217: Gratitude and Service With Gary Sinise: Grateful American

0:00:00 - Opening 0:09:56 – Gary Sinise, "Grateful American" 4:13:19 – Final Thoughts and take-aways 4:18:30 – How to stay on THE PATH. 4:33:46 – Closing Gratitude Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 217 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:10Jocko Willink?

  The Chaplain wanted me to visit one family in particular. They were caring for their severely wounded service member, a Marine Master Sergeant named Eden Pearl, who'd been part of the Marine Corps Forces Special Operation Command, MARSOC.

• 0:32Jocko Willink?

  I'd met a lot of severely wounded vets by then, but the severity and extent of Eden's wounds set him in a category by himself.

• 0:43Jocko Willink?

  His family, especially his wife Alicia, remained some of the strongest, most courageous people I've ever met.

• 0:52Jocko Willink?

  Eden was muscular, tattooed, and once sported a bushy red beard. They called him "The Viking."

• 1:03Jocko Willink?

  Other Marines knew him as an exemplary combat leader.

• 1:08Jocko Willink?

  He served in Kosovo from 1999 to 2001, helping to prevent ethnic cleansing. In 2003, he was one of the first Marines on the ground in Iraq.

• 1:22Jocko Willink?

  He redeployed to Iraq in 2004 and 2005, then deployed to Afghanistan in 2009.

• 1:31Jocko Willink?

  In August of 2009, Eden and his unit were involved in a massive gun battle against terrorists in the area surrounding a small Afghan village.

• 1:43Jocko Willink?

  The battle raged so intensely that the Marines made the difficult decision to leave the village so they could return at a more strategic time.

• 1:53Jocko Willink?

  As they left, the Humvee that Eden rode in struck a hidden roadside IED,

• 2:01Jocko Willink?

  exploded, and burst into flames.

• 2:05Jocko Willink?

  The interpreter and the driver, Army Corporal Nick Roush, were killed immediately.

• 2:13Jocko Willink?

  The remaining four troops inside the vehicle received severe burns, but none as terrible as Eden.

• 2:22Jocko Willink?

  Here's the remarkable thing. Eden was finally pulled from the vehicle and placed under a burn blanket.

• 2:31Jocko Willink?

  Still coherent.

• 2:35Jocko Willink?

  The first thing he did was ask if his troops were okay.

• 2:43Jocko Willink?

  The family asked me if I'd go into the intensive care unit for a while to sit with Eden.

• 2:49Jocko Willink?

  I nodded and a nurse fitted me with a gown, gloves, and booties and placed a nylon hat over my hair.

• 2:59Jocko Willink?

  The family stayed outside while the nurse led me in.

• 3:04Jocko Willink?

  All was quiet in the ICU. My footsteps made no sound as I approached the marine in the bed.

• 3:14Jocko Willink?

  I stood for a moment. Taking in what I saw.

• 3:21Jocko Willink?

  Eden was burned on more than 90% of his body and was covered by bandages. Burn gel covered any exposed area of his skin. His eyes were slightly open with burn gel covering his face.

• 3:38Jocko Willink?

  He'd suffered a traumatic brain injury and was missing both legs and one arm.

• 3:45Jocko Willink?

  I'd seen many, many badly wounded service members by then, but Eden was the most severely wounded I'd ever met.

• 3:56Jocko Willink?

  He did not move.

• 4:00Jocko Willink?

  The nurse whispered to me that they weren't exactly sure what Eden could hear or comprehend, but they were fairly sure some messages were getting through.

• 4:12Jocko Willink?

  I drew closer to Eden and told him that he wasn't alone.

• 4:17Jocko Willink?

  That his family was there with him.

• 4:20Jocko Willink?

  That they loved him and cared for him deeply. And that as a country, we were immensely grateful to him for his service.

• 4:32Jocko Willink?

  After I finished speaking, Eden's eyelids flickered.

• 4:38Jocko Willink?

  Once.

• 4:40Jocko Willink?

  Twice. The only movement he'd made since I walked into the room.

• 4:50Jocko Willink?

  Over the next year, I would reach out to the hospital chaplain to receive updates about Eden.

• 4:56Jocko Willink?

  But the chaplain eventually moved to another assignment and I lost touch.

• 5:02Jocko Willink?

  Then in 2012, I did an event in Chicago for the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation. A Chicago police officer started talking with me about a severely wounded Marine he knew. And before he named the man, I said, "Wait, I know who you're talking about, Eden Pearl. Please, tell me what you know about him. Where is he?"

• 5:24Jocko Willink?

  The police officer put me in touch with Eden's battle buddy, Marine Phil Nobelin, a Florida resident. I called Phil and he explained how Eden had moved around the country from convalescent home to convalescent home. His family always with him.

• 5:41Jocko Willink?

  Phil put me in touch with Eden's wife. And we talked and caught up. I told her about the home building initiative for wounded veterans that we had going by then. We talked through a few specifics of the program. Then I simply said, "It would be in my honor if you would let us do that for you and Eden."

• 6:05Jocko Willink?

  Phil Nobelin had raised some money to help, so I asked Phil to use those funds to purchase land in San Antonio, not far from the Brooke Army Medical Center burn unit. And my foundation built Eden and his family a specially adapted smart technology home.

• 6:22Jocko Willink?

  To see part of the immense burden lifted off his wife and family was gratifying.

• 6:28Jocko Willink?

  Over the next few years, in that place of, "Respite," his wife and family helped Eden live a quiet life as they wanted.

• 6:40Jocko Willink?

  Eden received all the help he could. And never stopped fighting.

• 6:49Jocko Willink?

  His sacrifices were enormous.

• 6:53Jocko Willink?

  And I respect Eden and his family tremendously.

• 6:59Jocko Willink?

  In 2015, at age 40, after a long, six-year fight for healing,

• 7:08Jocko Willink?

  Eden Pearl passed away.

• 7:16Jocko Willink?

  He will never be forgotten.

• 7:33Jocko Willink?

  Ninety percent.

• 7:40Jocko Willink?

  Ninety percent of his body burned.

• 7:46Jocko Willink?

  Loss of both legs. Loss of one arm, traumatic brain injury and a

• 7:55Jocko Willink?

  just a brutal

• 7:59Jocko Willink?

  six-year battle.

• 8:05Jocko Willink?

  And it's hard to even

• 8:08Jocko Willink?

  what do you even call that? Sacrifice doesn't even seem to be a strong enough word.

• 8:15Jocko Willink?

  And not just the sacrifice by Eden Pearl himself, but

• 8:24Jocko Willink?

  but the sacrifices family made.

• 8:33Jocko Willink?

  A a sacrifice that we must never forget.

• 8:45Jocko Willink?

  Now

• 8:48Jocko Willink?

  sometimes people ask me how they can serve if they were never in the military.

• 8:58Jocko Willink?

  And I always tell people that there are countless ways to serve without actually being in the military.

• 9:06Jocko Willink?

  And today I have one such person here who has not served in the military but does everything in his power to help our American servicemen and women and first responders as well. And the piece that I just read about Eden Pearl is from his book.

• 9:27Jocko Willink?

  And the book is called Grateful American. And the man that wrote it is Gary Sinise, an actor, founder of a world renowned theater company, a bass player in a rock and roll band, and a true caring patriot. And we are lucky enough to have him here to tonight, tonight, to discuss his life and the lessons that he's learned in life with us. So Gary, thank you for coming on by.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  It's great to be here, Jaco. Thank you for having me.

• 10:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it was, um, there's multiple stories that you tell in the book about, you know, some of these wounded warriors that you've, you've had the honor of meeting and seeing in these horrible situations. And, you know, that, that one right there, when you start talking about somebody that, you know, when you get a burn on your finger, when you burn your finger on the stove and you have a tiny burn on your finger, that's painful and it's annoying. And you could say, okay, well, can you imagine if that was my whole, my whole finger or my whole hand? You get to a point where you're talking about 90% of your body.

• 10:50Jocko Willink?

  I mean, it's, it's, it's, you cannot fathom that. You cannot fathom that. And that, that idea, you know, one of the, one of the most horrible things that, that these roadside bombs do is

• 11:07Jocko Willink?

  When they go off, they deform the vehicles because the explosion just, you know, the torques the vehicle so hard that a lot of times, the vehicles, the doors, just like on a car door in a car accident, you know, you hear about the firefighters showing up and the doors don't work anymore. Well, the same thing happens in armored vehicles, except for you can't break the windows either because they're bulletproof and then they catch on fire. It's a nightmare. It's a nightmare. But yeah, so as I read through

• 11:43Jocko Willink?

  some of those things, man, it was tough to read and definitely, I appreciate you sharing those stories of what you've seen up close and personal with everyone so that everyone can kind of understand, or at least not understand, but at least get some idea of the sacrifices that are made by our service members across the board.

• 12:14Jocko Willink?

  Well, thank you.

• 12:16Jocko Willink?

  Now, your road to, you know, writing this book and actually, the road of your life, the journey that you've been through has been, it's, I mean, it's very interesting. I'll just put it that way. It's very interesting. And I can imagine that as you started writing this book, you know, you're thinking to yourself, well, what's this stuff going to sound like? Now that you're writing it, you know, in the past, going back, whatever, 30, 40, 50 years in the past of when you were a kid. I talk a lot on this podcast about the dumb

• 12:57Jocko Willink?

  things I did as a kid. I haven't had the courage yet to document them as you have done here. And so I think it's interesting, but I think what's powerful about it is...

• 13:13Jocko Willink?

  Look, anybody that didn't do dumb things when they were a kid, you know, they don't exist, I don't think, right?

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 13:19Jocko Willink?

  And so, but seeing, you know, how you grew and how you learned over those years, it's pretty impressive.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Well, I want, you know, I didn't know what the book was going to be called, or exactly what it was going to be when I started. I knew I wanted, I was encouraged to document the military support, because I've been all over the world and been, you know, engaged with our military for so long, and been to so many places and everything. Some folks, agent and whatnot, encouraged me to consider writing some of that down.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  And I eventually kind of accepted, well, you know, I could probably try to do that. But then I thought, you know, well, how did I get to that point where I'm doing all this stuff? What was, what were the steps along the way that kind of led to it? And I couldn't have predicted that I would go all the way back before birth, you know, to getting to that, but I ended up doing that, because I started to trace my own family history, and some of the, some of the things that had happened along the way for my own family, especially on my father's side of the family, the Italian side of the family.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  And coming over, you know, through Ellis Island and all of that, settling in Chicago, and...

• 14:51Jocko Willink?

  Is this Vito Sinise?

• 14:53Speaker 01

  This is Vito Sinise, my great-grandfather. And the stories, and I didn't know, you know, I only knew so much, so I actually started researching my own family. It became kind of fascinating and interesting to me to kind of retrace those steps and learn about things. And I wanted to, I wanted to set that up, because my grandfather, my father's father, was, when I was younger, he had, you know, he had served in World War I. And I remember as a kid, seeing all this stuff in the basement, you know, but... The kind of scary grandfather would never talk about any of that stuff or anything

• 15:33Speaker 01

  like that. And I was a little bit frightened from my big Italian gangster-like grandfather. And it was later, after he passed away and things, that I talked to his sons, my dad, a little bit more about him and learned about him. And he had three sons. They were all in the service, two in World War II, and my dad served in the Navy during Korea. And I just started thinking, okay, well, these individuals do play a part in my journey to this service work. Because as I've gotten more into the service work, I've explored the veterans of my own family a lot deeper. And things that I never knew as a kid, or

• 16:17Speaker 01

  never even thought about, considered, you know. By the time I was old enough to kind of absorb anything that they had done during their service years, they were well beyond those years, you know. My uncle was a banker, and my other uncle, World War II uncle, was a writer living in Texas. And my dad was a film editor. And none of them ever talked about anything in the service. So I started wanting to know a lot more.

• 16:45Jocko Willink?

  And when was that? When did you start? Was that when you started researching this book? Or this is just in your

• 16:50Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 16:51Jocko Willink?

  20s or 30s or something like that?

• 16:53Speaker 01

  Well, it was actually probably when I really started to ramp up on supporting our veterans and that. I wanted to know more about the veterans in my own family, on both my side of the family and my wife's side of the family. So they play an important part in setting the stage for the book. And then I realized the book is a journey. It's a journey from this kind of self-focused Gary, focused on, you know, my theater company and my acting thing and wanting to become, you know, successful and all that, to this broader focus of service to others. And so that's why the subtitle is A Journey From Self to Service.

• 17:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You, you know, you're mentioning what your uncles did and your dad, but like...

• 17:44Jocko Willink?

  During World War II, going back to the book during World War II, Uncle Jack flew thirty missions as a navigator in a B-17 bomber over Europe, while Uncle Jerry, at just eighteen years old, served on a US Navy ship in the Pacific, arriving just after the Battle for Okinawa, ended in mid-June 1945. I mean, first of all, being on a B-17 bomber over Europe, your chances of survival are not good.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Not good.

• 18:08Jocko Willink?

  Not good.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, we lost, half the, half the soldiers, half the service members that were lost in World War II, were lost in the air.

• 18:16Jocko Willink?

  You know, a lot of times when I meet people that aren't in the military, they tell me, "I grew up in a military family." Did you get that feeling, or was it so far in the past for your, your uncles and stuff, that one was a banker, and your dad was in film, and they just didn't talk about it, or did you feel it?

• 18:31Speaker 01

  No, I didn't. No, they, they never talked about it. I, I so wish my grandfather would have, you know, I would have been aware enough at the time to talk to him about World War I. He, he drove an ambulance during the Battle of the Argonne in, in World War I. That's, we've never lost as many service members in one battle as, as that. It was devastating. And he was ferrying our wounded back and, you know, away from the front lines, back to the rear, and then go back again. And Germans would try to take out the ambulances, and it was very dangerous. He survived that. He was like seventeen years old when he was doing that. And yet, I never talked to him about it. But I do remember trunks in the

• 19:15Speaker 01

  basement with stuff, you know, from World War I. Thankfully, the uncle that I mentioned, who was in the Pacific, who became a writer and lived in Texas, he wrote about his dad. And he interviewed his dad, and he tried to get his dad to talk about it. And he said he wouldn't talk much, but he shared certain things. And some of those things I got from my uncle's writing, that I put in the book about my grandfather.

• 19:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and I always have to make this disclaimer, that although I read big chunks of the book, I don't read the whole book here. And so, to get all those little details, you, you need to get the book, so. So, go get the book.

• 20:01Jocko Willink?

  1963, I mean, these are turbulent times, kind of the beginning of the turbulent times. Kennedy's killed. 1964.

• 20:14Jocko Willink?

  For, back to the book, for Christmas, I received my first guitar acoustic. I had no idea how to play, but I loved it. The Beach Boys had become my favorite band. My first record was Beach Boys Concert, a live record. And as the songs spun on my record player, I loved to hear the crowd cheering in the background. So you go out and you make your own band called The Beach Dwellers.

• 20:40Jocko Willink?

  Which I guess in Chicago, you got beach in Chicago, I guess, right?

• 20:43Speaker 01

  That's Lake Michigan.

• 20:44Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 20:47Jocko Willink?

  And it looked like you focused on that pretty well, but on the other hand, we got this. Every report card I brought home stunk. This had been going on since first grade. Reading and writing didn't come easy to me.

• 21:01Jocko Willink?

  You say, "My future lay in either music or sports." I could have tossed a coin. I loved sports. In Highland Park, I played baseball each spring. Winters, they'd freeze over the parking lot at my school and we'd play hockey. I was a huge Blackhawks fan. And Bobby Hull was my favorite player. I also loved football and rooted for the Bears. The Bears.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  The Bears.

• 21:21Jocko Willink?

  We organized a local football league for kids and played each other on the weekends. I was a fast runner, always the quarterback or one of the halfbacks. I usually got the kickoff return guy running for a touchdown every chance I got. I played football through eighth grade in Glen Ellen, but I was an undisciplined kid. Never showed up for practice, so I never knew any of the plays. The coaches would just put me in to return the kickoff because of my speed. And nine times out of 10, I'd get a touchdown. When I reached high school at Glenbard West in 1969, I tried out for the team, but realized every kid was twice as motivated as me, twice as big and twice as big. So that ended my football career. That left me music and dreams of being a rock star.

• 22:07Jocko Willink?

  And I figured musicians all needed to be hard partiers, right? Woodstock, rock and roll. My parents liked to entertain and kept a bar stocked with various bottles of liquor. At the end of eighth grade, I decided to experiment. I had a metal box with a latch on it, so I gathered empty peanut butter jars with lids, cleaned them out and stashed them in my box. When no one was looking, I sneaked small amounts of liquor out of my parents' bar. Whiskey into one jar, vodka into another, vermouth into another, wine into another. Always just a bit, so mom and dad didn't notice. One Saturday night, I decided it was time. Randy and I shared a bedroom, but there was a small attic room connected to our room that was private where we kept some of my music gear.

• 22:50Jocko Willink?

  When Randy was asleep, I went to the attic room with my metal box full of jars, shut the door behind me and tasted the vodka. The whiskey, the vermouth, the gin, the wine. Next thing I knew, I was plastered, sick as a dog, puking into my metal case, everything I'd eaten for the past month. My head spun and I wanted to lie down somewhere, but thought I'd be better to clean out the box so no one would find out what I'd been up to. I bobbed and weaved down the front stairs, heard the TV on the other room, figured the coast was clear, crept into the kitchen, started dumping the vomit into the kitchen sink. I was dizzy and nauseous and as I looked up, suddenly my mother was standing next to me, her arms folded. She looked puzzled and concerned and angry at the same time. "Oh, hello, mother," I said in my sugary voice. "I'm just cleaning out my box. It was a little messy. How are you this evening?"

• 23:35Jocko Willink?

  The room started to go dark and I realized I was passing out. Next thing I knew, mom and dad were wiping off my mouth, putting me to bed. I was grounded for a week and no more box. You'd think I would have learned my lesson, but that was just the start for me. The times were changing and the drug culture began to rise. America was exploding in a million different directions just as I entered my teen years. And it felt like the entire country couldn't contain itself. We were at the peak of the Vietnam War and it was going badly. We found ourselves in the age of revolution.

• 24:10Jocko Willink?

  Everybody was anti-authority, anti-establishment. I heard about Woodstock, the sexual revolution, pot was everywhere. And by the end of 8th grade, although I was still on the football team, I felt caught between the athletes and the pot smokers. For a couple of years, I went crazy.

• 24:31Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. Get some, young Gary.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:36Jocko Willink?

  So that's, so 1969, you're in 8th grade?

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Uh, 8th grade and that was my freshman year as well.

• 24:45Jocko Willink?

  So you were-

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Finished 8th grade and-

• 24:47Jocko Willink?

  You were a little too young to be worried about the draft at that point? Or were you thinking about it?

• 24:51Speaker 01

  No.

• 24:52Jocko Willink?

  Weren't even thinking about it?

• 24:53Speaker 01

  But this was the height of the Vietnam War, 68, 68, 69, 70. So there was all, all the stuff was going on, all the protesting and all the, all the, you know, the riots on college campuses and all of that was going on. Yet I was still kind of on the young side for all of that. And I do remember, and I write about in this book, the, they would have things they call moratoriums. And the moratoriums were on the high school campuses and college campuses. And people would just not go to class and they'd sit around and somebody would speak and they'd wear black armbands and somebody had a guitar and play it. And you were protesting the war.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  So I thought, as a freshman, I would, and, and, and if you told them you were doing that, you told your teacher you were doing that, you would be excused. They would give you a break. So I thought, well, that's, that's a good thing to do. I'm gonna get out of class.

• 25:53Jocko Willink?

  That was your big political motivation?

• 25:55Speaker 01

  I went, my big political motivation was getting out of class and maybe there's some girls at the protest, you know? So I went and sat there. I couldn't, couldn't tell you what was said or anything like that. I was just out of class and I didn't have to go. And in fact, I looked at the yearbook from those years and they had a picture of one of those protests. Everybody's sitting around and guitars playing and protesting the war with black armbands. I'm probably in the crowd somewhere there. I couldn't find myself, but-

• 26:27Jocko Willink?

  But you weren't thinking about the draft really?

• 26:30Speaker 01

  No. No.

• 26:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and I mean, I imagine when you're, because your eighth grade is like thirteen, fourteen years old, and three years, or three or four years away seems like the rest, it seems like an eternity, like you're never gonna get there, so why would I be worried about what's gonna happen in four years?

• 26:45Speaker 01

  I wasn't, even though, even the Vietnam War was on television all the time, it was on every night, the, you know, casualty reports were on all the time, what was happening, my parents were fearful that I was, you know, gonna get drafted because, you know, they were drafting everybody, and especially the kids who were failing in school, you know, and that was me.

• 27:09Jocko Willink?

  Well, that was you.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  And I thought, you know, my, my mom was terribly frightened that I was, I would probably, you know, get plucked out of school because I was so bad and go, have to go to war or something. So I wasn't, you know, it was only, it was only later that I really started to analyze those years, and how oblivious I was to what was happening to young people just, just slightly older than I was, in the jungles of Vietnam, and, and then it, it hit me, you know, a lot of sort of guilt and shame for how oblivious I had been, and how I, you know, wasn't really paying attention.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  So, that, that I think was galvanizing in some way, in, in, in terms of taking on, taking action, taking on the charge to help our veterans. Because I go back to the Vietnam War days, I, and I graduated, and my, my class was nineteen seventy-three, and that was the end of the draft that year. So, I remember having to re- register for selective service, but the draft was over, so my parents, you know, breathed a sigh of relief that I wasn't gonna get drafted.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  But, it was, it was only just a few years later, then, you know, after I met the woman who would become my wife, whose two brothers served in Vietnam, and her sister joined the army, met a Vietnam veteran who served in the army for twenty-two years, it was after I met them that, that things started to change for me, I started to really look back at those years and go... You know, I should, I should have been more, paid attention more to what was going on in the country with, with our service members, but I was a kid.

• 29:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, that's, it's interesting too that you're, cause even though you said you didn't feel like you were from a military family, even though you absolutely were from a military family, it's interesting that, you know, your, your parents,

• 29:27Jocko Willink?

  that you didn't connect those dots, right? Like, hey, my Uncle Jack was in the army, he was, he was in the Army Air Corps, he flew B-17s and a lot of those, you know, a lot of his friends must have died and well, wait a second, what's going on now? It's just, and,

• 29:42Speaker 01

  Never thought about it when I was a kid.

• 29:43Jocko Willink?

  Exactly, exactly, and that's-

• 29:45Speaker 01

  But because they never talked about it. My, my uncle was a banker. He wasn't a World War II hero, you know, uh, until later, and then I really spent a lot of time with my Uncle Jack and, and he, and then he talked, he, he, he would talk about his experiences a lot. I took him to the National World War II Museum, we recorded him on video where he's preserved at the World War II Museum. I took him to Memorial Day in, in, in DC and this and that, and I spent a lot of time with my Uncle Jack in the last 10, 12 years of his life. And, uh, he talked a lot about his, his war days, up to a point, and then, then you knew like he wouldn't go beyond this place. He would

• 30:29Speaker 01

  never let him go into an emotional place, let, never let himself go there. Cause I could tell he was, he was getting close to something like that. He saw a lot of bad stuff. I mean, his, his own plane barely made it over the English Channel one time. One engine and they were about 500 feet off the channel and they crashed, uh, on the, uh, the, you know, the, in Britain and they all survived. But he saw, he saw a lot of planes go down around him in flames and just crashing everywhere. And, uh, some bad stuff. He saw, he saw a lot of bad stuff up there, but he, he went up mission after mission

• 31:12Speaker 01

  after mission, you know, 30 missions, survived them.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  There's one story in the book where he swaps. He was a navigator and he swaps with a buddy. The buddy said, "Hey, you know, can you take this, this mission with my crew? I gotta go do something." And, yeah, I don't know. For, for whatever reason, they swapped. And it was with a guy named Don Casey and he was a navigator as well. So my Uncle Jack said, "Sure, you go with, with this mission." Sure enough, plane gets shot down. All the guys abandon ship and Don Casey gets captured and spends 18 months in a German prison camp until he escapes.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  And, and they were best friends, you know, for their whole life. And Don always took the opportunity to remind me

• 32:08Speaker 01

  how lucky he was to switch missions, you know. It was just as fate would have it.

• 32:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, it's interesting that with all that going on, how it just, it just shows you how easy it is for, especially in America, so easy to disconnect from the realities of war, right? And for people to be, you know, going to Starbucks and drinking a coffee when there's guys that are fighting right, right at this moment in time. And it's so easy in this country to be disconnected from that. It's one of the, it's one of the things, it's one of the things I like about your book is you bring that connection back together to explain to the people in the civilian world that, "Hey, just kinda FYI, this stuff's going on."

• 32:52Speaker 01

  You know, Jaco, that's, that's one of the ways I've found that I can be useful, you know. I've got a public platform as an actor.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  There's, there's a, you know, a forum with which I can talk to people and tell them things that I've seen and, and whatnot. And I really wanted to do something to help. So I found the way that I can do that is to try to bridge that disconnect between the average citizen who may not have a military person in their family or know anybody who's even serving in the military. Try to help them understand what our military does, how exceptional they are, the sacrifices that are made, all those things. I, I just found that that was the way that I could help.

• 33:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and it's huge, it's huge.

• 33:45Jocko Willink?

  And I'm glad that you ended up in this very nice place, but I'm gonna take it right back to your juvenile delinquent childhood.

• 33:52Jocko Willink?

  It is entertaining.

• 33:55Jocko Willink?

  You know, I closed out the last part saying for a couple of years I went crazy and you just kinda, you know, you do and you talk about some of the crazy stuff you were doing. One of your buddies had a, some kind of a music store, you went in there, you know, he had the key, you guys stole some speakers, you brought them back to your house, I mean, just, and any way you describe this, you say, "I'd become a thief and a liar and a near failing student and as a 14-year-old, I couldn't care less about any of it." And that's kind of the setup for this, this next chapter that you roll into, which is, interestingly, it's called baptism.

• 34:34Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna go to the book here a little bit. "I was a sophomore and played lead guitar in a new band and me, the bass player and the drummer all slouched against the wall in the glass hall." Part of your school. "We called ourselves Half Day Road after a stretch of highway that divided our two northern Chicago suburbs, Highland Park and Highwood. We thought we were the real stuff. More than anything, I just wanted to fit in at this new school and jam with my new band, but the life I hoped for was all about the change." "She walked straight toward us, a teacher named Mrs. Barbara Patterson. She was a powerhouse of a gal, a tornado of a woman, blonde hair, set jaw, the power of poetry running through her veins.

• 35:18Jocko Willink?

  She slowed when she neared us, stopped and gave a diminutive sniff. Our clothes were cool and raggy and my bandmates and I all wore scruffy jackets. I'd let my hair grow crazy and curly, it sprung out horizontally in a wild mass of thicket. Mrs. Patterson was the theater teacher. She looked at us and said, 'I'm directing West Side Story.'" For the spring play. You guys look like you play gang members. Come and audition for the play. It sounded like more of a dare than a request. Then she was off and walking fast on her way down the hall. We shrugged and laughed at all and one of us scoffed, who cares about plays? You kind of uh end up just kind of doing it, I would say, just out of

• 36:03Jocko Willink?

  hey, we got nothing better to do. We'll go in and maybe you had some curiosity in the back of your head, but you you sign up to do an audition. And they post the uh, I don't know what's it called. What's it called? What do they post? The the casting?

• 36:18Speaker 01

  Cast list.

• 36:18Jocko Willink?

  The casting.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Cast list.

• 36:20Jocko Willink?

  So here we go. Next morning in the hallway, near the drama department, a list was posted. Everyone crowded to look. Me too. I scanned down the list, way, way down. I kept scanning but didn't recognize any of the names. Well, who cares, I thought, but kept reading. My eyes kept scanning down, scanning down. Toward the very end, when I saw this, a soft light came on inside my soul. Peppy. Is that right, Peppy?

• 36:45Speaker 01

  Peppy.

• 36:45Jocko Willink?

  Peppy. To be played by Gary Sinise.

• 36:52Jocko Willink?

  How many lines does Peppy have?

• 36:54Speaker 01

  Peppy has a couple of words.

• 36:56Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  Couple of words. I wouldn't even call them lines.

• 36:59Jocko Willink?

  Okay, well, that's something, right?

• 37:01Speaker 01

  I was in the gang. I was, you know, it's the Sharks and the Jets.

• 37:04Jocko Willink?

  Sharks and the Jets.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Everybody knows West Side Story. And I was one of the Sharks, yeah.

• 37:08Jocko Willink?

  So uh, you go on here. I'd come to high school and fallen into a pattern of smoking dope, skipping class, smoking more dope. All the while trying to find friends, just another kid caught up in this American craziness. There wasn't much going, there wasn't much to hold us together. This is this, I could go off tangentially on this forever, but you're talking about, basically about America. There wasn't much to hold us together. Culture, that was changing. Morals, what were they? This was 1971. Religion, my mom, my family stopped going to church when I was a little kid and we weren't raised with any sort of faith. Nothing to provide an anchor. As a family, as a nation, these were tough times. Most days I was floating on the open sea. Every evening images of the Vietnam War splashed across the TV screens.

• 37:56Jocko Willink?

  So yeah, it's kind of wild times and you're at a party and there's some guy and it's it's I actually picked up on this immediately when I read it. You described some guy that's in there and some guy at the party and you how do you describe him? It's actually kind of funny. He looks like he's older, like someone's older brother and he wants to buy some pot from you and you sell it to him and as it turns out, big surprise, he's a cop.

• 38:30Jocko Willink?

  You get a call from one of your friends, dude, the police raided the party, came in with a real show of force, rounded everybody up. What are you talking about? I said, then it clicked. The dog catcher wasn't lying about what he did for a living. It was just slang. He worked for the city all right, police department and I'd sold pot to the dog catcher. I was the source of weed. Yeah, my friend, my friend's voice dropped on the phone and they're looking for you.

• 38:53Jocko Willink?

  And you know what? This is, I mean, pot is a crime. I mean, 10 years ago in America, I mean, we live in California. Maybe it wasn't that big of a crime, but you know, it was a crime, certainly in 1971.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 39:06Jocko Willink?

  I mean, that could be jail time without a doubt, right?

• 39:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It was, there was a whole juvenile department at the police headquarters at the police station, just to go after young kids that were abusing themselves with drugs. And the head of that was a guy that I write about in here and that they called Officer Rash. And Officer Rash led this raid and the dog catcher said, well, the guy who sold me the pot left right before the raid. So, but all these people know who he is. So they started asking everybody and blah, blah, blah. I was so scared. I mean, can you imagine that? Now

• 39:54Speaker 01

  this buddy calls me up and he says they raided the house and they're looking for you and you're the, you're the big drug pusher, you know? And so I, I ended up getting on a train. We had lived in the town Glen Ellen the year before and then we moved back to this town Highland Park. And the raid was in Highland Park. So I got on the train and went out to Glen Ellen to hide out. I was on the lam, you know.

• 40:22Speaker 01

  And finally, I came back and told my parents what happened and they drove me to the police station and I turned myself in.

• 40:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 40:30Speaker 01

  And turned myself in. The lights were blaring, you know. And I was just crying, you know, I cried and cried. But the main thing there is I had just gotten into this play West Side Story. And I felt-

• 40:47Jocko Willink?

  You had some words to deliver.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  I had a couple, yeah. Two, two, two words to deliver. And I was fearful that they were gonna pull me out, send me to like a juvenile home or something. Bust me, really bust me. And I begged the police officer to let me off the hook because I just discovered this new thing that I think, you know, is gonna change my life. And it will, and it did. And it turned everything around for me, being in this play. And all of a sudden, you know, I can't say that I didn't smoke pot anymore or anything like that, but through high school. But I found this thing that I was good at. I was a terrible student, as I said, and I was struggling all the time.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  And really, I was probably near being kicked out of school at the time that this thing, this incident with the police happened.

• 41:40Jocko Willink?

  Was that just a regular public school? Or was it private? This is a regular public school?

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, public school. You know, big school. I mean, like 2,500 students at the high school. So it was a pretty big, big school. But it had a wonderful theater department. And this, this teacher that I mentioned there was just, she changed my whole life.

• 41:59Jocko Willink?

  Barbara Peterson?

• 42:00Speaker 01

  Standing in a hallway, we've all had moments where something happens or an individual walks into our lives that we didn't see coming and the course of our lives just changes, you know, and we go this way. And that's what happened there, standing in that hallway. She sent me right to the theater world and from that moment on, I, I never stopped doing it.

• 42:24Jocko Willink?

  You guys, you do four shows of West Side Story.

• 42:29Jocko Willink?

  And the last show, you know, you obviously get better each time. And the fourth show, you know, you guys crush it and here we go. Back to the book, the lights came down. The audience burst into applause as one of the Sharks. I was part of the gang that carried Tony's dead body offstage. We Sharks set the body down behind the curtain and Tony came to life again. That's just good old Jeff Perry, a high school kid who's quickly becoming one of my best friends. Jeff gave me a huge hug and I burst into tears. And in the glorious pandemonium offstage, everybody was hugging and slapping each other on the back with no chance to blow away the snot because it was time for curtain call. Out in the auditorium, the audience continued their applause, cheering, shouting, whistling their congratulations.

• 43:11Jocko Willink?

  And all the supporting players and chorus members came out on stage in a pack, including me. And you know, the, the ensemble and all the gang members kind of get their applause. And then the leads go out, the leads took their bows together. I still hung far in the back sobbing harder than ever. My eyes scrunched tight against the tears. Then in the midst of all the commotion, I felt the hand on my shoulder. I opened my eyes. It was the hand of Jeff Melvoines. Am I saying that right? Jeff Melvoi. Jeff the Senior, Bernardo the Shark. He reached back, grabbed me, pulled me up toward the front of the pack where the six leads stood. He shouted in my ear to take a bow with all the leads, so I did. Me, the sophomore screw up, still bawling my eyes out.

• 43:55Jocko Willink?

  I stood out the front of the pack and the audience was still standing, still applauding, cheering for us. I took one long glorious look around, trying to wipe my nose with my sleeve. And we all bowed again all together and I suddenly realized I'd fallen in love with this new community of students. With this new life of theater, it was almost too much to take in. The entire cast had seen who I was before the play and what had happened to me during those five weeks. Now I had so many new friends, it was powerful. Something had really changed for me. I was going forward again. I had been baptized. My life of purpose had begun. You were crying.

• 44:34Jocko Willink?

  What emotion is that?

• 44:36Speaker 01

  Oh, it was, well, it was, it was very, because the play was over. And I didn't, I didn't want it to be over. I didn't want it to end. It had changed my life so completely. And introduced me to a new community in the school and I just wanted as much of it as I could get. And now it was over. The show was over and uh, my heart was kind of broken. And so I, I was sobbing at the end of the thing and the whole cast was kind of,

• 45:12Speaker 01

  you know, and this was my first play. I'd never done it before. A lot of the kids had been, been in plays and part of the theater department. They were used to it and this and that, but here comes this kid who's just kind of messed up and really struggling, nearly kicked out of school and, and I discovered this new world and they recognized that and it was really emotional. It was really quite, quite beautiful. And, and you know, people ask me quite often, you know, what, what are, what are some of the top things you've done in your career and you know, the movies and, you know, what are the pinnacles and everything like that? And there's, there's several good, good things that I've done. But among the top

• 45:54Speaker 01

  things, I, I always, this part with two words is always at the top because it was the first thing, you know, it's the first moment that I discovered this thing that would be, uh, what I would do for my life.

• 46:09Jocko Willink?

  West Side Story 72, Who Wants Some? Well, when I, when I was reading this, I was trying to, I'm trying to put what I'm reading into something in my own mind, trying to relate it to things that I understand. And the other day we did a podcast, um, about a guy, young British guy that was, he ended up in World War II, but in 1937, he joins the, the British Army and he goes in this little paragraph about how they went out and did parade. And they did the entire 20 minute presentation of, of close order drill with no commands. So it's just silent until the last thing they give one command and everyone executes the one command.

• 46:51Jocko Willink?

  And you could, you know, he talks just a couple of sentences about this incredible pride that he had. That he was part of this group, right? That had drilled and trained and practiced to get ready for this particular moment. And I was thinking, okay, well, that's what you have here, right? Well, that guy was a young kid that joined the army because the civilian life didn't have much to offer him as a 16-year-old British kid in tough times. And here you are, tough times, young kid. And all of a sudden, this group is there. And you gotta practice and train to get ready to do this presentation. Then you do it. And the big difference is in this one, you're allowed to kind of express your emotions.

• 47:36Jocko Willink?

  And on top of that, the crowd can express their emotions. And so you get this whole thing. And I started realizing, okay, so here's what that's what's going on. It's a very similar thing. You got, you became part of this, for lack of a better word.

• 47:52Jocko Willink?

  But it opens up a whole new category of thinking. You became part of this gang, right? This gang of friends. And just like this guy, Reg Curtis, became a part of this gang of troopers, soldiers. You became a part of this gang. The other thing that I realized about it, and it's what you say, you don't use the same words as I use, because I spent my entire adult life in the military. But you all of a sudden had a mission. You know, you had a mission like, oh, here's this thing. I could, you know what happened to me when I was 18 years old? I joined the Navy. And that was became my mission. And all of a sudden, all the dumb things that I did, which thankfully I haven't had to write about. All those dumb things didn't matter anymore. And all of a sudden, I just had a mission and, and, and I was now part of a gang.

• 48:37Jocko Willink?

  And then the more I stayed in the Navy and the further I went along, the tighter the gang got. And the more focused I got on the mission. So I think there's some element of that when some, when, you know, I always say to veterans when they get out, you know, because veterans, when they get out, they can get lost, they lose their way because they don't have a mission anymore. And so I'm always saying, hey, find a new mission, find a new mission, find a new mission. But if you just take that to a 13, 14-year-old kid, well, 13, 14-year-old kid doesn't have a mission. And the interesting thing is, a 13, 14-year-old kid. They might not have a mission, but they have energy and they have talent and they have potential. And if you don't harness that stuff and point it somewhere, well, then guess what it does? It steals booze from its parents.

• 49:22Jocko Willink?

  It steals speakers from its neighbors. And you know, that's what it, that's what it does. You take that energy and if you can focus it somewhere, all of a sudden it turns good. And I got one more from a friend of mine named Scott. You know, we were all raising our kids kind of together and you know, we'd be talking about what, what it is, how you make your kid not stray off into the bad, you know, the bad tendencies that people can go down. And he said, you know, I, oh, I just want my kids to be really into something. And I thought, that's a good point. And whether it's surfing or skateboarding or shooting bows or jujitsu or acting, whatever it's going to be, if you get, if you get that kid with a mission, all of a sudden it keeps them on somewhat of a good path. Of course, something positive. Exactly.

• 50:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And each one of those things, by the way, you know, you, I mean, every one of those things, there's subcultures, you know, you can be in a music scene and be a total, you know, you can get sucked into drugs, rock and roll, right? The, the acting scene, I'm sure can suck you down that path. Surfing, for sure, there's been, there's plenty of sad stories along the path of, of that course, right? So anything you can get sidetracked on, especially if it comes with a little taste of, of fame, right? Fame and ego. So you get on this path though, and you get, you don't do great in school. And by, by the time, um, here we go back to the book, there I was, class of 73, the

• 50:51Jocko Willink?

  end of my senior year, all my friends graduated except me. I didn't have enough credits. I'd aced all my theater classes, but bombed everything else. So I needed to return in September for one additional semester. I felt like a failure. So, you know, that's, that's gotta suck.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  I remember, that was hard, yeah.

• 51:13Jocko Willink?

  And then you say this, "In January 1974, I finally graduated from high school." Today, if people ask, I just laugh and tell them I was part of the class of 1973 and a half. College wasn't on my radar. I just wanted to keep doing plays with these pals of mine. So with two friends who were still in high school, Rick Argosch? Rick Argosch and Leslie Wilson, we gathered some other kids, we got to know, we knew, and we got ready to do a show. My parents knew the architects of a Unitarian church in Deerfield with a big, open space. I asked them to ask the church folks if they would let us do a play down there, and they said yes. We started rehearsing a play called "And Miss Reardon Drinks A Little",

• 51:54Jocko Willink?

  a complex comedy about three middle-aged sisters who faced their problems after the death of their mother. Since everybody, since everyone was still in school except me, we rehearsed after school hours and into the night. It felt great to be working on a play again in our own little space, an idea that was almost all our own doing. During rehearsals, we got ready to print programs, and I said, "Okay, we need to call this outfit something." We threw out all kinds of names. Rick was reading a Herman Hesse novel called "Steppenwolf", and while everyone was making suggestions, he didn't say anything. He just held up his novel and pointed to it and said, and I said, "Great, Rick, let's put that on the program." I hadn't read it, but it sounded good. Steppenwolf Theater Company. We needed to print programs correctly, so Steppenwolf it was.

• 52:39Jocko Willink?

  I felt so hopeful about what we were doing, excited to think we were creating a company. I pulled, we pulled a few bucks together to buy a rubber stamp with Steppenwolf inscribed on it and stamped our name everywhere we could. Stamp, Steppenwolf, stamp, Steppenwolf, stamp, Steppenwolf. None of us grasped yet, what none of us grasped yet was the magnitude of the moment when Steppenwolf was named. We couldn't see, what we couldn't see was a bigger future than any of us could imagine, something that would last for decades and is still going strong today. The Steppenwolf Theater Company of Chicago.

• 53:21Jocko Willink?

  Pretty, pretty big moment. Pretty big, pretty big branding moment. Now, did you guys, did you know the band Steppenwolf? You had to.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. I played some of their songs.

• 53:32Jocko Willink?

  And you didn't think that was, you didn't think that was, you know, kinda encroaching on their, their, their style?

• 53:38Speaker 01

  Well, like I said, we were looking at the book. We weren't thinking about the band. We just looked at the book.

• 53:44Jocko Willink?

  And it's a, uh, the cool, it's the book.

• 53:51Jocko Willink?

  It's like the conflict, it's the dichotomy, right? The dichotomy, yes. The dichotomy, people always accuse me, and rightfully so, of that being possibly my favorite word.

• 54:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:03Jocko Willink?

  The dichotomy of the kinda spiritual, high-minded part of you as a human being. And then the other part, which is the wolf of the step, which is on, in German, das Steppenwolf.

• 54:21Jocko Willink?

  But that's kinda cool because this is what's kinda tugging at humans, right? And, um, the thing that, when I was saying earlier that like, I kinda, uh, I don't know if we were recording yet, but the thing that I kinda relate, like when I was a kid, you know, we all had bands. I was into hardcore punk rock and it was, everything was kinda DIY. That was the, that was the mindset. The mindset was, we're doing this ourselves. Like, oh, the man doesn't wanna support us, cool, we'll do, we're doing this ourselves. I still have that attitude. I, I started my own publishing company. Why? Because I didn't like what my publisher said about something. I was like, cool, I got this, watch this. I have my own publishing company now, you know? So, that attitude, it's pretty cool that you guys had this attitude of, hey, we're gonna start our own theater company.

• 55:06Jocko Willink?

  We're gonna, you know, there you go. You make the name and you start getting it out there and it's been around now for however many years? Forty, almost fifty years, is it?

• 55:14Speaker 01

  Well, it's forty-six years.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know, we own several buildings that we built from the ground up. We're building another one right now. It's, it really is a great American dream story where you, you start off with just some kids with kind of a passionate desire to do something and it, you know, forty-six years later, it's a, it's a multi-million dollar gigantic place and lots of great actors come out of there. It's, you know, when you, when we walk in, I always think about the eighteen-year-old kid who's in high school who walks into that place and looks at all the, you know, all the pictures and everything and it's a giant theater.

• 56:01Speaker 01

  There's three or four theaters in there, restaurants, everything like that. And then you can see this picture of eighteen-year-old kids up there on the wall and think, they're like me, you know? They built this thing. You know, it, it really is an inspirational sort of theater story, I think.

• 56:21Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. I mean, it's not just inspirational theater story, it's a, it's an inspirational story of what's, what human beings, free human beings are capable of executing if they, if they put their mind to it.

• 56:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, and in the book, I write about a lot of the early years. All the struggles, all the ups and downs, all the crazy stuff that happened.

• 56:42Jocko Willink?

  You didn't think I was gonna get away with not talking about any of that, did you?

• 56:44Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't know if you wanna go through there, but...

• 56:47Jocko Willink?

  You say here, "Eventually, we ended up with a total of nine people for our new Steppenwolf, and today, these nine are sometimes referred to as the original members, even though the name Steppenwolf had already been used since nineteen seventy-four. The nine original members were John Malkovich, Moira Harris, Nancy Evans, H.E. Bacchus, is that right? Lori Metcalf, Al Wilder, and the three founders, which is Terry Kinney, Jeffrey Perry, and you, Gary Sinise. And, um...

• 57:22Jocko Willink?

  Again, just kinda what you were just referring to in the summer of 1976, not everything was so neatly resolved as our ensemble was getting wild, trying to get along and learn to work together. In those first months of Steppenwolf, things quickly grew messy and complicated as personal life and theater life intertwined. Moira Harris had particularly caught my eye. She was a brilliant young actor, beautiful, passionate, full of fire. I convinced her to date me. We soon fell in love. She was unlike anyone I'd ever met, but our love affair wasn't without its ups and downs. We were all over the place in our relationship. Two passionate personalities, on again, off again, in love, out of love, clinging to each other, mad at each other, breaking up, making up. You know, I work with businesses all the time. I have a leadership consulting company.

• 58:07Jocko Willink?

  And getting grown, adult, educated human beings to resolve problems is challenging. Having these, you know, whatever, nine, 18, 19, 20, 21 year old kids, all of them, you know, with these fiery personalities and passion. It must have been crazy.

• 58:33Jocko Willink?

  Not to mention you mix in, you know, chemicals and whatnot and it gets really crazy. You go here, "At one point Terry decided to leave again." And again, I skip a bunch here, some of the things that you're talking about, about the craziness, so I skip some of that, but that's why people need to get the book. "At one point Terry decided to leave again. Then he wanted back in again. This time we held a meeting to decide if Terry could rejoin. We all argued and shouted about standing on our principles and being fully committed." Moira was there and we were still dating, although our relationship was constantly up and down, off and on. Her father was dying of cancer then and all the chaos and stress, the meeting prompted Moira to boil over. Her passion turned to fury and she lost it. I mean, absolutely lost it, started yelling.

• 59:18Jocko Willink?

  "How can we not let our friend back in the company? My father is dying and all this is so stupid. If we're a company, then we're a company and we should stay together no matter what." She ran out of the basement into the grassy yard of the school yelling at the top of her lungs. All ran out in the yard after her. Her logic made sense. Terry was our friend. Moira's dad was dying. Terry wanted back in the company. Why did we care so passionately about something so trivial when life and death issues were all around us? Moira was still screaming and crying. We grabbed hold of her and hung on. Neighbors poked their head out of doorways. She screamed and screamed. And the commotion grew so loud, the police showed up. Moira calmed down. The police left. We all felt bad for Moira, bad for Terry. And we ended the meeting. Of course, Terry was back in the company. He was a founder and our friend. In those early days, the drama wasn't limited to the stage.

• 1:00:03Jocko Willink?

  I don't think any of us knew exactly what we were doing. The basement cocoon we've created gave us a foundation to try anything, do anything, become anything. And the freedom of the space allowed us to ultimately to glimpse the world through a wider lens. All of us were committed to becoming better at what we were doing. And we often mixed and mingled our directing and performing, directing one play, acting in the next, sometimes doing both. In those early days, we didn't talk about going to Hollywood or New York or into being in the movies. We wanted to do our own thing there in Chicagoland. And I think by being there in the basement, isolated, we developed the chip on our shoulder necessary to survive. We felt like we had a lot of emerging talent and we wanted our work to feel real and raw and fearless.

• 1:00:44Jocko Willink?

  And we worked hard to keep it deeply rooted in the sheer grit that we had on stage together. Whether it was true or not, we needed to somehow believe our work was different, unique, special. It would take some time and effort before anyone tried to branch out beyond our city. But I think those early days, we all felt like we were getting better and stronger and more confident as artists. And the sky could be the limit eventually.

• 1:01:07Jocko Willink?

  What I know today is that our theater benefited from a larger institution, the United States of America. The country of our birth allowed us any number of freedoms that we subconsciously used and enjoyed and benefited from, even though we didn't realize it. We had freedom of speech at Steppenwolf. We could express our thoughts and ideas about anything in public or private. The people around us might disagree or debate or push back, but when they thought we were being stupid, when they thought we were being stupid, but by no means were we ever stifled in what we said or thought. We exercised freedom to assemble. We used this sort of, we used a sort of freedom of religion, although nothing we did was religious, which was a freedom all its own.

• 1:01:49Jocko Willink?

  No one forced us to dress a certain way or talk a certain way because of their beliefs. We were free to live or travel anywhere we wanted and we were free to work any job we wanted. So we played in bands and created our own theater and worked in sewers where we found baby raccoons. We were free to educate ourselves by any means possible, formal or practical, and all this freedom led to something. It allowed us to create and innovate. It allowed us to dream big. Gratefully, it allowed us to be us. Awesome.

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  The baby raccoons thing, that's a reference to a job that one of our buddies had. Because we all worked, in those early days, and I'm describing there, everyone worked day jobs.

• 1:02:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  And then we would go to the theater, we had this little basement of a Catholic school that the Catholics, it was a closed down Catholic school. And they had a basement there that they had used for a teen center. And some, a guy at the Chamber of Commerce, I went to the Chamber of Commerce and I said, "Do you know any place that the kids could make a theater?" And he said, "Well, sure, let's go over here, this basement in the Catholic school." And it was perfect. And we built an 88-seat theater in there. So we were in there, in this basement. But, you know, we weren't making any money. I mean, we were just trying to get people to come see the shows for whatever. And so everybody had day jobs.

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  And, you know, the raccoon, the guy who worked in the sewer, he was actually, you know, kind of a technical guy, never did any acting with the company. But I worked...

• 1:03:39Speaker 01

  I worked on the loading dock at Neiman Marcus, unpacking boxes and, you know, kind of the shipping clerk type stuff. Malkovich was a, in that first summer, he was a school bus driver for a summer camp. So, I always-

• 1:03:56Jocko Willink?

  That's a movie in its own right.

• 1:03:57Speaker 01

  I always worry about those children, did they turn out alright? Yeah, and everybody had different jobs, you know, that we worked in the day and we would go to the theater at night and work into the wee hours in the morning, then everybody go home, get up, go to their job, go back to the theater at night, and that's how we did it in those early days.

• 1:04:16Jocko Willink?

  And, the thing that I think is, when you say like you guys weren't thinking about New York, you weren't thinking about Hollywood, you were just thinking about just doing this thing, as to the best of your ability.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the founders of the theater, two of the guys, Jeff Perry and Terry Kinney, they met each other at Illinois State University. Jeff Perry, as I mentioned, was in West Side Story with me and we became best friends. And then he went to college and I went back to high school. And he met Terry Kinney and they became best friends, another great actor. And so the three of us kind of galvanized our plans to start the theater company and to get the theater company going. And then Malkovich went to Illinois State University, Moira Harris, all those other people that you mentioned there in the original group, went to Illinois State.

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  And then they all moved up to Highland Park, which is where I found the basement of the Catholic school, and we started doing plays in there.

• 1:05:18Jocko Willink?

  Continue on here, a little bit forward, but, back to the book. Moira and I got together as a couple, a year after the Vietnam War ended in 1975, and I started to meet her family members, who had served in the US Army. Moira's brother, Arthur Harris, was a helicopter pilot, having flown 800 combat hours in Vietnam. Moira's oldest brother, Boyd McCanna, am I saying that right? McCanna, Mac Harris, had been to Vietnam twice. First as a lieutenant and platoon leader, and second as a captain and company commander. He'd received the Silver Star for gallantry in combat. Moira's sister, Amy, went through ROTC in college and went into the Army herself after graduation.

• 1:06:02Jocko Willink?

  She met and married a great guy, Jack Treese, who served as a combat medic with the 101st Airborne Division of Vietnam. Jack earned two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts. When Arthur came home from Vietnam, he withdrew from things. And I would see him only on rare occasions when Moira and I would visit her mother. But from time to time, Mac, Jack, and Amy came to visit us in Chicago and would see our plays. I didn't spend a ton of time with these veterans at first, but anytime we got together, we talked about deeper matters. And as I slowly learned more and more about the people who protected our freedoms, I began to look for ways to give back.

• 1:06:41Jocko Willink?

  In 1976 and 1977, Mac came to see a few of our basement plays whenever he was on leave from assignment as a tactical officer at West Point. I was a pretty ragged kid then, with torn up jeans and a T-shirt and lots of hair. He was spit-shined, strong as an Atlas, and had a deep, powerful voice. "Gary, what are your goals?" Mac asked me, one day after a show. He wasn't grilling me. I sensed kindness within his roughness. He was interested in other people's lives and genuinely wanted to know about my goals. But I wasn't sure if he was asking about my goals in life or my designs on his sister. Possibly he wanted to know where we wanted to go as a theater company.

• 1:07:24Jocko Willink?

  So I described my goals for Steppenwolf and how I wanted to make it as big as possible. We had a conversation, a real conversation. This elite former company commander and me, a long-haired, American 20-year-old with big dreams of all things, we connected on the subject of leadership. In high school, at the height of the war, I'd been oblivious to so much of what was happening in Vietnam. Yet in the early years of Steppenwolf, I began to form genuine friendships with these military veterans. They began to open my eyes so much more. The war, I knew the war hadn't gone well. I remembered casualty reports on the news and knew the reports were grim. But now I was meeting actual veterans who lived there, served there, fought there. And I knew that many of the Vietnam veterans who'd returned home hadn't been honored for their service.

• 1:08:09Jocko Willink?

  I didn't know what to do yet about this, if anything. But I felt something stirring inside of me. Honor needed to be granted. Respect was due. A simple thanks needed to be said. It would take a few years before I figured out any sort of next step. But in the meantime, I had a theater and Moira's family members and I knew something in our country desperately needed to change. I would start where I could with Steppenwolf. And without being able to articulate it in this way yet, I would begin to do my part to give back. So what I really liked about that, um, not, not to say that I'm any, uh, thing close to a guy like Mac, but when I meet people, right?

• 1:08:54Jocko Willink?

  Like I'll meet, you know, some friend of my daughters or some friend of my sisters, you know, some people that are whatever. They're clearly pretty close to, uh, you know, a long-haired Gary Sinise in 1975 or whatever. And you know, you can, I can, I can feel that they're looking at me thinking there's some stereotypical, uh, image of what I'm going to be like, right? And I, and you know, I'll just have a genuine conversation with them because I am genuine like, oh, so what do you do? You know, so what, where are you heading in life? And I think it's like the same way you said, hey, this was a, what'd you call him? This, this elite former company commander and you're having a normal conversation with him. And there's a, there's like a,

• 1:09:40Jocko Willink?

  A revelation that, oh, this guy's a person. This guy's just a person. That, yeah, he's got spit shine and yeah, he's got a high and tight, but he's just a person. And he's gonna come and watch our freaking crazy plays in our theater, which, which the plays are kinda crazy. Some of them are really crazy. Uh, I forget. Is the one where everyone's naked on stage yet? Does that one happen yet at this point?

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  That's a little bit later.

• 1:10:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that was, um, yeah, one of the, one of the plays that you guys do is about, what are they, native Peruvians? Is it Peruvians? What country?

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, down in South America, and it's a small, small tribe, living, you know, very remote, in a very remote area of the jungle.

• 1:10:24Jocko Willink?

  So you guys put 25 actors on stage naked?

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  Don't blame it on me. I didn't, this was Malkovich's idea.

• 1:10:32Jocko Willink?

  So Malkovich decides 25. And you know what? Actually, when I heard that, I was like, okay, you know what? I get it. You know, that they're trying to, you know, break down some barriers. But then what got me was, you go into the details of that, the fact that this place is really small, it's hot, and all of a sudden, you're sitting in a small room, and there's only 88 seats. So you got 88 people in the bleachers or whatever in the seats, and there's 30 people naked on stage. You're almost outnumbered by sweaty naked people.

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  It wasn't the biggest hit of our, of our early days.

• 1:11:06Jocko Willink?

  But I can see Mac rolling in there from West Point, going, what is my sister doing?

• 1:11:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, he didn't see that one. Thankfully, he didn't see that one.

• 1:11:17Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so, were you gonna, did I, did I cut you off?

• 1:11:22Speaker 01

  No, no, that, uh, yeah, Mac was an interesting guy. Let me just talk about, you know, he, he passed away in 1983 of cancer. And, uh, but he made a very big impression on me. As some, you know, I'd never met anyone like him before. As I said, I had veterans in my own family, but I never really met, you know, West Point graduate, two tour Vietnam veteran. In fact, you know, um, General Vic, Vince Brooks?

• 1:11:54Jocko Willink?

  I know, I don't know him, but-

• 1:11:55Speaker 01

  General Mike Scaparati, right? These are two, they're newly retired, but they're friends of mine. And I met them, I met Mike when he was a two-star, and I met Vince when he was a one-star. They both went on to earn four-stars. They retired their final jobs. Vince's last assignment was running Korea, and Scaparatti's was the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, right? So both of these guys were at West Point when Mac was there. And that's why I'm close with them, because when I met them early, earlier on in their star- stardom, they, I, they said they went to West Point, and I said, "Well, hmm, did

• 1:12:39Speaker 01

  you happen to know Mac Harris?" And both of them, when I met each of them, their faces lit up, and they started gushing about my brother-in-law, and how much of an influence he had on them when he was a tac officer at West Point. So he was a really significant guy, they, and they actually, just about four years ago, 2016, they inducted Mac, and this is 30 years after his death, into the Fort Leavenworth Hall of Fame. And, you know, Omar Bradley and General Patton, all those kind of people are in the Fort Leavenworth Hall of Fame. Because he revolutionized some things in the Army back in, in, in the day, back in

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  1976, 77, and into, you know, 81, 82, 83, when he, his final assignment was at, at Leavenworth, where he rewrote the Leadership Manual. And that manual is still taught today, and principles that he championed and he came up with. And so they thought it was a significant contribution to today's Army, so they put him in the Fort Leavenworth Hall of Fame. And this is the guy who came, and, you know, I was a little bit scared of him and everything, but then I got to know him, and he was a lovely, lovely guy, just unlike anyone I'd ever met, and he made a big impression on me, and I went to his funeral, you know, I went to his military funeral, when he, when he died in 1983, and that was, that

• 1:14:08Speaker 01

  was... Very, very powerful. And so when, you know, 10 years later, when I started working with our wounded and getting more involved and everything like that, all those memories of spending time with this particular individual came flooding back in some pretty significant ways, and that's why I write about them in the book.

• 1:14:30Jocko Willink?

  Well, I mentioned to Echo Charles before we started recording, before you got here today, I said, "You're gonna see some layers today," because Echo likes to talk about layers, the way things are connected. We often infuse layers intentionally into things, but we record, we do podcasts about, a lot of podcasts about military stuff, and we've covered dozens of military manuals on this podcast. And I think Podcast 172, we cover FM Field Manual 22 TAC 10, which is an earlier edition

• 1:15:12Jocko Willink?

  written in 1951 of leadership for the Army. So now, we get to go back, and I will, I will get the newer version, I'll get the one that Mac wrote, and I'll compare the two and see what things, what lessons he brought, because if you think about it, the reason I picked 1951 was, is post-World War II, right? So we're talking immediately after World War II, these are the guys that sat down and said, "Hey, here's what we should be teaching." So, I don't even think they revised it after Korea, but now, Mac's will be post-Vietnam. So, it'll be an interesting study. And, you're right, you know, these guys that, and, and one thing that I've talked about,

• 1:15:54Jocko Willink?

  I talk about a lot of these manuals when we cover them, is, you know, I'll be saying, I'll be saying, "Whoever wrote that, like, who wrote that part right there? That, that right there is solid, that one." And, you know, I always use, I, sometimes I joke about it being a committee in there, that's, there's one guy that's really good, and, and Lieutenant Colonel Pogue, or Colonel Pogue, is on the other side saying, "We can't say that type of thing, that'll be offensive," you know, whatever. There's always that guy, and then there's like, the combat vet that's putting it straight. So now I got a name to go with the combat guy that's putting it straight. His name is Mac Harris.

• 1:16:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know, just so you know, he got, uh, he was, his last assignment was, was to rewrite the leadership manual at Leavenworth. That's, and he got a lot of pushback.

• 1:16:43Jocko Willink?

  I'm sure he did.

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  From, from top folks who didn't want to go in the direction that he was taking it. And he wanted to tell, uh, he wanted to talk about leadership through very personal stories of history. And those leadership manuals can be very sort of dry and a little bit technical and just sort of blah, blah, blah. And Mac tells stories about Little Ram Top and Pickett's Charge and all this stuff in there. And they, he was getting a lot of pushback from people, but he pushed back himself and they, they made, they, you know, published the leadership manual about a month after he passed away. It was, it was finally published and, and brought to light and they're, they're still using it today at, at West

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  Point and throughout the Army.

• 1:17:31Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome.

• 1:17:37Jocko Willink?

  We're gonna jump forward a little bit here. Moira and I made a decision to break from Steppenwolf, move out to Los Angeles. Your parents had moved out there and lived with my parents for a while. We decided, we also decided to get married. Mom was thrilled and jumped into wedding planning with Moira, but I could tell something was churning in Moira's mind. One day shortly, and again, I'm skipping around because I can't read this whole book. People gotta buy the book. One day shortly before the wedding date, Moira told me she planned to fly home to Illinois to spend some time with her mom before coming back for the wedding. A couple of days after she landed in Chicago, the phone rang. Gary, I don't want to get married, Moira said. I'm not coming back.

• 1:18:19Jocko Willink?

  Well, what I said, she paused and added, I can't do it. Wait, invitations have gone out. We've got all the food ordered. I know, but I'm not gonna do it. I can't. I just can't.

• 1:18:32Jocko Willink?

  So that's kind of.

• 1:18:36Jocko Willink?

  And you, I mean, that's a, that's gotta be a big hit. Or were you nervous about it too enough to be like, oh, I guess we're good?

• 1:18:45Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:18:46Jocko Willink?

  Cause how old were you?

• 1:18:47Speaker 01

  There were some, I was more afraid of my mom who was spending the money on the napkins and the tablecloths and things like that. And, uh, okay, I accepted it, you know, I was disappointed, but then I accepted it. And we kind of went our separate ways for about a year and a half. And here we are, all these years later, back together and we've been married, uh, many, many years now.

• 1:19:14Jocko Willink?

  I, I had to talk about this.

• 1:19:18Jocko Willink?

  In late summer 1979, I found out that Robert Redford was making a big movie called Ordinary People. And I landed an audition. But didn't get called back. How could that be? I was perfect for this role, I thought. Mr. Redford didn't know what he was missing. The story takes place in Lake Forest, Illinois, right next to Highland Park where I grew up. This is me. I already know this character inside and out. I should be playing this part. I'd heard all these Hollywood urban myths, like the one where Steven Spielberg climbs over the fence at Universal Studios and gets his start in the film industry. I thought, hey, I can do that too. As soon as he sees me, Mr. Redford will cast me. All I need is for him to see me face to face.

• 1:20:04Jocko Willink?

  So I sneaked into the Warner Brothers lot, planted myself down on the couch in the office of the casting director Penny Perry, and informed the receptionist that I wouldn't leave until I could have an audition with Mr. Redford himself. The receptionist asked if I had an appointment. I said, no, but explain the story. The receptionist went and told Penny, and Penny came out and asked in a kind, but very flat voice, Gary, what are you doing? I know I wasn't cast, I said, but I grew up in Highland Park. I'm perfect for this movie. I need to see Robert Redford. She sighed, sorry, you are not going to see Robert Redford. Well, I'm not leaving. I'm gonna sit right on this couch until I do. She crossed her arms, Gary, don't do this.

• 1:20:49Jocko Willink?

  If you don't get off the couch, I'm going to have to call security. Please, I grew up right there. Penny's eyebrows lowered, you auditioned, you didn't get called back. Leave the building or you will be taken off the lot. I stared back at her, silent, hang dog. Reluctantly, I accepted the fact that Robert Redford would not be meeting Gary Sinise that afternoon. I slowly got up utterly defeated, left the office and walked out the front of the gate of the studios. I wasn't doing very well in this town. The thought of heading back to Chicago sounded better and better. On the way home, I came to the conclusion that had been brewing in me for a while now. Hollywood hates me. Timothy Hutton landed the part.

• 1:21:34Jocko Willink?

  It was his first acting gig since playing a bit role in a movie when he was a kid, plus a few small TV slots on Disney. Tim had never lived anywhere close to Highland Park, but for his performance in Ordinary People, he ended up winning an Oscar. He was only 20 when he won the youngest male actor to win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. And I had to admit it. He was really good. That's how it goes in Hollywood. And nope, to this day, I've never met Robert Redford. Having decided Hollywood hated me, I started packing up to go home. So that's a great story of rejection.

• 1:22:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, that's, that's, that's, uh, you have to learn to live with rejection if you're going to be an actor. Yeah, because it's, you're going to be rejected more often than, than accepted. Yeah. Uh, there's, uh, more actors than parts. So how many actors go up for a part? You know, for one part, you know, hundreds of actors go up, uh, try to get one part.

• 1:22:38Jocko Willink?

  I went to, uh, I was working with a company up in LA and I went up to speak to them and they were located around the corner from a casting, whatever place. And there's, I, I show up there and there's, call it 400 10-year-old kids in this line with their parents. And I, you know, I go to talk to the company that I'm talking to and I'm just talking to the executives. And as I show up there, I'm like, hey, what are these people doing here? And they said, yeah, there's a casting call. For, you know, obviously for some kids movie or TV show or a commercial.

• 1:23:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:15Jocko Willink?

  Who knows? So, yeah, there's, I was gonna say, there's more, there's more actors than there are people in LA.

• 1:23:21Speaker 01

  Oh, I was rejected a lot in the early days of the Hollywood thing, you know. I, that, that was when I was living in, in California. Moira and I had come out, we broke up, but I stayed for a while and kept trying to audition and get parts and whatnot. I was there for about a year, year and a half, never got anything until I made a decision to leave and go back to Chicago. Then I landed one little part on not landing.

• 1:23:50Jocko Willink?

  The, you know, people always hear, what do they call it? What's the bias? Echo, I need your help on bias. Survival bias? So you always hear about survival shit bias. You always hear about the person that went in, stormed into the office and I need to audition for this role. And then they got it and then everything's cool. You don't hear this one. Where like you storm in, you're committed until you're believing in yourself. And you stand there and say, no, I need to talk to Robert Redford. I'm here. Gary Sinise is in the house.

• 1:24:20Jocko Willink?

  And he's like, uh, cool. Get out. Call in security. You don't get to, that's why I like this story because, because people think, A, they think if they do that, whatever that thing is, that it's gonna work. And it doesn't always work.

• 1:24:36Speaker 01

  Doesn't always work. I, gosh, I remember times where I auditioned for something in Hollywood. And I remember at the end of the audition, the casting director goes to me, where did you study? And I said, well, I didn't study. I have my own theater company. I've been working with my own theater company. I did acting in high school and, well, don't you think you should study a little bit? And I said, well, I have my own theater company. We've been doing really well and I'm, you know, what? I think you should come back here after you've studied. And she was telling me to go get acting lessons, you know, because I wasn't good enough. And I never forgot that. I never forgot that.

• 1:25:18Speaker 01

  So I went back to Chicago and, and did my theater company and came in the back door.

• 1:25:24Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say, don't you think if there's someone in Hollywood?

• 1:25:30Jocko Willink?

  That had to pay their little dues. They had to go to their acting. They had to do all these things and then you show up trying to sneak in the back door that they kind of hold that against you?

• 1:25:39Speaker 01

  Hmm, well, you know, what I mean by sneak in the back door is, uh, I focused on the theater company and building the theater company in Chicago and doing our work. We eventually moved some of that work to New York City where it became very, very popular. So now we're doing shows in New York and all the casting directors and producers and people from Hollywood are going to New York and they're seeing our shows. And next thing I know, people know who I am. I can get the audition if I want. And it's just because we were able to show our work, show what we do on stage. When you go in an audition,

• 1:26:24Speaker 01

  you're sitting in a room like this and you got two guys like that and they're looking at you and you're emoting, you know, or you're doing whatever you're doing. Somebody's reading, you know, reading the other part and they're kind of flat and you're, you're supposed to act with them and all that stuff. It's really, you know, or you're in a hotel room and you're doing that. It's really, it's not, it's no fun. Um, I, I preferred to just go back to Chicago, do our work and show what we do. And that ended up working.

• 1:26:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's the DIY. That's the punk rock mentality. I know that you were, you're basically too old to be part of that scene, but that's pretty punk rock to say, oh, you know what? Yeah. Okay. I'm not going to play your game. I'll be over here building an empire. What do you got?

• 1:27:14Jocko Willink?

  Uh, yeah, you talk about that, but just before I left Hollywood, my agent landed me an audition for a bit, part on primetime evening soap opera knots landing, playing a teenager, doing some underage drinking at a party on the beach. Well, at least you were kind of, you know, that wasn't really a stretch.

• 1:27:28Speaker 01

  It was my wheelhouse. Yes.

• 1:27:29Jocko Willink?

  I got the part. My character's name was Lee Maddox and had a couple of lines and a make out scene with a girl while sitting beside a campfire. My very first time acting film. Let's just say it wasn't from here to eternity. Certainly not enough to keep me in Los Angeles any longer. Steppenwolf opened, Steppenwolf opened the 1980 season in March. I moved back with no place to live. I just showed up with my bags and said, hi, I'm back. What can I do? Steppenwolf folded me into the company immediately. Although our current season was already underway, so I had no formal roles to play. Then you did some, you did some stand ins when guys were sick or whatever. Steppenwolf wasn't rolling in dough, but we could finally pay our actors, actors a bit. And that's a big step.

• 1:28:13Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm. Yeah. Um. You did a play called Getting Out. I received my first award nomination called the Joseph Jefferson Award. The nomination was for best supporting actor and I won. I loved Chicago. In Hollywood, I was a dopey disco dancer in the background with Luke and Laura. I was a loser guy on the beach and I'd been thrown out, off the lot in Warner Brothers and told by a casting director to come back when I had some acting lessons. I couldn't get ahead no matter how hard I tried, but back in Chicago, I went to work as an actor almost right away. I got paid for it and won a recognized award all within six months. Meanwhile, uh, this is going on. Moira finished nursing school in California.

• 1:28:55Jocko Willink?

  Yet she never worked as a nurse. She moved back to Chicago in 1981 and rejoined the company. And we formally rekindled our relationship somewhere in the middle of the revival production of bomb of, how do you say this bomb in? Gilead. Bomb and Gilead. Moira and I took a good look at each other, shrugged, and said to each other, hey, let's get married. So you're back in the game. Uh, H E Bacchus, keep forgetting. Bacchus. Bacchus. H E Bacchus was the artistic director. He quits. And then it's between you and Malkovich being suggested to be the A D artistic director. You like that Echo Charles? Yes.

• 1:29:36Jocko Willink?

  He's kind of a Hollywood guy. Uh, the ensemble voted. And you landed the position. You thought Malkovich was relieved. And this is where I, I sense Mac Harris.

• 1:29:51Jocko Willink?

  I was convinced, so now you're taking over as the artistic director, which, so what does that mean? You're picking the plays?

• 1:29:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, run the company. Yeah, basically, there's a managing director who deals with the business, the artistic director kind of deals with the season and how the plays are gonna work and the casting and all that kind of stuff.

• 1:30:08Jocko Willink?

  Are you allowed to veto some weird directing, uh, ideas?

• 1:30:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:13Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you're kind of the man.

• 1:30:15Speaker 01

  Decision maker.

• 1:30:16Jocko Willink?

  Check. So you take over as AD?

• 1:30:19Speaker 01

  Although, although, can I say one thing?

• 1:30:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:22Speaker 01

  H E Bacchus, when he was the artistic director, we, we appointed him in the first season, we, he, nobody wanted to do it, so we made him do it. And H E was very diplomatic and easygoing, very, you know, he listened to everybody and everything like that. So people were kind of used to a little bit more free-flowing, whatever, let's do this and do that. Uh, I came in and I had a very different style.

• 1:30:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:49Speaker 01

  No, no question.

• 1:30:50Jocko Willink?

  It's interesting that even this, this group, so I'll work with companies where they, they're, I've worked with companies where they, they have literally a flat organization, meaning no one's in charge. And they're very, they're always very proud of this. Doesn't usually work great. So I find it interesting that even you guys, this group of, you know, uh, crazy actors and actresses, says, hey, you know what, we didn't, we needed, we need somebody to be in charge of this ship, right? It's, it's just very interesting from a leadership perspective. Even if the leader is a guy like H E, who's laid back and not really, you know, uh, a heavy leadership presence on every decision, but he's, he's at least got some oversight of the deal.

• 1:31:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, and he's smart and people respect him.

• 1:31:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and he's, he's steering it, right? Somewhat, even if he's steering it subtly. So.

• 1:31:41Jocko Willink?

  In groups, we need leaders, just kinda making that point. Uh, so you roll in, rolling in hot, as they say. I was convinced we needed to approach our work more like a business. The following Monday, I came in with a new set of rules. High on the list was all staff members in by 9 a.m. every day. I made several other changes and even fired someone. Good Lord, the new rules and approach came as a shock to the ensemble, sort of like General Patton had just walked in. While we still maintain our collaborative approach to the direction we wanted to go as a company, as A.D. I felt it was time to approach things a bit differently, to step up our game and allow the artistic director to lead in a new way. One rule I implemented was the now infamous, at least among the company, no pot rule.

• 1:32:26Jocko Willink?

  No pot could be smoked or eaten anywhere around the theater until after showtime. No beer either. Everyone fought the no pot rule. It's hilarious coming from a guy who openly partook from time to time, but for the most part, everyone along with it. So what I find interesting about this is, I wrote another book here. The book is called Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual. And what I find interesting about this is, I'm often explaining to companies that you as an individual human being, if you want to have freedom, then you need to have discipline. And I explain to companies that as a company, as a business, if you want to have freedom, you have to have discipline. You have to come up with standard operating procedures.

• 1:33:09Jocko Willink?

  You have to do things like everyone get to work by nine. So I find it interesting that you recognize these things. You know, you obviously saw that, hey, we're doing okay right now, but if we're gonna really step up our game, well, I'm gonna need to impose some discipline here.

• 1:33:25Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, and that's what it was. I mean, at that time, you know, people would just show up. And I mean, we rehearsed our plays. We were very serious on stage. I mean, everybody loved acting. We loved doing the work on stage. But it was a little undisciplined, um, you know, as a business. And we were raising money. We were, uh, we had a board of directors. We were trying to sell subscriptions now at this point.

• 1:33:54Jocko Willink?

  What theater were you guys in at this point?

• 1:33:56Speaker 01

  Now, we had moved from Highland Park into the city of Chicago. And so we're in about 134-seat theater that was already built. We just rented it. And we, you know, we were building our board, all that. So I wanted to improve all of tho- all of those things. And I really kind of saw us eventually taking one of our shows and moving it to New York to get international and national recognition and exposure. And I thought that would help us grow in the city of Chicago. So, you know, I had to, you know, I had ideas about how I wanted to lead the company. And sometimes they worked with everybody. Sometimes it didn't work with everybody. And, you know, we'd have to have to duke it out a little bit or vote on things,

• 1:34:38Speaker 01

  you know, and stuff. But, but eventually, you know, people got used to just the fact that now somebody was making real, serious, hard decisions and changing the way we did things.

• 1:34:48Jocko Willink?

  Another thing that I talk about, it sounds like there's a little bit of this some- somewhere, and it's actually a bunch of it in this new book I wrote, Leadership, Strategy and Tactics, is when there is a void of leadership, when there's a leadership vacuum, people, people can sense it and they kind of know it. And if someone steps into that vacuum and starts making decisions, everyone's kind of relieved that it finally happened. People are like, okay, cool. This guy's actually gonna move us and, uh, uh, look, it might not be the perfect direction, but we're all gonna move there together and that's good enough. So it sounds like maybe there was some of that as well. I bet if you'd have jumped in there a few years earlier with this, where there was a little bit more egos, people weren't, you know, it might have been resisted more.

• 1:35:27Speaker 01

  You, you're, you may be right, because we're, again, I described in the book that we were all trying to find each other and find ourselves and find our working relationships. And people were breaking up and, you know, there's a lot of personal stuff going on. It was a little crazy. But once we moved into Chicago, once that decision was made to move the company away from the suburb of Highland Park into the city where there were other theaters and theater community going on, and to become a part of that, we, you know, we found ourselves needing some, a little more discipline and whatnot. So I just came in and did, did it the way, and believe me, I don't know where that all came from. Um, you know, I just, I, as a kid, I think

• 1:36:11Speaker 01

  I was the guy to organize the, the baseball game in the neighborhood or, you know, the guy who'd come up with the set list for the band or whatever. I, I always sort of led a little bit like that. So, but I'd never led a theater company before. This was all new.

• 1:36:28Jocko Willink?

  I hate to jump into like, trying to figure some of this out, but you got 134-seat theater in Chicago. How many shows do you do a week?

• 1:36:38Speaker 01

  We were doing about eight shows a week.

• 1:36:40Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so you're doing like a show every night and two on Sunday or something like that, or two on Saturday?

• 1:36:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, and Monday was the day off.

• 1:36:46Jocko Willink?

  And then, oh, so like two on Friday, or two on Saturday, two on Sunday, something like that?

• 1:36:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, stuff like that.

• 1:36:51Jocko Willink?

  And are you filling that thing up?

• 1:36:54Speaker 01

  No, no, you know, from time to time.

• 1:36:58Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:36:59Speaker 01

  I mean, that the play, for example, that you mentioned, Baum and Gilead, that ended up being one of our massive hits. And it it sold out every night. So it all depended on word of mouth and the reviews and all that kind of thing. The play that I talked about called Savages with the naked people and everything. That we we barely had, we had more people on stage than were in the audience for that one, so.

• 1:37:27Jocko Willink?

  You are, is is one hundred and twenty five people, do you need microphones in that size? Like on the on the actors?

• 1:37:34Speaker 01

  Hundred and thirty four seats?

• 1:37:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, sorry, hundred and thirty four seats, you're you're not even using microphones?

• 1:37:38Speaker 01

  No, we had like three rows on the floor, and then there was a little balcony that had two rows that went around. It was it was like a three quarter theater.

• 1:37:49Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:37:49Speaker 01

  So so you had audience here, audience here, and audience here on three sides, and then the

• 1:37:55Jocko Willink?

  On the stage.

• 1:37:56Speaker 01

  Play was right here in the middle.

• 1:37:57Jocko Willink?

  So no microphones, everyone could just hear you, and it's super raw?

• 1:38:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:01Jocko Willink?

  And you're and if there's twenty five naked people on stage, it's super uncomfortable?

• 1:38:05Speaker 01

  It was it was really raw, yeah.

• 1:38:09Speaker 01

  Really raw, yeah. The the and these were these were all, they were playing Brazilian, you know, Peruvian, a tribe. And so these were all like, most of the People that were in there and playing this this tribe were like from northwestern students.

• 1:38:33Speaker 01

  So, you know, as white as you can be, right? So they they used a very tan makeup on their bodies and everything. And then after the show, they'd have to go to the showers. And there was there was also a gym with a locker room in this place that we had this theater. And so the entire cast, 25 people, go into the showers and hit the showers after the show. Luckily, I wasn't in this show. I was just the artistic director who made the decision to do the show.

• 1:39:02Jocko Willink?

  Well, I hate to say this, but you got to take ownership of that. As the guy in charge, you have to own those 25 naked sweaty people on stage.

• 1:39:09Speaker 01

  I do, but I blame John Malkovich, though.

• 1:39:12Jocko Willink?

  All right, all right. Yeah, I'll let you have to let you guys sort that out.

• 1:39:16Speaker 01

  It's a fun memory for everybody, you know. It was a misguided show, but we all get a kick out.

• 1:39:21Jocko Willink?

  So even though you're paying your actors, everyone still have day jobs at this point?

• 1:39:26Speaker 01

  Some people did, yeah. As artistic director now, I was drawing a little bit of a salary, so.

• 1:39:33Jocko Willink?

  And that didn't create any hostilities?

• 1:39:35Speaker 01

  No, no, no, because we were able to pay certain key people that needed to be there all the time. The artistic director, the managing director, stage manager, people like that. You know, we were able to, you know, our construction folks, we were able to, you know, we were building our board. We were selling more tickets. We were selling subscriptions now.

• 1:39:57Jocko Willink?

  Subscription means you can come any night of the week.

• 1:40:00Speaker 01

  No, a subscription will mean you you pay a certain price and you're buying all, let's say we have five plays in a season. You're buying all five plays and you get a discount because you're buying all five. And it's a subscription to this season.

• 1:40:15Jocko Willink?

  Okay, and we're making enough money, we're paying some people, all right.

• 1:40:22Jocko Willink?

  At this point, you know, you delve into a little bit about, you're talking about Mac, and you're talking about the impression that they made on you, and we kind of already talked about that now. But there's a play that you hear about, and it's a play called Tracers, which is written and performed by Vietnam veterans about their experiences before, during, and after the war. A light bulb clicked on. This is exactly what I was looking for. On February 20th, 1981, I typed a two-page letter to address, addressed to the entire Tracers ensemble in care of director John Defusco.

• 1:40:56Speaker 01

  Defusco, yeah.

• 1:40:58Jocko Willink?

  The Vietnam vet who conceived the play, co-wrote it, and owned the rights to it. John Defusco had never heard of Steppenwolf, wrote back and said, "No, sorry, it's a play written and performed by veterans, and we fail. It should be done always that way, so we're not letting anybody else do it." So you waited. Time passed. Eventually, you invite him to Chicago to see one of your shows.

• 1:41:22Speaker 01

  Bauman Gillian.

• 1:41:23Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so he sees that place is crowded, and he sees that there's a, what does he say? You say, "Gives a guest credibility."

• 1:41:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, the play was very, very good, very powerful. So he could see that we were a real theater company at that point, and he didn't know anything about us at that point.

• 1:41:41Jocko Willink?

  And then you guys, you find that he says you can do it. And I'll go to the book here. I talked to my brother Mac about, my brother-in-law Mac, about what he thought about putting on the play. He liked the idea, informed me about certain details I needed to make sure I got right. More than anything, I wanted him to come see the play. But in August 1983, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Mac's manual for the Army was published in October 1983. And that same month, his promising career in life were cut short. He passed away at age 39, leaving behind his wife and three-year-old daughter Katie. You talk about going to the funeral, the honor guard, the flag-draped coffin, the

• 1:42:25Jocko Willink?

  21-gun salute. I've never forgotten it. Mac was laid to rest beside his father in the cemetery across the street from where he grew up. Lieutenant Colonel Boyd McCannam Mac Harris truly lived a life of service to others, and his passing only put the cap in my commitment to do the play right. I wanted Tracers to honor the Vietnam veterans such as Mac Harris and help them tell their stories.

• 1:42:53Jocko Willink?

  And then a- as that's happening, October 23rd, 1983, suicide bomber drives a truck into the building in Beirut. So, you've got that happening, um, and your, your, your desire to really do a great production grows even stronger. Um, and you do it. You guys, you guys, you guys, you ran like a boot camp, sort of to get ready for it. You know, you guys go out in the, in the field and, and play little war games to try and

• 1:43:35Jocko Willink?

  get in the minds of the soldiers, which I know they do that all the time now, it seems, when people are doing movies, they always put some kind of a military boot camp thing together for them.

• 1:43:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:43:45Jocko Willink?

  Uh, had you ever heard of that before? Did you just kind of think we need to do it?

• 1:43:49Speaker 01

  I don't know why, because I, I remember, um, a couple of years later, this is 1983 that we're starting to work on this play. And remember the movie Platoon with, uh, Charlie Sheen and?

• 1:44:04Jocko Willink?

  Affirmative.

• 1:44:05Speaker 01

  Oliver Stone directed it. So that, that came out about three years later and they did a whole boot camp thing and then they lived in the jungle for two weeks and trained these guys and everything like that. But three years earlier, I took this cast out and we did something similar, in a, in a way, kind of our own little mini version of boot camp. And I'm not sure where that idea came from. I think it was just the desire to isolate my cast away from everything. And somebody I knew, um, was involved with a, a summer camp in Michigan that was closed down. And so this is, this is winter time now that we're rehearsing this play.

• 1:44:48Speaker 01

  And they, they said they could arrange for me to go to the closed down. Summer camp and you know stay in the in the in the cabins and I would just have it all to myself and they arranged that so I took my cast to this closed down summer camp in the winter and the snow is like this and we're playing Vietnam guys out in the snow you know doing we had remember Dennis Farina the actor? What was he what would he be? He was in Get Shorty and he was in a television. Snatch Echo okay. Yeah. If I'm remembering correctly. Yeah he was in he was in a lot of stuff you'd you'd recognize him uh he he's a Vietnam

• 1:45:31Speaker 01

  veteran himself and he was just getting into acting and I cast him as the drill instructor and so I told Dennis you're gonna be the drill instructor up at this summer camp with us and so I want you to wake us up and three in the morning banging on things and make everybody go out in the snow and do pushups and so we did we did a whole thing up there for four or five days and just and it was it was it was just so galvanizing for the cast to come together in this isolated place nobody was around we're out in the middle of the woods and nobody's around and we were just there doing our sort of military thing together and bonding as a cast I directed the play I wasn't in it but I did everything

• 1:46:16Speaker 01

  that they were doing and you know went out in the snow and did the whole thing and it was uh it was an ingredient in the preparation of the play that was really I think just super to bond this cast together I was very very committed because of the Vietnam veterans in my own family to telling these stories properly and having seen the original production twice and watching all these Vietnam veterans they they weren't you know there were only two of them in that original cast that wrote this play that had done any acting before all the rest of them were veterans and they just came together and over a six month period

• 1:46:58Speaker 01

  they exercised their demons into a script and wrote a play based on their experiences in Vietnam what it was like to be there serve there come home from there all that stuff and they put it into this play and I saw it was very powerful and they were all veterans performing their own stories. And I thought, I gotta, I'm gonna do my best to live up to that. They are entrusting me with their script, you know, and they're not giving it to anybody else, and they're entrusting me with the script. And for them and the Vietnam veterans and my own family, I want to make sure that my

• 1:47:40Speaker 01

  cast really gets this thing, why we're doing it, the importance of it. And this is 1983, so the wall was opened, you know, just prior to that, right? The Vietnam veteran really hadn't been welcomed home yet, you know, if you, I don't know if you're younger than I am, but in 84, 85, all of a sudden, there were some welcome home parades for the Vietnam veteran, the parades that they never got when they came home, the welcome home experience that they were denied. And this play, Tracers, was happening right around the same time, so something was changing.

• 1:48:23Speaker 01

  And I remember, um, the cast was so powerful, they really got what I was trying to do. We rehearsed the play, we put it on its feet, and, uh, I wanted veterans to come see it, right? It was very important to me that veterans would come see this show. So we made Tuesday night free for veterans. And the word spread throughout the community in Chicago, and veterans, especially Vietnam veterans, were coming in droves. And some nights, some of those Tuesday nights, we would have nothing but veterans, almost, in the audience.

• 1:49:05Speaker 01

  At this point, we were in a new theater, another new theater, that had 220 seats. And can you imagine that? You know, veterans coming with their own family members, and they've never talked about their own experiences, and now their family members are watching these actors on stage kind of relive some of the things that they'd gone through. And we would have discussions after the show, and people would ask questions, and the veterans would talk, and they would talk about their experience, and their wife is sitting right next to them, and she's going... He never said any of this to me before. It was a real cathartic, healing thing that happened with Tracers and it changed my

• 1:49:48Speaker 01

  life and galvanized something in me that would take, take root very deeply in the coming years.

• 1:49:56Jocko Willink?

  You, you, you say in here about it, "After each performance, we received a standing ovation. The crowd cheered wildly. The reviews all came back positive. We decided to provide a pre, free performance, which, which you go into." And, and then you say this, "Today, people often ask me about the highlights of my career. Tracers is one, an incredibly meaningful, absolutely extraordinary experience. As we did this play, I could see that the veterans felt like something was happening for them. They'd been stuck in the shadows, discredited, abused, or simply ignored, and now they were watching these actors honor them and bring their stories out of the shadows."

• 1:50:40Jocko Willink?

  I will always be grateful to John Defusco and the cast of Tracers for the opportunity to work on this life-changing play. For the first time, I felt like I was giving back by honoring our veteran, veterans, by not letting them fall through the cracks, by not letting them feel unappreciated or forgotten. I met many Vietnam veterans who had attended our free performances, and in the early 1990s, I was asked to help raise funds to build the Lansing, Lansing Veterans Memorial in Lansing, Illinois. A Vietnam veteran who had seen Tracers, Tom Luberta?

• 1:51:13Speaker 01

  Luberta.

• 1:51:14Jocko Willink?

  Luberta organized the creation of the memorial. It features the names of our fallen heroes on a black granite wall with a giant UH-1 Huey helicopter mounted overhead, while a statue of a soldier carrying a wounded comrade to the waiting chopper stands as a reminder to never leave anyone behind. I was honored to play some small part in helping Tom and the veterans realize their dream. And to say thanks for my involvement, they put my brother-in-law's name on the wall. Lieutenant Colonel Boyd McCanna Harris, US Army, 9th Infantry Division, American Division, Vietnam.

• 1:52:09Jocko Willink?

  When, here I'm gonna

• 1:52:13Jocko Willink?

  perhaps reveal my own personal lack of culture, which is, which is not very hard to uncover, right? I'm not a very cultured person, right? I didn't, I grew up in the military, I just, you know, I didn't go to museums or go to see plays or whatever. When you do this, when you do plays, theater, right?

• 1:52:41Jocko Willink?

  Do you ever feel like, hey, it's gone? Like, you, you know, we're sitting here talking about Tracers, I wanna watch it, you know, I wanna go watch it. And, you know, you can't. Do you feel like that, or is that something that kinda provides some of the magic to it because it's something that's, that's fleeting?

• 1:52:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a living kinda thing that when it's over, it's over.

• 1:53:04Speaker 01

  Unless, unless you've got something like, you know, Cats or something, which is, you know, Phantom of the Opera, that's never over. You know, in its fourth decade and it's continuing on. Uh, you know, that's, that's the thing about theater.

• 1:53:22Speaker 01

  You know, sometimes I've been in things that were over and then restarted again, and then we did it again, and then we did it again. Uh, and, you know, because there was more blood to suck out of it.

• 1:53:34Speaker 01

  But, uh, it usually it was because it was something really positive, something really good, something creative, and something that we wanted to keep alive a little bit more. The Grapes of Wrath was kind of like that. When we put The Grapes of Wrath on stage, we, a 650-page book, and we adapted it for the stage and we put it on stage in Chicago in 88, then we put it back up again. We took it to La Jolla, California, and London in 89, and then we moved it to Broadway in 1990 and it won, won the Tony Award. That was a, that was an ongoing sort of, we kept working on it and kept refining it, kept making it better and everything.

• 1:54:15Speaker 01

  Sometimes you get those, those kinda projects that, that have a, a big life. But generally, when you're doing a season of plays, you're doing five plays, you know, you, you wrap it up after five weeks and it's done. You go on to the next play.

• 1:54:30Jocko Willink?

  I just did these live gigs. I did six of them. And each one of them was different. So, yeah, each one of them was different. Like I would, as a matter of fact, the one I did, and I was writing them right before I do them. And it was interesting because like when we do the podcast, right? It's recorded, it's there for, for all practical purposes, it's gonna be there for a long time, right? It's on the interwebs.

• 1:55:01Jocko Willink?

  Those, those live gigs were one shot. And that made it very interesting for me because I knew that I was just gonna do this one time. The other thing is, I got the feeling of what it was like to have a bunch of people sitting right there. Because in the podcast, right, it's just Echo sitting there or whoever the guest is sitting there. And we're talking about something, but you forget that there's a million people out there, right? Or you don't forget it, but it's not, it's different.

• 1:55:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:55:33Jocko Willink?

  The, the impact of having these people, you know, having people sitting there with you in the room is, there's a little... I started thinking about, as you were describing this, I'm like, oh, that's, that's that thing. That's what, that's why, because let's face it, if you look at it from a pragmatic perspective, go to a movie. Right? From a pragmatic perspective, hey, you don't need to get a bunch of human beings on a weird stage somewhere and do all these lights and have them try and remember their little lines. No, you go and see a movie. But there's a reason why the theater still exists. And that's because there's this, there's this thing of going live. It's the same thing with seeing a live rock concert, right?

• 1:56:17Jocko Willink?

  Hey, why not just watch a DVD of the band playing their hits? Right? You could say that that's, that's a pragmatic solution, right? From, you know, from just a practical sense, oh, I'll just put on the DVD.

• 1:56:34Jocko Willink?

  Going to see a fight. Hey, going to see a fight, you see, you get a much better view when you're sitting at home on your eighty-seven inch flat screen television.

• 1:56:44Speaker 01

  And you can record it.

• 1:56:46Jocko Willink?

  And you can record it, you can rewind it, right? You can replay it. But when you're there in the Coliseum, there's something going on. So, I guess that's what I was trying to, trying to figure out. If you ever felt like, oh, hold on a second, how do we capture this? And I guess part of the magic is that you can't fully capture it. You have to do it live.

• 1:57:09Speaker 01

  From night to night, it's gonna change too. I mean, the blueprint is the same, but because the audience is reacting differently from night to night, the actors adjust too. And you discover things along the way. The play is never the same at the end of the run as it is at the beginning of the run. Because it evolves. Once you factor in the audience and their participation with you, and the interaction that they have with you while they're watching the play, things evolve. You learn things along the way, things change. I remember, we, we recorded, we did a play, me and Malkovich, called True West.

• 1:57:51Speaker 01

  And the two of us played brothers, and it was a long run, and we were, we were off Broadway. It was the first thing we did in New York, and the thing that kind of put us sort of on a national map. And that play, that play evolved quite a bit. We, we were improvising, we were changing things. This was written by Sam Shepard, and a very, very well-written play. A lot of people have done it. But by the end of the run for us, you know, it had, it had gone into a whole other thing. And it was simply because John and I are the kinds of actors that are gonna give and take and bounce around. He's gonna do something different from night to night, so I'll react differently, or vice versa, or whatever.

• 1:58:36Speaker 01

  And therefore, you know, and if it works, you keep it. And so that the play evolves as time goes on. It's, it's really a neat experience, live, live theater performance. But it's also... Endurance, you know, it's, you know, eight shows a week if you're doing a play like True West, which is two brothers fighting on stage, beating each other up, you know, going crazy, screaming and yelling, blah, blah, blah, night after night after night, you know, it's, it's an endurance test. I couldn't do that particular thing as I'm 64 now, you know, I'd like the, I'd play the psychiatrist, sit and ask questions in the chair, you know.

• 1:59:19Jocko Willink?

  I had this weird, so again, I'm only just diving into this a little bit because I have an actual professional here. I was doing these live gigs and as I was going to do them, so I know a bunch of comedians and, not a bunch, but I know a few comedians and some of them are really good, like Joe Rogan and Theo Von, and so I have some relationships with some of these guys and I kind of listened to them talk about being a comedian and one of the things that they talk about is when you're making a show, they go out to like a small club and they do like their routine and then they, they do it a little bit better and they change something, they add something, they take something away, they add something

• 2:00:03Jocko Willink?

  else until they get it, and this is what made me think of this, you're talking about how you hear the audience react and you go, okay, that's good, I'll add to that and you hear the audience react differently, I go, I'll remove that. And eventually they get to a point where they go, okay, now I can take this thing out on the road and they do, they do, they go on tour with it. What was, and I, like, on my second show, because now I'm changing, I was doing something different and I was like, hey, I don't take any lessons learned from the last one and I have no idea what everyone's going to think of this one I'm doing tonight, which was kind of, it might not be smart, but that's what I did. Doesn't seem like a smart thing to do.

• 2:00:46Jocko Willink?

  When you took that show to New York, not everyone was on board. When you took True West to New York. So there's a little leadership challenge that you faced. And in fact, when you took that show to New York, when you took True West to New York, they told you guys, this isn't Steppenwolf. Right? That's how it went down?

• 2:01:05Speaker 01

  Well, what happened was, I wanted to move the show. And we're in this 134-seat theater where we did True West originally. And we had the opportunity to take over another theater that had more seats that had been kind of closed down for a while, and it was sitting there, waiting to be rented. And we needed to add more seats. We were building our subscribers, our audience is getting stronger. We wanted more seats, so we wanted to go from 134 to the 220 in this building. And this, you know David Mamet? So, William H. Macy, actors like that. They started this theater company called St. Nicholas. They went bankrupt, and this building was just sitting there.

• 2:01:49Speaker 01

  And so we wanted to take it over. We had the, at the same time, we had the opportunity to open that new theater. We had the opportunity to move True West to New York. Most of the company said they didn't want to go to New York and do that. We had to focus on opening this new theater. I said, as artistic director, I think we have to do both. And it was my show, I wanted to move it. I brought the producers in, I wanted, John was in it, you know, I want to... And they said, and two of the actors that were in it, there's four actors total, John and I were the only ones who wanted to do it.

• 2:02:29Speaker 01

  The other actors didn't want to do it and go. So I said, "Well, okay, we'll recast those parts in New York." Well, that didn't go over well with the theater company at all. So they said, "Well, if you're gonna do that, then you can't call it a Steppenwolf show." And so, we moved it to New York, John and I. I recast the other parts. And we opened the show without calling it Steppenwolf, but... And there was a lot of tension between John and me and the other people in the company. They just didn't agree with it and we went and made the decision to do it. But, in our bios, in the program, all the credits we had were Steppenwolf.

• 2:03:11Speaker 01

  It said Gary Sinise is the artistic director of Steppenwolf Theatre. John Malkovich has done all these plays at Steppenwolf in Chicago. So, all the critics were reading those bios. Who are these guys from Chicago? And they read about Steppenwolf. So, Steppenwolf was now getting all kinds of attention. For, because True West ended up being a big hit. And it was a giant hit and people were coming from all over, all over the country, really, to see it because it was so popular. And it kind of put Steppenwolf into a more nationally-recognized position. We were getting a lot of attention from the New York media. Great reviews, lots of people were coming to see it.

• 2:03:56Speaker 01

  And it really turned everything around. After that, the company said, "Oh, that's great, let's do more in New York." And we started bringing a lot of plays to New York after that. But, somebody has to be the first one to kind of go over the hill, you know? And, and we did. John and I, John and I took it and we were successful. We did okay and we moved forward from there.

• 2:04:18Jocko Willink?

  You talk about, kind of how, you give the reviews, guys get these great reviews. Everyone's fired up. You say this, John's performance is especially getting a lot of attention. And his star began to rise during the run. He was doing media interviews and photo sessions for magazine covers. And you say John was so powerful in the show and getting press comparing him to Marlon Brando. The week after we opened, John told me he'd been approached by William Morris Talon, Agent Johnny Planko, Planko, and had signed with him. But after two or three months of running the show, no agents had approached me. I was happy for my friend, he's a great actor, and it was clear to me that he was going

• 2:05:03Jocko Willink?

  to launch into the movie business after we concluded our run of the show, and I couldn't help but wondering if a movie role might be in the cards for me also.

• 2:05:15Jocko Willink?

  Is there like ego involved in this scenario as it's unfolding? Are you just stoked for your friend?

• 2:05:22Speaker 01

  No, both. I mean, yeah, you know, we were onstage together the whole time, two guys. One of the parts is very, very flashy. It's a great part, the part that John played, of the older of the two brothers, and he's like this desert rat. He disappears into the desert and comes out. And the other one is a screenwriter, kind of a little cricket guy, and he's typing and writing, and they're very opposite, you know? But during the course of the play, they sort of exchanged roles in a way. The screenwriter gets crazier and crazier. So the two guys, it's two great parts, they're both onstage the whole time.

• 2:06:06Speaker 01

  And I thought, well, and John's coming in and he's saying, you know, I went out with Antonioni last night, and Robert Duvall, and John Cassavetes, and Gene Hackman was here. Did you see him? I went out with him. And I'm like, well, I went to the Greek restaurant by myself. You know, it was kind of like that. And a lot of great things were happening for John. It was very exciting. It's a flashy part, and he got a lot of attention. I thought maybe, you know, something like that was in the cards for me. It wasn't, but I decided to take some initiative. So I went to the box office and I said, can you give me a list of all the, like, agents

• 2:06:48Speaker 01

  and casting directors, people like that who have been to see the show? And they keep tabs on that kind of stuff. So they gave me the list, and I decided to make those calls myself. They weren't coming to me. So I made a call to some agents, and I ended up getting an agent in New York, and, you know, that changed things a little bit. You know, John had a, you know, he rocketed, you know, he was nominated for an Oscar within two years of that play.

• 2:07:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, I was, I was reading that, I was like, man, this is, I could see where, you know, obviously, working with a bunch of companies all the time, we always deal with people's egos, and I could see where this, this is a classic scenario where you could get mad and, you know, undermine him and, you know, do whatever, like, all sorts of bad things can come from this. Or you can have a great attitude and be like, hey, awesome for him, that's great. No factor, move on.

• 2:07:49Speaker 01

  Well, you know, we ended up taping the show at the end of our run. The show ran two years, we did it for the first six months and then I recast it, I was the director too. So I recast it with a bunch of different people. And we taped it for PBS, and it aired on PBS, you can see it on the internet. It's called True West, it's Malkovich and Sinise. And we taped it, and we took four days to shoot it. And then, right after that, John went off to Thailand to do his first movie. It was called The Killing Fields. And, um, great movie. And he went off, played a part in that.

• 2:08:30Speaker 01

  Within, within a couple of years, he was in a movie called Places in the Heart, and got nominated for an Oscar. And when he left to go there, I went back to Chicago and eventually took over again as artistic director of the company.

• 2:08:48Jocko Willink?

  I think that's what you're talking about here, from 1982 to 1987, we produced even more shows in Chicago.

• 2:08:55Jocko Willink?

  And took more to New York. And then in 1990, we opened The Grapes of Wrath on Broadway. That production won us another Tony, and I forget which one, won you the first Tony, this time for Best Play. And is, the Tony is the best thing you can get in theater?

• 2:09:12Speaker 01

  Uh, in New York, it's the big, big award that you can get. The reason I say another one is in 1985, just a couple of years after True West went, and we were taking other shows there. They gave us an honorary Tony Award for Best Regional Theater. Within a couple of years of, of taking True West then, there, and then in 1990, we won for Best Play.

• 2:09:40Jocko Willink?

  And that kind of precipitates what's going on here. In 1990, we realized another dream when Steppenwolf broke ground at 1650 North Halsted Street and built their own multimillion dollar building. We designed our own theater from the ground up and opened the doors not long afterward. The land of our birth had allowed us to pursue our dreams. Steppenwolf had truly arrived. So you guys were big time now. I mean, if you're building a building, you're doing some good stuff, obviously.

• 2:10:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, so 82 to 90, right? So during that period in the 80s, we became an internationally recognized theater. We took shows to London. We took shows to New York. We were getting great press from the international media. We went from a local theater that nobody knew about outside of Chicago to an internationally recognized theater with which allowed us to attract stronger board members. So, you know, reach a wider audience and, and eventually raise the money to build our own theater from the ground up.

• 2:10:53Jocko Willink?

  How many seats did you guys put in the new theater?

• 2:10:55Speaker 01

  Five twenty.

• 2:10:56Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:10:57Speaker 01

  And now we're building another one right next door.

• 2:11:00Jocko Willink?

  Right now?

• 2:11:00Speaker 01

  Adding another theater in the round, yeah.

• 2:11:03Jocko Willink?

  Still on the move.

• 2:11:04Speaker 01

  Kind of crazy.

• 2:11:06Jocko Willink?

  You get, uh, Sam. Who's Sam? Hollywood guy?

• 2:11:11Speaker 01

  Might be Sam Cohen, who was my agent at the time.

• 2:11:16Jocko Willink?

  He introduced you to a Hollywood producer named David Putnam. Uh, Sam called me and said that David wanted to offer you a directing deal in Hollywood at Columbia. David would pay me to move to California. He called David and he was asking you about like how much, how much do you think you should get? He called David, then called back and said David thinks you should get seventy thousand, seventy five thousand dollars a year. Okay by you? I was speechless. Sixty thousand sounded like a fortune to me, much less seventy five. They gave me an office in the, on the back lot of Warner Brothers where Columbia Pictures was based at the time. The same lot, incidentally, that I'd been thrown out of a few years earlier when I tried so hard to see Robert Redford. At the time I was still, at the time I made

• 2:12:01Jocko Willink?

  the deal, I was still artistic director at Steppenwolf. Turned over the reins to Jeff Perry and Randy Arnie.

• 2:12:08Jocko Willink?

  So now you go out and you're, they're basically paying you to look for a movie to make? Is that, is that what it is?

• 2:12:14Speaker 01

  Kind of, that's what the first look deal is. If, if I find a movie that I want to direct, I give it to them first to see it. They can say yes or no.

• 2:12:25Jocko Willink?

  Got it. And the movie that you finally come up with is called Farm of the Year.

• 2:12:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, another studio had that. So I had to go to David Putnam and say, look, I, I found a movie I want to do, but it's at another studio. And he said, uh, go make it, make it great. You know, they, they had me under contract there and they wanted me to make movies. So they weren't gonna have me hang around and do nothing. I had a movie I wanted to make and it just happened to be at a small studio.

• 2:12:56Jocko Willink?

  So, Sinocom?

• 2:12:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was, that was, uh, the company.

• 2:13:01Jocko Willink?

  They say they're gonna put five million up to make the movie. Uh, we shot the movie in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I found my transition from theater directing to film directing. A little more difficult than I'd anticipated. Again, I gotta skip through some of this. You, you talk about like some of the challenges you come across. Some of it being that's your first movie and you're not quite a hundred percent sure of what you're doing.

• 2:13:24Jocko Willink?

  As you're going through all that, to add to the pressure, in the middle of all this confusion, I received a call from the producers who said the selection committee at Cannes Film Festival wanted to see a cut of the movie. Cannes, holy crap. Cannes means red carpet and paparazzi, big movie stars chauffeured to the front door in limousines. Echo getting fired up over there. Every filmmaker dreams of being in competition at Cannes. A great reception there can really help a movie out. So, that's looking good. The studio execs, execs decided to fiddle with the title of film, changing it from the Farm of the Year to Miles from Home. So.

• 2:14:06Jocko Willink?

  Miles from Home comes out and you say here it never found its audience, it fell flat, earning a grand total of $188,000.

• 2:14:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's falling flat, yeah.

• 2:14:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and that's out of a $5 million investment, it's probably more than that. The experience wasn't all bad for me anyway, although I'm sure the studio wasn't thrilled. I learned many great lessons, I just needed to find the right movie. And by the way, our first baby was due just after Miles from Home closed in theaters. The due date was November 8th, 1988, Election Day, the year George H.W. Bush ran against Michael Dukakis. On November 9th, we named her Sofia Anna Sinise and called her Sophie.

• 2:14:50Jocko Willink?

  In 1990, Moira discovered she was pregnant again, this time with a boy. That summer, I was acting on Broadway in The Grapes of Wrath, and Moira, now six months pregnant, was in Chicago doing a play with Steppenwolf called Love Letters. She's just getting after it.

• 2:15:07Jocko Willink?

  In multiple phone calls, we discussed what we should name our son. One day, the name became clear to me. I called up Moira, "We should call him Mac after your brother." Moira was thrilled. Boyd McCannan Mac Harris, the Vietnam Vet, Silver Star recipient, West Point instructor, passed away in 1983 of cancer. We all thought of him regularly. When our son was born on November 10th, 1990, almost two years to the day after Sophie, we named him McCanna Anthony Sinise Mac for short. The Irish and Italian influences surrounded us and sounded very American.

• 2:15:45Jocko Willink?

  And, and after Mac is born, you know, you go, and I'm, I'm not going to read this part because people should read it for themselves, but you kind of talk about just how everything kind of hits you, that you got these two beautiful children, you got, you know, you're doing well in life, you've got the beautiful family, and you say here,

• 2:16:06Jocko Willink?

  you know, you're driving while this is happening and, and you're, get emotional. You say, "As I brushed away the tears at the stoplight, I think I whispered a semblance of my first prayer. The prayer was hazy, but the intention was clear. Called a longing, perhaps. The first twinges of belief, two words layered with more than one meaning. Thank you."

• 2:16:34Jocko Willink?

  You wrap up Grapes of Wrath onstage. And you say, "Here, I searched for what to do next. I knew I wanted to do something epic. Something that moved people, preferably another movie. But what? Then Elaine Steinbach and you talk about where you developed this relationship with her.

• 2:16:52Speaker 01

  And she was married to John Steinbach, his widow. She controlled all the rights to his material.

• 2:16:58Jocko Willink?

  And you knew her. Where'd you know her from?

• 2:17:00Speaker 01

  From working on The Grapes of Wrath. She gave us the rights to do it and she loved the production. So she, we became friends.

• 2:17:07Jocko Willink?

  And so Elaine had become a real champion of Stefan Wolf. She'd seen that we could take on her husband's novels and handle the stories really well. "On the last day of shooting the PBS version of Grapes of Wrath, I stood with Elaine during a break out by the theater's back steps. I thought about the boxcar image, swallowed, sucked up by my courage and said, Elaine, would you give me the rights to Of Mice and Men? I'd like to try and make a movie out of it. I paused and added tentatively, "I'd need your help too because I don't have any money." She chuckled quietly, smiled her beautiful delight, dignified smile and said, "Well, honey, it's already been a film." Three times. I got a kick out of that. You end up making the deal. She eventually gives it to you.

• 2:17:49Jocko Willink?

  She gives it to you free of charge, by the way, which is, shows you that she was impressed with you and what, you know, what you guys had done with her husband's other material. You start, you make this movie, you're doing that, and actually, the day the LA riots touched off, I was mixing the sound for Of Mice and Men at Sony Studios in Culver City. One of the technicians called me into the office and there on his TV, all hell was breaking loose. For the next five days while the riots raged, I tried to work at home while watching the city burn on television. Those are, of course, the Rodney King riots.

• 2:18:30Jocko Willink?

  You get another, uh, another invite to Cannes?

• 2:18:36Speaker 01

  It's Cannes.

• 2:18:38Jocko Willink?

  Okay, sorry. Did I mention something about me being uncultured?

• 2:18:41Speaker 01

  It's con. It's French.

• 2:18:45Jocko Willink?

  Alright, so you get another invite to Cannes.

• 2:18:49Speaker 01

  You say it how you want to say it.

• 2:18:51Jocko Willink?

  Hey, I'm American. There's an S on the end of it. So you get another invite to Cannes.

• 2:18:57Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 2:18:58Jocko Willink?

  And, on the way, on the way from the hotel to the theater, the streets were lined with cheering people. At the theater, the red carpet was packed with paparazzi and journalists. Everybody wore tuxedos or ball gowns. Flashbulbs popped everywhere. As a filmmaker, when your movie is being shown, you can't stand in the back and pace, which is what I nervously felt like doing. You must sit in the middle of the theater, along with the production team, in the middle of a gigantic crowd. You hope the crowd enjoys the show. If they don't, then you sit there and take your punishment, even if you get booed. And this was my first film as a producer, my second as a director, only my third as an actor.

• 2:19:38Jocko Willink?

  The crowd and I watched the movie. It started just as I envisioned it, on a train inside a boxcar. We heard the clickety-clack of the train going across the tracks. The story progressed, the movie finished, and the credits rolled with the lights still down. The plot concludes tragically, not triumphantly, and it's not a movie where you walk away feeling happy. Still, the story is deeply moving and powerful, and my hope was that after seeing the film, viewers might be motivated to do a little more and make sure people aren't alone, abandoned, marginalized, or left on the fringes. When the credits began to roll, a little lull kept in, crept into the auditorium, a tense moment of silence. Sometimes the audience waits until the very end of the credits to show their feelings.

• 2:20:20Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes, they make their decision with the credits still rolling. I felt my skin crawl. Will the audience clap? Will they boo? I held my breath waiting for the response. And then it happened. A dam burst. The entire room erupted into applause, huge applause. When the credits still rolling, the audience clapped and clapped. One person stood, then another. The entire theater rose to their feet. A standing ovation. The team and I stayed in the middle of the crowd. And they brought the house lights up and shined a spotlight on us. The crowd continued to clap wildly. They cheered through the entire credits. Malkovich and I stood, took a bow and waved. The credits ended and nothing appeared on the screen. The audience continued to clap and cheer. Malkovich and I sat down and took a few moments.

• 2:21:04Jocko Willink?

  The audience continued to clap and cheer. Then Russ, John and I stood and I saw Tom Selleck standing off to one side in the crowd. I had to leave this in there for Echo Charles. I saw Tom Selleck standing off to one side of the crowd, clapping, cheering. I didn't know him personally, but I could pick out his familiar face anywhere. He wore a white tux and as I glanced over, Tom caught my eye and smiled and nodded. It's only Magnum P I could do. The standing ovation went on and on. The noise in the room was deafening. Someone said later, "The ovation lasted a full 10 minutes." Finally, the clapping wound down and I stood again in the cloud, called the crowd, "Thank you, thank you, thank you so much." Tears filled my eyes. A wave of emotion nearly choked me. We had worked hard and this was our moment of truth. It felt spectacular.

• 2:21:48Jocko Willink?

  And there's a little, I'm not going to go into the full thing, but there's a, Russ is with you.

• 2:21:52Speaker 01

  Russ was a co-producer.

• 2:21:54Jocko Willink?

  And Russ says, "Wow, I'm so glad the MGM executives are here to see this. It will be really good for the film." Or is that you said that?

• 2:22:02Speaker 01

  I said that.

• 2:22:03Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you said, oh yeah, yeah. I looked over at Russ and quipped, "Wow, I'm so glad the MGM executives are here to see this." It will be really good for the film." And then he says back, "Either that, or I think we just made a French film."

• 2:22:17Jocko Willink?

  Which means that's like an artistic film.

• 2:22:20Speaker 01

  Art house.

• 2:22:20Jocko Willink?

  An art house film, which is cool. But not super, what profitable?

• 2:22:26Speaker 01

  Not a lot of people are gonna see it.

• 2:22:31Jocko Willink?

  Uh, sounds like you were kinda right.

• 2:22:35Jocko Willink?

  Kind of?

• 2:22:36Speaker 01

  I was.

• 2:22:37Jocko Willink?

  You were right.

• 2:22:40Jocko Willink?

  Going here, the execs, I mean, this is exactly what company made this or what?

• 2:22:43Speaker 01

  MGM.

• 2:22:44Jocko Willink?

  The execs, the MGM execs considered it an artistic success, but I think they suspected the movie wasn't gonna make much money, so they weren't gonna spend much to market it. Columbia's A River Runs Through It starring Brad Pitt and directed by Robert Redford. He's starting, I'm starting to get hostile towards this guy.

• 2:23:01Speaker 01

  I know, man.

• 2:23:03Jocko Willink?

  Came out seven days after Of Mice and Men, and although the stories were different, the heartland tone was similar. A River Runs Through It went on to win an Oscar and earned forty-three million. Of Mice and Men received a ten-minute standing ovation at Cannes.

• 2:23:19Jocko Willink?

  But grossed just over five million. So, yeah.

• 2:23:24Jocko Willink?

  Bittersweet.

• 2:23:25Speaker 01

  You know, but I'll tell you, I say in the book, I have no.

• 2:23:30Speaker 01

  Um, I was disappointed, obviously. I wanted them to put full-page ads in the paper and do a lot more promotion on it. But the bottom line is that they gave me eight point eight million dollars to make that movie. To make Of Mice, and nobody thought Of Mice and Men was gonna be a big blockbuster or anything like that, but they gave me the money to make it. And they left me alone pretty much when I was making it, to make my own decisions and do what I want. So, I'm very grateful to MGM and Alan Ladd and the people there who supported it, even though it wasn't a big hit.

• 2:24:04Jocko Willink?

  When you see the movie now. You made the movie that you wanted to make, right?

• 2:24:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:10Jocko Willink?

  You don't look at it now and go, I should have done this, I should have done that?

• 2:24:14Speaker 01

  No, you know, I haven't seen it for quite a long time, but the last time I saw it was with a small group of folks and I felt like the movie holds up. It's just, it's sort of a timeless story, you know, and the way it's made is not, there's no filmmaking technique that happened to be the fad at the time and or anything like that. It's shot very straightforward, it's pretty to look at, it's about the acting and the story is good. And so for that reason, I think it holds up and I've, I've received countless letters from high school kids all over the country for the last 30 years.

• 2:24:56Speaker 01

  Cause they, they study of Mice and Men in school and then they watch the movie. And so more kids have seen that movie than ever saw it in the theater when it opened.

• 2:25:06Jocko Willink?

  Where can people see it right now? Is it on Netflix?

• 2:25:09Speaker 01

  It probably is and DVDs and that kind of thing. Sure. Yeah. Netflix.

• 2:25:14Jocko Willink?

  Are they still making DVDs, Echo? I don't.

• 2:25:16Speaker 01

  Don't they?

• 2:25:17Jocko Willink?

  Have those.

• 2:25:17Speaker 01

  You don't know anything about that.

• 2:25:19Jocko Willink?

  That thing better be on iTunes. That thing better be, well, people are gonna go watch it now.

• 2:25:24Speaker 01

  It's a good movie.

• 2:25:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:25Speaker 01

  And Malkovich is, is in it. We play George and Lenny and it's, it's a good movie. I'm proud of it.

• 2:25:33Jocko Willink?

  Six weeks before the opening of Mice and Men, our third child was due. Born August 20th, 1992, Ella was our smallest baby. And two weeks after the, after her birth, we sat at an appointment with our pediatrician. She listened to Ella's little heart and said, I want you to go see a cardiologist right away. There's something odd in Ella's heartbeat.

• 2:25:54Jocko Willink?

  I tell you, when a pediatrician says that, your life clouds with fear. So you guys take her to the cardiologist, they run all kinds of tests. They find out that she's got some issues and.

• 2:26:08Jocko Willink?

  They say that she's, they want to see what happens over time. She's got some holes in her heart. Um, but sometimes the holes close up on their own and they want to see what's going to happen. Like, and when I say they want to see what's going to happen, it's years that they want to wait.

• 2:26:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:26:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Are you sweating the entire time? Are you constantly in fear?

• 2:26:27Speaker 01

  Um, no, because we would have regular appointments with the cardiologist.

• 2:26:32Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 2:26:32Speaker 01

  And he would just, he would just listen and see eventually, and they would, uh, you know, take pictures and, and, uh, look at what happened. Eventually, when she was five years old, uh, there were three holes when she was born in her heart. Two of them closed up by the time she was five years old. And the, the last one, the biggest of the three, they said, it's not going to close on its own. We're going to have to do surgery on it. So that, that, now we're dealing with our little five-year-old having heart surgery. And that, that, then it was, it was scary. Yeah. But these heart surgeons are, they're,

• 2:27:15Speaker 01

  they're remarkable. And we had a remarkable heart surgeon who took very good care of her. And she was home within two days, I think, of the surgery. And, you know, she's perfect. Uh, at about five years later, we took, you know, we had to take her to the cardiologist. He kept checking. Five years later, we went in, she's about 10 years old, and he said, I've got good news and bad news. The good news is, everything's good. Your heart's great. The bad news is, you don't have to see me anymore. So we stopped taking her, and she's a beautiful, beautiful girl, married now, and her little baby.

• 2:27:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. On the backdrop of that, I had, I had, I couldn't, I could not read this part. "In the fall of 1992, my agent set up a general meeting for me to sit down with Steven Spielberg. As a director and producer, Steven Spielberg was already legendary, having pulled off a string of block busts, including Jaws."

• 2:28:16Jocko Willink?

  Which I could just stop right there. Because anybody that knows me knows that when I was a kid, videotape machines had just come out. And my dad got a videotape machine. And we had, so like, we probably had three movies on videotape. One of them was Jaws. We watched that continually for years.

• 2:28:40Speaker 02

  We call those VCRs. We don't say.

• 2:28:43Jocko Willink?

  Oh, videotape machines, okay.

• 2:28:45Speaker 02

  We don't say that.

• 2:28:46Jocko Willink?

  Video cassette recorder.

• 2:28:47Speaker 02

  VCR.

• 2:28:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so we had that. So Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., The Extraterrestrial. Steven asked me what I was doing. I told him about Of Mice and Men. He said, oh, I'd love to see it. Will you show it to me? Just bring it over to my house. I've got a screening room there. We'll watch it together. And I said, of course. We set up the screening just outside the theater in Steven's house. He had a little lobby with a popcorn machine and a candy counter. His wife, Kate Capshaw, joined us. And we all grabbed some popcorn and sodas and sat down to watch Of Mice and Men together. It was surreal. Steven and Kate were both very gracious. They loved the movie. Afterward, we stood outside their home saying our goodbyes. Kate gave me a little hug and Steven turned to me while I racked my brain.

• 2:29:33Jocko Willink?

  Think, Gary, think. I was desperate to ask Steven one brilliant question. But all I could muster was, Steven, how do you know where to put the camera? He chuckled and said, I just watch a lot of movies. So simple, so profound. To become a great filmmaker, you must study the greats. You learn to steal. You learn and steal from people you admire. Over the years, I had endlessly studied actors I admired. Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, Gene Hackman, De Niro, Voight, DuVall, Hoffman, Brando, many others. Steven took this last sip of soda and added, oh, and Gary, based on what I just saw in Of Mice and Men, you should definitely keep directing.

• 2:30:19Jocko Willink?

  Directing, hmm. Now, you go on a little bit further, you said, "I couldn't have known what was just over the horizon. It was an amazing opportunity for me, one that would open a new world and not only in acting. Incidentally, after completing Of Mice and Men, I haven't directed a movie since."

• 2:30:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was it, yeah.

• 2:30:37Jocko Willink?

  You know, I often tell the story that, like, the reason I started a podcast was because Tim Ferriss, who was a very popular podcaster, and Joe Rogan, who's a very popular podcaster, both told me to start a podcast. I listened to them. If Steven Spielberg would have told me to direct more, I might have listened. No offense, Gary.

• 2:30:56Speaker 01

  Well, what happened, you know, was kept me away from directing, because what happened next?

• 2:31:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And that's The Stand. The Stephen King, you get a, you get a role, a big role in that Stephen King, what, miniseries?

• 2:31:16Speaker 01

  It was a, yeah, it was like a four-night mini-series, yeah.

• 2:31:22Jocko Willink?

  And this is back-

• 2:31:23Speaker 01

  Eight hours worth.

• 2:31:24Jocko Willink?

  This was back in the day where they would, when they would do that, they'd play them like four nights in a row.

• 2:31:28Speaker 01

  That's right, yeah.

• 2:31:29Jocko Willink?

  Get America.

• 2:31:30Speaker 01

  It was huge ratings. I mean, millions and millions of people watched it.

• 2:31:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:35Speaker 01

  You know, overnight, I was a recognizable guy.

• 2:31:40Jocko Willink?

  That was a huge deal, then?

• 2:31:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. This year, this particular year, 1994, when The Stand came out, was, was turned, turned the whole career into a different thing. And especially for my acting, as I said. So, I, I never, you know, I was never a frustrated, I was acting, but I really wanted to be directing. It wasn't anything like that. The directing I did was kind of because I loved acting. I wanted to put myself in Of Mice and Men.

• 2:32:13Jocko Willink?

  I think Mel Gibson.

• 2:32:16Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:32:17Jocko Willink?

  Did he win an Academy Award for Braveheart?

• 2:32:20Speaker 01

  Braveheart, yeah.

• 2:32:21Jocko Willink?

  He directed it, right?

• 2:32:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:32:23Jocko Willink?

  And I think I saw a clip of his speech when he won the Academy Award for directing that movie. And he said something along the lines of, "Now I'm gonna go back to doing what all directors want to do." Act.

• 2:32:40Jocko Willink?

  Pretty clever. The stand cost more than $28 million to produce, was well promoted, received good reviews, ended up winning a few Emmy Awards. We finished shooting in June and returned to California, then another call came, this one, an addition in a Paramount picture to play the part of a wounded Vietnam veteran. The movie's working title was simply the name of the main character, Forrest Gump. From the start, I wanted this role. Any project that dealt with Vietnam war interested me due to the work I'd done in the 1980s with Vietnam vets, in addition to my close connection with Vietnam vets in my family. The innovative director, Robert, how do you say his name? Zemeckis?

• 2:33:18Speaker 01

  Zemeckis, yeah.

• 2:33:19Jocko Willink?

  Zemeckis. Back to the Future, man. Okay.

• 2:33:22Speaker 01

  There you go. Roger Rabbit.

• 2:33:24Jocko Willink?

  Just, just kinda FYI, I echo seen most movies, I haven't.

• 2:33:32Jocko Willink?

  He'd, oh, here we go. You called it Echo. He'd had a string of hits, including Back to the Future. Romancing the Stone, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Would helm the film. The project based on a 1986 novel by Vietnam veteran Winston Groom was set to star Tom Hanks and a screenplay adapted by Eric Roth, another wonderful writer. I knew it stood a chance of being a terrific project all around, but I didn't get the role at first.

• 2:34:02Jocko Willink?

  So, why, why didn't you get the role at first?

• 2:34:05Speaker 01

  Well, I, I, I didn't hear about it for quite a while.

• 2:34:09Jocko Willink?

  Auditioned, but you just don't know.

• 2:34:11Speaker 01

  And then I kept asking my agent, do you know? Did they say anything? Did they cast it? No, they haven't cast, they haven't made up their mind yet. And so I, you know, you gotta go forward, right? I can't wait around to find out I didn't get the part. So I started auditioning for other things.

• 2:34:27Jocko Willink?

  So you auditioned for Little Buddha, you auditioned for Wyatt Earp, you auditioned for a Disney movie called Tall Tale, and then you're all set to say yes to Tall Tale. Back to the book, when the phone rang, I'd landed the role of Lieutenant Dan Taylor in Forrest Gump. It would mean I'd need to turn down the Disney movie. Did I still want Forrest Gump? Moira and I talked it over. We decided I needed to place my bets with Forrest Gump. Plus, I really wanted to play the role of a Vietnam veteran while she took the role of the mother in A Tall Tale.

• 2:35:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, we auditioned together for Tall Tale and she got the part of the mother and I got the part of the father. And so, but then Lieutenant Dan came along and I had to say, "Honey, I think I should do this one. You go do that one." And that's what we did.

• 2:35:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a smart move, kind of hedging your bets a little bit.

• 2:35:20Speaker 01

  I think it was the right move.

• 2:35:25Jocko Willink?

  You say here, "I wanted to give all to my character of the wounded Vietnam veteran." So I began reading the 1992 Pulitzer Prize winning autobiography, Fortunate Son by Louis Puller Jr., a United States Marine Corps officer who had been severely injured when he stepped on a booby trap bomb. Both his legs were vaporized and he lost his left hand and nearly all of his fingers on his right.

• 2:35:50Jocko Willink?

  Puller was the son of the most decorated Marine officer in the history of the Marine Corps. Chesty Puller. And if you are listening to this and you don't know that story, then you should immediately go and listen to podcast number 121, 122, and 123. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

• 2:36:14Jocko Willink?

  So, obviously you picked a, a heavy book to try and figure out, you know, what, what kind of emotions, what kind of person Lieutenant Dan was going to be. Now you do your little boot camp thing. This is sort of an official military movie thing nowadays, that if you're going to do a military movie, you're going to do some kind of military boot camp. You guys, back to the book, headed in the woods for four days with other actors in Lieutenant Dan's platoon to train with technical advisor named Dale Die, a decorated Vietnam veteran, who I've been playing tag with to come on the podcast. Captain Die served in the United States Marine Corps and trained the actors for platoon as well as serving as a technical

• 2:36:56Jocko Willink?

  advisor for many other military themed movies over the years. He put us through our paces. Sound like he ran you guys through some good training.

• 2:37:03Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:37:05Jocko Willink?

  You guys had a good time?

• 2:37:05Speaker 01

  No, yeah, yeah. I, I learned a lot from Dale. It was, it was important. And he pushed me. He pushed me as Lieutenant Dan, pushed me. So the military part of the character really was, you know, I kind of thought about my brother-in-law Mac quite a bit, leading a platoon in Vietnam. Which he did. And Dale sort of pulled that lieutenant leader out of me and helped me sort of galvanize that soldier part of the character. There's a couple of different parts of the character. There's the soldier, everything pre-injury, and then there's Lieutenant Dan in the throes

• 2:37:44Speaker 01

  of despair and, you know, kind of withdrawing from life and all of that kind of different thing. Long hair and the beard and all that stuff.

• 2:37:56Jocko Willink?

  It's, you decided that he went to VMI. Is that this character?

• 2:38:03Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:38:04Jocko Willink?

  Instead of West Point? Why'd you pick VMI instead of West Point?

• 2:38:06Speaker 01

  I wanted a little bit of an accent.

• 2:38:09Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:38:10Speaker 01

  I mean, I could have gone to West Point, but then they said, "Well, why do you sound like this?"

• 2:38:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:18Speaker 01

  I had a little bit of a drawl as Lieutenant Dan.

• 2:38:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:22Speaker 01

  You know, and I just decided, "Let's have him be sort of from that part of the country."

• 2:38:27Jocko Willink?

  You talk here, Lieutenant Dan meets Bubba and Forrest and gives them a few lessons on how to behave in the field. The meeting is the first image viewers see of Lieutenant Dan. He's on the way to the outhouse, toilet paper in hand, wearing only boxer shorts and flip-flops. The shot was made strategically because we wanted viewers to first see Lieutenant Dan standing on two good legs. Those legs would soon be gone. During the shooting of the Vietnam scenes, I invited my brother-in-law, Jack Trice, who'd been a combat medic in Vietnam. The costume designer had issued me a set of dog tags, but when Jack was in Vietnam, he'd made a set of rosary beads out of string and rope and hung his dog tags on it. Jack let me wear his actual dog tags and rosary in the movie.

• 2:39:10Jocko Willink?

  Jack wasn't Catholic, but he told me that in Vietnam, he wanted all the help he could get. That's awesome.

• 2:39:20Speaker 01

  I wish I had those. I've lost them along the way. I have, I have the original ones that they issued me, that the designers issued me, that I never wore. And they're hanging in my office.

• 2:39:34Jocko Willink?

  But you lost the dang rosary bead ones?

• 2:39:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, misplaced it somewhere along the way. Ah, I wish I had them. Yeah, you can see them.

• 2:39:42Jocko Willink?

  And they were his? They were his in Vietnam?

• 2:39:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. He was just glad because you can see the movie, you can see them.

• 2:39:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, and, and when you, when you mentioned that, I was like, oh, wow. You know, like, um, I think that's such an iconic role and everybody sees the dog tags all the time in every war movie. And then you see those dog tags and they're different and they stand out. So, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a part of the role.

• 2:40:09Jocko Willink?

  Again, you talk a lot more about, about the movie and, and how the kind of behind the scenes and, and people should

• 2:40:18Jocko Willink?

  get the book to read those. I'm gonna skip through some of that. Forrest Gump came out on July 6, 1994. It was an instant box office smash hit. I couldn't tell you exactly why the film worked to the degree it did, but it played to a lot of different emotions, covered a lot of territory, had lovable characters at the center of it, anchored by Tom as Forrest and Sally Fields as his mom.

• 2:40:38Jocko Willink?

  When Forrest Gump crossed the 100 million mark, Paramount sent gifts to the cast and producers, an Apple computer each. A nod to the scene where Forrest invests in some kind of fruit company. When the movie crossed 200 million mark, Paramount sent another gift. I've forgotten what it was now. When it crossed the $300 million mark, Bob Zemeckis and called and said Steven Spielberg wanted to take Moira, me, Tom, and Tom's wife Rita Wilson out to dinner to celebrate. It wasn't, I wasn't typically palling around with high poly, high-powered Hollywood rollers, so it felt good to be included. A couple of days later, Paramount sent another gift, a giant replica of a park bench of the park bench featured in the film.

• 2:41:21Jocko Willink?

  The base was made from concrete, it must have weighed 450 pounds.

• 2:41:27Jocko Willink?

  Forrest Gump garnered a long list of awards, including 13 Academy Award nominations and six wins, including a win for Best Picture. I received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

• 2:41:42Jocko Willink?

  Were you now big time?

• 2:41:45Speaker 01

  Uh, you, things had changed, yeah. I was in the biggest mini-series of the year and two months later, Forrest Gump came out and it was the biggest movie of the year. And, uh, got a lot of recognition from that and that, that'll tend to change your career. I had a lot of good opportunities happen. Uh, good roles came along, uh, after that over the next several years.

• 2:42:10Jocko Willink?

  Uh, Apollo 13, up next. This was an interesting part. Um, as this, as the words coming out about Apollo 13 being made, uh, who's it being made by? Ron Howard. And you say, um,

• 2:42:27Jocko Willink?

  I usually need to get a callback from an audition, but Tom had vouched for me. And when Ron came to the premiere of Forrest Gump, he met me in the lobby and said, really great job. I'm glad I cast you. And just like that, I was set to be in Apollo 13.

• 2:42:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had just met Ron, uh, you know, shortly before the, the premiere of Forrest Gump. And he put me in the movie and it was gonna be Tom's next movie. And, uh, he came to the premiere and he said, well, I'm glad, I'm glad you were, because he, he obviously liked Lieutenant Dan and the job I did in the movie.

• 2:43:00Jocko Willink?

  Uh, Apollo 13 came out on June 30th, 1995. It was a big hit garnering stellar reviews and eventually bringing more than 350 million worldwide. It was Oscar nominated, uh, nominated for nine Oscars, including Best Picture and won two, along with a host of other awards. Ron Howard's next movie was a crime thriller called Ransom. Ron asked me to play the villain of Detective Gone Bad named Jimmy Shaker, who kidnaps Mel Gibson's young son and holds him for ransom.

• 2:43:31Jocko Willink?

  In the end, ransom was a big hit. Critics liked the movie, very different film for Ron Howard, a tense, suspenseful drama. It ended up earning more than three hundred and nine million dollars at the box office. And again, you you go into a lot of details, really interesting stuff that I'm skipping through because I don't want this to be a fourteen hour podcast.

• 2:43:50Speaker 01

  Well, you don't, you don't want to go through my whole career. Wait a minute, everything I've done.

• 2:43:56Jocko Willink?

  You.

• 2:44:01Speaker 01

  There's a lot of movies in there.

• 2:44:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, it's, it's, you're on a roll, though. And what I was thinking about is, you know, if you're in that Hollywood scene, right? I mean, let's face it, when you go and apply to be Lieutenant Dan, there's got to be a hundred people that could play that role. And maybe they wouldn't do it exactly the same as you, but maybe it wouldn't be quite as good, maybe be a little better, maybe a little bit of a worse, but the chances of you getting a role have got to be microscopic.

• 2:44:34Speaker 01

  Well, you know, that's, I think that's one of the reasons they didn't tell me right away that I got it. It was two or three weeks because they were seeing a lot of different people and they were, I heard that, you know, Bruce Willis was toying with the idea of doing the part at one point and they were probably going through a list of, should we get, you know, recognizable actors to play this role? And they decided to, you know, I did a good audition for it. They decided to go with a newcomer. I mean, I'd only done a few, few parts, but I did have, you know, I did have of mice and men and they could see that I was a kind of a serious guy. I produced the movie, I acted in it and I directed it.

• 2:45:19Speaker 01

  So I think that, that, that caught their attention a little bit.

• 2:45:22Jocko Willink?

  Tough business.

• 2:45:26Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 2:45:27Jocko Willink?

  Because there's a thousand people that would want to play in that movie and they didn't get it. There's only one person that gets it. Crazy.

• 2:45:36Speaker 01

  I was lucky to get it. I had good fortune.

• 2:45:39Jocko Willink?

  You jump into this next chapter. It's called Darkness and Light is the name of the chapter, a very common theme on this podcast.

• 2:45:51Jocko Willink?

  Part of getting into the chapter a little bit, you say, "Back in the mid 1970s, a young incredibly talented theater student joined us at those early meetings held at Illinois State University to discuss the creation of Steppenwolf. As one of the meetings was winding down, she pulled a fifth of Scotch out of her purse and announced, 'Come on, everyone, let's go.' Everybody laughed. We were all into partying. Pot and booze were always available on college campuses, and the fact that this young theater student kept a bottle of whiskey in her purse didn't seem unusual to any of us. That student was Moira, before I knew her very well, and I drank and partied right along with her and the rest of our friends in those days. Over the years, I've known many wonderful performers

• 2:46:34Jocko Willink?

  who are explosive and funny onstage, but who are shy, fearful, reserved, and even a bit awkward in daily life. Performing gives them the confidence and feeling of self-worth. Sometimes they will add a little alcohol on top of that. And Moira wrestled with self-confidence and fear, performing and alcohol helped quiet those feelings." One night, and again, I'm jumping through some, I'm jumping through stuff.

• 2:47:01Speaker 01

  I'd kind of jump over some of that, and, you know, maybe just, this is kind of a difficult chapter, and I tend not to, not to go through it too much, but, you know, Cliff's Notes, maybe, maybe.

• 2:47:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's definitely a tough chapter.

• 2:47:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a hard one to write, this particular chapter, because it's a very personal and difficult story, family story for our family, but it's a hopeful story as well, and that's why we wanted to include it.

• 2:47:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and what I liked about reading it was, look, I hear from people all the time that are caught in this trap, and this is the story of that this trap doesn't have to keep you, that you can get out of it. And that's what you get into, you know, as time went on, going back to the book, I began to see that it was a big deal.

• 2:48:04Jocko Willink?

  As life with Moira as drinking got scarier and scarier, at one point about 1995 or so, I simply stopped drinking with her. I figured if she didn't have me as her drinking buddy anymore, then that would help and maybe she would stop. But that was wishful thinking. Alcohol was consuming Moira by then. And sometimes she would drink so much she'd pass out. As time went on, I had to be careful what I said and how I said it. Because when she drank, she would react unpredictably and kinda crazy. She started to hide her drinking from me and the family. I'd get rid of booze, all the booze in the house, but I'd find an open cabinet. I'd find a top cabinet with a bottle tucked far away in the back. I'd sometimes find a bottle hidden in the tank of the toilet. At times when I came home, she'd reek of perfume and mouthwash, an effort to hide her drinking from me.

• 2:48:52Jocko Willink?

  And at this point, you had signed on to do a show called George Wallace. Was that a movie?

• 2:49:00Speaker 01

  It was a TNT mini-series. Yeah, about the governor of Alabama.

• 2:49:08Jocko Willink?

  And by this time, alcohol had taken control of Moira.

• 2:49:13Jocko Willink?

  It was as if she had two personalities. When she was drinking, she was her beautiful self, respectable Dr. Jekyll. But when she drank, she turned into an out of control and scary Mr. Hyde. Sophie was nine years old, at the worst of Moira's drinking. Mac was six, Ella was five. Moira was always a great mom and tried her best, but because of her drinking, at times I felt afraid for our children. Each night, Moira would drink. Then each morning, she'd feel guilty and apologize. I'd tell her she simply couldn't keep doing this. And she'd say, "Yes, you're right, I'll stop." But the next night, she'd do it again. She couldn't help it. So many good things were happening with my acting career.

• 2:49:53Jocko Willink?

  I'd started rehearsing for George Wallace with John Frakenheimer and was trying to focus on my role, but night after night, when I came home from rehearsals, our home turned into a battlefield.

• 2:50:11Jocko Willink?

  You say here, jumping ahead, finally it became clear that Moira had no ability to stop her drinking. I didn't know where to turn. I started going to Al-Anon family groups for people worried about someone with a drinking problem. I started seeing a psychologist who specialized in alcoholism and helping families through difficult challenges. I learned that family members must become tough in their love. I need to become ruthless in combating this addiction for the sake of my wife, but it was very hard to do. You want to plead and beg and appeal to the wonderful, loving person you know is deep down inside. But that person has been consumed, swallowed up, and cannot hear you.

• 2:50:49Jocko Willink?

  And you kind of get to your wits end about this. And you talk to, so John Frankenheimer, was he the director?

• 2:50:58Speaker 01

  Of George Wallace, yeah.

• 2:51:00Jocko Willink?

  And you finally open up to him and you tell him what's going on. And back to the book, he'd now been sober for more than 25 years and was a serious attendee of alcoholics anonymous. He was a hardcore AA warrior and told me what I needed to do. I needed to take Moira to rehab. I needed to do it right away.

• 2:51:24Jocko Willink?

  So you, you, you take her, you take her to rehab. She freaks out on the way there. You compare her to Linda Blair in The Exorcist in terms of her behavior on the way there. And you're asking yourself like, who is this person and what's happening?

• 2:51:52Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a bit here. You say, "An average stay in rehab is 28 days. My wife stayed in rehab for seven weeks. She was there the entire time I was shooting the movie. I received a call from the facility at one point and a rehab supervisor indicated they were having a hard time getting Moira to admit she had a problem.

• 2:52:11Jocko Willink?

  She thought she was fine and that everybody there was messed up. That meant trouble. If you never admit you have a problem, you'll never get better."

• 2:52:25Jocko Willink?

  And you, when she, when they were telling you that she didn't, she wasn't admitting to it, or she wasn't owning the problem, that you kind of knew, this is not good?

• 2:52:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. That was, that was not surprising, because I knew she was kind of deep in the throes of, the devil had his hands around her neck, you know. And we had to come up with, try to come up with some additional ways to get her to, to admit it and to, to face it. And she wasn't going to get better if she didn't realize what her issue was, and that it was real. So rehab,

• 2:53:11Speaker 01

  after seven weeks, I brought her home and within, within, gosh, probably within four months, she had fallen again, and had to go to rehab again. And that's, that's when things began to get better and change, after the second time.

• 2:53:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and it seemed like that was a point where, you know, you, you, you described finding out that she's basically, you're, you're on the road, you're doing another thing, snake, snake eyes, and you're on the road doing that, you get a call from your daughter, basically saying, what, you know, "Mom's still drinking." You say here in the book, "I wanted to be the loving husband, the gentle husband. I wanted to ask Moira nicely, 'Please don't drink again.' But with the vicious enemy of alcohol taking over the life of the woman I loved, I learned that you could show no mercy fighting this enemy."

• 2:54:19Jocko Willink?

  I called John Frankenheimer and said, "Moira has relapsed. I'm heading back to Los Angeles, but I don't know what I'm gonna do." John said, "It's time to take the gloves off." And he told me exactly what I needed to do. When I arrived home the next day, Moira opened the door, and I spotted it right away, she'd been drinking again. I came in the house, gave the kid, her and the kids a hug, acted as if everything was normal and fine. After a short while, I said to Moira, "Honey, you look tired. Why don't you go down and take a nap?" She said, "You know, I am kinda tired, I think I will." She went to lie down in the back bedroom. Twenty minutes later, I checked on her. She was out like a light. I packed three suitcases, called a car to pick us up, and wrote Moira the hardest letter I've ever had to write. I explained, "We'd reached a point of decision.

• 2:55:03Jocko Willink?

  She couldn't have our family and still have alcohol. She needed to choose between us, and she needed to get serious about her choice, because I was finished." I told her I loved her so much, and I wanted her to be okay. What I wanted most in life was for her to be sober and happy, and for us to be together again as a family. But we couldn't do that if she continued to drink. I was taking the kids.

• 2:55:35Speaker 01

  And that's, you know, that's not an easy thing to do. You always wanna, uh... You know, I remember, you know, 'cause I started seeing counselors myself to help me with this issue. I started seeing a counselor who was focused on dealing with alcoholism and problems, and I started going to Al-Anon and doing, you know, "Where can I turn to get some, some, some help here?" And, uh, you know, you keep wanting to, you know, the next day after a bender, the night before, you see the sweet person, and she's apologizing, and, you know, you're hugging and everything,

• 2:56:18Speaker 01

  and that, you just want that person to stay there, you know? And so you kind of, you go, "Okay, okay," you know? And you're, you're...

• 2:56:29Speaker 01

  You believe them when they say they're gonna stop, or when they know they misbehaved, you know. But then it happens again, and then it happens again, and the same thing over and over and over. And at a certain point, you do have to get as vicious as the demon is, you know, it's like, it really is wrestling a demon. And so, I did what we had to do, which is something to shock her into reality, that there was no continuing in this cycle anymore for us. And if she... And it did it.

• 2:57:13Speaker 01

  She's a loving, wonderful person, who loves her kids. And fighting for her kids, knowing I had taken them back to Montreal with me, and they were gonna be with me while I made this movie, and you don't have anything to worry about now. You don't have to take care of the kids, they're not there, I've got 'em. You focus on yourself and this issue. And within a couple of days, she took herself to Betty Ford Clinic and checked herself in, and that's the last time she... You know, right before she went in there, she had her final drink.

• 2:57:54Jocko Willink?

  I had a friend who, you know, had a lot of money, was very wealthy, and lost his son to opioid overdose. And, you know, he was kind of talking me through what had happened. And one of the things he said to me, he said, you know, "I had unlimited resources. Unlimited resources." I sent him to every different rehab, all kinds of different, you know, drugs, psychologists, therapists, unlimited resources, to try and get his son off of drugs.

• 2:58:38Jocko Willink?

  And he said, "The only thing I didn't do was, was tough love," is the term that he used, which, you know, is what you did here, "Take the gloves off." And I can't imagine how hard that's gotta be to hold the line in those situations where, you know, when you're looking at your kid, your wife, you're looking at your kid and you're thinking, "Okay, I'm not gonna give you any more money." Because that's the other thing, like, not only was this guy investing, sending him to a psychologist, it was also, "Hey Dad, can I get a hundred bucks to go out to eat? Well, all that money's going to drugs." "Hey Dad, can I go to see a concert? Well, all that money's going to drugs." And, "Oh, by the way, my credit card's missing. By the way, there's eighty bucks missing from my wallet."

• 2:59:23Jocko Willink?

  So, he's enabling this behavior the whole time. And the only way to stop it is, "Okay, you know what? You're getting nothing from me. That means you can't stay in my house. You can't get food from me." And that's the sort of extreme measures when you're fighting against these extreme demons that it seems, and again, I'm not a professional, obviously, but it seems like when you're going against something that's as powerful as drugs or alcohol, you have to, you have to take extreme measures.

• 2:59:50Speaker 01

  You do. There's no question about it. And I, you know, as I said, John Frankenheimer was, came into my life at the right time because he was a hardcore twenty-five-year sober guy, and this is a very, very well-known Hollywood director. He directed The Manchurian Candidate, Seven Days in May, The French Connection 2, Grand Prix, Black Sunday, all these, all these great movies, and he's directing me, and we became friends. And he shared his story, very personal story, that where he basically destroyed his career because he wouldn't give up drinking.

• 3:00:34Speaker 01

  When he finally did that, he had to go through a lot of soul-searching and everything before he found his way back into directing again. And now he was sober for twenty-five years, and he knew what it took for him, because he was stubborn as hell, just like my wife, and he was not gonna go quietly and give up the booze until there were some hard decisions and some people took the gloves off with him.

• 3:01:09Jocko Willink?

  Well, good news. You ended up winning an Emmy for your role in George Wallace.

• 3:01:17Jocko Willink?

  Did a bunch of other movies. The Championship Season, The Green Mile, It's The Rage, Bruno, Impostor, Mission to Mars, Reindeer Games. All still career going, you know, solid. Working, yeah.

• 3:01:34Jocko Willink?

  Moira ends up going to a church looking for an AA meeting. She passes an elderly French woman, a member of the parish. Going back to the book, the woman said in a thick French accent, "My dear, you need to become a Catholic. You need to convert," and walked away. That got Moira to thinking. Here she was playing this Irish woman, because she was in a play at the time, playing this Irish woman searching for strength in a play set in a tavern. And in her own life, she was searching for strength to help with her sobriety. Nothing was said or done immediately, but Moira later told me she began to feel a quiet yearning for her own shooting star. And that's a reference that you talked about earlier.

• 3:02:19Jocko Willink?

  About recognizing that there are other forces bigger than ourselves.

• 3:02:27Jocko Willink?

  And you, again, moving around a bit, but Moira turned to me quite out of the blue and said, "Oh, when we get back home, I'm going to become a Catholic and our kids are going to go to Catholic school."

• 3:02:39Jocko Willink?

  That's right.

• 3:02:41Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a bit more, it was, Moira got confirmed. Ella started third grade, Mac started fourth, and Sophie started sixth at the local Catholic school.

• 3:02:52Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a bit more, on Christmas Eve 2010, I told my wife and kids to get dressed up. We were headed for a special family dinner at Morton's Steakhouse, a place we all enjoyed. On our way to dinner, I suddenly pulled into the church parking lot. A mass was underway and my family looked confused. It was too late to attend mass. What were we doing, what were we doing there? Without any family members knowing, I had been attending private sessions to be officially confirmed into the church. Our priest was expecting us. And in a small, quiet ceremony on Christmas Eve, surrounded by the family I love and cherish dearly, I was officially confirmed into the Catholic Church. It was a very special night in our lives. Moira was so touched. She'd come a long way, our family had come a long way, and I wanted to belong to the faith as Moira did. It meant so much to me, to her, to all of us.

• 3:03:36Speaker 01

  You know, I had, obviously, this was a difficult story to tell, this chapter, chapter nine, and I wanted Moira's full consent, you know. Should I, should I tell the story in the book of what we went through, the darkness and light of it, and how it plays into, into us, into our, into our lives? And she said, yes, you know, maybe someone struggling with this kind of thing will read it and find hope, you know, in it, that, hey, maybe, maybe I can overcome this particular demon myself.

• 3:04:15Speaker 01

  You know, during this period of time, everything on the outside, my career, Lieutenant Dan, ransom, you know, all these different things, we're having, winning awards, I played Harry Truman, I got the Golden Globe, and the SAG Awards, and the Emmys, and, you know, all this stuff was happening that was all very positive and wonderful and everything. And, and at home, you know, it was dark, it was tough, it was difficult, we were struggling, and the family was really going through some difficult things. So, nobody ever knew that. We decided to, to tell that story, because at, at a time where it looked like Gary Sneeze was on the rise, and all, all, everything was rosy and everything, we were struggling

• 3:05:00Speaker 01

  with some very serious issues at home, but we came through it, and some very, very positive things happened because of it. So, you never know, you know, a difficult, difficult, difficult period in your life can manifest itself into something that you never could have predicted would, would be positive, you know, at, at, at another time, you know. I mean, you can't, you know, you wait, you know, years from now, you know, I know you're going through this right now, but in, down the road, everything's gonna be better.

• 3:05:38Speaker 01

  And when you're going through that, you can't see that, you know, you just can't see. Somebody might tell you that, but you can't see it. I couldn't picture getting out of this. And how it was gonna... I didn't want my relationship to be destroyed because of alcohol or my wife to go down that road. I was so blessed that she kinda... It worked. Taking the kids and going, leaving her by herself to confront this demon, did the trick. And she's been sober 22 years now.

• 3:06:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, like I said, as we started that chapter, you know, you said maybe someone will hear this and it'll help them. There's no maybe on that. I promise you that people will hear that and they will... It will shed some light into their lives and help them get through to fight this powerful, powerful demon. I guarantee it.

• 3:06:44Speaker 01

  Well, I hope so. I mean, that's the purpose that we decided to share it in the book, you know.

• 3:06:53Speaker 01

  It's played a role in my service life because, you know, becoming a, you know,

• 3:07:04Speaker 01

  a member of the Catholic Church and the service aspect of the faith and whatnot. There was definitely a role that faith played in my turning from self to service. There's no question about it.

• 3:07:26Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of turning from self to service, jumping ahead here a bit. One morning in September, about 6:30 Moira, as Moira helped the kids get ready for school, our phone rang. I was still sleeping. Terry Kinney, who lived in New York, was on the line. Simultaneously, Moira turned on the TV. "Hi Terry," I said. "Gary, are you watching TV right now? I just got up, buddy. What's going on?" "Two planes have hit the World Trade Center. The tops of both buildings are on fire."

• 3:07:54Jocko Willink?

  Terry's words spilled out, "We're under attack, Gary. Terrorists have clashed airplanes into those buildings. It's bad, really bad." Every American alive then remembers that moment and can answer the inevitable question, "Where were you when you first heard the news?" I stared in shock and disbelief, along with the entire country, the entire world, as smoke poured from the tops of both buildings. Horrified, we watched on live TV as people leapt to their deaths from the upper floors of the Trade Center. As soon as the report soon arrived, that a third airplane had crashed into the Pentagon. About 20 minutes later, a fourth airplane crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. We heard it was United Flight 93, seemingly bound for the White House. The target was ultimately determined by the 9/11 Commission

• 3:08:37Jocko Willink?

  report to be the Capitol Building. People onboard Flight 93 had discovered that terrorists were crashing planes into buildings and the passengers had courageously, yet faithfully, chosen to take back the plane. We watched the South Tower collapse and crumble in a fury of dust and smoke. Then the North Tower fell. Horror enveloped us all.

• 3:09:00Jocko Willink?

  You say, "While driving through one of the canyons," and this is on September 11th, "I clicked on the radio news. Newscasters speculated that today's attacks were only the beginning of more attacks to come. The reality of the morning sank even deeper. Our country was under attack, vulnerable. Thousands of innocent people had been killed that day. More horror lay ahead. I couldn't tell you exactly why I did this, perhaps in solidarity, defiance, tribute, but I rolled down my window, stuck out my arm and made a fist and held it high. Tears welled up in my eyes as I listened to the news. For some time, as I rode along, I held my arm outstretched as high as it would reach."

• 3:09:45Jocko Willink?

  You were living in California at the time, in LA? Malibu. In Malibu.

• 3:09:53Jocko Willink?

  And even in Malibu, they broke out the American flags.

• 3:09:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, yeah, on Friday night, so it was a Tuesday, and there were candlelight vigils all over the place, if you remember. And we heard about something going on, uh, on one of the corners in, uh, in our neighborhood. So I grabbed, uh, I grabbed an American flag that I had hanging, uh, by my front door. And we walked down the street with the kids and we went and all the neighbors were gathering around and, uh, people were singing and, uh, at one point, everybody, I had my flag up and at one point, everyone turned and said the pledge of allegiance and it was "God Bless America",

• 3:10:41Speaker 01

  and it was "America the Beautiful", and it was the stars, you know, the national anthem and, and people were just singing with candles, uh, on the corner in Malibu. Uh, just coming together. People were in pain all over the place and everyone was looking for something. And during the day that day, we went to our little Catholic church. I don't know if you remember, but, uh, George Bush said he was going to make that Friday a national day of prayer for the nation. And so the churches and houses of worship everywhere in the country were just jam-packed with people

• 3:11:20Speaker 01

  trying to find some peace, some, you know, some, like, trying to understand what was going on and trying to find something. And we got to our little Catholic church, uh, at the school that my kids went to, and there was only standing room. It was packed. And, uh, we ended up standing off to the side, leaning against the wall. I remember the priest, he, his first thing he said, I don't remember everything he said, but he said, "This has been a tough week." And everybody was just, oh, you know.

• 3:11:57Speaker 01

  And at the end of the mass, we sang "God Bless America" in the church, and I couldn't even get the words out. I mean, it was just tears rolling down my face. Everything changed for me at that point. The chapter in the book that kind of explores that is called Turning Point. And it was, you know, the things we talked about in the 80s with regards to the Vietnam veterans in my family and Tracers and all these Vietnam veteran things. Then Lieutenant Dan comes along and I start working with our wounded after that with the Disabled American Veterans Organization. They contacted me and asked me to come to their national

• 3:12:37Speaker 01

  convention. They gave me an award for playing Lieutenant Dan. And there was a sea of wheelchairs and wounded veterans from going back to World War II. And they were all applauding me and everything. I was very moved by that, stayed involved with them, tried to support the DAV for a number of years. And then along comes September 11th. And the seeds that had been planted in those 80s years with the veterans in my family, Vietnam veterans and the working in support of the DAV, some of that, that all kind of grew into this thing after September 11th. And I turned, never to return to business as usual. I turned

• 3:13:22Speaker 01

  towards service in a very, a very active way. And it just got more and more and more. And I, I wanted to help our veterans, the men and women who were responding to those attacks and deploying to Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere. And I wanted to support them.

• 3:13:41Jocko Willink?

  One of the things that you say here around that is, throughout my entire life, I'd always been the type of person who chose to act. Not in the theater sense of the word, although I did a lot of that, but I mean, take action. Whether it was starting a band that lip synced for a living room full of neighborhood kids, or working with my fellow high school students to fashion our own theater company, or taking a great production to New York, or moving out to Los Angeles so I could work in the movies, I'd never been the kind of guy who sat around and talked, or wondered, or thought about stuff without doing something about it, at least not for long. My response had always been to take action, and hopefully, doing so would benefit other people along

• 3:14:21Jocko Willink?

  the way. In those early months of 2003, and again, I jumped ahead to get here, I realized like never before the cost of freedom, and I knew freedom needed to be defended. I knew places that existed in our world without freedom, and I knew that without freedom, nothing of the good and fulfilling ways we in America aspire to live our lives would be possible. This realization helped fuel me more than ever before. It made me profoundly grateful for being an American, able to live in this land of freedom, able to make something of my life. When it came to service, I wanted to be all in, all the time, living out my calling every single day for the rest of my life. I can almost, I can say most certainly, that what happened to our country on September 11th broke my heart and changed me forever.

• 3:15:05Jocko Willink?

  It forced me to rethink everything. What do I really believe? How do I want to raise my kids? What kind of example do I want to set for them? What can I do to give this great country, what can I do to give back to this great country I love? How can I use my good fortune to help? It was a turning point and marked the beginning of a new level of service. I found that the more I gave, the more I healed. Two months after watching the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down, I was on a plane to Kuwait. Nothing would ever be the same. We kind of kicked off, you know, the name of this next chapter is "A Bridge Between

• 3:15:48Jocko Willink?

  Worlds," you know, and bridging this thing, and you got this here. "Hi, I'm Gary Sinise, and I'd like to go on a USO tour. Please call me back." I left my number on the voicemail. A couple of weeks went by, all I heard was crickets. I concluded the USO must receive a large volume of calls with similar requests as mine, so I called again and left a second message. "Hi, this is Gary Sinise, and I'd like to go on a USO tour to support the troops. Please get back to me." Chirp chirp, those crickets were deafening. Uh, now you get tactical and you say, "I called again in May and left a third message, this time more strategic. Hi, this is Gary Sinise calling again. I'd like to go on a USO tour. I want to do as much as I can to support the troops. Please call me back."

• 3:16:30Jocko Willink?

  Oh, by the way, I'm the guy who played Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump. Uh, Representative from the USO returned my call the very next day.

• 3:16:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wasn't a recognizable name at that, that, that point. But Lieutenant Dan was.

• 3:16:45Jocko Willink?

  Lieutenant Dan, as everybody knows Lieutenant Dan. Uh, so that's, that starts it. You go to Camp Doha, you go to Camp Udari, um, you end up at one of these bases. USO representative motioned for us to follow him and led us to the big tent near the center of camp. The tent had an entrance on each side, generators working overtime to pump and air conditioning. We headed for one door and at the other side, a line of at least a thousand troops waited in the heat to get in. As we headed in, they started to applaud. The atmosphere inside crackled. Maybe another thousand uniformed troops already inside the tent, broke into applause when we came into the tent. I took a deep breath, what have we done? They deserved the applause, not us, but wow, this is amazing. Even with a little air, even with a little air conditioning, it was hot as hell in there.

• 3:17:30Jocko Willink?

  Nobody seemed to care. We lined up and the troops lined up and started to file past us. We smiled and shook hands and posed for pictures and everything happened quite quickly. The very first soldier I met said, "Hey Lieutenant Dan, you got legs." And then each one down the line just kept calling me Lieutenant Dan over and over. I realized they didn't know my real name, so I went with it. I tried to look each person in the eye, tried to ask each soldier where he or she was from, tried to ask how things were going, but nothing I did felt very deep because we had to keep the line moving. There were so many people and then you guys have to leave and you kind of, you kind of ask yourself, did we do any good?

• 3:18:08Jocko Willink?

  Now you're traveling around, you're getting ready for a next um, a next trip. I think you're heading into Baghdad. You say this, "The man to the right of me wore a button on his shirt bearing the photo of two young men, a New York City police officer and the other a firefighter with the FDNY." We struck up, struck up quite a conversation and I learned he wasn't an entertainer. The two young men were his sons and both sons had died on 9/11. He was there because he wanted the troops overseas to know, know that America supported them. The man was maybe in his mid 60s and spoke with a low rasp. Scars ran across his neck and later I found out he'd survived throat cancer.

• 3:18:48Jocko Willink?

  The man carried a chunk of rock, concrete maybe. He showed it to me, then passed it in my direction so I could feel it too. I ran my hands over its rough surface. It felt like an old piece of rubble. Puzzled, I asked him what it was all about, why he was carrying all this extra weight. He swallowed once, twice, then his eyes grew wet. He whispered more hoarsely than before.

• 3:19:12Jocko Willink?

  "It's a piece of the World Trade Center."

• 3:19:20Jocko Willink?

  You guys land at the um, Saddam International Airport. Well, what was formerly the Saddam International Airport, which by this time was called the Baghdad International Airport. And by the way, I wanted to mention this.

• 3:19:33Speaker 01

  No, it was still Saddam International when we were there.

• 3:19:36Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna tell you that you beat me to Iraq. Because you went to Iraq for the first time in June of 2003.

• 3:19:43Speaker 01

  2003.

• 3:19:44Jocko Willink?

  I didn't get to Iraq until, I think it was late September, early October 2003.

• 3:19:53Speaker 01

  So I was on point.

• 3:19:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was a new guy.

• 3:19:55Speaker 01

  Setting the stage for you.

• 3:19:56Jocko Willink?

  I was a cherry boy.

• 3:19:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:20:00Speaker 01

  But I got to leave after five days.

• 3:20:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's um, that's a little bit different.

• 3:20:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:20:05Jocko Willink?

  Um, yeah, that's, but that's impressive that you got in there that quick. I would have really liked to have uh, joined you.

• 3:20:14Jocko Willink?

  Now you're landing there, when we clattered down the cargoes. Uh, planes, the planes ramp. I can only shake my head in disbelief in front of us waiting in two long rows of uniforms. Stood American soldiers, thousands strong lining our route all the way to the cargo, from the cargo plane to the hangar like a happy gauntlet. We simply walked forward and shook hands on our way to the destination. Soldier after soldier, marine after marine, sailor after sailor, airmen after airmen, smile after smile. I felt choked up inside, happy to be there, honored, grateful, so incredibly grateful. We were here for them, but they had our backs. They weren't gonna let anything happen to us. They were here for us. Then you guys make your way to the stage.

• 3:20:55Speaker 01

  This was, this was the first, um, USO tour. After the statue came down. So the statue came down in April. And in June, now this was the first big entertainment tour. Northwest Airlines gave us a 747. There were 180 people on the plane. Kid Rock was there, uh, with his band, uh, LeAnn Womack, Robert De Niro. I mean, I mean, it was, it was an endless sea of celebrities and people that were going over there. The basketball players, football players, cheerleaders from the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders were there. I mean, it was, uh, Paul Rodriguez. I mean, it was a lot of entertainers that were going on this, this trip.

• 3:21:38Speaker 01

  So it was the first entertainment tour to Iraq. And they split us up into a lot of groups. And I remember getting back from Kuwait, we went out to Udari, uh, which, uh, it was called Udari at the time. It was renamed Camp Buring later on. But, uh, Udari, we flew back, that's with the tent and all the sweaty people and the thousand in there and everything. We flew back and I got back about 11 o'clock at night and I get a phone call from the USO representative saying Tommy Franks, General Tommy Franks, is going up to Baghdad tomorrow. He wants to take a small group of people and he wants you to come. So I said, absolutely. So we went up to Baghdad and, um...

• 3:22:26Speaker 01

  You know, went into the palaces, you know, this, this thing with Kid Rock and everything at the, at the airport, thousands of people. It was pretty, pretty amazing, just to be there with so many soldiers. We entertained them there in the hangar, maybe 4,000 people in the hangar. You know, I got to see the palaces. I got to meet a lot, a lot of troops during this, this trip. It was, it was an amazing trip and I kind of befriended Tommy Franks from that, that moment. And we ended up going to Doha after that, to Central Command and we did some shows there and met a lot of people and it was amazing. I was back in

• 3:23:10Speaker 01

  Iraq within six months, again, for another trip.

• 3:23:15Jocko Willink?

  I'll say this too, and when you, like I said, so all that took place, I hadn't even gone to Iraq yet. I was waiting to go to Iraq.

• 3:23:22Speaker 01

  When did you go? October?

• 3:23:24Jocko Willink?

  Fall of 2003.

• 3:23:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I was, I was back in November.

• 3:23:27Jocko Willink?

  You were back in November, but I'll say this, at this time, that early, like, the war had a different feel to it.

• 3:23:40Speaker 01

  No question.

• 3:23:41Jocko Willink?

  We were kinda just winning, you know? Hey, look, we were taking some casualties for sure, but there was, there was no insurgency yet. There was some former regime elements were running around. We had the deck of cards we were going after. We were doing pretty good. We were, we didn't get Saddam until later that, later that year, but I was there when we got Saddam. Not we, me, but American forces got Saddam. But, but still, it was

• 3:24:16Jocko Willink?

  the...

• 3:24:20Jocko Willink?

  It was still seemed like everything was going pretty good. I mean, there's no other way to put it. But when I deployed there in 2003, 2004, it if you would have asked me at the end of my deployment, how much longer the war in Iraq was gonna last, I would have said, oh, probably another three, four months, you know, there'll be less and less combat operations. And then, you know, it'll be, you know, I'm sure we'll still have some troops there, but it'll be pretty settled down. So, you know, I was wrong, and we were wrong as a country because it was, it wasn't even getting started yet. And so that's why when I picture all these celebrities rolling in there, you know, thinking

• 3:25:03Jocko Willink?

  back to the glory days of Bob Hope, like, oh, yeah, this is kind of, hey, that's what that's what I've said this before. That's what us young guys that hadn't been to combat before, we were like, we want to go. We want to go, we want to make sure we do, you know, we want to do our part. And I could see, you know, everyone thinking, we want to do our part, we want to help out. And it seemed like, for lack of a better word, it seemed like things were going really well, and this wasn't going to last too long. And we'd all come home and have a big victory parade and be done.

• 3:25:33Speaker 01

  Well, it would be, it would be four years before I went back. So during those intervening four years, things got really bad.

• 3:25:42Jocko Willink?

  So when did you go back?

• 3:25:43Speaker 01

  Oh, seven.

• 3:25:44Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 3:25:45Speaker 01

  And it was calming down a little bit. And we were up in Ramadi and, and, you know, the surge had happened, and all of that.

• 3:25:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the time period in between, you know, well, oh, five, oh, six was, was

• 3:25:58Speaker 01

  Not good.

• 3:25:59Jocko Willink?

  was not good. And

• 3:26:03Speaker 01

  And I went back again in, in oh, eight. And I went back a couple of years ago.

• 3:26:09Jocko Willink?

  What year did you go back most recently?

• 3:26:11Speaker 01

  It's 2017.

• 3:26:12Jocko Willink?

  Okay, well, you've got more trips to Iraq than I do. What's up with that?

• 3:26:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they're shorter. They're much shorter.

• 3:26:27Jocko Willink?

  Jumping back to the book here, on September 11th, 2003, two years after the attacks on our country, I walked into Walter Reed Army Medical Center and National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda for the first time, meeting wounded troops in both hospitals in one day. Walter Reed, at Walter Reed, I met a soldier wheeling himself down the hallway, whom I'd seen two weeks earlier at Longstool. Back in Germany, he was fresh off the line, unable to get out of bed. Now, back in Washington DC, he was able to get around in a wheelchair. It was good to see progress.

• 3:27:00Jocko Willink?

  And then you say, you know, you did six trips in six months. I mean, going, and you know, your family's sticking by you.

• 3:27:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, two of those trips were Iraq, June and November, and then in between, I went to Germany, and I went to Italy, and, you know, they were all troop trips. I'd come home and say, send me, send me someplace else. And I didn't have a job at the time, so I had a lot of time, and I said, you know, let's make use of it right now.

• 3:27:34Jocko Willink?

  Then you start talking about the hospitals more. And here you go into Longstool in Germany. Always quiet at first, somber. I could smell the antiseptic, feel the harshness of the fluorescent lights. A lot of these soldiers had thousand-yard stares. I wore a USO baseball cap and just stood there at first, not knowing how to get started. The silence felt uneasy, awkward, but I knew I needed to dive in. I needed to go to someone to introduce myself and just say hello. Just then, one of the soldiers, one of the wounded soldiers looked up. He looked straight into my face and broke out in a big grin and exclaimed, Lieutenant Dan. A dam broke. All the other guys looked at me and roused themselves. The ones who could walk crowded around me, and the whole mood in

• 3:28:15Jocko Willink?

  the room changed. Soldier after soldier introduced himself. They asked me questions about Forrest Gump, and I told them some funny stories. A USO rep had a Polaroid camera and started taking pictures of me with the guys, so I signed the backs of the Polaroids and handed them out. Maybe a half hour passed, not long, but when I left that room, I couldn't help but noticed how the mood felt different. Now there was laughter, joy. I knew, and I knew I had changed, a change had occurred in me too. This first room full of banged up service members had forced me to get outside of myself. They helped me focused on who I was truly there for, them, not me. It was a reminder that this trip was about lifting them up and not about my own fears.

• 3:28:58Jocko Willink?

  So I walked into the next ward. I told myself to stop thinking about how I felt and focus instead on how the troops felt. My job was to help relieve their pain, to give them something else to think about, to help them heal, to spread a bit of cheer.

• 3:29:20Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, that became, you know, like you said, part of your mission. And, and what you were doing was trying to, trying to help these guys give something else to think about.

• 3:29:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and lift spirits, you know, that's, that's the whole, whole point of, you know, why am I going? Just to see stuff or to do something?

• 3:29:41Jocko Willink?

  And I love your perspective and actually like the closing of this book, Leadership Strategy and Tactics. Basically, the, well, the closing chapter is called, "It's, It's All On You,

• 3:29:55Jocko Willink?

  But Not About You," right? Like, you're responsible, but it's not about you. Leadership isn't about you. And that's this, this mental note that you make of, "Hey, look, it's hard to go into these rooms, but it's not about me. It's about making these guys feel better."

• 3:30:10Speaker 01

  I learned, I learned a lot on those first trips. Landstuhl was the first military hospital that I went to. And they're fresh off the battlefield, as you know, you know, and the, the guys that I described-

• 3:30:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, literally hours. I mean, they could be hours off the battlefield.

• 3:30:24Speaker 01

  And as soon as I got there, the bus pulled up. We, we were just about ready to get out of the bus and a fresh batch of wounded were, were, they were just pulling a bus up.

• 3:30:40Speaker 01

  The airplane had just gotten in. They put him on the bus. They brought him to the hospital entrance. So we were going in and they were all of a sudden, all these, all these technicians and everybody started running out of the hospital and started unloading this bus, which was just nothing but gurneys with wires and, you know, wounded, wounded folks on these gurneys. And I just sat there and watched them unload the bus of gurneys. And then I had to go in and I was apprehensive about it. Tell you the truth, I didn't know how he was going to react to seeing somebody with their legs gone or any of that kind of thing. So, um, but I learned a lot on that first trip and within two weeks I was at Bethesda and Walter Reed and I was doing that.

• 3:31:29Jocko Willink?

  At one point, um,

• 3:31:32Jocko Willink?

  you see Kid Rock doing what Kid Rock does, which is delivering the justice of rock and roll.

• 3:31:41Jocko Willink?

  And, um,

• 3:31:45Jocko Willink?

  I was watching MTV with my wife and on MTV, this was 2000, this was either 1998 or 1999 or 2000. I don't know, but I was in Virginia Beach and Kid Rock, this person no one had ever heard of was playing the spring break special at, on MTV and he played

• 3:32:09Jocko Willink?

  Ba with a Ba, whatever that song is. He played that song and I looked at my wife and I said, this guy is going to be huge. And sure enough, Kid Rock, I called it. I called it.

• 3:32:21Speaker 01

  Did he have that little, little person dancing around?

• 3:32:24Jocko Willink?

  I don't know if he had, I don't know if he had that little dude with, with him or not.

• 3:32:28Speaker 01

  I remember that. The first time I saw him, I said, this is unusual.

• 3:32:31Jocko Willink?

  But I'll tell you, like, no kidding. When I saw him for the first time, I was like, this, this guy is, this guy rocks. I called it, Echo Charles.

• 3:32:41Speaker 01

  We, we had a good time together on that. It was fun.

• 3:32:45Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so you see that and of course, you know, despite you doing this acting and directing whatever. What's your true, what's your true desires to be a rock and roll star? So you say to the USO people, hey, uh, I'd like to, you know, I play, I got a band. Cause you had done, you'd done a little gig with your friends. And so now you say, hey, I'd like to go on tour as well. And they kind of shine you on.

• 3:33:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little bit. I mean, an actor with a band is not interesting.

• 3:33:16Jocko Willink?

  But you drive on and you put together the, the Lieutenant Dan Band. And your first show is at Diego Garcia, which only someone in the military could laugh at because Diego Garcia is an island in the middle of the Pacific.

• 3:33:32Speaker 01

  It's as far away as you can imagine.

• 3:33:34Jocko Willink?

  Most remote place in the world. They're like, oh, you want to, you want to go on tour? Cool. Start with Diego Garcia.

• 3:33:39Speaker 01

  Well, here's, here's the thing about that, Jaco. They, you know, I bugged them over and over. I went on six tours that year. And every time I'd go on a tour, I would bug them. And you know, I got musicians I played with. I want to entertain the troops. I don't, I'm just shaking hands and taking pictures. Finally, after six tours, they knew I was serious. And they said, okay, we'll set up a tour for you. They didn't ask me for a CD to even hear if the band was any good. So what they did was just send us as far away as possible.

• 3:34:12Jocko Willink?

  Yes, they did.

• 3:34:13Speaker 01

  And, uh, nobody would ever hear about us, I guess.

• 3:34:19Jocko Willink?

  And you end up playing 30, 40, 50 shows a year.

• 3:34:22Speaker 01

  We've, um, the first stuff we did was in oh, three. The first place we played was, uh, Great Lakes Naval Base, which was right near where I grew up. And we played there in November of oh, three, uh, right before my second tour to Iraq, uh, handshake tour. And then they set up the, the tour to Korea, Diego Garcia, Singapore in February of oh, four. And I haven't stopped since. Now my foundation produces most of our shows. I do only a few with the USO each year. But I think from 2003 to, to now, we're almost near, nearing 500

• 3:35:04Speaker 01

  shows for the military in the, in that 16 year period.

• 3:35:11Jocko Willink?

  Impressive.

• 3:35:11Speaker 01

  And that's the only reason I have the band. I don't, I don't play for money. I play for free. I have to pay the band and everything, but I, I play for free. I make my, my living as an actor. So, uh, this, the, the band is a part of my foundation and, uh, people donate to the USO, you know, they're gonna send entertainment. You donate to the Gary Sine's Foundation and, and one of the things that we do is we provide this, this entertainment piece and I've played on bases all over the world with this band and now we continue to do it. You know, a couple of days, we're at Naval Medical Center doing one of our festivals. So we, we continue to get out there and get at it.

• 3:35:51Jocko Willink?

  Another thing you do is you pick up, um, the lead role in CSI New York. That's a, a, a huge deal that happens. Um,

• 3:36:04Jocko Willink?

  kinda, this is another little layer, if you will, as you're, as you're figuring out the character, um, you want him to be a vet. The character's original name was Rick Carlucci. And you didn't write, you really liked that. You, you were with Anthony. Who's Anthony? The writer?

• 3:36:22Speaker 01

  Anthony Zeiger created CSI.

• 3:36:25Jocko Willink?

  Got it. And so you say, hey, can we change the name? Uh, Anthony asked me for ideas for a new name. I gave him a list of suggestions for both the first and last name. The name I liked most was Mac for obvious reasons. For the last name, I suggested the surname of Lieutenant Dan. Anthony wrestled around with suggestions along with some others before coming to me and saying, let's do it. Right away, I felt gung ho for my character's new name. Mac Taylor.

• 3:36:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a

• 3:36:58Jocko Willink?

  good layer, we'll say.

• 3:37:01Jocko Willink?

  And then just about the, about the

• 3:37:05Jocko Willink?

  CSI New York from 2004 until 2013, nine seasons, 197 original episodes. I portrayed Detective Mac Taylor on CSI New York. The show ranked as high as number 17 on Nielsen and evened out to about 10 million viewers per episode, considered quite good. Today it's been shown in more than 200 markets all over the world and continues to run in syndication. Eventually comic books, novels, a video game, and even a slot machine in Vegas came out based on the show. Although at first I didn't see what a blessing it would be, the series became one of the greatest gifts ever handed to me. Nine seasons on television is this tremendous success. It gave me the resources I could never have imagined. It allowed me the financial and logistical freedom to take good care of my family and continue my mission of supporting

• 3:37:48Jocko Willink?

  the troops. I will always be proud to have portrayed US Marine Corps veteran and 9/11 family member Detective Mac Taylor on CSI New York.

• 3:38:00Jocko Willink?

  Does that, what's the role that you get recognized for the most, still Lieutenant Dan?

• 3:38:06Speaker 01

  Um, could be, yeah, but CSI New York, when you're on television every week, you know, I mean-

• 3:38:14Jocko Willink?

  For a decade.

• 3:38:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, it changed. And then I did another series Criminal Minds Beyond Borders for a couple of seasons after that. So, you know, primarily, I think it's probably between Mac Taylor and Lieutenant Dan. But, you know, and when I went overseas, you know, one time I'm up on the DMZ in Korea, right? And I'm doing a tour with the band over in Korea and we go up to the DMZ to look around and get a tour up there. And I'm in the gift shop, there's a gift shop on the DMZ, you know, you gotta go buy some DMZ stuff. And a group of Asian tourists, a tour bus pulled up, and the Asian tourists come out and they come into

• 3:38:57Speaker 01

  the, into the, into the gift shop. And there's 50, it's packed in there with the tourists and they're looking at stuff and stuff. All of a sudden, one sees me and he goes, "Mac Taylor!" And all of a sudden, the whole place goes nuts. And here I am on the DMZ in a gift shop with all the tourists screaming about CSI New York. It was completely surreal. But it was, it's because internationally, it was, it was very popular in certain places. It was very popular in South Korea. Yeah, that's crazy.

• 3:39:36Jocko Willink?

  Next section that you talk about is,

• 3:39:41Jocko Willink?

  you're back in Iraq. We suited up in helmets and bulletproof vests and drove out in a convoy of Humvees to visit one of the Iraqi elementary schools that US troops had been working to improve. It was November 2003, my second tour of Iraq with the USO. The school itself wasn't considered dangerous, but the roads to the school and back were always suspect, particularly when traveling with US military. So you roll into this school, I couldn't help but notice how many children sat at each desk. The desks looked longer than typical American school desks, perhaps built to seat two comfortably, yet three to four children huddled at each desk. Each little group would share one pencil stub, passing it back and forth amongst themselves, working on just a few sheets of paper. These desks and pencils were the only school equipment I saw.

• 3:40:24Jocko Willink?

  When I asked why the Iraqi children didn't have more supplies, the surprising answer came back because we can't get them.

• 3:40:32Jocko Willink?

  Skipping forward here as we headed back to base in our convoy, an idea started to percolate in the back of my mind, but I didn't say anything at first. It was, wasn't a big idea initially. It was just simply reflecting the phrase that was digging deep into my heart, "I can do more." And then you start going and gathering up school supplies for Iraqi children and that becomes your next,

• 3:40:57Jocko Willink?

  I'd say your next tactical mission was getting these, getting kids' school supplies over there. You hook up with Laura Hildenbrand, who wrote Seabiscuit and Unbroken, and you start this, this thing, Operation Iraqi Children, which eventually becomes Operation International Children. And you guys

• 3:41:21Jocko Willink?

  just supply, you supply all this, all this gear to these kids.

• 3:41:26Speaker 01

  Well, the important part of, of that was that we wanted to give it to the troops to give to the kids.

• 3:41:32Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 3:41:32Speaker 01

  So the, our, our little motto was helping soldiers help children. I just felt, you know, on that first trip to the school, I saw how much the kids were loving the soldiers, you know. The soldiers rebuilt the school. They came in there, put windows in, they did all kinds of stuff for the kids. And the kids were very grateful. The soldiers were just hugging the kids and it was a spirit that I thought was very important to preserve in some way. So I thought, well, maybe we can collect some school supplies and send them to those troops and they can take them out to the school and give them to the kids. And that's what we did. We collected stuff at my kid's school and we shipped it over to that base and they took it out and gave it to the kids.

• 3:42:15Speaker 01

  And it turned into a program that lasted nine years and we sent hundreds of thousands of school supply kits, soccer balls, shoes, all kinds of stuff to not only Iraq, but Afghanistan, Haiti, all these different places.

• 3:42:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a strategic move too, because as these young kids see the American soldiers, what do they see of them, right? They see guys with guns, they see guys kicking in doors and that can obviously give a real negative impression. But then when they see a kid, I mean, they see a soldier and he's giving them crayons and soccer balls and whatnot, all of a sudden they realize, oh, these guys are, these guys are here to help, which is sometimes not obvious.

• 3:42:59Speaker 01

  That was the important part of what we're trying to do. I knew I couldn't keep running over to Iraq every month, you know, but I wanted to do something from home. And so supplying the troops with something to give the kids was a way that we could do that.

• 3:43:14Jocko Willink?

  And then, I mean, you just get involved in all kinds of things. Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, Fisher House Foundation, Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors. You end up doing something called the Snowball Express. Idea was simple, going from the book. They brought the children of our fallen heroes to Disneyland just before Christmas to allow them to meet each other, to see they were not alone in their grief and to bring them some joy and new happy memories to this special group of children who are experiencing so much sadness, especially at Christmas.

• 3:43:48Jocko Willink?

  You go on talking about that. I could not be prouder to be part of creating opportunities for joy, friendship, and communal healing by connecting families struggling with loss to one another. Together, they share a common bond and can feel a bigger part of a bigger family. The children meet and interact with others who understand what they've been through and each and help each other through this unique and terrible experience. It cannot be overstated what an event like this can mean to a child who has lost a parent or in military service. Struggling with their grief can be overwhelming, and uniting together with hundreds of other children experiencing similar tragic loss can be the magic that carries them throughout the year. There's so much joy on their faces during these moments.

• 3:44:33Jocko Willink?

  It's a blessing to interact with kids this way. At the same time, I'm always reminded of the solemnity embedded in these moments of the incredible cost represented in the faces of the children who come to this event. Last year, one girl wore a T-shirt to the event with these words printed on the back. "In honor and memory of..." And underneath the words was a blank box where kids could write in the name of their fallen hero. In black marker, the girl had simply written, "My daddy."

• 3:45:18Speaker 01

  And that's a, that program, you know, we're about to the foundation, the Gary Sneeze Foundation. That was a, that was an organization that was started, and every year I would go back and play a concert for the kids and be a part of the event. American Airlines supplies all the transportation to get, get all the kids from all over the country to the, to the event. And...

• 3:45:46Speaker 01

  A couple of years ago, we folded that particular thing into the Gary Sinise Foundation as a program. And we moved the event from Dallas, where it had been for nine years, to Disney World. And so we take over a thousand kids to Disney World, along with, you know, four, five hundred surviving parent or guardian, or who's ever with the kids. And we give them a lot of joy right before Christmas time at the happiest place on earth. It's extraordinary. And my band has played concerts for the last, I don't know, thirteen years, something like that.

• 3:46:24Jocko Willink?

  Awesome. Going back to these hospital visits. Back to the book. After a bomb exploded in Iraq in July of 2003, Marine Staff Sergeant Mark Gronke? Am I saying that right? Lost an eye, hand, fingers, thumb, and right leg. I met Mark on my first visit to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, on September 11, 2003, where he was recovering. He was the first wounded service member I visited on the first of many trips over the

• 3:47:06Jocko Willink?

  years to where DC, to the DC Military Hospitals. He wanted to talk about Lieutenant Dan. And we shared a few stories, and I sat with him for a while before I went on to the next room. That afternoon, I was at Walter Reed for the first time. I visited with so many wounded heroes that day, including many of the first triple amputees I would meet in the coming years. Just twenty-one-year-old, just twenty-one-years-old US Army Specialist Hilario Bermanas was serving with the 82nd Airborne Division in Baghdad. On June 10th, just ten days before, I would be in Baghdad myself, Specialist Bermanas and a fellow soldier came under attack while guarding a weapons turn-in point.

• 3:47:50Jocko Willink?

  A rocket-propelled grenade killed his friend and took both Bermanas's legs and his left hand. As Bermanas lay in his bed, his father stood by his side and told me what had happened and how Hilario was from one of the tiny islands in the Federate States of Micronesia. Three years earlier, wanting to be an American soldier, he'd gone to Guam to sign up for the US Army.

• 3:48:15Jocko Willink?

  The week after my visit in a ceremony at Walter Reed on September 17th, 2003, Burmanis was awarded US citizenship.

• 3:48:24Jocko Willink?

  I'll always remember that first visit, meeting Specialist Burmanis and so many others, seeing this young man in a hospital bed, missing three out of four limbs. It made a lasting impression on me.

• 3:48:45Jocko Willink?

  And at one point, some of your friends and some of the partners from Operation International Children, you weren't able to go to Iraq, so they went over, they delivered supplies, and they stopped at Landstuhl in Germany on the way back. And going back to the book here, there they met a young soldier named Brendan Morocco, just 22 years old, the first United States service member ever to survive after losing all four limbs in an IED explosion.

• 3:49:10Jocko Willink?

  The blast happened during the early hours of Easter Sunday, while Brendan was returning from a night mission in the deserts of Iraq. He was in bad shape. In addition to losing both arms and both legs, Brendan's nose, left eye socket, and facial bones were broken. He'd lost eight teeth from the blast, and had taken shrapnel in his left eye and face. His face and neck had been burned, his left carotid artery severed, and his left eardrum pierced.

• 3:49:43Jocko Willink?

  Usually a soldier this severely wounded would die, but Army medics had been making remarkable strides in treating battlefield wounds.

• 3:49:55Jocko Willink?

  And you go into some details here, but a guy named Sal Cassano, am I saying that right? He's the Commissioner of the New York Fire Department, and they wanted to raise money to build Brendan Morocco, a specially-adapted smart technology home in Staten Island. They asked if you would help, you know, raise funds. Going back to the book, as we were planning a fundraising concert for Brendan to be held in Staten Island in August of 2010, I received another call on March 26th, 2010, while leading a squad of Marines on a security patrol in Afghanistan, Corporal Todd Nicely, 26, had stepped on an IED buried at the foot of a bridge.

• 3:50:37Jocko Willink?

  His fellow Marines quickly wrapped tourniquets around his wounds and administered morphine. A rescue helicopter arrived within six minutes. He became the second US service member to survive injuries as a quadruple amputee.

• 3:50:52Jocko Willink?

  I met Todd in the hospital, then simply said to the Tunnel to Towers guys, which are the guys that run in this this charity, he needs a house too, let's do another concert. Even before we played Brendan's concert, we received a third call on May 24th, 2010. Sergeant John Peck had just finished sweeping a compound with a metal detector checking for bombs when he stepped on an IED.

• 3:51:17Jocko Willink?

  He became America's third surviving quadruple amputee. We decided to raise funds to help build homes for all three quadruple amputees. Back before my foundation was created, it was no simple matter to help raise about a half a million bucks for each home project. It still isn't a simple matter today, but I wanted to do everything I could do to help.

• 3:51:41Jocko Willink?

  In time, we built homes for all three quadruple amputees and this new initiative steamrolled from there. The good news was that thanks to new sophisticated lifesaving techniques on the battlefield, more soldiers started surviving these horrific injuries. The bad news was that after Brendan, Todd, and John, more soldiers were wounded similarly.

• 3:52:02Jocko Willink?

  Staff Sergeant Travis Mills was our fourth quadruple amputee. A highly capable and resilient squad leader. He later joked that his injury in Afghanistan was only a bad case of the Mondays.

• 3:52:17Jocko Willink?

  Like so many of the wounded service members I've met, Travis is one of my heroes.

• 3:52:23Jocko Willink?

  And we remain close friends to this day. And Travis was on this podcast, number 90. If you want to, if you want to realize what a hero sounds like, go listen to that.

• 3:52:38Jocko Willink?

  Navy Petty Officer Taylor Morris, a member of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal Team, became our nation's fifth surviving quadruple amputee from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Immediately after the blast that took his four limbs, Taylor lay on the Afghan soil, fully conscious, bleeding to death. But before medics attended him, Taylor ordered them to wait and make sure the ground surrounding him was clear of IEDs. He didn't want any other service members getting wounded. Where do they find such men?

• 3:53:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, um, I mean, I haven't spent a decent amount of time with Travis. Yeah. If that guy's not a hero, then I have no idea who is.

• 3:53:42Speaker 01

  Well, he's an amazing guy and he's doing something really positive with his circumstance. And he's helping fellow veterans with his own foundation, Travis Milth Foundation. Obviously, he wrote a book, there was a movie. Travis is an ambassador for my foundation, so he'll do things from time to time to help us do more. And, you know, I've met just extraordinary people. We've done over sixty or seventy of these houses now for very, very badly wounded folks, you know, in all branches of the service. And it's been a privilege because I've learned quite a bit from a number of them and have

• 3:54:26Speaker 01

  many, many friends who, you know, are in the wounded community. As I said, I've been involved with the DAV for many, many years and so I have many wounded pals from a lot of different wars. And they, they, they give me a lot of inspiration, a lot of motivation to keep doing more.

• 3:54:56Jocko Willink?

  You go on here, "Another busy year is planned for 2010, 35 concerts, and additional events in support of our troops." They were still out there fighting. And I kept doing so much because it needed to be done. But I was tired, I was wondering how long I could keep up this pace. Would I be able to continue like this, or would I burn out? Yet I envisioned a future, doing still more, and I wanted to figure out a way to ramp up, not pull back my work, since I could see the positive efforts we were having. The question was, "How?" I began to consider consolidating my mission under one umbrella, continuing to work while focusing my priorities in the most effective way possible.

• 3:55:38Jocko Willink?

  Having teamed up with many organizations and efforts in the military support space, I had learned a great deal about many different areas of need. I could strategically harness the incredible power of the many volunteers who worked alongside me over the years, and could help serve them, our military veterans, and first responder communities more effectively, too. I could still point donors in a good direction, encourage generosity of the American people to support quality projects I was involved in, but I could do it more consistently, under this one umbrella. Thinking through all of that, the solution became clear: My Own Foundation. And you call it out here, "I'd been involved in so many different types of initiatives at this point, and even though I was consolidating efforts, I still wanted to keep the mission statement broad,

• 3:56:22Jocko Willink?

  reflecting the support work I'd done over the years, and so we could always adapt to changing needs of our veterans." We came up with this mission statement: "At the Gary Sinise Foundation, we serve our nation by honoring our defenders, veterans, first responders, their families, and those in need. We do this by creating and supporting unique programs designed to entertain, educate, inspire, strengthen, and build communities."

• 3:56:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you got to a point where you had to kind of consolidate your efforts.

• 3:56:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, in the, in the back of the book, there, there's, there's a list of maybe thirty different charities that I was supporting and, you know, in various ways. I would, I wanted to do a lot for as many veterans as possible. So I chose to do that initially by not only doing USO tours, but supporting nonprofit organizations that were really doing a good job in the, in the military support space. So I would do PSAs for them, I would fundraise for them, I would lend my name, I'd be on their honorary advisory boards, I would blah, blah, blah. It would, it went on and on and on. And then I was

• 3:57:41Speaker 01

  like, you know, right before I started the foundation, I launched the foundation, Gary Sine's Foundation, 2011. So the chapter in the book called Flurry of Action kind of talks about 2009, 2010, the two years leading up to the founding of the foundation because those years, I was just ramping more, more, more. And all the while, I was, I was shooting a television series, by the way, at the same time. So I was never home. I was shooting the show or gone on the weekends, doing something, helping some organization out. And I thought, this is, you know, I need to figure out some other way to do this. And having been involved

• 3:58:20Speaker 01

  with so many military charities over the years and had established a good reputation within the support space, you know, that it's a, you know, people knew I was there for real and I kept coming back and I, you know, it wasn't something I did once and, and I was, I was ongoing. It was part of my life. So I thought, let's capitalize on that in some way and, and create an organization that can, you know, act as a reliable resource for people who want to support our veterans and military community. And that's why I named it the Gary Sine's Foundation. I mean, people knew who I was at that point. They

• 3:59:02Speaker 01

  knew I was in this for good. I could have called it the Help the Troops Foundation or something like that, but I decided to put my name on it because I had... You know, I'd taken action and, uh, and people were supporting that. So I thought, well, the, the whole purpose of having a foundation is to raise money so that you can do more. And I wanted to raise a lot of money to, to do a lot more. And that's what we're doing.

• 3:59:28Jocko Willink?

  Well, just like any brand, when you know the brand and you know its quality, because let's face it, I mean, the charitable organizations, there's good ones and there's bad ones. And so if you have a good reputation inside of a brand that people know that you're doing the right thing, then why not, like you said, capitalize on that and, and, and make it obvious?

• 3:59:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I made a decision that the, this is, look, I'm, I'm, this isn't something I'm gonna stop doing. I'm gonna keep doing it. Uh, so let's, let's figure out the best way to do it in the most effective way that, you know, will, will be there for a long time. I, I hope to create a foundation and, and I think we're well on our way to doing that. Uh, to, uh, that, that is here for the long term. That, uh, hopefully it'll survive me and go on and keep helping people, uh, in the spirit of personal touches that I've tried to give it. And, uh, it will be there, um, you know, uh, and last, you know, in, for decades. That's, that's what I hope.

• 4:00:31Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm in it for good. It's a meaningful mission. Service has been a, a great thing for my life. And, uh, I think, you know, we, we're helping a lot of people now and I can see that, uh, that what we've, the, you know, the building blocks that we've laid here over this time are solid and people trust it and wanna support it.

• 4:00:54Jocko Willink?

  Well, some of the work that you're doing is incredible and we, like, um, you got this. "We built a home for U.S. Army Ranger Sergeant First Class Michael Schlitz, who served as a rifleman and platoon sergeant in southern Iraq on February 27th, 2007. Mike and his crew were conducting road clearing mission near Baghdad when their vehicle struck a hidden IED and burst into flame. His gunner, Sergeant Richard Sukenka."

• 4:01:24Jocko Willink?

  And medic Sergeant Jonathan Cadaverro were killed instantly. His driver Corporal Lorne Henry Jr. Passed away shortly after the blast. Mike rode in the passenger seat engulfed in flames. He was thrown from the vehicle. He lost both hands in the sight in his left eye and sustained burns over eighty-five percent of his body.

• 4:01:48Jocko Willink?

  Early in Mike's recovery, he started going to a program at UCLA called Operation Mend, consisting of a team of surgeons who help provide free surgeries to our severely wounded veterans. When I first met Mike, he was so severely burned, he didn't have a nose and he talked through a hole in his throat.

• 4:02:06Jocko Willink?

  We struck up a friendship. Over the years, he's had multiple reconstructive surgeries to repair the damage to his eyelids, mouth and nose and other parts of his body where the skin was burned. Having last lost both arms, he now uses two prosthetic hooks.

• 4:02:24Jocko Willink?

  Mike's living situation posed innumerable challenges for him. Because of the fragility of his skin, Mike preferred colder temperatures and often needed to turn the air conditioner on full blast. His mom Robbie, in his, in his full-time caregiver, and she wore heavy coats to keep warm in the house. Direct sunlight is hard on Mike's eyes, so he preferred to keep all the shades drawn.

• 4:02:46Jocko Willink?

  We built them a home with one section for Mike and another for his mom where the temperature and light in each section of the house could be individually governed. Mike has a special shower and a gym that he can navigate by himself. We helped restore Mike's independence and helped empower them both. Mike is an amazing individual who's dedicating his life to honoring his fallen brothers through serving his fellow veterans. An ambassador for my foundation, he helps us with our veterans outreach as our military and veterans resource manager.

• 4:03:18Jocko Willink?

  With our smart home program, we work with each wounded service member to provide exactly what they need. Master Sergeant John Mason is married and has three kids on October sixteenth, two thousand and ten, while conducting village stability operations in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan. John, a medic with the twentieth special forces group stepped on a hidden IED.

• 4:03:40Jocko Willink?

  And lost both legs and his left arm.

• 4:03:44Jocko Willink?

  Due to the severity of his amputations, he can't wear prosthetics and he's confined to a wheelchair. The hallways in his house were too narrow for a wheelchair. Additionally, he couldn't reach anything in the closets and the bathroom was too small for him to navigate alone.

• 4:03:57Jocko Willink?

  So we built John a house for him and his family. That allows him to be independent and in turn allows his wife and children to worry less about caring for him. We built a home for Captain Luis Avila and his family. Luis served five combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq.

• 4:04:19Jocko Willink?

  On December 27, 2011, Luis's vehicle ran over an IED.

• 4:04:25Jocko Willink?

  Luis lost his left leg, then suffered two strokes and two heart attacks, resulting in traumatic brain injury. Ultimately, he was left almost completely paralyzed. Today, he continues to heal while maintaining an incredibly positive attitude and sense of humor. His wife Claudia is his full-time caregiver and never leaves his side. She is one of the fierce fighters for the needs of our wounded service members and reminds us of the importance of also supporting our caregivers. Each smart home is given to the veteran free of charge.

• 4:04:59Jocko Willink?

  The mortgage for the house and land is completely underwritten. The veteran can select what part of the country he or she wants to live in.

• 4:05:10Jocko Willink?

  We built a home for police officer, Michael Flamian. From Baldwin, Missouri, he was shot in the neck by an assailant during a routine traffic stop and is paralyzed from the neck down.

• 4:05:23Jocko Willink?

  His wife is now his full-time caregiver. And the home built specifically for Michael's challenges provides some much-needed support and relief.

• 4:05:38Jocko Willink?

  So, I mean, if you can listen to those and recognize what you're doing, I mean, that's just phenomenal, phenomenal. And, you know, we already talked about this, but I'll add this little thing. You've got a program called Soaring Valor, and one of the things you did with the Navy, with the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, is made a film. You did the voiceover for the film, and in the film, the voice you use, or the person you're, what is it, acting?

• 4:06:12Speaker 01

  Portraying.

• 4:06:12Jocko Willink?

  Portraying, is Ernie Pyle, the famous war correspondent, who wrote Dispatches from the War Zones in Europe and Asia, and...

• 4:06:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's how I got involved with the World War II Museum, you know, over 10 years ago. And Tom Hanks was one of the producers on that film, and he invited me to play Ernie Pyle. So I did the voiceover for Ernie. That started my relationship with the World War II Museum. Now, we've taken, through my foundation and our Soaring Valor program, we've taken hundreds of World War II veterans down to see the museum, and we've recorded them on video, telling their stories. And those stories are preserved in the library at the museum.

• 4:07:02Jocko Willink?

  Well, two things. Number one, we covered Ernie Pyle on this podcast right here, number 39. And if you don't know this about Ernie Pyle, he was actually killed in action in the Battle of Okinawa. And two, I don't know what we can do to get the recordings out of the library and into the interwebs, but we should do that. Let's get them out there.

• 4:07:30Jocko Willink?

  The stuff that you, you know, again, another example. Staff Sergeant Jason Ross, March 2011, during his second deployment to Afghanistan, Jason lost both of his legs, part of his pelvic bone where an ID exploded. Doctors gave him less than 2% chance of survival, but Jason never stopped fighting. Complications set in and surgeons ended up needing to take more and more from his legs until eventually all his hips were gone. To date, he's undergone more than 240 surgeries. Basically, the entire lower half of his body is no longer there. We built a smart home for Jason and his family in San Diego. When we handed over the keys to him in his ceremony, his six-year-old daughter Stacy

• 4:08:14Jocko Willink?

  asked to speak. "My daddy is Jason Ross," she said. "When I was little, my daddy got hurt in Afghanistan. He was in the hospital for a long time. My daddy is strong and brave." Another thing you guys do, you talk about here. My, my foundation's final program is called Relief and Resiliency Outreach. This is an umbrella program where we simply try to help veterans and their family in any way possible, including those recovering from trauma, injury, or loss. Within the umbrella is a mentoring program.

• 4:08:59Jocko Willink?

  I've had a long relationship with the Disabled American Veterans, DAV, and know several wounded veterans who've lived with their injuries for decades, so I thought of providing an opportunity to introduce some of our younger wounded veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan to veterans from previous wars. I met with Jim Sersli, a Vietnam veteran, triple amputee, and former National Commander of the DAV to gauge his interest and get his thoughts. He responded positively and said he would love to be involved and that he would discuss it with the DAV leadership. And if you want to know about more than, more about Jim Sersli, Layers, Podcast 200, in here talking about his story, which is, which is incredible.

• 4:09:46Jocko Willink?

  And you close this section out by saying the simple story is here that from its creation in 2011, the foundation has grown into a friendly giant. We've gone from one donor, just me in the beginning, to a base of more than 45,000 donors and an annual budget of nearly 30 million. While we can never do enough to show our gratitude to our nation's defenders, veterans, first responders, and the families who serve alongside them. And you have this little mantra, this little motto, "We can always do a little more." And I think the

• 4:10:28Jocko Willink?

  idea of "we can always do a little more" is probably a good place to wrap, even though it's not the last chapter. The last chapter is actually called "Why I'm Still on a Mission."

• 4:10:41Jocko Willink?

  And obviously, there's an important message there, but that also ties in with the motto, "We can always do a little bit more."

• 4:10:48Speaker 01

  And I guess they'll have to buy the book to get that last chapter?

• 4:10:52Jocko Willink?

  Yes, indeed. And the book contains a lot of reasons why we all still need to stay on mission. And as I was preparing to do this podcast, I knew that I was going to be reading your words. And then I thought back to a time when you actually read some of my words. When Mikey Mansour was killed in Iraq, I gave a speech at his memorial service in

• 4:11:24Jocko Willink?

  Ramadi. And the theme of that speech was, was "Roger that." Because I told the story where I had told Mike and the rest of the new guys in the task unit that when the instructor Cadre from the training detachment came and told them to do something, or corrected them, or yelled at them, the only thing they were allowed to say back was "Roger that."

• 4:11:57Jocko Willink?

  And so, a couple of days went by, and one of the Master Chiefs, who was a friend of mine, he came up to me and he's like, "Hey, what the hell is up with this Montsorik guy?" And I said, "What do you mean?" He says, "Every time I tell him to do something, fix something, he just looks at me and says, 'Roger that.'"

• 4:12:15Jocko Willink?

  And I said, "Hey, man, that's exactly what I told him to say." And that actually became Mikey's attitude, and no matter what he was asked to do, no matter how hard the task, his response was always, "Roger that," including when a grenade was thrown that threatened the lives of three of our other teammates.

• 4:12:37Jocko Willink?

  And only one person could save them, was Mikey. And in order to do so, he had to smother that grenade with his own body and sacrifice his life

• 4:12:49Jocko Willink?

  for his friends. And in that moment of truth,

• 4:12:57Jocko Willink?

  his response was the same.

• 4:13:02Jocko Willink?

  "Roger that."

• 4:13:07Jocko Willink?

  And a few years later, at the Republican National Convention, there was a tribute to Mikey.

• 4:13:15Jocko Willink?

  And it was rooted in the same thing, theme. And clearly, it had been taken from the eulogy that I had delivered in the dusty hangar

• 4:13:25Jocko Willink?

  with a broken heart in Ramadi, Iraq,

• 4:13:29Jocko Willink?

  just after Mikey was killed, and that theme was "Roger that."

• 4:13:34Jocko Willink?

  And the tribute

• 4:13:37Jocko Willink?

  for Mikey was delivered by none other than Gary Sinise.

• 4:13:44Jocko Willink?

  And it was a fitting tribute.

• 4:13:49Jocko Willink?

  Fit for a hero

• 4:13:53Jocko Willink?

  such as Mikey,

• 4:13:59Jocko Willink?

  who continues every day to inspire us all

• 4:14:05Jocko Willink?

  to do a little more.

• 4:14:09Jocko Willink?

  And to live our lives as

• 4:14:14Jocko Willink?

  grateful Americans.

• 4:14:29Jocko Willink?

  So I thank you for doing that Gary.

• 4:14:32Speaker 01

  You're welcome. It was a, it was a privilege. I, I didn't know that came, came from you Jaco. That's, that's amazing. I looked it up recently. I told you I, I wanted to do something on the one year anniversary of the commissioning of Mike's ship. And so I posted something on my social media. And I found that video somehow that somebody had kind of filmed of their TV and it was of that, of that video that they showed that I narrated. And included that and then I, I wanted to look up some more and I found, I found the piece that you wrote after the ship was commissioned.

• 4:15:18Speaker 01

  And included it there, but did not know that some of those words that I said in that,

• 4:15:26Speaker 01

  that beautiful piece and I thought they did a very good job with it. I didn't know that they came from you. God bless you.

• 4:15:33Jocko Willink?

  It was an honor to hear them. And,

• 4:15:37Jocko Willink?

  well, I told you I wasn't sure how long this was gonna take. But it's been over four hours.

• 4:15:45Jocko Willink?

  Thank you, I mean for coming on.

• 4:15:49Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's, you know, thank you obviously for what you're doing for the truth, but thanks for swinging by. Thanks for coming on. I'm sorry I can't make your gig tomorrow night.

• 4:16:08Jocko Willink?

  You have any, um, you have any, you have any closing thoughts before we take off?

• 4:16:13Speaker 01

  Look, I'm, I'm, I'm thankful that you, you had me on. You gave me some time to talk and that you were interested in, in the book.

• 4:16:26Speaker 01

  The book came out a year ago. It's done, it's done very, very well and we hope it, it just keeps on going because it's a, I think, what I think is, in some ways, a little bit of a call to action. I tried to tell the story of somebody who didn't see it coming, but all of a sudden, made a turn toward a service life, which is basically, that's what I do now, you know. I've, I've done well in my acting career. I was grateful that I had CSI New York, because it gave me a lot of resources to do a lot of good things.

• 4:17:07Speaker 01

  And now I'm, I'm focusing primarily on the mission of the Gary Sinise Foundation and what we're doing and, and the book kind of tells the story of how I got there.

• 4:17:16Jocko Willink?

  If people want to support the Gary Sinise Foundation, they can go to GarySiniseFoundation.org. Also on Twitter, on Instagram, and on Facebook. Those are all also Gary Sinise Foundation, @GarySiniseFoundation. And then Gary himself is on Twitter and on Facebook, @GarySinise, and then on Instagram, @GarySiniseOfficial, if you want to check out the social, what is it called? Media.

• 4:17:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:17:58Jocko Willink?

  The social media. Yeah, so Gary, like I said, it's been for, over four hours. Thank you so much for what you're doing. Thanks for coming on.

• 4:18:08Speaker 01

  God bless you.

• 4:18:09Jocko Willink?

  It's been, it's been an honor to meet you and look forward to, you know, having you back on here. Next time you get a spare month, we can have you on here to talk again.

• 4:18:18Speaker 01

  Let me, let me just say this too, to you for your service to our country. I'm, I'm one grateful American. I appreciate what you've, you've done for our country and, and I don't for one day take it for granted. So I hope, you know, by spreading the word about what we're doing at the Gary Sinise Foundation, we can help more of your fellow service members and take care of them and their families.

• 4:18:40Jocko Willink?

  It was an honor to serve. Thank you. Thanks for coming on.

• 4:18:44Speaker 01

  You bet, bud.

• 4:18:46Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Gary has left the building.

• 4:18:51Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:18:52Jocko Willink?

  We have a brief message for you when it comes to supporting, right?

• 4:18:58Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 4:18:59Jocko Willink?

  We want to do more with our lives.

• 4:19:02Jocko Willink?

  I think that's pretty straightforward.

• 4:19:04Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 4:19:05Jocko Willink?

  Echo, Charles. Yes, sir. You've been relatively quiet today. We are all grateful for that.

• 4:19:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you notice, you didn't ask me, "Oh, Echo, you got anything else?" Because I had a whole list of movie questions.

• 4:19:17Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 4:19:18Speaker 02

  So, yeah.

• 4:19:19Jocko Willink?

  I'm glad I didn't open that.

• 4:19:20Speaker 02

  You dodged the bullet on that one.

• 4:19:21Jocko Willink?

  I didn't open that one. What can we do to do more, be better? What can we do? What do you got?

• 4:19:26Speaker 02

  Okay, so workout, take extreme ownership, take responsibility, don't complain, and also do jiu-jitsu. So, various reasons for this, obviously. And, you know, I don't have to go over them. I will.

• 4:19:44Speaker 02

  You want me to?

• 4:19:44Jocko Willink?

  It's been over four hours. How about we just accept the fact that we're gonna do jiu-jitsu?

• 4:19:50Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:19:50Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 4:19:50Speaker 02

  Good idea.

• 4:19:51Jocko Willink?

  We're good.

• 4:19:51Speaker 02

  Okay, so you need a gi, or when you do gi, you need rash guard, you're gonna do no gi. You don't need one, but you want to get one, for sure, 100%. For gi, you do need a gi. So, you get an Origin gi. This is why. Factually, the best gi in the world. Many options. Made in America, 100%. Those are the front-running reasons.

• 4:20:12Jocko Willink?

  Really, no expansion needed. Those are all kind of speak for themselves.

• 4:20:16Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 4:20:16Jocko Willink?

  Best gi in the world. Many different options. Made in America, 100%.

• 4:20:21Speaker 02

  Yep, 100%.

• 4:20:22Jocko Willink?

  Okay, case closed.

• 4:20:23Speaker 02

  Case closed.

• 4:20:23Jocko Willink?

  We're good on that.

• 4:20:24Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 4:20:25Jocko Willink?

  What else can we get from Origin? How about some supplements?

• 4:20:29Speaker 02

  Supplements, yes, big time.

• 4:20:30Jocko Willink?

  Oh, were you gonna say jeans?

• 4:20:31Speaker 02

  Well.

• 4:20:32Jocko Willink?

  You're probably over there thinking, "Well, you can get jeans too, Jocko. You don't necessarily need to be a G in a gi."

• 4:20:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, not necessarily. But, yes, so, Jean, okay, yeah, you brought it up, jeans. Yes, I was gonna say that at some point.

• 4:20:42Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 4:20:43Speaker 02

  So, yes, jeans, same deal. Best in the world, factually. Multiple, we'll say more than one option. More than one, that's multiple, right?

• 4:20:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, more than one is technically.

• 4:20:55Speaker 02

  And.

• 4:20:56Jocko Willink?

  More than one.

• 4:20:56Speaker 02

  And made in America, hundred percent. Boom. Jeans, by the way, did I say it was American denim? Cause that's what it is.

• 4:21:03Jocko Willink?

  Yes, it's American made, a hundred percent.

• 4:21:04Speaker 02

  Also supplements. Important supplements.

• 4:21:07Jocko Willink?

  Very good supplements. Supplements that you should take. There's no other two ways around it. So, take joint warfare. Take krill oil, all the time. That's just a daily discipline. Is krill oil, super krill and joint warfare. Get on that and then you've got some other options. If you need a little. You need to get up on step, a little bit.

• 4:21:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:21:30Jocko Willink?

  Cool, take discipline. You can take discipline go pill, you can take this discipline go powder form, mix it up. Or you can take discipline, ready to drink in a can, ready to rock and roll.

• 4:21:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:21:42Jocko Willink?

  You may need, so that can give you a little boost.

• 4:21:45Speaker 02

  Yes, boost.

• 4:21:46Jocko Willink?

  Little boost. You might need a boost of your protein intake. If you need that, cool. We got you.

• 4:21:55Jocko Willink?

  If you need dessert.

• 4:21:57Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:21:57Jocko Willink?

  We got you. Cause, and those last two, kind of the same thing.

• 4:22:01Speaker 02

  Same.

• 4:22:01Jocko Willink?

  Dessert and protein. Dessert and protein.

• 4:22:06Speaker 02

  Molk.

• 4:22:07Jocko Willink?

  Molk.

• 4:22:08Speaker 02

  All day.

• 4:22:09Jocko Willink?

  By the way, there is. There is a thing that you can get on. You can get on board. It's called the Molk Train.

• 4:22:16Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, get on, stay on, hundred percent.

• 4:22:18Jocko Willink?

  Get on it, stay on it.

• 4:22:18Speaker 02

  And not the split hairs, Discipline Go is not the powder.

• 4:22:22Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yes.

• 4:22:22Speaker 02

  Discipline.

• 4:22:23Jocko Willink?

  Discipline.

• 4:22:23Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:22:24Jocko Willink?

  That's the original.

• 4:22:25Speaker 02

  The OG.

• 4:22:25Jocko Willink?

  Original, hey, let's make a powdered drink that I can drink to get my.

• 4:22:29Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:22:30Jocko Willink?

  Then, hey, you know what, sometimes I don't have time to mix up a drink. How about we make a little? Pill I can take, cool, great. By the way. Yeah, then sometimes, oh, sometimes I want to have a little bit and I want it like right now. I don't want to mix it up.

• 4:22:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:22:45Jocko Willink?

  I want it in a can.

• 4:22:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:22:46Jocko Willink?

  Discipline Go, RTD, in a can.

• 4:22:48Speaker 02

  Boom, that's, and that's just to sort of separate the, you know, like I said, not split hairs, but hey, you know, these are details that aren't unimportant.

• 4:22:55Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 4:22:55Speaker 02

  See what I'm saying? Anyway, yes, also, Warrior Kid Molk, back to the Molk Train. Warrior Kid, more for the kids, a little bit more engineered towards the kids, but let's face it, you're gonna get into that, that supply as well.

• 4:23:06Jocko Willink?

  There's no doubt that I've drank much. I've been on the Molk Thomas the Tank Engine.

• 4:23:13Speaker 02

  Is it Thomas the Tank?

• 4:23:16Jocko Willink?

  Thomas the Tank Engine, yeah, yeah. That's the little kids' milk train.

• 4:23:19Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 4:23:19Jocko Willink?

  A lot of, a lot of people call it the little kids' milk train.

• 4:23:23Jocko Willink?

  The Warrior Kid Milk Train. Get your kids on Thomas the Tank Engine Warrior Kid Milk Train.

• 4:23:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:23:28Jocko Willink?

  And don't forget about Jaco White Tea Organic.

• 4:23:32Speaker 02

  Certified.

• 4:23:32Jocko Willink?

  Cause, cause Echo really likes that part of it.

• 4:23:35Speaker 02

  Bro, yes.

• 4:23:35Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, everything that we just talked about, that's a supplement. You can get it at the Vitamin Shop, Nationwide, USA, America.

• 4:23:44Speaker 02

  Take it. Also, if you're not walking into the Vit- the Vitamin Shop Nationwide in America, just go to originmaine.com. That's where you get it.

• 4:23:53Jocko Willink?

  And where you can get all this stuff.

• 4:23:54Speaker 02

  Yes. All of it. Oh, yeah, yeah. The G's as well. This is everything. Everything we just talked about? Originmaine.com. Also, if you want to get your copy of Grateful American

• 4:24:10Speaker 02

  by Gary Sinise, AKA Lieutenant Dan, AKA Mac Taylor. Don't worry, I got you. Go to Jacopodcast.com. Go, click on the top where it says books from the episodes. Boom, it'll be right there. Where you click on there and then go to that page, boom, right there. Along with all the other books, all the other books that we, uh, cover on this podcast. Also, Jaco's store, it's called Jaco Store, and this is where you can get Rash Guard's t-shirts. T-shirts, big, that's a big one. You want to represent, I mean, every day, let's face it, we're wearing t-shirts every single day.

• 4:24:40Jocko Willink?

  Yes. Just about everybody.

• 4:24:42Speaker 02

  Everybody.

• 4:24:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:24:44Speaker 02

  Even if you're in the snow, whatever, let's face it. Also, Rash Guards, more Rash Guards, hoodies if you're in the slow, snow. Anyway, a lot of good stuff on there that are representative of the path. Represent while you're on the path. Discipline equals freedom. Good, you know. Good attitude is a good attitude to have.

• 4:25:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. By the way, you were talking about, um, sometimes we see fakes, right? So when you said good, there's like other good quote t-shirts out there?

• 4:25:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:25:13Jocko Willink?

  Actually, there's a good t-shirt out there that has the entire good. Speech.

• 4:25:18Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, sir. It does.

• 4:25:20Jocko Willink?

  And you can get it on, on whatever. A website.

• 4:25:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, like one of those.

• 4:25:25Jocko Willink?

  You can, but you are not supporting. Just kind of FYI.

• 4:25:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:25:28Jocko Willink?

  I, I get, you know, like, cool. I'm, I'm happy that you're trying to be in the game.

• 4:25:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:25:35Jocko Willink?

  But you're actually giving money to a thief and a liar.

• 4:25:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. Is that, well, not plagiarism, right? It's called something else.

• 4:25:41Jocko Willink?

  Called stealing.

• 4:25:42Speaker 02

  Copyright or.

• 4:25:43Jocko Willink?

  Called stealing.

• 4:25:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 4:25:45Jocko Willink?

  Don't do it.

• 4:25:46Speaker 02

  And that's what, yes, that's true. And.

• 4:25:47Jocko Willink?

  Official? Go to JacoStore.com.

• 4:25:49Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:25:50Jocko Willink?

  Just be good.

• 4:25:51Speaker 02

  And a lot of these knockoffs don't have the layers in it, like for real layers.

• 4:25:55Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, they didn't even get the font right.

• 4:25:56Speaker 02

  Nope. Don't get, have the font right.

• 4:25:57Jocko Willink?

  But now, but now you know what? They're getting the font right now. Alright, so they're out there, watch out.

• 4:26:02Speaker 02

  And usually they're a substandard product.

• 4:26:04Jocko Willink?

  That's for sure.

• 4:26:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, like you get one of those cheap, like knockoffs, when you get it, you're like, okay, I'm representing the path in your mind, you know, I'm right, but man, I don't know how much I'm gonna wear this. Maybe I'll wear it the first time when I wash it.

• 4:26:14Jocko Willink?

  No, what sucks is when I read a bad review on one of those and they say like, I can't believe Jaco would put his name on this.

• 4:26:20Speaker 02

  I didn't. Yeah, I know. It's like bittersweet though. You see what I'm saying?

• 4:26:24Jocko Willink?

  I know.

• 4:26:25Speaker 02

  But.

• 4:26:25Jocko Willink?

  Anyways, not real hard. You just go to JacoStore.com and then you're good. You, you, you will be supporting when you do that.

• 4:26:31Speaker 02

  Yes. Also, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already on iTunes, Google, Stitcher, or sorry, Google Play, Stitcher, you know, leave a review if you're in the mood. In the mood, leave a review. That's a good, good, good move.

• 4:26:43Jocko Willink?

  Don't forget that we also have the Grounded Podcast. We have the Warrior Kid Podcast.

• 4:26:50Jocko Willink?

  And from the Warrior Kid Podcast, we also have Warrior Kid Soap. Did you get Killer Soap yet?

• 4:26:55Speaker 02

  Not yet. I haven't checked the mail though.

• 4:26:57Jocko Willink?

  I will say this. It's, it's, it's legit.

• 4:27:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. The fact that it's black is like, that's the cherry on top.

• 4:27:04Jocko Willink?

  But it's also got, it's got like the, you know, you ever use T- or?

• 4:27:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:27:09Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes it's way powerful. Like a little too much. This is totally perfect. Like you can, you know it and it's just, you feel like, you feel like when you use this soap, soap, the Warrior Kid Soap from IrishOaksRanch.com, you feel like when you've used this soap. You can stay clean.

• 4:27:30Speaker 02

  I feel the same way. Yes, Irish, Irish Oaks Ranch.com. That's, that's where you get it. Also, we have a YouTube channel for the video version of this podcast. You're gonna watch it on your smart TV while you're working out, or while you're not working out, maybe in your office, I don't know. If you want to watch it, the video version, yes, we have a YouTube channel. So subscribe if you haven't done that, you know, if you want. Also got some excerpts on there too. So there's more benefits to the YouTube channel, as it were.

• 4:27:59Jocko Willink?

  Got Psychological Warfare. If you need a little psychological hitter, you can proceed there. And that little, that little hitter that you need, it's gonna help you get through that moment of weakness. Get Psychological Warfare. It's on iTunes. It's on Google Play, Amazon Music, any MP3 platform. You can set it for your alarm, so it can wake you up in the morning to my soothing voice. And don't forget, if you need a visual representation of the path, you can go to flipsidecanvas.com. Dakota Meyer, by the way, no big deal, just Dakota Meyer.

• 4:28:39Jocko Willink?

  He owns that company and he's making really cool graphic designs. So go to flipsidecanvas.com to support that. For books, yes, we have Grateful American, written by Gary Sinise. Lots of powerful stories in there. You can pick that up. You got Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. Is it still hot off the presses?

• 4:29:04Speaker 02

  The technical specs on that, I'm not sure.

• 4:29:05Jocko Willink?

  You know what? It's been out for a month. I'm considering it warm off the presses. I'll tell you this, if you don't have it yet, you're definitely wrong.

• 4:29:13Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 4:29:13Jocko Willink?

  Feedback. What's the feedback?

• 4:29:16Speaker 02

  Hundred percent approval rating.

• 4:29:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:29:17Speaker 02

  And look, I'm not gonna sit here and say your other books weren't like, I'm not gonna say that, but my favorite, if I was gonna choose a favorite, I'm leaning heavily towards this Leadership Strategy and Tactics.

• 4:29:32Jocko Willink?

  I like the way you think.

• 4:29:32Speaker 02

  Of all of them.

• 4:29:33Jocko Willink?

  That's including the kids books?

• 4:29:35Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 4:29:36Jocko Willink?

  Oh, wow.

• 4:29:37Speaker 02

  Here's the thing though, you know, I am thinking of myself. You see what I'm saying? Like that, even the

• 4:29:42Jocko Willink?

  Typical.

• 4:29:43Speaker 02

  But the kids book has legs, more legs, because it's, you know, extends to the kids. So I dig it. I dig it, but still. I said, I said what I said.

• 4:29:50Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so we're going with it. Let's get it. Leadership Strategy and Tactics. One of those, here's the deal. You're in some random group of people. It's a team. It's a business. It's a company. People are maneuvering. People are trying to stab each other in the back. They're not supporting each other. They're doing all the things that these, that happens inside of a team. Get them this book. Get them this book. There you go. Get them this book and you will see people start to do the right thing. Because they'll understand leadership. They'll understand human nature. It will help them. Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. The Warrior Kid Books, one, two, and three.

• 4:30:28Jocko Willink?

  I wish I had those books when I was a kid.

• 4:30:32Jocko Willink?

  But I can't go back in time.

• 4:30:35Jocko Willink?

  Mikey and the Dragons. Every kid is born afraid of things in the world. They don't need to be. They just need to read a simple book called Mikey and the Dragons and then they'll realize how they can overcome those fears. The Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual.

• 4:30:53Jocko Willink?

  Two pages is a little dose that will propel you forward faster, stronger, and better. That's a weird statement to make. Sounds like a big, bold statement to make. I'm telling you. I wrote it. It works on me. I wrote the book.

• 4:31:12Speaker 02

  Dang.

• 4:31:12Jocko Willink?

  I wrote the book. If I read two pages, I'm like, oh yeah, I'm gonna go a little bit harder. I wrote it. I already know it. You see what I'm saying?

• 4:31:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:31:20Jocko Willink?

  This is strange.

• 4:31:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I could see it.

• 4:31:22Jocko Willink?

  I wrote it. I know it. I wrote every word in there. I wrote. I opened up, read two pages and I, my game goes up.

• 4:31:29Speaker 02

  Dang.

• 4:31:30Jocko Willink?

  My discipline increases.

• 4:31:33Jocko Willink?

  Factually. If you want an audio version of that, it's not on Audible. Because if it was on Audible, you couldn't use it as an alarm clock to wake you up. Instead, it's on iTunes, Amazon Music, Google Play, other MP3 platforms. And then, of course, we got Extreme Ownership and The Dichotomy of Leadership, which I wrote with my brother, Leif Babin. Fundamentals of Leadership. We also have a leadership consultancy. It's called Echelon Front and what we do is solve problems through leadership. We have leadership training online called EF Online. Because leadership training is not inoculation. You don't get it one time and now you're good to go. No. You gotta do repetitive training. You gotta drill it in from other angles.

• 4:32:16Jocko Willink?

  The other angles are on EF Online. We have the muster. Live. Events about leadership. We're doing one in Orlando, one in Dallas, one in Phoenix. That's the schedule for 2020. Every event that we have done of any kind has sold out. If you want to come, go register. And then we have EF Overwatch and EF Legion. If you're a military individual and you're transitioning to civilian sector, go there, put your information in and we can move you in the right direction for employment for your next mission.

• 4:33:01Jocko Willink?

  And if you're a civilian company and you want leaders at every level inside your company, go there to those EF Overwatch and EF Legion. Fill out the appropriate boxes and we'll get you in the game. And let's say you just haven't gotten enough of my hyper dramatic reading. You haven't heard enough of my moments of silence. Maybe you need more of that. You want more?

• 4:33:38Jocko Willink?

  Maybe you want to hear a ridiculous story from Echo Charles about the grocery store. If you need that still, well, we're on the interwebs. On Twitter, Instagram and El Fez en Bouké. Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Chalk and Link and once again, Gary Sinise Foundation dot org.

• 4:34:07Jocko Willink?

  And the foundation is on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at Gary Sinise Foundation. Gary himself is on Twitter and Facebook at Gary Sinise and he's on what Echo calls "The Gram" at Gary Sinise Official.

• 4:34:25Jocko Willink?

  And with that, uh, once again, thanks to Gary for, for coming on, for sharing his story. And more important, thanks to Gary Sinise for what he is doing and continuing to doing and has done to support the veterans and first responders of our great nation.

• 4:34:49Jocko Willink?

  Because for many, the war doesn't end when the battle's over.

• 4:34:58Jocko Willink?

  There is a war that can continue physically, mentally, spiritually.

• 4:35:07Jocko Willink?

  And Gary is doing a lot to support America's heroes through that transition. And to the heroes that are out there listening, to those that are serving and those that have served, thank you for protecting our way of life. And yes, we are grateful.

• 4:35:27Jocko Willink?

  And the same goes to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service.

• 4:35:39Jocko Willink?

  You protect us here at home and yes, we are grateful for that as well.

• 4:35:47Jocko Willink?

  And to everyone else out there, when we talk about being grateful, we're not just talking about being grateful for our heroes in the military and our first responders. I'm talking about being grateful for life.

• 4:36:07Jocko Willink?

  Cause it's here and it's now. And there are so many men and women that have sacrificed so much for us that we can be here in a world that is overflowing with opportunity.

• 4:36:26Jocko Willink?

  So be grateful for that and then show gratitude.

• 4:36:34Jocko Willink?

  Show gratitude to those that have served not just by saying thank you. Show gratitude not just with your words, but by going out and taking action. Making things happen. Show them gratitude by going out there in the world.

• 4:36:56Jocko Willink?

  And getting after it.

• 4:36:59Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco, out.