guy who played Lieutenant Dan. I want to go on a tour. And then they called me back.

• 1:03:52Speaker 02

  So I wasn't, I wasn't real well-known at that point. You know, this is back in, this is before CSI New York. I'd done, you know, I'd done ransom with Mel Gibson. I'd done Apollo 13. I'd done some pretty big movies. I did The Stand, which was a mini-series on ABC. So, but still I wasn't like a recognizable name actor. So, I figured that out. I figured, oh, okay, I gotta, I gotta tell them who I am. So they called me back and I went, I started going on tours. And I went on the first one to Iraq. It was the first big USO tour to Iraq in June of 2003.

• 1:04:35Speaker 02

  We hadn't sent a tour over there yet. We'd just gone into Iraq in March. Remember the statue coming down and that was in April? And then in June, I was over in, in the war zone.

• 1:04:47Speaker 05

  You know, Green Zone? That would have been like Iraq, uh,

• 1:04:51Speaker 02

  Surge, wasn't it?

• 1:04:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, that's during the surge. You're pulling down the statues and there's maybe one green zone at that time? Where did you go? That entire experience, like, I,

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  No, this is, this is, yeah, this is before, uh, the insurgency and all that. So this is right, just within months of us getting there, right? Pulling the statue down, we had, we were in Baghdad. We were all over the place. And so I went over there on the first big USO tour and there were 180 of us on this tour. Northwest Airlines gave us an airplane. And a 747 taking all of us over there on the plane. Uh, Kid Rock was on that tour. LeAnn Womack.

• 1:05:38Speaker 02

  Gosh, they're basketball players, football players, Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. I mean, it was, it was a big, big tour.

• 1:05:48Speaker 05

  Dude, it was crazy. When we pull up to base, because I, I lived out in sector, so I had to come back and we see posters for, it's like, hey, this person's coming to the base. I'm like, duh. I don't get to be on the base any of those times.

• 1:06:01Speaker 03

  I was just thinking about the chronological possibility that you, Kid Rock and Eli were in country at the same time.

• 1:06:10Speaker 05

  Yeah. Were you there in like 2007, 2008?

• 1:06:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was in, yeah, both, both, both years.

• 1:06:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, see, probably there and I was out in sector.

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  Oh, you, you guys served together.

• 1:06:21Speaker 02

  Gosh, yeah, I was in both, both years. I, I was in Balad.

• 1:06:26Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, I was in Balad, yeah.

• 1:06:28Speaker 02

  Tajji and all, all these different places. I, I, I was, uh, both those years. I went, I did two in a row.

• 1:06:34Speaker 05

  Balad's beautiful. Oh, if you get to live there.

• 1:06:37Speaker 02

  I was at Camp Anaconda.

• 1:06:38Speaker 05

  Yep, I, yep.

• 1:06:39Speaker 03

  What is the service member equivalent of Eskimo bros?

• 1:06:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, pretty much. I know this area. How was it like getting off that plane the first time? Cause that had to be. A change, yeah, a change for you. You're not prepared for war and well, we just got in the country eight months ago. Hey, here, can you entertain these people? That's a wild.

• 1:07:00The Fat Electrician?

  I, I, I'm sorry, I can't get you being in, in character for Lieutenant Dan, surrounded by Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders out of my head.

• 1:07:10Speaker 03

  That was entertaining. It's like the New Year's. That meme?

• 1:07:17Speaker 00

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• 1:07:48Speaker 05

  That was fun.

• 1:07:48Speaker 02

  That was fun.

• 1:07:51Speaker 02

  Well, how was it getting off the plane? It was hot. Like 150 degrees or whatever.

• 1:07:57The Fat Electrician?

  Oh, the temperature. I thought we were still talking about the cheerleaders. My bad.

• 1:08:01Speaker 02

  Well, that was hot, too. That was good.

• 1:08:03Speaker 03

  Better than the fire ants.

• 1:08:05Speaker 05

  I am Lieutenant Dan.

• 1:08:08Speaker 02

  We, we had a, we had a great tour, though. I mean, that was, that was, it was called Project Salute. That 2003 tour. And then, um.

• 1:08:18Speaker 05

  How was it scary, though? Like? Where was anyone worried going into that? Because that would have been. Military, you signed up for it. You're going to war. You're going to a country where a war is happening. They prep you for it, but from your side. I want to do a good thing. I'm going to make a difference. Landing in country, getting off in a C-130 or Blackhawk, and you're like, oh, it's really hot.

• 1:08:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, we, we landed in Kuwait first, and then we went, went up to Baghdad.

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  You know, there were so many of us, 180 on that first tour. That we split off into three different groups. And I remember. One group like was, went into Kuwait, another group went up into Iraq, another group flew out to a carrier. In the Gulf out there. We were just splitting off and trying to cover as much territory as possible. And I remember, um.

• 1:09:13Speaker 02

  I went up, yeah, I went up to, uh, you know, we're doing a lot in Kuwait. I went up to Baghdad, did some stuff. Came back. And then Tommy Franks, he was running the, the war. And he said he wanted to go, he was going up to Baghdad the next day, and he wanted a small group to go with him. And so I went back up into Baghdad, uh, with Tommy Franks and Robert De Niro was on the airplane, you know, we're on a C-130 and we're going up. Uh, that was a really, that was an in- incredible trip, and I wanted to go back. Once I got home. So we were well protected and we weren't going to anywhere, you know, we were such a

• 1:09:56Speaker 02

  big tour that we weren't like fob hopping or anything like that. The second time I went back, I went back that same year in November, just whatever it was, four months later. That one was a little bit different. I remember mortars coming in, you know, at one point and it felt to me like, like everything was rattling, like the pipes were rattling or something like that. I was sleeping on a cot in this room, there are no lights, no electricity. And I was like, what's going on here? And I came out and there were two soldiers just sitting there. Sitting there.

• 1:10:40Speaker 02

  The building had been rattling.

• 1:10:42Speaker 05

  I think we're smoking.

• 1:10:44Speaker 02

  And they were just sitting there like this, you know? And I'm like, what's going on? You know? I'm like, and they said, oh, the mortars, you know, mortars coming in.

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  Just another day.

• 1:10:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, it's another night.

• 1:10:55Speaker 05

  The James Franco meme, first time?

• 1:10:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. They were, they were not, I mean, if they weren't gonna freak out, you know, and like, okay, everybody's out, we're going into the bunker or whatever. Uh, but they weren't, it was a routine and they could tell how far away they were by the noise, you know? So they knew that we were, at that point, this was kind of a routine thing. Bad guys out there throwing the mortars in at this time of night, you know, kind of thing.

• 1:11:25Speaker 05

  I would have.

• 1:11:26Speaker 02

  But that was the first time for that, you know?

• 1:11:28Speaker 05

  I would have looked at my buddy, like, we're dead. Gary Sinise is here. This makes zero sense. We're in heaven. We need to run.

• 1:11:37Speaker 03

  My current job is to guard Lieutenant Dan. What the fuck are we doing here?

• 1:11:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, two, two guys out there not doing anything.

• 1:11:44Speaker 05

  You hear, you hear incoming stumble out of the tent hung over like, Lieutenant Dan? The Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders?

• 1:11:51Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. I'm going that way.

• 1:11:54Speaker 05

  Running with the cheerleaders?

• 1:11:58Speaker 03

  Yeah. Follow the shorts.

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• 1:13:50Speaker 03

  This is a threat. I was actually just gonna ask and forgive my ignorance on this, but I don't know if any of the USO shows intentionally got attacked? Or anything like that?

• 1:13:59Speaker 02

  With me? When I was on the?

• 1:14:01Speaker 03

  I mean, with you?

• 1:14:02Speaker 02

  In general. No, no, we did, there, outside of Ballade, there was a big soccer stadium?

• 1:14:12Speaker 02

  The big soccer stadium Saddam Hussein and his family used to like torture people in this stadium. But we.

• 1:14:20Speaker 03

  Wait, what?

• 1:14:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:22Speaker 03

  They.

• 1:14:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, they.

• 1:14:23Speaker 03

  Out of all the places, they would like as an intentional like media event?

• 1:14:27Speaker 02

  Bad stuff would happen in that stadium. Yeah. And we saw I was in palaces with swimming pools and there were like empty swimming pools with blood on the side and.

• 1:14:37Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:14:37Speaker 02

  You know, there was some ugly stuff that they did and the the bath party and all that. Um. They did some ugly stuff, but. I remember the soccer stadium. And. We I was with Wayne Newton. Uh, Chris Isaac.

• 1:14:55Speaker 05

  Your tour was way better than my tour.

• 1:14:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm sure it was. Yeah. And I got to leave after a few days.

• 1:15:02Speaker 03

  He was like, he didn't even get shot.

• 1:15:04Speaker 05

  Dang, this sucks.

• 1:15:05Speaker 02

  Neil McCoy is. Neil, uh, lives in Texas. He's a country singer and everything. Neil was on that trip. Great guy. Uh, and so we were entertaining on that trip and we did a big. Um, there's a picture around here somewhere. Uh, from that trip, um.

• 1:15:25Speaker 02

  Me talking to thousands of troops uh, in the soccer stadium. And there were probably five or 6,000 in the soccer stadium in this is in the Ballad area. Uh. Five or 6,000 troops. You know, they're all out there. Uh, didn't feel dangerous to me or anything like that. It felt like. Okay, we're we're here. It's November 2003. Fairly early on after we kind of started occupying things. Um, we went out to visit some Iraqi schools that they had, uh, helped to rebuild. I started a program after that called Operation Iraqi Children. We started shipping school supplies over to the troops

• 1:16:09Speaker 02

  in Iraq and they would take them out and give them to the kids. Put them in the convoys. You know, roll into a sort of somewhat tense situation. Just get out, started handing out stuff and it changed the mood. So, uh, that was a good program and that started because of the November trip. So I didn't feel, there were a couple, you know, a couple of times where it felt a little, little sketchy. In the convoy, you know, just going down the road and stuff. You're kind of looking around, you know, wondering what's going on, but we, we were, we were pretty good. Nothing, nothing happened.

• 1:16:44Speaker 03

  Do you know if anything happened like to, to any of the others? Like, cause I, I want to say that was one show that did get attacked, but I don't remember, or an attack happened during the show, rather.

• 1:16:52Speaker 05

  A lot of the times.

• 1:16:53Speaker 03

  I don't remember.

• 1:16:54Speaker 05

  You'd have mortars. I was gonna expect you'd deal with like one mortar incoming and it is, as you said, Balad's huge. Like Balad is a massive base.

• 1:17:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was big, yeah.

• 1:17:04Speaker 05

  And you'll have one that's, did they even have the alarm systems at that time or is it just like, oh yeah? So it's boom, boom, boom. You'll hear, you'll see either people running or they don't care and they're like, eh, whatever. But was it only about one mortar situation?

• 1:17:20Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, that night, uh, cause I was only there that one night. Um.

• 1:17:24Speaker 05

  Of course, the one that you're there.

• 1:17:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was, I was there that one night, but it seemed kind of routine, like it was a sort of a routine thing. Or something.

• 1:17:32Speaker 03

  Incoming, speaking of incoming.

• 1:17:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, in, incoming at that time of night.

• 1:17:37Speaker 05

  Oh, it was a daily, if you lived on a big base, it was expected. If you lived out in the sector and a cop, never get mortar because it's so small. But when you're on a giant place like Balad or Eagle, what, any one of those is just shoot a mortar and see what happens.

• 1:17:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, the show, when I was at Bagram, um, in Afghanistan, uh, some similar things, you know, some alarms went off. We had a hunker down and stuff like that, but I don't recall any, anything coming in. But there was a, a reason they set the alarms off.

• 1:18:10Speaker 02

  So, yeah, you, you feel sometimes some pretty dangerous situations. On the other hand, I'm with a group that's surrounded by a bunch of guys with guns. So, I mean, they, they protected us pretty well over there.

• 1:18:24Speaker 03

  Not a bad place to be.

• 1:18:25Speaker 06

  The show you're talking about is when Toby Keith came to Kandahar Airfield and he played and I was there and it got bombed.

• 1:18:31Speaker 05

  Oh, really?

• 1:18:31Speaker 03

  Kandahar?

• 1:18:32Speaker 06

  Yes, sir. So it was my first tour. I landed and then I ate at a Burger King. Yeah, at the boardwalk.

• 1:18:39Speaker 02

  The boardwalk?

• 1:18:39Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:18:39Speaker 02

  I played a concert on that.

• 1:18:41Speaker 06

  You did?

• 1:18:42Speaker 02

  I did, yeah.

• 1:18:43Speaker 06

  Man.

• 1:18:44Speaker 02

  In 2009, I played a concert on the boardwalk. But yeah.

• 1:18:47Speaker 06

  I was playing a concert in 2009, but it wasn't that, you know what I'm saying?

• 1:18:50Speaker 02

  Well, they had like Subway and Tim Hortons.

• 1:18:53Speaker 06

  It's crazy, yeah.

• 1:18:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, and a bunch of fast food places on this boardwalk. So you were where?

• 1:18:58Speaker 06

  Uh, so I, we landed there, but then we went to Garmser. And then, uh, I did that tour, but my second tour, I did an invasion into Marja. But like I just landed there, my daughter had just been born and have like all these weird feelings and I'm eating like a Whopper. At the peak of the military.

• 1:19:14Speaker 02

  It's surreal, yeah.

• 1:19:15Speaker 03

  I think you did a video on that, like the Army's deployable Burger King that we have.

• 1:19:19The Fat Electrician?

  The Army has a, a deployable Burger King.

• 1:19:21Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:19:21The Fat Electrician?

  It could be anywhere in the world.

• 1:19:22Speaker 03

  God, I love this fucking country so much.

• 1:19:25Speaker 06

  We're the best, dude.

• 1:19:26The Fat Electrician?

  Nothing more demoralizing to the enemy is like, they're bringing in a lot of troops, oh, they're bringing out a trailer, what's in that?

• 1:19:32Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:19:32The Fat Electrician?

  They brought a Burger King with them?

• 1:19:35Speaker 03

  They're gonna smoke you, they're gonna have a good time.

• 1:19:38Speaker 02

  Or Subway, there was a Subway.

• 1:19:39Speaker 06

  There was a Subway too, it was, it was, I heard they even put a TGI Fridays in there.

• 1:19:44The Fat Electrician?

  Wait, what?

• 1:19:45Speaker 06

  I swear, I swear to you, you can look this up on, on the line, but I heard they put a TGI Fridays in there.

• 1:19:50Speaker 03

  Is it just as mediocre in the Middle East?

• 1:19:52Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:19:54The Fat Electrician?

  TBI Fridays.

• 1:19:54Speaker 02

  My, my, my first meal was like something like Subway or Burger King. When I got to, to, to, uh, Kandahar.

• 1:20:02Speaker 06

  It's wild because like it's such a big active base, especially at that time with all the NATO forces and stuff. And the Marines were like literally off where they turned into like a waste depot.

• 1:20:11Speaker 03

  We're literally bringing capitalism with us.

• 1:20:14Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:20:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. All over, yeah.

• 1:20:15Speaker 06

  Democracy's the best, but, um.

• 1:20:17The Fat Electrician?

  How do these troops get by?

• 1:20:21Speaker 06

  It's called a Whopper.

• 1:20:23Speaker 03

  Oh, oh.

• 1:20:24Speaker 06

  But, uh, he came in and he was playing, him and, um, Scotty Emrick, I think is his name. They were playing some songs and stuff and he got to the end, he started playing the Taliban song. And then the sirens went off, the air raid sirens, and then like the air force attache like ran up there. And was like, no, no, no. And like, we're all there because we're a bunch of animals. We started booing.

• 1:20:49Speaker 06

  We're like, get back out here. And then he came back out. He's like, well, I guess I'm gonna finish the Taliban song since they're attacking us. And he finished the song and then they took him away. But it was like crazy. I had a belly full of Burger King and Toby Keith singing the Taliban song while the Taliban-

• 1:21:03Speaker 02

  He wasn't playing on the boardwalk though.

• 1:21:04Speaker 06

  No, he was like off in a different area because they wouldn't list over there. But he was just like, "The Taliban, baby!" You know, like this-

• 1:21:11The Fat Electrician?

  They banned the Marines from the boardwalk? Is that what you're telling me?

• 1:21:13Speaker 06

  Shortly thereafter. We were not allowed to go back to the boardwalk, yes.

• 1:21:16The Fat Electrician?

  I wonder why.

• 1:21:17Speaker 06

  Bartering incidents.

• 1:21:18Speaker 02

  On that trip, now I just, you know, the guy that played Bubba in Forrest Gump?

• 1:21:23Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:21:24Speaker 02

  Michael T. Williamson, I took him with me on that trip.

• 1:21:26Speaker 05

  No kidding?

• 1:21:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, and he plays harmonica. So he got up and played with us a little bit.

• 1:21:30Speaker 05

  Well, it's awesome.

• 1:21:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's sick. It's crazy. And, you know, just from my perspective as a veteran, I really appreciate everything your organization has done for so many people. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, some names few, like you've literally changed lives and gone out of your way to help people who need it the most and like really show what true patriotism is. And it like means a lot to me.

• 1:21:51Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:21:52Speaker 06

  Like from like the deepest part of my heart. I'm not often serious, but I do mean this.

• 1:21:56Speaker 02

  Well, I appreciate what you did for our country.

• 1:21:59Speaker 06

  It was my honor. So, thank you so much. I'm gonna try back out with a more handsome version.

• 1:22:05Speaker 02

  Thanks for sharing that.

• 1:22:07Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, it was awesome. Thank you, sir.

• 1:22:08Speaker 02

  Good stuff.

• 1:22:09Speaker 05

  Just the amount of work you've done. And go into more depth with what your foundation does. Because it changes lives in different ways and how it helps the community. So what is some of the big ways Gary Sinise is helping veterans or soldiers?

• 1:22:24Speaker 02

  Or families.

• 1:22:25Speaker 05

  Or families.

• 1:22:29Speaker 02

  You know, like I said, I got involved very, a long time ago, decades ago, and it just kind of spiraled into something. There's a, I wrote a book called Grateful American, and there's a chapter in the book called Turning Point. And that is really the September 11th chapter and what that moment did to kind of galvanize me toward the service of veterans and first responders. And-

• 1:23:03Speaker 02

  One way, before I had my own foundation, one way that I would do it was start with a lot of different foundations that were in a lot of different spaces, right? Helping our wounded, building houses for them, helping our families of our fallen, entertainment, whatever it was. And I would get involved with a lot of different organizations and support them. And so that gave me a lot of insight into where the needs were, and what different organizations were doing to fill those needs, and how I, as a public figure, could best benefit that effort.

• 1:23:45Speaker 02

  So I started getting more and more and more involved in all these different efforts. I actually, the home building stuff that we do, where we build houses for our wounded service members, that actually started, I got involved with that before I had a foundation. So once I created the foundation, we created a program, we started raising money. Now we've, we just gave away our 101st home that I've been involved with since 2010. And so, 15 years. And we just, just, just this past week, we gave away our 101st house.

• 1:24:26Speaker 02

  But I saw that that was a need that was not, that was, it was not a service that was provided to our Vietnam veterans when they came home, right? "Oh, let me build you a house," you know? It was Vietnam veterans disappear, because it was not a good time to be a Vietnam veteran. I didn't want that to happen again, you know, to Afghanistan and Iraq veterans. And so, got involved with the, the home building effort, started doing that. Now we have a very vigorous program where we not only build homes, but we provide adapted

• 1:25:06Speaker 02

  vehicles, mobility devices, you know, track chairs, wheelchairs, that kind of thing. We do home modifications. So we're, we'll, we have, you know, dozens of home modifications in the queue right now, where we will go in, somebody's, you know, and we do these for elderly veterans, we do this for anybody who's serving, right? You got a lot of aging veterans and, you know, they're, maybe they're having trouble in their house. They can't get up the stairs anymore. We make the bedroom downstairs much bigger for them. We go in, we fix the bathroom up, whatever. We do modifications. But we're

• 1:25:50Speaker 02

  still building a lot of homes from the ground up for people that have been very, very badly wounded. Tyler is, is one of those, you know. In fact, Tyler Vargas-Sanders, I, when he, when he was first wounded in that stupid withdrawal, I reached out pretty quickly to the hospital to find out what was going on with our wounded and talked to his mom. And started communicating with his mom because he couldn't really communicate. And I wanted her to know that there were services that we could provide should he need that. And

• 1:26:32Speaker 02

  I'm glad that eventually he came around to applying for the program. You know, he sacrificed a lot. And we want to do something to give back, and back to him. So we have, we have a couple of our wounded from the Abigat mess that we're, we're building for. We probably have 20 in the queue right now. I mean, we thought maybe this was going to start to wind down a little bit. We wouldn't, there wouldn't be as much of a need for us to build these

• 1:27:11Speaker 02

  specially adapted smart technology houses for badly wounded service members. But there are a lot of needs out there. So I don't want to be somebody who says no a lot, you know. So we, we have a pretty vigorous program. And we're trying to provide those services on multiple fronts to help a lot of different people. We have, we've had World War II programs for World War II veterans. We, we just, you know, we're taking a bunch of Rosie the Riveter's down to the New Orleans, to the National World War II Museum. Wherever we can serve those who have served and defended and protected

• 1:27:54Speaker 02

  us, that's where I want my foundation to place its efforts. And I'm, I feel blessed that the American people have kind of put their trust in us, you know, send us their donations, or, you know, they help us. If we have a special project or something like, we'll, we'll have a disaster, a hurricane, or something like that, our National Guard starts going in, helping. Well, we, we back them up. We'll go in with disaster relief stuff to help them, help the people. So we're operating on a lot of different, different areas. Mainly focused, of course, on supporting first responders, supporting our veterans,

• 1:28:39Speaker 02

  supporting our active duty, supporting our families of our fallen, you know, wherever we can place our hands and wrap our arms around these people. That's, that's what I want my foundation to do.

• 1:28:51Speaker 03

  And I'm glad you brought up the mobility part of that, because a lot of people don't realize just how bad the VA is with stuff like that. I mean, I'm representing now, or about to be, one of the biggest veteran districts in the entire country with, you know, Fort Sam Houston, Fort Bliss, everything like that. There's people that I've talked to that, you know, need, for example, like a mobility, like a wheelchair, electric wheelchair, essentially. And there's limitations on if it breaks, like, for example, in this case, like a battery broke. Like, okay, well, can we get it replaced? Well, no. Okay, well, if I go out and purchase the battery, will you service it? Well, also, no. Okay, well, can I get another one? No, you're owed one every six years, I think is the cutoff. And so this guy's just, he's

• 1:29:36Speaker 03

  being forced to wheel around. He's an elderly, disabled veteran. I don't think there's an excuse for that.

• 1:29:42Speaker 02

  You know what? Here's what I would say about that.

• 1:29:50Speaker 02

  First of all, if we didn't have the number of nonprofits that are in the space of veterans and first responders, sports space, there'd be a catastrophe. I don't believe that the government can do everything. The government does certain things. I know my dad benefited from his V8 benefits and all that, and many veterans do. But I always say, look, we as citizens who benefit from the freedom and protection of our defenders, there's a role for us to play. You know, there is a role for us to play. I don't, I don't think we can depend on the government to do everything.

• 1:30:35Speaker 02

  They should do, they should always do more. But I always say my foundation should always do more. You know, there's always more that we can do, and I think that's a great way for our citizens to participate, you know, in helping our service members through difficult times. There's thousands of nonprofits out there that are in this space. And if they weren't here, we'd have a catastrophe. If it was all up to the government, massive catastrophe. So it's a good thing that these nonprofits are out there. It's a good people, a good thing for people to be aware of all the different nonprofits, and not all of them, you can't, there's too many, but, you know, be aware of some good nonprofits, especially in your area.

• 1:31:20Speaker 02

  What are, what are the veteran support organizations in your area that are helping your local veterans? If every citizen in this country took some responsibility for, you know, reaching out to the men and women who have served our country and sacrificed for our country, just to help them through their day, you know, maybe just go buy groceries. If maybe somebody's deployed and that spouse is left at home and the car breaks down, and she's got four kids and she's trying to manage everything like that, you know, just a little helping hand can help that person a lot. And people always ask me, who should I support and what should I do?

• 1:32:02Speaker 02

  I always say, look in your own neighborhood, look in your own community. Are there veterans and military families and first responders who are struggling? Can they use a helping hand? It'll make you feel really good if you do it. You don't have to write the big check. You can do, you can do something very personal. Personal touches ma- matter. Uh, I started my, you know, by just a lot of personal touches, going out to the war zones and patting people on the back and shaking hands and taking pictures and sitting down and having dinner with them. That meant a lot to them, just to know that somebody cares. Know that somebody in the country who's benefiting from what they're doing to protect and defend us, that it matters to that person.

• 1:32:47Speaker 02

  And I, I, I try to let our service members know that their service matters. And, uh, to let our fellow citizens know that there are a lot of ways that you can show your appreciation. But yeah, um, anything else, do you guys have any more questions?

• 1:33:02Speaker 03

  I was asked specifically, uh, to ask you about, uh, the Snow Mall Express.

• 1:33:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's just, this is the Families of Our Fallen Heroes program that we have. Uh, it was, it started 20 years ago

• 1:33:18Speaker 02

  uh, by, uh, some folks who wanted to, uh, some veterans uh, in California, they wanted to do something, you know, this is 2006. You know, we've been in Iraq now for, uh, three years. We've been in Afghanistan for five. Uh, we've lost, you know, we're losing folks. Um, lot of children, you know, struggling and suffering. And so they wanted to do something that, that would uh, help, help the kids through difficult times. So right before Christmas time, they, uh, they, they raised some money and they were able to bring,

• 1:34:02Speaker 02

  you know, a bunch of families with kids to Anaheim, uh, to Disneyland. And all expense paid. Um, Southwest Airlines was involved, uh, helping to provide some transportation.

• 1:34:19Speaker 02

  They did one event where they brought the kids and they had, they videotaped it. And right after that event, which was December of oh six, they contacted me. I was shooting CSI New York. And they, you know, they knew that I was active and doing a lot. Uh, going overseas and that kind of thing. They contacted me and said, we want to do this again next year. And would you get involved in it? And they showed me the videotape of the children. These are all children that are lost, my mom or dad. And, uh,

• 1:34:57Speaker 02

  it was very moving, you know, it was very moving to me. And I had actually been involved with the Intrepid Foundation. Wanting to try to do something for children of our fallen heroes. That never quite got started and got off the ground. So all of a sudden this event comes and I'm seeing all these happy kids at Disneyland. And I said, I wanna, I wanna help that. So I got involved the next year. I brought, I volunteered to, uh, go to the event at Disneyland. Uh, brought my band, donated my band.

• 1:35:32Speaker 02

  Played a concert for the kids.

• 1:35:35Speaker 02

  Um, and it was so moving, you know, you see these kids and they got T-shirts. And their fallen hero dad is on the T-shirt or buttons or whatever. And they're right in front of me, these little kids. And I'm playing music for them. I'm trying to lift them up. Make them feel good and they're having fun. And so I, uh, the following year I, I went back again, did, got involved again. Then it moved to Dallas because American Airlines got involved. Started providing all the transportation for the kids to go to Disneyland. Now, we were going to move it to Dallas, which is the hub of American Airlines. And

• 1:36:18Speaker 02

  they have a lot of connections in Dallas and all this stuff. So we're gonna move the, the event to Dallas. We're gonna do it in Dallas. For nine years it was in Dallas. And I brought my band back every year to play for the kids and to help, help them through. It was growing. Lot of families that lost loved ones.

• 1:36:39Speaker 02

  I have a great relationship with Disney World narrating that that park ride and being in the movies and all that stuff. Narrating at Disney World, a show called The Candlelight Processional, I was doing that every year at Disney World. So I said, the next thing we should do with these kids is take them to Disney World. And so I went to Disney and had a meeting with them and they were, we got them on board. We had to have, we're gonna be, bring a thousand kids there, we're gonna have this Disney on board, right? So after that, it was gonna cost a lot more money. So we brought it into the Gary Sinise Foundation as a program of the Gary Sinise Foundation.

• 1:37:23Speaker 02

  So we have very vigorous programs to support the families of our fallen heroes. That particular program is really focused on the children, but we support the spouses and, you know, we support parents of fallen heroes. We're getting involved in, you know, we're involved in so many different things. In fact, today, we have, we have, what we call it is a city adventure going. You might have seen the balloons out in the hallway and everything like that. So we have a city adventure going where we're bringing in spouses of fallen heroes and we

• 1:38:03Speaker 02

  treat them to, you know, two or three days of fun in Nashville, we show them some love, just trying to help them through these difficult times. You know, I understand grief, it's a, it's a difficult thing to deal with when you've lost a loved one. And, you know, we, these are, these are people who are giving a lot for our country and we want to do something for the families that are left behind.

• 1:38:32Speaker 05

  It is, it's awesome to see how much you do for the veteran communities, the families. It is one thing, like, we were blessed enough because of the amazing community to donate towards the Gary Sinise Foundation. We're gonna continue like every year for November when we do our.

• 1:38:49Speaker 03

  Pretty much that entire month, we'll make a few shirts and then a hundred percent of profits we make that month, we just write it off and just donate everything we make and we do it for special needs and veterans. So we've done as well as our own money too. Like usually if we have a goal and we come slightly shy of that or something like that, we'll throw in our own, our own.

• 1:39:09Speaker 02

  You guys are in San Antonio?

• 1:39:10Speaker 03

  Yes, sir.

• 1:39:11Speaker 02

  So I'll be at BAMC next month.

• 1:39:13Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 1:39:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:14Speaker 03

  Come say hi.

• 1:39:15Speaker 02

  I have my band at BAMC next month. We do, one of the programs that we have is we do these festivals at Military Hospital. I started doing it in San Diego in 2012 and we do it at the hospital. We'll, we'll be at Fort Belvare. We were at, we were in Naval Medical Center in San Diego in, at the end of January and we're at BAMC on the 17th.

• 1:39:41Speaker 02

  Right? Yeah. 17th of April.

• 1:39:43Speaker 03

  Got a lot of good friends.

• 1:39:43Speaker 02

  Come on over.

• 1:39:44Speaker 03

  Sure. I would love to. Lucky to see you. A lot of good friends that have trained there. A lot of people don't realize how much of Army Medical, pretty much all of Army Medical is out of Fort Sam Houston, BAMC, all that in San Antonio.

• 1:39:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, this we set up outside is during the day and we call it our Invincible Spirit Festival. So I'll visit the hospital and then I come outside, play a concert. We have food, moon bounces for the kids, rock climbing walls. You know, I mean, we set up a festival outside. So they look forward to it every year. Come on over and see what we're doing.

• 1:40:17Speaker 03

  We would love to help out with that. That'd be awesome. I'd love to.

• 1:40:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, because we would put out, I mean, even our post, if we can help with any of that, let us know. That's one space we want. Stay in touch with my team. Then they know that's, I have a concert in, at the Marine Corps Air Station in Miramar in California on the 15th and then on the 17th, I'm in San Antonio.

• 1:40:40Speaker 03

  Dan Band.

• 1:40:41Speaker 02

  The band is, it's a rockin' band. Yeah.

• 1:40:43Speaker 03

  Is up the name though?

• 1:40:44Speaker 02

  Which is damn bad. Yeah, it's really good.

• 1:40:46Speaker 05

  That's still just like your passions, just the music side of things.

• 1:40:49Speaker 02

  The music is, is, that's kind of my escape. Yeah. You know, it's really, you know, I don't go play golf. I don't go on, on trips. Um, other than for the mission. And so when I'm playing a concert, that's really my, that's my release. You know, I pay the band. Uh, I've had this band for over 20 years. I, I play for free and that's, it's just part of the mission, you know?

• 1:41:16Speaker 05

  That's awesome. And then if we can, just a quick shout out to your son, Matt, cause that's where you guys connect really. Cause that last album he did that you didn't know about?

• 1:41:27Speaker 02

  Well, like, yeah, my son was, uh, he was a great musician and great composer. You know, he was, he was my number two drummer. So if my guy couldn't play, I would always ask Mac to sit in and play with us. He was just really exceptionally good. There's a picture of him over there when he's nine years old with his drumsticks. When I, it's the first day I put him on the drum set. Uh, it's, it's over there and I took a picture of him. Uh, he became just a great drummer, went to USC music school, wrote a lot of music. Um, ended up working for the foundation, writing music for the foundation.

• 1:42:08Speaker 02

  Um, he got very, very sick and, uh, with, with, uh, a rare cancer called cordoma. And he fought it for.

• 1:42:24Speaker 02

  He fought it for five and a half years and, uh,

• 1:42:28Speaker 02

  in the last year of his life, he hadn't been thinking about music at all. And he said, Dad, there's a piece of music I wrote in college. I never finished it and I've been thinking about it. And I think I'd like to try to finish it. And he was paralyzed from the chest down from the cancer. He was in a hospital bed.

• 1:42:50Speaker 02

  And he finished a piece of music. They ended up going to the studio, recording it with an orchestra. You can see it at Max Sinise YouTube. You can see the recording sessions for the first record. He called the record Resurrection and Revival. He ended up doing a whole album, ten, ten pieces of music. And he, and the album went to press the week that he died. So he never got to see that album. But that album, that's a picture of my grandfather and his great-grandfather on the cover. And one of the things Mac did for the foundation was kind of resurrect and revive things in my archive, old photographs

• 1:43:31Speaker 02

  that I have from World War I, World War II. And he loved that picture of my grandfather from World War I. And he, he brought it back to life and put it on the cover. And he brought that piece of music that he wrote in college back to life, you know, resurrected it and revived it. After he died, I started to find all this other music that he wrote. So that's when I did Resurrection and Revival Part Two. And then, believe it or not, I started to find even more after I finished that record. So we're putting the finishing touches on Resurrection and Revival Part Three right now. And that'll be available in June. Thirty-one

• 1:44:16Speaker 02

  pieces of music are on this record. Wow. I thought I found everything he wrote when I, when I did the second record. But then I found all these little things and just all these melodies they created. And so we've taken them and brought, brought them to life. And it's, I was listening to it on the way over here today. And it's, it's great. You can download both Resurrection and Revival and Resurrection and Revival Part Two. You can buy the albums, the vinyls, all the proceeds. Go to the Gary Sinise Foundation. Because that's what Mac wanted. He said, Dad, I want to make some vinyls if we ever sell them. I want the proceeds to go to the foundation.

• 1:44:59Speaker 01

  And where can people find that if they want to buy the vinyls or anything?

• 1:45:01Speaker 02

  The vinyls, right at garysinisefoundation.org.

• 1:45:04Speaker 01

  Perfect.

• 1:45:05Speaker 02

  The vinyls are available. We've sold over 9,000 copies, you know. People buy them, they don't even have a record player. But, but it's, you know, they buy the album and then they go get a record player because the, the music is very special. When you wa- when you watch the YouTube videos, there's a piece called Arctic Circles. And it's an orchestral piece that Mac wrote. That's the piece that he was thinking about that he never finished in college. And, uh, he finished it and it's stunning. It's a stunningly beautiful piece. That led to a whole album. Then I found more and now I found even more. So between all three albums, it's about 60 pieces of music.

• 1:45:50Speaker 01

  So what?

• 1:45:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. That he created.

• 1:45:52Speaker 01

  When does the third one drop and where it will also in the same location?

• 1:45:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, you guys are getting a scoop. I haven't told anybody about it. So that, that third album is coming out in June. Yeah, we're gonna have it, it goes to press next week. So we're, you know, we got a couple of months where they're, they'll print it and get it all ready. You know, get all the artwork done and everything like that. And then it'll, it'll be available on our website on, uh, in early June.

• 1:46:23Speaker 01

  Thanks, brother. Any last pieces of wisdom for the audience out there before we close this out?

• 1:46:29Speaker 02

  I always, I always say, um,

• 1:46:33Speaker 02

  that while we, we can, I, I believe that we can never do enough for the men and women to serve our country, protect our cities, you know, run into burning buildings, try to save people they don't know, all these different things. We can never do enough for them, but we can always try to do a little more. And that's what I'm trying to do here is just find ways that we can continue to do more, that we can continue to inspire young people, uh, and motivate young people to learn a little bit more about.

• 1:47:12Speaker 02

  Why it's important that we have defenders out there protecting our country, you know, and that we're lucky to have. So, all you veterans here, you know, I really, uh, my, my hat's off to you. I thank, I thank you. This foundation was created because of, you know, what you've done for our country and, and, uh, I don't take it for granted.

• 1:47:36Speaker 01

  Truly appreciate it. But then you, it's talking to you guys. All you, thank all you guys. Hey, let's not even cook.

• 1:47:47Speaker 01

  You got a whole crowd over.

• 1:47:50Speaker 01

  Don't embarrass me in front of Gary.

• 1:47:54Speaker 02

  You want to close this out?

• 1:47:55Speaker 01

  Thank you guys for joining the unsubscribe podcast. I was joined today by Eli Doubletap, the fat electrician, Gary Sneeze, Brandon Herrera, myself, Donut Operator. Thank you so much for being here.

• 1:48:06Speaker 02

  We love you. Yeah.

• 1:48:09Speaker 02

  Honored is to sit next to the fat electrician.

• 1:48:51Speaker 00

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