Robert J. O'Neill + Admiral James Stavridis (Carolla Classics)

Summary

Adam Carolla Show: Robert J. O'Neill & Admiral James Stavridis (Carolla Classics) Release Date: May 25, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of The Adam Carolla Show, host Adam Carolla engages in an in-depth conversation with two distinguished guests: former Navy SEAL Robert J. O'Neill and retired Admiral James Stavridis, alongside author Elliot Ackerman. The discussion centers around O'Neill's military experiences, including his role in the mission that led to the death of Osama bin Laden, and the insights from Stavridis and Ackerman's collaborative work on their novel, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War. This episode delves into themes of military strategy, geopolitical tensions, and the evolving dynamics of global conflict.

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Robert J. O'Neill: A SEAL Team Leader’s Journey

Background and Military Career (00:28:00 - 03:00:00)

Robert J. O'Neill, a Navy veteran who served from 1996 to 2012, shares his extensive military background, highlighting his participation in over 400 missions across four different theaters of war. O'Neill discusses the transition of SEAL missions from general counterterrorism to high-profile operations post-9/11, emphasizing the increased visibility and complexity of these missions.

Key Missions and Experiences (03:00:00 - 30:36)

O'Neill provides a detailed account of the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan. He describes the meticulous planning involved, the unexpected helicopter crash during the mission, and the subsequent adaptation required to carry out the operation successfully. A notable moment occurs when O'Neill recounts the confrontation on the stairwell with Khalid bin Laden, illustrating the split-second decisions and intense emotions involved in such high-stakes missions.

"We knew that if we tell the Pakistanis, we're coming in, they wouldn't have him there. They would have removed him." (04:58)

O'Neill also reflects on the portrayal of SEALs in popular media, such as the film Lone Survivor, noting discrepancies between reality and cinematic representation.

Post-Mission Reflections and Challenges (30:36 - 43:00)

After successfully completing the mission, O'Neill discusses the psychological impact and the challenges faced during the transition back to civilian life. He touches upon the stigma surrounding public recognition of such missions and the internal conflict that arises from being publicly associated with a pivotal moment in global counterterrorism efforts.

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Admiral James Stavridis & Elliot Ackerman: Insights on Global Conflict and 2034

Introducing the Guests (43:00 - 55:00)

Admiral James Stavridis, a retired four-star admiral and former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, alongside Elliot Ackerman, a former Marine Corps and CIA officer, co-author the novel 2034: A Novel of the Next World War. Their collaboration brings together military strategy and geopolitical analysis, offering a fictional yet plausible scenario of an impending conflict between the United States and China.

Discussion on 2034 and Geopolitical Tensions (55:00 - 1:10:00)

Stavridis and Ackerman delve into the core themes of their book, which envisions a future where escalating tensions in the South China Sea lead to a full-scale naval conflict. They discuss China's "One Belt, One Road" initiative and its implications for global dominance, stressing the strategic importance of the South China Sea as a pivotal theater for potential conflict.

"China has around 370 so-called battle force ships. These are simply warships that are capable of operating at some distance. The United States has about 300. So it is a correct statement that China has more of these battle force warships than the United States." (16:30)

Nuclear and Unmanned Warfare (1:10:00 - 1:40:00)

The conversation shifts to the future of naval warfare, highlighting the shift from traditional aircraft carriers to more distributed and unmanned systems. Stavridis emphasizes the necessity of evolving military strategies to incorporate cyber operations and unmanned vehicles to maintain a strategic edge.

"We need a cadre of people who can truly, deeply, madly focus just on space because it is going to explode in terms of size." (18:35)

China’s Strategic Objectives and the US Response (1:40:00 - 2:00:00)

Stavridis articulates China's long-term strategic goals, underscoring their desire for territorial sovereignty over the South China Sea and their economic ambitions through global infrastructure projects. He critiques past US administrations for underestimating China's ambitions and advocates for a more assertive stance to counterbalance China's growing military and economic influence.

"China recognizes it has to have a functioning, massive economy to support its massive population. That's what 'One Belt, One Road' is about: exporting finished goods, importing raw materials." (35:12)

Ackerman adds depth to the discussion by addressing the internal political dysfunction within the United States, which he believes hampers the country's ability to formulate effective responses to external threats. He draws parallels with historical conflicts, emphasizing the dangers of complacency and the need for sustained military and geopolitical vigilance.

"We need help from those moderates, the people that can say, we can have our religion, we can have our countries, but we can also have Western society be part of it." (37:07)

Space Force and Future Military Innovations (2:00:00 - 2:30:00)

The dialogue extends to the establishment of the US Space Force, with Stavridis affirming its importance in the modern military landscape. Both guests agree on the critical role of cyber operations and unmanned systems in future conflicts, advocating for investment in these areas to ensure national security against evolving threats.

"A force of men and women who are really focused on this cyber problem. We don't have that now." (40:57)

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Conclusion

The episode wraps up with Admiral Stavridis and Elliot Ackerman sharing their perspectives on the future of global conflict, emphasizing the necessity for the United States to adapt its military strategies to counter emerging threats effectively. They reiterate the themes explored in their novel, 2034, highlighting the intricate balance between military preparedness and geopolitical strategy.

"If we look at the last hundred years as being an American century, that American century was forged in two fires, right? The First World War and the Second World War. In 2034, we imagine a war started between China and the United States." (82:37)

The episode provides listeners with a profound understanding of the complexities surrounding modern military engagements and the critical importance of strategic foresight in maintaining global stability.

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Notable Quotes

• Robert J. O'Neill on SEAL Missions Post-9/11:
  “It was a long career, about 400 missions…” (03:28:00)

• Admiral James Stavridis on China's Naval Expansion:
  “China has around 370 so-called battle force ships… The United States has about 300.” (16:30)

• Elliot Ackerman on US Political Dysfunction:
  “Much of the book is a reflection on the United States… how difficult it is to respond to threats.” (1:40:00)

• Stavridis on Future Warfare Needs:
  “We need a cadre of people who can truly, deeply, madly focus just on space…” (18:35)

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Conclusion for New Listeners

This episode offers a compelling blend of personal military experiences and strategic geopolitical analysis, making it a must-listen for enthusiasts of military history, geopolitical strategy, and those interested in understanding the potential future conflicts shaping our world. Through Robert O'Neill's firsthand accounts and the strategic insights of Admiral Stavridis and Elliot Ackerman, listeners gain a nuanced perspective on the evolving nature of global warfare and the imperative for strategic adaptation in the face of emerging threats.

Transcript

[Adam Carolla]

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[Giovanni]

Classics. I'm your host, super fan Giovanni. This is the podcast. We play the best moments, highlights and fans like the clips from all 16 years of the Adam Corolla show. We have a separate podcast feed titled Corolla Classics with ad free archives exclusively available throughout the Podcast One Premium. You can also find ad free archives for the Adam Carolla show, The Adam and Dr. Drew show, as well as exclusive access to the brand new show Beat it out through Adam Corolla substack adamcorla.substack.com make sure to check it out and subscribe. And if you'd like to request a clip, Please email us classicsdamcorla.com let's get to the clips coming up. First, we have a listener request that's appropriate in light of the holiday tomorrow. This one comes from Mark M. He writes, on another note, love that Rob o' Neill Bin Laden. And we'll be kite serving next week with my Marine F18 pilot book. He hasn't heard it yet. Well, Mark, you can link him to the show. Hope you guys enjoy.

[Adam Carolla]

Good day, Gina Graham, Good day to you. And Bald Brian.

[Giovanni]

Cool.

[Adam Carolla]

Is that sunny? It is enthusiastic. Normally we bring our guests in about the 45 minute to an hour mark, but Robert O' Neal here has such a interesting story.

[Gina Grad]

You don't make a man like this.

[Adam Carolla]

Wait, no, I don't Want to upset him. The operator Firing the shots that Killed Osam Bin Laden's the name of the book. And My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior available now on Amazon. You know what to do. Just bookmark us and click through our site. It's called Win Win. Good to see you, Robert.

[Giovanni]

Thanks for having me, Adam. I appreciate it.

[Adam Carolla]

So I got so much to talk to you about. We can go through the mission. The thing I was kind of interested in as well was involved with the rescue of Captain Phillips. We saw that movie about with the pirates and everything. 400. Am I right when I say over 400 missions in a 17 year period?

[Giovanni]

Yeah, just about 17 years. 400 missions. Four different theaters of war, technically, but some of Those were before 9, 11. I joined the Navy in 1996. I became a SEAL right around 97. Started deploying from 1998 until 2012. So it was a long career, about 400 missions. Actual combat missions in that time. So, yeah, fortunate enough to be part of the team that was picked for a lot of the high profile ones towards the end. So that was kind of. It was different from before where no one really knew what we were doing and we were just hunting bad guys and it turned into the high profile stuff and big rescues and stuff like that. So very interesting career.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, sorry, Dylan wrote here 1995. So that's why I did my incorrect math.

[Giovanni]

No, no, it's about right.

[Adam Carolla]

You're in 96. So did they work your team like they work the officiating team for the super bowl where they take the sort of the best guys or the best crews and they move them to the.

[Giovanni]

Big game, High profile stuff for the big mission. That's how they did it. We were at the right part of a rotation. We just finished a combat deployment. We were just back and training. And because that crew could travel and train without being really noticed, they picked the best guys from that crew. So that was kind of how it is. They picked 28 guys. We ended up going with 23 before that for Captain Phillips. We just happened to be the guys that were in place. There's a certain rotation either at war training or standby. We were on standby, so we got picked to jump in after Richard Phillips. And then I was part of the team that rescued the lone survivor, Marcus Luttrell. That's just because we were overseas at the time. Happened to be in the right place there too. So a lot of luck involved, a lot of hard work to get in the place to be lucky. But that's Kind of the way it.

[Gina Grad]

Went down is one of the criteria to have a really strong cleft chin. It seems important.

[Giovanni]

Thank you.

[Bald Brian]

How many movies have you been portrayed in you or your.

[Giovanni]

You were sort of four, because they did American Sniper, and we were in the same place, but we weren't working with that SEAL team.

[Bald Brian]

Did you know Chris Kyle?

[Giovanni]

No, I didn't. I actually was going to. We were going to meet up, and he. He was killed right before we were going to meet up. But he. He actually sent me something very cool right after the bin Laden raid. It was still fresh in my head, and I wasn't sure how to. I don't know how you absorb that.

[Bald Brian]

Sure.

[Giovanni]

And I got a book, Monumental American Sniper just come out, and I got a book sent to me, and I. And someone told me it was autographed. And I remember thinking, why would I want an autographed book from another seal? And I opened it. On the first page, it said, great shot, Chris Kyle. And I was like, well, there's the coolest thing I own. That's pretty neat. So I still have that.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, so here's how you know everything you're gonna hear from this point on is gonna be true. Because we asked Robert if he knew Chris Kyle, and it could have been super easy for him to go, oh, we hung a little when we're in theater and country or whatever. But he said, I didn't know him. Which now everything else that comes through your mouth will be true. Well, you could have easily fudged that. You're in the same area doing the same stuff. None of them would have yelled liar at you if you said you had a couple sandwiches with the guy and did a little powerlifting. It was a cool dude. Like, no one could ever vet that. So the fact that you said didn't know him. Well, now we know everything's gonna be true.

[Bald Brian]

So American Sniper, obviously. Zero Dark Thirty.

[Giovanni]

Yes.

[Bald Brian]

And then Captain Phillips, I'd assume.

[Giovanni]

And then Lone Survivor.

[Bald Brian]

Lone Survivor. Okay. You've seen all the films.

[Giovanni]

Yes.

[Bald Brian]

Can you rank them in terms of accuracy? How much maybe you enjoyed or responded?

[Giovanni]

Accuracy is a tough one. I would say Lone Survivor, because my initial thought there was, if you want to know what a gunfight in the mountains of Afghanistan looks like, that would be. And what it feels like to have something shoot past you or slam next to you and just be like, where'd that come from?

[Gina Grad]

It was so visceral.

[Giovanni]

It was a great movie. My only complaint about Lone Survivor was the mountains weren't steep enough and you can only. They filmed it in, I want to say, New Mexico, which has some pretty serious mountains, but in the eastern Himalayas, in the Konar province of Western Himalayas, eastern part of Afghanistan is.

[Adam Carolla]

I didn't want to correct you. I was about to dive in.

[Giovanni]

And then what's funny too is I'll get asked about Captain Phillips, which is a good movie. I like it a lot. And they made seals look good, but it's not accurate. It's 70% accurate. Unless I get asked, like at happy hour by some women, I'll say, well, it's 100% accurate. I took all three shots. All depends on where we're at. No, I wasn't one of the shooters there, but they did a good job with that. I like Zero Dark Thirty. I can pick apart tactics all day long. And then American Sniper was really good at depicting the pts that comes with a lot of deployments and how they responded. I wasn't a big fan of the fake baby scene. Do you guys see that part? Yeah, right in the theater.

[Gina Grad]

And it's like that took you out a little bit.

[Giovanni]

Good stuff.

[Bald Brian]

But all good movies, all good moves.

[Gina Grad]

Have you. I'm sorry if you haven't. I didn't already. I don't know. But have you consulted?

[Giovanni]

No, I have not. Not on any of them yet. But there'll be more that comes out, hopefully. I hope so.

[Adam Carolla]

So when you see a modern day, sort of gritty, tough movie about the theaters you were in, you look at those and go, that's pretty close. I mean, that's the way they dress, that's the way they talk, or the way they talk.

[Giovanni]

They had really. They did a really good job in American Sniper, especially with the comedy aspect of SEAL training, when the instructors are yelling at him, just destroying them verbally. But stuff they're saying is really funny when you look back on it. Yes, I had instructors that were like that. They did a good job with that. And again, launch Survivor is more serious than all of them. And then even with, I'm assuming was Zero Dark Thirty, because there was a government agency that found him and there was actually a group of women that found him. And they were spot on, as far as I could tell. As far as how serious, 100%. He's in this place and we know it. We found him. So there. I'm sure each part of every kind of movie has certain parts that are really realistic and some that. But that's not what happened.

[Adam Carolla]

But I feel like. And I have nothing to compare it to, but I Just feel like the old John Wayne movies of yore just didn't accurately depict what life in battle was, let's say, like. And these new ones feel, if anything, I guess, are they even sometimes too gritty? Do they feel like a little overdone, or is that about it?

[Giovanni]

They're pretty good. I mean, there's never the guy running through a house to jump through a window when an explosion almost catches him type stuff. But I think that the John Wayne type movies where everyone was brave and no one's afraid and we'll rush the hill, and that's all nonsense. I don't think people are like that. There is an emotion factor that comes with it. And then there's the not necessarily fighting for whomever is in office at the time. It's fighting for the guy next to you. Yes, we believe in the overall effort, but right now, I'm fighting this house for him.

[Adam Carolla]

I want to. Hey, Gary, look up Audie Murphy. Know Audie Murphy.

[Bald Brian]

Know the name.

[Gina Grad]

I loved him in Raw.

[Adam Carolla]

Audie Murphy.

[Bald Brian]

Well done.

[Giovanni]

See what you did there? That was Eddie Murphy.

[Adam Carolla]

Audie Murphy smells like Eddie Murphy.

[Giovanni]

Audie Murphy is the most highly decorated soldier in the history of combat, I believe, isn't he?

[Adam Carolla]

He's up there and he. So. And he had a big Hollywood career, so he. This is one of the most. One of the most. And then he was received. Hold on. Just go ahead and do your Audie Murphy thing. But. So he's a highly decorated soldier. Then he came back and started doing war movies. And I don't know when he died or what this story was. It's interesting how these. I don't know his name. Audie is his name. Yeah. A, U, D, I, E. And he died in 1971 at age 45. I'm still doing some research as to how damn early. And then we gotta find out did we remember, right? What did he get? What was he decorated with? And then did he do a bunch of war movies as soon as he came home? And then why the hell he died? 41. All right, hold on. I'll tell you about Vault Man Stream, the largest offering of classic series, documentaries and cutting edge specials on history. No commercials. New videos added every week. Series like the Story of Us and Modern Marvels. And hundreds of hours of videos exploring ancient Rome, US Presidents, military history. It's all there. And if you like that, you watch it, man. Watch anytime, anywhere on your favorite device. I have favorite devices, but I don't tell them because I don't want them to get Cocky.

[Bald Brian]

Sure.

[Adam Carolla]

You know what I mean.

[Gina Grad]

Stay humble.

[Adam Carolla]

I like the iPhone the most but I don't want to tell my laptop when start getting soft, start cruising your sense of competition.

[Bald Brian]

You know, keep moving. If your laptop knows your favorites, the other one is not going to try as hard.

[Adam Carolla]

That's why play it close to the vest. Perhaps I've said too much. Watch anytime, anywhere from my favorite device, not yours. Our listeners get an exclusive extra one month free trial. Go to historyvault.com Adam that's historyvault.com Adam all right, Gary, what about Adi and why did he die at 41?

[Bald Brian]

45?

[Adam Carolla]

I'll get there. Oh, in 71. Correct. Born in June of 1925, he enlisted in the US Army. He dropped out of school in the fifth grade to help the family. He was born to a family of sharecroppers and after the attack on Pearl harbor, his older sister helped him falsify documentation with his birthdate to get into the armed services. Turned down by the name Ian Marines. So he enlisted in the Army. Over the course of his career, over the course of World War II, he received every military combat award for valor available from the US army as well as French and Belgian awards for heroism. He also received the Medal of Honor for valor demonstrated at the age of 19 for single handedly holding off an entire company of German soldiers for an hour at the Colmar Pocket in France in January 45, using magic to be fair and then leaving. They were mesmerized. It worked.

[Bald Brian]

Whatever it takes.

[Adam Carolla]

Whatever it took. Yeah. Because he then led a successful counterattack while wounded and out of ammunition. Wow.

[Bald Brian]

Hey. Made it on something.

[Adam Carolla]

I like the idea that you have to start expanding into other countries to take their medals. Like I got everything the US has to offer. I got to move into other Axis powers.

[Bald Brian]

Belgium.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. He did. Then come back after the war and enjoy a 21 year acting career. Played himself in the 19901955 autobiographical film to Hell and Back based on his memoirs. And beyond that, he was largely in westerns after suffering from ptsd, or what would today be called PTSD he suffered in the last few years of his life. Was plagued by money problems, but refused to appear in alcohol and cigarette ads because he wanted to be a good example. And he died in a plane crash in Virginia shortly before his 46th birthday. He was interred with full military honors at Arlington. It's weird. You escape all of that death for so long and then you just die in a plane crash. Such a weird, weird life. God. All right. You're not flying anytime soon?

[Giovanni]

Yeah, I pretty much fly every day.

[Adam Carolla]

I saw your bags backed out.

[Giovanni]

What's unique about it is I don't avoid alcohol and cigarettes, so I'm not too worried about crashing.

[Bald Brian]

Your odds are evened out.

[Adam Carolla]

Shrewd.

[Bald Brian]

Can I ask you a question?

[Giovanni]

Sure.

[Bald Brian]

How long did you have to keep quiet about all this? Where you could write a book, give interviews, that kind of stuff, even talk to families.

[Giovanni]

When we finished the mission, we flew back from bin Laden's house to bases in Afghanistan. Then we left. Later that night, we flew back to Virginia. By the time we got back to Virginia, it had pretty much gotten out that I had done it in the SEAL team, so in Virginia beach and in San Diego. And then it spread up to Washington D.C. i had friends that I had worked in the White House call down and talk about me. So it kind of got out and it was, it wasn't really natural. It wasn't a normal thing because, you know, it was never. I didn't do the mission. You know, the analysts found them, the pilots don't get enough credit for flying there and saving everyone's life. On the first helicopter that crash landed, the people that led the mission up the stairs, the guy that jumped on the suicide bombers, that he thought, you know, I just got the shot. So it wasn't, it wasn't comfortable to be like, hey, look, this guy killed bin Laden. And it never did get that way. I did eventually get out of the Navy and then through some memoir, I did public speaking. Never about bin Laden, just about success and why we were successful. And I was writing my memoir and I submitted it to the Pentagon and they said, and I put the bin Laden stuff in there. They said, yeah, okay, it's good. So this is the first book about, especially that mission by someone on the ground that's been submitted and approved by the agencies involved in the Pentagon. So that's kind of what I. So short answer is five years.

[Adam Carolla]

So let's. I want to walk all the way through the process and the story in the evening and all that, if you don't mind.

[Giovanni]

Don't mind.

[Adam Carolla]

Good. So where are you when you hear that they've. I think they used this carrier and spotted him or found where his compound was. When do you first hear the news and how long from the time you hear that to the time you're getting.

[Gina Grad]

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[Adam Carolla]

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[Gina Grad]

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[Giovanni]

They were tracking his courier who was taking messages from that house to parts of Pakistan to call people for about five years. They didn't tell us till about two weeks before, but they knew about it. They'd been briefing certain people to include the President and different parts of the military. They brought us into a spot now maybe three, three and a half weeks, and told us about a mission, but they didn't tell us what it was and they were being ambiguous about everything. We assumed we were going to go to Libya after Gaddafi because it was the Arab Spring, you know, it was April of 2011, all the uprisings, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, things like that. So we're going to go get Gaddafi. Then just through certain briefings over the next few days, we figured out it was going to be in Pakistan, it had to be bin Laden. And then they took us down to a place in North Carolina to train. And they told us that day, actually, the famous woman came in, the one they called Maya, and she said, the reason you're here is you're as close as you've ever been to Osama bin Laden. And so we prepared for about two and a half weeks, but we knew it was bin Laden. We were going after it for that time.

[Adam Carolla]

So you're doing this in North Carolina? Yeah, they have his compound sort of mocked up there.

[Giovanni]

Yeah, they built up the exterior out of chain link fence and like Conex boxes, the big storage type crates. And it was pretty much the exact exterior, which is good, because you don't want to know what the interior is, because as soon as you get there, it's wrong. Always has been. No one knows what the inside looks like. Just let us go in.

[Adam Carolla]

I'm guessing it was tasteful, whatever it was, but we don't know exact lay of the land.

[Giovanni]

But we were able to train on it with helicopters, come up with the perfect plan, and then as many contingencies as we could, even to include talking about, well, what if the helicopter crashes? So we talked about that stuff, and we worked on that day and night, 10 to 14 hours a day. And then we'd stand around a table, a model of it that was exact, just not to scale. And we would talk about everything. And then, you know, a day with the family, then back out. We went out west. I'm not sure if I said in the book where, but there's a training site out near here. We trained for a few days, and then we went back to Virginia. Another day with our kids. And then we decided we're gonna launch to Afghanistan to wait for the green light from the president. So we waited there, and they told us the Friday before for sure, we're going. We left on Sunday.

[Adam Carolla]

They knew. So they said they'd been kind of tracking him for five years. Why such a long cooldown period between the time they sort of knew where he was to the time they actually acted on it?

[Giovanni]

I don't think they knew he was. They were onto something based on trying. They knew the guy that they found in a certain part of Pakistan was making calls for him, but then tracking him back to that house took a number of years. Yeah.

[Bald Brian]

They never had a visual on him. Right. He never left the house?

[Giovanni]

No, he never left the house. This guy did. And they couldn't find it because he was always using his phone from a moving vehicle. So it's very hard to track, especially in certain parts of Pakistan where If you don't look and sound like you're from there, you're not welcome there. They're going to mess you up. But they eventually tracked him back. They found the house, they started watching, and they noticed one guy walking around inside of the compound. They called him the Pacer. And he was taller than everyone. He was wearing different clothes. And when people were doing the normal tasks like tending the garden or working with the animals, he would walk past them, maybe stop and say something. But he never stopped to help someone important. He's never leaving the house. And he comes out this entrance, goes back up, and then they start looking at it closer with people on the ground. Certain walls are certain heights. You can't see in, you can't see out. They always burn their trash. Something's going on. And, you know, very smart people figured it out. The best people that the agency had.

[Adam Carolla]

Were figured out how central to wherever anything was happening was this compound. Like you heard, I guess we heard about sort of hiding in plain sight. But how remote was it or how central was it? How much was going on around it?

[Giovanni]

It was in a fairly remote part of, of a resort type city, as much as a resort you can get in Pakistan. It was near a golf course. The.

[Bald Brian]

The Palm Springs of Pakistan.

[Giovanni]

Exactly right. The, their version of West Point was, was a mile away. And it was at the end of a road that dead end. So it's not like just through traffic, but houses were being built up around it the whole way. There's a neighborhood around it. And, you know, by the time we got there, it was pretty built up. It was. There was even a guy outside as we were leaving who was outside with his phone tweeting. Why is the. We saw him. I saw him. He was that famous dude. If you look it up. He was tweeting, why would the military be running exercises on a Sunday night?

[Adam Carolla]

And so what percentage of the neighborhood, if any, suspected or knew he was in there?

[Giovanni]

I wouldn't guess the neighborhood necessarily did, but the Pakistan Intelligence Service definitely did. They probably put him there.

[Adam Carolla]

So they were in on it. They knew about it.

[Giovanni]

Certain parts of it were. I'm not saying necessarily the Pakistan military was, but the intelligence services definitely knew he was there. And they have a vested interest in keeping Al Qaeda a little bit at bay because they're not their friends necessarily, but they don't want Al Qaeda attacking them. So if they turn over bin Laden, maybe they attack them. And. But I mean, we knew without a doubt that if we tell the Pakistanis, we're coming in, and we're going to do a joint effort. He wouldn't have been there. They would have taken him out. He would have. I mean, not taken him out. They would have removed him from there, Right? Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Too bad. It's funny because you hear about all the leaks coming from the White House all the time, every day, and you realize these guys didn't leak anything.

[Giovanni]

I don't think anybody knew, but the.

[Adam Carolla]

Intelligence, the Pakistani intelligence knew, right? Oh, as far as that, I mean, they weren't leaking. You'd think there'd just be a weird rogue. Someone would get drunk, you would like.

[Giovanni]

To say something for money because what was our $50 million reward on his head?

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, I mean, like, what do you. We can't assign a number to it, but were we talking about dozens of people that knew and just would never said a word for all these years? I mean, it seems. It's like if somebody knew who. If somebody knew who killed Nicole Brown Simpson and it wasn't O.J. like, wouldn't you. That guy get drunk and talk or say something at somebody? This is how I know there's no other. There's no other killer because that guy would have said something to some hooker he was banging when he was drunk.

[Bald Brian]

I've seen Shawshank Redemption. I know how it works.

[Adam Carolla]

You know how it works. I'm surprised that these group of people is able to sit on this forever with, again, the huge $50 million reward.

[Giovanni]

It just, I mean, it just tells you where the. I mean, it worked with the Hussein's sons, Uday and Koussay. Their uncle figured out, you know, 20, 25 million a pop, and they're in the same house. I know where they are. I'm. I'm going to. I'm going to show someone. My ass is moving to Dearborn in a mansion.

[Adam Carolla]

So is that where he's living?

[Giovanni]

I think so. I'm assuming so.

[Adam Carolla]

Another country, as a great Yakov Smirnoff once said. So you, you, you know, you, you simulate the compound. There's two choppers. You're in chopper one. Or two.

[Giovanni]

I was in two.

[Adam Carolla]

And one's job is to do what? And two's job is to do what?

[Giovanni]

The first one's job was to hover in between Bin Laden's house and the guest house, which is in the front yard, and put everybody out on fast ropes, which, when they hover, snipers protect them on both sides. And then the guy's fast rope down and the snipers come down. Then it leaves. We Were going to land outside, put other snipers down and the dog and the dog handler and then an interpreter and put our team on the rooftop of the main house, if that makes sense, so that we can have an assault team going down while another one comes up and you can kind of pinch them in there.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Giovanni]

That was the perfect plan. That lasted for about three seconds. The first one crashed. Nobody, we didn't know it. The pilot knew it. So he just dropped us all off outside. So then we had to start on the way in. But we knew what to do. We knew what was going on. We just didn't know. The helicopter crashed. I didn't know until I got inside.

[Adam Carolla]

The house what caused the helicopter crash.

[Giovanni]

The pilot told me, and I'm not a pilot, but he said there was some sort of aeriolus effect, meaning an updraft, that it couldn't hold a hover because I think it was. The weather was warmer than we thought, so the air was thinner and it couldn't quite cut it. And the air off of the fence, because we were training on chain link fences and these were mud and it just had a different effect. And the pilot actually said if a lot of inexperienced, less experienced, and he was the best in the world, fortunately, would have tried to power up and make a racetrack, but he knew if he did that, he'd flip it and kill everybody for sure. So he just put it down. He actually didn't crash it. He landed it, but he just pinned it against the wall and the ground so it could stick. And that's why it didn't roll, really. And you make that decision in less than a snap of a finger.

[Adam Carolla]

Right. So he's a good. Less experience would have said, I'm dropping full throttle, let's go up and get out of here. But it would have rolled.

[Giovanni]

That's what he said to me. And I could be wrong, but that's what the best pilot in the world explained to me.

[Adam Carolla]

So now you're outside.

[Giovanni]

Yes.

[Adam Carolla]

And how many guys are inside? How many guys are outside?

[Giovanni]

I want to say we had 13 and they had 12. Is that right? No, 11 and 12.

[Adam Carolla]

11 and 12.

[Giovanni]

11. We had 12 and a dog.

[Adam Carolla]

And how now you got to get from outside to inside?

[Giovanni]

Yeah. So we knew just because the pilot landed us, because he did go to take us to the top and he saw the other helicopter go down, so he just brought us back. So we just.

[Adam Carolla]

Now was the dog a comfort dog? Because one of the folks were scared to fly in the chapter.

[Giovanni]

We were very concerned about microaggressions when we got there. So we didn't. We didn't want them to kill us with that or magic or a macro aggression there. Shoot him at this point, that's a macro aggression. He was there for his nose. If somebody ran, he could chase him, he could find him with his nose. So his job was initially to get there and do a loop around the whole thing to make sure nobody could leave. And then once they put us down on the outside, we just knew where there were entrances. So we went to put bombs on. The closest one was on the northeast corner. So we went up to that thing, put a huge bomb on it. It blew up and it opened like a tin can into a brick wall. Like it was a wall. It was a fake door. And that's when it starts to click. It's like, wait a minute, this is a fake door. There's someone inside. He's in here.

[Adam Carolla]

Right. So.

[Giovanni]

But now we have to find a new door. Cause that didn't work.

[Adam Carolla]

Right. So they mocked up basically a door like Wile E. Coyote would use.

[Giovanni]

We were actually joking about that. Like in the bin Laden house, going down a hallway, it gets smaller and smaller and then you're just like bin Laden.

[Gina Grad]

It's painted on.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. So. But yeah, that had to. I mean, at the time, you could have thought, well, maybe some weird, eccentric, you know, maybe the version of Phil Spector was living there, like just some sort of weirdo rich guy who, you know, never left his house and was tall or whatever it is. But when you see the fake door.

[Bald Brian]

Play with guns, gold records everywhere with.

[Adam Carolla]

The brick behind it, you know, this is somebody.

[Giovanni]

Yeah. They didn't just accidentally find this house of someone who happens to be just a freaking nuts. At that point. We knew it was going to be probably, you know, top five Al Qaeda.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Giovanni]

But still, it's been lied.

[Adam Carolla]

We don't know it's been lied. So now how do you. How do you breach it? How do you get it?

[Giovanni]

Well, we knew there was another door. It would have been to our right, and it was a carport and we'd seen it open.

[Adam Carolla]

What time is this?

[Giovanni]

Probably about 2:00am local time.

[Adam Carolla]

And how much ambient light is there?

[Giovanni]

There was zero percent illumination. That's why we went on that day. There was no moon, so.

[Adam Carolla]

And that's in your.

[Giovanni]

That was part of the reason we launched then if we didn't get it that night, we skipped Saturday. There was two nights of zero percent illumination. We skipped Saturday because of the correspondence dinner in Washington because if we launched that and all of a sudden the cabinet gets up and leaves all the presses there, what's going on? They're gonna start digging. So we launched on Sunday and that was. If we didn't get that, then it would have been wait 30 days.

[Adam Carolla]

So you make your way to the right. You're wearing the night vision.

[Giovanni]

And we didn't know the other guys were inside. We thought they had flown off. And so we announced to them that we were going to blow the carport. And they said, no, we'll just open it. And the door opened and thumbs up came out. And that's a point where I'm a big believer that if something happens, you don't need to worry about why it just happened. We need to do something else. We'll talk about why it happened later. I didn't know why the guys were in there, but they're in there. Doesn't matter. They're there. I don't care. So we went in and we're just kind of. I remember looking up at Bin Laden's house, My guys are already in there, there's already gunfights going on. And just thinking, wow, this is cool. This has been Laden's house, man. We're probably going to die tonight, but I'm going to take this in. This is historic.

[Adam Carolla]

So what you say, thumbs up. Do you guys have a signal or a call or something? Because in the chaos.

[Giovanni]

Well, that would have been that. It's making calls and yelling makes the chaos more chaotic. Just a thumb coming. When you're watching movies and stuff and you hear that one jackass just yelling, go, go, go. It's like, calm down, we're going. We're all going to go. Everyone take a wrap up. Stop yelling at me. But yeah, the thumb came out. It means we're good. And then so we just. I knew that part of my team's job was to go into Bin Laden's house. So I knew it was to the left. Going to go to the left. And then we're at the bottom floor and I'm watching and I was very fortunate to have not gone to the rooftop because now I have a front row seat to the greatest mission that ever happened. I'm in the back watching. I'm not doing much. I'm just chilling out, watching guys do their job. You know, the way they're breaking indoors, going from mechanical breaching to explosive breaching, moving people around, and then they got to the end of the bottom floor where they're trying to breach a door. That's barricaded. That we know goes to a set of stairs, and so we know we want to get up. Bin Laden's probably in this house.

[Adam Carolla]

How do you know it goes to a set of stairs?

[Giovanni]

It's got to. It's a three story house, and we've already cleared the entire bottom floor, so.

[Adam Carolla]

There'S no other door to open. And this one has to lead. And it's the most fortified.

[Giovanni]

Yes. And that's when, again, it starts. Okay, why would this be barricaded? And we just. On the bottom floor, one of the guys killed the courier, and his wife jumped on top, and she was killed. And one of my guys was worried. He's like, well, she just. She became a human shield. And it's like, don't sweat it. She's a martyr. Like, this is again, another sign. This is something biggest here. They're trying to martyr themselves.

[Adam Carolla]

She jumped on.

[Giovanni]

She tried to jump in front of him in the gunfight to block the bullets.

[Adam Carolla]

I don't feel like my wife would ever, ever do that. She'll give my son, like, the rest of one of my sandwiches going, he's hungry. But what about me? Forget about.

[Bald Brian]

Maybe seals come into your house and wow.

[Adam Carolla]

I have to really rethink my relationship. All right, I'm gonna take a quick break here. Perfect time for a read I'm gonna tell you about the smart mouth man. Dual solution oral rinse only. Activated mouthwash, clinically proven to instantly eliminate bad breath and prevent it from coming back for 12 full hours. Zinc ion technology binds to bacteria, forcing it to stop producing sulfur gas. Nothing ruins an intimate moment as quickly as a stinky breath. Even if you're going on a raid you don't know, you might meet the right gal. And over at, maybe meet like a. You know, maybe she's just a temporary sous chef or something over at Bin Lan's joint. And she's a nice gal. You want that fresh breath? Foul breath can ruin.

[Gina Grad]

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[Adam Carolla]

Code [e-mail] Social Situations Sabotage Relationships and career prospects. Let's not do it smart mouth. Dr. Drew loves this stuff because it's good technology. He loves the technology, the zinc ion technology. So visit smartmouth.com or find it at Walmart, Target, Walgreens, CVS, wherever you shop. Let's be smart. Let's get ourselves some smart mouth. All right, so, Robert, now we're in the compound and we're in the three story home that's within the walls of the compound. They breach every door and there's one left. It's heavily fortified. How many folks would you say you came up against on the first floor and on the premises?

[Giovanni]

The people that were trying to fight us were two guys. So two guys had their guns up. One got a full, I think, 30 rounds out of his magazine, shot through the door. He missed and he was eliminated by some of the guys. This is in the guest house. The guy on the bottom, I don't know if he got a shot off, but he definitely raised a weapon. And one of my guys from outside shot through the window and killed him. And that's the one that had the wife jump, try to jump in front of him during that fight. Other than that, there was probably between 15 and 20 women and children. And that's just a part of separating them, putting them in one spot, like leaving a person on them because they're not a threat really. They can be, but they're generally not. And then we're just looking down the hallway to a door that's barricaded and there's already two guys down there working on that problem. So they're going through their systems just, you know, they eventually got some explosives on it. And then the door opened and then we found the stairwell. It's right inside that door that opened.

[Adam Carolla]

So at this point, you know, Bin Laden is probably here.

[Giovanni]

Yes.

[Adam Carolla]

And obviously he's now awake. And are you thinking what is he thinking? Or are you thinking does he have some sort of jet pod or something to escape? Or is he taped TNT to himself?

[Giovanni]

That was the most likely. Even in the rooms that I would go in, I would look around the ceiling to see if there was any explosives that were hanging from the ceiling, because that's the best way to bring a house down if you're going to demolish it. And that's a tactic a lot of guys would use. In this spot was a improvised Explosive device in a house and, you know, an hpid, and there weren't any. So we assumed the suicide bombers are gonna be on the stairwell and then in the bedroom, and he's gonna have a vest on, too.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, that's the part that really ups the ante, because if you're going after, you know, the drug kingpin in Central America, that guy just wants to live so he can long enough to see his kids and bang another hooker at some point and doesn't really, you know, if he goes to prison, it'll be a prison that he bu bringing in professional soccer players to hang out with and do coke and stuff like, that guy wants to live. So when you're rating that guy's compound, that's gotta be a totally different thing than rating a compound of a guy who you assume is gonna go out a martyr.

[Giovanni]

Yeah, being a martyr, they definitely. That is one thing they want to do. But there's also a very interesting part of it that someone at, like, bin Laden's level or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's level, as they believe, and I'm not making this up, that the more people, they only get one life to give to Allah, but if they can give more lives, like, if they can convince people to kill themselves, they get, like, a little piece of it. So maybe he was thinking, if I get captured, I can be on trial in New York for 10 years and just bring the jihad that way and encourage people to do it. I was assuming he's going to blow himself up, but I wanted to get up there to see it. I wanted to make sure we got him, and I know it's him. And we had accepted death on this mission anyway. I just want to make sure that it's him. So we're going up the stairs. And we also knew that we'd run into his son on the stairwell, which is. The analyst from the CIA told us that we would run into Khalid bin Laden. She said, I don't know where the stairs are, but when you find him somewhere between the first and third floor, Khalid will be on the stairs, and he will be armed, and he's his last line of defense. And if you get rid of him, the big guy's next. So we kind of went up the stairs.

[Adam Carolla]

How do you think she got that intel?

[Giovanni]

I have no idea. She was one of the best in the world, but she knew he'd be there, and she turned out to be 100% right on every single person in the house.

[Bald Brian]

Is this the Jessica Chastain character, essentially from the Movie. Sorry, that's our point of reference.

[Giovanni]

No, that's right. Exactly. Who they made the movie about?

[Adam Carolla]

Minus the £80, but. Yeah, but other than that. The triple chin. But she knew. She knew. Yeah. Like raying around the roots. But yeah.

[Giovanni]

I mean, the skin can understood the thoughts of the house coming down on us blowing up. That was what kind of made it really cool, was nobody was afraid in the house. I was watching my guys just. I remember being proud of them and how cool they were. And, like, it doesn't. No one's hesitating. Everyone's doing their job. Exactly. And the way I describe it is, slow is smooth, smooth is fast. That's what the guys are doing. And I watched them do it. And we got to that stairwell, I was like seven guys back in the line going up. And we saw Khalid. And he sort of jumped behind some cover, like a banister. And he was armed. And it was quiet and dark. And normally, you know, I would have taken some guys back because if he throws a grenade, you don't want to fight up, because if they throw stuff down, it's bad. But I remember being there thinking, I have to watch this. I need to see how there's two grown men separated by 10 inches that want to murder each other. I got to see what happens. And the point man, just as cool as ever. He whispered, khalid, come here. Khalid, come here. In two different languages that he knew. Khalid knew. And Khalid came around the corner and he said, what?

[Adam Carolla]

Wow.

[Giovanni]

That was it.

[Adam Carolla]

And he shot him.

[Giovanni]

He got him in the face. The guy was still armed, so he's a threat, but he just little trickery. I didn't know how he was. I wouldn't have thought of that. But I was like, man, this guy's either a great seal or a great criminal or both. Because that was some tactics right there. That's like Jedi stuff.

[Adam Carolla]

Do you think Khalid. Well, first off, I guess it's now two something in the morning, Sunday night. This guy's probably watched football down a few, had a few Pizza Hut. They probably had a few brewskis and they're passed out. You know, when I'm like, Sunday night, especially during football season at 2am I am. I don't know where I am.

[Bald Brian]

There is no deeper sleep.

[Adam Carolla]

Was he. Do you think he thought, well, now I'm going to die? Or do you think Khalid thought, I know somebody. This has got to be familiar. I think what happened, as the inside.

[Giovanni]

Man or something, I have to assume what happened is our tactics were so good. We were so quiet. No one's yelling in English, no one's saying a word that they don't know who it is. I mean, it could be anybody.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Giovanni]

Maybe it's the Pakistanis coming to move us.

[Adam Carolla]

Right, Right.

[Giovanni]

So who knows? I mean, there was gunfire, but I mean there's gunfire a lot in a lot of those places.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Giovanni]

And so he confused him and that was it. And then at that point, you know.

[Adam Carolla]

So now Khalid's gone and we've confirmed that it's Khalid visually. So you're looking at pictures.

[Giovanni]

No, as we stepped over and we're looking at them.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, I know, but before that you looked at pictures and so you go, that's him, that's him.

[Giovanni]

Now Bin Laden's up here.

[Adam Carolla]

Now, since everything that all the intel you got from the Zero dark thirty gal has been right up until this point, you're assuming whatever happens after this point is going to be correct as well.

[Giovanni]

Yeah, I mean, I was convinced he was there anyway before we went just because of her. I was convinced he's on the third floor of this house. There was no doubt in my mind. And it's easy to say now because he was. But she was very convincing. She was very good at what she did.

[Adam Carolla]

And so you're also worried about blowing up the building, him being a martyr, suicide vest. But you figure there's not a lot between you and him at this point.

[Giovanni]

Right. And that's. So we, after we got Khalid and again I was like seven, eight guys back. That was in between the first and second floor. We got to the second floor and that's when everyone went to the left and right because you need to clear the unknown spaces. They went to clear the rooms on the left and right of the second floor. And that's when I became the number two man behind the pointman.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Giovanni]

So now we're looking up the last set of stairs and there's a curtain at the top of it. And it was like acting as a door.

[Adam Carolla]

Is there any light on inside?

[Giovanni]

Nothing. Zero light, Nothing.

[Adam Carolla]

But you're wearing the.

[Giovanni]

We have night vision so we can see. And now, because we know that it's bin Laden and we know he thinks something bad is happening, we're assuming they're putting on suicide vests. Behind the curtain we can see. And that's when the point man, he didn't know it was me, but started talking to the guy behind him because I had positive control of his shoulder just to let him know he's got guys. And when I squeeze, it means we have enough. That's again, communication without talking, right? So he just started talking though. He's like, hey, we got to get up there now. Because he thinks we can beat him to the vest. Like, if we can get up there and kill the suicide bombers before they clack, we might live, right? And so he kept saying, he was so convincing that. And I just didn't have enough guys. It was just him and me at this point. But then I remember I don't know what he was thinking because he's just a bad dude. But for me, it wasn't bravery. It was like, yeah, we got to get this over with. I'm really tired of thinking about blowing up, so I'm just gonna go find out. So I squeezed him and he went up the stairs through a curtain. And there were people that turned out to be women, but he didn't know right away. He just assumed they were suicide bombers. So he grabbed them and tackled them down the hallway to absorb it. Like when they blew up, which is amazing. He jumped on a grenade that didn't go off. And because he went that way, I turned to the right and then three feet in front of me is Bin Laden standing there. He's got his hands on his wife's shoulder and he's sort of pushing her towards me. And so I saw him, positive id, and the way that my thought process went was he's taller than I thought, he's skinnier, he looks older, his beard is short, it's gray, that's his nose, that's him. He's not surrendering. He's a suicide bomber. I got to kill him. So I shot him twice as he was standing up and one more on the ground. And then so he's done. And then his wife was right there. I pushed her over to the bed. He died at the foot of his bed. I pushed her over to the bed. His three year old son was standing there. And I remember as a father, like just thinking, you know, this poor kid's got nothing to do with this. It's a shame he has to see this. And picked him up, put him down. And that's when other seals are coming in the room and they're clearing. And then I was sort of standing there and a guy came up to me and he goes, hey man, are you good? And I said, yeah, what are we supposed to do now? And he laughed and he goes, well, now we find the computers, bro, we've done this hundreds of times. And I said, ah, you're right, I'm back And he said, yeah, you just killed bin Laden, man. Your life just changed. I was like, wow.

[Adam Carolla]

Was wow all. God, I felt like I was there. Is. Is so.

[Gina Grad]

But you, like, you worked on a. You did some podcasts today, and I think you worked on the car a little bit. So you guys are basically even kind.

[Giovanni]

Of the same thing. Same day, it was dark in the garage.

[Adam Carolla]

I paid a guy to work on my car. But yeah.

[Bald Brian]

Is it possible? Can you satisfy my curiosity? Because one of the best. And again, the point of reference for all of us, you know, mortals is the movie Zero Dark Thirty. There's that great moment to cut the tension. Just. It pricked the balloon just enough when you. I see your character and the other Navy SEAL are going up the stairs, and the one guy, you know, it's a white knuckle at this point because, you know, you know, bin Laden's next. And all of a sudden someone, I assume either you or someone says Osama.

[Giovanni]

Yeah, but see, no, see, we said Khalid.

[Bald Brian]

I know. I didn't know if it got kind of transposed.

[Giovanni]

The people that helped with the movie, I think they were seals and they kind of let their imagination roll.

[Bald Brian]

It's definitely very dramatic on the screen, I will say.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

[Giovanni]

Oh, no, it was. It was. But no, it was never. I didn't whisper it and I didn't hear it be whispered. And nobody from the mission helped with the movie. Good movie again. But the way it went down was so fast.

[Bald Brian]

Sure.

[Giovanni]

I didn't get to say anything.

[Adam Carolla]

What was. I'm curious. Yeah, so it's like when you have these impressions of somebody, but it's like when you see a celebrity in real life, that guy's taller or older or better looking or younger, whatever it is. You have these, like, you had that with a skinny.

[Giovanni]

Yeah, sorry.

[Adam Carolla]

I'm sorry. Yeah, you had that, but taller, skinnier, older, like all in a millisecond, in the dark, pretty much.

[Giovanni]

The one that stood out was the skinny and older because you see him on TV with the darker beard and it's full beard and he looks kind of like a young. Just tall, skinny, old.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, well, so now that's about him. But like when you enter these things, all your senses are going and they're going. They're all at 10. And so there's smells and, and, and other visual things that you pick up. I'm curious. I'll, I'll tease it a little bit. What did you pick up? Just being there. Like, this guy sleeps a lot. This guy's a slob. This guy loves porno. This guy loves curry. You know what I mean? Like, when you walk into somebody, it's like, you know, you ever. You ever. You ever borrow someone's car? The second you get in their car, you're like, oh, man. What radio station?

[Giovanni]

Oh, he smokes.

[Adam Carolla]

This guy smokes. Oh, the air freshener. Oh, he's a Gatorade guy. Oh. Who drinks his brand of Gatorade. Why would he drink that? Like, you immediately just start all like they tell us. Like, oh, you can't judge and you can't profile. Jump into someone else's truck and borrow it. I did it today. I went on a lumber run today and I jumped in a guy's truck, and all I did was profile. Like, why would you wear sheets so far back? She's not that tall. Why is it tilted back? That's not good for your pocket.

[Bald Brian]

A lot about a guy from his compound and. Or the way he keeps his car.

[Adam Carolla]

Just the radio station it's on and everything else. So I'm just teasing that because I want to know. You must have had a flood of that when you entered his initial area.

[Giovanni]

Initially, it was. I was surprised at how much it looked like a house in Iraq. It looked the same. They slept the same, people on the floor, families together on beds on the floor. But after I was done, what impressed me was how organized he was as far as running Al Qaeda because he had three business centers downstairs. Computers, towers, thumb drives, hard drives, all kinds of stuff going on. And then the just copious amounts of opium that were in there.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, really?

[Giovanni]

They're in these huge C bags, like the duffel bags? Yeah. And we opened them and at first I thought they were.

[Adam Carolla]

Sorry, go ahead. I was gonna.

[Gina Grad]

I got it.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. Cheese feet. It's a joke, but good name for Cheese V. See you back.

[Giovanni]

I thought they were vacuum sealed ribeye steaks. When I first looked at them, my initial thought was, wow, they're in it for the long haul. They got steaks here. They can cook. Then I started looking, and it's raw opium. And then you start to think, okay, they're not smoking this or whatever. They're funding Al Qaeda with this. So they have this computer set up all the propaganda. You can see where he'd watch stuff and they're sending out mess. Even the porn that we found, there was embedded missions on the porn. So they're not in there for the.

[Bald Brian]

You can write it off that way.

[Giovanni]

Yeah, well, yeah, it's obvious.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

[Giovanni]

The tax implications is. He is I.R.S.

[Adam Carolla]

He'S working. He's not hiding. He's working.

[Giovanni]

He's running it.

[Adam Carolla]

He's running out of.

[Giovanni]

And they're a lot more organized than people realize. And they're not done either.

[Adam Carolla]

Interesting. All right, hold that thought for a second. So much to get to. First I'll tell you about Simply Safe. Ah, you take precautions every day. You have your phone in a case, Identity theft protection. I have my son on a lower floor in case there's trouble.

[Bald Brian]

Smart be the first point of contact.

[Adam Carolla]

Unfortunately I'm a single floor house, so he's down in the crawl space, but he gets a good night's sleep. Simply safe. No hassles. You just order it online. Completely wireless, comes in a pre programmed package right out of the box. You plug it in, it'll walk and talk you right through it. Install it yourself in under an hour. No activation fees, no holes in the walls to expose wires, no pulling, no mess around the clock. Professional monitoring with Emergency dispatch only. 1499 with no long term lock in contract. So what do you do? Go to Simply S I M P L I. SimpliSafe Adam.com. get the 10% off when you order today. That's SimpliSafeAdam.com for 10% off your home security system. SimplySafe Adam.com get the 10% off. All right, so Robert, now I love this story. My God, I'm so into this. So you're now Bin Laden's dead and you must have this sort of surreal dreamlike feeling. And then training kicks in and it's back to reality and now it's time to start getting computers and getting.

[Giovanni]

Well now it sinks in that we wanted 34 minutes on the ground, how much time we've been on here. Let's get as much as we can.

[Bald Brian]

Robin, a bank. I wanted the cops.

[Giovanni]

Well, seriously. But now it's because before it was all right, you want to take it in, absorb it, it's historic. We're going to die now. It's like, hey, we can live. Let's get our stuff and get out of here.

[Adam Carolla]

So 34 minutes is what you had. A lot.

[Giovanni]

That's what we want. Well, initially because of the first two helicopters, that much fuel could get us in and out, we thought. But now because of some of the stuff that we did, we had other helicopters with extra fuel in certain spots on different mountains. But we want to get off the ground because we're not worried about the Pakistan military. But we don't want to kill a bunch of Pakistan police because that turns international incident. You know, we can do it, but we don't want to.

[Gina Grad]

What time are you at?

[Giovanni]

By now, I would say probably right around 15 or 16 minutes. And so we. But there was so much stuff there that we wanted to get as much as we could and we ended up getting a treasure trove. We got so much, so much out of there and we ended up killing. Not us, but the US military killed a lot more high value guys because of what we found in that house. But you know, we needed. We're trying to get the positive identification from the people on target. Trying to get a little DNA to confirm because we want to tell our superiors, hey, it's him. Just in case something happens, we get surrounded, we can tell the. Eventually, maybe through negotiations. Look, we told you if we found him, we're coming to get him. So chill out, everybody. You know, we don't know, but we're trying to make sure we're covering all the bases. And we need another helicopter to come in because we need to blow up the other one. Even though the pilot said he thinks he can fly it out, we're not taking a chance. Like, you had one shot at this. You crashed. I'm kidding. So you clear?

[Adam Carolla]

You have to destroy the copter.

[Giovanni]

That's the J in the front yard.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, it's like when a horse breaks its leg or something like that. It's a lie, but you got to put it down. You have to put it down. Why?

[Giovanni]

We wanted to try to get rid of it so they couldn't find any technology. If we couldn't fly it out, we can't leave the entire helicopter there. And we did a pretty good job. Except a part of the tail fell over the wall. That's the part that the Pakistanis got and inevitably sold to our dear friends at Chinese.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, really? So that's why.

[Gina Grad]

Previously owned.

[Adam Carolla]

So you have to throw the explosive satchel in there and just blow it. Yeah.

[Giovanni]

We had two of our bomb guys go out there and they just. In the interior, they put certain bombs in certain places, thermobaric type stuff, just to blow it, try to burn it, incinerate it.

[Adam Carolla]

And so I never even really thought about that. It's one of those parts of movies that they never seem to cover the cleanup. They scuttle ships all the time, but they don't.

[Bald Brian]

They did it in Blackhawk down when they got the helicopter. They tossed a couple grenades in there, downed helicopter, and they.

[Adam Carolla]

I never thought about it from a technology standpoint or a sharing of technology. But so we know the one is damaged, and maybe it'll fly out, maybe it won't. But we're not gonna make that decision. We're just gonna blow in place. We have other helicopters that can come get us. Who has identified. I mean, you visually identified Osama bin Laden, but who. How's the DNA work?

[Giovanni]

We had a guy on the mission that even. Because we had already sort of drawn down as special operators from Iraq, and for some reason, this guy decided he wanted to keep learning Arabic, and everyone made fun of him for doing it, but because he taught himself Arabic, when we flew over, we picked him up and grabbed him. So he got on the bin Laden mission having not even been on our team, which is pretty cool. So he ended up talking to some of the daughters and the wife and was asking about him. And they finally admitted to him. They said, yeah, that's him. That's Sheikh Osama is what they said. So that was confirmed there. And then with the pictures that we sent that we do have that the conspiracy theorists will eventually see whenever some politician decides it's important enough to get reelected, to show people the pictures. But we did have them. And that's when we gave the Geronimo call to our bosses to let the President know that we got him. And now we're going to bring him out.

[Adam Carolla]

So do you have a body bag with you?

[Giovanni]

Yeah, we put him in the body bag, and four of us carried him out.

[Adam Carolla]

And so you and three other guys.

[Giovanni]

Myself and three other guys, yeah, we carried him down. We put him out in front of the. It was interesting, too, because we put him. The guy. The sniper outside is the guy we put him next to, and he was the sniper that initiated the fire on the pirates to rescue Richard Phillips. So it's like, here's a guy here, and he's. Oh, by the way, he's on this one, too. It's like, small world.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

[Giovanni]

But we brought him out and said, hey, here's your guy. He's like, you're kidding me. Like, no. He's like, let's get out of here. So that was kind of how that went down. And then we put. We split up. We put the body on one helicopter, and then we took the DNA and the rest of the guys on the other helicopter and we flew out.

[Adam Carolla]

Right. In case something got hit or One gun.

[Giovanni]

Yeah, the redundancy. Cause now my team's not in a. Have the stealth technology. It's a school bus flying out. So we have 90 minutes to fly out. And they know we're there. And a surface to air missile, especially from someone like Pakistan, is designed for a jet and she goes after a helicopter. You're done. Right, so now we have 90 minutes to think about that as we try to get to Afghanistan.

[Gina Grad]

How many people were left in the house and what happened to them?

[Giovanni]

All of them, maybe. I don't know the number. It's available somewhere, 20 something.

[Gina Grad]

And were they still no concern at all.

[Giovanni]

We just left them. And we knew the, we knew Pakistan would be there soon enough, which they were. And they kind of rounded them up and then interrogated them and tried to find out what we knew. Didn't we tell you not to tell the Americans about this?

[Adam Carolla]

So are you leaving with hard drives, computers, everything?

[Giovanni]

Everything we could find? Everything because we would. Yeah, find everything. Hard drives, electronics, everything we had in bags. And now we have it all and we're flying out with it. Stuff we could fit in our pockets. I had a hell of a time carrying that sea bag full of opium out.

[Adam Carolla]

And are you at the time, you don't know what's on the hard drives or anything?

[Giovanni]

No, we're just trying to get it. We know someone smarter than us will get to it.

[Adam Carolla]

But does someone smarter than you share what's on that at some point?

[Giovanni]

A lot of it's available now. They've released a lot of it.

[Bald Brian]

But with you, like did you. Do you have to wait for the rest of the public?

[Giovanni]

Oh yeah, yeah, we had to wait for them to go through because as soon as we got back we turned it over to the law enforcement intelligence types.

[Bald Brian]

But do you have to wait till we all find out about it for.

[Giovanni]

You to find out or do you.

[Adam Carolla]

Get a little bit of it?

[Giovanni]

No, we probably would if it's something that would had to do with our team in a specific place where we could be sent and they would tell us. But a lot of it, they, you know, the whole need to know thing is just because, I mean it's not that it's too secret. People really don't need to because it's not going to affect.

[Adam Carolla]

All right, a million more questions to go. We need to take a quick break. The book the operator firing the shots that killed Osama bin Laden and my years as a SEAL team leader. Available right now on Amazon. Robert o' Neill is here. Take a quick break. Be right back after this. All right, now we're back. Robert o' Neill here. I love all these stories. We had a couple people on hold for a million years. So I just want to Blast through them. And then we'll get right back to my question. Is going to be Al Qaeda and where they are now, what's isis? What the hell's the difference between ISIS and Al Qaeda and what's going on in the world right now? But first I'll talk to John, 32, from San Pedro, California. John, hey, get it on, ace, man. Get it on, man. Mr. Bald, Ms. Gina, Mr. O' Neill. Thank you for your service, sir.

[Giovanni]

You're welcome. Thank you.

[Bald Brian]

My pleasure.

[Adam Carolla]

You're no, sir.

[Giovanni]

Bald. Brian.

[Adam Carolla]

What'S going on? You know, just with all the congress stuff, man, you hitting it out of the ballpark, the documentaries, the racing, the race cars, your family, you know, we all strive to do your best. I just wanted to know when was the last time that you thought you didn't do your best? I do think about this because I try to put myself, I don't know if you guys ever do this, but I deal with 29 year old dudes or 25 year old dudes and I end up saying, what the hell were you thinking, man? Come on, how's this going to work? Or what do you think was going to happen? Or how did you think this was going to work out? Then I realized I could remember really specifically when I was installing closets and I was like 27, and I was putting up some like aluminum track for the sliding doors in front of the closet. And I cut it a little long and I started to kind of try to push it up and I sort of like take a block and whack on it and start to get bent up. And I kind of like straightened it and I whacked it up again. But it was like a horrible job. And I got back to the shop and my boss was like, the owner's on the phone, the track looks like shit, what did you do? And I remember kind of thinking, yeah, how did I think this was gonna go down? Like, I knew this was gonna look bad. I knew they were gonna call. I knew it looks like hell, like you can't avoid it. And I remember thinking, that's how I was wired when I was 27. But I don't know why I left the person's house not thinking they would come home and go, this looks like crap. What are we doing? I paid good money for this. You have to come back and fix it. And my boss was kind of looking at me going, it looks like crap. Like, why'd you just leave? And I remember just kind of thinking going, I don't know, I don't know. I'm 27. That's where I'm. That's as far as I can get. So every once in a while. So that's the last time I screwed up. But no, no, I do sometimes when I'm looking at people, especially younger people, and I'm going, what were you thinking? Like, how do you think this was gonna go? Like, why'd you think this was good? Didn't you think I was gonna come home and see this and go, what's going on? Like, this looks like crap. You need to fix it. And they just go. So I don't know. I don't know. I think to myself, that's what I was thinking when I was 27, when I was leaving this guy's house with this bent up aluminum track that they paid good money for. So I get that something like congress, I could have screwed up because I didn't prepare. So I didn't do my best. But it ended up turning out okay.

[Bald Brian]

You did your good enough.

[Adam Carolla]

I did my good enough. No, it was not preparing, but it turned out good anyway. So that little bullet dies.

[Bald Brian]

Wasn't there a race not so long ago where you didn't. You didn't. I almost said rehearse. You didn't run, like the trial run and like you sheared a something or something came off or something. Yeah, I'm just trying to think.

[Adam Carolla]

I had knee surgery and I said, I'm doing a race the next day, and I ended up hitting a concrete barrier. That's good.

[Bald Brian]

I feel like Robert gained a lot of mileage out of Adam has a catchphrase. Don't do your best.

[Giovanni]

Do my best, do my best.

[Bald Brian]

I feel like Robert got a lot of mileage out.

[Giovanni]

One of the things I was thinking about when you were saying that was there's two ways to do things. You can do it the right way or you can do it again. And then if you wanted to do something, well, do it a thousand times. You'll be good at it.

[Adam Carolla]

I like that too. Yeah.

[Gina Grad]

And what was the one earlier? I'm sorry? The fastest, slowest, smooth.

[Giovanni]

Smoothest, fast.

[Gina Grad]

Love that.

[Bald Brian]

It's good. Hey, somebody's way.

[Gina Grad]

Tell the men folk that.

[Giovanni]

All right, one more leads to sick bay.

[Gina Grad]

Another good one.

[Adam Carolla]

Time to lean, time to clean. That was at the McDonald's in Studio City. Someone said they saw the Ray Kroc story.

[Bald Brian]

The founder.

[Adam Carolla]

The founder said it was good. Said, time to lean, time to clean was like behind him in some part. I didn't see it yet.

[Bald Brian]

Oh, really good movie.

[Giovanni]

I've seen it twice. It's awesome.

[Adam Carolla]

I want to see it. And it's a great movie. I happened to watch it last night. It's definitely in there.

[Bald Brian]

Underrated because it didn't get any, like.

[Gina Grad]

Any award, no fanfare.

[Adam Carolla]

It's why Time to clean. It confuses people. But it was in my McDonald's when I was 16 in Studio City. Sierra 28, Nashville. Hi, Adam. Hi, how are you? I would like to thank Mr. O' Neill for her service.

[Giovanni]

Thank you for saying that.

[Adam Carolla]

You're welcome. Okay, so I've lived in six different states. I live in Los Angeles, Seattle. Most recently I lived in Virginia for three years. Like a small, conservative, God fearing city. And I noticed that there's way more catcalling, so much more catcalling. Like on the east coast, like you go to Boston, like you walk down the street. Way more catcalling and like on the east coast, on east coast than West Coast. Yeah. Okay, I have an answer. This is like construction sites. No, no, like I'm talking like, not even construction sites. I'm talking like guys hanging out, cars.

[Bald Brian]

Yelling, dudes on the street.

[Adam Carolla]

Dudes on the street. Okay, but, and, or, and construction sites and dudes on the street. Possibly construction sites.

[Bald Brian]

But I know you want desperately for ever heard of, encountered this.

[Gina Grad]

Anyone who's ever held a hammer.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, I just figure every move I see where there's, there's a cat call that's on a construction site where they go walking past and the guys are all doing that. I'm talking, I'm walking down the street with my dog, young men leaning out like leaning out the car windows yelling.

[Gina Grad]

Okay, like every single day on a.

[Adam Carolla]

Construction site, on a mobile construction site.

[Giovanni]

Was the dog wearing a tool belt?

[Adam Carolla]

All right, have you dropped a considerable amount of weight? I have two theories here. All right, interesting.

[Bald Brian]

Okay, she's gone up in the inner.

[Adam Carolla]

City, L.A. okay, here's my LA feeling. It's also, I'll weave it into Robert over here. I was at this theory that Al Qaeda and ISIS are never going to hit la. And the reason they're never gonna hit LA is because you're not killing the blue eyed devil over here. You're killing a bunch of brown people.

[Bald Brian]

You're not killing Robert o' Neill.

[Adam Carolla]

You're killing like poor brown people. Like you would kill if you set off something in la, you'd kill a whole bunch of non whites. And then your biggest allies who are over in Malibu, the celebrities that are cheering for you, those guys would actually get pissed off because you killed all their housekeepers and gardeners. So la, not a good, tactically not a good target.

[Bald Brian]

Is this Ernest Bigot?

[Gina Grad]

Ernest J. Bigot.

[Adam Carolla]

Ernest J. Bigot from last week working out the material? Well, you want to kill the blue eyed devil, not the poor brown guy who's come here just to get a job at a bakery, you know, working under the table. So la, I think doesn't have a lot of white dudes walking the street. I feel like they're just at home or in a double gated community. It's just the whole vibe. Like you go to New York, you will see, you'll see the extras from Saturday Night Live going up and down the street. That's true. You go to LA and walk up and down the street, do you see anybody who looks like Denny Terrio coming at you or John Travolta circa 1979? Like, you just don't see those guys. Those are the guys who do the catcalling. The Mexican guys and the Filipino guys and all the other Asian guys and all that. They're not the big catcalling crew. I think it's a cultural problem. I think in Boston you got a bunch of white guys walking around.

[Bald Brian]

Higher concentration.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. You go to LA and just walk through downtown or whatever, you do not see a bunch of red haired guys walking at. You look like the Wahlberg brothers. Although.

[Gina Grad]

Sierra, did you say you lived in New York for a period of time?

[Adam Carolla]

No, I did not, but I visited a lot of East Coast. Okay.

[Gina Grad]

Did you ever notice, because I live in New York, I lived there and this is something that doesn't happen anywhere else. I don't know if, if it was a Puerto Rican or Dominican gentleman, but they would hiss at you.

[Adam Carolla]

That's the thing.

[Gina Grad]

There's a lot of hissing, there's lots of frightened cats. But that's instead of like, ooh, it's hissing.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, you know, this reminds me of something that I wish I wasn't reminded of. You know how we do this thing where we can't stop bringing up meaningless event or topic du jour and then we drill down on it. It's all over the news. It makes a cycle for a week, three days, and then it's gone. Like to bring up Cecil the Line and the who gives a shit department, but we have to bring it up. Remember three years ago, some chick made a catcall video about her walking through the streets and half of the cat calls were guys going, good afternoon or how you doing? Or good Day or so, she was counting all the greetings, as the catcalls do, and that made the whole cycle. And now it's been three years. Are we thinking about it? Has it come back to haunt us? Is this part of our daily ritual? Or is it just another thing that idiots jumped on, decided was a news story when it wasn't a news story, and now it's gone again. But the theme's always the same. Aren't we horrible? It was another one of those, oh, we're so horrible. Look at her. She walked down the street and guys said, how you doing? Right? Yeah, that chick was crazy. Of course she was. No, she's not crazy. The news is crazy. For treating it as news. It's not news. Sorry. Go ahead. It happens so much. And, like, I've lived in Seattle, which is pretty dang white, you know? And, like, you walk down a street in Seattle and, like, they don't bother you. But I'm walking down this. Really? I have a theory. You want to hear it? Yeah. I think that men in the west, like, their masculinity has been suppressed more. I think living in a very conservative kind of, you know, traditional kind of towns, young guys, they're given a little bit more. They're allowed to be kind of guys, you know? That's my theory. Yeah, I'm sure. Construction sites. Well, no. I mean, you could probably walk up and down the streets of Santa Monica all day, every day in a thong back. I wouldn't have one cat call because of the constituencies.

[Bald Brian]

You'd be more likely to get a sassy gay guy going, like, you go, girlfriend. Whatever the gay call is.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, man. All right, Sierra. Glad we. We cracked that nut. Thank you there. All right. What was that stupid video? Remember, we all had to discuss it.

[Gina Grad]

And so she obviously knew the guy who was walking in front of her because he had some sort of a nanny cam in his backpack, which is why it seemed like it was a Right.

[Adam Carolla]

This is a big news story because guys were saying, how you doing? Or, hello, lady, or whatever. There's half. Some were just. Greetings.

[Giovanni]

Rob.

[Bald Brian]

Are there any female Navy SEALs?

[Giovanni]

No. Have there ever been any? No. They're in the process right now of trying to select. Excuse me. Trying to select women who can potentially go through.

[Adam Carolla]

I thought there was two.

[Giovanni]

There are. They're in the early. Early stages. I'm not sure how that's going for them. I did work with females in combat before in a different role, and they did some of the missions with us, and I was very Impressed with them. They weren't necessarily the people kicking in the doors, but they did the long 5 mile hikes through the swampy, snowy, crappy Afghanistan mountains with us. And I was impressed with them. In gunfights with them, who knows? I'm a big believer that if you don't lower the standards and they pass them. I don't mean they, I mean anybody. Have at it.

[Bald Brian]

I know anyone who can do it, do it.

[Giovanni]

I'm just saying. I mean, very, very few percentage of men make it through, so an even smaller percentage of women will. But if someone does, I don't, I.

[Adam Carolla]

You know, I think there's a misnomer, which is guys don't want women to be firemen or guys don't want women to be in seals teams. Every guy I know would just go, as long as the standards are the same. As long as you can climb a ladder with a 60 pound pack. So my kid weighs 60 pounds and you can get them down the second floor. As long as you can do that, nobody cares. I think you hear about the standards being changed and then that's the problem. Then folks object and then you go, oh, you don't like women? And it's like, no, we don't like lower standard for super important jobs.

[Giovanni]

Right? When I was getting out, right around 2011 and 12, the big thing was the repealing of don't ask, don't tell. The only people making a huge deal about it were the pundits on television. Guys over there in Afghanistan with me are like, I don't care. It doesn't matter. If they did the job and they're fighting fine.

[Gina Grad]

Well what was all the. And I wonder how much this actually affected you guys or if this was more just BS that everyone was talking about back here. But you can't have women on the front lines. You can't work with women because the men will be so over sexualized and that will be such a disease.

[Giovanni]

No, I don't see that. They try to put that in as some psychological crap, I think, I don't think that's the case at all. Like I said, I've been in fights with women there and it's not, it's more of a who's in a better tactical position. If someone's in trouble, I'm gonna help that someone. That's all it is. And I don't think it would be other than me protect woman crap. I don't buy it anyway. But again, I'm not fighting right now, so I don't know how they feel, but that's how I feel.

[Adam Carolla]

All right, so we'll get into the. You have a few minutes. You grab everything you can grab, including the body. You go to a different chopper than Bin Laden's corpse, Right. You land where?

[Giovanni]

Well, they picked us up right outside the compound. And then we turned and started flying towards. This is actually a pretty cool part of the story because we get in the helicopter, we're flying 90 minutes to Afghanistan again on a mission we're supposed to die, but we realize if we make it and we start the stopwatches, 90 minutes and we live. And like, we're counting that stuff and we're getting to 20 minutes, 30 minutes, and everyone's kind of looking around, but no one's talking. Because you don't want to jinx a no hitter in the top of the sixth, right. I'm not saying anything, but it's been 40 minutes, 50 minutes, 60 minutes. And then we got to. It's getting surreal. We get to 85 minutes and then all of a sudden the pilot comes over the radio and says, all right, gentlemen, for the first time in your careers, you're going to be happy to hear this. Welcome to Afghanistan. And that's when it sinks in. It's like, holy crap, we did this. And then we landed, we got out, the other helicopter came in, we pulled the body out, the admiral was there, we showed it to him. The female analyst was there and we kind of talked about stuff. And I don't want to ruin the book because I'm not allowed to say the language, but in the movie Zero Dark Thirty, they showed the female analyst the body and she got emotional and cried and left. And the movie ended horribly. Worst part of the movie, what actually happened is in the book and it's hilarious and it shows what a tough person she is. Very good story. Again, I tell it now, but I wouldn't do it justice without using the language she used. By the way, it hurt my ears a little bit, but she used it.

[Adam Carolla]

Now it's four in the morning or so. Yeah. So you have to be exhausted.

[Giovanni]

Yeah, we're pretty high on emotion.

[Adam Carolla]

It's gotta be a feeling of wanting to crack a beer and just blow off a little swimming. Yeah.

[Giovanni]

Well, we flew him up to a different base that we kind of. We'd built up a little bit since 9 11. So we had a different chalet we can go to with a pizza oven and they had some adult beverages there. So we were able to partake a little bit before we flew back To Virginia Beach. You know, it wasn't a big keg party, but we could sneak stuff into place. We just snuck into packets. Now I'm hoping I could have snuck in a bottle of Jack Daniels.

[Adam Carolla]

Was it a. So now do they need to get you out of the region quickly? Is that a concern?

[Giovanni]

No, it wasn't a concern, but just because we'd gone over so abruptly, they just wanted to get us back. There was no reason for us to be there. There's already another team over there as far as our team and they just wanted to get us home. So, I mean, because it was not. It wouldn't have been. It was going to be business as usual. We get back and we start training again for our next deployment. So, I mean, there was obviously dog and pony shows where we go see the higher ups and different principals and then the President and Vice President, things like that. Everybody in that famous picture too came to thank us except Hillary Clinton.

[Adam Carolla]

That's odd.

[Giovanni]

She must have had other stuff going on, I guess.

[Adam Carolla]

I got Benghazi questions. As long as you brought that up. I want to know about the President meeting the President and what that vibe was like. But I'm curious about what you think or know about Benghazi as well. First I'll do a little love for Geico. Man. You want to save hundreds of dollars on your car insurance? You don't have to get on a chopper and put a satchel, explosive satchel, on a fake, fake door outside a brick wall. Go to geico.com 15minutes. You could be saving 15% or more on your auto insurance. Take that extra money, put it in your pocket, save for a rainy day. So go to geico.com 15minutes. Could be saving 15% or more on your auto insurance. It is Geico. Benghazi. I don't know what you know. I don't know if you knew any of those guys. I don't know what your thoughts are on it, but I'm curious if you have any.

[Giovanni]

Well, I didn't know any of the guys there. I know some guys are indirectly involved. I'm familiar with the mission that was going on over there. And the biggest problem that I have with it is the COVID up at the end when they lied to the families and they tried to say whatever it was and it was because of a video, not because of a coordinated attack from Al Qaeda. There's a lot of problems there, one of which was not believing in bad guys. Political correctness has us believed because we're a consulate in Libya. The bad guys don't exist here. But there are no borders in Levant. That's what isis, ISIL was standing for, you know, Islamic State in Iraq and Levant. Levant spreads through Libya to Tunisia. So short answer is, we're fighting Al Qaeda there, too. Same guy, same ideology. You got to be careful there. I wish a lot of the agency people that had security would have helped more. Unfortunately, there's not a team ready to roll to rescue people in every part of the world. And then you got to consider some of the guys that went to fight who were very, very brave and the fight they got into. I wasn't there nothing but respect for those guys, will to live and just what they did. Having paid professionals there, there's international law you need to think about. I don't know if I can send these guys in to fight, because, I mean, we got to uphold that kind of stuff. Horrible fight. I think the guys that fought, fought, like I said earlier, they just fought for the guys next to him. I've seen 13 hours. I know some of the guys now that were there. The fight sounds horrific. And just 13 hours of fighting in a place like that, where you're surrounded, overrun, like Alamo type stuff. Incredible fight. I just wish the administration would, instead of lying about it, if they would have told the truth. Instead of Susan Rice going to every different Sunday show and just lying. It was a big problem.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, my thing is, before the lying, or before we knew the lying was lying, when Hillary Clinton was like, don't worry. We're gonna get the guys who made that cartoon.

[Giovanni]

Well, that's part of it.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

[Giovanni]

It's an issue.

[Adam Carolla]

I'm like, why do you care about the guy? I don't want to get the guys who made the cartoon. I want to make the guys who murdered these guys. It seemed insane to me. And I know there's a bunch of political correctness and insanity, but you're allowed to make cartoons. You don't have to kill people because someone made a cartoon about your God. The notion that we need to get the guys who made the cartoon and not the guys who. Who did the killing, the slaughtering, means we've jumped the shark politically. That's an insane statement. Don't worry. We're gonna get the guys who made the cartoon. Even though the guys in America, the land of free speech, like, that's an insane comment that she made, right?

[Giovanni]

Even though the guys with the cartoon or the video, whatever it was, have nothing to do with the attack. The fact that you would bring that up in a Cover up even is nonsense. Cuz that shouldn't be. Well, I don't care about the cartoon. It's free speech. Yeah, exactly. I see what you're saying.

[Adam Carolla]

That was an insane comment to make and I think she denied it.

[Giovanni]

An insane comment from a perfectly sane person though I guess she stopped.

[Adam Carolla]

She denied she ever made the comment, I guess, but I guess there were some.

[Giovanni]

That reminds me of. I heard a really good joke. What cost millions but is worthless. Second place in a presidential election.

[Gina Grad]

Oh, that's a good one.

[Adam Carolla]

So there was a. It's kind of weird because I'm assuming there was a cover up or sort of an attempt at a cover up. I'm still not sure why there needed to be a cover up. But I guess the question, like the reason why do you think there needed to be a cover up?

[Giovanni]

I think a lot of things. I'm assuming the initial thing was they didn't want to admit what they were doing in the consulate because that's a sort of a spot, I think, where they're running guns into Syria. They're trying to do it out of there. They're putting guns somewhere. So it's like a covert thing. Then they don't want to admit that they had Americans in trouble. They really did nothing to help them. And then you know, the admission that, oh, the red line that we told not to cross, the bad guys are spreading everywhere because of our failed policies in places like Libya, in places like Syria, in places like pulling out of Iraq. You just want to pretend like if we just stick our heads back in the sand, maybe it'll go away.

[Adam Carolla]

What is the difference between ISIS and Al Qaeda?

[Giovanni]

Well, the difference is simply that ISIS was able to do the first thing that someone from that ideology has done and that's that they actually established an Islamic state. They actually did it. They had a capital, they have a caliph, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, same principles, same Wahhabist version of Sunni Islam that comes out of Saudi Arabia. They all of them too, like Boko Haram in Africa, the Khorasan group, all these different fronts are all based on the same radicalized version of Sunni Islam, this certain part of Sunni Islam. So there's not really a big difference. Even parts of the Taliban, like even they say Taliban and ISIS are in Afghanistan. That's not the case. These ISIS guys are Taliban guys now that say they're isis, they just pledge allegiance to the caliph. That's all they're doing. So they're on the same side and that's one group. And then you got the Iranians who are Shia and the other group and they've been fighting since the split of. The split of, like the split of Islam, when it's split off.

[Adam Carolla]

As someone who's experienced the culture and the people up close, are you optimistic or does it seem in everyone's muscle memory and DNA just to fight?

[Giovanni]

I'm getting more optimistic because what we're going to need is a help from a lot of our Sunni allies, the Sunnis, to deal with isis. The Sunnis aren't going to help us with Iran. Well, they would, but in a totally different way. That would be the right way to do it, but because I've seen people in places like Afghanistan that are from United Arab Emirates, that are Sunni Muslims, but they yell at the Taliban. They're like, look, you can have Dubai and Islam. You don't need to do this crazy archaic 10, you know, 1400 year old nonsense. You don't need to do it this way. But we need help from those moderates, the people that can say, we can have our religion, we can have our countries, but we can also have Western society be part of it. That's what we need. We need to get the clerics that are preaching the hate off the pulpit. We can't have. One of the things that I always say is that a lot of the problems right now is that they're stealing the innocence of children because they're teaching them to hate right off the bat. They have this thing, you'll notice online, if you can stomach it, they have a thing called the Cubs of the Caliphate where they're raising kids to be executioners. And if you're a five year old kid cutting a live man's head off with a dull knife, you're not going to be normal in 10 years. So you need to get rid of the hate preach that's out there and that's what they're doing because they really believe in this version and it's a way to get to heaven, that if we do this for the, you know, because they're trying to take over the world, we do this for the Prophet, for Allah. We're going to heaven eventually.

[Adam Carolla]

Is this worse than the cat calling that took place with this young lady walking through Manhattan? This was a 10 hour period. Now, I know cutting a guy's head off with a dull knife at 5 is bad, but what about Cecil the Lion?

[Gina Grad]

Don't answer too quickly.

[Giovanni]

It's just, I mean even the.

[Adam Carolla]

This is why I laugh about our problems. This is when they laugh about Whatever.

[Giovanni]

It can be solved just with common sense. Like, I went to war a lot and we're not going to win this by bombing people. We're going to need a lot of it because these military aged, radicalized fighters that are, you know, 20 to 30 or whatever age they are, that have been, they're not going to be. We can't bring them back. We're going to need to kill them or lock them up. But it's the kids we can save and we need help from the kids. Clerics.

[Gina Grad]

I'm curious, I heard on a, on a show one time there, I believe it was Denmark, they tried this program. I don't, I don't know if you're familiar with it or not, but young people who were radicalized, I believe from, from Denmark, not originally, but they came back. Instead of locking them up or interrogating them, they sort of. I don't want to use the word embrace them, but, but tried to sort of de. Radicalize them through having tea and. Having teas and having. I don't know if, if you have any thoughts on.

[Giovanni]

I have, I mean, some thoughts on that too. I've had, you know, people that really want to martyr themselves for the cause to go to Allah are not going to have their belief changed by tea and cookies. And I've had interrogators tell me that, having Talked to Tier 1, Al Qaeda targets, the de radicalization thing, I don't know. I mean, they could be so good out there. They're going to lie to you. I mean, you got to find who's preaching what and where, and it's got to be from inside the mosque. And we're going to need help for that. I mean, if they can, I'd love it. Who knows, maybe we take a bunch of them to Vegas, we're good to go. Maybe the white devil or whatever they call us, the Great Satan's not that bad.

[Gina Grad]

Oh, Great Satan.

[Adam Carolla]

I've always.

[Giovanni]

That'd be a good band name.

[Adam Carolla]

They were great right in it and just great white. And then we just put Satan in there. So this is the same thing. See, I think we get into trouble when we start with this precept, which is everybody loves their family, everyone wants to get along, everyone wants to see their 85th birthday. Nobody wants this. So there must be a reason why people are doing stuff. And I've always said we are so narcissistic that we go, we must have gotten them to do something like there's a reason why they hate us. What are we doing? I don't know.

[Giovanni]

Well, that's the problem. That's what we're saying. But a lot of they're saying that we need to coerce them to be just like us. And if not, we kill them or we make them pay a tax. But see, I mean, we are the same way. Because it's like, well, we'll just go over there and we'll just enforce democracy. It's like you can't do that. It has to come from within. We proven that before.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, and also I think you can go bomb Germany, you can bomb Japan, you can bomb Italy, and then you can put up a little puppet regime, get them back up on their feet, have a little military force, let them start selling some cars and clear out. But that's a different culture, way different culture.

[Giovanni]

And you need to be over there to understand it. You need to see it up close to understand it. A lot of people, you know, we're losing the war in Afghanistan because we got politicians in and lawyers involved, you know, and that's not the way it works. And even right now when they're trying to raise it, oh look, our well trained Iraqi army just took Mosul from isis. No they didn't. The Iranians did. So there's. So that's, so that's awesome.

[Adam Carolla]

Why is it that we never. Or maybe I'm incorrect. So you help me. Our plan is like train the locals. But we never seem to really coach them up the way they need to be coached up. And somehow they don't look right in their uniforms.

[Giovanni]

They're not.

[Adam Carolla]

They never look good in their uniform.

[Giovanni]

No, they can't. You ever seen one of the marines trying to teach the Iraqis how to do jumping jacks? I thought it was a joke until I went there.

[Adam Carolla]

Why wouldn't we be able to take just young, able bodied 18 year old guys, give them the right training, the right equipment and go. Now you do jump, J.

[Giovanni]

Because I mean that's part of their culture. Everything they do is called Inshallah, God willing. And that works opposite ways on our end. It's like, hey, we'll be here tomorrow for a workout at 7:00am well, inshallah, they might show up, they might not. We might train, they might not. But they do sometimes because they get paid on the other side. God wants them to destroy the infidel. So that's why they fight so hard. That's why they blow themselves up. So it's a cultural thing based on their religion. And when religion's all, you know, it might be A bad. I mean, you might want to throw in, like, a trigonometry course every now and then or, you know, something.

[Adam Carolla]

God, it's just.

[Giovanni]

It's fascinating, but it's scary.

[Adam Carolla]

It's fascinating, but it feels so unfixable because it's permeated everywhere. And then it's also. I feel the same way about certain districts and politicians and stuff. Like, where you just go, when is enough gonna be enough? Where you just vote someone else in? Like, you start going a different path. Like, how many years of. How many years you're gonna vote in Maxine Waters before you just go, hey, poor people, this just ain't cutting it.

[Giovanni]

Let's try something else.

[Adam Carolla]

Like, our schools suck. Everything sucks. Everything's in poverty. Like, why four more years? Or why another term? Like, at what point you just go, I don't think this system is benefiting us. I don't feel. I don't feel like there's a bunch of dirt on the floor. There's a scorpion up my ass, like, I'm eating with my hands. Our schools suck. Like, at what point do you just go, let's. How those Mormons doing? They seem to be doing pretty good over there.

[Bald Brian]

They got some ideas we can incorporate.

[Adam Carolla]

I'm just saying, like, it's so weird that you think, like. Like, doesn't there have to be some sort of saturation point for people? Like, I do feel that way with politics all the time, where you go, how long is this not gonna work before you go, Maybe we'll go another direction. And they just keep going with the same people until they die.

[Giovanni]

It's gotta be the herd mentality. That's all it is. You know, we're gonna. You know, we've always done this, so I'm gonna keep doing it. My grandfather voted this way. And, I mean, that's gotta be the problem.

[Adam Carolla]

I get it. If you're being herded over some fertile pastures with lots of food and clean water, but just being herded into an action after years and years of years of just being herded into an ashtray and the herder goes this way, at what point do you just break off and kind of go, that's a good question.

[Giovanni]

You would think it would happen.

[Adam Carolla]

It's weird. It's weird that the way civilizations, cultures, and humans are. I feel like this country, which is probably less broken than. Than almost any other nation in terms of how we treat people, our system, just the government, the murder rate, just whatever it is, whatever yardstick you use to measure a culture we're probably less broken than many, many, many other cultures who treat their women or gays or whatever yardstick you use to measure this. We are constantly self scrutinizing. We're constantly going why aren't we changing? We should be changing more. We're not changing fast enough. It needs to happen more. We're under a magnifying glass that we put over our own anthill and decided we need to change, we need to change early, we need to change often and we don't need that much changing. But we never stop talking about hope and change or change or we need to modify or we need to progress, we need to move forward. And then there's these cultures that have been flatlining for a million years that need nothing but change and it's never discussed. So it's a weird thing. And it's also kind of a luxury. Like I feel like we do this because the water's clean and we're safe and we have plenty of food and we're soft and we do just focus on us changing. And I'm not just saying us. Like Australia does a lot of it. Like they're putting themselves under their own magnifying glass. But how much change does Australia really need to do? And isn't it just a weird out of problems first world imposing of this? This is way too, this is way above any of our pay grades. But I'm now just thinking that in a weird way we probably talk more about changing than many cultures that actually need to change a ton and we need to change 4%. God bless America. I'll tell you about Lifelock. Oh, no need to change if you're checking out LifeLock. Free Wi Fi Convenient yes, when you're on the go but. But free isn't always safe. 92% of Americans put their personal info at risk using public wi fi. Someone's identity stolen every two seconds in ways you may not detect if you're only monitoring your credit. Thieves could sell your information onto the dark web zero dark dirty web. Or you can get an online payday loan in your name. Let's not let that happen. Lifelock detects a wide range of identity threats. If there's a problem, the US based identity restoration specialists will work to fix it. No one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transaction at all businesses. But Lifelock is the best. I have it. The kids have it, the dog has it. We all have it. It is Lifelock Dawson. Act now and get the added security of Norton security for the first year free when you bundle Norton and LifeLock memberships. Plus for a limited time, you'll also get a special, special 15% discount off the first year of your LifeLock membership. Call 1-800-LIFELOCK or go to lifelock.com and use promo code ADAM15. That's ADAM1 5. To save 15% today, terms apply.

[Gina Grad]

Gina, I'm curious and if you're comfortable talking about it, you've done this for so many years, you've been on so many missions, and I'm wondering if you've experienced or what your experience has been with ptsd, with people that you know dealing with that when they come home. American Sniper was so powerful when it came to that. And, and I think about this a lot and I don't feel like we do enough to transition people back into society in a way that really helps them. And I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on that.

[Giovanni]

Yeah, that's true. That we don't necessarily help transition too much. And that's simply because the military doesn't really have an interest in that because they're not going to come back to benefit them. As far as with pt, I don't consider it a disorder. I consider it just post traumatic stress for sure. And a lot of guys get it. I've been very fortunate, believe it or not. I've never seen a friend get hurt in front of me. Never had a friend get hurt on combat. I've had friends that have died that I'm very close with, but not when I was there with them. So I've never seen a child get hurt. So I've been lucky. But I have friends that have and have seen friends die right in front of them in a horrible way. So they do have it, and we talk about it too. But part of the issue with PTS is that it's over diagnosed. They want you to have it. So everyone that's been to combat, they want. Oh, no, no, you definitely have it. You just denial. And the problem there is the people that actually have it don't get the treatment they need because they're trying to treat everyone, even people flooding. And a lot of it, believe it or not too, and a lot of vets won't tell you this is because if you have PTSD or whatever they call it, you can get benefits. So even people that haven't seen combat, they can claim it and get money and they do. So it's another problem with the entitlement society. You should have enough honor to say, look, I'm fine. Like, I do too. I Don't have pts, and I'm not getting any benefits for it. But a lot of people don't do it that way. Like, even with us, there are Marines out there now in Kandahar province walking through minefields. They have a job that's much more dangerous than anything I ever did, because we could fight on our terms. They can't. So the young Marine, 20 years old, that wasn't trained to our level, sees three of his friends blown to hell, he's going to have an issue. He's the guy that needs the treatment. It's not the person back at the base. God bless him. Thanks for their service, but never left. Green bean coffee. They don't need it. So it's, you know, it's definitely a real thing. And I'm happy that, you know, we've come from a way. Like in World War II, you know, you're fighting at Bastogne in Battle of the Bulge, and then on Monday, you're working in the factory again, because you should just do it. Where? We've come a long way, but right now, we're almost too sensitive about it. We got to find the people that really haven't helped them. But a lot of us, like myself included, we don't need it.

[Adam Carolla]

Interesting. Well, so there's a couple things you have. You incentivize people to have it because you're going to get paid, and then, good luck. Any politician that says, come on, she was in the rear with the gear, she doesn't have it.

[Giovanni]

That's a good point. Very good point. Never going to happen.

[Adam Carolla]

You can't take a stand. You can't tell someone they don't have it if they say they have it. So between them getting paid to have it and you not being able to really vet it, because if you say you have it, you have it, there's nothing we can do. There's going to be a lot of people with it. I like the idea that you drop the D with the disorder part because I always worry, and I talk to Dr. Drew about this all the time. Like when they tell kids that they're hyper something, or they have a reading disorder, an eating disorder. Like just telling someone you have a disorder. You know what I mean? Could have some add, dusting of Asperger's, and it's like, leave them alone. Everyone's different. Does everyone have to have this rubber stamp of, I'm defective, I have a disorder. I'm gonna carry this around for the rest of my life? Could. And I agree, you don't want to deny it, but if somebody has been where they've been and seen what they've seen, then they're going to be changed by that. But does that mean that they carry this around for the rest of their life? And I like the idea of not putting this sort of label on it that says you're this way for the rest of your life.

[Giovanni]

A lot of the VAs want to do that. They want to get you in there, convince you you're nuts, put you on some pills and send you out. You know, that's not the way to do it. I mean, if you want to treat veterans, there's places out there, get them together. There's a friend of mine, Eric Greitens, who's now the governor of Missouri, started a foundation, the Mission Continues, where he would get vets together and they would build houses. And that's just, a lot of them weren't carpenters. But you're just out there doing something, a product and that's what gets people out of their, you know, out of their room. So, you know, that's really good stuff there. And then, and then like the other thing is a lot of vets don't know what to do as far as work. What am I going to do? We've been at war for so long. People don't like, I got out at 17 years. I didn't get a pension. I Knew it was 20, but I'm not going to do 20. I'm good. We did these missions. I'm just going to get out. But I didn't know what I was going to do. I was fortunate to have some skills that the military taught me. The SEAL teams helped me to fine tune and I met people that hired me. I actually started a foundation called you'd're Grateful Nation that helps veterans do that because they'll say they'd rather go to combat than fill out a resume because combat makes sense. But once they realize they've learned that how to solve problems, manage stress, work as a team, show up to work, loyalty. We'll find a company for them and they will mentor that veteran for nine months. All of a sudden they have a job.

[Gina Grad]

Wow. Well, I do have an idea about a possible transition thing, but you tell me if it's too marshmallow for you because I really, I've been thinking about this for a while. If you're a combat veteran and you're coming home for whatever, two weeks, four weeks, there's like some really, really, really nice high end spa where you're getting just place to decompress with talk therapy, with individual therapy, with chilling out, hardcore like appreciation.

[Giovanni]

I think they do stuff like that now too. I'm not sure if it's required, but there's stuff out there and I think a lot of. I think it would actually help a lot of people.

[Gina Grad]

Thanks. I'm glad. Let's talk more about that.

[Giovanni]

I mean I can be the test case if I'll smuggle right now, but.

[Gina Grad]

Like a really expensive high end spa.

[Adam Carolla]

We got a problem. We got a problem. Well, because a lot of they're not all in Afghanistan. Some go to like the Philippines. And those guys are different. They have a different idea of a spa experience. You see what I'm saying? So those guys are gonna actually, we will make concessions. Ptsd. If they don't get a happy ending, you know what I mean? Like that could send them further in their spiral stress. Well, again, they're used to this operation in a theater.

[Giovanni]

I think what you get there is ptsd.

[Adam Carolla]

Thank you. Thank you.

[Giovanni]

Doing what I can over here.

[Adam Carolla]

Good note to roll into ONNIT with. Have you heard me talk about ONIT before? Amazing supplements like Alpha Brain, Buffalo Meat, Warrior Bars, MCT Oil, ONIT CEO Aubrey Marcus did a Take a Knee, my motivational podcast. We talked about going from college athlete to running a multimillion dollar health brand and what you need to do and what it takes to abandon your dreams to hopefully find some other play. A quick clip. What I'm trying to say to people, because we always do this. Hey, you gotta follow those dreams and you gotta hang on to them. You gotta shoot for the stars. You gotta hang on to those dreams. Like I'm saying, no, you don't abandon those things. Just like you did in basketball, just like I did, believe it or not, in football. Just like so many other. Just like my son will do one day, he will abandon his dream. Yeah, they filmed the whole thing. You can watch the entire podcast. And behind the scenes, that's our mini little doc [e-mail] that's O N N I T.com Adam while you're there, save up right at 10% your entire order. So get 10% off your entire order. They have great supplements over there. And watch the Take a Knee Episode free at onnit.com Adam that's O N N-I-T.com Adam. Wow, man, what a. What a tale has been woven here today. I am so impressed, Robert.

[Giovanni]

Thank you.

[Bald Brian]

Should have played blah blah blah with him.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, I love the stories. You come back and we'll ask you. We'll get all into Captain Phillips on that one. And then rescuing Mark Wahlberg and everything. The operator firing the shots that killed Osama bin Laden and my years as a SEAL team warrior. Available now on Amazon. Robert o' Neil is the name. Robert, man, this has been great.

[Giovanni]

Yeah, I've had a good time. Thanks. I appreciate you having me come out.

[Adam Carolla]

This is awesome. It's been all my pleasure. You can go to amcarolla.com live shows. I'm doing standup in Chicago and Minneapolis and Nashville and all over the place countries. Just go to amcroll.com, we got the Mangria and we got our Cruz and we got swag and we got buck slips and all that. So check that out. And until next time, this is Adam Crow for Robert o' Neill. Gina grand ball Brian saying mahalo.

[Giovanni]

Abu bakr al Baghdadi. That was Adam Krolo Show 21:39 With Rob O' Neill in the studio. Coming up next, we have Adam Kirlishau 3016 featuring Admiral James Dravides, Elliot Ackerman, Gina Grant, and Brian Bishop in 2021.

[Adam Carolla]

Thanks for tuning in and thanks for sharing. We love that about you, right? Gina Grad.

[Gina Grad]

That's right.

[Adam Carolla]

Handball. Brian, hello. Pot pie.

[Gina Grad]

Mon petit jou.

[Adam Carolla]

Drew's got some chops. When you push him, you know, you.

[Gina Grad]

Gotta push him because he is an opera singer. He must speak some Italian as well.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, that's probably true. Yeah. He'll play it a little close to the vest sometimes, and then he'll bust out and sing the national anthem at the King's game. But let's not forget Drew, big musical theater guy all the way through high school and then I guess into college as well because they had a big. They had a big hair. Was it hair or godspell? I can't remember. They're the same. Feel like the same thing to me. But he had a big reunion at his college the other day. All right, well, I've got some answers to a few questions. One is I went out last night to do comedy. I saw Jim Jeffries there. I saw Adam Fred fresh off the links, and I walked up to him and the first thing he said is, brad Williams drives the golf ball 235 yards consistently.

[Gina Grad]

He drives the golf ball but not the golf cart.

[Adam Carolla]

That's right. And he said he out drove him all day. Wow. Maybe it's me, maybe it's Maybelline. I don't know. But. But when. And Maybe it's just the guys I hang out with, but when Brad was saying he was going off to play some golf with Jim Jeffries, I was thinking pitch and putt, not putt putt, just a par 310 yard. You know, don't bother bringing the drivers or the fairway woods. You know, you just bring your nine iron and your sand wedge and your putter and you kind of go at it swinger style, you know.

[Gina Grad]

Okay.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, perfect, right? No, no, they were playing a full course. And Brad's the real deal.

[Bald Brian]

He's posted many videos from the golf course.

[Gina Grad]

Well, and did you see his outfit? I mean, he had the hat, he had the shirt. He was ready to play.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. And he went out there with his. It's funny, Jim's like, well, you know, he's got custom clubs and it's like, well, of course he has custom clubs. You'd have to go to fucking Toys R Us and play with plastic clubs if he didn't get custom clubs made. But Jim, who's, you know, a stout 210 pound dude, well built, was out driven consistently by Brad Williams, which Jim pointed out to me on several occasions. Yes.

[Bald Brian]

More impressive with the custom clubs because I assume you have to assume they're shorter than the average club and you got the more torque and more, you know, length with that longer club. You got a compact swing. You're getting 230 out of that one. That's impressive.

[Gina Grad]

Well, that's what I was thinking, but. And I don't have a mind for this at all, but I was wondering if a lower center of gravity is more helpful in a case like this.

[Adam Carolla]

I think there are he just allowed.

[Gina Grad]

To be a good golfer?

[Bald Brian]

No, I'm saying it's more impressive, all things considered.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, yeah. I think different sports have different advantages, different positions. You know, if you're going to play forward in the NBA, you want to be tall. Maybe if you're going to catch in mlb you want to be a little shorter and a little stouter. You know, there's kind of different positions and different sizes, but I do not think that once you get under five foot, it's any kind of help at all in golf. He's just very skilled at what he does, so. Very good golfer. And that was backed up later on by Adam Ray who said, very good golfer. So evidently I'm the last guy to the Brad Williams golf party.

[Gina Grad]

Have you ever golfed like they golf?

[Giovanni]

Yeah.

[Gina Grad]

Andy, my fiance's like a pro golfer that comes from a family of all like golfers, and I have no interest, and I don't know how to do it.

[Adam Carolla]

Jimmy and I used to go out and golf when we had some time to go out and golf. We went to Maui once a million years ago, and we brought our golf clubs. We went there as, like, a couples thing and. Meaning Jimmy and I were the couple.

[Bald Brian]

Yeah, of course we understood.

[Adam Carolla]

We brought our golf clubs. And all I remember is Jimmy said to the person who was, you know, giving us the Bud lights on the 18th green or the hole or whatever it is, I remember two things. I think Jimmy had done a commercial for, like, Miller Lite or something. And if you want to know how I'm wired and how Jimmy's wired, he had in his contract that he couldn't drink Bud Light. One or the other. I can't write Amstel Light for a year or whatever. We're out in the middle of this deserted golf course in Maui, and the person just had, like, Miller Light. And Jimmy was like, nah, I can't do that. I'm like, just put your fucking hand on the label. Let's do this. You know? And he's like, nah, I got a contract. Like, I don't want to get into trouble. Wow. Yeah. Turns out it served him well.

[Bald Brian]

Company man.

[Adam Carolla]

I know.

[Gina Grad]

Well, we know how. Remember when that happened with Britney Spears and. Must have been a slow news week, because it was. She's pictured walking on the beach with a Coke, and she has a Pepsi contract. And it made you.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, there was.

[Gina Grad]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

I think there was also famous Tom Brady story where he was driving an Aston Martin and he had a deal with Cadillac or something like that. There was some Aston Martin, Tom Brady, whatever. We should all hope our kids get into this kind of trouble one day. The people at Bentley are outraged. Outraged. Yeah.

[Bald Brian]

So if you need help with golfing.

[Adam Carolla]

Too, there's a guy named Martin Trainor.

[Bald Brian]

He's a pro golfer, pga. His last name is Traynor. His name is Traynor, but he was on TV and this picture came up. And if you look at the bottom.

[Adam Carolla]

Of his biographies, dream foursome, Adam Carolla, Warren Buffett, and Nate Silver. NBA. Oh, Adam Silver. Wait, where's Nate Silver from?

[Bald Brian]

Is that 538 Nate Silver, 538. Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

I don't.

[Bald Brian]

Yeah, I might be the 538 guy or the American statistician. Statistician. Yeah. It started 538. It's just. It's a site. I'm almost positive. Let's get the name wrong.

[Gina Grad]

Yeah. No, you're Right. Special correspondent for ABC News in 5:38. Editor.

[Bald Brian]

Yeah, he started a site making analytical predictions of elections and the Oscars and shit.

[Adam Carolla]

Obviously.

[Gina Grad]

He obviously just wants to make sure he's better than everyone. He's golfing with Adam, Warren Buffett and Nate Silver.

[Adam Carolla]

It will be done. Yeah.

[Bald Brian]

Great guest.

[Adam Carolla]

I was famously thrown off a driving range for hooking too many balls into the tennis court. Actually over the top of the net. Shanking them into the tennis court or hooking them into the tennis court. So the guy came out, said, hit a bunch of balls into the tennis courts. We're getting complaints. If you do it again, you gotta leave. And then he stood there and watched me tee up a ball and hook it right into the tennis court. Not that I was trying to do it. Maybe the club was a little. Maybe the face was a little open.

[Bald Brian]

Yeah, that's the problem.

[Adam Carolla]

And there it went. And he didn't even say, you have to leave now. I just drop my head, picked up my bucket, and I started to walk off the driving range. So, you know.

[Gina Grad]

You know what else is really fun, though? I've gotten to do both of them is the one in Vegas. You know, it's like three deck, like three tiers. And you go up there and you drive the ball as far as you can. It has a little microchip in it, and that's kind of fun to see how far it goes. And also, Andy's sister in Minnesota runs one of those golf simulator places. So you're hitting it.

[Bald Brian]

Like, indoor party place.

[Gina Grad]

Yeah, they're fun. That. I mean, that's where my speed.

[Adam Carolla]

The simulator should keep going. Like, once you're done hitting the balls, then there's a simulated wife going, you're drunk. What are you doing? And he's going, get off my back, woman. And she's like, you spend. You have. You spend all your day whacking a bucket of balls. You got kids you're ignoring, and then you get into a big simulated fight, and then you simulated motels.

[Bald Brian]

The kids are like, dad, you missed my. My soccer game again, right?

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. The simulation should just keep going.

[Gina Grad]

You're right.

[Adam Carolla]

No reason to stop it at the driving range. So that was one thing we got to. The other thing. The answer to the question I've always told you guys about that famous Daytona. You can find a picture. Max Apata Cobra and the Shelby car that he wanted to give away, and then he ended up selling it to a guy who ran one of those big slot car tracks back when they used to have those big slot car tracks out there. And then Phil Spector bought it for like $10,000. And then Phil Spector drove it around the streets of LA for number of months. And he got too many tickets and it was too loud and too hot. And Phil's nuts. So he took like house paint, had a guy write all the records the car broke on the side of it with like, like house paint. And then he gave it to his bodyguard, and then his bodyguard gave it to his daughter. And then you fast Forward to the 90s and the car sitting in some broken down storage thing. The, the daughter worked at Sears full time. Think about a throwback retail Sears warehouse, I think, or something. So she was, she was a complete and utter pedestrian. And there it sat. And many people, including Carroll Shelby himself, went over to her home and she wouldn't open the screen door and shooed everyone away. And at some point, this guy named Dr. Simeon, Fred Simeon from the Simeon Collection in Philadelphia, got a little envoy together, came up with a price that she probably couldn't say no to, and then she could quit Sears sent her over, and then she got the money, quit Sears, and then set herself on fire. Oh, right, that was that story. But I happen to know that that car's. It's 30 million bucks and, and, or maybe more, but at least 30 million bucks. But I never knew what he paid for it. Guys played close to the vest, but we had him on as a guest on Carcass. It'll be this Saturday, Friday or Saturday. Friday, Friday. He should figure that out. And I asked him what he paid for this car in 2001. People knew this car was worth something in 2001. It was not, you know, it wasn't one of these things since the back of the, you know, auto trader for 89 bucks. But he paid about kind of what I thought, which is in 2001, he paid 3.5 million bucks for it.

[Gina Grad]

A steal.

[Adam Carolla]

It's a lot of money for a car that somebody bought for $1,000 and someone was given, I mean, bodyguard was given the car, but worth 10 times the amount. 30 million bucks. Not too shabby or 20 years later. So I got that price figured out. We got, I think our own Gavin Newsom gave a news conference about. He gave a little state of the state. He did it. I didn't know this, but Gary brought it up. He did it from Dodger Stadium. And the reason he did it from Dodger Stadium is because the capacity of Dodger Stadium is equal to the amount of Californians Killed by Covid, which I don't know that anyone would do the math on that. I don't know what the significance really is.

[Bald Brian]

Pointlessly symbolic, right?

[Gina Grad]

Also, if you're trying to get people back, you know, reintegrate them back into life and get to Dodger Stadium and, you know, get business going again, do you want to remind people that that's why you're there? Because that's how many people have died?

[Adam Carolla]

No, I'm not so sure that he wants to get people back, reintegrated into life. But, you know, now, I was telling you guys, and we'd always talked about Subaru commercials and the cars are made with love and everything's good vibes, but that is now spilled over into all of politics at this point, and I've never heard more talk about being sympathetic and empathetic and reaching out and pride and dignity. And it's such a weird thing because it's all nuts and bolts. Like, there's teachers and unions and taxes and gas prices and infrastructure, like opening business. Let's just. Let's stick with the nuts and the bolts. But here's Gavin. He gets out of the gate talking about staying the course, which I thought's a very interesting approach to one of the worst run states in the union. Like, we're staying the course, okay? My kids are now at one year of being in their bedroom and not going to school, but we're gonna stay the course. All right, let's just play it two minutes.

[Bald Brian]

Look, the state of our state, it remains determined. I remain determined. And I just want you to know we're not gonna change course just because of a few naysayers and doomsdayers. So the California critics.

[Adam Carolla]

Why not alter the course just a little bit, you fuckwad. You're doing a horrible job running the state, and that's why you're being recalled. But we're gonna stay. What does staying the course even really mean? Should we go back and close down outdoor dining? Should we never let indoor dining reopening? Should the gyms still be closed? Should the schools still be closed? What do you mean we're going to stay the course?

[Bald Brian]

This is sad trend in politics and probably for a long time. Never admit you're wrong, never admit defeat, never admit it was a mistake and Gavin's just playing the playbook.

[Adam Carolla]

Stay in the course. All right, sorry.

[Gina Grad]

I'm sorry. I got to ask real quick. Do you think he's. His underlying, you know, read between the lines is he's talking about stay the course. Don't recall me. Probably doomsdayers and naysayers.

[Adam Carolla]

I would. I would say, Gina, that's a good call. All right, sorry. Go ahead, Dawson.

[Bald Brian]

And doomsdayers. So to the California critics out there who are promoting partisan political power grabs with outdated prejudices and rejecting everything that makes California truly great, we say this. We will not be distracted from getting shots in arms and our economy booming again. This is a fight for California future. You know, since this pandemic started, uncertainty. Well, it's been probably the only thing that we can be certain of. But now we're providing a little bit more certainty. Certainty that we're safely vaccinating Californians as quickly as possible, certainty that we're safely reopening our economy, and certainty that we're safely getting our kids back into the classroom. All of which adds up to. To a much brighter future for our state. Because California, we're not going to come crawling back. We will roar back, you know, when this pandemic ends, and it will end soon, we're not going to go back to normal. Because I think we all agree normal was never good enough. You know, normal accepts inequity. That's why Latinos are dying from COVID at a higher rate than any other racial or ethnic group. And while essential workers. Workers wages aren't enough for them to afford the essentials. And why Mothers. Mothers have been leaving the workforce in staggering numbers. Look, our eyes are wide open to what's wrong. And so our journey back must also be a path to close those inequities. There is no economic recovery, no economic recovery without economic justice. With more compassion, more empathy, more connection, we can write that next chapter in California story.

[Adam Carolla]

Connection, empathy, compassion. What the fuck is he talking about? They never really explain what that means. Look, everyone has a certain amount of sympathy, empathy, and compassion for homeless people. But what the fuck do you want us to do? Adopt a bum? They're fucking. They're sleeping on the street. Their own fucking filth. What do you want us to do? Yes, I feel compassion for guys sleeping on the sidewalk. Now what? You gotta enact something. You gotta do something. And I will tell you that the compassion and the empathy is what caused the fucking homeless problem. Sorry, you gotta lead. There must be rules. There's laws. You have to enforce those laws. The first day, the first guy takes a tent, pops it under the freeway overpass of the Ventura Freeway on Laurel Canyon and tries to bivouac on the sidewalk, you have to fucking scoop him up. And something needs to be done. If you show him compassion and empathy and just sort of look the other way, then another tent pops up the following day and so on and so forth. And now I was in Gina's neighborhood the other day. Yeah, well, you broke down. Yeah, I broke down and visited my loser mom.

[Gina Grad]

What's her cross street?

[Adam Carolla]

She's on Wilkinson.

[Bald Brian]

Had him. Had his mind erased like a turtle, Sunshine.

[Adam Carolla]

He has no idea she's on Wilkinson. And Magnolia. She's by like Magnolia and Moorpark or no, sorry, Magnolia.

[Gina Grad]

No, no, no, those are parallels.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, she's on like near Magnolia Riverside or something like that. I'm trying to figure out what the fucking cross street is still parallel, but I get you. God, what is. No, Whitsit. She's on Wits.

[Gina Grad]

Oh, she's by the old, by that big pub. It used to be the Draft. Yeah, I'm familiar.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, a place used to be an underage bar, like an underage nightclub bar. Oh, for like 10 minutes such a thing existed.

[Gina Grad]

Yeah, like a club for like, you know.

[Bald Brian]

Oh, it's really 18 plus like dance.

[Adam Carolla]

It was like 18. They would accept under 18, I think.

[Giovanni]

Oh, wow.

[Adam Carolla]

But so the deal was is there was no booze in the club, right? So here's how human beings work. No booze in the club. Everyone just brings their own handle of vodka, sits in my grandparents driveway and gets loaded before they go walk across the street and go in the club. So it ended up being a shit show for Helen and Laszlo Garag over there. But yeah, I saw underneath the freeway overpass they're putting like washing stations. Like the kind of thing you'd put out in the Rose bowl parking lot if USC was playing a game.

[Gina Grad]

There's porta Potties and yeah, those like foot pump sinks.

[Bald Brian]

Yeah, I'm gonna take that and reject the premise of not having compassion. Like, does anyone. We all have compassion. Like we see homeless, we're like, that sucks. That. That's too bad. That's unfortunate. You feel bad for them, but we've been beaten into indifference. You know what I mean? Like it's ubiquitous to this point. Like you said, it's everywhere. And now it's the point where like this is a problem. I feel bad for these people that something needs to be done to help this situation.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, what have you just said?

[Bald Brian]

No one's callous about it. No one's like, fuck those people. It's like they need help.

[Adam Carolla]

What about if you just said these you got rid of homeless and just said these are gypsies, we got a gypsy problem. In this state. Now these gypsies are setting up their tents and barbecues, and it's a deep cut.

[Bald Brian]

I can't turn around. I've seen the damn gypsies.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, on the houseboat, I think. But the point is, they stole his laptop. They drugged him, I think. On a house. So if. If they were gypsies. Let's just say they were gypsies. And we said, we got a problem with the gypsies. They're setting up their tents and their barbecues and their lean tos and their shelters and their plywood and stuff. And they're just showing up under all the freeway overpasses. I drove into Hollywood to go into the club or the outdoor club or whatever the fuck it. It's so weird. You're doing a comedy set in Hollywood, and the promoter comes up to me and he goes, you're going up first. Everyone was supposed to do 15 minutes. We're gonna do 10 minutes. And I go, why we all doing 10 minutes? He goes, it's gonna start raining. And I'm like, oh, that's right. We're in a fucking parking lot. We're outside. It's gonna start raining. We gotta hurry up the comedy. So what if it was just gypsies? And there's gypsies everywhere. And somebody said, we got to do something to alleviate this gypsy problem. There's gypsies camped out, cramps and thieves all throughout. Cher's on her horse bareback. We got a. I think I mixed my Cher songs there. Sorry, that was Half breed. The point is, how long before we get rid of Half Breed? I mean, Cher's got to be canceled with her Half Breed.

[Bald Brian]

Have we gotten rid of that?

[Adam Carolla]

It's not officially. It's still around on the 70 station. All right, so we got to get rid of these gypsies. And then somebody in the city council said, hmm, I know. Why don't we drop off porta potties and hand washing stations to the gypsy camps? Wouldn't someone else in the council go, what the fuck are you talking about? How's that going to. How's it going to alleviate this problem? I think it's going to create more gypsies in a more entrenched gypsy camp. And that's essentially what we're now. We're now at that. We're not at the point where we're just handing out heroin to the junkies and saying, could you stay in this part of the park?

[Gina Grad]

That's exactly what I was just saying.

[Adam Carolla]

That's the kind of compassion. That just causes a bigger problem. At some point, adults need to enter the fray, start making decisions, and gypsy camps need to be dismantled. All right, somebody, Ron from Philadelphia remembers some loveline stories, wants to know if I still remember them. I bet I do, but let's hear it. Ron. 32, Philadelphia. Yeah. What's happening, Adam? Hey, man. Are you out in Philly? Yeah, I'm in the gayborhood of Center City Philadelphia. How is it out there? It's a gayborhood, you know. Yeah, it's gay.

[Giovanni]

And yeah, the weather is getting better.

[Adam Carolla]

On the East Coast. How's the city? Are you guys. Can you eat indoors? Are gyms open or schools open? I don't know anything about schools, but yeah, restaurants are probably like half capacity, like on Valentine. The restaurants are full, like completely crowded. It must be nice to not have to eat outdoors or do stand up when it starts raining. All right, but we're gonna stay the course and figure this one out. As the rest of the free world just opens around California, we're just gonna stay the course.

[Bald Brian]

We're gonna be. You're gonna be in Philadelphia in a month and a half or a couple months, so you can tell us yourself.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, I will. But I'm gonna be hanging out in that Daytona at the Simeon Collection, so I won't have time for you.

[Bald Brian]

That's fair. That's fair.

[Adam Carolla]

Audrey, you should come to Gabriel. They love you. I love all gay neighborhoods. What is safer and cleaner than the gay neighborhood? I'd be curious. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I'd be curious. It's a chapter in my book. I think in 50 years you all be chicks. It's in there. I bet. West LA weho, our gay neighborhood with the property prices and the all that's going on there. Do they have homeless there? I don't feel like they would tolerate it there.

[Bald Brian]

Interesting.

[Gina Grad]

No, not. I mean, if you're just talking about literally driving down Santa Monica into, you know, we Ho, I. I don't see homeless people.

[Bald Brian]

Also, no freeway underpasses in that neighborhood.

[Gina Grad]

Yeah, so yeah, that's true. But these guys, it borders, you know, you're right up against Doheny and Beverly Hills too.

[Adam Carolla]

These guys are bivouacked everywhere. They don't need the overpass is helpful, but they're everywhere. But be curious. Do your cops in the neighborhood have the jumbled gay flag on the side of the car like they do in weho? No, there's actually case in the gayborhood, there was like a gay pride parade and someone burned like a blue flag or whatever. And, you know, the cops arrested them, and I think they spend at least a night in jail. All right, but nothing represented on the side of the vehicle. No, no, no. The cars, the sheriffs that patrol WeHo, as we've discussed years ago, have the gay flag on the side of the car. Then everyone thinks I'm an asshole because I go, why the gay flag on the car? And then they go, well, a large gay population, and that's the group that they serve. And I go, okay, Glendale has a lot of Armenians. Should we have the Armenian flag on the side of the car? And they go, no. And I go, okay, thank you. Next. Next argument. All right, maybe the cars are cleaner, you know, with the gay influencer. Well, it's not the that. It's just the colors of the gay flag. It's in the shape of West Hollywood, which I don't think anyone knows the shape of it. So it just looks like a weird. Looks like somebody put an M80 in a Rubik's Cube. And that's essentially what it looks like. But anyway. All right, I'm an asshole. Go ahead, Ron. All right, so the first story that I wanted your modern perspective of is your mother's method for protecting your ears while brushing your teeth. Oh, yeah.

[Gina Grad]

Protecting her ears.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. This is a good deep cut, Ron. My mom is very, very much into self preservation. And if there's a fire, if there's a fire in that house, she'd be the first one out. Then eventually she'd flag down a neighbor and say, like, my kids are in there somewhere. She's very much into taking care of herself, which is not really the quality you want a mom when that's sort of me first thing, but that's the way she rolls. And at some point she got herself, and I'm sure of it, a used electric toothbrush. Oh, boy. Oh, yeah.

[Bald Brian]

The least illegal items you would want least used.

[Gina Grad]

Let's just assume he's just talking about the base.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. May have snap in brush. May have found the cartridges, you know, on, you know, in the Penny Saver, but still in the package, you know, and decided that the sound of the electric toothbrush may be causing some hearing damage.

[Bald Brian]

So the intense throttling.

[Adam Carolla]

She's a sensitive creature.

[Bald Brian]

So my like being across the street.

[Adam Carolla]

From a jackhammer, my stepdad had these aircraft style ear protection like you'd wear at the gun range.

[Bald Brian]

Yeah, yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

And those things just sat on the cabinet and when they brushed their teeth, they would put the Headphones on. But the thing about the. The thing about the electric toothbrush is the sound comes from within, you know, it's not.

[Gina Grad]

Comes from inside the house.

[Bald Brian]

Yeah, there's no.

[Adam Carolla]

Right. Yeah. Right. And then I would lay in my bed and cry for help and my cries would never be heeded or answered.

[Bald Brian]

Yes, they put amount of ear protection, external ear protection is gonna solve that problem.

[Adam Carolla]

But Brian, it's the symbolism of I was abused, I had a horrible life, and now it's gonna be all about me taking care of myself. So it's very symbolic.

[Bald Brian]

Protect it.

[Adam Carolla]

Just who you want running the household. That's exactly the kind of pragmatic woman. Nuts and bolts, boots on the ground.

[Giovanni]

Nurturing.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

[Gina Grad]

She said real mama bear.

[Adam Carolla]

She's Gavin Newsome esque in her pragmatism.

[Bald Brian]

Fiercely protective.

[Adam Carolla]

Yes. Of her, of her hearing, of herself. Right.

[Bald Brian]

Of her own faculties.

[Adam Carolla]

Although last time I talked to her, she couldn't hear me because her fucking mask was pulling out her hearing aids. So I don't know if it's worked, but. Go ahead, Ron. Yeah, I got one more. The garbage dispersal at the party house. If you would like to know people's capacity to ignore things that aren't them, aren't for them, and pay attention to now things that are them. Like I've always said the microwave in the kitchen at the radio station is a shit show. Somebody blew up a burrito in there three weeks ago. But I guarantee the person who blew up the burrito in that microwave would never do that with their microwave. At home. They're two completely separate standards of how we treat microwaves. People do that with the flip cap on the ketchup. It's always up when it's at work, but at home they snap it down because they bought the ketchup at the party house. I try to idiot proof things and. And the switch for the garbage disposal was kind of a quiet garbage disposal. So I put a red light on the switch. You can buy like a stacked switch. One of them will have a toggle. And just above it is literally a red light. So it's like I have one here in the studio.

[Bald Brian]

Yes, the mics are on.

[Giovanni]

Light.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. No, here it's. The air conditioning is on. I have a toggle switch. So it's like. Because you can't. Because the air shuts off and then everyone goes home for the weekend and then it runs all weekend and I put a switch with a red light on it and I put that in and I was letting Danny two sheets stay There when he was in from New York. And one day I showed up on a Saturday and I could see as I was walking across the hall that the red light was on. And Danny, two sheets had turned on the garbage disposal with the red light and neglected to ever shut the garbage disposal off. Like, literally left.

[Bald Brian]

Nothing against Danny, who I like very much, but what adult is not aware that they turned on the garbage disposal?

[Adam Carolla]

One who always begets off, one who does not pay the electricity bill, and one who did not purchase the garbage disposal. It gets a lot easier when you factor in those two mitigating sources.

[Gina Grad]

This is the slippery slope to requiring a top sheet. Because the first night's just a top sheet and then the world's their toilet after that.

[Adam Carolla]

Yes, yes.

[Bald Brian]

The world's your duvet.

[Gina Grad]

That's right.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. Idiot. Proofing things has been a major part of my adult life. I've told you guys. I put a 3 inch metal tech screw into the top of the toaster oven because of my old house, Lynette and the nanny and whoever would frequently put the plastic microwave cover on top of the toaster and then melt it onto the toaster. Unavoidable.

[Gina Grad]

You've also put nail polish on the.

[Adam Carolla]

Lock for the sliding door, nail polishes on the locks for the deadbolts. Because, like, the cleaning ladies would come undo the deadbolts and the French doors, like, open up, go out on the patio, and then they'd come back and they'd never lock it and you couldn't see wasn't locked. But at some point, my 3 inch tech screw was defeated. I will have you know that the actual microwave cover made it over the top of the tech screw.

[Bald Brian]

Oh, wow.

[Adam Carolla]

Didn't slide it in. Went over the top and melted it again. And then I announced to everyone in my home, shall I put in a second tech screw? And the answer was a defiant maybe you should.

[Bald Brian]

Maybe you should maybe think about that. Fix this problem once and for all.

[Adam Carolla]

Yes, those were two I do remember. Thanks. Thanks, Ron. Yeah. Yeah. Are you gay yourself or just living in the gay district? Oh, no, I'm not gay. Although, you know, I've been accused of. Of being gay. Everyone dabbles a little in college. I get it.

[Gina Grad]

It's a compliment.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

[Bald Brian]

Ooh, parade.

[Adam Carolla]

You got one more, Ron? Yeah, sure. So you had like an ivory, ebony and ivory thing that you had mentioned briefly back in Loveline? Yeah, yeah. I met a couple of girls once, way back in the day when I was living in Santa Monica. One was heavyset woman of Color and then her very spindly white friend. And I did take them back to my apartment and have a little roll with them. I remember that clearly because when we woke up Sunday morning, one of them, I think the white girl was in a little bit of a rush and she said. I said, where are you heading? And she's like, I got to get to church.

[Bald Brian]

Anywhere but here.

[Adam Carolla]

I guess you do.

[Bald Brian]

I would say she need to be blessed.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, it was a weird night, but I stand by it. Stand by that night. Thank you. Thanks, Ron. All right, next time. Yeah, it's surreal talking to you. I've listened to so much Loveline and so much acs. Just thank you for the content. Thanks. Thanks for the deep cuts. Good luck on Gay. All right, let's see. We got Mary and wants to know about the Woody Allen doc, which. Yeah, I got a long winded. The Woody Allen doc was very disturbing. But then I got a long email from Giovanni explaining that much of it has been discredited, but in my. By who? Oh, Mr. Allen.

[Bald Brian]

Woody.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, the nannies knows all, but the nannies recounted their statements and, you know, investigators didn't find any. Blah, blah, blah. I'm still kind of about the part where he had the stepdaughter in high school and she was meeting him at his Manhattan pad up the street. And we found some condom wrappers in the trash can and some nudie pictures.

[Gina Grad]

That's. That's enough.

[Adam Carolla]

That's enough.

[Gina Grad]

Dayenu, as the Jews would say. And also we have a little one in the house, and I rough house with him all the time. I pick him up, I turn him upside down. In no situation would you ever walk into a room and find my head in his lap, staring at his crotch. Mr. Allen.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Gina Grad]

Under no circumstances.

[Adam Carolla]

But that's part of the disputed stuff. I don't know, Mary. Wait, did I. Hi.

[Gina Grad]

I love this show. Thank you so much for. I'm literally nervous because I listened to the past so many years, and I just love it. Anyway, I heard you guys talking about the Woody Allen doc, and the whole time you were talking about it, I kept thinking, there's one guy you need to have on the show to talk about this documentary to get a full picture. And that man's name is Robert Whitey. And then the next day, you mentioned him in connection with Albert Brooks, that he had interviewed albums. And I was like, fell off my chair. I was like, oh, my God. Like, I have to call into the show. This guy has kind of, I don't know, made it his like, he's dedicated his life to this a little bit to defending Woody Allen. And I agree with you. Woody Allen definitely has done some shady things. Nothing to talk about. I mean, I think that. But Suny Previn is a very brilliant woman and she speaks for herself. She has a lot to say on the subject as well. And people don't really listen to her side of the story. She's 40 and something now, you know, A lot of thoughts.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Gina Grad]

I thought maybe if you guys can get Robert Whitey on the show, I think that would be really interesting. Great director.

[Adam Carolla]

We will try and do that. Max. Pat, I make a note. I will say this. There is a side to every story, but as it pertains to adult males and teenage girls or prepubescent girls, there should never even be a story. That's kind of the way I.

[Bald Brian]

What happened was right.

[Gina Grad]

And when you have a. You have a three or four year old who. She's the only consistent person when she's interviewed, you don't just go, yeah, well, but she's a kid. She's trying to tell you what happened.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. I'm just saying it's kind of in a weird way, it's kind of like Cuomo. It's like he didn't do a heck of a lot, it seems to these six gals, but there's still six gals saying he did something. You know, you should try to lead a life where there's nobody saying anything. Yes. Okay.

[Bald Brian]

Yes, indeed.

[Gina Grad]

Yeah. No, you do that very well because the lengths I have to go for a compliment. Haircuts, losing weight, new clothes. I get radio silence. So you are doing a great job.

[Bald Brian]

Keep it up, Adam.

[Adam Carolla]

I do that with the fellas as well, Gina. So you'll be Gl, Adam. I'm an equal opportunity non offender. All right, Jeff Cesario is waiting in the wings and we'll talk to him right after this. It's time to check Adam's voicemail. What's up, Face man? Class of 1981, North Oskies. Ceramic in the major, my friend. Hey, I got the answer to your unicycle. I have four kids. I taught them all how to ride a unicycle Shopping cart. Get behind a shopping cart. It gets in the perfect balance between something to hold on to, but they still got to keep it by themselves. Trust me, works like a charm. Now all you got to do is steal a shopping cart later. You can leave us a message at 888-634-1744. Wow. Shopping cart. Very good call. Jeff Cesario is joining us. The album what Was I Thinking, available now on Pandora, Spotify and anywhere you get your music and the podcast Play with Pain with Chet Waterhouse. Good see you, Jeff.

[Jeff Cesario]

Hey, good to see you guys. That's how I learned comedy was behind a shopping cart. Took it right up on stage. Took away all my fears.

[Adam Carolla]

We, Chris went and pulled your very first appearance on the Tonight show with Johnny Carson, right?

[Jeff Cesario]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

And said it was a seven minute set, but he thought we'd play the first two minutes and he said material holds up. Said still good material from. Was it 87? Did we figure out?

[Jeff Cesario]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

God, how nervous, how nervous were you going out there?

[Jeff Cesario]

I was pretty nervous. I was more nervous for my first letterman in 84. I literally walked around Central park till about 5am with my nuts in my throat just trying to remember my act.

[Adam Carolla]

God, remember those days.

[Jeff Cesario]

But by the Tonight show in 87, I was nervous, but I was together enough to know if I get that first joke out, I'll be fine.

[Adam Carolla]

Were you New York based back then or where were you?

[Jeff Cesario]

I was never New York based. Most people look at me and think I was, but I never was. I was Minneapolis compared to. And I moved straight to Los Angeles in 83 and 84. I did Letterman. I did another one. 86 and 87. I started a series of Tonight shows that lasted four or five years.

[Adam Carolla]

I'm trying to think, as I think about being really nervous about my first Letterman appearance and flying out there the night before and just I had the extra added pressure of Jimmy, who was a massive Letterman fan and also didn't mind critiquing my appearances, you know, so I knew he was going to be watching. He'd have a jeweler's loop pressed up against the screen, you know, watching me. And I was like, God, I don't. I was more like, I don't want to disappoint Jimmy because I got to come back and share an office with him and if it's going to be a long plane ride back if I go out there and lay an egg. But here's a question for everybody that I don't know what the answer is to, but Jeff is doing Letterman and he's nervous. But Jeff also has a set and he knows the set. He knows what his material is. And presumably he's worked it. He's got a certain comfort and familiarity with it. And so even though standup, you're kind of out there on your own, you at least know what you're gonna say, and you've done it in front of a crowd multiple times and you've kind of found the beats and the moments in it. If you're gonna do panel and you're, you know, Dr. Drew or Larry King or some, you know, basketball coach or something, you just have to kind of be there, answer some questions. If you're the comedian, meaning me, but I'm doing panel, then it's kind of sit down, stand up. But you've never tried any of these jokes before. You've never uttered any of this stuff before and you don't really have it committed that well. Yeah. So what do you guys think?

[Jeff Cesario]

So you've also got essentially Kenley Jansten sitting there, who's gonna throw a fastball at you at any given moment that you don't know.

[Adam Carolla]

Right. Letterman will.

[Jeff Cesario]

It's just like you're in the middle of a bit and suddenly Carson or Letterman or any of these guys think of something and wham, they throw it, you know.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. And Letterman, Letterman wasn't a groundlings grad. Like, he wasn't a. Yes and guy. He would say, just say, I never seen that. I don't know what you're talking about or whatever it is. And you'd just be kind of sitting there. But still, I feel like I'd be more nervous in Jeff Cesario's situation. I don't know. What do you guys think?

[Bald Brian]

The only thing I can compare it to this is not the same thing, but it's my only experience with this is I was more nervous doing well. Jeff was there, Adam was there, Georgina was there. I was more nervous hosting Laps with Ball Bryant because that's not something I do. I'm not a stand up comic. It's my first time before a crowd anywhere near that size. I was more nervous there than I was doing who Wants to Be a Millionaire, which is insane. But I'm good at trivia. Like if you're good at something, you're like, okay, well this is something I can do. I'm not. I was of course a little bit nervous, but I was much more nervous doing the standup because it's not, that's just not something I do. Whereas, you know, like Jeff was saying once he got. But tonight's show, he had been doing that thing for years, you know, a few years. So he was at least, yes, nervous, but at least something he was able to do well.

[Adam Carolla]

Jeff, you could probably answer, what do you think? Would you have rather that first shot on Letterman, done the panel or just One on one with Letterman or do the standup, especially the first couple of times.

[Jeff Cesario]

Just please, God, just let me do what I do.

[Bald Brian]

Let me play my sport.

[Jeff Cesario]

Yeah. Don't dress me up in an outfit and ask me to. No, I can't. Just please, just make the spot as big as you can.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, I'll hit it.

[Jeff Cesario]

Make sure the cameras are running, and I swear I'll try my best.

[Adam Carolla]

It was kind of a weird, surreal thing because Biff Henderson, who can't be with us anymore, can he?

[Bald Brian]

I have no idea.

[Adam Carolla]

Biff Henderson was the black guy who's kind of a funny character.

[Bald Brian]

Stage manager.

[Admiral James Stavridis]

Right?

[Adam Carolla]

Stage manager, right. And the problem is when you watch Letterman all the time and Biff becomes a big part of the show when you're standing still alive. He's still alive.

[Gina Grad]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

He's the oldest living black man named Biff. People don't know that.

[Gina Grad]

He's 74.

[Bald Brian]

He might be.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, he was not that old back then. So the part that as long as you're a Letterman fan, you've watched Letterman every night and especially watched it as a civilian. See, this is kind of an interesting thing. Another dynamic we should try to explore, which is there are plenty of new shows that came about after I was a celebrity, so I didn't grow up watching the View. So when I was a guest on the View, I was already a celebrity and the View had been on just started or whatever. So I didn't care about going on the View. It's kind of like when you do a show. So anyone who does a show in Australia or England or something, that's why they're drunk half the time. They're like, I don't give a shit. We're in Australia. I don't want anyone to watch. I mean, the Internet has destroyed all that. But you'll see, like, American guests do some Australian shows. Like, that guy was out of his mind. He was loaded. So Letterman I had watched for years as a civilian. I mean, I would just sit and raise mom's apartment in North Hollywood, and we'd stay up and we're loser 19 year olds, and we'd just sit there. So now the notion of going on to Letterman, it now got into the surreal zone. And then Biff Henderson, who I would have recognized anywhere was the guy who pulled the curtain for you. So now you're standing backstage, it's like, biff, what are we doing? You're going out. That's what you're doing. What are we doing? A bit like, no, this is My job. Yeah.

[Jeff Cesario]

I was lucky in the sense that I did a lot of music material in my act. Not a lot, but I had about like a five minute chunk on music, on playing music, which, you know, nobody else really did. And the guys in the band had heard it. Paul and. And Will Lee and those guys had. Had heard that material. So they were a little bit fans. They kind of knew me a little bit. And that always put me at ease. Whenever I was in a situation.

[Adam Carolla]

Like.

[Jeff Cesario]

That where I knew the musicians, that always made me relax. I don't. I don't really know why, but it just did. I just felt like, okay, I got allies here.

[Gina Grad]

You got a whole. And it's. It's a group, you know, it's a crew that will chuckle, and they're right there with you on stage.

[Adam Carolla]

Do you remember the song they played when you went out?

[Jeff Cesario]

Yeah, I think the first couple of times they did some Tower of Power, probably.

[Adam Carolla]

What is he, Ryan Sweet.

[Jeff Cesario]

And then they did and. And they loved taking requests because I imagine most comics just go, yeah, play whatever you want. And I would come in and go, do you guys know Oakland Stroke by Tom?

[Bald Brian]

And they go, yeah, that's a badass tune.

[Jeff Cesario]

And then he got into this thing. There was a cool. In the gang song called Fresh. And Paul would, you're a fresh young kid. I'm gonna play Fresh for the fresh young kid. So they would. Then about the last four or five times I did it, they played Fresh.

[Adam Carolla]

I just love she's fresh, fresh, exciting. So exciting, too. Hey, Chris. We're enjoying the shit out of this school. And the gang song known as Fresh.

[Bald Brian]

Yeah, I see that. Dawson's bopping around.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, we'll take a note. Dawson likes it. I see that.

[Jeff Cesario]

I'm ready. Ready to do the set.

[Adam Carolla]

Biff standing back there with his headset on, his big glasses.

[Bald Brian]

Biff's digging the cruise.

[Adam Carolla]

You guys know this one?

[Giovanni]

Yep.

[Gina Grad]

I don't think so.

[Adam Carolla]

It's gonna kick in. G.

[Bald Brian]

Things.

[Adam Carolla]

You just a mystery.

[Giovanni]

I have seen her.

[Jeff Cesario]

Oh, wait.

[Giovanni]

Hot.

[Adam Carolla]

Mystery women are called, by the way. They're not. There's times, like, Chick comes in, she's dressed to the nines. No one's seen her before. She's wearing this. Yeah, that's called a prostitute. She's fresh, exciting. She's so exciting to meet me. She's fresh, fresh, exciting. I think your bass player can handle the fresh. This song grew. Yeah, he's lay down this place, play Oakland Stroke. After this, me and my brother used to sing She's Fresh fish.

[Giovanni]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

This good song of.

[Jeff Cesario]

Literally she's living.

[Adam Carolla]

Fresh. Would they play this song for you to go out there? Yeah, I love it.

[Jeff Cesario]

They play the chorus the last three, four times because he got in the groove with it and I just thought.

[Giovanni]

Well, Paul's enjoying it.

[Jeff Cesario]

Yeah, I'm fine with it.

[Adam Carolla]

Let's go. All right, everyone. She's fresh, exciting. She's so exciting to meet. She's fresh, fresh, fresh, fresh, exciting. So exciting. Add this to your karaoke repertoire, everybody. All right. Do we have Oakland shuffle? Stroke, stroke. Tower. Oh, yeah. Brian grew up with Tower of power.

[Bald Brian]

Yeah. Top 10 most played band in my house, easily growing up. Oh, wow. My dad loves Tower of Power.

[Adam Carolla]

I think I got. I'm. I'm a man. Is this it? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. See him walking out there, sleeves pulled up. Yeah. Bolo tie, skinny tie.

[Bald Brian]

We're the last big regional bands, Tower, pal. They're a local band to the Bay Area.

[Giovanni]

Are huge in the Bay Area.

[Gina Grad]

Well, and aren't there like a dozen of them?

[Bald Brian]

They interchange members quite freely.

[Jeff Cesario]

Well, these. A lot of players from around the Bay Area.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

[Giovanni]

Come in now.

[Adam Carolla]

Probably not more than the Coasters, though. The Coasters, who had their first hit in 1956, have a bunch of 33 year old guys in the band now and they're like, still the Coasters. All right, Cesario, let's see. Well, why don't we play a little bit of that, of that Carson clip that Chris dutifully found. This is, this is a good night for a new comedian who's making his first appearance. Because you're in a good mood and that's always helpful to somebody who has not done this show before.

[Giovanni]

Jeff is from originally the state of.

[Adam Carolla]

Wisconsin and he performs like a lot of the young comedians he performs, performs frequently at the improvisation here in Hollywood.

[Giovanni]

And so would you welcome him, please?

[Adam Carolla]

Jeff Cesario pants.

[Admiral James Stavridis]

Good luck.

[Gina Grad]

My goodness.

[Jeff Cesario]

Thank you very much. My name is Jeff Cesario. I am originally from Wisconsin. A couple other escapees here tonight this week. I've been out here four years in California. I've never yet to go to the beach. Too many blonde people at the beach in general. I show up at a beach out here, people go, who called a cab? I prefer my sports indoors. I watch sports on tv. My favorite's probably basketball on tv. I watch basketball on TV because I cannot believe the moves these guys make. I watch bowling on TV because I cannot believe there's prize money involved. What could possibly be less strenuous and more boring? Than bowling on television.

[Adam Carolla]

Golf.

[Jeff Cesario]

Okay, golf. I'll confess, being from Wisconsin, I'll watch golf on tv, you know, just to see really good weather. But who is riveted to their seat for a televised golf match? Who calls eight friends, gets a keg of beer? Landscapers maybe, huh?

[Adam Carolla]

Applause. Break.

[Jeff Cesario]

Some sports I cannot watch on tv. They're just too hard for me. Tennis is one of them. I like to play, but tennis is hard to watch. There's too many arguments in tennis. They're always arguing whether the ball is in or out. Why don't they just make the out of bounds out of Velcro? I think out of everybody, I think the best athletes we have, probably horses. You ever seen a horse run a race live and in person? Beautiful animals. Although they have the best incentive to win a race. You're a horse, you win the Kentucky Derby, where do they send you?

[Giovanni]

Stud farm?

[Jeff Cesario]

Guessing. Most of us could shave a couple of seconds off a hundred yard dash time. It would have helped me in high school Olympian Carl Lewis in the lead. Wait a second.

[Adam Carolla]

From nowhere, 14 year old Jimmy Dugan.

[Jeff Cesario]

That's the only real thing we have left on television. Sports. Everything else to me is completely out of control. But people will believe it if they see it on tv. This is amazing. There was a special on the other night on the Bermuda Triangle and my friends believed it. People disappear without a trace in the Bermuda Triangle. Yeah. These people who disappear, you know where they are?

[Adam Carolla]

Bermuda.

[Jeff Cesario]

Who always disappears? It's always some poor guy with six kids in college, a huge mortgage and a dead end job. Oh, he disappears in the Bermuda Triangle.

[Adam Carolla]

What the fuck happened to the Bermuda Triangle? Every third TV show was, it was Leonard Nimoy narrates and they'd always show the compass spinning around on the dash of the plane.

[Bald Brian]

Haywire.

[Gina Grad]

It went the way of quicksand.

[Adam Carolla]

Yes. And the dodo bird Jeff duo coming on.

[Bald Brian]

Oh, God.

[Gina Grad]

I was just gonna say that was hilarious. And your gait and your movement, your physicality is just so relaxed and charming and fun right out of the gate.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, cool.

[Jeff Cesario]

I'm glad I've lost all of that, of course.

[Adam Carolla]

But here's a question. You know once when you do tons of standup and you're used to playing clubs, you're so used to having the mic in your hand and then you go there and you don't get to hang on to that mic. And a lot of guys really like the feeling of that mic in their hand. Was that tough? No.

[Jeff Cesario]

As an Italian, I just went, give me 10 seconds and then boom.

[Adam Carolla]

It just.

[Jeff Cesario]

I figured it out.

[Adam Carolla]

Your hands.

[Jeff Cesario]

I just knew my hands would react to what I was saying.

[Adam Carolla]

All right, we got a couple of military men. They're gonna be joining us pretty soon, so I think we should cut right to the chase and get to Chet Waterhouse. Why don't we? Dawson's running back to his seat. Fresh the sports with Jet Waterhouse. Oh, brother.

[Jeff Cesario]

Time for the Waterhouse update, brought to you by Haul and Oats, the food truck that hauls a mellow duo of oatmeals right to your door. NFL Cowboys signed Dak Prescott, $126 million guaranteed. Meanwhile, I'm boiling ramen in a coffee pot at a Red Roof Inn. Chicago Bears watch Seattle's Russell Wilson and are offering Khalil Mack two improv groups and Lou Malnati's Deep Dish of the Month. That item brought to you by Menadrill, the erection pill. NBA All Star Game. Team LeBron beat Team Durant using a quarter by quarter combined concurrent and aggregate scoring form formula that would have had Stephen Hawking thinking, you know what? Just have my angry wife push me into the sun. Baked backyard college football. Kansas dumps coach Les Miles after rumors he hit on coeds while at lsu. Miles said he was merely teaching an extension course called Hitting on Co heads while at lsu. That item sponsored by Susie Qanon. The snack cake fill with sweet conspiracy. America's pastime. No, not trying to muster sympathy for a wealthy ex princess. Baseball spring ball. Royals. Bobby Witt Jr. Slugged a 484 foot homer clear out of the park in Arizona. The home run disputed by Woody Allen's legal team. And finally, this week in sports history, the year 1946. The place Boston, Massachusetts Red Sox star Ted Williams offered $500,000, which is $20 million in today's money, to play baseball in Mexico. He refuses, saying, I'd rather have my dead head cut off and frozen. That wish granted in 2002. This Waterhouse update, brought to you by Edgar Eason Allen Poe finely crafted Goth furniture. If you want more of me this weekend, Saturday, I'll be calling the Papa Shot Low Ceiling Championships. Look for some ricochet concussions there. Sunday. For real. Me and Trevor Longwad are gonna simulcast hot man on man PGA action. That's right, the final round of the Players Championship from TPC Sawgrass. Only on the stereo app. It's simple. Download the stereo app, watch the coverage on NBC, but catch our call. Why not? It's golf, for God's sake. Loosen up. This Is Chet Waterhouse reminding you to play with pain?

[Adam Carolla]

Chet Waterhouse, sports Sorry we had to play that clip from 37 years ago about you talking about not wanting to watch golf. We didn't know you were gonna plug a golf tournament moments after we played that clip.

[Jeff Cesario]

That's called the old setup.

[Adam Carolla]

That's right.

[Jeff Cesario]

Don't worry about those.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, Jeff Cesario, all I can think of is what a pro every time he comes on this show. Stand up album, what was I thinking? And the podcast Play with Pain with Chet Waterhouse, available on Apple podcast as well. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks, Chet.

[Jeff Cesario]

Pleasure.

[Adam Carolla]

Always. Great. All right. Well, we'll talk to Admiral James. I think it's Stavridis. Stavridis. There you go. Stavridis. And Eliot Ackerman. They've written a book. We're going to talk about China and their navy and global domination, and we've been always talking about Russia, but we should probably be talking a little more about China. And I have an interesting clip to play these guys as well. We'll take a quick break. We'll come back with the admiral and Elliot right after this. Adam. And now a tip from the 1965 issue of Good Housekeeping. 120 Ways to Please a man.

[Gina Grad]

Men find certain feminine sins hard to forgive. Are you guilty of lipstick on your teeth? A slip or strap that shows Fussing when the wind whips your hair? Neatness in his eyes is a feminine virtue. So make your cosmetic corner a shining showcase.

[Adam Carolla]

Just one of 120 ways to please a man. Now back to the Adam Carolla show. Well, we have Admiral James Dravidis and also Elliot Ackerman. They have a new book, newish book, 2034, a novel of the next world war, and it involves China. And I should tell you that these guys know of what they speak because I got their bio and I read it earlier. So, Admiral, let's start with you. Your experiences. You've worked on destroyers, you've worked on aircraft carriers, you've led battle groups. Tell us. Brag for 10 seconds about your bona fides.

[Admiral James Stavridis]

I'm a Naval Academy graduate and a long career in the Navy, including command of a destroyer, a squadron of destroyers, a carrier strike group, all in combat. So I know the front end of the spear, so to speak, in that regard. And I also, and this relates to my good friend and co writer Elliot Ackerman, I went to the Fletcher School of Law and diplomacy, did a PhD there in international law and then became the dean. So I have sort of the policy side of this thing, as well as the operational side of it.

[Adam Carolla]

And Elliot, your turn to brag.

[Elliot Ackerman]

I'm a former Marine Corps and CIA officer, served five tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, fought in the Fallujah battle there. I'm also a graduate of the Fletcher school and about 10 years ago started writing full time. I'm a contributing opinion writer at the New York Times and my books have been nominated for the National Book Award, the Carnegie Mellon Medal in Fiction and Nonfiction.

[Adam Carolla]

So as coincidence would have it, I don't know if you guys caught it, but I was watching Tucker Carlson last night and he was talking about that. Your book is a geopolitical thriller that imagines a Navy clash between the US and China in the South China Sea. 2034. He did a whole piece on the Chinese Navy and how they've really been upping their game with modern equipment and stuff like that. It just ran last night. Did you guys catch that?

[Admiral James Stavridis]

I did not, but I watched closely the testimony of a fellow named Admiral Phil Davidson. Admiral Davidson is the four star admiral in charge of all of the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. He's my counterpart from the days when I was Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. So he's the Pacific version of that. He was testifying in front of Congress and made some very strong points about the fact that the United States can't simply assume we're going to win a conflict with China. He called it a turning point in the military relationship.

[Adam Carolla]

How serious is China about their hundred year plan?

[Admiral James Stavridis]

They are 100% serious about their hundred year plan. And I would tell you they actually have a 200 year plan. This is a nation that historically has thought in a long sweep of time. It's an ancient civilization dating back thousands and thousands of years. And that's an advantage that they have over us. So to bring it to the present, one of the key elements in that long range plan is ownership, as in territorial sovereignty over the South China Sea, the entire South China Sea, which is the size of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea combined. They claim to own it. And the novel 2034 begins with a set piece, a battle in the South China Sea between the US and China.

[Adam Carolla]

Are we. It's just a sort of Navy geek question. Are we going to need aircraft carriers in the future or are we going to have some other way to distribute planes and bombs and things of that nature?

[Admiral James Stavridis]

That's not a geek question at all. That is a very, very powerful question for the moment. And the short answer is over time, we are going to have to distribute firepower more broadly, as you put it, will probably have somewhat smaller but more carriers. And over time it's not inconceivable to me that we would move out of the paradigm that hooks us so firmly to these carriers. I'll point you back to 1941, what happened on December 7th. Pearl Harbor.

[Gina Grad]

Pearl harbor, correct.

[Admiral James Stavridis]

Ginger Grad. And the entire US Navy battleship fleet, which was the aircraft carrier of the time, if you will, was sunk in Pearl harbor to the aircraft carrier. Over time, I think there'll be a new generation of ships that will allow us to distribute that firepower more effectively.

[Adam Carolla]

Another weird side note, as I was hearing about your story, Admiral, I said I wonder if he knows of. I know your dad was in the Navy as well, correct?

[Admiral James Stavridis]

He was in the Marine Corps.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, the Marine Corps. Anyone know Jim Morrison's dad, the rear admiral? You did?

[Admiral James Stavridis]

Wow. I was at the. When I first graduated from the Academy in 1976, he was, I think a two star admiral and he came and visited the school where we were and of course we were all in awe of him because he was Jim Morrison's dad, which is probably what's on his gravestone now he's passed away.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, it's a double edged sword being Jim Morrison's dad because on one hand you're Jim Morrison's dad, on the other hand your only son says you're dead. I wouldn't take as a compliment, but.

[Admiral James Stavridis]

Have you ever been to the grave of Jim Morrison?

[Adam Carolla]

What's that? Oh, I've been to the grave, yeah.

[Admiral James Stavridis]

Yeah, it's in the very famous cemetery, as you know, in Paris. And you know, he lived up a full and a fast life.

[Adam Carolla]

I agree. Not usually a lot of Admiral traffic around Jim Morrison grave. A lot of Heschers, you know, hanging out and spilling a little crevassier on it. But disproportionate. Yeah, I walked over there of that.

[Admiral James Stavridis]

Generation, you know, I listened to the Doors and Jim Morrison sort of figured in my teenage years. So when I was in the cemetery, I definitely made it to the graveside.

[Adam Carolla]

Sorry, Elliot, go ahead.

[Elliot Ackerman]

I just say I think the Doors transcend generations.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Timeless stuff. We've had Robby Krieger and Densmore, I think have both been on this show. All right, let me play this clip from Tucker Carlson last night because it was just last night he was talking about the Chinese sort of gearing up for the naval battles in the future. And it's just a complete coincidence that you guys are on less than 24 hours later. Here we go.

[Giovanni]

Last year we learned that China has.

[Adam Carolla]

Quickly developed the world's largest naval force.

[Giovanni]

In 2015, China had 255 battle force ships.

[Adam Carolla]

Now they have more than 360. And many of those ships are more capable than anything in the American naval fleet.

[Giovanni]

So how are we responding to the this? Well, at the White House yesterday, Joe Biden addressed it effectively. What's the American military's response?

[Adam Carolla]

Here's what Joe Biden said. Some of it's relatively straightforward work where we're making good progress. Designing body armor that fits women properly, tailoring combat uniforms for women, creating maternity flight suits, updating, updating requirements for their hairstyles. And some of it is going to take and you know, and an intensity of purpose and mission to really change the culture. And posit. All right, that's in Boston, Biden's jobs. But it is, it is interesting that China's added, I don't know, was it 100 and some odd ships and a short period of time. And then what about that assertion that they're going to have stuff that's better than our equipment?

[Admiral James Stavridis]

I think that overstates what's happening. China has about to give you the numbers. China has around 370 so called battle force ships. These are simply warships that are capable of operating at some distance. The United states has about 300. So it is a correct statement that China has more of these battle force warships than the United States. But if you put them all together and had them fight each other, the United States would easily win because our ships are more capable. And in particular in today's world, we have these nuclear powered aircraft carriers. What we got to worry about is the, if we ever did get into a battle with China, China would be fighting that war on their home course. They would have operations in the South China Sea. They would have the aircraft operating from land bases there. It would be a tough fight for the United States. I still think we have the capability to prevail, but that gap is closing and I think that is accurate.

[Adam Carolla]

How many years into the Hundred Year Plan are we?

[Admiral James Stavridis]

Well, as you might or might not expect, the 100 year plan is revised every five years or so. So it's kind of a rolling timeline. But I think a fair way to think about it is China began to think holistically about what they call one belt, one road. It's a geoeconomic, geopolitical strategy. Realistically about 10 years ago as they really lifted the majority of their population out of poverty. So, so they're at the very early stages is the short answer to the question.

[Bald Brian]

Brian, I have a question. I just thought of this because the clip Adam played were the stats that Tucker quoted as realized were between 2015 and today and of course into a burn on Biden. But were we too soft on China? Should we have been doing more or is this just the natural evolution of the last four years?

[Admiral James Stavridis]

We should have been taking a more assertive stance with China. I would argue going back to not only the Trump administration but before that to the Obama administration and before that to the Bush administration. Really the bet in the international. Bet in the international system was, oh.

[Bald Brian]

Boy, they're coming for you.

[Admiral James Stavridis]

Satellite.

[Bald Brian]

That's right.

[Admiral James Stavridis]

Yeah, it's my satellite. Chinese are lucky. Mostly they find me by the reflection. The bet in the international community was that by allowing China to integrate through the World Trade Organization to give them a lot of space, that gradually they would come to become a positive player. That really hasn't happened. And they have simply become more aggressive, more sharp elbowed in business.

[Adam Carolla]

Business.

[Admiral James Stavridis]

They built up their military. They're leaning on small countries across this one belt, one road. It's become pretty clear that China is our major geopolitical and geostrategic opponent, certainly for the first part of this century. I think that light has gone on both on the Republican side and the Democratic side.

[Adam Carolla]

How difficult. I'll pose this one to Elliot. You know, the nuanced relationship with China is, you know, back in the day you had your enemies pretty well defined. Nazi Germany, later Russia, Japan. You know, we knew who we were fighting, but we didn't have LeBron James defending Germany and we didn't have Disney, you know, making their products so we wouldn't offend Imperial Japan or the Soviet Union. Now there's this weird blurred line which is we need these people. They're making our phones, they're making our tennis shoes. No one wants to offend them. God forbid somebody from watching our movies. Yeah, somebody from the NBA says he wants to stand with not Tibet, he wanted to stand with Hong Kong. And he gets, gets shouted out of the league by all the NBA players. I mean, this is a totally different situation. How do we make our way through? How do we navigate this?

[Elliot Ackerman]

I think you showed that clip or what Tucker was getting at to select that clip with Biden's reaction to this announcement of what's going on in the South China Sea is to discuss the latest in maternity garments and form fitting body armor. Is kind of good at this theme that when the barbarians arrive at the gate. We're probably going to all be arguing about what pronouns to assign them with the threat. And, you know, and one of the things we very much get out of the book, I mean, it's focused on China, but it's also focused on the pervasive political dysfunction that exists in the United States right now. That makes it very challenging for us to put together any type of holistic, forward looking response to not necessarily a China specific threat, but any type of threat. However, speaking to the China specific threat, like, absolutely. We're living in a society right now where we are, if not directly, certainly indirectly affected by China and everything from our sports, LeBron James, our media. Listen, if you go not saying this to toot our horns, but if you go on Amazon right now, our book is number seven on Amazon. I've published, this is my sixth book, the Admiral's Tent. I have never in my life received so many one star reviews. I usually get about 50% one star reviews. We've got over 60% one star review.

[Bald Brian]

I know. You made it.

[Gina Grad]

Yeah, Take a look.

[Elliot Ackerman]

I mean, listen up.

[Admiral James Stavridis]

Scratching my head. And we are enmeshed in every single way.

[Elliot Ackerman]

And to pretend this isn't going on is lunacy.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, look, we're a dream come true as a superpower because what a delight it would be if you had a foe and that entire country that was your foe was arguing about how racist they were and trying to figure out the gender pronouns and canceling Speedy Gonzalez while you were just building up your fucking fleet. It's insane that we bought into all this stuff.

[Elliot Ackerman]

Well, they're not arguing about that.

[Adam Carolla]

We are. We are. Yes.

[Elliot Ackerman]

The fact that they're not should concern us.

[Adam Carolla]

Yes.

[Elliot Ackerman]

The fact that what do we. We just spent the last, what, three or four days talking about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

[Adam Carolla]

I know they're not even from here. We don't even like them.

[Elliot Ackerman]

The Chinese were teaming up to own space together.

[Adam Carolla]

It's. Yeah, we're just like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

[Elliot Ackerman]

The word I like to use is decadent. It's decadent behavior. I myself, I'm a veteran of our wars. 20 years of war is really decadent late Empire behavior. And it's worth us waking up to that if we want to have another America century. And I think one of the inspirations for the book was to try to just shake people by the collar and say, we don't want 2034 to look like this. 2034.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, it's sort of like, I know Everything is problematic in our society, but there's real problems out there, and we'll fucking long for the days when we're arguing about Speedy Gonzalez and Dr. Seuss when the shit goes down.

[Elliot Ackerman]

Well, it's a great luxury to be able to have the arguments about what we're going to paint on the side of the basketball court while eating nacho.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Elliot Ackerman]

If we interact together, we're not going to be able to have those arguments.

[Adam Carolla]

That being said, Admiral, how pumped are you for Top Gun? The next one. When is that coming out?

[Admiral James Stavridis]

Well, it's almost as good as if the Doors were going to put out a new album. It's really that good. I am very excited. The whole Navy's excited. You know, that film came out right after I came out of the Naval Academy, and it.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, the Admiral. I think everybody just froze. Oh. Oh, man. The Internet went down. Just when we're getting to the real subject I wanted to get to, which is the release of Top Gun that's.

[Bald Brian]

Coming out July 2nd.

[Adam Carolla]

July 2nd.

[Bald Brian]

And I think Newsom just announced reopenings of movie theaters.

[Adam Carolla]

Ooh. And then what about Fast and Furious 9? Because if that comes out the same weekend Top Gun's coming out.

[Bald Brian]

I know it got pushed, but I don't know to when.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, do your job, son. I know. Focus, would you, please? Yeah. Oh, man. It seems to me. I'm just going to speculate. While everyone has been frozen out with our technological difficulties, it seems to me that with the range of aircrafts improving and with drones and missile technologies, you know, the notion of an aircraft carrier. I'm now looking at Dawson as someone to reflect on an aircraft carrier is about the oldest idea in the world. Like, we're just going to take a patch of landing strip and put it in the middle of the ocean, and you can land your airplane on that. But it's a very old idea if you really just think about it conceptually. The aircraft carriers are modern, the planes are modern. Things have changed. But the concept of we're going to take a patch of landing field, put it in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. You can take planes off from that. Sorry, hold on.

[Gina Grad]

Okay, here's Adam.

[Adam Carolla]

Hold on. We had a little technical lockup. Sorry, Top Gun. As a recruiter.

[Bald Brian]

We're back.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, no, as a recruiting tool, it's gotta be huge, right?

[Admiral James Stavridis]

Oh, sure, it's huge. And it also just kind of rattles the DNA of the Navy in very positive ways. And as I was saying a minute ago, everyone is kind of dying to See what Tom Cruise looks like as senior officer. Pretty hard to imagine that.

[Bald Brian]

Currently scheduled for a Fourth of July release. Fourth of July weekend, of course.

[Admiral James Stavridis]

Hopefully I'll be able to go to the theater for that, because that really is a film you want to see in a theater.

[Bald Brian]

Yes. You know, remember Top Gun? Remember how Top Gun was always the movie that people put on to test out their home sound system? Like, dude, you gotta check this out.

[Adam Carolla]

Right?

[Bald Brian]

Top Gun. Like, you're gonna want to see Top Gun Maverick in the theater.

[Adam Carolla]

So what is that? What's the future of our Navy? What are we working on? What technology? What are we building? What are we building now that would kind of surprise us? Or that may be the future. Is it faster and more maneuverable or is it bigger? What's the trend?

[Admiral James Stavridis]

Three big trends. One, you can't see and you can't touch. And cyber. It's building the ability to conduct offensive cyber operations that can get into the command and control networks of our opponents. Number two is unmanned vehicles. That you can picture, right? And we think sort of drones, but I'm talking unmanned vehicles, as in, from nanotechnology, very, very small swarms to huge unmanned vehicles that can operate in space. Others that can be at the bottom of the sea. But taking the men and women off those platforms allows you to operate them in much more extreme ways in terms of speed and depth and altitude and so forth. And then thirdly to Elliot's career, thirdly is Special Forces and enhancing the ability of our Special Forces teams. Elliot was in the Marine Corps, the equivalent of a Navy seal. They call them Recon Marines, Recon battalions and Marines. There'll be more of an emphasis on using smaller numbers of troops, but more elite, more highly trained forces in the future. That triad of cyber unmanned Special Forces is really the future of the armed forces.

[Adam Carolla]

It's also kind of the future of fast food, Right? Less employees, more robotics. One guy kind of knows what's going on versus a whole bunch of doofuses. I'm sorry, Elliot, did you want to say something?

[Elliot Ackerman]

I just had an interjection moment. Sometimes I do have to jump in with the admiral and remind him that the Navy SEALs are actually the equivalent of Recon Marines, not the other.

[Gina Grad]

Can I ask, Admiral, because we're talking about, you know, Special Forces in the future and things being manned and unmanned. I'd love to get both of your perspective on Space Force. And if you think, you know, we're going in the right direction or what direction that even is.

[Admiral James Stavridis]

Yeah, well, the television series was really.

[Gina Grad]

Dopey, the Steve Carell.

[Admiral James Stavridis]

But the real space force is an idea whose time has come. And it's not big. I think people think it's going to be like some huge force and Starship Enterprise will be driving around out there. No, this is going to be small. In the context of the Department of defense, maybe around 10,000 to 15,000. Remember, there's 1.5 million people in uniform in the Department of Defense, so it's a small number. And their job is to procure and operate the satellite constellations in the sky. But we need them because we need a cadre of people who can truly, deeply, madly focus just on space because it is going to explode in terms of size, as I was just talking about, more big, unmanned up there. So good idea. But I would say to conclude what we really need more than a space force is a cyber force. A force of men and women who are really focused on this cyber problem. We don't have that now. That's, I think, insane over the next few years.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. Final question for both of you. What is the end game for China? Do they want more landmass? Do they want everyone sort of under their rule? I mean, I think we can all agree there's nations that are sort of content with staying the size they are, who they are. Canada comes to mind. And then historically, there have been other nations that have wanted to kind of spread their wings a little bit. We've done a little of both. We've gone over, done some stuff, and then we usually come home at some point. What's China's endgame? What's the big picture?

[Admiral James Stavridis]

I'll take a swing at that. I think that, first of all, you're right to kind of point out nations have DNA about whether or not they are expansionist. China historically has not been an expansionist power. China often refers to itself as the Middle Kingdom, meaning they simply assume that they are already between Earth and heaven, therefore above the rest of the world. Therefore, they don't need to expand. Don't forget, they built the Great Wall of China not to expand, but to delineate the extent of the Chinese empire. What has changed is that China recognizes it has to have a functioning, massive economy to support its massive population. That's what one belt, one road. That's their strategy is all about exporting finished goods, importing raw materials. And I think where they will go in terms of expansion is to kind of reach out and pull Russia alongside them. And let me tell you something. To the north of China is Siberia. It's the size of the land mass of the United States of America, and only about 20 million Russians live there. It's full of hydrocarbons, natural gas, oil, gold, diamonds, rare earths, arable land, fresh water. China looks at that like my dog looks at a rib eye steak. It looks really, really good. Watch for China not to invade Russia, not to take over Siberia, but to kind of pull them alongside as a bit of a junior partner that will give them the raw materials they desperately want, and then they'll expand that influence along the route of one belt, one road through the Indian Ocean, and the next big target will be Africa. Again, not going to take over these countries. They're not going to colonize them. But what they're looking for is a large global footprint that can assure them of a functioning economy and continue to raise the standard of living within China. That's the goal.

[Adam Carolla]

Elliot, are they laughing their asses off at us, like arguing over the Green new deal every 10 minutes?

[Elliot Ackerman]

I would suspect that culturally we're not impressing anybody in China. But that being said, I mean, just to echo what the points the admiral was making is, oftentimes the argument that's made against a scenario like what we laid out in 2034 ever occurring is the economic interconnectivity between not only China, the United States, but China and the world. And hopefully we won't see a scenario like that play out. But similar arguments were made at the beginning of the 20th century that the economic interconnectivity of all the European nations, the families being intermarried, would prevent any type of war in Europe. And obviously in 1914, with the first World War, we saw that that was not the case. And you could have a similar escalation of circumstances in the case with China. And one of the themes we get out in the book, because the book is as much about China as it is also sort of a reflection on the United States, is if we look at the last hundred years as being an American century, that American century was forged in two fires, right? The First World War and the Second World War, those were two wars that we did not start. But like, we. We sure as hell finished those wars and were the beneficiary of those wars for decades and decades into the future. In 2034, we imagine a war started between China and the United States. But you have to read the book to find out who finishes that war and how to.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, the book is 2034, a novel of the Next World War. It's available now on Amazon. Don't mind the bad ratings. Those are just the Chinese bots giving it the one star. Yes.

[Gina Grad]

If anything, it should intrigue you more.

[Bald Brian]

That's right.

[Adam Carolla]

Yes. Admiral Elliot, thank you guys for joining us. Very enlightening stuff. All right, let me hit solo stove and then we'll do some news. Whether you're camping in the woods or hanging out in the backyard, nothing like a roaring fire. I love my solo stove. It's so well made, stainless steel. It burns so clean and so hot. And by the way, you don't get that smoky fire pit smell from it. It's like I said, stainless steel construction designed to regulate airflow and burn more efficiently. So just a little smoke. You'll wonder why there's so much fire with such little smoke. No campfire smell on clothes or hair. Nothing left but ultra fine ash for easy cleanup. Especially when it's cold outside like it is now. Portable and built to last, easy to light. Just use a few bits of starter. Lifetime warranty for every purchase. It's solo stove, right, Dawson? No one needs a reason to gather around the fire. Solo stove just took away any reason not to. And now you can get $10 off when you use promo code Adam at checkout. Just go to solostove.com and remember, you get $10 off when you use promo code Adam. All right, quick break. Come back to the news right after this.

[Giovanni]

Give me the news with crack News with Geno Grad.

[Adam Carolla]

Breaking viral weird crime protest politics. Give me news with Gina Grass stuff.

[Giovanni]

It's on tmz.

[Adam Carolla]

Joe Biden. Come now.

[Giovanni]

Big news with Gina.

[Admiral James Stavridis]

Gina.

[Adam Carolla]

The news with Gina Grad.

[Gina Grad]

Well, long awaited news with some crazy Los Angeles Unified School District stuff, Teachers union has reached a deal that paves the way for a return to classrooms by mid April, just a hair before graduation. This According to abc, seven preschool and elementary schools would reopen first in mid April and secondary schools at the end of April. The deal allows for.

[Adam Carolla]

I heard a stat today that said like out of over 500,000 Covid tabulated deaths under 300 kids. That's the stat. Like this thing. If there's anything you'd want to be during this pandemic, it would be a 15 year old.

[Gina Grad]

That's right.

[Adam Carolla]

If there's anything you wouldn't want to be, it's an elderly person in a nursing home. That is the difference between possible Death and fucking Zero Burger. This is a Zero Burger for 14 year old kids.

[Gina Grad]

And it's not just okay, you're right. They're getting something. $2 billion set aside for districts that hit the goal of getting, you know, everything ready for in person learning by their set dates. The state also set aside 25,000 doses of vaccine for LAUSD staff. And there's still going to be a combination of in person classes, online learning, and crucially, the agreements as teachers, along with nurses and other union members will not have to return to work until they're vaccinated. But again, we're talking about the end of April and Biden said everyone should be vaccinated by the end of May. So thank you. It's a short window.

[Adam Carolla]

End of April for high schoolers.

[Gina Grad]

Yes. Secondary school. High school.

[Adam Carolla]

Right. Until whatever the new variant hysteria comes out and blah blah, blah. I mean it's literally school ends end of May, beginning of June. That's the schedule. Now, I don't think any of these folks are volunteering to come back for summer school. That's it. I mean, my kids are going to go back to school for three weeks.

[Gina Grad]

Yes. And you think that's what I was going to say? But wait a second, you can't go to prom. That sweaty breathing, singing in a closed room.

[Adam Carolla]

That's right.

[Gina Grad]

They wouldn't. I'm sure they won't allow prom.

[Bald Brian]

Yeah, I'll bet they'll have modified versions. That's my prediction.

[Gina Grad]

Maybe on the football field they'll have.

[Bald Brian]

Outdoor in a tent, something.

[Adam Carolla]

Maybe. Well, the teachers union certainly did not let this go to waste, did they? Jesus fucking Christ, please. I've been on record as hating fucking teachers for a decade. Everyone told me, oh, they're heroes, they're heroes, they're heroes. Why do you hate teachers? Because most of them are fucking horrible. And this thing where it's like, they're heroes, they're heroes. Heroes. They're heroes. They work less than half the year and it's like they don't get paid as much as if I. Yeah, they don't work that much. They've chosen a job where they have three months off for the summer. I don't know anyone else who has that job in every fucking federal holiday there is. Oh, heroes, heroes, heroes. I think we've found out who teachers are through this pandemic. If we'd not found that out. And this thing where it's like, well, it's not them, it's the union. All right, it's the fucking union. Then they should be pushing back against the union and they're not. So thank you. I was early. Money on the fucking cowardly teachers and their shithead unions and the whole union thing is starting to jump the shark a little, too, because there was a time when we definitely needed a union. Now the unions have turned into. Well, you can't fire the ones that molest the kids. They just get full pay and go to, like, teacher's prison in Anaheim or something. Yeah, the rubber room. Yes.

[Bald Brian]

The corporation is. The corporations.

[Adam Carolla]

Yes. It's time to start modifying. And by the way, we wanna get rid of school choice. Shouldn't everyone in America just be outraged by that concept of we wanna get rid of options for schooling? Haven't we learned that we need options for schooling?

[Bald Brian]

Yeah, this puts a pretty fine point on it.

[Adam Carolla]

Yes. This experience, I agree. And there is. It's like if you're against school choice or your teacher thinks it's unsafe to go back into the classroom, you're just a fucking liar at this point. And you don't give a fuck about kids. There's no other choice in that. How can you be against school choice, seeing what we've just seen? How can you lobby against it? And how can be for the teachers unions? They're fucking despicable. They're cowards. It's been a goddamn calendar year. The rest of the country's open. It's completely safe to conduct business. The kids are not in danger at all. Get the fuck back to work, you fucking cowards. Jesus Christ. And you fucking people that want to tear me a new asshole for speaking this way. Go fuck yourself. The fucking mop handle, you fucking pussies. Jesus Christ. We're talking about kids. Anybody? Anyone want to chime in or. No, no, no. He said something bad about teachers. Of course I said something bad about teachers. They're fucking cowards that shut the school down for no reason and they're blackmailing everyone to go back to fucking work. Of course I said something about it. Where's everyone else? Where the fucking voice is. Jesus Christ so fucking mad, he sent out a fucking tweet calling them stupid or liars or fucking cowards. That's what else is there. They're either lying or they're cowards or they don't want to go back to work. It's. Or all the above. What's the other. What's the other option? Is there. Is there a hero option? Can we check that box? I don't think so. I mean, they just got a fucking thing on their website, like, hey, if you're gonna go on spring vacation, don't put pictures of you in Bermuda. It'll send the wrong message. We're Trying.

[Gina Grad]

Yeah, that was their Facebook page.

[Bald Brian]

That's poor.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, listen, the teachers unions are. The teachers unions. They're mobbed up. They're mobbed up with the fucking politicians and Gavin Newsom and everyone else. I get it. It's business. Business. They are doing their business. They don't give a fuck about kids. They're doing business. They want everything fine. They see this as an opportunity to get what they want fine. Where's everyone else? Where are all the voices? Where all the fucking activists? Where are all the people on Twitter that are outraged about everything all the time? Where are all the fucking celebrities? Where are all the comedians? Oh, they got a problem. They got a lot of opinions about fucking Meghan Markle. They got fucked, whatever fucking name is. I'm on a roll. They got tons of thoughts about the fucking Royal Family, the zero fucking burgers, living in a house in Santa Barbara. They got a lot of thoughts about that. No thoughts about the teachers or the teachers unions. Thanks, cowards. If you guys would have fucking. We'd had a groundswell of outrage by the Hollywood community or by the Twittersphere or whoever it is, is. We probably could have pressured these fucking cowards to going back to work, but you guys were silent because you are scared of being called a name for calling out cowards. Jesus Christ. Beam me up, Scotty.

[Bald Brian]

Maybe if he hadn't done it for you. Have your mansion.

[Adam Carolla]

That's right. That's where I sit every day. I just sit in my mansion. Or we go to Oklahoma City and fucking work in a crowded club because we're not pussy.

[Gina Grad]

You know what's interesting about the Meghan.

[Adam Carolla]

Markle pussies and you guys trying to turn this into a race issue. You fucking coward. Pussy. Teachers unions trying to turn this white against black. That's such an awesome plan. The little brown kids are suffering. The little black kids are suffering. And I know what we'll do. We'll try to turn this into a race issue where only the white privileged kids want their kids to go back to school. That is an awesome, diabolical, cowardly, chicken shit, fucking nefarious plan to try to take race, try to inject race in this and turn communities against each other based on race. Blah. God, you guys should be fucking disgusted by these people. And you should be disgusted yourself for not fucking saying shit. Anyway, other than that, I don't have.

[Gina Grad]

Strong opinions, as my dad would say. Other than that. How did you Enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln? And it's interesting that you make the Meghan Markle comparison, which Is so timely.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, I made the Markle comparison, but yes.

[Gina Grad]

Well, to be fair. Yeah, the Greek heiress. There are so many people who are coming out going, my heart breaks for her. I feel for her. So we're putting more energy into. When we talk about a class system and class warfare, into diving on the, you know, on the sympathy of this woman who is Oprah's neighbor. They are fine. She is very, very wealthy. She will be fine. But what about all these kids that are sitting at Echo park that aren't allowed to go to school? But we're so concerned that if somebody hurt Meghan Markle's feelings, she's gonna be okay. I promise.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, there was a story that some mother, like, wrote in Concerned, and the teachers union, like, wrote her back and was like, oh, by the way, what's your race? Because they were just hoping she was a white chick so they could fucking trot her out. The idea that they turned this into a race issue is. I guess everything's a race issue now. But it's such fucking weak sauce. Make your fucking argument and go back to work. Cowards. Thank you.

[Bald Brian]

It's pretty cynical.

[Adam Carolla]

Yes.

[Gina Grad]

Well. A federal judge ruled Kobe Bryant's widow, Vanessa, can in fact get the names of the four LA County Sheriff's deputies that were taking the pictures and texting the pictures of the crash site. Her attorneys claim they shared unauthorized pictures snapped at the site where Kobe and his daughter and seven others died. Lawyers for the deputies argued that releasing their names would make them targets on the Internet, but the judge didn't buy that. Now Vanessa Bryant's lawyers can get, you know, whatever dirt or information on the deputies from an internal affairs investigation. Vanessa's lawyer said transparency promotes accountability. We look forward to presenting Ms. Bryant's case in court. I'm not. I don't know if making it. If it's just about making an example of them or you're gonna track all the places they texted pictures. I don't know.

[Adam Carolla]

I think you would like to prevent this from happening in the future.

[Gina Grad]

Absolutely.

[Adam Carolla]

And this may be a step toward preventing that. Although, you know, you think about these guys, you know, you think about them as a sheriff, but they're really 26 year old guys who. Fans, who were fans, who had a couple years at JUCO and passed the sheriff's test and they have their phones with them and stuff. Like, think about where you were at when you were 25. Like, you would have taken pictures and you would have showed it to somebody in the locker room or whatever. Like, I'M not making excuses for them, but it's kind of bound to happen. But, but on the other hand, get them out there, sufficiently humiliate them and let that be a warning to anyone else who wants to do this.

[Gina Grad]

Yeah. So that's what they're now able to do. Just in terms of clerical errors, this one I think is number one with a bullet right now. A New York City murder suspect has mistakenly been released from Rikers island and he is still at large. Fox News reports that 26 and we have his picture in case you, you see him around. 26 year old Christopher Buggs was jailed without bail at Rikers while awaiting trial for more than three years. He's accused of fatally shooting a 55 year old man outside of Bodega in Brooklyn in 2018 and he was arrested three days later. But in a different criminal contempt case, a judge sentenced bugs to just 30 days and that sentence was mistakenly listed as the final disposition in the murder case. Jail staffers didn't realize the error. They released him on Tuesday. Corrections officers warned that he is considered armed and very dangerous.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, seems that way. Why don't we have bodegas out here?

[Gina Grad]

I don't know. They're the best part of living in New York. The best sandwiches and you can grab anything you need. And there's bodega cats.

[Adam Carolla]

I know we got AM PM and 7 11. And you can get a world's shittiest hot dog injected with liquid cheese. Too much good stuff. Why can't we have something where you could get a sandwich in a bottle of bottle.

[Gina Grad]

Good sandwich.

[Adam Carolla]

Yes.

[Gina Grad]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Yes.

[Gina Grad]

Like a nice deli sandwich.

[Adam Carolla]

I'm sorry.

[Bald Brian]

Not for me, but for the people listening who don't know what a bodega is. What's a bodega?

[Adam Carolla]

It's like a little corner store that sells, might sell some produce. You could probably get some deli items there. We used to have dairy drive throughs. Do you guys remember that? Oh yeah. I think it was like carnation. I'm not even, I'm unsure. They were like the dairy and you'd like drive through it. There's one over here in like Glendale or Burbank or something. And you'd pull up and it'd be like quart of milk and pack of cigarettes and some spaghettios and they'd just like hand them, hand them out. Are they still around, Dawson? I, I don't think so. But there was one in the town I grew up in and I was in my uncle's car once and he was going through and he needed a pack of cigarettes. He needed a pack of Cools. He smoked Cools. Menthols. And did he escape from Rikers recently? Because this place was run by an Asian family. Oh, boy. And they kept trying to hand him a six pack, of course. Oh, yeah, that's tough. Cool. Cool. Were those called Carnation or were they called not Carnation, but were they called Dairies or something? Like, there's a weird name to those. I think ours was just an independent one. I don't think it was a chain, so I don't know. Country superstar Travis Tritt. Brian is joining us tomorrow.

[Bald Brian]

I'm on record as his song It's a Great Day to be Alive. Very important, impactful in my life and my recovery and my sickness and everything. It means a lot to me.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, I'll tell him that when I talk to him. You zip it. You zip it. Adam.

[Gina Grad]

Get your run. Don't walk to Panorama City, because I think there's one there.

[Bald Brian]

No, you should run.

[Gina Grad]

I'm looking on Yelp right now.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, I guarantee they're selling horchata and pinatas. It's not the one from my childhood. Panorama City.

[Gina Grad]

All right, so we may have a reason for the bizarre dog napping involving Lady Gaga's French bulldog. According to tmz, that incident may have been part of a gang initiation because similar crimes in the LA area have been reported recently.

[Bald Brian]

What happened to our gangs?

[Gina Grad]

I know fit the shooting that nearly killed the dog walker, Ryan Fisher. TMZ also says the woman who found the dogs has not received her big half a million dollar reward because police haven't cleared her yet. A source says authorities don't believe she was part of the dog napping, but they're investigating whether she had any involvement after the fact. But is that the new gang initiation, dog napping?

[Bald Brian]

Just get jumped in?

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. What about jumped in or even going super old school, like, you gotta swallow this goldfish.

[Bald Brian]

I think that's a fraternity.

[Gina Grad]

Yeah, that's different.

[Adam Carolla]

That's different than initiations. Were initiations back in the day. I'm saying now you have to just shoot a random person in West Hollywood. That's take their dog and take their dog. That's an awesome initiation. But yeah. So Lady Gaga is like 500k, no questions asked. But now she's like, well, the police have a whole bunch of questions.

[Bald Brian]

Yeah, I want to ask questions.

[Adam Carolla]

So I'm not asking in New York. I'll be with my checkbook in New York until the authorities are done. Asking questions because.

[Gina Grad]

That's right.

[Adam Carolla]

Because what. Let's really try to distill this down. Whoever did it found out about the 500k almost immediately, right?

[Bald Brian]

Yeah, think so. Yeah.

[Gina Grad]

Because that was in the same 24 hour news cycle.

[Adam Carolla]

Right. The dogs wouldn't have just been pushed out of the car. I would have assume. I mean, I would assume they'd go back to headquarters or whatever with the, with the young headquarters with the young pledges and someone did the half a million buck math. And it kind of makes sense to me that they just handed it off to some chick they knew who wasn't in the gang and said, here you go. But I have no idea.

[Gina Grad]

Oh, that's a different. I thought you were going a different way. Not that again. I'm only saying this because TMZ says there's been like a rash of these puppy broker they like here, what can I get for these dogs? She's like perfect, and then watches the news and was like, I got a better idea. There's gotta be black market puppy brokers.

[Adam Carolla]

Interesting. Well, the 500k bounty was front and center, right? Like that came out.

[Gina Grad]

Oh yes, that came out quickly.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Gina Grad]

That news was a headline two seconds after this guy was shot and almost killed. Nobody cared about that. They only cared about this reward for the dog.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, I'd make a horrible boyfriend for Lady Gaga. She'd be like 500, half a million dollars. She'd be like, you don't think 75k would get the dog back?

[Bald Brian]

This is gonna motivate some people. I mean, 25k is a lot of money.

[Adam Carolla]

I know for you it's a fucking clutch and a piano tune, but for most of America, that's enough to bring a fucking dog back. I don't think we. I mean, 500 is great, but I'll tell you the same person and no one's gonna look at 150 grand and.

[Bald Brian]

Go, I don't know, waste of my.

[Adam Carolla]

Time, I'm going to Petco. No, they take the buck 50 the same way as they take the 500. They take 10, they take over anything over 25. You know what I mean?

[Giovanni]

Yep.

[Adam Carolla]

So anyway, I wonder who this. Do you know who this girl is? I mean, whoever gave her the dog. I mean, if it's my plan, someone had to figure out that this person cannot be, you know, have gang tattoos or something. But it's gotta be somebody's sister or something. Or somebody, something. But you also have to know they're just gonna be on her and she's gonna do something stupid right there and.

[Bald Brian]

Ask some questions and dig.

[Adam Carolla]

Right?

[Gina Grad]

Yeah, I don't. I know we don't really care about these things and there's bigger problems, but I am dying to know who this woman is, so I will absolutely tell you when we find out. Winston Marshall. He's the banjoist and lead guitar player for Mumford and Sons. He's quote, unquote, taking some time away from the band following the social media backlash surrounding his praise for a far right writer named Andy Ngo. Ngo. So the controversy came about when Marshall praised Noe for his book called Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy. And he tweeted, finally had time to read your important book. Your brave man didn't go over super well. So now, Andy. Now, in a statement on Twitter, he said, over the past few days, I've come to better understand the pain caused by the book I endorsed. I've offended not only a lot of people I don't know, but also those closest to me. The band, I imagine, including. Oh, including my bandmates. And for that, I'm truly sorry. As a result of my actions, I'm taking time away from the band to reexamine my blind spots. For now, please know that I realize how my endorsements have the potential to be viewed as approvals of hateful, divisive behavior. I apologize. This was not my intention.

[Adam Carolla]

We are living in fucking backwards land. Andy Ngo is a reporter who covered Antifa, who's also Vietnamese, by the way. Yes. Who got the shit beat out of him, like, in Portland at one of those, like, Antifa rallies or when they were trying to take over the courthouse or whatever it is. So Andy knows, is this a reporter who is trying to fucking get to the bottom of Antifa? And so he wrote a book on Antifa. Now, bookstores in Portland have been pressured not to sell his book and all sorts of shit. I don't know why. Since when did Intifa be fucking become our friend? Like, I get it. They're the wokest of the woke, but they also burn a lot of shit down. This guy just wrote a fucking book on these guys that burn a lot of shit down. And we're gonna attack him and we're gonna attack anyone who supports his book. The book's a book about Antifa. I mean, you can talk about proud boys and you can talk about anyone else. You know, white supremacists, whatever. Antifa's a piece of shit too. They just happen to be on the other side. What's the Support of Antifa. And then this guy who plays a fucking banjo for a living supports Andy Ngo who's had the shit beat out of him by Intifa and brain damage and everything else. He was unreasonable doubt in 2019, writes a book about antifa. And then this guy supports his book about antifa and he's got a fucking apologize.

[Gina Grad]

Take a step back to re examine the book. Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

And I don't even know if Andy. No, I know everyone is. Is far right. Like the far right. He's just writing a book about antifa. I don't even know what far right is. He doesn't like Antifa. Nobody should like Antifa. I know we're always worried about Qanon and, you know, Ted Nugent, but we shouldn't like Antifa either. This is this weird insanity where we're defending antifa. Or like when Black Lives Matter burns down a bodega, we gotta defend them too. Criminals are fucking criminals right and left. I don't know why one side has to shut down the other. This guy wrote a book about antifa. We should all learn about Antifa or at least let Andy Ngo, who's a journalist who knows about Antifa, create a book. Why would you apologize? And who the fuck needs him to apologize for saying read a book?

[Gina Grad]

I think he's desperately trying to stay and be one of the and sons. So I think this is probably for the band.

[Adam Carolla]

Right? But the band doesn't give a fuck. A bunch of pussies on the Internet pressured them. The guy wrote a fuck. He was like beaten to almost death by Antifa in, I don't know, Portland 2019. 2019. Like he had brain damage and stuff.

[Bald Brian]

It's interesting the guy specifically mentioned his bandmates or whatever. I wonder if those guys were specifically upset or if they're like you said, like you alluded to. They're responding to pressure from fans or whatever.

[Adam Carolla]

It's all. And I don't even know if it's pressure from fans anymore. There's just a fucking woke culture out there that just has to have everyone walk back everything that's said. If it's just a little to the right. And the band probably dealt with all that and just went fucking go apologize. We don't want to deal with it. I'm sure Mumford is not. Not big Antifa fans. Well, they got.

[Bald Brian]

They got into a little bit of a controversy in 2018 because they had an in studio picture and Jordan Peterson was there.

[Gina Grad]

Yep. I was just about to tell you that.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, they don't want. Exactly. Right? Yeah, yeah, Jordan Peterson, who just happens to speak the truth about things. He needs to be fucking silenced as well. Jesus Christ. Antifa is bad, everybody. Andy Ngo wrote a book about it. That's fine. We don't have to burn it. We don't have to ban it from the bookstores. You don't have to apologize for recommending it. It's just another book about a subject that presumably he knows well since he had the shit beat out of him by Intifa. He was like embedded with Intifa for long periods of time. So maybe we should read the book about Antifa and learn about it and learn about Antifa. All right. We're living in strange ass times, people. Let's bring it home. Gina Grad.

[Gina Grad]

You got it. I'm Gina Grad. And that's the news.

[Adam Carolla]

Gina, Gina. That was the news with Gina Grad. All right. Oh, last but not least, there is Geico. Do you own, do you rent or you do one or the other? How about you get your Bundle on at Geico. Go to Geico.com, take your homeowners or your renters policy and get it hooked up up with your automotive policy. That's the bundle, people. Go to geico.com, get a quote, see just how much you could save when you [e-mail] because they make it that easy. All right, the book 2034 novel of the Next World War. I'm intrigued. It's available now on Amazon. And Jeff Cesario, what was I thinking? Is the alpha. And until next time, this is Adam for Jeff, Regina and the Admiral and Elliot and Bald saying mahalo.

[Giovanni]

All right, that was Adam cruel show 3016. That does it for today's Coral classics. Do clips chosen in light of tomorrow's holiday, Memorial Day. Hope everybody has a safe weekend. Until next time, mahalo. And get it on.

[Adam Carolla]

Sa.