#2579 - Gary Sinise

Gary Sinise is an Academy Award-nominated actor, musician, director, author, and philanthropist. His new book, "Graceful Warrior," is available now.www.nelsonbooks.com/books/graceful-warrior/www.youtube.com/@GarySiniseFoundationwww.garysinisefoundation.orgwww.garysinise.com Perplexity: Download the app or ask Perplexity anything at https://pplx.ai/rogan. Don’t miss out on all the action this week at DraftKings! Download the DraftKings app today! Sign-up using https://dkng.co/rogan or through my promo code ROGAN. Download Uber Eats and order now. https://ubereats.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:12Joe Rogan?

  Pleasure to meet you, man.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  Thank you, Joe. Good to be with you.

• 0:15Joe Rogan?

  It's always weird when you see someone, you meet them, and you're like, "Fuck, I've seen this guy in movies since I was a kid, and now here you are." I'm sure it's weird for you, too.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 0:27Joe Rogan?

  You know, when you meet people like that, like, you know...

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Oh, sure. I've seen your show and whatnot, and some of the UFC fights and all that, and now we're here together. It's great.

• 0:36Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, it's very odd. Like, I just want people to know, it never stops being odd.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  Well, I'm harmless.

• 0:44Joe Rogan?

  Oh, I know you are. You're a very nice guy, but it's just like, you've been in so many giant movies, man.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  Some good ones, yeah.

• 0:51Joe Rogan?

  Oh, my God. You're in both Forrest Gump and The Green Mile, two of my all-time favorite movies.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:56Joe Rogan?

  Those are amazing movies.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  The '90s were good. I did three movies with Tom that year, and they were all successful, all very good movies. Forrest Gump and Apollo 13, I did right after. That was Tom's next movie, and I did that after Forrest Gump. And then Green Mile was a few years later, I think, but only one little part, but it was a good part, and it was a couple of days with Tom on the set.

• 1:24Joe Rogan?

  It was a good part. And you were, again, you're, just to be a part of that, Green Mile's a huge movie. It's one of my favorite Stephen King movies.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Very good, yeah. Thank you.

• 1:33Joe Rogan?

  You wrote a memoir. It was just like what everyone who's lived an extraordinary life should do at some point in time, write a memoir.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Well, I wrote a couple. The first one is called Grateful American. That came out in 2019, actually. Came out that year, and it kind of documents how I got so involved with our veteran community and our first responders and all of that. I had been on so many tours overseas, USO, hospital visits, whatnot. I was encouraged by my agent, who I'd never, this is a book agent, and I'd never worked with her before, but she approached me and said, "Why don't you document some of this stuff that you're doing?" And so

• 2:23Speaker 01

  I started to do that, and then it turned into an autobiography. I went back through the history of my family, serving in World War I, World War II, Korea era, my wife's side of the family, Vietnam, Cold War, all of that, Afghanistan. And then it just traveled all the way to the creation of the Gary Sinise Foundation, which I set up in 2011, and so it kind of tracks all of that. That book came out in 2019, and now I've got a new one coming out.

• 2:52Joe Rogan?

  When did you first start getting involved with first responders and military? When did this all start for you?

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Well, I think it was kind of different steps along the way. Again, the family on both my side, the family of veterans on my side, and my wife's side of the family. Back in the '80s, because of my wife's brothers who had served in Vietnam, and her sister's husband, a combat medic, I started to get, you know, I started to spend time with them and talk to them quite a bit about what it was like for them to go and serve in Vietnam and then come home. And of course, it was a bad time to be in the service, coming home from Vietnam.

• 3:36Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, maybe the first time ever in American history where people were angry at you for fighting in a war.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  That's right. And it was a very divided nation at that time, and the Vietnam veteran had to crawl into the closet and, you know, hide in the shadows. It was a difficult time for them, and I felt a lot of compassion for them after I started to actually meet Vietnam veterans through my wife. And so I wanted to help them. I started helping them in the '80s. And in the '90s, I got to play a Vietnam veteran in Forrest Gump. He was a wounded guy, so I started supporting our wounded after that through the Disabled American Veterans Organization. And then September 11th was, in the book Graceful American, there's a chapter called Turning Point, and everything up to that chapter is kind of

• 4:24Speaker 01

  teeing up what would happen after the attack on our country on September 11th. And that was truly a turning point toward a greater level of service. I started raising my hand in all kinds of ways for the USO and just going out to the hospitals and visiting our wounded. And, you know, having been involved with the DAV, Disabled American Veterans, in the '90s, I was impacted greatly by the real-life Lieutenant Dan's out there and wanted to help, you know, our returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. And so started supporting them in various ways, and that all led to the creation of my own foundation, which is now in its 16th year. We've raised a lot of money and deployed those resources

• 5:09Speaker 01

  all over the country doing all kinds of things, and overseas as well.

• 5:13Joe Rogan?

  Well, that's phenomenal that you put so much energy and effort into that, because Lord knows they need it, and they, I'm sure they appreciate it, because it's, especially in today's day and age, it's such a, we live in such a divided country, and at least we should be able to love and respect and take care of the people that sacrifice everything, put their life on the line to serve our country. I mean, it is the ultimate sacrifice, and it gets, you know, depending on whether or not you agree with the war, or whether or not you agree with the president, and whether or not you'd agree with the political movement

• 5:56Joe Rogan?

  of the time, you know, that's how people feel about the military themselves, and I think that's terrible.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  I don't care at all about that stuff. I remember what it was like to come home from Vietnam from these, I was greatly impacted by the veterans that I met coming home from Vietnam. I was 18 years old in 1973, the end of combat operations in Vietnam, and then I met my wife's brothers, and they started to really tell me what it was like to serve in Vietnam and come home to feel like the nation had abandoned them and crapped on them. And all that is, that is the foundation, that is a motivator for me to kind of take up the charge with those who deployed in reaction to the horrific attack that we all

• 6:47Speaker 01

  witnessed on September 11th. We had a lot of people raising their hands after that and going off to serve, and they started getting hurt, they started getting killed, families started losing loved ones. I was, I just felt called to try to do something to help them and to try to ensure that if they were going to return from war, that they would return to a grateful nation. And you could see, remember, in 2004, 2005, initially everybody was like behind the service member. They were responding to Afghan, what happened with Osama bin Laden and the attack on our country. People were raising their hand, they

• 7:27Speaker 01

  were going to Afghanistan. Then we went into Iraq, and the nation started, it had come together after September 11th, and it started to divide and split again. And you could see one side was supportive of George Bush and what he was trying to do in Iraq, and then there was a whole other side that was, you know, really not in support of it. Having so many Vietnam veterans in my family and remembering what it was like for them to get caught in the middle of that crap.

• 7:55Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  I didn't want that to happen to our Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. So, you know, at a certain point, I just started raising my hand and saying, "Hey, I want to go visit them and let them know that there are people that care about them and appreciate them." And that turned into just a life mission. I don't ever want somebody who volunteers to serve our country going the harm's way, you know, sacrifice limbs and lose friends and all of that, to ever feel like nobody cares about that. You know, we should protect and defend our defenders. Look at what they do for us. If we had nobody that wanted to

• 8:36Speaker 01

  serve in the military or put on a uniform as a police officer or fighter, fighter, what would we do? We'd have to make people do it. That's what happened in Vietnam. There was a draft, and that split the nation in half. We don't have a draft now, so I'm grateful that we have people that are willing to do this work.

• 8:56Joe Rogan?

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• 9:37Joe Rogan?

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• 10:45Speaker 02

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• 11:05Joe Rogan?

  You know, I agree. I agree with you very much. So I had my first experience with a Vietnam veteran when I was in high school. I had a history teacher that was a very nice guy, but he had a fuse that was the short, like you couldn't light that firecracker. It was gonna blow your fingers off. His fuse was so short and it took me a while to figure out, like, what is, why is he, what is going on? Cause he's normal and then he would snap. Like, I remember one time a kid didn't bring a pencil and he said, can I, can I borrow a pencil? And he pulls the desk out, grabs the drawer, yanks the drawer out with all the pencils in it and slams it on the ground. He goes, get a fucking pencil. Pick up a pencil.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  This is the teacher.

• 11:51Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, this is the teacher. Out of his mind. And we're all like, yo.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Something's going on in there.

• 11:56Joe Rogan?

  A hundred percent. And it took us, like, no teacher had ever done that before. Like, it wasn't that the kid was like starting fights or lighting a fire in the crowd. He just didn't bring his pencil. And so he pulls the drawer out of the, out of the desk and slams it with all the pencils. The pencils are scattering all over the place and, and I remember sitting in class going, should I run? Like, what the fuck is this guy gonna do next?

• 12:20Speaker 01

  He got everybody's attention that day.

• 12:22Joe Rogan?

  Definitely got everybody's attention, but it was in a completely disproportionate way. But when we found out, you know, cause we would, you know, and I'll go have lunch afterwards, like, what the fuck? I forget his name. I wish I could remember it because he was really, he was a cool guy, a really cool guy. It was just, he had been through it.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  How did, how, did you know he was a Vietnam veteran?

• 12:43Joe Rogan?

  Yes. We found out from other teachers. We found out from other classmates and...

• 12:48Speaker 01

  After the, after that incident or before?

• 12:50Joe Rogan?

  No, I think it was along the way. Cause it wasn't just that incident. He, his fuse was, he was ready to pop at any moment. It was like, it would come out of nowhere and like, maybe it was in response to unruly kids and teaching them how to get in line. But I went to a pretty soft school in high school. I went to Newton South High School, really nice suburb of Massachusetts, Boston, Massachusetts. Very nice neighborhood. Very, no, no gang fights at my school. It was very, very peaceful, great academic school. Everyone was nice. I mean, normal shit. Kids got in fights, normal stuff, but it wasn't anything scary. We weren't scary kids. So when he would pop and snap, it was like, whoa, where's this coming from?

• 13:34Speaker 01

  It makes me, I grew up in the same kind of environment. Nice suburb of Chicago. Grade high school, Highland Park High School. It was a great high school and it makes me think, I wonder if there were teachers at my high school who had gone through the war and then came, came home and, and taught. I never met, never met any until my wife's brothers. I never met a Vietnam veteran until then.

• 13:59Joe Rogan?

  Had to be. Now that I'm thinking about it, this might not have been in high school. It might've been in eighth grade. I have to be, I have to be careful with this. Cause I don't really remember. So fuck, I'm so old. I'm 59 now.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  You're not old.

• 14:12Joe Rogan?

  But I'm thinking through it. I'm like, it might've been eighth grade, which makes more sense. Cause I was in Jamaica Plain and it was a little bit of a sketchy neighborhood, but I'm not sure. Either way, this guy, this was my first experience with anybody that had been through Vietnam, whether it was eighth grade or ninth grade, different schools. But he was really smart and, and just, I could tell even as a 13-year-old kid, this guy was tortured. You know, something had happened. And then as I got older and saw a bunch of movies on Vietnam and, you know, saw Apocalypse Now and it's like, whoa, jeez. Like, you just think of, we thought of war as World War II soldiers going over there

• 14:52Joe Rogan?

  to fight the Nazis and, you know, and stop evil from progressing across the globe. And we remember that photo of that, the Navy sailor kissing that lady in Times Square. It's like one of the most iconic photos in history, right? And that's what war meant. It was like, we're the good guys. We go over there. And then you see Apocalypse Now and you go, okay, well, what the fuck is this? Is this really what they dealt with? And then you have these accounts of these guys that had to go into the, the tunnels.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, tunnel rats, yeah.

• 15:28Joe Rogan?

  Jesus Christ. You're like, and then there's no reason whatsoever that we should've been there in the first place. Like, wow. Okay. Well, this is war.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. And if you look at, that's not the only movie, Apocalypse Now, from that era, right?

• 15:42Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Seventies and eighties produced Platoon, Casualties of War, Coming Home. I mean, there were a lot, there were a lot of movies.

• 15:50Joe Rogan?

  I think Platoon was a little later, right?

• 15:52Speaker 01

  Platoon was eighties. Yeah. Eighties. Deer Hunter, another one.

• 15:56Joe Rogan?

  Right. Deer Hunter. That was another great one.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  What Happens to Chris Walken at the end of that movie?

• 16:00Joe Rogan?

  Oh, God.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  So you, you look at all those movies, Joe, and if you look at all those movies, just like Apocalypse Now, you just wonder, I don't think these Vietnam veterans are gonna be okay at the end of this film, right?

• 16:14Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Forrest Gump was the first time that a story about a Vietnam veteran was a happy ending story. We had never seen that story before. We'd never seen a Vietnam veteran come home, process all his anger, process, you know, isolate himself through booze and, you know, loneliness and all that anger, all the things that were going on with Lieutenant Dan. But what happens at the end of that story is he's standing up again. He's got legs. He's moving on. He's successful in business. He forgives himself. You know, we hadn't seen that positive story about a Vietnam veteran. I think that's in some ways why so many Vietnam veterans kind of appreciate that story. Because yes, there

• 16:59Speaker 01

  were those who came home from Vietnam and isolated themselves. My wife's, one of her brothers, it was like that. He just, he just, you know, had, had a lot of trouble after Vietnam. And we heard that story over and over again, but we never heard the story of the guy who came home from war, was able to kind of process the war years and move beyond them. And that's, that was, that's, of course, that's the story we want for anybody who goes off to war. We want them to come home and be okay.

• 17:29Joe Rogan?

  We do. And we, we like when that happens. And I think part of the reason why we like it is because we know it's so unlikely. Cause it's so difficult to come back from that and, and re-emerge and just re-enter society. And they don't get any help. And this is the thing that I found most shocking. When I got older and I met a lot of military guys, specifically through jujitsu, through martial arts, met a lot of military guys. And the thing that astounded me the most is how little help they get in re-emerging or re-entering into society. And that you go from being involved in firefights every day and breaching buildings and shooting terrorists. And then all of a sudden, you're back in regular life.

• 18:15Joe Rogan?

  And it doesn't make any sense. And you, no one's telling you how to deal with this. No one's giving you tools. You can get a little bit of counseling. That doesn't seem to help. They could put you on medication. You want, you want to numb yourself to the whole world? You could do that. No one wants to do that. And then no one wants to talk to you about it. It's, and it's crazy to ask that of people. To take a regular person and just put them through boot camp, put them, you know, give them some training and then have them go kill people. And then a few years later, here they are, back, working in an insurance company, just sitting at a desk. Like, what? How do you process that? It's hard to process regular life. Like, regular life is baffling to people. I mean,

• 18:57Joe Rogan?

  how many millennials and Generation Z kids are just like so confused about life itself? Imagine that.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:05Joe Rogan?

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• 20:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. Thankfully, I mean, even with things like that, that do happen today.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  Think back to what it was like to come home from Vietnam and have no services at all and have the nation be completely, you know, I had people that had bags of crap thrown on them when they got off the airplane and whatnot. Today, there are multiple services provided. You know, there are thousands of nonprofits that have emerged since September 11th, 2001, that are out there trying to fill the gaps where the government kind of falls down and we don't have enough support. So there is support out there for a lot of people. Unfortunately, many of our service members that come home, they don't seek it out. They don't seek that help out. They isolate. And we don't want them to do that

• 21:10Speaker 01

  at the Gary Sinise Foundation. We try our best to be very, very proactive if we hear about anything. We don't wait for them to call. We call them. We try to, we try to reach out. Mental wellness is a big part of what we do at the Gary Sinise Foundation. And I know a lot of people that are in, in, in that business to make sure that, like your, your teacher, who's, who's containing all that stuff. He's not talking about it. He's keeping all that in. We want to provide opportunities for them to tell their stories and come out. The more they talk about what they've been through, the more, the, the, the better it is, the better the chance that we save somebody from doing something bad to themselves.

• 21:52Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I'm, I mean, it's one of the things that I've learned through jujitsu, in particular, is so many guys who came over there and needed something to really like push them and test themselves and just like release the demons and get out all the, the pent up anxiety and that extreme physical exertion in jujitsu. And also the camaraderie of jujitsu really helped them with a lot of that.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  It's hard. It's, it's hard. You know, if you, if you've seen a lot of buddies go down, you know, you've seen a lot of bad stuff and you come home and just try to go on with life, I, I think it's difficult. The one, the one thing that I will say is, I had, my wife had two, two brothers. One, one died of cancer in 1983, but he was a West Pointer. Two tours in Vietnam, went as a platoon leader, lieutenant, then went back as a captain, a company commander, came back, taught at West Point as a major, was teaching at Fort Leavenworth. He was just rising in the rank. He would have been a four star and he would have been involved right along, he was Tommy Franks's age. So

• 23:02Speaker 01

  he would have been involved with General Franks and, and serving in Iraq. I have no doubt about that. He did better than the younger brother who came back and got out. Right? He did his tour and got out and he didn't have the community around him. You know, my old, the older brother had the military community around him. All these guys had served in Vietnam. They're all around each other. They're still serving in the army, whatever it is. But the younger brother came out and he got out of the service and tried to do exactly that, you know, go work in a, you know, he ended up being a prison guard and ended up doing these, just trying to get a job. He tried to go to college. He,

• 23:43Speaker 01

  he never adjusted properly. So we want, we want people to, to know that there are services out there constantly, available to them. If they're, you know, if anybody's listening to this, you can go to the Gary Sinise Foundation. But there are multiple services out there that can be provided if somebody is in need of help. We want them to know that.

• 24:05Joe Rogan?

  So for people listening to this, your website, what is it? GarySiniseFoundation.com?

• 24:09Speaker 01

  Dot org.

• 24:10Joe Rogan?

  Dot org? Okay. Just to let people know to go there. Yeah. It's just like the, just the task of coming back and reintegrating completely makes sense that someone who stays in the military can adjust to it much better. You're just used to being around other, there's a lot of camaraderie and community, people being around other people that are experiencing the same thing you're experiencing.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  Or experienced, you know, because they went to war together.

• 24:33Joe Rogan?

  Right. Right, right, right. Support each other.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:36Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. It's a, it's, you know, it just, it's the most demanding thing you could ever ask of someone, ever, by far. Risk your life, go kill others. And, and then when you come back and you find out like, hey, maybe we shouldn't have even really been there, you know, and that's insanely difficult to deal with.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  And people are questioning, yeah, people question, and what did I go through for? I mean, think about our Afghanistan veterans, you know, 20 years in Afghanistan, and we give it back to the Taliban, along with 80 billion dollars of, you know, hardware, American military equipment. And you've got a lot of Afghanistan veterans who lost a lot of buddies, saw a lot of bad stuff, went through difficult, difficult things, saying, wow, why did we do all that? What was it for?

• 25:22Joe Rogan?

  Extraction, the, the leaving was one of the most insane things I think I've ever seen.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Terrible.

• 25:28Joe Rogan?

  It, it made no sense. It was like the, I mean, I don't, I want to look at this as charitably as possible, but it was one of the stupidest fucking decisions I think I've ever seen, to just leave all that stuff there and just abandon, just do it all in one sweep, where people are climbing on top of airplanes and falling from the sky. And this is, a lot of these people are people that cooperated with our troops while they were over there. People who are translators, people who helped them, people work with our troops. And then they just abandoned those people there. And a lot of them were killed. A lot of them were killed and probably tortured by the Taliban.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Terrible.

• 26:06Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. It's, it's insane. The, the, just the desperation to climb onto a jet that's on the runway, climb onto the wheels and watching people fall from the sky.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  Crazy. It was, it was, it was a botched withdrawal, as they say.

• 26:24Joe Rogan?

  Well, it doesn't even make sense. It's like, and then leaving behind all those tanks and helicopters. Look, at the very least, blow them up. At the very least. The fuck are we doing? Where you have these parades now, where the Taliban does parades.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  With our equipment.

• 26:43Joe Rogan?

  With our equipment, billions of dollars of tanks flying overhead with Blackhawks. It's crazy to watch.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  It was bad. Imagine being one of those service members who used to drive in those, in that, in that equipment.

• 26:57Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. No, just absolutely insane. It doesn't make any sense. And then the, you know, you get into the conspiracy theories, like they want to keep them armed. They want us to be able to have some sort of a reason to go back over there. And you're like, please God, I hope that's not true. I just hope that's not true.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  You, you, you hope not. It was like, we're going to get out by September 11th. That's going to be our date. And we're going to withdraw no matter what. And that's what it was. I said a date of September 11th and, and get out.

• 27:24Joe Rogan?

  How about pick another date, first of all?

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:27Joe Rogan?

  Maybe, maybe pick another day.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  That's the date they picked.

• 27:30Joe Rogan?

  It's, I mean, just because it's September 11th, don't do that. You know, that, that date means a lot to this country. I mean, to, to leave in a terrible way on the day that marks the reason why we went there, when we shouldn't have even really been there.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  I have, I have very good friends, you know, special forces guys, who were very involved in trying to do something to get people out of there during that time during, my buddy Scott Mann, Lieutenant Colonel, he, he served over there, had a lot of Afghan allies that he was with, special forces guys. So they work in tandem with our Afghan allies and whatnot. And all of a sudden, he's, he's out of the service and he's sitting back here. And he jumped in with something called Operation Pineapple Express to try to get a lot of people out of there. They did their best and they were, you know, they were really hurting. I mean, these guys were hurting and they, you know, they didn't know what

• 28:26Speaker 01

  to do. And they did their best to get people out through various networks and, and whatnot.

• 28:32Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  It was, you know, and they did get some people out. And that, that was important. But they felt terrible for the ones that they couldn't get out. And it was just a very, very sad and tragic thing, I think. You know, so you've got a lot of Afghanistan veterans that are in a lot of pain. And we want to help them through. We, we don't want them to think that their service, you know, was in vain or anything. There were, there were people that were free for a period of time because they were there. And that's a good thing.

• 29:02Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. My buddy Evan Hafer, he runs Black Rifle Coffee. And you know Evan?

• 29:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I may have met Evan, but I love him. They're fantastic.

• 29:12Joe Rogan?

  He's the best. I love him to death. He employs a lot of people from Afghanistan. Afghans work for him and his, guys that he worked with overseas. He brought them and their family to America when they helped us. Cause this is before the extraction. So it was before everything went completely sideways. But.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  It sure did.

• 29:31Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. It's just, I mean, why would anybody trust us after that? You know, if you're in a country that Americans come in, they say, hey, work for us, even though you live here, work for us and we're going to help you get rid of this terrorist organization that's running your, your country. And then like, actually, we're not, we're out. See ya. You're, you're on your own. Even though you worked for us for 10 years here. Yeah. Bye-bye.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Good luck.

• 29:58Joe Rogan?

  Fucking insane. Insane. And then to leave all those weapons behind. All, it's like, this is the most chaotic, it just like makes you question everything of your leaders. Like if you're willing to do that, if that's your decision, that's the, you looked at all the possible options. This is the best way to handle this? That seems insane.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  Hard, hard, hard to think that that was the best way to handle it. Sure.

• 30:22Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. It seems like even if you wanted us to not be involved in there anymore, you, just by virtue of the fact that we were there for 20 fucking years, you've got to maintain some kind of a strong presence there. You have to.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, there were, there were better ways to do it for sure.

• 30:38Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  And, and I, you know, I want these people to know that, okay, regardless of, you know, government decisions that may have gone wrong and whatnot, and they may have been affected by those things. There are grateful Americans out there.

• 30:54Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  You know, that are involved in support. And you should always know that. And that was one of my great motivators back in the early days of, you know, after September 11th, is to make sure that they knew that they had support services and there were people that were, that cared about them. And you could see the nation starting to split and divide. Once we went into Iraq and things were saying, all of a sudden, you know, it was a bad time to be in the service.

• 31:23Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  And the news was always bad news and everything like that. I was going over to the war zones at that time. And I was seeing a completely different side of what was going on when I went there. For example,

• 31:38Speaker 01

  In oh three, I went to Iraq twice in oh three. And first tour was something called Project Salute, and we were on a big entertainment tour. Kid Rock was on the tour, and LeAnn Womack, and Paul Rodriguez, and Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, and all, I mean, football players, basketball, it was a giant tour. Northwest Airlines gave us a 747, we all flew over there. And we split up into three groups, and we covered a lot of ground in a week, and saw a lot of people, and lifted them up. This was about, remember when that statue got pulled down in the square? That was in April of oh three, the Saddam Hussein statue. Well, in June of oh three, I was, I was over there, and we were doing the first big USO

• 32:23Speaker 01

  tour. And I went back six months later in November, and I was in a convoy, and they took, took me out to show me a school. I was with Wayne Newton, I was with Chris Isaac, remember Chris Isaac?

• 32:36Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  And I was with Neil McCoy, country singer Neil, great guy, it was a great group. And they took us, they wanted to show us an Iraqi school that they had rebuilt for the, for the, for the kids. And we pull up in a convoy, and we're driving down the road, and we got helicopters, and you know, a lot of protection, driving down, we pull in, we start getting out, and the entire school of kids just runs out to the soldiers, and starts hugging them, and loving on them, and everything. This is, this is November of 2003. So, I had not heard about anything like that going, it was all bad news, we were getting a lot of bad news.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  You see these kids just hugging on these soldiers, and the soldiers picking up the kids, and it was just, it was very heartwarming. The four of us ended up singing "You Are My Sunshine" to a classroom full of kids, and they didn't know what we were saying, but they were laughing at us. And it was very positive, I saw a lot of kids.

• 33:40Joe Rogan?

  There it is, right there.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Like, yeah, that's, that's, that's the trip, that's the school, right there.

• 33:45Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  So that's Neil, right there next, next to me, there's Wayne over there, there's Chris. And this is the Abu Hurstan School in Balad, Iraq, in November of 2003. And it was a beautiful, beautiful day. These soldiers had, they, they had all been out there before, they had refurbished the school, the school was in disrepair. So these kids and these Iraqis just loved our soldiers, and we weren't hearing anything about these stories, you know, these kind of civil affairs stories about our troops. So I came home from that trip, and I started a school supply program. And we started shipping school supplies over to those soldiers, and they would take them

• 34:28Speaker 01

  out to not only that school, first it was that school, because I saw these kids, they're, they're like, they had these long desks in the classroom. And there'd be four kids to a desk, little Iraqi kids, and they'd have one little half pencil, you know, that they'd be sharing, no, they'd have nothing, absolutely. So we started sending paper, and pencils, and crayons, and erasers, and stuffed animals, all kinds of stuff over, soccer balls, sending all that stuff over. We started a program called Operation Iraqi Children. Eventually, we turned it into Operation International Children, because we were shipping to Afghanistan, and Djibouti, and Haiti, and all these different places where our troops were deployed, the,

• 35:13Speaker 01

  the motto of it was helping soldiers help children. We wanted to provide these materials for our soldiers to take out into these communities that could be very hostile. Let's say, you know, the convoy moves in, and guys with guns get out, and the community is like, very suspicious and very hostile. But when they pull in and start unloading all these boxes of stuffed animals and school supplies, all of a sudden, the community comes out. And we had people write us letters saying, "Your supplies helped to save lives. Your supply, we delivered your supplies to, to an Iraqi village, and two days later,

• 35:55Speaker 01

  we were going down the same road, and the kids ran out, and waved, and stopped our convoy, and pointed down the road. And there were bombs on the road. And the kids that got those supplies just two or three days later, saved that convoy from getting blown up." And we, we got a lot of letters like that, from people that, you know, were serving in our military, who were very, very grateful that the American people supported Operation International Children, and provided these, these school supplies. You weren't hearing anything about these kinds of things at a certain point during Iraq. You were just hearing the bad news, you know, another convoy got blown up, things are going bad, things are going terrible, you know, and all that.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  And you could feel like the nation's starting to really split and divide over whether we should be in Iraq or not, and I could just feel the service members over there just getting caught in the middle of that. And I did not want that to happen, so I just kept ramping it up, and doing, doing what I could to let them know we appreciated them.

• 36:58Joe Rogan?

  That's really beautiful, that's, that's really cool. And it, say what you want about who decides where we go to war, and what happens, I can't think of another army that would do that, other than the American Army, that would go in and bring school supplies, and set up programs to try to help kids.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, well.

• 37:23Joe Rogan?

  Regardless of whether or not you think you should have been there, or you think it's a good idea to be in that war, that's, that's a very uniquely. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. If you're thinking about building a website, you should try Squarespace. I know, because I use it. That's right, joe rogan dot com is powered by Squarespace. It has all the features that you need to create a standout website, like an AI-enhanced website builder, SEO optimization tools, and seamless checkouts with mobile pay links. Head to Squarespace dot com slash rogan for a free trial. And when you are ready to launch, use the offer code ROGAN to save 10% off your first

• 38:06Joe Rogan?

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• 38:48Joe Rogan?

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• 39:04Speaker 01

  It kind of reminds you of the GIs going through the German towns that we just decimated with, with just multiple bombs everywhere, carpet bombing everywhere, and then walking through those, those towns, and handing out pencils, and chocolate, and, you know, trying to, trying to engage the community. This was a very much a hearts and minds project, you know, just trying to provide our troops with something that would let them know that we're thinking about them, back home, and we're sending them these things, but also that would help them, you know, engage with the communities that they were, that they were going through over there. It was a very positive program.

• 39:46Joe Rogan?

  What was it like for you to have been there and see things like that, but then come back and see the news? And see this version of it where it's, obviously, especially the news on television, there's a very limited amount of time. Obviously, there's a lot of different things going on there all at once, and the things that are going to get people to pay the most attention are the horrific ones. It's casualties.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, bad news.

• 40:10Joe Rogan?

  Bad news, things that people are going to get upset about, whatever it is.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember, well, here's one example. We had a convoy going out with our supplies to a school, and a news crew was with them, right? Documenting for the nightly news, or whatever, our program going out there and providing all these school supplies to a school. It was, it was beautiful, the footage was great, the kids were happy, they got all these supplies. The convoy left, and it was attacked on the way out, you know, I mean, it left the school, and down the road, it gets attacked. The gunfight was on the news that night, and the whole purpose for the convoy never made

• 40:58Speaker 01

  it to the nightly, nightly news. So we, you know, the, the, the part of the story that said, why was the convoy even, where were they going? What were they doing? Well, they were delivering school supplies to, to a school, they were trying to help a school, we weren't seeing that, you know? And it was unfortunate, I remember feeling. I just felt pretty bad about that, you know, that the purpose for the convoy was eliminated from the story, but all we saw was the gunfight. And that was, that, that's the way our troops were feeling, like, hey, we, we're doing a lot of good things over here to try to help people through this difficult situation. And all it looks like on the, on the nightly news is that, you know, it's all going to

• 41:41Speaker 01

  hell, you know, nothing's working. So I felt, you know, I can't control what the decisions that are made, or what somebody's going to tell them to do. But as a citizen, I can control, you know, trying to help them through that experience. And, and that's what our programs were, were like. And I think, you know, as I said, you know, we, we heard from a lot of people that the programs were very, very helpful. That, that particular school supply program lasted for about nine years. It was, it was a program that started in 2004 and went to, whatever, 2012 or something, something like that. And it was a very, very positive program.

• 42:23Speaker 01

  And there were lots of programs like that from people here on, in the States that just felt like they had to do something to help these, these service members through a very, very difficult situation.

• 42:35Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, it's gotta be extremely frustrating when you're over there and you're seeing the news and you see this one version of what's happening. And part of it, I think, is almost inevitable because the news, just the format of what they're doing by covering a certain amount of things over a one hour period of time, they just don't have any time. And they have commercial breaks and it's like, and then you have editors. And the editor's job is to get the most ratings possible. And the most ratings, what does that mean? Make things exciting, put a bunch of dun, dun, dun, a bunch of crazy music, lights, graphics.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  Show the guns going off.

• 43:10Joe Rogan?

  Keep people locked in and then show them something disturbing. And then if the, sort of the narrative in the country is that this war is a disaster and everything's going wrong, the last thing you want to do is show a positive story from the war, you know?

• 43:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not dramatic.

• 43:25Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  You know, I guess.

• 43:27Joe Rogan?

  It doesn't fit what they're doing.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  I remember doing an interview with one news, national news outlet. I said, why aren't you reporting this, you know, any of these good things that are happening? He was very honest with me. Bad news sells. I mean, that's what he said.

• 43:41Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, it's the Don Henley song.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was, that was hard for me to hear because I was, I felt like one role that I had to play was to, to talk to people about what I saw firsthand by going to the war zones and going to the hospitals and meeting and engaging with the troops and the, and the people that were serving our country. You know, I, you know, not everybody can go over to the war zone and, and visit the troops and everything, but I could. I, you know, I'm in entertainment. Lieutenant Dan showing up on a military base was uplifting to the troops. And then I could come back and talk about what I'd witnessed and all the courageous things that I'd seen and the, and the good work that I saw them doing. And I wanted people to know about that.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  And I felt the way that I could serve was just by talking about what I saw.

• 44:32Joe Rogan?

  That's a very noble thing. It, it is really kind of the opposite of what a lot of people think of when you think of Hollywood movie star. You think of someone who's very selfish, very self-centered, egotistical, Googling their name all day.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  Well, let's see.

• 44:49Joe Rogan?

  You know what I'm saying? I mean, that's what people think about instead of someone who does something that's very selfless and is probably way more rewarding and it probably enriches your soul, like who you are as a person, far more than anything you're ever going to get from.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  Celebrity can have a purpose beyond yourself, you know? I, I, I'm, I'm grateful that I had, you know, you know, I've had good, good opportunities and fun opportunities. You, you talked about some of them earlier. Great opportunities in the movie business. I was on television for 11 years, CSI New York, and then I did Criminal Minds Beyond Borders. Hollywood's been, you know, I, I had a lot of good, wonderful experiences with a lot of great, great folks. And thankfully, I, you know, I had some success and I did, did well, made some money, had to have a public profile that I can talk about things.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  And I'll, I'll tell you though, you know, I've been doing this a long time. It's a long, it goes back a long time. But in the beginning, and I've told this story before, but I really wanted to go to Iraq after we first went in there. And I told you, I went on this trip with Kid Rock. Well, I had done some movies, you know, Apollo 13 and some of these different movies. And I hadn't done CSI New York where you're on television every week for nine years and people get used to you and that kind of thing. But I remember calling the USO after we went into Iraq. I had wanted to go to Afghanistan, but I was, I was caught up doing a lot of movie stuff.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  And now I want to, you know, we went into Iraq and I really wanted to go and support. And I called the USO and I left a message on their machine and said, you know, it's Gary Sinise, I want to, I want to go on a tour. I want, you know, want to support the troops, please call me back. And I didn't hear anything. And then I called again. I said, it's Gary Sinise, I'm leaving a message again. I'd really love to go on a, if you're going on, taking a tour over to Iraq, please call me. I really want to do, I didn't hear anything. And then I started thinking, hmm, well, I'll call them back right now and leave another message. Hi, this is Gary Sinise. I'm the guy who played Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  I'd like to do a tour. And then they called me back. So, so they didn't know who Gary Sinise was. I hadn't done that many movies, I guess, you know?

• 47:24Joe Rogan?

  Well, it's probably very young people working there too.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  Maybe, you know, this was, so this was in 2003. You know, I'd done ransom, I'd done Apollo 13.

• 47:34Joe Rogan?

  That's true.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  But I was still kind of a character actor, who, the supporting guy, all that kind of thing. But everybody knew who Lieutenant Dan was. And I sort of figured out, okay, they, they're not sure who Gary Sinise was. So they called me back and I ended up on, on the next tour that they, it was the first big tour to Iraq that they sent over there.

• 47:56Joe Rogan?

  Well, good for you for being persistent. What was that first big tour like?

• 48:01Speaker 01

  Incredible. Yeah, they called it Project Salute. A lot of, there were a lot of sponsors on this tour. The USO, the Intrepid Foundation was one. The Intrepid Foundation is based in, in New York City. Vanity Fair, I believe, was one of the sponsors of that. Tribeca Films, I think, I think Robert De Niro had something to do with being a sponsor of that tour. He ended up on that tour as well. Kid Rock was on the tour. I think I mentioned LeAnn McPaul, Rodriguez. There was another band named Nappy Roots was on that tour.

• 48:41Speaker 01

  Football players, basketball players, Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, and I was Lieutenant Dan, you know? And I would just go out and shake hands and take pictures, sign autographs, you know, Lieutenant Dan, you know, tell them stories and sit with them and visit with them and whatnot. And we were all over the place. We went into Baghdad. I remember my, my first trip was, we, we did a lot in Kuwait. And then we got on a C-130 and we went up to Baghdad. And we landed at the airport and Kid Rock was on that C-130. There were, there were other singers, Nappy Roots was on that.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  And we pulled up, the airplane pulls up, and there are thousands and thousands of troops lined up from the airplane where the airplane put all the way into this giant hangar where there must have been 5,000 troops in there sweating. It was 140 degrees. It was June. I mean, it was hot, it was messy. And we walked this gauntlet all the way into the hangar and got up on a stage. Thankfully, they had some equipment up there because they had kind of an army band like playing, entertaining people until we got there. So Kid Rock grabbed a guitar and, you know, John Stamos was with us on that tour and he jumped on the drums, started playing.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  Kid Rock's guitar player grabbed a bass and they all started playing. And we just put on this impromptu USO show. Nobody really knew we were going to even do that, but we just started entertaining and thousands of troops. There, there's footage of, of all of that. We have, we have footage on my, on my website, garysinisefoundation.org, our YouTube, where you can see like there was a, we put a video out, 20th anniversary of my first trip to Iraq. That was the first big trip. And it was, it was incredible that day to do that, go and see. And then I got home that night and we get a call.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  Tommy Franks, General Franks, who was running the whole war in Afghanistan and Iraq, wants to take a small group back up to Baghdad. And he wanted me to be on that, on that trip, to go on that trip. So it was a handful of people, De Niro was there.

• 51:05Speaker 01

  Stamos, John Stamos and Rebecca Romaine Stamos were there. A handful of people were on that. And we went up and then we went into Baghdad proper, right? We spent that whole day at the airport the day before. We went in and we went to the palaces. And we saw the palaces that we were now occupying. And that was eye opening. We saw a lot of troops, did a lot of handshake and picture taken, all that kind of stuff. That was, that was, that was incredible to be in one of Saddam Hussein's palaces. And that wasn't the only time. I went back, you know, four more times to Iraq after that. And, you know, got to see a lot of, a lot of stuff and meet a lot of people.

• 51:47Joe Rogan?

  What was it like being in Baghdad? Like, what is, what is that? It's gotta be like a completely different world.

• 51:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it was, it was. There's a big memorial there. I don't know if you've ever seen it, but those big giant sabers over a, over one of the highways. And everywhere you went at that time,

• 52:09Speaker 01

  there were statues and photographs and paintings of Saddam Hussein. You couldn't go anywhere in that country, in that city that we were in, anyway. You couldn't go anywhere without seeing Saddam Hussein. So he had a lock on that, on that country. It was incredible. There's one palace that we went to that had giant, giant Saddam Hussein heads on every like post. And you're pulling in and you see just Saddam's head. It was just like a-

• 52:40Joe Rogan?

  I want to see some of those, Jamie, see if you can find them.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  You could probably find him. It's, it's-

• 52:43Joe Rogan?

  I want to see the sabers too.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  It's incredible, the sabers.

• 52:47Joe Rogan?

  The sabers over the highway.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  You can see the, the trip into the hangar and all that stuff. It was incredible and we had, so Tommy Franks is in, on that trip with us. He's the general who's running the whole thing. And he flew on the C-130 with us up there.

• 53:03Joe Rogan?

  There's the saber.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  There they are, yeah.

• 53:04Joe Rogan?

  It's crazy.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  That's incredible. So Tommy, Tommy Franks is with us. We're in a convoy and surrounding us in that convoy were gunships. We had, I remember looking out the window. I had a helmet on, flak jacket, all that stuff. And gunships are just flying along with the convoy on both, both sides. There must've been four or five gunships protecting the convoy.

• 53:29Joe Rogan?

  How did that feel? What was that feel like?

• 53:31Speaker 01

  It was surreal. I mean, I, it was hard to believe that, uh, well, I knew I was there and everything like that. I thought I was just gonna do these entertainment type things like we did the day before.

• 53:42Joe Rogan?

  These statues.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, there you go. You know, everywhere, everywhere you went, you had, you had Saddam Hussein everywhere.

• 53:50Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, there, there's the heads right there. Yeah, it's, it's pretty crazy.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  And there's the statue coming down. Uh, and I was there just a short time after that.

• 54:05Joe Rogan?

  I've read a bunch of stuff about his sons.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  Crazy, yeah.

• 54:10Joe Rogan?

  They are some of the most horrific stories I think I have ever read about like the evil son of, and of an evil king. Doing terrible things.

• 54:22Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 54:22Joe Rogan?

  That they would just find a woman who's getting married. They would take her from her husband, kill her husband, take her, rape her, feed her to dogs.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 54:32Joe Rogan?

  Feed her to dogs.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  And they would watch, you know, they have like a ceremony. I was in a soccer stadium where they used to torture people.

• 54:39Joe Rogan?

  God.

• 54:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, crazy stuff. I mean, it was that kind of intimidating the population to the point where they just submit and now they're just living in fear all the time of the supreme leader, you know?

• 54:52Joe Rogan?

  There's an account, God, I can't remember if it was a book or just a long article, but I, I read a, a passage from it where there was a doctor who was treating, whether it was Uday or Kusay, I don't remember which one, got shot a bunch of times. And he had to get a bunch of physical therapy. So some doctor was going over there and taking care of him. And the doctor told, it was like he acted completely normal, like you would never know he was a monster. He was very polite. And then you hear the stories of the things that him and his brother did and you're like, good lord.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  Crazy, crazy stuff.

• 55:27Joe Rogan?

  Like Joffrey on steroids, Joffrey from Game of Thrones on steroids.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  It was pure, pure evil. It was, it was evil. I was in a, uh, one of the palaces, there was a swimming pool in there and there was blood on, you know, it was drained. But there's blood on the side of the walls. They used to take people down there and just kill them and torture them.

• 55:45Joe Rogan?

  They could do whatever they wanted. They had no-

• 55:47Speaker 01

  Pretty much.

• 55:48Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 55:48Speaker 01

  Hey, pull over, there's a pretty girl, you know?

• 55:51Joe Rogan?

  Insane amounts of money, completely evil and sociopathic. Their father's a monster. And, and that's how they were raised. And they had all the money in the world and all the power in the world. And you watch that, you would hope that like one of them would be like a Jesus figure. Like one, you know what I mean? Like you'd hope one of them would realize like this is wrong. I'm gonna reject all of this. I'm gonna, you know, study Buddhism or something, you know?

• 56:16Speaker 01

  I think they were living high, you know? They were living high at that time. I went to one of the, one of the palaces that he was building is called the, and this is surreal. And you could, you could probably look this up too. This is weird. One of the problems, uh, the palaces he was building at the time of the invasion, he called the Victory Over America Palace.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  Victory over America.

• 56:42Joe Rogan?

  It's kinda wordy.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it was very, very strange because outside of the Victory Over America Palace, it was under construction when the invasion happened, were French construction cranes. You know, so a little, little, little weird. You remember, uh, some of our allies were not too keen on us going in to Iraq at the time we did.

• 57:02Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  French construction cranes outside of the palace. We go into the palace, a lot of it is bombed out. I have some weird pictures of me, um, sitting in the rubble and, you know, in a golden chair and all this stuff. Come in and there's a, there's a, yeah, that's the Victory Over America. And you, uh, I remember sitting, you know, being on a balcony. And there it is, that, I walked in there. I was right in the middle of that. Uh, that was like the big, one of the big ballrooms and everything. Um, walking in there was very surreal. During a time where, you know, it had been bombed and they had it closed off, right?

• 57:47Speaker 01

  It was surrounded by fence. So not a lot of people got to go in there. But you see all this water around it? There was so much water around his palace that some of these farmers out there didn't have any water. He was taking all the water.

• 58:02Joe Rogan?

  To make a moat.

• 58:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, to make his, his beautiful little thing. And you can look up, on, on the opposite side of that water there, the Flintstones was one of his favorite shows. So for his grandchildren, he built a Flintstone village for them to play in. And you could probably find that. And that, that was the weirdest thing, just there it is.

• 58:27Joe Rogan?

  Whoa.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  You can prob, yeah, Flintstone Village. And that was for just-

• 58:32Joe Rogan?

  What a great grandpa.

• 58:34Speaker 01

  Simply for his grandkids to play in the Flintstone Village.

• 58:37Joe Rogan?

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• 59:21Joe Rogan?

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• 59:31Speaker 01

  It was insane and I, I saw that and, you know, standing there and, and we had, you know, we had a tour guide. They didn't let a lot of people go in there. There it is. It was right across from the palace, the Flintstone Village over there. They didn't let a lot of people go in there. Um, but they, they took me in so I could, I could see it. And, uh, I, I had a crew with me at that time. That was documenting some of the things that I was doing for the troops. And so we put some of that on a film in a documentary that's called Lieutenant Dan Band For The Common Good. And they were making a movie about all my band concerts for the troops and the work that I'm doing and everything like that. Thankfully, we got some of that on film.

• 1:00:13Joe Rogan?

  Well, that's cool. It had to be very weird being in the Flintstone Village that Saddam Hussein created for his grandchildren. How, I mean, how-

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  Totally bizarre.

• 1:00:21Joe Rogan?

  The energy in that spot must've been very strange.

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're getting, and you got, you have farmers that- Got let in after that, and I remember one soldier who was showing us around told me that the farmers would just come in and see this palace and see what he was building while the people were starving.

• 1:00:40Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:00:41Speaker 01

  And, and, and the farmers didn't have any water, and they didn't even know that some of that water was there, but they came in and saw that palace and saw all that water, water that they didn't have to water their own crops and everything like that, and they would just break down and fall down and cry, and with such rage, you know, he really was an oppressor.

• 1:01:01Joe Rogan?

  He really was an oppressor, and he's not unique in history. That's what's really crazy, is that there's so many people, when they get to that kind of a position, or is it the type of people that get to that position in the first place are just like that, which is horrible.

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:18Joe Rogan?

  It's a horrible idea that the only kind of people that are gonna rise to power are ruthless, driven psychopaths.

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, hard, you know, I've, I've also stood on the border between North and South Korea.

• 1:01:34Joe Rogan?

  Another example.

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, there you are, you know, I'm standing on the border, you know, you've probably seen, remember President Trump, and he stood.

• 1:01:40Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  He stepped across the border and went into North Korea.

• 1:01:43Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  Well, I've been there, I've been to that spot, you know, and you can, you, you could easily step over. It's just a little, like, cinder block thing that's on the, you know, that's separating the two, two sides, and you've got the Rock soldiers, Republic of Korea soldiers behind you here staring just like this, staring at the North Korean soldiers who are right over here, and very, very easy, you realize, you know, they're free over here, these guys behind me are free, and these guys over here, they're, they're slaves, they have no idea what freedom is, no concept, they've been born into oppression, and they're there to serve the Supreme Leader, and that's the way they've been raised, they

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  have no concept. One, one Korean soldier walked up to me, and all that's, all that's between us is this little cinder, cinder block thing about a foot high, and I'm standing there, and he's standing right, you know, this close, you and, you and I, and I'm staring into the eyes of this slave, and he's got no idea, and he starts taking pictures of me, you know, he came down, there's a building up here, and they spy on you, yeah, there we are, oh, right there, and that's, that's, that's the guy who started taking pictures of me.

• 1:03:03Joe Rogan?

  That's the same guy?

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:05Joe Rogan?

  Wow, so he's got a document, whoever is on the other side?

• 1:03:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was looking at us through the window, there he is.

• 1:03:12Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, that building straddles the border, right, half of it is on the North Korean side, that blue building there, and the other half is on the South Korean side, and there's a table in the middle of it, in the middle of the building, and the South Koreans can come in and sit on their side of the table, and the North Koreans can come in and sit on their side of the table, and they have little meetings and things like that, that, that's it.

• 1:03:42Joe Rogan?

  There it is, right, that is so insane.

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I took my band over there, we, we, that's, that's a bunch of my band members there, we've been there, you know, I don't know, four or five times, uh, there's the table, there, there, and that's, that's the North Korean building that's, that's right there.

• 1:04:00Joe Rogan?

  How could they not work that out?

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's so weird.

• 1:04:04Joe Rogan?

  They're fighting each other.

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  You know, yeah.

• 1:04:06Joe Rogan?

  Also, you're all Korean, that's what's even more crazy.

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  And they, they don't, and they don't, they don't have any concept of what's going on, you know, in the free world, they'd...

• 1:04:14Joe Rogan?

  I had a woman on my podcast a few years back, her name was Yomi Park, and she escaped from North Korea when she was really young, do you know her, of her?

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  I've heard of her, yeah.

• 1:04:22Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, it is a heart wrenching story, it is, it's insane what her mother had to do to get her out, and what her mother endured, what she saw her mother endured, what she endured.

• 1:04:33Speaker 01

  Terrible.

• 1:04:34Joe Rogan?

  She went into China, and then eventually made her way into Europe, and then to the United States, and it's like, and, you know, her, her stories, it's like, this can happen, this can happen when people get into positions of power, and you have to be very careful of who gets into positions of power, and you're very careful what you give up, very careful what rights you give up, what concessions you make, because one of the, the big premises with North Korea was, you give up your land, the state, so that everyone will have food. What a great idea.

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:06Joe Rogan?

  What a great idea, oh, this way, the farmers can't, you know, wrench us over, or rake us over the coals for the price of crops, the government's gonna be in control of that.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:05:16Joe Rogan?

  Everyone will have food, wonderful.

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  Eh. Leave, leave the government in charge.

• 1:05:19Joe Rogan?

  How's it go? Well, the leader gets fat and rich, and everybody else is basically starving to death, because that's the only way he can maintain power.

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  And the military gets fed.

• 1:05:28Joe Rogan?

  Exactly.

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  Military gets fed well.

• 1:05:30Joe Rogan?

  Exactly, so, you should probably join the military, it's a lot better than being a farmer, because they'll steal your crops.

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:36Joe Rogan?

  And then on top of that, you like, you, everyone has to rat on everyone else, it's a part of the culture, like, you have to tell on people. People went to jail because when Kim Jong Il died, they didn't cry hard enough.

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:50Joe Rogan?

  So, have you ever seen those videos of performative crying? Jamie, pull up those videos of performative crying.

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, they're standing there the entire time.

• 1:05:57Joe Rogan?

  Months.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 1:05:59Joe Rogan?

  Months, they had to weep and wail in the street, and if you didn't do it right, if you were like, man, sucks that he's dead, no, sucks for you, motherfucker, they just put you in jail.

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  You're, you're going, you're going down.

• 1:06:08Joe Rogan?

  They'd probably kill you.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, terrible.

• 1:06:10Joe Rogan?

  They could do whatever they want to do, it's, and it's just complete fear, and again, a culture of ratting on everybody, everybody rats on everybody else, no one has any power, no one has any money, communism, folks, that's what it really boils down to, that's where it goes, don't let it happen here.

• 1:06:26Speaker 01

  That's what the Nazis did.

• 1:06:27Joe Rogan?

  That's what the Nazis did, it's like, here, so here, here's the performative crying, I mean, it is absolutely crazy, these poor people.

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  A bunch of actors there, yeah.

• 1:06:39Joe Rogan?

  I mean, it's just really crazy.

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  You're not freaking out enough.

• 1:06:42Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  No, Wade, you're not doing anything.

• 1:06:44Joe Rogan?

  I don't like that guy, lock him up.

• 1:06:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:46Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, it's...

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  I remember that really, really well.

• 1:06:49Joe Rogan?

  There's a guy named Robert Sapolsky, he's a, is he a, what is his exact Sapolsky's work, I know he's a biologist. Neuroscientist and primatologist? That's it. Um, he believes in determinism, you know, and he thinks that it's gonna be one of the, uh, the, the big things that we look back on this day and age, and with uh, punishment and the way we treat people, he doesn't believe in free will at all. He believes that human beings are the product of everything that's ever happened to them leading up to that moment, you don't really have free will. And I think it's a really

• 1:07:30Joe Rogan?

  interesting intellectual sort of exercise, like, this idea that you are a product of everything that's ever happened to you, and it's determinism, like, all these things have taken place, your genetics, where you're born, what you experienced, all these different things that lead you up to that point. It's, you're laughing.

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:51Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, because I don't believe that.

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  I don't either.

• 1:07:53Joe Rogan?

  I don't, well, but I don't think, it's not a factor, this is what I think, I think the idea of making that a binary distinction, that's one or zero, I don't think that's accurate.

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  It can be a factor in a society like that.

• 1:08:06Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 1:08:07Speaker 01

  Where you are raised with nothing else.

• 1:08:08Joe Rogan?

  Right, and you have zero free will.

• 1:08:11Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:08:12Joe Rogan?

  Right, and so, it's not a coincidence that all those people have the same kind of lives.

• 1:08:16Speaker 01

  They don't know.

• 1:08:17Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  They don't know anything.

• 1:08:19Joe Rogan?

  Because they don't have free will.

• 1:08:20Speaker 01

  That's why we have to be so grateful.

• 1:08:21Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  You know, I'm a grateful American, that's, I, I wrote my book, Graceful American, because I am grateful that I'm here in this country, and I'm grateful for the men and women who provide that freedom for us, so that, that I can, I've, you know, been able to pick and choose some of the things that I wanted to do in this life, uh, there are, you know, we have a military that is there to protect that, whereas a military like the North Korean military, they are there to take that away from you, they are there to oppress you.

• 1:08:54Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  Uh, and militaries can be used for that, they're, they're not the only, uh, country on earth that, that does that.

• 1:09:01Joe Rogan?

  And through most of human history, that was the norm.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right, the king, you know, or the, you know, the emperor.

• 1:09:08Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  Whatever.

• 1:09:10Joe Rogan?

  This is the rare exception.

• 1:09:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, we have to protect it.

• 1:09:12Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, and, and, and it's not a coincidence, this is the only country that has, like, the real, other than the Greeks, the first experiment in self-government.

• 1:09:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right.

• 1:09:20Joe Rogan?

  And this idea that you can really figure out your own path in life, that's why that whole determinism thing, it's like, so, does Saddam Hussein take no, he has no fault in all the things that he did, and all, and his sons, his sons are a product of determinism? So, that's the idea, like, if you were Uday Hussein, you would have, like, killed those people and fed women to dogs? Really?

• 1:09:49Joe Rogan?

  It's hard to believe. It's hard to believe. But I mean, I have never lived as the son of a dictator that has unlimited resources and is exposed to evil and psychopathy from the moment I'm very, very young. So who knows?

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  Can imagine.

• 1:10:03Joe Rogan?

  I don't know. We don't like to believe that. Everyone likes to think that they are capable of not ever falling into these traps that you see so many human beings fall, that we're all uniquely wise and uniquely different.

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. Just imagine, you know, on those kids being raised by psychotic dictator like that. You know, I mean, they had no choice, really.

• 1:10:30Joe Rogan?

  In a lot of ways, right? I mean, you kids very uniquely imitate their atmosphere. And you have children, I have children. It's, you watch them, you watch like cool things that they do. You're like, oh, I know where they learned that. And then if you're a murderer, you know, then they, they think, oh, it's cool to kill people. It's fun. It's fun to just pick somebody up off the street and say, today's the last day of your life. Boom.

• 1:10:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:56Joe Rogan?

  And just laugh and go have a beer.

• 1:10:58Speaker 01

  Feed them to the lions.

• 1:10:59Joe Rogan?

  And, yeah, feed them to the lions and no consequences. I mean, we all would like to think that there's no way that you would enjoy that.

• 1:11:10Joe Rogan?

  There's no way that you would become those people.

• 1:11:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, you, you, you know, I mean, we are free here in this country. We don't, we don't have to go down that road, clearly, you know?

• 1:11:22Joe Rogan?

  What is it like just being in his castle? I have a buddy of mine who sent me a picture of him using his toilet. Saddam had a golden toilet and he's sitting on it.

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

  Probably more than one.

• 1:11:30Joe Rogan?

  Oh, yeah, I'm sure he had a ton of golden toilets.

• 1:11:33Speaker 01

  It was, it was like bad Vegas, you know? When I went, I walked through, I see this kind of gaudy looking stuff around and...

• 1:11:40Joe Rogan?

  What is it about dictators who love gold? Everything's gotta be gold.

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  You know, well, I mean, it was just, there, there's, there was, one of the palaces had this giant chair. Everybody liked to get their pictures taken in this giant Saddam.

• 1:11:55Joe Rogan?

  Is that it?

• 1:11:56Speaker 01

  There it is. You grabbed that really fast. That was, so I've got, I've got pictures in that chair.

• 1:12:02Joe Rogan?

  That's a cool thing to the right, or the left, rather, of the chair.

• 1:12:05Speaker 01

  In one, in one of the palaces, I've, I've got a, there's a picture of me somewhere in that chair.

• 1:12:09Joe Rogan?

  What is that thing to the right of it?

• 1:12:13Speaker 01

  It's like Aladdin's lamp.

• 1:12:16Joe Rogan?

  Oh, is that what it really is?

• 1:12:17Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 1:12:19Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:12:19Speaker 03

  I was sitting in this one because it's right up front.

• 1:12:21Joe Rogan?

  It's pretty cool looking.

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  Everybody wanted a picture in that chair.

• 1:12:25Joe Rogan?

  Of course. Look at that.

• 1:12:28Speaker 01

  I've got a few. Look at that.

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  That's like a USO tour somewhere.

• 1:12:36Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  And that's in one of the palaces, one of his main palaces in Baghdad. I've got pictures in front of that. Those missiles are actually pointed at Israel.

• 1:12:44Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  That's what I was told. I've got a picture in front of that.

• 1:12:48Joe Rogan?

  He's got, for people that are just listening, he's got these comic book looking missiles painted on the wall behind his golden throne.

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:57Joe Rogan?

  And the missiles are shooting up into the skies.

• 1:13:00Speaker 01

  And I was told they're, they're shooting up in the direction of Israel.

• 1:13:06Joe Rogan?

  Makes sense.

• 1:13:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what they, that's what they said.

• 1:13:09Joe Rogan?

  Wild.

• 1:13:09Speaker 01

  It's, it's strange stuff. That's inside the palace there that was, was bombed out.

• 1:13:16Joe Rogan?

  It's also interesting because this is kind of the first time in history where we get a real detailed look inside of like the palace of

• 1:13:26Joe Rogan?

  an evil dictator. Like you really get to see inside of it. Whereas in history, we just have stories. We have stories of how people lived and what they did. But this, you get to see his throne, see the pictures on the wall.

• 1:13:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, now that's one palace.

• 1:13:41Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  So, you know, that's not the victory over America palace. He needed another one just down the street. He's going to build another one. But he had palaces in multiple cities around, around the country.

• 1:13:51Joe Rogan?

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• 1:14:34Joe Rogan?

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  70% off your new system with professional monitoring when you visit simplysafe.com/rogan. That's simplysafe.com/rogan. And write in the Joe Rogan Experience at checkout. That really helps the show. Simply Safe, ahead of crime in real time. Of course he did. What, you don't want him to have one palace?

• 1:15:40Speaker 01

  No, he had to have, he had to have. I, I was in, I was in the ones in Baghdad. Those are the ones I went to. But I went to multiple cities around the country and visited our troops and did a lot of traveling around and, you know, I, I did, I did five different trips over.

• 1:15:58Joe Rogan?

  There must have been a lot of laughing when the people were inside the palace. Must have been a lot of like, what the fuck is this?

• 1:16:04Speaker 01

  It was surreal for everybody. I just...

• 1:16:06Joe Rogan?

  I'm sure.

• 1:16:07Speaker 01

  I mean, people are looking around and all of a sudden we're occupying the palaces.

• 1:16:12Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  And the dictator's on the run. He was on the run at that time, you know?

• 1:16:16Joe Rogan?

  How, how long after that did they catch him?

• 1:16:18Speaker 01

  Not, not, not too long. After, I was there in 03 and the, the fourth ID from Fort Hood, actually, they were the ones, I believe, that captured him under General Ray Odierno. And I went to Fort Hood in April of 2004 and that, and the fourth had just come back. And they were the ones that found him in the spider hole and dug him out and, and got him, you know, and they, they captured him. So it was some, somewhere between November of 03 and April. I don't know, you could probably find the date.

• 1:17:03Speaker 01

  Hmm?

• 1:17:04Speaker 03

  December 13.

• 1:17:05Speaker 01

  December, yeah. So just after I was there, they found him.

• 1:17:08Joe Rogan?

  What is it? That is a surreal video. The video of them pulling him out of that hole in the ground?

• 1:17:13Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. And remember the pictures of me? Now he's got a beard and crap, you know, he just looked like a rat.

• 1:17:19Joe Rogan?

  Well, how long has he been hiding in there for?

• 1:17:23Speaker 01

  In the spider hole?

• 1:17:24Joe Rogan?

  There he is.

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  There he is, yeah.

• 1:17:25Joe Rogan?

  Look at that dude. Hey, mom.

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  Terrible.

• 1:17:31Joe Rogan?

  Yo, take a picture of me.

• 1:17:33Speaker 01

  That's, yeah.

• 1:17:35Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, he looked crazy. It looked really crazy.

• 1:17:40Joe Rogan?

  So, and everyone's taking photos of him, smiling. It'd be so strange.

• 1:17:45Speaker 01

  The fall of the king.

• 1:17:46Joe Rogan?

  And that was the hole?

• 1:17:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:48Joe Rogan?

  Wow. And how was he getting?

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, there he is. That's, that's what they had on the hole. They pulled that up and they found him in there.

• 1:17:55Joe Rogan?

  How was he getting food and water and everything down there?

• 1:17:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, he had people helping him, you know, hiding him, protecting him.

• 1:18:03Joe Rogan?

  And how did they wind up catching him? What was the story behind that?

• 1:18:06Speaker 01

  You know, I'm not completely sure.

• 1:18:10Speaker 01

  But they were, they were on the hunt for him, you know, everywhere.

• 1:18:13Joe Rogan?

  For sure.

• 1:18:13Speaker 01

  And remember the deck of cards? You remember that? I mean, the, the military made a deck of cards that had all the Saddam and all his leaders, all his top generals and everything, all their faces on these cards. And they handed them out to troops all over the place. This is who we're after. We're after all these guys.

• 1:18:31Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:31Speaker 01

  Find him.

• 1:18:32Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, they found a lot of them.

• 1:18:34Joe Rogan?

  Well, I'm sure. Once people knew that this fucking evil dictator was not in power anymore, they're probably willing to talk.

• 1:18:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and he had, he had to have like an inner circle of people that were helping to protect him because...

• 1:18:50Speaker 03

  Here's a real brief. They had two different spots they were going after. They codenamed them Wolverine 1 and Wolverine 2. 600 soldiers went after it, didn't find them at either spot. And then someone kicked something.

• 1:19:03Joe Rogan?

  What?

• 1:19:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, the spider hole. There it is.

• 1:19:05Joe Rogan?

  Kicked a piece of flooring to one side, exposing a spider hole, prepared to throw a grenade into it in case it led to an insurgent tunnel system. When suddenly Saddam appeared, soldier struck him with the stock of his M14, M4 carbine, disarmed him of a Glock 18C. Wow.

• 1:19:22Speaker 01

  Saddam surrendered.

• 1:19:24Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:19:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:19:26Speaker 03

  Had a million dollars in cash on him.

• 1:19:31Joe Rogan?

  Seven hundred fifty thousand dollars of US bank notes recovered from the spider hole and a Glock. Wow. Where was he gonna go? Wasn't that, that was also a story with his sons too. Didn't his sons, didn't they try to leave the country with like a million dollars in cash too?

• 1:19:47Speaker 03

  I stumbled across a picture of like the proof of death that they posted like the New York Times of one of his sons dying when I was looking for photos earlier.

• 1:19:54Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I've seen that. It's rough.

• 1:19:57Speaker 03

  But I didn't see where they were when I was looking at them.

• 1:19:59Joe Rogan?

  I think one of them tried to flee the country with a lot of cash too.

• 1:20:02Speaker 01

  It was a crazy, crazy time.

• 1:20:04Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. Well, it just, I mean, throughout history, there've been people like that that have ruled over their country. Like, for people that don't think that a military is important, you live a beautiful life in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, okay? I'm sure, I'm sure you got a great coffee shop you go to, I'm sure there's a great local theater that you like to attend, I'm sure you're a wonderful person, you know, I'm sure you got restaurants you really enjoy, I'm sure you're great, I'm sure, but that's not the whole world.

• 1:20:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:34Joe Rogan?

  There's parts of the world, like North Korea, there's parts of the world like Kuwait or Afghanistan, or where they're in trouble, where there's people invading them, where there's all kinds of shit going on, we're just extraordinarily lucky that we're separated on oceans, on the east and west coast.

• 1:20:50Speaker 01

  Many parts of the world.

• 1:20:51Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  It's hard to believe. There are still slaves in the world, you know?

• 1:20:55Joe Rogan?

  There's more slaves in the world today than there were before we abolished slavery in America.

• 1:21:00Speaker 01

  It's a bad thing.

• 1:21:01Joe Rogan?

  It's crazy. Well, that's like the Libya situation. Libya is the craziest one. Like, that story, that photo of the Americans with Saddam Hussein, I mean, for him, bad day, very bad day. Not as bad a day as when the rebels captured Gaddafi. That, that video is crazy, when they stick that bayonet up his ass.

• 1:21:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, bad stuff.

• 1:21:24Joe Rogan?

  Ooh, just the look on his face of horror that he's being captured by these rebels.

• 1:21:30Speaker 01

  Just hated him, yeah.

• 1:21:31Joe Rogan?

  And then afterwards, Libya essentially becomes a failed state, and you have open-air slave markets. Like, you could watch open-air slave markets on YouTube for a while. What I understand, people have contacted me from Libya and they said it's gotten a lot better since then, so I wanna say that. You know, people that live there said this is not a failed state anymore, like, okay.

• 1:21:55Speaker 01

  Okay, good.

• 1:21:56Joe Rogan?

  Noted. But, for a while, pretty fucking horrific. And the idea that human beings are still willing to enslave people in 2026 is insane. That, that is still a problem. So for people that don't think a military is necessary, for people that, maybe not necessary in your neighborhood, right, but just understand, the world is a very dangerous place still, and not much less dangerous out there than it was a hundred years ago or two hundred years ago, in a lot of places.

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  And I'll, I'll support them, you know, these are, these are our defenders, right? We have young kids who raise their hand right out of high school, or right out of college, raise their hand to go defend the country, and they, you know, they wanna do that work. We're grateful and we're glad that we have people that want to do that.

• 1:22:50Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 1:22:51Speaker 01

  And so we need to support them no matter what. We don't have any control over where they go.

• 1:22:55Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:22:56Speaker 01

  Once they sign up. But we do have control over how we treat them and how we support them.

• 1:23:01Joe Rogan?

  Unfortunately, this country is so oddly divided, left and right, that for a lot of people, support for the military and support for veterans is a very right-wing idea, whereas Hollywood is a very left-wing place. Did you ever experience, like, some pushback or some weirdness that you felt because you were involved with so many veterans?

• 1:23:27Speaker 01

  You know, I, I guess I never, never did. I just, you know, I was, I had a television show, I was doing well on the TV show, I got the TV show, CSI New York, right around the time, I had just, I'd done my first trip, first two trips to Iraq in '03. In '04, I was heading over to Korea for my first trip over there, and I had been offered the lead role in CSI New York. And I remember being on that trip, trying to decide if I wanted to go into a television show, or if I wanted to just keep doing movies. I didn't know what I should do. But when I got back, I decided to go into CSI New York.

• 1:24:10Speaker 01

  I had that show for nine years, and it came right at the right time, because I wanted to, in, in my book, Graceful American, the chapter's called "Perfect Timing," and it's the CSI New York timing, uh, chapter, which I talk about, ramping up everything I wanted to do for the military, and trying to do my best to help them through, and at the same time having this public platform on a weekly television series, and how perfect that was at the time. And I just kept, kept working, kept working hard on the TV show, didn't feel a lot of, you know, I tried to tell everybody, hey, I'm going on a trip next week, I'm doing this, I'm doing that, I'm playing concerts on military bases all around the country

• 1:24:55Speaker 01

  and overseas. My hiatus from the TV show, I'm overseas doing some kind of trip, I come back, I talk about it. I never really felt, I don't think, that people didn't think that that was a good thing for me to do. They may have had a lot of difficulty with George Bush at the time, who was, you know, when I was first really getting involved and going on trips, he was the president. And there were people in, in the business that didn't, didn't like him, or, you know, didn't agree with him, or whatever. But I wasn't gonna let that dissuade me from supporting the troops, because I remember what it was like, again, for our Vietnam veterans, to get caught in the middle of all that political stuff, and I didn't want that to happen.

• 1:25:39Speaker 01

  So, I just ramped up and did my thing, and I, I don't recall ever feeling, you know, like the community turned its back on me or anything like that. I just was doing my thing.

• 1:25:51Joe Rogan?

  Well, that's great. Well, you'd already been very established by then too, that helps. It also helps that you're on a cop show.

• 1:25:57Speaker 01

  It was, and I was playing, you know, it was great. My detective on that show, Mac Taylor, was a Marine, you know, and he was a Beirut veteran, you know, who was at the Beirut bombing in 1983, where we lost 241 service members. And we made him, I wanted to make him a Beirut veteran, so, and we even had episodes where I talked a lot about what was going on there. And he was not only a Beirut veteran, but he was a 9/11 family member. I wanted to make him somebody who had lost his wife on, on September 11th at the World Trade Center.

• 1:26:39Speaker 01

  So, I felt honored to be able to represent those 9/11 families, and also veterans that, you know, we forget about what happened in Beirut, but that was a very, very bad day for the country during the Reagan administration, when we lost so many to an Iranian terrorist bomb, bombing. And, you know, I just wanted to draw some attention to that. So, I've been able to use the platform for, you know, to, to do some good out there.

• 1:27:05Joe Rogan?

  That's very cool that they let you put that into the storyline. I had forgotten about Beirut until you just brought it up.

• 1:27:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:12Joe Rogan?

  You know, I, I didn't remember that attack. What year was that?

• 1:27:16Speaker 01

  1983.

• 1:27:17Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I was in high school. I was in high school when that happened. I remember it.

• 1:27:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I was, I was working on a play about Vietnam veterans in Chicago at the time that that happened, and I remember that day, and I got all these calls from my cast members, who are now focusing on our military and our veterans and whatnot. And I remember, I remember exactly where it was, in my apartment, when I heard about it. It was terrible. And since then, I've met, you know, Beirut survivors, people that survived that bombing, and, you know, they, they go through a lot of, a lot of pain on those anniversaries, for sure.

• 1:27:56Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, for sure. Most people in this country aren't even aware of how many times we've been in conflict with Iran, other than like what's going on right now. Like, a vast majority, especially young people, they don't know about what happened during the Carter administration with the kidnappings.

• 1:28:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:28:14Joe Rogan?

  You know?

• 1:28:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, this has been going on a long time, you know? We've lost a lot of people over proxies and all, all that, that they've supported over the years, you know? Look, I, again, I just want, I just want anybody who serves our country to know that there's grateful people out there, and we don't take what they're going through for granted. We wanna help them through, and we want them to be okay. That's what we do every day at the Gary Sinise Foundation.

• 1:28:42Joe Rogan?

  That's a beautiful thing that you do, man, it really is. And that sentiment, I can tell, is honest and real, and that, that's really what you're doing, that's your real focus. That's awesome, man.

• 1:28:53Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:28:54Joe Rogan?

  It really is. It really is awesome. And again, especially from someone who's a movie star.

• 1:28:59Joe Rogan?

  Although I gotta say, having these conversations with people like, you know, I mean, I've talked to so many actors on this podcast that turned out to be really cool. Who I was a little hesitant, you know, I was like, cause I had, I've had very good experiences with actors in Hollywood, but also some ones that weren't so fun. And, you know.

• 1:29:19Speaker 01

  But that's. You don't have to tell me who that is.

• 1:29:21Joe Rogan?

  I won't. But you could, you could say the same about comedians or athletes or anything else. There's good people everywhere, but there's people that have, it's a very uniquely weird situation to be a movie star. You know, and much like being a dictator, you can kind of get a big head.

• 1:29:42Speaker 01

  You know, I, I mean, I, I come from Chicago. I scrapped around in theater. Didn't make any money for the longest time, building a theater company there, Steppenwolf Theater. It's, it's over 50 years old now.

• 1:29:55Joe Rogan?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:29:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, we started, we started with absolutely nothing.

• 1:29:58Joe Rogan?

  And you started it?

• 1:29:59Speaker 01

  I was 18 years old.

• 1:30:00Joe Rogan?

  Wow, that's amazing.

• 1:30:02Speaker 01

  And now it's a, and, and if you go to Chicago, it's an entire city block in, on the north side of Chicago. It started with nothing. We didn't even charge for tickets. We would put a, I remember bringing a shoebox in. And one of our first plays that we did, I was like 18. And I wrote donations on the side of the shoebox and we put it in the lobby and hoped people would throw some money in. So we could, you know, do another play after that. And now, if you look at it, we've done hundreds of plays all over the world, you know, won a lot of awards. We built a building from the ground up. It's an entire city block. There's three theaters in there. There's restaurants,

• 1:30:42Speaker 01

  bars, I mean, it's classrooms. It's, it's giant. When you look at it and you think that was started by kids. You know, here in this country, we can do some great things that we just, we just bear down, right?

• 1:30:54Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:55Speaker 01

  You bear down and you put your, you know, I didn't go to college. I, I just wanted to start a theater company. And that's where I learned how to act. I ended up making a living at it. Uh, and I'm, I'm, I feel blessed, you know, to have grown up in this country and certainly grateful to the men and women who provide our freedom for us.

• 1:31:14Joe Rogan?

  How old were you when you first got interested in acting? Was it?

• 1:31:17Speaker 01

  16.

• 1:31:17Joe Rogan?

  16?

• 1:31:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:19Joe Rogan?

  So two years later, you started a theater company? You had a lot of get up and go, I'll tell you that.

• 1:31:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was a sophomore in college, in high school when I did my first play. And then I graduated from high school when I was 18. And I didn't want to go to college. I, I was just really struggling as a student. And, and in fact, I had to go back, uh, to high school for, for an extra semester because I didn't have enough credits to graduate. So I went back for another semester, did another play. It was great and I, I loved it, graduated. And didn't want to go to college. And so I just started doing some plays, you know, in a little church. We found a space and we went in there with a bunch of kids and we did plays for free. We, nobody made any money. We didn't charge for tickets. It was all free in the beginning.

• 1:32:08Speaker 01

  It was just a passionate desire to kind of act and I loved it. And then, then the theater company started. And if you look at the early history of Steppenwolf, that's 50 years ago, in 1976, I teamed up with, um, the co-founders of the theater are Jeff Perry and Terry Kinney. But then they went to college with John Malkovich.

• 1:32:31Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:32:31Speaker 01

  Laurie Metcalf.

• 1:32:33Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:32:33Speaker 01

  Uh, Joan Allen, who was nominated for like three Oscars. And my, my, the woman who would become my wife just five years later, Moira. She became, uh, one of the members. We had an original nine people in the company. And then it just grew and grew and grew. And now so many great actors have come out of Steppenwolf. And it's, it's really doing very, very well. Uh, you know, still, still going strong. I, I'm going back in a couple of weeks to do a book, uh, book event for my new book there. Uh, but they are running it well and a lot of people are coming and it's, it, you know, it's a hard, hard to be in the theater business now. After COVID, things got really rough.

• 1:33:16Joe Rogan?

  Sure.

• 1:33:17Speaker 01

  But Steppenwolf is, has a great reputation, is doing real well.

• 1:33:20Joe Rogan?

  So when you were 16, when you first took this theater class, were you interested in it before that? Did you, were you inspired by movies? Was, no?

• 1:33:28Speaker 01

  No, no, no. I was, I was playing in a band. I, I was, I had a rock band. I got a, I got a guitar and I was playing in a band and um, we, I've told this story where I was standing there, I'm probably ditching class or something. I'm standing in this hallway in the high school, Highland Park High School. And I'm with the other band members and we're all looking pretty scruffy and ragged. And, uh, the drama teacher walked by and she turned around, she looked at us and she told us she was directing West Side Story. You know, West Side Story about the two gangs? And she said, you guys look perfect for the gang members. Come and audition. So, so I, you know, I laughed at her and she walked off down the hall, but I was curious.

• 1:34:12Speaker 01

  And I went to the audition after school and there were a lot of pretty girls walking into the audition. So I just kind of wandered in there. I didn't know what an audition was or what to do. They gave me a script and said, read this part, you're on. And, you know, I got up there and I, you know, just stumbling through it. I wasn't, I was really interested in the girls. And I wasn't interested in the script, but I didn't take it seriously. I was just goofing off and I got a lot of laughs and I looked up the teachers laughing at me and everything. And I don't know if you ever auditioned for a play, but the next day, you go to the drama department and you look at the lit, the cast list.

• 1:34:53Speaker 01

  You, and every, I come in and everybody's huddled around the cast list, looking to see if their name's on the cast list, if they got cast. And I went down and there's my name. And I got a little tiny part in West Side Story and that changed everything. I mean, it was, it's like destiny or something, you know? Remember the feather in Forrest Gump floating around? Forrest Gump talks about destiny and all that. I think I just, God put me in that hallway at the right time and that teacher walked by, told me to audition for the play and I ended up making a living at it.

• 1:35:28Joe Rogan?

  That's incredible. What a great story. So what, so when you did West Side Story, what, what did it feel like the first time you performed that in front of an audience?

• 1:35:41Speaker 01

  Spectacular. I mean, I didn't, I didn't have a big part again, but I, I became friends with a lot of the kids in the theater department. I, again, I was a kid who was really struggling, going through, you know, do some kind of crazy stuff as a kid. Playing in a rock band, not doing well academically. I was about to get kicked out of school, probably, probably. And I stumbled into the theater department and I made all these new friends in the theater department. We rehearsed. I just loved it so much. I signed up for all the theater classes. I wanted to take all the theater classes after that. We start performing the play and you, basically you do like,

• 1:36:22Speaker 01

  when you do a high, it was high school play, it's like Thursday through Sunday and you do like four shows. And I remember the last show. Uh, I don't know if you remember this, but in West Side Story, Tony, the lead guy gets shot. And he dies at the end. And the two gangs have been at each other's throats, just fighting and everything. And at one point, the American gang, they go, two guys go to pick up the body of Tony and carry him. And he's kind of heavy. And two of the other, the Puerto Rican gang come in and they grab him. And the two gangs carry Tony off the stage. And that's the end of the show.

• 1:37:07Speaker 01

  And I was one of the guys that got to pick him up and lift him. And he, he had become my best friend, the guy that was playing Tony. And I pick him up and I'm carrying him off and I just burst into tears.

• 1:37:19Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:37:20Speaker 01

  I, I remember it. I get choked up thinking about, I just burst into tears. I get off. I, I put my buddy down. He grabs me. He's hugging me. I'm just crying like crazy. The show is over. You know, it's very, very dramatic. And then we have to go out for the curtain call. And, you know, I was just a kid who didn't, you know, who was struggling and the, the entire cast knew that I, something had happened significantly to me during the course of that whole thing. And I'm standing there crying, you know? And all the lead characters, right? Tony, Bernardo, Maria, Anita. They all go and they stand in front of all the rest of us and they take their bows.

• 1:38:04Speaker 01

  And my buddy who played Bernardo, after he took his bow, he reached back and he grabbed me and he pulled me up to the front to stand with all the lead characters and take a bow. Nobody in the audience knew what that was about. But everybody on stage knew that the kid crying, who was barely making it through high school had, had had my life changed in a significant way. And from that point on, I just, I just wanted to do plays and I became, you know, a, a top theater student and, you know, got a lot of good parts in high school. And then that's where Steppenwolf came from. We teamed up with, with my pals and we just, we started a theater company after that.

• 1:38:48Joe Rogan?

  So that one moment where that lady came up to you and said, you should audition. What a crazy fork in the road.

• 1:38:56Speaker 01

  That is.

• 1:38:58Joe Rogan?

  What a crazy fork in the road. Have you ever imagined what would have happened if you had zigged when you should have zagged and you weren't there?

• 1:39:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:07Joe Rogan?

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• 1:40:39Speaker 01

  You know, we can all sort of look at those moments. You know, that there's somebody that stumbles along, just happened to bump into you and, you know, changes your life in a significant way. She did. And I remember when my first book, Graceful American, came out. She was living in Nashville, and I stayed in touch with her over the years. I mean, without her, I don't think Steppenwolf Theater would have existed because she fired us all up, and I just wanted to do plays. And then, now, now you have a giant building on the north side of Chicago. And it started with high school kids. And I remember my book coming out, Grateful American, and I was on a book tour, like I am now.

• 1:41:20Speaker 01

  And, and I called her up and said, I'm coming to Nashville, I'm gonna do some, some press. Let me take you out to dinner. And I picked her up, we're out to dinner. I, I think I had just done the Huckabee Show. He had, used to have a TV show there. And we're driving in the car, I get a call from my publicist. And she says, and I'm sitting here with the woman that remembers me as a high school kid, who could, I couldn't even spell or write or anything. I could barely read, but I somehow could memorize lines. And I was really a struggling kid academically, but I had kind of an intuitive, I don't know, I just, I just took to the theater.

• 1:42:02Speaker 01

  And I'm sitting here with this woman who kind of remembers all that, right? And the call comes in that Grateful American hit the New York Times Bestseller list at number three. And I'm sitting here with her at the moment that I hear that. And I turned to her and I said, I'm a, I'm a bestselling author. And she, she was just burst into tears. She, she remembers when I could barely read and write. And here I am, sitting with her, telling her, at the moment that I hear this, this great news. And it was, it was really just a beautiful, very poignant moment. I mean, it was very special.

• 1:42:43Joe Rogan?

  That's making me tear up.

• 1:42:44Speaker 01

  It was something special.

• 1:42:46Joe Rogan?

  There's a lot of people out there that just need a thing. You know, they need a thing where they can put their energy into, that rewards them and shows them that they're valuable, and that they can contribute, and that they can really make something beautiful. And so many people never find that thing, or they're never exposed to it, or life gets too complicated before they ever get a chance to spread their wings and, and take a chance with something like that.

• 1:43:15Speaker 01

  You're very fortunate if you're, if you find something as a young person.

• 1:43:20Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 1:43:21Speaker 01

  You know, because so many young people, they, you know, they're, you know, they search for a long time to figure out what they want to do, and, you know, and, and, you know, thankfully and hopefully, they, they find it. I was fortunate. I was 16 when I fell in love with what I ended up being able to do for a living. And that's, that's, you know, that's a rare thing.

• 1:43:43Joe Rogan?

  It's a very rare thing. It's a very beautiful thing, but I think, I think it's possible for a lot more people to never experience it. And I really wish there was more things like that out there, and more, just some guidance, some direction, just push people in certain directions. Because there's so many people out there, they just, they just get stagnant, and they don't know what to do. And then they spend all their time partying and hanging out with their friends, and they never, they never find it.

• 1:44:14Speaker 01

  You know what's, you know what's heartening? I've been to all the, all the military academies. I played concerts for the kids, you know, these students, cadets, or midshipmen, whoever. I've been on all the, all the academies. And it's, it's, it's very heartening and hopeful when you meet a lot of these youngsters who are going to West Point, who are going to Annapolis, who are going to the Air Force Academy, Merchant Marine Academy, Coast Guard. I've been to all of them, and every time I come away just feeling, wow, that, there's an impressive group of young people out there. And I'm sure it's not only at the military academies, but that, these are, these are folks that knew what they wanted to do coming out of high school, right?

• 1:44:58Speaker 01

  They wanted to go into an academy. They wanted to be a part of that service. They know that when they come out of the academies, they owe the country, you know, they owe the country four years. And some of them stay in the service for, make it a career, and go on and become great, great leaders, some of our great leaders. And some of them, you know, just, they get out after, after four years, or, or whatever, and move on to something else. But they've got such a substantial background by going to the academies, which are very, very impressive. And that, that, that gives me a lot of hope. It does give me a lot of hope. And at the Gary Senees Foundation, too.

• 1:45:36Speaker 01

  We're, we're trying to, you know, one of my objectives there is, is to nourish and nurture a new generation of grateful Americans. And to teach them about service and volunteerism, and what that can do for you as a person. You know, gives life great purpose when you reach out and touch somebody and lift them up and help them. That's what I've tried to do at the foundation, and, and just in, in many decades of life, just trying to give back to people that I feel, you know, that, that are deserving of that. And so we take, one of, you know, one of the programs that we had at the foundation is called Soaring Valor.

• 1:46:19Speaker 01

  We've taken hundreds of World War II veterans down to the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. That's where our National World War II Museum is. Very, very impressive, very special. I, anybody who's going to New Orleans, I always tell them to go to the National World War II Museum. Well, we've sponsored probably 15, 1600 World War II veterans, along with American Airlines, who provides all the travel for us. We have a great partnership with them. They really are dedicated to our veterans. We put them on, we did 33 charter airplane trips with World War II veterans. We put them on the airplanes, and then I wanted to add a component where we pair them

• 1:47:03Speaker 01

  up with high school kids. So if you're a 16-year-old kid, you meet Mr. Johnson, and he, he served at Iwo Jima, you're gonna be a travel buddy with Mr. Johnson for the next three days. We're gonna take you down, and you're, you're gonna spend time with him. That is a life-changing experience for a lot of these kids. And we've, like I said, for 10 years, we, we sent World War II veterans and students down to the National World War II Museum. Now we send them, we send them to Ground Zero in, in New York, to the Trade Center. We send them to the Pentagon to learn about what happened at the Pentagon. We send them to Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

• 1:47:45Speaker 01

  We send them to the Medal of Honor Museum in, in Texas, in Arlington. So we want, we want to teach them about service and volunteerism, and what it takes to keep us free. So they come, come away from those places feeling like, gosh, why didn't I know really that much about what happened on September 11th? Because they're not getting, they're not learning about that significant event, and how that changed the landscape for so many of us. Because, you know, many of them, I mean, they weren't born then. So now it's up to us to kind of educate. And we want to be a part of, you know, just nourishing. This is a good country. There's a lot to be thankful for, for living in this country.

• 1:48:28Speaker 01

  We want, we want to look at that, and we want to, we want to tell this younger generation, this is not a bad place. This is, this is a good place. We're lucky. Go, go to some places that aren't, aren't so good, you'll have a different opinion, a different perspective on it.

• 1:48:42Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, absolutely. Look, it's not perfect. People aren't perfect. It's not possible to have a perfect country.

• 1:48:47Speaker 01

  Why, yeah, why would we expect that?

• 1:48:49Joe Rogan?

  But I think that there's something about the incredibly challenging environment of the military that is an amazing vehicle for developing young people. And it, because I think young people in particular need to be challenged so that they understand their potential. And there's a, a lot that comes out of that, where these guys, they come out, they can do things that other people can't do. One of the reasons why is because they learned.

• 1:49:13Speaker 01

  I've met some impressive people. One quick story. Landing on the Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, right? I'm on, I'm on one of my tours, I'm going here and going there, I land on this carrier.

• 1:49:25Joe Rogan?

  Helicopter?

• 1:49:26Speaker 01

  Uh, no, it was a COD. It was like a 20-person airplane. Lands on the, lands on the deck.

• 1:49:32Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:49:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, lands on the deck. I get out, this is my first, first Afghanistan trip, 2006. And I go up on the bridge, and they're showing me around, and I look over, and, you know, they've got the big wheels steering the boat, right? This is, there's 5,000 people on this aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf. And steering the boat, there's this young guy, and I walk up to him, and I said, how old are you? And he said, 19, so.

• 1:50:07Speaker 01

  And I said, you're nineteen?

• 1:50:09Joe Rogan?

  And you're driving this thing?

• 1:50:10Speaker 01

  And you're driving this boat? Are you kidding? What are your buddies doing back home right now while you're out in the Persian Gulf driving this boat around?

• 1:50:19Joe Rogan?

  Driving a five thousand person boat.

• 1:50:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a lot of hardware there.

• 1:50:24Joe Rogan?

  Holy shit.

• 1:50:26Speaker 01

  And so you have to imagine, like, what caliber of person was that, that he impressed the leaders so much on the ship that they would entrust him to take that job and do that job? It was impressive. It was very, very impressive. And I've met so many, so many people like that who are very, very impressive. I've been to the war zones, I've been to the hospitals, you know, I've been on military bases all over the world. I've done hundreds of shows, you know, concerts and whatnot, and met some of the most extraordinary people we have serving our country. And I just feel blessed and fortunate and lucky that we have people like that, you know, that want to do that kind of work. I wonder, I often wonder, what happened to that nineteen year old?

• 1:51:10Speaker 01

  Did he stay in? Did, you know, what happened to him? But for that moment in time, he can always look back and say, I got to steer the Ronald Reagan around the Persian Gulf, at least for that moment.

• 1:51:22Joe Rogan?

  That's incredible, because, I mean, think of the average nineteen year old today. What the fuck are they doing?

• 1:51:28Joe Rogan?

  In comparison to that guy.

• 1:51:31Joe Rogan?

  I mean, that is a insanely difficult thing to, just to be responsible for. You're responsible for five thousand people on a boat that you can land a plane on.

• 1:51:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, you wonder if they said, just hold it here and go straight, you know, don't turn.

• 1:51:49Joe Rogan?

  I mean, how long do you have to train? It's like, that seems crazy, that you could be nineteen and have already trained your way to the position where they let you steer that thing. That's an extraordinary person.

• 1:51:58Speaker 01

  Standing on the deck of a carrier while the airplanes are coming in and going out, going out, is so impressive. The operation is awesome. Watching our people in a very dangerous situation on the aircraft carrier.

• 1:52:12Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:12Speaker 01

  You know, just doing their thing, getting the planes ready to take off, to launch, to catapult off the deck, or to land. And that's a dangerous job out there. And I got to stand there and watch these people work. It was very, very impressive.

• 1:52:27Joe Rogan?

  Incredibly dangerous job, incredible responsibility, and the work ethic that you have to have to be a part of that, that is just in the culture. It's just like, this is what it is. That makes extraordinary people. And I think extraordinary people gravitate towards those kind of challenges, but going through those kind of challenges makes extraordinary people.

• 1:52:48Speaker 01

  You can develop.

• 1:52:49Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, and I just don't think that resource is used enough, or gets enough credit. I mean, it's one of the things my friend Evan from Black Rifle Coffee really emphasizes, is that they hire veterans, they use veterans, they give to veterans, they give to a bunch of different veteran causes and organizations, first responders, they're involved in a lot of different things, just to like, sort of emphasize that, to let people know that we care, and we understand, and we support you.

• 1:53:18Speaker 01

  And there are some great programs out there. Transitioning from the military, if you've been in the military for a long time and you're used to that lifestyle and all of that.

• 1:53:27Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:53:27Speaker 01

  Transitioning out of the military into the civilian sector and kind of just, you know, figuring that out, that can be challenging for folks. And there are some great programs out there that are helping our veterans kind of navigate that transition from, you know, twenty, thirty years in the military to something new.

• 1:53:44Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:53:45Speaker 01

  We want them to be okay. We're grateful out there, and we want them to know that we are, and we want them to be okay.

• 1:53:51Joe Rogan?

  Well, I'm really glad that you do what you do, because, and that you have this message, and you continue to spread this message on all these different interviews that you do, because so many people just kind of don't appreciate it or understand it. And I think it's just, without it, we're fucked. Like, without those people, they're like, some of the best people that we have, best young people that we have in this country.

• 1:54:15Speaker 01

  We need a strong service.

• 1:54:17Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:17Speaker 01

  We do, we are, where would we be if we didn't have the American military? Where would the world be without that? Think about it, you know? There's a natural disaster or something like that, you know, we send aircraft carriers, we send ships, you know, we don't just fight wars.

• 1:54:37Joe Rogan?

  Right, right.

• 1:54:38Speaker 01

  We do a lot of things that the military is very highly qualified and capable of doing.

• 1:54:43Joe Rogan?

  Well, this is also one of the reasons why people get so upset when the military's used in what people consider to be an unjust way. Like Vietnam. I mean, that's why there was such a giant shift between, you know, nineteen forty-five and then the nineteen sixties in Vietnam. It's like, twenty years later, you have this complete polar opposite reaction to military.

• 1:55:06Speaker 01

  I think, I think we learned some hard lessons from what happened to our veterans when they came home from Vietnam. That's why there's thousands and thousands of nonprofits that have popped up after September eleventh and our deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. I think they, like me, they were motivated to ensure that what happened to our current day service members deploying to those war zones would not happen like what happened to our Vietnam veterans when they came home.

• 1:55:37Joe Rogan?

  Do you know Marcus Luttrell?

• 1:55:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:40Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, Marcus is a friend of mine, and we're actually texting today about some stuff.

• 1:55:44Speaker 01

  I'll give him my best, please.

• 1:55:45Joe Rogan?

  He's involved in this IberGan initiative that they're pushing through, and with Rick Perry and Brian Hubbard. And it's a really amazing thing, and this is one of the things that I went to the White House to talk to Trump about, about pushing it through, about getting that. And there's so many veterans that have had that experience, and it's helped them just sort of re-enter society, helped them deal with their demons, helped them overcome alcoholism and addiction to pills.

• 1:56:14Speaker 01

  I know some people that's been very helpful for them, yeah.

• 1:56:18Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, and it's, that, I think, is, it gives me a lot of hope, that that's going to be available to more people. Just, I know so many people that have come back from that and had, just, nothing helps, nothing worked, until they did that.

• 1:56:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you have several people that are just dealing with a lot of bad stuff, you know, and they, you know, there's a very aggressive, and it can never be too aggressive, I don't think, effort to try to address this terrible suicide problem that we have, of course, in the services and in our veteran community. A lot of people are focused on that. We support a lot of programs at the Gary Sinise Foundation, dealing with mental wellness and, you know, initiatives. It's a very, very difficult problem, though, because you have, you also have a lot of folks that won't ever reveal what's really going on.

• 1:57:17Joe Rogan?

  Right, they think of it as a weakness.

• 1:57:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, they won't ever, they won't ever tell you, and that's why you hear, gosh, you know, somebody took their life, and even their wife, you know, wasn't, didn't know what was really going on, or best friends didn't know, or whatever. There were no signs whatsoever, or something like that. So how do you combat that, when somebody's dealing with something that they won't reveal? Or, I think, I think it's up to peer-to-peer, you know, support. We have, you know, you have battle buddies in the war that you're close with, when you get home, those battle buddies, and when they're with you, and they're still with you, and checking on each other, and all of that stuff, that can be life-saving.

• 1:58:03Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 1:58:04Speaker 01

  You know, those battle buddies.

• 1:58:05Joe Rogan?

  Absolutely.

• 1:58:06Speaker 01

  I know a lot of folks that are constantly checking on their buddies to make sure they're okay, and getting through those things.

• 1:58:10Joe Rogan?

  That's one of the things Marcus does. He sent me a text today, he just checks in on you.

• 1:58:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. Are you doing okay?

• 1:58:15Joe Rogan?

  Have a good week, checking in on you. Have a good week.

• 1:58:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:18Joe Rogan?

  It's beautiful. It's nice, because it's real, you know?

• 1:58:21Speaker 01

  I'm always glad when somebody checks on me.

• 1:58:23Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, it's nice. It's never bad. It's nice. And I think that the culture of, for lack of a better term, you know, manhood, that men think that it's better to be stoic, and to try to like, keep it all to yourself, and just deal with it, and seek help, seek help, talk to people. Let people know that you're struggling.

• 1:58:47Speaker 01

  Tell your story.

• 1:58:47Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, because we all have had someone who we didn't know was struggling, who took their life. And it leaves you with this horrible feeling that I could have done something. And you don't know, when, when do you act? When do you say something? When do you leave it alone? What do you say? You know, do you fuck it up worse by talking to someone about it? Do you make them think about it more? Are you helping them by telling them you love them? And you don't know. Like, when someone does take their own life, and you feel, that is a terrible, it's a terrible feeling, to feel like you could have done something.

• 1:59:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:22Joe Rogan?

  That if I had to just talk to them, if I had been there, I think I could have prevented it.

• 1:59:27Speaker 01

  Many, yeah, many feel like that, but you don't know. You don't know if you could have, you know? It's a, but if we're proactive, you know, that's, that's the thing. Proactive, we're trying to make sure that somebody knows that there are services out there.

• 1:59:44Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:44Speaker 01

  We're dealing with people all the time at the Gary Sinise Foundation who are going through difficult things, and we have multiple services that we provide, or, and if we don't do it at the Gary Sinise Foundation, we can provide information about other organizations that are very deeply committed to ensuring that, you know, our service members that might be dealing with something difficult, know that there's a place for them to turn. We don't, we don't want those sad stories. And we have to be proactive in what we do, you know? And so, that's one of the things that I can do, you know? I can talk about things on radio and television, and podcasts, and, you know, all of that,

• 2:00:28Speaker 01

  let people know that there are services out there that can be provided. And I, you know, I hope that by doing that, that's a way that I can serve the community, just by passing on information, and letting people know that they are cared for, they're appreciated, and we don't want them to struggle by themselves. We, they're not alone in this whole deal.

• 2:00:49Joe Rogan?

  No, no question it's a service, and no question it helps people, because just having people know that someone cares is a lot. It means a lot.

• 2:00:59Speaker 01

  One of our great programs at the foundation is for The families are fallen, and there are thousands of these families. Thousands of children who've lost a mom or dad in military service. And we have some great programs at the Gary Sinise Foundation. One of those programs is called Snowball Express. And we will take, we're about to take over a thousand kids next month, all expense paid, paid to Disney World. And we've been doing this for years. We did it in Anaheim at Disneyland. Then we moved the event, because American Airlines is a big travel sponsor of the event, our presenting sponsor, and we moved it to their hub in Dallas.

• 2:01:43Speaker 01

  And then in 2018, we brought Snowball into the Gary Sinise Foundation as a program of the foundation. I have a great relationship with Disney World and Disney because of movies and narrations that I do for them. And so, all of a sudden, we started bringing all these kids to Disney World. And when you bring a thousand kids together that are all going through the same thing, I lost my dad, I lost my mom. When those kids get together and they engage in that community and they see that there's a big community out there of kids that are all going through the same kind of thing, they may cry a little bit, of course, you know, missing their mom and dad, but they're hugging each other and they're bonding with other people that are going through the same

• 2:02:28Speaker 01

  thing. It is profoundly impactful for these families. And we do it for families of fallen first responders, too. Firefighters, police officers that are lost in the line of duty and leave children behind. And we bring them to Disney and do the same thing for them. That's one of our, one of our big programs. Of course, it's expensive to take these kids to Disney World and get the hotel, and we take over an entire hotel, and we've got hundreds of volunteers. It's a big, it's a big thing. But when you see what happens to these kids, and they can feel forgotten, right? I mean, you know, maybe you've got a child whose dad or mom committed suicide, and they're

• 2:03:09Speaker 01

  with a bunch of other kids who dad or mom got killed in combat or something like that, and you're the, you're the suicide kid. Well, you're worthy of our attention because your parent served our country, and they, they had fatigue, something happened to them, and they were a casualty of war.

• 2:03:30Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:31Speaker 01

  And so, we want these kids to know that, that we don't forget about them. And this program has helped a lot of children, a lot of families go through, a lot of, who are going through a lot of difficult things. And I show up and I play, my band plays for, for the kids every year. I've been doing it 20 years now. And it's, it's a big rewarding thing to be able to take these, these families. And again, we have hundreds of volunteers, corporate sponsors, who volunteer and bring their, you know, bring their materials and everything, a lot of big sponsors for this event. It's, it's very, it's, it's very rewarding to see what people can do when they just care and they just want to do something to help somebody.

• 2:04:12Joe Rogan?

  That's beautiful. It really is. I, I, I think a lot of people are unaware of the suicide crisis, of how many veterans have taken their own lives. And I, I think, what is the statistic about veterans versus the amount of people that died in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan?

• 2:04:31Speaker 01

  It's more.

• 2:04:32Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, it's quite a bit more, I think.

• 2:04:33Speaker 01

  I don't know the number, but it's, it's a lot more.

• 2:04:36Joe Rogan?

  Put it into perplexity and find what the number is, but it's, it is shocking when people hear about it. It just, obviously, something's going on. Obviously, these people aren't getting the help they need, and obviously, something's not being addressed, and they have been forced to endure something that most people couldn't even imagine, which is combat duty.

• 2:05:00Speaker 01

  It's tough.

• 2:05:01Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, it's unbelievably tough, and very few people can get through that unscathed.

• 2:05:05Speaker 01

  But, but we can make a difference.

• 2:05:07Joe Rogan?

  Absolutely. So here it is. U.S. troops and veterans comparison is roughly four to one. Wow. So, university cost of war study estimated that 30,177 deaths by suicide among post-9/11 service members and veterans versus 7,057 U.S. military deaths in post-9/11 war operations. 4.3 times as many. Holy shit.

• 2:05:35Speaker 01

  It's tough. They're, they're all casualties of war.

• 2:05:38Joe Rogan?

  100%. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. And that's, that's the right way to look at it, you know? Gary, you're an awesome guy, man. You really are. Just...

• 2:05:48Speaker 01

  I, I appreciate that.

• 2:05:49Joe Rogan?

  The way you are able to dedicate your life like that to service is like really incredible. Is that the book? Great.

• 2:05:59Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Here. Here you go, bud.

• 2:06:03Joe Rogan?

  Great. Graceful Warrior, Gary Sinise. It's really inspiring, man. I hope people go out and buy your book, because you're awesome. Really, I just, you're, you're a real genuinely good person, and that's a beautiful thing to experience. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Scams have gotten smarter because criminals use AI to flood you with fake texts, emails, and phone calls that are designed to be more convincing than ever. One wrong click could put your personal information and your identity at risk, so protect yourself with LifeLock. LifeLock helps detect and alert you to threats, and if your identity is stolen, LifeLock will step in to fix it, guaranteed or your money back.

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• 2:08:16Speaker 01

  The book is about my son. And we, you know, I, I've been through a lot with families who have lost loved ones and that are going through grief, and I've learned a lot from them over the years, just seeing how they persevere through great challenge. And we hit, we had our own challenge there with, with our son. He was diagnosed with a very rare cancer called cordoma in 2018. He worked for the Gary Sinise Foundation, was a, just a, a great spirit, a wonderful guy. He was a great musician.

• 2:08:55Speaker 01

  There are albums of his music, Resurrection and Revival, series of three records of music that he kind of wrote and tucked away in his files. And I discovered it. We lost Mac on January 5th, 2024, after a five-and-a-half-year battle with this devastating rare cancer. And after he died, I started to discover all this music that he wrote. And so, we, he had done an album in the final years of his life. The last year of his life was 2023. He went to work on an album because he wanted to finish a piece of music he wrote in college and never finished.

• 2:09:39Speaker 01

  And he finished it and created an entire album of music. And, and I found, I started going through his laptop and his iPad, and, and I started to find all these mus, all these pieces that he wrote, and beautiful, beautiful music. And I, I brought together all his collaborators who worked on the first album with him, and we did a second album, Resurrection and Revival Part II. And then I found more music in 2025, and we did Resurrection and Revival Part III. And I told the story of, of that, you know, going through loss and grief and...

• 2:10:23Speaker 01

  The loss of a child is, you know, it's the hardest, hardest thing to lose a son. And for my daughters to lose their brother like that. And so, but the way he fought with such grace and courage was inspiring. And I learned a lot from, from him. After he died, I just started putting pen to paper and writing some things. And then it turned into this book, Graceful Warrior, the true story of a son, a father, and a family who carried each other through. And this is a, it's a family story. As you can imagine, it's a very personal book.

• 2:11:07Speaker 01

  It's not a book about cancer, fighting cancer, as much as it is about persevering through great challenge. And I, like I said, I've seen hundreds, if not thousands of families go through a lot of different, difficult, difficult things in their lives. In military service, wounded folks that are so banged up that they're never going to recover in, you know, the way they want. And their family is just courageously persevering through each day, getting them through the next day and the next day after that. And they've inspired me so much over the years that I know that in some ways I was

• 2:11:50Speaker 01

  being prepared for what we would face in 2018 when, when we found out our son had this, this orange sized tumor on his tailbone. That was really painful for him. And we didn't know why he was experiencing all these, this pain. He was a great drummer and he was drumming, but he, he was on tour after college and he was having all this pain, just drumming. He finally, we finally sent him to my wife's spine surgeon. She had had multiple spine surgeries. And I asked her, her spine surgeon to look at Mac. He put him in the CT scanner and saw this giant tumor on his tailbone. And that was tough.

• 2:12:35Speaker 01

  That was in August of 2018. By September of 2018, he was having that tumor taken out. And in May of 2019, we found out the cancer came back and it started to spread. And that, you know, this is an incurable, rare cancer. Maybe only 90 people per year are diagnosed with metastatic cordoma. You've never heard of it. I'm sure you haven't heard of it. Most people haven't. It's very, very rare, maybe 300 cases per year in the U.S. And that began our journey of chemo and radiation and multiple surgeries and Mac going through the most challenging time of his life.

• 2:13:18Speaker 01

  He was disabled by cancer, couldn't write music anymore, couldn't play music anymore. But what was miraculous about it is what he did in the final years of his, final year, 2023 of his life, where he created this album of beautiful music called Resurrection and Revival. And he wanted to make some vinyls. And he said, Dad, I want to give these vinyls to people. And if we ever sold any, I want the proceeds to go to the Gary Sinise Foundation to help our mission. He loved the foundation, loved the mission. And we continue to sell those vinyls at garysinisefoundation.org. And now the book comes out November 10th.

• 2:14:01Speaker 01

  And it's, it was two years writing this book. And as you can imagine, it was, it was a hard one to write, but, but a good healing one to write for me to be able to focus on it while at the same time I was putting the music together and producing the record. So the past two years have been spent on that. It were almost, we're almost to the third anniversary of losing him. It was tough, but I, I want people to know it's not a book about cancer in, in as much as it's a person about, about hope and courage. And Graceful Warrior comes from an interview I did with somebody who was asking me about him.

• 2:14:46Speaker 01

  And that's how I described him. He never gave up the fight. He wanted to keep going. You know, his sisters, the family rallied around him. We pulled each other through the most difficult thing. And he was, he fought it with such grace and courage, you know, just like, I described it, remember the movie 1917?

• 2:15:07Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:08Speaker 01

  The World War One movie, remember? At, at the end, they, the two guys go on a mission. They've got to warn the, the battalion not to attack the Germans because it's a trap. And they go, they, one of them gets killed and the other one gets to the trenches where the battalion is just about to come out and attack the Germans. And the trenches are so clogged up with people that he can't get through the trench to go down here and warn everybody. So what does he do? He jumps out of the trench and the bombs are raining down and he's running through the bombs. And he's getting knocked down by the bombs and he keeps getting up. And he won't quit until he gets there.

• 2:15:51Speaker 01

  And I described Mac as, as that guy running through the bombs, getting knocked down and getting back up. He just kept getting back up as much as he could, even though he was paralyzed from the chest down, his spirit was soaring. And it was beautiful to witness. And I, I feel so privileged as a, I mean, you've got kids, just imagine, I, I feel so privileged to, to have had Mac in my life for 33 years. We all do at our, we all do in our house. And, and November 10th, the day the book comes out, would, would have been Mac's 36th birthday. So it's a, I'm, I'm just talking about this book right now and, and, you know, trying to raise awareness.

• 2:16:35Speaker 01

  I think, you know, I got a lot of, I wrote a story six months, six weeks after he died and posted it on the Gary Sinise Foundation website. And I got so many wonderful messages from people, fathers, who may have lost a child themselves and have, like our service members, kept that stuff in. And I remember reading some of these messages from fathers who read the story and said, you know, reading this story is making me want to share what's going on inside me that I haven't talked about. I thought I would just push this grief away and keep it, keep it away and try to move on. And so I was encouraged by that.

• 2:17:17Speaker 01

  And I think that's one of the reasons, not only for writing it for Mac and writing it for the family, but for any family out there who may be going through something tough, who wants, you know, maybe some encouragement, maybe some, you know, some, just some, to find some strength and courage, you know, as they go through their own challenges in how we faced it and persevered through it. The grief will never go away, right? The hole is always there. But you can learn to manage it, manage it a little better as time goes on. And certainly if you feel like sharing your story is going to help somebody else, and that's something I, I'm always talking to our veterans about, right?

• 2:18:00Speaker 01

  Share your story, tell your story, get that stuff out, talk about it. It's going to be healing to not only you, but to somebody else who might hear something you said and find some inspiration and courage in that. If sharing this story can do that for somebody, I know that Mac is, is going to be smiling about that. And go, go for it, Dad. Do that.

• 2:18:24Joe Rogan?

  I'm sure it certainly will help. Let everybody know. Graceful Warrior. This is, is there an audio version of it?

• 2:18:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it comes out same day.

• 2:18:33Joe Rogan?

  Did you read it?

• 2:18:34Speaker 01

  I did the reading, yeah.

• 2:18:35Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, obviously, yeah.

• 2:18:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:37Joe Rogan?

  Thank you very much, Matt. It's a pleasure to meet you.

• 2:18:39Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 2:18:40Joe Rogan?

  I really enjoyed this and good luck with this book.

• 2:18:42Speaker 01

  Thank you, Joe.

• 2:18:43Joe Rogan?

  And everything else.

• 2:18:44Speaker 01

  Thanks for having us.

• 2:18:45Joe Rogan?

  Bye.

• 2:18:46Speaker 04

  Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu is now streaming on Disney+. What are you waiting for? Hop on. The must see galactic adventure comes home on Disney+. This is the way. Our only chance is to work together. I like this kid. Always wear your seatbelt. Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu now streaming on Disney+. Rated PG-13.