The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Run Robbie Run by Jon Pepper

Run Robbie Run by Jon Pepper https://www.amazon.com/Run-Robbie-Jon-Pepper/dp/B0H116JL73 Jonpepperbooks.com Indelable.com Jon Pepper's political farce Run Robbie Run is a razor-sharp satire of an American political party at war with itself— and it's wickedly funny. Set during an election year nomination process, the novel follows two spectacularly unfit candidates: Dewey Fenwick, an 87-year-old former president who can barely stay conscious, and his successor Robbie Crowe, a lazy, self-absorbed billionaire who stumbles into the nomination without earning a single vote. Pepper's comic gifts are immediately on display. The opening scene, in which campaign aides frantically try to rouse Dewey from a Golden Girls dream before television journalists arrive, is a masterclass in political absurdity. But the novel's real engine is Robbie — a man so thoroughly unprepared for the presidency that when asked about his vision for America, he offers a few lyrics from What a Wonderful World and tells his aide to write it down. The satire cuts in all directions. The party machine, corrupt billionaire puppet-masters, a fawning media, campus radicals planning "mostly peaceful" firebombings at the Chicago convention — no faction escapes unscathed. The fictional surveillance program "America's Just Rewards," essentially a social credit system dressed up in loyalty-points marketing, provides the novel's chilling undertow beneath all the comedy. The supporting cast is superb: Dinda, the idealistic campaign intern who slowly realizes the party has no actual principles; Senator Hiram Fry, a straight-talking old warhorse who delivers the novel's most sobering warnings; Lady Janice, the former First Lady desperate to return to the White House; and Marty, Robbie's long-suffering aide whose deadpan exasperation carries the humor throughout. Pepper writes with the confidence of someone who has watched Washington up close, and it shows. Run Robbie Run is sharp, fast, and bracingly cynical — a comic novel that lands its punches because the absurdity never strays too far from reality. About the author Jon Pepper's six novels form distinctive set of modern satirical fiction—mainly focused on business, politics, and popular culture. They have won praise from critics and readers alike for their humor, insight, clear prose, and brisk pacing. Jon's newest novel, "Run Robbie Run," debuts June 16, 2026. It's a fast, sharply comic political satire that aims its barbs at the modern campaign machine, media incentives, and the wealthy “do-gooder” class. One review observed: "What makes this work is the voice: brisk, confident, and unapologetically satirical. Pepper writes with a comedian’s timing and a columnist’s eye for hypocrisy." "Run Robbie Run" is Jon's sixth novel. It follows his five-book series, "Fossil Feuds," centered on the wealthy Crowe family's New York-based energy empire. Intra-family warfare, executive rivalries, crosstown competitors, government regulators, and climate activists threaten to bring it all down. The Crowe family's battles are sometimes petty, sometimes mean, but they're always lively, amusing, and deeply human.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries and motivators. Get ready, strap yourself in, keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now here's your host, Chris Voss.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  Hi, I'm Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, it makes official welcome to the big show. For 18 years, we've been bringing the oldest living podcast in existence that still does one to two new shows every single day that we publish for you guys because we care about our audience. And of course, we're also driving you wonderful authors and minds that you can binge on every day and constantly just find new stuff that you can enjoy. But in the meantime, help us become the oldest living podcast in existence that still lives. Give us a year or two, but we need you to refer your family, friends and relatives to your five person downline you must have to be part of the MLM that is the Chris Voss Show. Are we the first MLM podcast? Maybe someone should have met one of those. Anyway, go to goodreads.com for Chris Voss, linkedin.com, youtube.com and facebook.com all forward slash Chris

• 1:26Speaker 01

  Voss, one word. Today, we had amazing young man on the show. We're going to talk about his books. He's a multi book author and written a big series and different things. We're featuring his sixth book that's standalone, but with some of the characters from his original five series. It is entitled Run Robbie Run by John Pepper. Sounds like it. Sounds like the second book to Forrest Gump or something. Doing jokes. John Pepper's newest novel is his six. It follows a five part series fossil feuds, which centered on the bickering descendants of industrialist Homer Crowe and their battles with politicians, activists and competitors and one another. Missy's Twitch released in 2024, won widespread praise for its entertainment

• 2:10Speaker 01

  and educational value. His previous books were recommended by Kirkus Reviews and the New York Post. A native of Michigan, he's won numerous awards as a national writer and business columnist for Detroit News. He's also a radio talk show host, president of a media firm focused on nanotechnology, an executive for energy and automotive companies. He's president of the Strategic Communications Agency, indelible, which he founded in 2014. Is that supposed to be indelible? Or is that?

• 2:44Speaker 02

  It is.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Okay. Wasn't sure if that was supposed to be ink and someone spelled wrong. So welcome to the show. How are you, John?

• 2:51Speaker 02

  Good. How are you doing, Chris?

• 2:52Speaker 01

  I'm doing excellent. It's wonderful to have you. Give us your dot coms. Where can people find out more about you on the interwebs?

• 2:59Speaker 02

  The first one is jonpepperbooks.com. J O N, no H and pepper like salt and pepper. jonpepperbooks.com. I also have indelible, I N D E L A B L E. It trips people up all the time, but indelable.com. Of course, I'm on Facebook with a author page there. You can find me there. Also on X, my name, nothing, nothing fancy about it. John underscore pepper at X. Those are the main ones, Chris.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  And indelible, I guess I was confused. Indelible is the name of the company.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  It is. It is indeed. Yeah.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  I was reading the setup as the name of it when you said president of the strategic communications agency.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  You can't believe how hard we struggled to come up with a name that would, that would confuse everybody and continues to do so apparently.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  So you did well. So I think, I think someone just should have put a semicolon in there somewhere or something. But we got it now. So give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside your book?

• 3:57Speaker 02

  The book is a satirical look at, at politics and business coming together in America. And I think readers will certainly recognize not exactly these specific characters, but people who act like the characters in my book. It takes a satirical look at three weeks in a presidential campaign. That is the weeks preceding the national convention for a political party. I don't name any political parties by name in the book, but people are going to get a sense of who's who in the zoo when they read through it.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Who in the zoo?

• 4:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a fairly sizable zoo, as you well know, Chris.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've seen that movie.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. So the, it really focuses on Robbie Crowe, who's a, the protagonist in my fossil feud series. He's a descendant of Homer Crowe, a great industrialist from the early 20th century. He's grown up with wealth and privilege in New York. He's been failing forward upward his entire life. He failed as the CEO of his family power company. He's failed as the head of his family foundation, the Crow East to for the greater good. He's failing at everything. And yet his name recognition is important when they need somebody in a hurry to run for president, that when the nominee, the 87 year old nominee Dewey Fenwick becomes comatose, they need a replacement fast as the convention approaches. They recruit

• 5:15Speaker 02

  Robbie. Robbie is seduced by the possibility of all the perks and privilege and the prestige that goes along, power that goes with it, of course. And also he sees it as a bit of personal revenge. Look at, look at me. I'm, I, look at me, people, all you doubters out there who thought I couldn't do anything. Here I am at the, at the top of the heap. So he, he gets seduced into it. And as he gets into it though, he finds this is maybe a little bit more than he can chew and he could be in over his head. Involved with some dangerous characters who are behind the agenda for the party. And it all plays out in a, I think in a pretty interesting way. So there's some, there's a lot of comedy. There's a lot of suspense and it ends in a way that suggests there will be a sequel, which indeed will be. Yes.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  Ah, so there's a sequel plan. Do you have an anticipated release date for it?

• 6:04Speaker 02

  I would hope next fall. I'd like to have, I'd like, I have two more books planned in this series, one for next year and one for the following year. And I'd like to have the third one come out before the election of 2028. That's the idea because this would cover, the three books would cover a presidential campaign and the election and what happens immediately after. The first one's a good introduction and you don't have to read my previous five books, although if you'd like to, please do, but it's not necessary to pick up Run Robbie Run.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  And how did you choose? I imagine there's an endless supply of October surprises and, and different shenanigans that go on with things. How did you plan what to put in this book? Right now in 20, you may have written this before 2026 and AI really kicked off. I'm not sure, but is there any AI issues in the book? Cause I guess we're going to see some in this one.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  There, there are some AI issues in this, in this one. That's what you asked about AI. Yeah. Yeah. That's the centerpiece in some ways of, of the book. That's, that's the dramatic and somewhat malevolent undertow to the book is that the party bosses want to introduce a program, a loyalty program for America called America's Just Rewards. The, the party boss is a guy named Benny Barbou and he has a, a chain of coffee shops around the country called Cafe Che. And they feature, they feature posters of Che Guevara and they have a lot of radical chic sort of ideas. And they have their own loyalty program called counterculture where people can, can rack up points to get a free mochaccino or

• 7:40Speaker 02

  a breakfast burrito. And so what they've decided to do is try to create a loyalty program for the country. And that's, this is where people would be getting points for their behavior, for how they, what they post online and what they don't and so forth. This is actually not too far off from a couple of things. There, there's one is the trends that are going on in this country, Chris, where there's so much gathering of intelligence about people. First of all, from businesses, people are getting everything. They're surveilled constantly. And you've seen this, we all see the, every time you, you have to sign up for something. Cookies, essential cookies only. What are, I don't know what essential cookies are. You might.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Chocolate chip cookies.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  I would, I put that in my top, top three. That's for sure. So you got, you got, yes. And so you got essential cookies and you've got terms and conditions and, and things are following you constantly. You're getting, you're getting text. And so all this information is gathered, companies trade it, they sell it, they buy and sell it. And you add that to what the government is also collecting. You've got, you've got an incredible trove of information out there. Imagine, imagine this, Chris, that if you, if you collect it and you put all that data together, how somebody might use it, who might not have your best interests in mind.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. I stole a Snickers bar when I was a kid from the store.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  Oh, we know that.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. Damn it. If you know that, then you know everything. But my mom did make me return it and I was crying and had to do the right thing. And that was a good lesson for a parent to teach a child. But yeah, it's, there's a lot, there's a lot that can go on. But there's always that October surprise joke that there's always going to be something that comes out of the woodwork, runs in. I, that's, that's one thing that keeps a lot of people, I think, from running for office anymore is the extreme vetting they're going to do. And then how they can take that you got a hangnail in 1972 and went to the doctor for it, that you have a. Disease of syphilis or some spindle.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  And you're like, oh, hey, whatever. He cheated on his wife in nineteen seventy five. Therefore, he's probably a horrible politician who couldn't govern and lead a country.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  That that Snickers bar could come back to haunt you if you were president, no question.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  I think I'm still wearing it because I'm wearing a lot of the sugar I used to eat. So that's so it does come back to haunt me. What really comes back to haunt me is Taco Bell buffet night, but that's another.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  Oh, well, watch out for the Cheesecake Factory now. That's the.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, the cheesecake. You're watching this, folks. It's it's September of twenty fifth of two thousand twenty six. You can Google that Obama joke. People watch their videos like ten, twenty years from now. They've been up for twenty years and they're literally still watching the iPhone two review video and then they make fun of it and they go, that's not the price of the iPhone two. It's five dollars on Amazon. You're like,

• 10:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, dude.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, look, look at the date on the frickin video. Yeah. So we have to sometimes we have to timestamp our references. So people know what hell we were going through at the time and when they're living in their Terminator AI Hellscape down below in cities of the sewers and Terminators two, they know we're referencing. So what what now is this book different than the series, the five part series that you had before? I know you took some of the characters to think from it. Is this different or is those that five part also a political spin on book?

• 11:13Speaker 02

  It's there's a lot of politics to it, Chris, to the previous books, but they're mostly about a company.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 11:19Speaker 02

  They're they're about it's about rich people. I try. I take a lot of satirical jabs at things and I try to punch up, not down.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  We make fun of poor people's kind of, you know,

• 11:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  low hanging fruit, right?

• 11:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not much fun. I think the.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  Unless they're not gonna sue you like Elon Musk if you say something bad about him.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  That's right. We'll just keep that between us. We don't mention it on this podcast. But yeah, the previous five books center on the on the Crow Power Company. The first one called A Turn in Fortune is it's about a struggle for the top for power at the Crow Power Company. You've got a chairman who's a blue blood. You've got a CEO who's a blue collar kind of guy who worked his way up and the blue collar CEO is getting a lot of credit for the company's success. He gets his mug on the cover of Fortune magazine, which just incites the chairman into a fit, a rage of jealousy and ends up being a big power struggle between the two of them. The town, the town and the company were not big enough for the two of them. So somebody had to. That's the that's the story. It's very funny. I think people seem to enjoy it.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  And and people probably need some entertainment about politics because politics right now is kind of dark and sinister and serious and having some fun with it. What was that one movie? Was it called Dave?

• 12:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  I think it was a comedy. Yeah, Kevin Kline is a few people that they've done some funny movies about running for president and stuff. And I think we all kind of like to giggle at those things because we're sick of the alternative.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's kind of what I try to do is get behind the scenes on this stuff. I've I've been to the conventions. I've met presidents. I've interviewed some presidents. I've met foreign leaders as well.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  And in my corporate life, I was in the I was in the C suite. I was behind the curtain there and seeing things that I couldn't believe were going on. Because I had been a journalist. I was a business columnist and I covered business and politics for the Detroit News for ten years and I'd been a national reporter before that, traveling, traveling the US and and Europe, covering various events. And so now I get behind the scenes in the corporation. I'm thinking, what, how, these people are nuts. Why how'd they let me in here? I've been on the outside scratching to get in and get information. And as a journalist, you're part you're putting together little scraps of information to try to create a a big picture and it's hard. But once you're inside and you see what's going on, it's it's a very eye opening experience.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  I tried to take people into those suites and get on the corporate jets and stuff like that. And what's life like? And and what I've found, I think this is interesting for for your listeners here, Chris, is that it's true. Money doesn't buy by happiness. It buys comfort, but people are not any less anxious if they're super wealthy.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:01Speaker 02

  I've seen this as throughout my my career. They still have the same anxieties about, do I have enough? How do people look at me? Do I deserve this? There's a lot of guilt involved. There's a lot of anxiety about ill gotten gains, things like that. I explore the the psyches of people. I when I write and I have passages in my books about the various characters, I sometimes use their inside voice. What are they thinking when they're in a scene? And you get a pretty good idea of that when you're up close with folks.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. With your newspaper background and interviewing background, you you you've probably had a lot of experience that you can utilize through the book knowledge on some of these different characters, help build them out. Was there any one, I don't want to put you on the spot, but you know, some people like being put on the spot. Was there any one political person, maybe you spent a lot of time around that maybe you geared after one of the or was it more like maybe a compilation of different?

• 14:55Speaker 02

  It's they're all compilations. All the characters are composite, but I understand them all internally in some way. Because you gotta you gotta know your characters and the only way you know them is to put a little piece of yourself in there. So I'm as probably as goofed up as some of the characters I write about. That's just the that's just the way it goes. But I did. I saw very different kinds of characters. I interviewed Jimmy Carter and he was a very prickly kind of guy. And I was, he was having a party at down in Atlanta at Emory University before one of the conventions. And he was making a comeback at the time. He had been out of the spotlight since he had left office in nineteen eighty, early to eighty one. Now, this is nineteen eighty eight. And so I I saw him standing in the

• 15:36Speaker 02

  party by himself after I'd interviewed him earlier. And I said, so how's it feel to be out here in the in the spotlight? I have the spotlight on you again. And he just looks at me, goes, I usually am in the spotlight when I throw a potty. And I thought, oh, gee, nice talking to you, Jimmy.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 15:54Speaker 02

  I think I'll go get the hors d'oeuvres now. So that was.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Has he always been that way? Because he seems like such a charitable, sweet guy in the P O.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  The houses for, what's it called?

• 16:04Speaker 02

  Habitat for Humanity.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  No, I think at heart, he's a decent guy, but he's just a prickly personality.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Huh.

• 16:10Speaker 02

  And another time I was I was going to interview George W. Bush. He just started his campaign and he came into Detroit and he went to a park in southwest Detroit where he was gonna hit the Hispanic community down there and show his prowess in speaking Spanish. I thought this would be interesting. I'll just watch him for a while. And then I was gonna ride with him in a bus out to a out to an event where he was speaking. And I thought, I'll just watch him and I'll stand on the sidelines. I'm not gonna interrupt him while he's talking to voters. And so I'm standing there and he's talking to somebody and the person leaves and he looks over at me, sees my name badge and walks over and says, Hey, John, George W. Bush. I understand we're gonna be going out to out to Livonia together in a little while. I look forward to it. I think now that's a personable guy.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:54Speaker 02

  Whatever his presidency, that's a whole nother matter. But I would just say, you contrast Carter's reaction, which is kind of kiss my, you know what, kiss my grits, I guess. And Bush, he was just very personable. And I've seen him subsequently in other other settings. And I think he he really is a personable guy.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think he's a kind of a big hearty guy. He did really great as vice president that Dick Cheney presidency. It was really amazing. I voted for that crap, too. That's just so embarrassing.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  He was embarrassed subsequently thereafter. But, you know, he he can dodge shoes. So he's really good at that. I was impressed.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  Yes, that's right.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Slow as he is, that he was able to dodge those shoes in Iraq. So.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Dodge the shoes. People who are in Dick Cheney's hunting party couldn't dodge the bullets quite a lot.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  Wow, you just took my joke and next level that wow. Yeah, that's true. That's true. It's tough even being Dick Cheney's attorney, man. It's tough. That that retainer is your face. Oh.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Retainer is your face full of lead.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Okay, I'll reduce the fee. How's that?

• 18:02Speaker 01

  Or increase it for that matter. I would increase it after that.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  I think so, yeah.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  Look, I forgive you, Dick, but your hourly just doubled.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, now you gotta pay for pain and suffering.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, that probably is would be the wrong move knowing Dick Cheney, because then he's just gonna invite you on a hunting trip.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  So you might want to.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  Man overboard here.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Man overboard. You're holding it by the legs, Dick.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Oh, you see that? Oh, there. Anyway, what what? I think you kind of talked a little about your experience and experiencing these folks in real life and all their stuff. What what makes you want to write about politics and and use this spin as opposed to maybe just writing a novel about, I don't know, vampires or some shit?

• 18:44Speaker 02

  I I don't. I thought when I wrote about politics, it was about vampires.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 18:49Speaker 02

  So there's so there's that.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  So we've got a little bit of the, what was that series the girls love with the vampires and werewolves, the Twilight series? We got a little bit Twilight in the book?

• 18:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. Actually, this is stuff that I know that I didn't. You go you go with what you know. I don't know vampires that well, although I worked for one or two. I would say that. Yeah. I worked for a blood sucking vampire here and there. I'm sure you must have yourself, but.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  They trained you well.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. So but I I know this stuff. I I know business, politics is what I spent my life in. And so I just write what I know. And and to me, it's it's fascinating. I'm a news junkie. I don't know about you. I think you probably are.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:26Speaker 02

  And that's that's what drives it. I and I have, I think I bring some insights to it that I wouldn't bring to other issues. Like vampires, for instance.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  But not to say I wouldn't make that an October surprise sometime.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe you should do that as your second book, Vampires Running for Office in America or something, the Twilight Extensions series or something.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, people might not see that as satire, though.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. As long as it's got a bunch of hot guys walking around with their shirts off, I'm sure you can get women to go see that movie.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  Well, this is what my wife keeps telling me to do is she wants me to write that. She wants me to write a bodice stripper. Why can't you just write something that that has the hot guy on the cover and has a big romance and all that? And just do the guy did in American Fiction.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Well, is she is she aware that if you did write about a stripper, you'd have to do some research?

• 20:15Speaker 02

  I actually have done some stripper research.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  You told her that?

• 20:18Speaker 02

  Well, I did because back in my back in my suburban Detroit writing days, I was I was assigned to write a story about a historical designation for a building that housed a strip joint out near Metro Airport.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  Let me write this down because this is a great story you made up.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  In case we need this after Spearmint Rhino.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  I went out. I went out to the out to the strip club and I I had to interview a couple strippers about it. Then one of them said, I'm really into history and stuff. So this is really cool. I should add, I should add too, Chris.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:54Speaker 02

  I was also assigned, I was also assigned, some of these assignments were given to me.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it wasn't your choice.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  I had nothing to do with it.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  They clearly had to turn your arm behind your back and twist it a little bit.

• 21:05Speaker 02

  Every, which every, my arm is still twisted like a pretzel. Yeah, both of them. But, but this one was, I was asked, I was told to go get a story about Hugh Hefner getting married.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  For the first time, well, second time, I guess, but in the modern era. And so I, I was talking to Playboy people about it and they said, okay, here's what we want you to do. Come out to the mansion in Holby Hills in LA and come to the Playmate of the Year party. That's where Kimberly Conrad is, his fiance is going to be honored as Playmate of the Year. And you can interview Mr. Hefner and Ms. Conrad prior to the event. So I had to go get a tuxedo, rent a tuxedo, a very shabby one, by the way. But the, the pimply faced boys in the tuxedo shop who were taking my order were, wanted to touch the hem of my garment because I was going to the Playmate of the Year party.

• 22:01Speaker 02

  Cause they kept asking, where are you going? Is this for a wedding? Is this for a graduation? What is this for? And I said, for the Playmate of the Year party. And they were just shooing. They were just so excited about it.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's where you sniff it after, when the, when the tuxedo comes back.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was a.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  This smells like the grotto, damn it.

• 22:18Speaker 02

  It, it could. I spent a little time with the grotto, not in, not underwater, but I was there.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  You were researching, yes.

• 22:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it was, it was, it was actually a very funny story because, that I ended up with. Because I asked, I asked Hefner, I said, this is it? Are you going to be monogamous now? This is, there's no fooling around. And, and Kimberly is staring at him like, come on.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  This is the question.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, what is it? And he's going, he's humming and hawing and she's getting very, very upset. So it was, I ran the tape and just kept that, got that little interview on there and it made a very, very entertaining story.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it looks like they were married for 21 years. 1989 to 2010?

• 22:58Speaker 02

  Is that how long they were married? I know the, his most recent one, the one he was married to last is, has just come out fairly recently. Again, here we are, October 2026, but yeah, complaining about all kinds of stuff.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I really, I mean, that's just such an embarrassment to his legacy.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  It, it's so funny. I, I remember watching, they did a reality show with those last set of girls. And then the one he married, and you saw how they're behaving and, and now they're trying to spin this history that, oh, I was just a nun and whatever, shut the fuck up. I get so sick of this bullshit. Yeah, it's, I think it says here on the thing, they were married 89 to 2010. So that, that would have been 21 years. That's a, that's a good old boy.

• 23:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. It was, it was interesting. They had a big presentation after I interviewed him. And they had a huge tent on the backyard and they showed all these pictures of her basically naked on the screen. And she sat there with her mom and her mom had her arm around her girl's shoulder and they were crying and how, how sweet it all was. All the naked pictures for 200 people out there at the backyard.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  What's that red snapper doing over there in that picture? I don't know what that means. Anyway, and that would be kind of weird to be hanging out with someone. Their nude pictures are right there. Yeah, I grew up with Playboy and, and I, I've been in love all my life with the, the two top ones. The blonde bombshell who was married to Tommy Lee. I don't know.

• 24:25Speaker 02

  Pamela Anderson?

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Pamela Anderson, Pamela Anderson, she ruined my whole life for making me attracted to blondes and big boobies. And, and the other one, I can't remember, but I met her once and she was so wonderful. But she was in a lot of movies too. She, she originally was found by Prince as a dancer and dated Prince for a long time. She's on the movies like Scream. But yeah, that would be weird to be at a thing where you're just looking at a person and their picture, their hoo-ha. And they're looking at a picture in the picture. They're like, this is maybe more information than I want to be witness that I'm witnessing right here.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  It was, it was really, it was really strange to, to watch them both teary eyed over all these naked pictures in front of all these people. I, they, they had, they had a different sense of what was propriety and what I might've thought coming from little Detroit.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. At least though you weren't on the penthouse, there was a while there that really turned me off where they were doing the golden showers at penthouse. And that was like, I was just like, seriously, can we just make a separate magazine for this? Cause I, I'm really none of that. I, I just can't figure out, it's like foot fetish. I'm not judging anybody, but I am. It's like all the parts of a woman and, and you want the foot part? Like, yeah. It's like, it's like going to Disneyland and you just visit the hot dog vendor and leave or something.

• 25:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, you got the, you got the wrong end of this.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're, go on the rides, eh? They're fun. Anyway, so back to your book. And now you, so we're talking about a, maybe a second one coming out. Do we want to brush over your other series? Maybe a little bit more, give some in-depth to that before we go?

• 25:55Speaker 02

  Sure. A Turn and Fortune, I mentioned, that's the first one is written in 2018. 2020, it came out with Airs on Fire where Robbie Crowe is battling with his wife. They're getting divorced and she sees that he's about to cost them a fortune. So she pushes him out of the family and out of the company. And it's a very entertaining corporate satire. The third book, third book is Green Goddess where Lindsay now running the company is challenged by activists to come up with some solution to transition away from fossil fuels. And is having difficulty because everything she wants to try is actually blocked by environmentalists. So, but she has got a research project going in fusion energy.

• 26:38Speaker 02

  And I don't know if you've had any discussion about this on your, on your program, but fusion is this kind of holy grail of, of energy. That is that scientists have been trying forever to, to come up with fusion and perfect it and make it useful. And they say, the, the, the joke about it is that fusion energy is 20, just 20 years away and it always will be. Cause they just can't quite, they can't quite figure it out. But there's a, there's a lot of money going into it though. Big corporations, big money has moved into it. They're trying to push it hard. And then the, the fourth one is Missy's Twitch about a young woman in the Crowe family who has come up with climate anxiety to such a degree that she's developed this strange twitch.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  Oh wow, I thought that was from the crack addiction.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  No, this, this one, this case, it was, it was caused by climatosis.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Oh, climatosis.

• 27:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, so.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  You know what's funny is we had a guy on the show yesterday who wrote a novel, and this is yesterday. Maybe there's something going on we need to figure out. But he wrote a, he wrote a novel about a child who is allergic to anything that causes global warming and they'll get like physically sick.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  You guys must be on the same page on that one.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  Not exactly, cause I, cause I, I take it, I take a, a more of a skeptical view in, in cli-fi or climate. I'm more of a skeptic. I mean, I, I, I did a lot of research, read a lot of books, read a lot of papers, looked at a lot of testimony before Congress to see what was going on. And then I looked at things like Al Gore's, Al Gore's predictions. Not, not which have come true, by the way.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  I should revisit that movie. I haven't seen it in a million years, but Al Gore being wrong? Are you sure?

• 28:18Speaker 02

  It's hard to believe. He was right about one thing.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  Was he?

• 28:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was very enriching. He got, he got wealthy. Oh, he got wealthy going around selling this stuff, but it's just flat out wrong.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  I'll have to revisit that movie or see if Claude can get the facts for me and then I can figure that out. But yeah, I, I think, I, I always love how the people who are flying around, I, I think someone did a study on his house. I think it was probably Washington Post, New York Times or somebody. But they did a study of how much this giant house causes to operate fossil fuel wise. And just lighting bill alone for this giant mansion and then flying on our rear, Lear jet. These guys are consuming what whole states?

• 29:04Speaker 02

  And this whole thing is about, is about carbon dioxide emissions. Well, his, his dioxide, CO2 emissions are off the charts. They're like in the top 1.1%.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you're flying private everywhere, come on, man. You got a private jet, flying private. Don't lecture me on the environment.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, you fly private out because it's so urgent for you to tell other people how to live.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love how rich people, it's the same in Hollywood too. Rich people who don't really know anything beyond their skill level of career going, I think everyone needs to tighten their belts to survive. Except for me, of course, but the rest of you, basic bitch Luddites need to do better. And you're like, why don't you fuck off? But yeah, that's a whole new book. Yeah, I'll have to go revisit that. Cause yeah, it's, it's always interesting to me. I think someone did a fossil fuel consumption on, what's her name? Not Shania Twain, but Taylor Swift. Because she runs around on multiple Lear jets and stuff and, and she's supposed to support that sort of thing. I think that one gal who's, I, I don't know if she's from Germany or Austria or someplace, Loretta Goldberg, I'm not getting.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  Oh, Greta, Greta Thunberg?

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Greta Thunberg, thank you. At least I got some, a little bit of respect for her. She took a boat over here, which still uses. I think it was electric boat. Maybe I shouldn't throw.

• 30:23Speaker 02

  It, it wasn't a rowboat, that's for sure.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 30:26Speaker 02

  One, one time, one time I was flying out to Las Vegas, out to your neck of the woods. And I was going to go with an executive and the executive's going to give some sort of talk about how we need to be responsible companies and watch our, our carbon dioxide emissions. I get on the jet, the executive isn't there. And I said, what the, what's going on? We took off and we flew to an airport. So we flew around for 15 minutes and landed in the airport five miles away and picked them up.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  Do you know how much?

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Was he in Prump or something? We know what he's doing if he was.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  So it's crazy. But yeah, so a lot of these rules are made for other people.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  The main thing is if you can kind of virtue signal of how, how much you thought about it and how much you care, that's all that's really important.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I do. That's what I, I, I tell the homeless that I care about them as I step over them and maybe spit on them as I walk by. No, don't do that, folks.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  No.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Don't do that. When I'm downstairs, when I'm downtown photographing, I always buy them several lunches and hook up a few people to pay my dues for going down there and taking out of that environment, my photographs. And I usually, if you go to my sites, folks, you can see taking several photographs of homeless to try and, to try and raise awareness.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Should help them. Yeah, yeah.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  I had them, I, in New York City, where I lived for 18 years, I had, they were everywhere.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  That's because no one can afford the fucking real estate there.

• 31:56Speaker 02

  They were, it was a little, you didn't have to raise awareness about homeless. Let me put it that way in New York. Everyone knew it. But I think for a lot of folks, like I'm down here in Miami, you don't, you don't see it nearly as much. And you don't see the encampments like you saw in New York.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's good. Probably because the alligators get the folks that are out there in the streets. So.

• 32:15Speaker 02

  Well, that could be, that could be. Yeah.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's the one thing that keeps me from Florida, you know, that, that days when you just go in your backyard and you're like, where's the dog? And then there's an alligator there in your pool or some shit. I've seen those, I've seen those videos. I'm like, I'm staying over on the side.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. No, I, I, I like to swim regularly. I swim pretty much every day, but I do.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Check the pool?

• 32:40Speaker 02

  I do it in the pool. Yeah, I'm not going in the bay, I'm not going in the marina.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  Never go into the water at night, basically. Even in your own pool. I never, ever, when I was a kid, we used, we went and saw Jaws and my buddy, my buddy who I was friends with as a kid, his parents had a pool in California and we went and saw Jaws. And after that, I was convinced that somehow a shark could somehow get through the system and get into the pool and eat me at any given moment. It's one of those irrational fears.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  I know, I know. After seeing the Wizard of Oz when I was a little kid, I was sure our house was going to be twirling around in the sky.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. How does that? And some crazy lady on a bike, two flying by as your house is going?

• 33:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was my babysitter, I think.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. That was why I don't live in Alabama. What is that? The areas where there's tornado alley?

• 33:32Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Why does, why are mobile homes even allowed in tornado alley?

• 33:36Speaker 02

  Well, they do, they do cause, they do cause tornadoes, scientists have shown.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 33:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  The mobile homes too?

• 33:43Speaker 02

  Mobile homes cause, cause tornadoes. Yes.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  Do they really? They just, they just attract them? If you're, if you're a person who has trauma and you're always attracting bad partners, that's kind of what's going on there?

• 33:54Speaker 02

  I, I don't know. We have to ask AI about this because there is definitely a symbiosis there between tornadoes and mobile homes.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  I'm against asking AI about that. I'm trying not to give it any ideas that can have to kill us. It probably already has enough. It's been trained on. But I don't want to give it any more ideas. I could wipe out these inferior humans with the tornado. Yeah, good idea. Thanks for bringing that up. I'm glad. I wasn't even thinking about that as the evil AI may become and turn on you, but thanks for the ideas.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  It is, it is, it is scary smart. I will say, I look, I use, I use AI all the time. I use it for everything, everything but my writing, but I do it plenty for research. It's just doing great for research.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  That's great research. But yeah, I don't want to give AI any ideas. In fact, I, I, we fed it everything about humans, right? We trained it on everything about humans. And in hindsight, I'm thinking, maybe we should just send it the good part of humanity, like the, the caring, the love, the, maybe the good things we do. Cause maybe tipping it off to what shitty humans nature.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  It's just going to give it ideas, man.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, they could get together with the other senators and say, we ought to do something about this.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  We need to do something about these inferior stupid humans and their dumb ass feelings and lack of logic. And they're always just run around being stupid. And they're just a plague, really, when it comes down to it. We'll just kill most of them off, keep a few to, they can work the lights and make sure we still have power.

• 35:26Speaker 02

  What if they start their own virtue signaling? They want to show that they're good machines, right?

• 35:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:30Speaker 02

  We're good computers. Yeah. One of the things I've found with rich people generally is once you make your pile, you start worrying about your reputation. Maybe once they gain power, then they start to want to be seen as benevolent.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. I hope, hopefully they would impose that trait of us. But a lot of times we get power, we're not benevolent. I think we can see that in 2026. And sometimes power, what is it? Well, these old adage, power corrupts.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  So we train it to be human. And now they're going to learn a powerful lesson and they're going to be smarter and bigger than us and have the ability to turn off the lights.

• 36:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  What could go wrong? Really?

• 36:06Speaker 02

  Nothing. It's, it's all in good hands. Just.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  I'm seriously just already accepted the fact that they're going to kill us eventually. Eventually. It's just on a long enough timeline, you know.

• 36:19Speaker 02

  Here's how we're lucky though, Chris. We're probably going to be dead anyway by that point. So count your lucky stars.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  That's true. I'm with all these Iran wars and crap going on. I, I just saw they put missile interceptor launchers at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. Cause, and then they put all the bases on readiness to not have, to have their own power. I don't know if you're aware of that. So they're expecting something from Iran possibly. But I don't think Florida's realized they put themselves on the Iran target map by Mar-a-Lago.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  I didn't move to, I didn't move to West Palm. So that helps. But the, no.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  It was good knowing you, John.

• 36:57Speaker 02

  Thank you. Thank you. I thought, I thought it's getting out of the cross here is moving out of New York City. Now here I am, you know.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, you walked right into it, man. That's the second White House. That place is ground zero. You know, Iran wants the whole family too. So that's, that's not good.

• 37:12Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. There's so, there's so much, so much chest beating going on right now. You don't know what's what. And I think some of that is, is a reaction to Trump saying after the midterms, he's gonna, he's gonna launch a war potentially. He's got, he got a war, but launch an offensive against Iran. So they're gonna, they're gonna beat their chest too and do the same kind of thing.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Iran or Florida does need a little bit of cleanup. If we get some of them bath salt, face eating people, that'd be great. All the Florida men.

• 37:40Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Anytime some weird ass shit happens, you could be like, that's, that's gotta be in Florida. That's Florida, man. That's gotta be. And then sure enough, oh, yeah, there it is. That's.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, it's, it's its own species. It's the weirdest stuff. And there are lots of channels on social media for that. Only in Florida, Florida.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  They should just call it America's Zoo. That's not nice. I know a lot of wonderful people like yourself in Florida. Well, I want.

• 38:07Speaker 02

  I don't take it personally, honestly. I, I got, I, I could be guilt by association with a lot of disruptive characters through my life. So Florida man's okay. That's just next on the list.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's if you haven't done that, then you really haven't lived. You gotta live on the edge sometimes. As we go out, John, we've had a lot of fun. I think half the show is your book and half of us just joking around and slapping jokes. But should be a good entertainment for the audience. And give us your final pitch out for people to pick up your books and dot coms.

• 38:36Speaker 02

  So I, my books are available on Amazon. They're also available through your local bookstores, all of them. And the name is John Pepper, J O N, not J O H N, J O N. We couldn't afford an H. We were, we were poor. And so John Pepper and the book is called, my most recent one is Run Robbie Run, which I urge you to pick up. I think it'd give you, giving people a laugh, some amusement about what's going on in our, our, our current life. And you'll recognize what's going on. One of the things I get about my books, I don't mean to digress too much here. I know you're closing out here, Chris, but I've had people call me and say, executives at companies where I've worked and also places I didn't and said, your books are not fiction. They're fact. Quit calling them fiction. Cause they're,

• 39:23Speaker 01

  So close to reality.

• 39:24Speaker 02

  So close to reality. So they're absurd, but they're, the absurdities are also very close to reality. So when you doubt, you can get a look at all the books very easily on Amazon. I've got an author page there, but also at my, my website, jonpepperbooks.com.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  Ah, there we go. There we go. Yeah. That's the truth is stranger than fiction, right? The absurdity of it?

• 39:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  But it's, it's sometimes the, the reality is, is more of a head turner than, than people can make up. I've certainly seen things in the last two years that I'm like, that even, like I've seen some AI stuff and some stuff that isn't real. It's just parody. But I've seen some stuff that like, for example, my Rush, my favorite Rush band, I love them, but they're touring and they're Canadians. And someone made a fake post for their tour that Donald Trump had written a big extensive hate mail thing that he does there on whatever that is he owns, banning them from the country because they're immigrants. And, and it looked like a real post. And I remember reading it thinking, that can't be real, but it really could actually. I wouldn't be surprised at this point.

• 40:28Speaker 02

  You're, you're right. And another thing people have said to me, why didn't, why didn't you just write memoirs? And I said, because nobody believe it. The, the truth is, is weirder than the fiction matter.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Probably accused you being fiction on that one, in fact, in this one.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  Exactly. That's, that's exactly right. Yes.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, isn't may you live in interesting times. The old Chinese curse.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  Evidently it's tattooed somewhere on me because I keep finding it.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  So thank you very much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. It's been a lot of fun to have you on. John, thank you very much.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  Thank you, Chris. It was a pleasure.

• 41:02Speaker 01

  Thank you. And thanks so much for tuning in. Order up his book wherever fine books are sold. Run Robbie Run by John Pepper. Folks, refer the show to your family, friends and relatives, or you'll forever wish that you did. And it will be a regret that will haunt you until your deathbed. So please just refer somebody to say, hey, man, why don't you subscribe to that stupid ass show, The Chris Voss Show? And he'll make your life better with the wonderful guests he has on the show. He has nothing of entertainment value himself. It's just the amazing guests that he has. So anyway, com for Chris Voss, facebook.com, for Chris Voss, youtube.com, for Chris Voss, all those crazy places. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next.

• 41:42Speaker 00

  You've been listening to the most amazing intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life. Warning, consuming too much of the Chris Voss Show podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts. Consult a doctor for any resulting brain bleed.

• 42:03Speaker 01

  Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Voss Show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind.