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- [00:00]
A
Hey, Shiloh. Here with an invitation for all my old school listeners. I'm going to be taping a live episode of Old School at the National Constitution center in Philadelphia hosted by the Jack Miller center as part of their national summit on Civic Education. I'll be sitting down with the incredible historian and Pulitzer Prize winning author Jon Meacham to talk history, leadership, and the future of our republic. Tickets include a reception and a three course dinner before the show. And the best part, listeners get $50 off tickets with code TFP. T like Tim, F like Frank, P like Pam. Don't miss it. Grab your tickets now at the link in the show notes. See you in Philly. I'm Shiloh Brooks. I'm a professor and CEO and I believe reading good books makes us better men. Today I'm sitting down with Jack Carr. Jack is a bestselling author, TV producer and former Navy Seal sniper. Richard Connell's The Most Dangerous Game, published in 1924, changed Jack's life. Today I asking him why this is old school. Jack Carr, welcome to old school, man.
- [01:15]
B
Thank you so much for having me on. This is awesome. And get to talk about one of my favorite short stories and how influential it was not just on me, but film and television and other books. So thank you so much for having me on. Really excited.
- [01:29]
A
Yeah. So we're gonna talk about Richard Connell's the Most Dangerous Game. But first, I want to get a better sense of who you are. I mean, when I was looking at your biography, you strike me as a man who's lived a very, very full life. I'm gonna say some words and I want you to add to them. So I got Navy seal, I got novelist, I got screenwriter, I got television producer, I got Hunter, I got husband, and I got dad. What am I missing? And tell us a little bit about all that you do.
- [01:55]
B
Well, I guess, son. My mom was a librarian, so I grew up surrounded by books and a love of reading. So that's probably important for this discussion and actually for everything else. That reading has really been a foundation of not just what I'm doing now, but what I did in the SEAL teams. When it comes to leadership, to knowing the enemy to study, to being a student of history. Very early on, I knew I wanted to be a seal. Third grade, I knew I wanted to be a SEAL by sixth grade. I'll probably influence a lot by this. I knew I wanted to write afterwards. So I was reading also all the nonfiction I could find. Anything on warfare. I knew that I needed to study very intently What I was going to devote my life to later.
- [02:32]
A
I know you spent a long time in the Middle east and before we get to the book, I'm just curious to hear, do you think we're speaking sort of week after the initial operations of Iran? And I'm just curious to kind of get your view of that. Do you think we'll accomplish anything lasting and meaningful or what is your kind of view of what's going on now?
- [02:53]
B
Yeah, it's so hard, especially for I think those of us who were there from the beginning onward after September 11th and just seeing how we kind of muddled down in both Iraq and Afghanistan, how horrible decisions were made at the strategic level. Whereas if we'd made those kind of decisions at the tactical level, we probably would have been court martialed and thrown out. But we did very good at the tactical level in adapting to our enemy who was constantly adapting to us throughout that whole time. But it was those strategic level decisions up here that really impacted that soldier, sailor, airman and Marine who was the last decision maker in a long of decision makers. That starts with the President of the United States and that hasn't changed. That 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 year old kid holding that rifle, that's the last decision maker in a long line of those decision makers. But they're still holding the line out there. And so what I hope is that the people that are in leadership positions now, appointed, elected, that they take those lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan and apply them to the current problem set as wisdom. We're not very good at doing that if we look back historically. But 20 years was such a long time, especially to be bog down in Afghanistan, then all those years in Iraq of course as well. But to have those leaders now who experience some of that, I think, I think they'll be able to make better decisions for the current soldier, sailor, airman and Marine than was made for us. But once again, you never know once you get into these things. Very easy to get into them, very difficult to get out, especially with the unintended consequences. Second, third order effects that are bound to come. But what is, what's important is adapting to those unintended consequences.
- [04:25]
A
There's a lot of talk as there was years ago when you were serving about regime change. And I'm just curious to see whether you think, given the methods that we're pursuing and in ways are very different from the war that you fought in, whether it's actually likely that that will happen or not.
- [04:41]
B
Well, I hear regime change as soon as I heard that word, I was like, oh no, here we go again. I've seen this movie, I've read this book. And at the same time, you have to realize, or I'm talking to myself now, when I say you, that every model is not the same. Meaning you can't just pick up this model from Iraq and Afghanistan and those direct lessons, you have to take those lessons and apply them to the current problem set. But it's a different country with a different history, with a different geography, although close by, obviously right between Iraq and Afghanistan. And one would think, looking back, I wonder in 100 years if they'll say, hey, why when you were occupying Afghanistan and Iraq, or wouldn't that have been the time to do this? Because you have the country you're going to war with sandwiched in between. And I wonder if that'll be the case in years to come down the road here. But when it comes to regime change, those of us who serve there obviously get nervous. Understandably, I think the populace should get nervous, should ask questions about that. And we did it before, in the early 50s. We had a little regime change back then that was spurred on by the CIA and British intelligence, also at the behest of the oil industry. I have a couple, couple books on it back here, actually I grabbed a few before I, I ran in here because I think rather than having your opinion, I guess, manipulated by whether it's influencers, whether it's politicians or intelligence agencies, an algorithm even, I think spending more time in the pages of some books that can establish some historical context and a foundation and then allow you to take that foundation and make some judgments on the current situation from a foundation of something other than a one sentence line on Instagram or X or wherever you're getting your information and scrolling to the next thing that enrages you, that's now been fed to you by an algorithm that knows what you're going to stop on. So I think putting that down, diving into the pages of some of these books might help with that. I think what we want from all of this are those three things that, that we wanted at the outset through negotiations that failed, of course. Nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and no support of proxy terrorist organizations. Those were the three things that we were told any publicly. That's what our end goal is. That's our political end state. That didn't work. And so now we go to war and now we're trying to get that political end through violent means. And now some of that shifts because now we have to adapt now There is a bit of an opportunity, I think, because you have to think that not everyone was on board with this appointment of a new leader, that there might be some fractures within that internal security apparatus and the military, but perhaps proxy terrorist organizations like Hezbollah as well, I don't know. But those fractures that are probably natural with a new leadership with someone being appointed, they're fractures that can be exploited. And I would suspect that the CIA or intelligence agencies at large are in back channel negotiations with certain elements of those, whether internal, external security apparatuses to find out, are there these fractures and how can we exploit them? Is there somebody here who has that support, who wants to come to the US Camp because protesters aren't going to do it while you still have a regime in power that can control the populace through machine gun fire. And we only saw those changes in the Soviet bloc back in the day when new leadership came to Moscow that put the directive down that hey, we're not going to be machine gunning people in the streets anymore going forward. And that's really how they controlled those Soviet bloc countries up until the decision was made not to do that anymore. Then we saw these protests rise up and we saw things change. Now we don't have that yet in Iran. Will we have it? I don't know. So that is a very long way of saying I don't know.
- [08:23]
A
I read online, tell me if this is true, that you might have had some influence on changing the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War. Is that true? And if so, tell me the story
- [08:32]
B
that is kind of tongue in cheek, but I never heard anybody else talking about it until I did. After watching the Afghanistan withdrawal and then just thinking that through, thinking about how we had 20 years to prepare for that, how we had 20 years to prepare for August of 2021, it wasn't a surprise that we were coming. Shouldn't have been a surprise to us. Shouldn't. Certainly wasn't a surprise to Afghans. And there's that old saying that says the Americans have all the watches, but we have all the time. So eventually we were going to leave that place. And after 20 years, that was the best that we could do. And just thinking about the friends that I lost there, just how much we invested in Afghanistan and to see it end the way it did was, was just, was awful. So I started writing about it, thinking about it and thinking about the, the history of the Department of War, the War Office before under George Washington, of course, it becomes the War Department. And then up till 1940 49, we get the actual name change. 47, the reorganization, of course, it had a different name like National Military Establishment or something like that from 47 to 49. But in 49, we get the Department of Defense. And then we got to start to see a lack of accountability going forward for the decisions of senior level leaders. And we saw that all the way through 2021. So I started thinking about that name change and how precision and language reflects precision and thought and thinking about our history from Revolutionary war up to 1949. And then what happened 1949 going forward. There's a symbol for the Department of Defense that has what is an olive branch or something, and then it has arrows. And apparently I haven't checked this yet because someone just pointed it out to me. They said before 1949, the eagle was looking at the arrows. And then for the Department of Defense, it turns towards like the olive branch or something. I need to. Like I said, I haven't zoomed in on this. So anybody listening to this can check me. They can point out something that's wrong with it. Because, like I said, I haven't checked this out yet. But it went along with that name change. And so just defense means something different than war. I mean, in war you can have defense, so you can have offense, of course. And it seems to me that the Department of Defense is more a Coast Guard, a Border Patrol, that sort of thing when you think about it. And a Department of War handles all of those things to crush your enemy. And we had a hard time doing that from 1949 onward. And a lot of that had to do with the lack of accountability. So it's not necessarily the name change. It is what that implies. So it's a reason that it's the profession of arms and not the career of arms. And after 1949, it seemed like it became the career of arms. And you had politicians in uniform leading us forward from that point on. And this is very generally speaking. This is generally speaking, of course.
- [10:57]
A
But I want to get to Richard Connell's the Most Dangerous Game. I had not read anything by Connell prior to this. And I have been given to understand that he served in World War I. He wrote, by my count, over 300 short stories. He would publish these in the Saturday Evening Post call years. He also wrote four novels. He had handed some screenwriting. He was nominated for an Academy Award in 1941. And I got to read about this guy, and I was like, you know what? This is kind of Jack Carr. I mean, you know, screenwriter Novels, stories, storyteller, you know, served in World War I. So I'm curious if you, you know, know much about Richard Connell.
- [11:37]
B
Have you.
- [11:38]
A
Have you studied him much? Or do you think much about him in your own career?
- [11:41]
B
You know, I do, but only in the sense that he's the author of this influential short story that impacted me sixth grade onward. And in sixth grade, I told myself one day I would write a novel that paid tribute to this short story. And that became my third book, Savage Son. It was. It was one of the. I had like 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 different ideas, like executive summaries on the table when I chose the terminal list. I wanted to start with Savage Son, but I knew I had to start with the terminal list because the characters weren't yet at that place where I could explore the themes of Savage Son, which is the dark side of man through the dynamic of hunter and hunted.
- [12:12]
A
Take me to the sixth grade. Jack Carr, you're reading this. What are you thinking? What are you feeling? How did it affect you then?
- [12:18]
B
Obviously, it's not even 10,000 words. It's stripped down to the basics, yet it's so primal and visceral. And then what I like to do, and I think I even did this at the time, is, as I'm reading, put myself in the shoes of someone reading it at the time it was written. And today I recommend all sorts of books that I read growing up and that were impactful to me. But now you have to put yourself back into 1983, 1985, 1987, like when those books were written. Otherwise, you're evaluating them through the lens of today, which isn't really fair to the author and isn't really as fun, I don't think, for the reader. But so putting yourself back in 1924, when this is written on the heels of. Of World War I, there's a lot of other literature out there that's talking about going to Africa and doing these big game hunts and all that sort of thing. So this is contrarian in nature as well. And. And I think I just love that it was so stripped down that you could read it in an hour. And I went back to it last night. I poured myself a little drink and put the phone in the other room, close the computer, and sat there and read this just like somebody would have, you know, back then. So. So, yeah, it was super fun to
- [13:22]
A
do for somebody who's never read it. You mentioned. All right, it was written in 1924. It's a short story. This guy's known for short stories. For people who want to find it today, you can find it bound in some volumes with other short stories. I found it bound in a volume with Jack London's To Build a Fire and some other similar stories. But for the Most Dangerous Game, since you just read it, can you summarize it for somebody who's never read it? What is this thing about?
- [13:45]
B
Well, the theme is similar to the one I explored in Savage Sun. Cut the dark side of man through the dynamic of hunter and hunted. He's seeing that. That waste of World War I, seeing those people die in World War I, asking those questions the same similar ones that we're asking today. People that were in Iraq and Afghanistan, though, was it worth it? So background for people who don't know what it is. It's a big game hunter. He's on a yacht and he's headed south to go hunt down in central South America. And in the book, he falls off. Sagner Rainsford falls off. He's an author also. And so he's writing books about hunting and gets washed ashore, swims ashore to this island, makes his way up to, you know, what's described as a chalet, but it really sounds like a castle. And maybe that's because I picture it from the. From the film as well. But goes in there and meets Ivan, kind of the henchman. And then General Zaroff, a Cossack who's. They're known for their martial skill from Russia, Ukraine, type of a. Type area. And of course, he recognizes the Sagner Rainsford right off the bat and recognizes him as an author. He's read his book on hunting, like tigers in Tibet. And they have dinner, they talk hunting. And then General Zaroff, in an amazing passage in the book that I remember to this day, tells Sagner Rainsford that he has found a new animal to hunt. He'd grown bored with hunting. And Sagner's asking, he said, what is it? You have Cape buffalo here. What did you bring her? Tigers. And no, it's man. So it's pretty cool.
- [15:14]
A
Yeah. So a guy falls off a boat, he washes up on an island. He finds himself in the company of a general whose background is somewhat obscure. But he's very civilized, man, this General Zarov. So when the guy washes up, he goes to this fancy house and he's like, man, why is there this fancy house on this island? And he gets in there, and the guy's got all these heads on the wall, and he's got fine Liquor, and he's got servants, and he's got really good food. And so there's this bizarre way in which there's civilization at the same time that there's this dark secret, which is that this guy has grown bored hunting big game. And he now has a kind of factory where he has human beings who he sets free on his island. And they are hunted by him. And if they can survive for three days, it's almost like a reality show. If they can survive for three days, he lets them off. But if they can't survive for three days, obviously he kills them prior to that. And so this hunter, Rainsford, he says, now, I want to hunt you. And so I know you're the greatest hunter in the world. You fell off your boat. I want to hunt you. So here's a knife. Here's some food. I give you a head start. Go. And so this guy Rainsford finds himself on this island, running around trying to escape being killed by this general. And that's the premise of the story. And so I wanted to ask you, like, this book was clearly very influential on you. I suspect it contains some essential elements of the modern thriller. Can you talk about the way this book is a prototype for. I know it influenced your book, Savage Son. This book is a kind of prototype of all great books of its kind.
- [16:46]
B
Yeah, it's really timeless in that respect in a number of ways that I'll hit in a moment. But actually, in Savage Son, which I have right here, I have one of the characters in there, Rafe Hastings, who is one of my, I guess, most popular supporting characters. He uses the. The. The pseudonym S. The pen name S. Rainsford, as he writes hunting articles in. In the book. So I. So I wove that in there as well. But, yeah, it has these timeless elements to it. I think there's something very primal about it. Which takes us back to, like, the camp sitting around the campfire telling stories orally. Many of those had to do with the hunt and with warfare. Because you had to pass these lessons on to the next generation. And before we could write these lessons out in. In books or whatever else, you had to pass them on orally. So if you wanted your tribe or your community or country to survive, then you had to take those lessons of the past and apply them to whatever was going to happen going forward. You had to put food on the table. You had to feed the tribe. You had to beat that other tribe at war for hunting grounds or water or whatever you were fighting over at the time. So I think there's something that takes us back to that, even if you don't know it. Even. Like, I wasn't thinking about that certainly in sixth grade, but now I think there's something timeless about this story because. Because there's something so primal in all of our DNA, because we wouldn't be here if we didn't have ancestors who were good at fighting and hunting and. And that's in there. That's in there somewhere. And I think that drives a lot of young men in particular to go to Marine Corps boot camp or Navy SEAL training or Army Rangers or whatever it might be. There's something about wanting to test yourself, and you used to have to do that in the tribe. So you'd hear these stories of the hunt and of warfare. And then eventually, when you were. Whatever age it was, depending on what time we're talking about, whether it's 10 years old, 12 years old, 16 years old, 18 years old, whatever it is, there would be some sort of a crucible that you had to pass to prove your value to the tribe, to become a full member of that tribe. And we don't do that anymore. But I think there's still that draw in each of us. And I think in the Most Dangerous Game, that's why it's so timeless, because it's. It's so much at the forefront and it's. And it's. It's so slimmed down in the way that it's. That it's told, that it's really palatable and really approachable for that reason. But there's something that is primal about it. So I think that hit me, unbeknownst to me, that it hit me hard in sixth grade. And. And even if I didn't recognize it at the time, I couldn't articulate it at the time, that I would recognize how much it influenced all these other books like. Like this one. Like. So this is Last of the Breed, Louis Lamour, and this also influenced Savage Son. But I read this when it. When it came out back in the 80s. I wish they'd made a movie of it back then. It would have been amazing. Especially coming on the heels of Rambo First Blood, Part two, First Blood, of course, it influenced this book as well. Rambo First Blood, Part two, right here that I read the summ. I read Last of the Breed back then. And then Jeffrey Household's Rogue mail right here, which is written essentially on the eve of World War II, 1939. So kind of all of these books have elements of the most Dangerous Game in them. And they all move the genre forward. So. So, yeah, I'm just. I'm obviously. I'm a fan of all of these books and reading in general, which is why I'm so concerned that people aren't reading anymore. Because you've really developed this empathy and compassion through reading. Which Rainsford is doing in here by becoming the animal. So he's actually developing it himself in this book. But just reading anything today helps develop that. And really, everybody being on social media does the opposite. It enrages. It does all the things that don't develop that empathy and compassion. Which you can see in online discourse. So I think if people want to. Want to improve their lives drastically, let's say by like 90% right out of the gate, just in the mornings, Just sit down with a book for an hour instead of going to that phone. And I think your life will get exponentially better.
- [20:28]
A
Yeah. Let me. That's a very good way to put it in a certain sense. It's the premise of our show. Let me ask you a little bit. I know you're a man who thinks a lot about characters and how to develop them. This book, as you've mentioned, is only 9,000 or so words. And yet the character, the protagonist, Rainsford. And then what we might call the villain, General Zarov, really come to life in that 9,000 words. And it's really a testament to Connell's talent. General Zaroff, in particular, is a creepy character. This is who's on this island? Who's hunting human beings? Whenever the main character is told. Rainsford is told that that's what's going on on this island. He's kind of appalled. And one of the things that surprised me most. And I want to get you to react to this. Is whenever Zaroff tells Rainsford, look, what's happening on this island is that I'm bored hunting bears and big game. I'm hunting men. Rainsford says, that's murder. And so at this particular moment, Zaroff says, no, I'm merely hunting. And Rainsford says, no, no. What are you talking about? That's murder. He says, this. I'll read what Rainsford says. Hunting Great God, General Zaroff. What you speak of is murder. And then the general laughed. With a good nature. He regarded Rainsford quizzically. And then the general responds, I refuse to believe that so modern and civilized a young man as you can harbor romantic ideas about the value of human life. Surely your experience is in war. And then he cuts him off. Rainsford says, did not make me condone cold blooded murder. Finished Rainsford. Laughter shook the general. How extraordinarily droll you are. The general said, one does not expect nowadays to find a young man of the educated class, even in America, with such a naive, and, if I may say so, mid Victorian point of view. It's like finding a snuff box in a limousine. And so I wanted to ask you about this character Zaroff. That's a creepy thing to say. He basically says, look, murder. No. What are you talking about? Didn't the war teach you? And then he's cut off. What's going on in his head? Why does he think this is okay? And why is Rainford so appalled by the fact that this is going on?
- [22:33]
B
Yeah, well, first it's. The general assumes that Rainsford is going to want to join him on a hunt. It's just an assumption. Like, of course, this hunter. And with that one sentence, we know that both now are established as veterans. So that's. So I like that you have the two. Two veterans, even though. And that's another genius of this, that it's done with a line. It's not like you don't have that exposition of what they did in the war and all that stuff, which. Which I tend to do in my books because I want to know the background of all these characters. But here you get it with a line, just one single line, and you're like, veteran, Veteran. Okay. They both have this military experience as they're going to go forward in this. In this story here. But. But yeah, Zaroff's. Zaroff assumes that this hunter, this veteran, is going to be okay. Well, of course he's going to be okay with hunting. And I'm going to show him and introduce him to this hunting of man so that he's not going to get bored with hunting either. And that's how it starts. And then Rainsford, of course, says, oh, no, I'm not doing this. No way. This is murder, as you said. And then Zaroff shifts in his mind and says, whoa, well, here we go. I'm going to have my greatest adversary yet, kind of a thing. And off they go and begin that phase of the story. But reacting to the murder part, it's really, thou shalt not murder. Thou shall not kill. And killing is a natural part of the human condition to protect this gift of life, to defend your family, your tribe, of course, to put food on the table. So I think those things are all very natural to the human condition. But murder is Not. And there's why every great religion in the world has always had the Golden Rule, some form of the Golden Rule to treat others as you would like to be treated. People forget that. It seems like we're forgetting it more and more these days.
- [24:14]
A
And it seems like Zaroff has some sense that, well, in wartime you kill, so in peacetime you kill. Whereas Reinsford said, no, in wartime you kill, but in peacetime you don't. And I'm just curious about that kind of deformation of the soul. And I'm thinking about now, the aftermath of World War I and what Connell must have seen and what the guys coming back must have felt. And this is a kind of peculiar. No, it's still okay to kill. And I'm thinking a lot about the kind of way that World War I was the first mechanized war. In a way, you know, killing on a grand scale. It was a kind of impersonal sort of killing. In other words, you don't have to see the man to kill him anymore. This is true today. We talked about Iran a minute ago, that you can send a drone from the next country over and nobody has to look another guy in the eye with a sword or with a gun and shoot him. And so I'm thinking about those things as I read about Zaroff and just what must be going on in his heart and what Connell's trying to say with all this. I don't. I invite your reflection on that, because I'm not so sure.
- [25:15]
B
Yeah, I think it's pointing out the difference between killing and murder. I mean, you actually have those words in this. In this story. And I think a lot of people struggled when they thought of killing, equated killing and murder for a long time because they were told that by whether it's, I don't know, media, whether it's Hollywood and popular culture, but really thinking about it and thinking about history and putting it in context, there is a difference between those things, which is why you don't go to prison for defending yourself if you kill somebody. But you do go to prison if you are the aggressor and decide to murder somebody. And that's the law. It's the rules of nature, of God. So I think there's a lot in here, but I think at the base level, it's that distinction between killing and
- [26:03]
A
murder in the end. I mean, I don't want to spoil it for anybody, but essentially, in the end, we'll just do a spoiler alert.
- [26:09]
B
Yeah, we can do a spoiler alert.
- [26:11]
A
I'm going to tell you the end. In the end, Rainsford defeats Zaroff. Do you think there's any chance that he becomes Zaroff, in other words? Basically, what ends up happening here is Rainsford goes out for three days. He's running around this island. He creates all these fancy traps. He's attaching knives to trees and making them spring up. And he's making pits in the ground that he's covering over with straw to try to get this guy to fall into the pit. And just all of these elaborate kind of hunting tricks. And he ends up running out and jumping into the water and kind of swimming away. And Zaroff goes home and thinks, oh, I'll get him tomorrow. And he's laying in his bed in his beautiful mansion on this remote island. And then Rainsford emerges from the curtains of the window, and it's like, I got you. And so there's an implication that Rainsford kills Zaroff. And then at the end of the story, Connell says Rainsford had never slept better or something like that than he did in Zaroff's own bed. So now I wonder if there's some kind of nod to the fact that the hunted has become the hunter and that this is some kind of cycle in human life, you know?
- [27:22]
B
Oh, yeah. So in sixth grade, I never would have thought that. So in sixth grade, I'm like, oh, the hero kills the bad guy, of course, you know, and then rides off into the sunset or sails off into the sunset or something. But in revisiting this, the film, and. And the book, back before I wrote Savage Son, then I started thinking, oh, interesting. I wonder if. And I need to. You know, it's not because it was 1924. There wasn't all this commentary. And, you know, it's almost nicer when the author doesn't explain some things from their books and leaves it up to the reader. So now, when I revisited this back in 2019, 2020, when I'm writing Savage Son, I thought, you know what? Maybe because he never slept. Did he just sleep in that bed for one night? Or is he. Is he so comfortable now in that bed that he's taken this thing forward? All. Everything's set up there. He's got most of the hounds still. And now he is essentially the lord of the manor. And has he taken Zaroff's place? And I think that's very interesting.
- [28:18]
A
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- [29:30]
B
Okay, we got to do the short, the short part here. But I want to encourage everyone to get the actual book to read this full two page passage that stayed with me from sixth grade onward. But I'll just read the end of it right here. Oh, said the general, it supplies me with the most exciting hunting in the world. No other hunting compares with it. For an instant. Every day I hunt and I never grow bored. Now for I have a quarry with which I can match my wits. Rainsford's bewilderment showed on his face. I wanted the ideal animal to hunt, explained the general. So I said, what are the attributes of the ideal quarry? And the answer was, of course it must have courage, cunning, and above all, it must be able to reason. But no animal can reason, objected Rainsford. My dear fellow, said the general, there is one that can. And that encapsulates the entire theme of the book right there in that short passage. But there's a whole lead up to it that I. That I won't read just for time's sake. And it's so good.
- [30:29]
A
And then why did it stick with you? Why did that passage stick with you since sixth grade?
- [30:33]
B
I think because that's where Rainsford finds out that, hey, this guy's talking about hunting man. So that's where things shift. And he realizes that he's not just having a conversation with another hunter, another veteran, someone who he shares, he has common traits with whom he has common traits. Now he is talking to an adversary. He's talking to the antagonist very clearly. This isn't his savior. This guy could lead to his demise. And that's where everything. Everything shifts on that passage. Because Rainsford becomes aware of what's actually going on. And it encapsulates the whole theme of the book right there in that passage. But then the other one, of course, that stuck with me is at the very end. And once again, I won't read the whole thing. That starts on the other page. And it's General Zaroff coming back. It describes him having this dinner. And of course, having the after dinner drink and all these things. Very civilized reading. Marcus Aurelius, I think. He sits down and does that. Then he goes up to his bedroom. But. And I just love this last passage, too. It's just. Just brilliant. And so there's little moonlight. So before turning on the light, he went to the window and looked down at the courtyard. He could see the great hounds. And he called better luck another time to them. He switched the light on. A man who had been hiding in the curtains of the bed was standing there. Rainsford. Screamed the general. How in God names did you get here? Swam, said Rainsford. I found it quicker than walking through the jungle. The general sucked in his breath and smiled. I congratulate you, he said. You have won the game. Rainsford did not smile. I am still a beast at bay, he said in a low, hoarse voice. Get Ridder ready, General Zaroff. The general made one of his deepest bows. I see, he said. Splendid. One of us is to furnish a repast for the hounds. The other will sleep in this very excellent bed. On Guard Rainsford. He had never slept in a better bed, Rainsford decided. I mean, that's just awesome, that is. The movie ends in a little different movie. Has a big fight scene and all that stuff. And the general dies a little differently. And when I went back to read this a couple years ago, when I was writing Savage Son, I could have sworn that they both drew sabers or something like that. I don't know why that was in my mind. It must have come from the On Guard Rainsford. But in my sixth grade head it was. I always pictured them like pulling out their sabers, swords, foils, whatever, and then boom. And I love how it doesn't describe it in the book. And that's something that a lot of authors use. I use it in not describing every intricate. Sometimes I describe every intricate detail in a fight scene. And then others I do something like this. So it's just so cool.
- [33:06]
A
I think one of the most compelling things about this short story is the juxtaposition of civilization and barbarity and what, in the context of war, that. And this is. This is in a certain way a metaphor for war. One is civilized until such time as one has to defend one's nation, and then a kind of barbarity has to set in. And I think Connell is really exploring the tensions there. On the one hand, we respect each other, we're civilized. We have our nice wines, we have our big houses. And then there could come a moment in life when we set those things aside, pick up weapons, and have to go through the jungles or the deserts and kill one another. And then we go back to our nice wines and our. And so it's just a sort of beautiful juxtaposition of that great tension between civilization and barbarity, that no matter how much civilization you have, in order to defend that civilization, some measure of barbarism, in a way, is always necessary. Civilization never gets to the point at which war is done away with, it would seem.
- [34:06]
B
I bet you didn't see this comparison coming to Patrick Swayze's Roadhouse. Yeah, yeah, I bet any of your listeners are watchers and viewers didn't either. But be nice until it's time to not be nice.
- [34:20]
A
That's right. That's right. And we can be sophisticated until we have to defend civilization. And then civilization must be suspended in a way. And we have mechanized, violent, World War I bloody warfare. You see what I mean? And then we go back to reading our novels and our philosophy.
- [34:34]
B
Yep. And you always. I mean, you have to have that break in case of war. You have to have those people that are kept at arm's length. And a lot of literature has explored this over time, and so have. Have movies and. And television shows, but keeping that barbarian at arms length, keeping that warrior at arms length until you need them, and then they come to defend the tribe, defend the community, defend the country. And then when that's done, they go back in their box until they need to. Until you need to break that glass again. So it's. It's. That's that sheepdog analogy. Guarding the sheep. And that's, you know, that's. It's. Like I said, it's probably the theme of most of my. Of my books and a lot of other. Other books and television shows out there.
- [35:13]
A
Yeah. I mean, I would say it goes back all the way to Homer and the Iliad and Achilles. But let me turn now to some questions. I mean, you know, you've written a lot of scenes where people face violence in different ways. You yourself have faced violence. I'm curious to ask you, what separates somebody who can face violence calmly from somebody who freezes? Is that an innate thing in us? Is that trainable? How does that work?
- [35:36]
B
And I don't know the answer to that question. I think that because it depends on the type of training you see, police officers, people in the military with training frees up. I never saw it, but I've read about it, I've heard about it, that sort of a thing. But does that training equate to somebody else's training? Who from another department, another military service, another unit who got a different kind of training, a quote unquote, better type of training, where they didn't? Or was it innate in both from the beginning? And I don't know if we'll ever know the answer? Certainly you're going to fall to the level of your training, not rise to the occasion. Occasion. And that's. I forget exactly which stoic philosopher said that, but it's. That is true. That is certainly true, which is why you need to train, remain vigilant. Skills are perishable. You need to think about these things so that ahead of time, maybe even if you're not 100% certain how you're going to react in a certain situation, because it hasn't happened yet, you haven't had the experience yet, you are as prepared as you can possibly be for it when you get there, when you're put in that position. So then, of course, when you are in that position and then you have that experience and you gain that knowledge, then you can pass on that wisdom to the next generation. In years past, through oral storytelling, now you write it down. Now you become a training officer in a police academy, or you become a trainer in a military unit or something like that. So I don't know if you ever really know until you go through it, then you know, and then you can take those lessons and apply them going forward and gain, just like in any industry you're going to. From a business transaction or whatever you're doing, you're going to gain some knowledge from that and you're going to take that, learn from it and move forward.
- [37:14]
A
The word of the day is query. This is a homonym meaning. It's a word that has the same spelling and sound, but two different meanings. It comes up in the Most Dangerous Game because one of the hunters says, I now have a query with which I can match my wits. Meaning I now have a prey that I can pursue and that can pursue me with, you know, equal danger. Quarry in this sense means prey. It means the thing that's hunted. Of course, there's the other meaning of quarry, like a marble quarry, like we're going to go and mine some marble out of the quarry. But in the hunting context, quarry actually means prey. When beloved family patriarch Gary Farris went
- [38:02]
B
missing, his family looked everywhere on their
- [38:05]
A
property until they came across something horrifying. It's a homicide. Absolutely. The blame game in this family went round and round. This is Blood is Thicker, the Ferris wheel. I don't see how anyone can look at this story and think they were happy. Follow and listen to Blood Is the Ferris Wheel on the Free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. We live in a world where war can be waged from a computer screen miles away. In some ways, you know, remote flight, planes and drones and that sort of thing. This seems to make war easier to wait. After all, you can, you can say, well, there will be very few casualties because we won't have boots on the ground, because we'll be doing it from a, you know, a remote base in Nevada or something like that. So that's one way in which technology affects the question of whether one should go to war. I mean, you might weigh the question differently if there was going to be 100,000 men, 50,000 of whom might well lose their lives in machine gun fire. So that's one question, is how does technology affect war in terms of the way it makes it easier to wage from decision makers. But the other question, the deeper question is when you send robots into war, you deprive men of the opportunity to earn honor in the old sense of that term, meaning there's one thing, it's a noble thing to face down another man and be better than him. And if you're not better than him, he will kill you. It's another thing to do that from a remote control computer screen with a bag of Doritos and a Mountain Dew. And so that's a less honorable thing in a way, or at least it's not as noble. And so I'm just curious about the way technology affects both the, the ease of waging war and the kind of moral economy or honor economy of war.
- [39:56]
B
Yeah, this is something I think about because now I'm writing about it. Obviously, it's great that 100,000 people aren't going to die. Vietnam, we have 58,000 plus people killed, untold number of people wounded. Essentially, we probably never know the exact numbers and we'll never know the exact numbers of the psychological toll that took on people. So the physical and emotional scars of that semi recent war are still pervasive today and have multi generational effects, as do all war. So now when you're sending drones into combat, and certainly now we have the advantage here, meaning we can press that button, we can control drones from Nellis and Nevada. We could do that for part of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan as well. But now it's definitely more pervasive with drones. But the enemy is certainly taking the brunt of this right now. And I don't know how many. It's. At the end of the day, we're going to find out how many, whether military targets or the unfortunate collateral damage that comes along with warfare. What that looks like on Iran's side, I don't know. It's going to be a big number and our number is going to be a lot smaller than that obviously, but man, so it's tough. So that obviously we would say that's good. But then to your question now, as we move forward here in the next 50 years, 100 years, when we're making these decisions about sending not people to war, we're sending robots to war, drones to war, you have autonomous, more autonomous weapons that are going to war that are using whatever artificial intelligence turns into in the future as we go forward and apply it to weapon systems. Do we maintain that advantage or are we going to end up against a nation state like China or somebody else that's also going to have that kind of a capability in 100 years or something? And then what does that mean? Do the robots just kill each other or do we now eventually devolve back to that man on man type of combat? I don't know. It's a tough one to think about and I explore it in the pages of my novels through these different weapon systems that are getting more autonomous by the day, it seems. So I'll keep exploring that going forward. I actually went back to 1968 Vietnam for my last book called Cry Havoc because I didn't want to have to deal with facial recognition technology and not autonomous drones, satellites like all of these, everyone with a cell phone, cameras everywhere. I just wanted to go to old school tradecraft. So I dropped an espionage story into the heart of Saigon, 1968.
- [42:13]
A
Yeah, I really appreciate that. It makes me think about the degree to which courage will still be a virtue. After all, if there are robots fighting each other, one doesn't need Courage. But you say, well, it'll always come down to a man with a R. In that sense, you rescue courage from the possibility of its complete erosion from technology, such that no one has to have courage because they don't have to be on the front line. So I'm hopeful you're right because I admire courage as a virtue. I want to ask you about fatherhood. I saw a segment, I think it was on CBS with you where you talked about you have three children, is that right?
- [42:47]
B
That's right.
- [42:48]
A
And you've got a special needs child and two other children. And you linked in that segment your writing, in your drive. You're clearly a man of drive. I listed all the things that you do at the beginning of the show. One of those was fatherhood. Can you, can you talk about the way your writing is linked to fatherhood and what you think makes a good father?
- [43:09]
B
I mean, I'll never know if I've had the same drive without having a special needs child. And he's 24 7, full time care forever. And my responsibility is to make sure that he is provided for for that lifetime. And I don't lifetime a full time care and didn't want that financial burden to drop to his brother and sister. So I wanted to take care of that. So, you know, I don't know if I'd have the same drive. I mean, I feel like I had it before in life anyway, the lead up to the SEAL teams, all the way through the SEAL teams, Iraq and Afghanistan. So I felt like I had that drive always in life. It's probably one of the worst times in the past, let's say 50 years where you could step into the publishing world or into Hollywood, just because there's so many other distractions for people these days that they carry around with them in their pockets. So it's a very transitional time in both of those industries, which means that you need to adapt. And for me, we adapted on the battlefield. We did it faster than the enemy. Typically, whoever's going to adapt faster than the enemy is going to come out on top. I looked at publishing the same way that I looked at the battlefield. Just logically, okay, how do I adapt to this changing environment, which is kind of a very pyramid shaped type of an organization, very similar to the military, very slow to change, very slow to adapt to ebook, very slow to adapt to audiobooks, very slow to adapt to all these other distractions out there. And because it's so big already, so it's like an aircraft carrier that's turning Very, very different. You can turn a Zodiac a lot quicker than you can turn an aircraft carrier. And publishing, I feel like, and even Hollywood now, when we're looking at these changes, is like the aircraft carrier that is a little slow to adapt and slow to change. So I just did it faster at my tactical level. And that means doing all those things that authors wouldn't have had to do in 1985, when I decided I wanted to be an author. But I wish that I could just disappear to a cabin in the mountains, write a book, send it to New York, maybe do one morning show, go back to writing. That was my vision in 1985, 86, 87, when I decided that I wanted to be an author at some point after my military time. And then I crept up on the publication of my first book in 2018 and realized, oh, this landscape has changed. I have to be a part of the story. People really want to know today that person behind whatever product it is, they want to be a part of that story. They want you, I think, sharing lessons, talking about, maybe even inspiring some people to go and write their own book or make our TV show or take that risk or start their own business or whatever it might be. But they want to know that person. They don't just want the object, they don't just want the product. The product has to be the best that it can possibly be. Of course, it has to get better each and every time. That's what you owe your reader, in my case. But they want to know that story behind it. And you have to do the podcast, you have to do your own podcast, you have to do the social media, you have to do the engagement. I have the merch line, I have the TV shows where I'm very, very involved as a screenwriter, as an executive producer. So all of those things you have to do to break through all of these other distractions. Because if we go back to 1985, 86, and I wish I could go back there, I know I can't, but I can wish all day that I could go back. I wish I could just wake up in 1980, January 1st, and go to January 31st, 1989, and then keep doing that cycle over and over again. I know that can't happen, but back then you could, could just write that book and you were competing with, okay, a movie that's going to come out on Friday at 7:30, or you're going to go Saturday at 7:30 or 9:00', clock, whatever that is, or you're going to wait for your favorite TV show at 8, 9, 10. But now the amount of distractions out there that are also so addictive in nature, it's a very difficult time to break through that with something that requires your effort, that requires you to sit down in deep thought. When the most powerful companies in the history of the world are essentially doing the opposite it. They are keeping you from reading, they're and essentially keeping you from developing that compassion and empathy that become. That comes along with putting yourself in someone else's shoes through these stories.
- [46:58]
A
Couldn't have said it better than that. Let me move to a quick lightning round with you. Give me the best book that you know of about war.
- [47:09]
B
Ooh, about war in general. Yeah. That's going to be surprise to you. It's Once an Eagle by Anton Meyer. So written in the late 60s, it's really an anti war book if you look at it through the lens of the 60s. But it follows these two guys from pre World War I up to Vietnam. They don't call it Vietnam in the book. They call it a different country, but that's what it is. It's Vietnam. And one of them is enlisted. One of them is an officer, and that's Sam Damon is enlisted. And Courtney Massengale, he's the officer. And they both earned World War I and then they have the interwar years and then you go into World War II and it's a fantastic. It's a history lesson like a lot of historical fiction is, which makes it approachable or makes it not approachable. Unapproachable is the size of the book, which it can be a doorstop or a blunt impact weapon if you need it to be, because it is very long. But it is also a case study in leadership. Because I used to gift this book to people who were starting their time in uniform. And I'd write a letter and I'd put it in the front of the book and I'd say, this is why I'm giving you this book. But there's another letter at the end and that's in a sealed envelope. And in order to read that one, you have to read this whole thing. And then you'll get my take on what you just read. Because I don't want to pollute your reading experience with my interpretation ahead of time. And then two other ones. Once again, historical fiction, Winds of War and War and Remembrance, specific to World War II because you. Once again, we talked about empathy and compassion earlier. You experienced the lead up to World War II and then you go all the Way through the war, through the eyes of this family. And it's multi generational, so you learn so much. And I read both when I was backpacking through Europe when I was younger, before the military and so going to some of these places that I was reading about. And my grandfather was killed in World War II. He was a court air pilot, Marine pilot. That was the plane that had the goal, wings that would fold up and you'd put on aircraft carriers. And of course, back in the day, once again, popular culture, there's Black Sheep Squadron on television. It came out in the 70s as Baba. Black Sheep was in syndication in the early 80s as black sheep Squadron with Robert Conrad portraying Pappy Boynton. And so I think a lot of his leadership style kind of transferred over to me at those impressionable years. But those books right there. And I have a whole library full of books that are on war, but on the nonfiction side. But I think you get so much more out of Once an Eagle. If I was to recommend one book on warfare, because it's also about leadership and it's also about the human toll, the human suffering. And you learn something as you go through that aren't just facts.
- [49:31]
A
I hear that you own the typewriter on which Hemingway wrote A Movable Feast. First of all, I want that. Second, can you give me, in the spirit of that fact, your favorite classic? Is it Hemingway? Just favorite classic author?
- [49:47]
B
Yeah. Well, you know, since we're talking about the typewriter, of course, I can't think about anything else but Hemingway right now, but the Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber. Once again, a short story by Hemingway is so good, and I won't spoil it, but it's. Take note of where the comma is in that title. I'll just say that. And it has a touch point with hunting and. And it is Hemingway to the core, but once again, it's approachable.
- [50:14]
A
Can you recommend me one western novel that you'd like?
- [50:17]
B
Oh, my gosh, there's so many. What? Flint.
- [50:22]
A
Flint by Louis Lamour. Yeah.
- [50:25]
B
But I really like. Because I do like the westerns, and they're short, they're approachable, so I do like that. But Last of the Breed, if I was to recommend one, it's Last of the Breed. And then I think also Haunted Mesa is so good because of when I read it probably in Life, Night over the Solomons, also Louis the Moore. So those are three that are not Westerns, which I'll. Which I think makes them stand out to me. When you think about Louis l' Amour. Everybody goes to Western right away. And if we go to that picture of him on the back of the book, he might have it in this one. Let's see. No, it's definitely a picture here. But if cowboy had one. Yeah. And. Yeah, the walking drum, of course. Amazing. But, yeah, I just. I love Louis the more because he's, you know, and he wasn't pretentious about anything. And sometimes you've, you know, you find that you look people, you know, looking for awards maybe, or something like that, and, you know, he just wanted to write stories and. What did he say? He's. He's a storyteller. He's just a storyteller at heart, but he was. He called it troubadour. Anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's fantastic.
- [51:29]
A
Last question. Best part about being a CEO. Oh, yeah.
- [51:33]
B
I think that the testing of yourself every day, the drive to be better, because people to your right and left are depending on you to do that, which makes them do the same thing. So you are operating with these guys who are just driven. And also they're your best friends. Your best friends, they're your teammates. And you push each other every day, day to be better versions of yourself. So we have that saying, the only easy day was yesterday. There's another sign up at BUDS that used to say, the enemy thanks you for not giving 100% today. So I think all those things. And also I really liked how different people were. Meaning when you watch TV or movies or something like that, a lot of people tend to think of people from the military as all coming from a certain place, having a similar background or having to do it or something like that. But. But we had so many people from so many different backgrounds. And I enjoyed that before we actually went to war, and then I saw the value in it after we went to war. Meaning we're not all bringing the same thing to a problem set, as we're actively adapting to an enemy on the battlefield who's doing the same thing to us. Meaning everyone is bringing their entire life experience to that problem set. And they were all so different. So you had people who had never seen the ocean before, before they showed up at Buddha in Coronado, California. And you had people that grew up on the ocean or played water polo in school and were amazing swimmers, but everybody had this different. You had Rhodes Scholars and you had someone just out of high school like yesterday. So you had all of these different people with all these different backgrounds from all over the country. And then when September 11th happened and we went to war. They got to bring, we all got to bring our backgrounds. Not just the same background, the same SEAL training, the same jumping out of airplanes and doing close quarter combat, combat diving under the water with, with a rebreather system. No, you brought your entire life experience to these problem sets and I think that's what allowed us to adapt very quickly on the battlefield and really differentiated us as a special operations force during the war.
- [53:32]
A
Jack Carr, thank you for introducing us to the short story the Most Dangerous Game. And thank you for being on Old School. Bam.
- [53:38]
B
There it is right there. Most Dangerous Game. Gosh, I love that. And I love thank you for inviting me on because I got to revisit this, which was so much fun last night. And a couple nights ago, like I said, I got to rewatch the old movie from 1932. So that was just a true pleasure to do that. And there's so many things going on these days that very rarely do I get to take a breath, put all the other things to the side, and just go into the pages of something for the sheer joy of it. Just the same way I did back in sixth grade. So thank you so much.
- [54:04]
A
Stitch Fix Shopping is hard. Let's talk about it.
- [54:08]
B
I don't have time to shop, so
- [54:09]
A
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B
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A
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B
That look good.
- [54:29]
A
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