← The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
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- [00:00]
Podcast Host or Narrator
Oh, it's a beautiful world Ain't nothing on screen that's ever gonna be this view oh, it's a beautiful world and I just want to share with I just want to share with you this beautiful world Such a beautiful.
- [00:35]
Sponsor or Advertisement Voice
This episode is brought to you by Peloton Break through the busiest time of year with the brand new Peloton Cross training Tread plus. Powered by peloton iq. With real time guidance and endless ways to move, you can personalize your workouts and train with confidence, helping you reach your goals in less time. Let yourself run, lift, sculpt, push and go. Explore the new peloton cross training tread +@onepalaton.com welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast.
- [01:02]
Jenny Ertz
My name is Jenny Ertz. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside and I just read a fantastic book on my whole goal in life. Like, all I really want to do is read fiction. I read a lot of nonfiction for interviews, but I'm like, oh, I just want to read fiction. And so I have read your brand new book that will be out by the time this podcast goes live. And I actually, because I wrote in mind, I got an advanced reader copy and I, like, wrote all these notes and I bought one for my boys, my teenage boys who are 14 and 17. So I've pre ordered my own copy. It's called Cold Zero with an incredible, incredible premise. The author, Brad Thor, who has written 25 books and he has a TV series coming and a movie coming and has a TV series. Really? People want to go back in time. There's an older TV series as well. Welcome, Brad.
- [01:43]
Brad Thor
Yeah. Oh, my gosh. You're talking about my career before I was an author. Yes. Thank you, Jenny. Good to see you.
- [01:48]
Jenny Ertz
Yes. Okay. So Cold Zero was this book that I stayed up until the middle of the night to finish because it's such a page turner. And I was telling. I got to talk to Ward. So you co authored this book together. I was telling Ward it was one of those books where I liked it so much that I use it as motivator to get chores done that I didn't want to do.
- [02:07]
Brad Thor
I love that.
- [02:08]
Jenny Ertz
I was like, if I can just get these things done, then I'll go back to reading this book. And I also read your very first book, the Lions of and I don't know how you say. If you say Lucy.
- [02:16]
Brad Thor
Lucerne. Lucerne.
- [02:18]
Jenny Ertz
So this is Scott Harvath. And I loved this one too. And I was like, how do these guys come up with so many twists? You're like, you know, he's, like, repelling the ice thing. And then he falls. And then it's like his. His gun. His gun thing. And then they gotta cut free. And, you know, you're constantly like, it's another twist and another twist. I would love if you would give us your background. You talked about it, actually. There was, like, at the end of the Lions book, at the very end, in the acknowledgments, you just talked about how at one point, you're, like, trying to write a novel. You're living with some other family, you're trying to write a novel, and you set it aside. Then you go into television travel series. Like, you know how. How can I. Like this? I watch one of them. You're like, do you remember? You're, like, pulling on your ears. And I was like, you're like, in Paris. And you're like, how can. How can you cheaply travel through Paris? One of the ideas was to stay at a place that didn't have much plumbing. Well, sure, that would be a little bit cheaper. What was your story like? You're a TV guy, you're doing this series. You, like, knew you wanted to write novels, but you had to kind of leave it and come back to it.
- [03:25]
Brad Thor
Yeah. So I went to college, and my dad, who had been a United States Marine, who had the Marine Corps, was his ticket out of the south side of Chicago. He got to go to college on the GI Bill. My mom had been Southwest suburbs. She became a flight attendant for TWA in the glamour days of international travel in the 1960s. And they both saw the world in their respective careers. And when it was time for me to go to college, my dad said, I want you to study Business Administration. And I went to University of Southern California. Hated Business Administration. And without telling my dad, I switched over to creative writing and film and television production.
- [04:07]
Jenny Ertz
Hold on. That's such a change.
- [04:10]
Brad Thor
Yeah, it's massive change. I had taken a test in the college counseling office that was called the. At that point, it was called the Strong Campbell Personality Test. I think it's called, like, the Strong aptitude test now. And I scored off the charts for writing and publishing. And it was something that I'd always wanted to do since I was a little boy, was to be a writer. So I did not change my major on my report card. So it still said Business Administration, but all of these English classes, Introduction to Poetry, Introduction to Fiction Writing. From page to screen, 100. All of these, like, artsy film, TV, and creative writing classes were Showing up on the report cards. And my dad was looking at the report cards that were being sent home. And he eventually figured it out. By then, it was too late for him to do anything. I stuck with it. And when I graduated, I had spent my. In my junior year, I'd gone abroad to study in Paris, and I made friends with this wonderful family, and they had an extra room, and they said, listen, you know, you keep talking about wanting to come back to Paris when you graduate. You can stay here with us. And I wanted to write a book, and so I did. I came back, brought a laptop, and I got about two or three chapters into it. Ginny. And I was so afraid of failure. I had this little voice in the back of my head, what if the book is terrible? What if nobody likes it? What if you don't get it published? Maybe it's better to just quit instead of being embarrassed. And I really think that that which we fear the most is often that which we're most destined to do in life. And I chickened out, and I shipped the laptop back home. I had worked leasing apartments as my job in college, and I'd saved up all this money, so I just took my backpack and traveled in Europe until the money ran out. And I went back home afterwards. And I had this idea of a travel show for young people because I'd met all these kids with backpacks. That was not something you saw in Chicago, where I was growing up, people walking around with backpacks. So I pitched public television. It's a long story, but I ended up getting a TV show on public television where I was the producer, the writer, host. It was called Traveling Light. And on my honeymoon, after my second season of shows, my wife said to me, she said, you know what? What would you. Good question to ask maybe before you get married, not after. What would you regret on your deathbed never having done? It's a good get to know your potential spouse question. And before I could pull the words out of the air and shove them back in my mouth, I said, writing a book and getting it published. And my wife said, okay, when we get home from the honeymoon, you need to start taking two hours every day and make that dream come true. And so I wrote my very first book when I got home from our honeymoon. Yeah, right.
- [06:47]
Jenny Ertz
Did she have a thing? Huh? Did she have it?
- [06:50]
Brad Thor
Oh, God, you can make me look like a terrible husband now.
- [06:53]
Jenny Ertz
I know. She, you know, honeymoon.
- [06:56]
Brad Thor
She was. She was already doing her thing. She'd always wanted to be a family medicine and sports medicine. Doctor. And so she was a family med doctor. And we were living in Utah because she was a doctor for the US Ski Team. So she did family practice at a clinic in Salt Lake City. We lived in Park City. And then for competitions and training and stuff like that on the side, she was a doctor for the US Ski Team.
- [07:20]
Jenny Ertz
Okay, that is so interesting because skiing is a part of both of these books. And it's like this cold weather, you know, all this excitement. And you had written at the back of lines of. I got you. I'm gonna say it.
- [07:33]
Brad Thor
Lucerne.
- [07:34]
Jenny Ertz
Lucerne. It's like a. Er.
- [07:36]
Sponsor or Advertisement Voice
Okay.
- [07:36]
Jenny Ertz
In lines of Lucerne, you wrote your wife Trisha helps you with the medical sections of the novel. That's.
- [07:41]
Brad Thor
So Trish did. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [07:43]
Jenny Ertz
And her willingness to read your chapters over and over again because she's already, like, invested in your dream. What a cool thing. And you said parents. Your parents helped instill a love of reading into your life. And you plunged into what you've always wanted to do since you were a child, which is write books. And you're already a TV producer, writer, host. So is that a pretty. Is what's that transition like then, to have your. So these. The Scott Harvath. I just read the first one. So this book, and it was fantastic. This is turning into a TV series. And Cold Zero is going to be a movie on Netflix.
- [08:16]
Brad Thor
Correct.
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Jenny Ertz
Was it hard? What's that transition like?
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Sponsor or Advertisement Voice
Is this.
- [08:21]
Jenny Ertz
It's probably super exciting to go from.
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Brad Thor
TV to books, to go from.
- [08:25]
Jenny Ertz
Well, you're. Now you're going back the other way.
- [08:27]
Brad Thor
From books to have my. To have my stuff be made into movie and TVs. Yeah, listen, it's really exciting, but I'm going to temper this excitement for the audience real quick. So I have been at this for two plus decades, and in a town with as many beautiful people as Hollywood has, I have kissed every single frog in that town. I have had more deals. I have been left at the altar more times than Julia Roberts in all of her movies combined. And you can throw in Jennifer Lopez, too. And I've been let. Any more times. So I've kind of got this attitude of, you know, it's super exciting, but I temper it with a little bit of restraint because anything, anything can happen until it's on the screen and I'm sitting there with a big bucket of popcorn and I'm at the screening and that's when I'm going to be like, yes, we did it. But I will say this for the Cold 0 the book that comes out February 10th, the movie. Netflix, we've got a fabulous team. Pete Berg, the producer, director, who did, Gosh, Friday Night Lights and it got turned into a TV series. He's got a series on Netflix now called American Primeval. He's done a kajillion movies with Mark Wahlberg, including Lone Survivor. He did the Kingdom with Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner. He's fabulous. And our writer is Nick Pizzolato, who created True Detective that first season with Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, which is amazing. So it's a really awesome team. And then that's for Cold Zero, just the standalone movie. And then on the TV side from my Scott Harvath books, which, by the way, I tell everybody in my Harvath books, because I've written a bunch of them, are like the James Bond movies. You can jump in at any book. You don't need to do what Ginny did and start at the beginning. The purists love to do that.
- [10:02]
Jenny Ertz
You could, because it's a really good book.
- [10:04]
Brad Thor
Absolutely.
- [10:04]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah.
- [10:05]
Brad Thor
Thank you. Thank you. So that's the John Wick director for that TV show. And then it's the writer who wrote the Punisher for Netflix. And then our executive producer, one of our eps is Howard Gordon, who was the force behind 24 and Homeland. So this is the best position, Jenny, out of kissing all those frogs. Every frog kissing was worth it to get to the teams that I have now, let's put it that way. So I'm very excited about the people we're working with and all that's coming.
- [10:31]
Jenny Ertz
That's so fun. And, you know, I just think it drives people to read more because it's like, you're always more interested in reading a book if you're going to be able to see the movie. I think sometimes it's a little bit of an incentive. If you've got teens and you want them to read more, you're like, oh, we can go see the movie together. So what's interesting to me then is your wife's like, look, you know, you have this dream. Get back into it. Why don't you try and write two hours a day? But once you started, you never stop, right? So this is this one, this first one, this first Scott. Scott Harvath comes out in 2002. And then on your website, because you can sell your books, it's is 2003, 2004, 2005. Every year.
- [11:04]
Brad Thor
Every year since.
- [11:05]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah, every year since. I mean, up through 2025 was Edge of Honor. And then 2026 is called Zero. And then Ward made it sound like there's another one coming of yours.
- [11:16]
Brad Thor
So there's another one of mine that comes. So in my series with my protagonist, Scott Harvath, I have a new one coming out in June called Choke Point.
- [11:23]
Jenny Ertz
Of course you do, because there's got to be one for 2026. Of course, before we dive into the premise here, which is an incredible premise with an airplane that crashes into the Arctic and trying to save the AI Technology that might ruin the world. And it's just all of these different countries. It's like, here's Russia and here's China, and there's submarines, and there's all of these things. And the main character is a woman. Casey. Casey Sheridan. So before we jump into that, I just want people to know that you have these reader experiences, the ultimate reader experiences on your website@bradthor.com and the one that I looked at, which was his first Scott Harvard book. It's like, you go through. It's really cool. You're like, the gear, the food, you know, the different places. Can you. And. And then not only that, there's conversation starters. Nobody knows how to start a conversation today.
- [12:12]
Brad Thor
So book club questions, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. So we tried it. We tried to kind of build a mini universe for each book. So if the book. So you could even go onto my website and look at the descriptions of the books and say, oh, that's interesting. And then go to the bonus material and be like, oh, he talks about this in the book and that in the book. And you can even do that before you read the book or after you read the book. Because we, like I said, we wanted to build a mini universe around each book to kind of broaden out the experience of reading the book. And so that's. That's been a lot of fun. So we do one of those for each and every book.
- [12:45]
Jenny Ertz
All right. Brad has been called the master of thrillers, America's favorite author. Your bestselling novels have been published in over 30 countries, 25 thrillers that you've written in this new one called Zero is a. It's really interesting to me. All these books are, you know, like, you gotta throw AI in there. So can you talk about. I. I talked about this with Ward because he had books that were from early 2000s too. So it's an interesting situation where when you read the first book, you know, people are like, I'm gonna go to the Internet cafe.
- [13:15]
Brad Thor
Yeah.
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Jenny Ertz
Up to A new book that's like this AI technology basically is like a mal that is, you know, inserted into your vehicle or your plane, and it can basically shut the whole thing down. So can you talk about your study? Like, do you have to have pretty deep study into, like, what's going on with AI in the battlefield? Currently not too much.
- [13:42]
Brad Thor
Which is kind of fun as a fiction author, as you get to play the king of your domain. So Alfred Hitchcock talked about something called the MacGuffin, he nicknamed it. And the MacGuffin is what the protagonist needs to get his hands on. And the bad guy doesn't want him to get his hands on, because either the bad guy wants to stop the good guy or the bad guy wants the MacGuffin for himself. So the idea behind this book, when I came up with it, I had become, I love international travel. That's why I did a travel show on public television. That's why the locales and the books, Ginny, are so glamorous and international. It's kind of armchair travel when you read my books and. And I became fascinated, just not as an author, just as a traveler, at how airlines were starting to route their airplanes over the North Pole to save fuel, save time. And I thought, hey, there's never been a crash of a commercial airliner at the North Pole in the Arctic. What would that look like? What would the recovery efforts look like? How quick could you get to survivors if there were survivors? And I thought that'd make a cool book. And me being me, I said, how do I add another layer on top of that to make it kind of espionage kind of a thing, add even more action and intrigue? And I said, what if there was something on the plane that the superpowers, or the near powers, as they're referred to now because we're the sole superpower? What if America's near peer enemies, Russia and China, were also racing to get this piece of technology first? What might that piece of tech be? And so with AI, I loved this idea of creating something that you could carry on the battlefield, like a little. Like a little box, like the size of a shoebox that would have AI in it in anything electronic that your enemy had, you could gain control of. You could stop, make their planes fall out of the sky. You could turn their planes around, make their planes crash into each other. This would be such an amazing piece of tech that it could shift world power if a military had this. And so I thought, okay, how about a really brilliant Chinese scientist who has completely lost faith in the Government in China wants to defect to the United States. And so a couple of CIA agents are sneaking him out of China. And they are, they're thinking, okay, we could put our feet up. Now we're on this glamorous, all first class airline that's going to fly over the pole. We're safely away from China. We haven't had a drop of alcohol because we've been working for the last three weeks in China keeping this guy hidden. All right, let's do this. Let's have a glass of champagne. Let's celebrate. And all of a sudden the airplane develops engine trouble and goes down. So that to me was such a fun idea of then, okay, China's racing there, America's racing there, and the Russians are all racing there to get the piece of tech first. And I thought that would make an awesome, awesome thriller novel. And not only that, but Hollywood thinks it's going to be this awesome huge blockbuster film. So that's really co.
- [16:33]
Jenny Ertz
It's. Oh, it sure is. It sure is. It's like engine failure. And then this is like in the page 20s, you know, like you're at the beginning, this plane is going down and then it. Then they're like, well, how are we going to, how are we going to land it in the ice? You know, and then the plane is landing and it's like we can't backwards thrust, you know, we can't put down the landing gear skin.
- [16:52]
Brad Thor
You've been talking a ward, you know. Yeah.
- [16:54]
Jenny Ertz
What is going to happen with this plane? So then it's interesting that you brought up the international travel because the book, the lines of Lucerne, this is Switzerland. So you know, you're learning about all these different areas there. Plus Germany, you know, it's like Herman the German, you know, there's a lot going on there.
- [17:09]
Brad Thor
Oh yeah.
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Jenny Ertz
And then this one is the Arctic of all places. And no one thinks too much about the Arctic. But you talk in this book about how actually this become a strategic spot for global leaders and, and for different countries. And so I love that this spot that no one really talks about or even really considers becomes this convergence. And everyone is converging in different, like cool high tech, you know, like the, the Chinese are coming in on the icebreaker that can cut the ice that's 10ft thick. And the Russians are coming in on this submarine that nobody even knows that they have. It's the most high tech one. And the Americans are coming in on an older submarine, but also a different type of plane that can land on like it's the biggest type of plane that can land on the water because it has. Yeah, yeah. All converging in this place. Like nobody really talks about or goes so can you talk about that piece of it like the Arctic as a location for an entire book?
- [18:12]
Sponsor or Advertisement Voice
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- [21:42]
Brad Thor
What the we wanted something shy of, you know, something silly like setting it on the moon. Something that was so remote, so inaccessible that the survivors were going to have to rely on their wits. And they were not only going to have to outrun the Chinese and the Russians, they were going to have to outrun the elements that the cold and the severe conditions actually become a character in the book. And so this is what was so neat about co authoring it with Ward because he was a fighter pilot. Now he's a commercial aircraft pilot, so he'd had all the survival training. I had worked with one of the lead instructors for the Navy SEALs that teach them how to do cold weather warfare and how to survive in the Arctic. So we had all these neat pieces of information that we were bringing to bear, and we thought, okay, this is really interesting. And the one area, Jenny, where we had to swear an oath to each other we would not treat like a magic kind of toy chest is the cargo hold on the airplane. We allowed ourselves one cool thing that could be pulled out of there. That was it. You could not keep returning to the cargo hold. And, oh, look what's in this suitcase. And, oh, just what we need is in that suitcase. We wanted to be as austere as possible, so we had to kind of go back and forth and say, okay, listen, these guys are going to catch one break. So they're only going to find one thing in the cargo hold that really is something. They are like, oh, we're so lucky that's there. You can't have a satellite, iPhone, a bunch of hand warmers. You know what I mean? You have to just do it once to really. To be fair to the audience. And so we went back and forth a lot on what they would find there. But those were kind of. Some of the only limits is how would you survive in the cold? There's no trees. You can't build a fire. If you start burning seat cushions, you're going to choke to death on the toxic fumes. So what could you use? You could burn clothing that's kind of hard to light. And anyway, it was a puzzle as much as it was a creative writing experience. And that made it exciting. And I think it was fun for both for me and for Ward to take a step away, little mini vacation from the series and the same heroes that we write all the time, to have a blank page and start from the beginning with something new that was.
- [23:58]
Jenny Ertz
Pretty cool with all these brand new characters. So Casey Sheridan, she is one of the main characters, and so is his first officer, Brett Sharp. There's a little, like a little bit of a, you know, a little bit of a connection that these two have.
- [24:08]
Brad Thor
Little spark.
- [24:10]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah, they both have these backgrounds that have equipped them. Like she was a D1 athlete, you know, who was a runner, finished fourth place at the NCAA Finals. And, you know, it's this. It's this juxtaposition of having these very capable people trying to guide a less capable person. But who is the one who knows about all the technology through the Arctic, you know, to try and escape? And it's just like this. You know, you can. It's One of those things that you can imagine yourself in and being just completely mortified, you know, like trying to escape a situation and walking on ice and not knowing what way you're going. And there's a storm. And then there's the part about that the ice pieces break. You know, like, the ice is not, you know, some.
- [24:56]
Brad Thor
It's not contiguous. Yeah.
- [24:59]
Jenny Ertz
So that was a word. And Ward actually said he learned that word from you. It was a word I didn't know called a lead.
- [25:05]
Brad Thor
Yeah.
- [25:05]
Jenny Ertz
Is that right? Yeah.
- [25:06]
Brad Thor
I think it's the reverse. I think I learned about leads from Ward. I can't remember. I think actually, it was Ward. And that's the gap that opens up between pieces of ice where it becomes just like this drop off, this severe drop off. And you have to be very careful because those do exist, and they're like huge cracks in the ice that can go down, down hundreds of feet or go straight down into the water and be too wide to cross. So then you have to say, how do I get across this? I have to walk to the left or to the right, and I don't know how long the crack could go for miles before you could actually find a safe place to cross.
- [25:37]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah. Or am I gonna jump?
- [25:39]
Brad Thor
I mean, am I gonna jump? Exactly.
- [25:41]
Jenny Ertz
Quite the thing. The spot where I. I was like, okay, this has to be a movie, is when there are these. They're, like, coming through the sky. The ice wolves. Oh, yeah.
- [25:51]
Brad Thor
The Chinese special forces. Their winter warfare team. Yeah.
- [25:54]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah. In less than a minute, all 24 were falling through the stormy Arctic sky. All 24 men. That's when I was like, oh, my goodness, this has to be a movie. And then I saw on the Today show you were talking about that it was going to be a movie. So, I mean, the premise is just fantastic. It's clean. It's enough to give to your kids, you know, your teens, if they want to read it. It's got this. This female lead. So I just. I mean, I so enjoyed it. And I think. I think, like, this whole. This concept of a Frankenstein moment for the digital age is such a big one. It's like when your technologies turn on you, and what are you gonna do? So the amount of layered characters, because you're also layering all these countries, and what are their interests? Like, Russia wants to show off, Right? Yeah. Cool submarine that no one else has, so they're trying to show off. Like, everyone has all these different interests. So I loved it. A Frankenstein moment for the digital age. So the movie is Gonna come out and you read the book ahead of time. I loved this one. And then I also read your. It's always hard to talk about fiction because I'm like, you don't want to give anything away.
- [27:00]
Brad Thor
Sure.
- [27:00]
Jenny Ertz
Okay. But there was a couple concepts that I felt like could extend. So one of the ones was, it's amazing what you can do. I think this is the premise of the book. It's amazing what you can do when your life depends on it, because they're just constantly getting thrown all of these different situations, and they're having to deal with the lead, or they're having to deal with the polar bear, you know, or they're having to deal with the, you know, people skiing in to try and save them. And, I mean, it's just so many things happening. I actually feel like that's kind of a common theme between both of the books that I read. It's like when your back is up against the wall, I think most people would fold. Yeah.
- [27:40]
Brad Thor
And so one of the things that we. That we wanted to explore, particularly. I love strong female characters, and I always write strong female characters because I am surrounded by strong female characters. Air quotes. My wife, my daughter, my agent, my editor. And when I write female characters, I want them to be characters that I could hand the book to my daughter, and she would love reading them and that she would find these characters inspirational. One of the things that we dealt with with Casey, particularly early on, after the plane comes down in the Arctic, is where do her loyalties lie? She's still alive. She's gonna find the piece of technology, the scientist on board, she's gotta figure out if he's alive. Is her duty to the other passengers who survived, or is her duty to her mission that the CIA center on? How much can she tell Brett Sharpe? His duty is very clear. It's to the passengers. He's the surviving aircraft personnel is legal and moral responsibilities to the passengers. So what does she tell him and what does she not tell him? And what does it mean to be a. Not only a character, but in particular to be a woman who actually has more knowledge than the men around her? She actually understands what's going on better than anybody else. And how does she parse out. Not that she's using them, but how does she parse out the information in such a way that it doesn't jeopardize her commitment to her country and the mission that she was trusted to be sent on? Because her mission doesn't end until she draws her last breath and that's, you know, so she's got that motivation. So how does she work with Brett Sharp? And when does she reveal what actually is going on here? Because he doesn't know. And so we. And we wanted to keep Casey this incredibly likable character who you could identify with whether you were a man or a woman. She's fantastic. You're like. You're rooted for her. So that was a. That was a big part of what we went through with writing that character in particular and dealing with that theme.
- [29:37]
Jenny Ertz
I loved when, you know, she said she had acquired a sixth sense for how far she could stretch lies and deception. And that comes up a couple times where they're having to, like, be deceptive, you know, with these different countries converging, but also with Brett, you know, that's the whole thing. And. And you could see that, you know, if this is your job, if you. If you're working for an organization where you're trying to infiltrate, that you would become a person that knows just how far you can push it and when you've pushed it too far. One of my favorite sentences in the book was when you said, casey, who had ignored the routine safety briefing. Great line.
- [30:12]
Brad Thor
We all do.
- [30:13]
Jenny Ertz
We do. And then a plane's going down, and you're like, oh, my goodness, what is gonna happen here? Okay, so then talking about duty and loyalties. Then the other book I read of yours, which, I'm sorry, so excited, because now I have a new series. I told Ward, oh, my gosh, I love to read. And I. I just. I box myself in too much, I think, Brad, like, you know, it's just, like a thing of life where you're like, I'm gonna read the, you know, this rom com or whatever.
- [30:38]
Brad Thor
That's okay. That's okay, too. Those are fun.
- [30:41]
Jenny Ertz
It is. Okay. But then sometimes you. You're like, I don't. I've lost. Like, I don't have another book. Or what am I. You know, when you're in that spot, what am I gonna read next?
- [30:49]
Brad Thor
What I read next?
- [30:50]
Jenny Ertz
Then I was like, oh, my gosh. I had so much fun reading both. And now I'm like, at book one, and there's 24 more I can read, plus another one coming out. So this is also a book about duty, where Scott, named after your brother, which is so cool. Scott loses the president.
- [31:09]
Sponsor or Advertisement Voice
Yep.
- [31:10]
Brad Thor
Yes.
- [31:12]
Jenny Ertz
So what's his duty?
- [31:14]
Brad Thor
So his duty. So it's very interesting. So when we lived in Park City, when my wife was a doc for the US Ski Team, president Clinton. Clinton came twice for Chelsea's birthday in real life to ski in Park City. And I had a friend at the Secret Service and I said, I'm fascinated by this. Do you guys have to shut down the entire mountain for the President to ski? And he said, no, because nobody knows where we're gonna be half the time. Nobody recognizes the President cuz he's got goggles on. We just look like a big group of people that are out like on vacation, skiing. And I found that fascinating and I thought, oh, wouldn't it be interesting if the President. Somebody tried to capture the President while he was on a ski vacation and that gave birth to the Lions of Lucerne. Because this group of Swiss mercenaries get hired because they're so good in the snow to take on the job of kidnapping the President. And Scott Harvath, because he's the only survivor of the kidnapping attempt, they think maybe he had something to do with it. He has to go on the run to prove his innocence. And it's this big global manhunt in his search for the President. And he ends up teaming up with another one of my favorite female characters that I've ever created, Claudia Mueller from the Swiss federal attorney's office. And she's another great, great, great character. And without her cooperation and work in her working together with him, they never would have found the President. So it's another one of these great things where I've got a male and a female and the dynamic between the two of them and how if you had put either one of them in the situation by themselves, they wouldn't have had all the puzzle pieces out of the box to, to, to solve it.
- [32:43]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah, this one had so many twists and turns too. And also it has this cold weather element. So both books have this. So you're talking about the polar seals. So like in a, a certain spot like Scott's in the water, he ends up in the water. And you wrote, he knew that in cold water the key to survival was to move as little as possible. Swimming desperately takes the heat, you know, away from your center of your body.
- [33:03]
Sponsor or Advertisement Voice
Radiates.
- [33:04]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah, yeah, radiates out to your limbs. And the body cools four times faster in the water than in the air of the same temperature. And so these effects are of cold water can take over quickly. So he's used to that. Also used to like winter camouflage when they're having to, you know, repel and steam up the mountain.
- [33:20]
Sponsor or Advertisement Voice
It.
- [33:21]
Jenny Ertz
How hard is it to re. I mean, you seem like you, it seems like you just Read it yesterday.
- [33:25]
Brad Thor
Yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of neat because there's so much stuff that spies do and then what we call our Tier one operators, the most elite units of the US Military, whether that, that's Delta Force, whether it's. And these names have changed. I mean, everybody knows Delta Force and Seal Team 6, they've changed their names a couple of times since then so that, you know, politicians can deny those units exist. But the, the tradecraft, if you will, kind of the, the institutional knowledge and what they teach those people hasn't changed very much over the course of my writing. So I have this neat little PhD, whether it be in spies or Navy SEALs and Delta Force that I can draw on for all these books. But then you get into the specialized stuff, like whether it's SEAL teams that are specifically assigned missions in cold weather, and then there's more I have to do, and I'm very fortunate. In, like any other business, whether you're an attorney, an accountant, whether you're a realtor, your human network is really important. The people that you reach out to to help you, whether it's to find clients or help with marketing. I've got the same thing where I reach out to know in those communities, the intelligence community, law enforcement, the military. And I say, hey, you did this. What's it like? What's the experience like when X happens? Because I want to have, I want to. I like to take you as a reader, Jenny, right up to the edge of the bushes and let you peer over into the other side, into the real life stuff that happens while keeping you in that fun fiction world.
- [34:57]
Jenny Ertz
Okay, so let's talk about this real life thing. How often does this happen? So in both books that I read, there is this concept of leaks or just like, like complete disloyalty. So the whole premise of Cold Zero is that this Dr. Cheng Li, who has been working for China to come up with this AI technology for a decade, is turning on his country. I mean, that's the whole premise. And then in the Lion's Book, there's a ton of leaks that you don't even know who to trust. Scott doesn't know who to trust. I mean, you could see how with all sorts of different motivations of money and fame and power, you know, the vice president might get to take the president spot like that. This, this could be actually fairly common.
- [35:43]
Sponsor or Advertisement Voice
Yeah.
- [35:44]
Brad Thor
So there's not only intentional bad actors, there is stuff that is unintentional. And we see this in real life. I mean like a year ago there was the Secretary of Defense with real life administration officials discussing a highly classified attack in the Middle east over the signal cell phone encrypted app. And that wasn't necessarily any traitorous business. They weren't talking with Chinese or Russians. But it was not how you're supposed to handle classified information. So sometimes truth can be stranger than fiction. And we have multiple instance there was a young Air National Guardsmen about two years, I think it was two or three years ago who released a bunch of sensitive military information that, that, that got convicted for that. And you know, we saw what's his face, Julian Assange and there was Chelsea Manning and all this kind of stuff. So we do see these, these situations where US Intelligence is either. We see a lot of idealistic people that put stuff out there because they don't agree with it. Tends to be young men or young women in their twenties for some reason think that they should not push it up the chain of command and make sure that the right person addresses any malfeasance. They kind of decide they're going to go public with it, which I disagree with. I think you could find members of Congress that would say, wait, what did you find out? Bring this to me, I want to talk to you about it. I don't think, and giving it, putting it out there so our enemies can see it as the right way to do it. But unfortunately, anytime you gather two or more people together, no, you need three people for a secret. Two people, there's no need for secrets because there's nobody else. Anytime you get three or more people together, you have the possibility for secrets. And so that's. We gather together in larger groups than that as human beings. And so warfare, security, all of that stuff has always involved a certain degree of secrecy and you always run the risk. What does it look like if people violate confidentiality agreements, national security, non disclosure agreements. So I like to play with that a little bit in any fiction writer worth their salt does because they like to keep you guessing. Who's the bad guy, who's the good guy? Oh, there's a twist. I didn't think it was that person.
- [37:57]
Jenny Ertz
So yeah, absolutely. Like we've been infiltrated. Who you know, who is it who can be trusted?
- [38:03]
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- [40:37]
Jenny Ertz
And just the layered motivation. So there was this concept of the stoke and sting. You know, we're like, trying to make sure, like, well, the Vice president join in on this and with this person. And you're, like, trying to figure out, like, can we. Can we play on their ego and all of these sort of methods that are used really, to kind of use people.
- [40:57]
Brad Thor
Yeah. Oh, there's a lot of that. And that stuff has been going on for a long time. The Russians are very good at it. And. Yeah, so there's. There's a lot of stuff. Human beings, our technology may change, but who we are at our core doesn't change. So there's a. There's a lot of. There's an acronym that they use in the spy world that's called mice. And it's moving. So it's an acronym for, like, money ideology, something. Something. I'm told I'm drawing a blank right now because I've not had enough coffee, but it basically is. Here are four on ramps to get somebody to reveal national secrets to you so you can pay people so you know somebody is having money trouble. And so this is one of the reasons why the United States government is constantly reviewing their personnel is because they want to know, does this guy who handles sensitive information, does he have a gambling problem? Is this person a drug addict? Is she being blackmailed? Or can she be blackmailed because she has something in her past that would make her vulnerable to blackmail? So, again, as much as our technology changes, we do don't change at the core who we are. And so these traditional ways of blackmailing people, it's evergreen. It's worked forever, and it's going to continue to work forever.
- [42:11]
Jenny Ertz
Unfortunately, I found it. It's a counterintelligence framework explaining why individuals betray their country. It's money, ideology, coercion. It says coercion. Sl Compromise and ego.
- [42:25]
Brad Thor
And ego. Yeah. And the coercion can be like a honey trap. It can be. They always joke that just because you're at a foreign conference and you're drinking in the bar, you just. You didn't suddenly get better looking. So you get these guys that go overseas to these security conferences or whatever, and all of a sudden this beautiful woman with an accent is talking to them and it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You didn't get suddenly better looking, funnier, more intelligent just because you hopped on a plane and went to a conference. You're getting set up. So. Yeah, but very good. You got the. That. That is mice.
- [42:57]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, that's a, as a, as a writer, that's a pretty fun thing to play around with. As a human, it definitely makes you feel like, oh, gosh, things are not very secure. So talking then about the human part of it, then. One of the parts is that your relationships, like, you're so in cold zero. These are a lot of new relationships, like Casey and Brett. But then it's interesting because it can go both ways. Like, Scott, he gets. Is actually my favorite line in the book of lines, the lines of Lucerne.
- [43:30]
Brad Thor
Very good.
- [43:30]
Jenny Ertz
Where I think I'm really trying. Okay. I wrote it down. It's got earn in it. So the lines of Lucerne. He's friends with this Herman the German. And my favorite line is when he says Herman, he, like, needs help. Like, Scott needs help. So he goes to this Herman. You know, when they embrace it, they're so excited to see each other, haven't seen each other. And Herman had said, men in our profession need insurance that employers can't always provide. So I love these parts where like, like it happens either, like, in the positive and also kind of in the negative. So in cold zero, on the Chinese side, you know, this Dr. Chang Lee takes this technology he's been working on, he betrays the country and leaves. But his, like, protege, she steps up like, you know she's gonna try double cross him, right?
- [44:20]
Brad Thor
Yeah.
- [44:20]
Jenny Ertz
So, like, on the positive and the negative, your human relationship can either propel you forward or really cause a lot of problems. So, like this Herman the German or you talked about your, you know, it's like one of your favorite female characters, Claudia, like, she had, had, she had relationships too that ended up helping Scott. Like, they had it. There was a, a triage, like a triad trio triage of relationships where they, like, someone knew one and he knows her, and then they end up all together. And it helps.
- [44:50]
Brad Thor
Helps.
- [44:51]
Jenny Ertz
So can you talk about. I mean, the relationships are really strong in these books.
- [44:55]
Sponsor or Advertisement Voice
Yeah.
- [44:56]
Brad Thor
And, and that's the way, particularly with espionage, the intelligence community is largely based on relationships. They, they. When you go out into the field as a, as an intelligence officer, part of what you're doing is you are trying to get people in foreign countries to spy against their own country. So that is, they are Looking for people that are really good with persuading people through whatever means, pay them, convince them, you know, offer them a better life in the United States, whatever. But it is a. You really have to understand kind of what motivates human beings. And you. You build what are called networks. That's what they call these. These groups of. Of people. An intelligence officer has a network. But it is very much. There was an old thing in the 80s, this is really. Are you familiar with the British clothing line called Barber?
- [45:44]
Jenny Ertz
No.
- [45:45]
Brad Thor
So Barber. They make these great kind of waxed green jackets. They have some brown ones, some green ones. But like, every time you see a British ad with a Range Rover, somebody's wearing one of these jackets and a pair of Wellington boots. But so barber. It's funny because a lot of the spies in the 80s used to wear these barber jackets. And there used to be a word among the spies that if you were ever in trouble, look for a barber jacket because it might be a fellow spy who could help you out. I was told that by an old spy, and he swears by it.
- [46:16]
Sponsor or Advertisement Voice
And.
- [46:17]
Brad Thor
And he's never joked with me. He's never told me something that wasn't true. So I'm inclined to believe it. But it is a relationship game, and so those relationships are important. So I try to reflect that in the books. And again, this is what I like, is that my character cannot get to the end of the book without the help of other people and the help of other people. The biggest chunk of that help normally comes from a character of the opposite sex. So if I have a female protagonist, she needs the help of a male protagonist, not because he's male, but because of something he can provide. And then in my main series, where I have a male protagonist, he can't get to the end without the help of a female protagonist because of her skill set, the relationships she has, either in the government or whatever. So it's just people that work together with people. Because I think that's the most interesting thing of any book we read is the problems that people. People find themselves in, how they get out of them and how they relate to other people during that process. I think that's what's fascinating about fiction.
- [47:15]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah, it's a lot of twists and turns in the books, but also a lot of layered relationships as well. Let's talk about this. Okay, so one of the concepts, it's really. In both books, it's just a mind over body. You know, what. What can my body actually do? So Scott's talking about It. He's saying, my mind is my most important weapon. You know, like, just turning off the fear, moving ahead. Like, I'm. I'm just gonna walk this many miles across the Arctic and hope I find what I need. You know, like, off we go. There's no turning back. You know, it's like one of the characters, it takes off and it's like, if I don't get to where I go, nobody even knows I'm here. Like, this will be the end of me. So that was, like, a really interesting part. So can you talk about this? I just feel like, like. Like so many of us, myself included, are so soft, you know? So you read these books and you're like, gosh, there's really a different level of person out there.
- [48:11]
Brad Thor
Yeah, there's a mental toughness, and you particularly. So I first came into contact with that my dad, My. The Marine Corps was my dad's ticket, as we talked about, out of the south side of Chicago. And my dad has a tremendous amount of mental toughness. And what's interesting is when you look at a community like. Like the Navy SEALs, and you look at the people that show up for. For the selection process who want to try out for the seals, you look at who shows up and then who actually makes it through to the end. And if you stood there not knowing anything about the Navy seals, and you only knew what they were going to go through over the next X amount of time, and you took bets, a lot of people are going to bet on the physically biggest specimens. And it's a mental game. It is not necessarily physical. And it's amazing what you can do when you set your mind to it. And that's what the SEALs are looking for. That's what the CIA is looking for. If you send people far away from the United States, you need people who will not quit. Big maxim in the seals is failure is not an option. Success is the only outcome I will accept. And so with that, you can overcome a lot. But you know what? You and I see that every day. We see people that are fighting cancer. We see. See people that are fighting financial difficulties. You have a child who special needs. You have a parent with dementia. You know, you just. There is no time to roll over. You may take a break and try to catch your breath. You may have a good cry, whatever, but you don't give up. You keep going and going and going because there is no other option. You won't entertain another option. And that's that mental toughness that you need to have in these elite military and elite intelligence communities.
- [49:50]
Jenny Ertz
So, okay, what about this motto? The only easy day was yesterday.
- [49:54]
Brad Thor
Big Navy SEAL one. Yeah. So the only easy day is the one that's already behind you. That's a big one. So that no matter what happens today, the easiest day was yesterday. You should expect it to be tough. You should meet it as if it's going to be tough. Steel yourself for the fact that it's going to be tough. Don't expect any breaks. But one of the things they do do with. Let's say you've got a Navy seal. I did a book called Backlash, and Scott Harvath gets grabbed by the Russians, and they are taking him to one of their own black sites for interrogation. And the plane goes down with him on it, and he manages to get away, and he's got to get to the border with Russia and Finland, and it's very wild, very cold, very dangerous. And one of the things that they teach you is celebrate small wins. Okay, you made it over the next hill. Celebrate that. You actually found a little bit to eat. It's not as much as you'd like to eat, but you found a little bit. Celebrate that. Celebrate win after win after win. Focus on the positive. Focus on what's worked, not what's not working, because then you are supercharging your brain to be successful, to propel you forward.
- [51:00]
Jenny Ertz
That's such a parenting piece of parenting advice there. I interviewed this man named Peter Mudabazi, who was a street kid in Uganda and just grew up, like, abused and no family.
- [51:10]
Brad Thor
See the one that walked up to the gentleman in the. This isn't the kid who walked up to the guy in the marketplace and the guy asked him a question and ended up becoming a wonderful patron for him. Is it?
- [51:19]
Jenny Ertz
I. I don't know about that story. It could be, but at this point, it's been a long time since he.
- [51:24]
Sponsor or Advertisement Voice
Was a street kid.
- [51:24]
Jenny Ertz
He lives in America, and he's a foster dad. He's in his 40s, and he's written a couple books.
- [51:29]
Brad Thor
I think it's the same guy.
- [51:30]
Jenny Ertz
And he talks about how, you know, these foster kids will come in and everybody. Single day, he gets called in to school because the kid is having a hard time adjusting. He's like, so if we get to four days instead of five, he like. He's like, I'm gonna celebrate that. I celebrate all the. All the small wins. I think it's great parenting advice.
- [51:46]
Brad Thor
It's terrific parenting advice.
- [51:49]
Jenny Ertz
This is, like, such an odd transition.
- [51:51]
Brad Thor
Go for it.
- [51:52]
Jenny Ertz
How do you make a good disguise.
- [51:54]
Brad Thor
That is constantly changing? So what I would have told you 15 or 20 years ago, I will not tell you now. So interesting, particularly with facial recognition. So facial recognition has made it impossible to just paste on a fake beard and mustache and have a fake passport and walk through passport control. It's. It's impossible now to do that. So that's. That's an issue. That's a really difficult thing.
- [52:19]
Jenny Ertz
Okay. Wow, Brad, I'm so glad that you said that. And I'm glad I asked because I was maybe gonna skip it. I thought it was an interesting part because Scott's, like, trying to come up with this to Scott, and he's got the fake passport. But the books really do showcase how the changes in technology in just over two decades, which is not really that much time, is so considerable, it's huge.
- [52:38]
Brad Thor
So what Scott might have done with colored contacts and changing his hair color and stuff like that, getting across a border that doesn't exist anymore, there's so many cameras and all that kind of stuff. The other piece of technology, as far as you, how you would disguise yourself, that I learned about science several years ago, is that the way you walk is as unique as your fingerprint. And there is software that if they've got. If they've got Ginny walking into. I don't even know where you live, what state you're in.
- [53:07]
Jenny Ertz
We're in Michigan. We're in Michigan.
- [53:08]
Brad Thor
Okay, so you're in Michigan. So you go into. Is it a Myers in Michigan?
- [53:12]
Jenny Ertz
It is.
- [53:13]
Brad Thor
Okay. My wife is from Detroit.
- [53:16]
Jenny Ertz
Reference.
- [53:17]
Brad Thor
My. My East Lansing, Michigan state wife from Detroit would tell me it's a Myers. Okay, so you walk into a Myers. They've got you on. On cctv. They now know what Ginny's walk looks like. So now they've got video footage of you throwing a brick through. They've got video footage of a woman all dressed in black with a ski mask who throws a brick through a window, along with a threatening letter at, like, a polling place. Well, they can look at that walk and run it through software. And if they have access to the Myers footage of you grocery shopping, they can compare the two, and that helps them identify that it's you. So what you would need to do is put a stone in your shoe before you throw the brick through the window, because it completely changes your walk. You cannot fake a limp long enough. Your mind will actually reset your walk. You can only fake it long enough. You have to constantly be thinking, limp, limp, limp. And the minute you stop thinking about it because something caught your attention. You're trying to read something on the window. Or is anybody around me before I throw the brick? The minute you break your concentration, your walk goes back to normal and you've blown your identity. How about that? Isn't that wild?
- [54:28]
Jenny Ertz
I'm glad I asked. It's just really interesting to see the juxtaposition between the different technologies, because you're talking about glare guns, which I hadn't heard of. It's like, you know, you're going to disorient everyone that's in Lines of Lucerne. And then also you're talking about the Yellow Pages.
- [54:44]
Brad Thor
Yeah. It's how old?
- [54:45]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah. Airsoft is new. Like, it's a brand new technology. But there's also formulated acid paste that already still existed. So, you know, you're like talking about trying to get a cab. Like, does any. Do any of these cabs take.
- [54:56]
Brad Thor
That's before rideshare. Yeah.
- [54:58]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah, before Uber. So it's just. I mean, it is just. It's something to be aware of. Like, the technology is changing.
- [55:03]
Brad Thor
Yeah.
- [55:04]
Jenny Ertz
Rapidly. It makes books fun. It's. It's fun. And there's always. I would imagine there's always new things then to write about. I'd love to wrap it up with your. With you and the books that you like. So when I saw you on the Today show that you talked about other books, it was really interesting. Like, you think you're just gonna go out there and talk about Cold Zero and the movie that's coming up, but you talked about a couple other books on, you know, you're helping other people promote their books. I thought that was a really cool thing.
- [55:27]
Brad Thor
I love that.
- [55:28]
Jenny Ertz
There's one book that got brought up in Lions of Lucerne, the White Spider.
- [55:33]
Podcast Host or Narrator
Whoa.
- [55:34]
Jenny Ertz
Also, there's a Charles Dickens book, too. Those two books got brought up in Lines of Lucerne. And then in Cold Zero, you brought this book called the Elias Network, which I got a copy of by Simone Gervais, and I'm planning on.
- [55:46]
Brad Thor
Yeah, Simon Gervais. Yeah.
- [55:48]
Jenny Ertz
Okay. All right. So can you just give us, like, what kind of books do you like? What inspires you? Any other book suggestions for the listeners?
- [55:58]
Brad Thor
So I love. So Stephen King, in his book about writing called On Writing, said you should write what you love to read because that's where your passion is. And I tell people, not only is that where your passion is, but you've developed a mini PhD because you've been. Been reading in that genre for so long. You know, why Certain books really lit you up. Your favorite author, his or her seventh book, you didn't like that as much as you did 5 and 6 and 8 and 9. So the seventh book didn't work for you, but you understand why it didn't work for you. It was a character issue or a plotting issue. So you've got a mini PhD and that's what I always tell people is you should write what you love to read. I grew up stealing books. My parents had a basket of books on the front front porch that was their own little lending library for friends that would come over and guess. And after I, after I burned through all the Hardy Boy books which were really big when I was a kid, I would go into this basket of books that I should not have been touching at my age and I would grab Robert Ludlum books, Clancy books, John Le Carre books, Freddy Forsyth books. So I've always loved espionage international thrillers. And I'm also a big non fiction fan. One of my, my favorite nonfiction authors is Eric Larson. And my favorite Larson book that he wrote is called in the Garden of Beasts. And it's told from the perspective of a family from Chicago where the dad gets made the ambassador to Germany and they move to Berlin and they were reluctant to believe that the Nazis were becoming as bad as everyone was saying. And it's a fascinating book to watch how the eyes of this family start opening up to the. The horrors of Nazism. It's a really great book and I love to tease my editor about it because her husband was the editor of that book and it is the only book I've ever read that doesn't have a single mistake in it. So I always tease her when I make a mistake and it ends up. And I make lots of mistakes and sometimes it sneaks through a thousand eyes reading the manuscript and ends up in the final book. And I will joke and I'll say, you know, I bet if your husband had read that, that book, that mistake wouldn't have made it through. And she's like, he had a great copy editor editor. That's who made, that's who made in the Garden of Beast. So good. So I'm a. There's so many good writers in my genre. You mentioned Simon Gervais, he's one. Ward Larson's books are fantastic. I'm a big fan of James Rollins and Steve Barry. They write great thrillers. Dan Brown, the author of Da Vinci Code is a good friend of mine and I just absolutely live for every new book. Dan comes out with.
- [58:22]
Sponsor or Advertisement Voice
Because.
- [58:23]
Brad Thor
Because his books are so exciting and so smart. So that's a handful of people.
- [58:28]
Jenny Ertz
That's a good handful of people. You're never going to run out of stuff to read.
- [58:32]
Sponsor or Advertisement Voice
I love it.
- [58:32]
Jenny Ertz
I. I'm just thankful for my, like, I'm like for my own little reading journey. I'm like, oh, I've got. Oh, I read Ward's first book too and that was like about like a shipwreck and an assassin. And these are great. Oh, like I got two new authors and now you listed all these other ones. But, but the thrillers are fun because they're total page turners. I, I make notes if I find, if I find in a. Books like mistakes.
- [58:59]
Sponsor or Advertisement Voice
Yeah.
- [58:59]
Jenny Ertz
And I do often. I never, I never tell them, but I haven't, I don't. There's none. I don't have any for yours. Oh, good, good.
- [59:06]
Brad Thor
Well, you know, it's funny.
- [59:07]
Jenny Ertz
Typo, typo on page 210 or whatever.
- [59:10]
Brad Thor
And it happens. And what's really neat about the experiment that you ran, Ginny, by going back to my first book, the Lions of Lucerne, and having read Cold Zero, which is the latest thing that I've written, is a lot has changed in the world of entertainment. We didn't have smartphones when I started, so now you've got Instagram and it really takes a lot of discipline to sit down and read a book. A lot of people would rather scroll and get the dopamine hits in their brain. That comes, oh, look at, there's a picture. I like Bing. You get a shot of chemicals going in your brain. What's funny is I changed my style very much from the Lions of Lucerne to Cold Zero. Now, instead of having a 15 or 20 page chapter, my chapters are like two and a half, three pages. They're very crisp, short, cinematic, versus when I first started out where readers really wanted long chapters. That was before I had to compete. At that point when I was writing that Netflix, you got DVDs in the mail. That's what was going on. So as, as the competition for people's attention changed, I changed the way I do my writing so I could stay competitive, if you will, in that marketplace. So now my books are all very short chapters. They were great. I'm proud of the chapters before. But an original Brad Thor chapter would probably be three chapters now, if that makes sense. Or five chapters even.
- [60:22]
Jenny Ertz
And interesting though, it's like as the world has changed, you know, all this technology, it's like the stories are still so compelling because it's really about the human element.
- [60:30]
Brad Thor
Yes.
- [60:31]
Jenny Ertz
Like, okay, it doesn't matter that there's yellow pages as well. If, like, my kid read it, they will be like, what is yellow pages?
- [60:37]
Brad Thor
Exactly.
- [60:38]
Jenny Ertz
Huge congrats, Brad. What an honor to meet you. I love these books. I'm super excited about the TV series and the new Scott Harveth book that's coming out and the movie. And I. I cannot recommend this more highly. And I told Ward I actually appreciate, like, this cold zero is clean enough. You know, it's like, I know you were sneaking books. It's hard to find stuff for your kids, you know, I mean, this is a fantastic, you know, for a family. Your kid. Who wants a page turner. It's like, one you like. Don't want to put it down. I didn't want to put it down.
- [61:04]
Sponsor or Advertisement Voice
I was like, thanks.
- [61:05]
Jenny Ertz
So anyway, I. An honor to meet you. Huge congrats. We always end our show with the same question. I know. You got to go. What's a favorite memory from your childhood? That was outside.
- [61:12]
Brad Thor
Oh, I remember. It's funny. I was just thinking about this the other day. It's one of my earliest memories of my dad. And I was a kindergartener. I had an outdoor pool, inflatable pool. We lived in Houston one year. And I remember that my dad. I love the Tarzan TV show. It was an old black and white TV show. My dad took me to the toy store to buy a rope swing so I could pretend it was a vine. He hung it in our back backyard so I could swing on the rope swing like Tarzan, jump off, and then dive into the pool like Tarzan dives into the river every. At the beginning of every Tarzan show. So, yeah, that's. That's my earliest memory.
- [61:48]
Jenny Ertz
What a dad. How fun.
- [61:49]
Brad Thor
My dad.
- [61:49]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah, yeah, he. Oh, I love it. Huge congrats, Brad. Thanks so much for being here.
- [61:52]
Brad Thor
Thanks, Jenny.
- [61:57]
Podcast Host or Narrator
Get outside Open your eyes Feel that sunshine kissing your skin Throw your worries out to the wind Climb some trees Skin your knees Feel that grass on your feet again get out there and take it in.
- [62:19]
Sponsor or Advertisement Voice
Oh.
- [62:21]
Podcast Host or Narrator
It'S a beautiful.
- [62:22]
Sponsor or Advertisement Voice
World.
- [62:24]
Podcast Host or Narrator
Ain't nothing on the screen It's a never going to beat this view oh.
- [62:33]
Sponsor or Advertisement Voice
It'S a beautiful world.
- [62:37]
And I.
- [62:37]
Podcast Host or Narrator
Just want to share with I just want to share with you this beautiful world Such a beautiful world.
- [62:48]
Sponsor or Advertisement Voice
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