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This is on Daunted Life Man's Podcast. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it.
0:52
Hi guys. Today we've got a special guest for you on the podcast. It is Eric Blem. He is an author
0:57
and he is the author of my favorite book of all time. And that is fearless. That is the biography
1:04
about the deceased Navy Seal Adam Brown. I've talked about this book on the podcast A Bunch.
1:09
Pretty much every time I think of it, I mention it. I've bought the book for other people. It's
1:13
probably one of my most gifted books. It is absolutely my favorite book for a lot of reasons,
1:18
a lot of which we get into in the show. He's also the author of the last season. The only thing
1:22
worth dying for and legend. And guys, in this podcast, we don't just go over the books. We don't
1:26
just talk about this book or that book, which we certainly do. We talk about his writing process.
1:30
We talk about how he picks a story. We talk about how he gets into everything. And guys,
1:34
he's got an access to some of the least accessible people in the United States military. And he
1:40
didn't get that because they didn't trust him or that he was a untrustworthy guy. So they're like,
1:44
sure, let's just like spill our guts to this guy. So you have to kind of read between the
1:48
lines on some of the things that Eric is talking about in this podcast, because this is a guy that
1:53
is able to gain trust from people in a very extreme way. And it leads to some of the amazing
1:58
stories that he's been able to tell, especially with the only thing we're dying for and we're
2:02
fearless. And so it was a wonderful conversation. If you stick with us until the end of the interview,
2:07
we were going to talk a little bit about his upcoming project, the project that he's currently
2:10
working on. But guys, without further ado, let's get into it.
2:15
Eric Blim, welcome to Undaunted Life, a man's podcast. Kyle, thanks for having me today.
2:20
I'm so excited for this guys know that I've been trying to get you on for a while. And we are
2:26
certainly going to talk about the book that you wrote called Fearless, which is my favorite book
2:30
of all time. I talk about it all the time we will certainly get into that more later on in this
2:34
episode. But from the very beginning, I found it interesting on your website that you have a tag
2:38
line for yourself and the tagline is telling the stories of those who serve. And so in as brief a
2:44
way so you can give us your life story, how did you go from being a little boy growing up to telling
2:50
stories of those who serve? Oh, that's a great question, Kyle. Well, first of all, I grew up in
2:56
Southern California. And I, my original goal with writing, the very got into it was because I wanted
3:06
to basically go and snowboard of all things around the world on someone else's dime. My mom died when
3:13
I was 17 and she battled cancer for about four years. And during that period of time, you know,
3:20
my escape was books and magazines. And at the time snowboarding was just getting started. And I was
3:28
really, really interested in going that direction. Well, I wanted to be a pro snowboarder in the 80s.
3:32
And so if you can, I got a lot of day glow in my old photo album, right, right in that period of
3:38
life. And I ended up following my heart. One of the last things my mom told me before she passed away
3:45
was if there's anything you want to do in life, do it now, because you never know about tomorrow.
3:51
And you know, she had, she was a workaholic, my parents were both workaholics, entrepreneurs,
3:55
and you know, we didn't have really have vacations other than, you know, driving from California to
3:59
Oklahoma to see my dad's relatives and maybe a couple little small trips here and there. But for
4:04
the most part, they were workaholics, always behind the eight ball. And the message I got was,
4:10
you know, she was always putting off vacations and retirement and things like that for later.
4:14
And I really wanted to try and do something with my life where I lived life along the way.
4:19
And I kind of jumped forward from there. I, you know, I moved to Breckenridge, Colorado.
4:25
I met a guy on a chairlift who was a travel writer and he was telling a story writing a story about
4:31
Breckenridge. And as I was speaking with him, I just asked, what did you major in? And he said,
4:36
journalism. And he said, it's a great deal. You know, I don't make a lot of, you know, treasure-wise,
4:40
you don't make a lot of money. But boy, I get to do some pretty cool things. I'm here in a hotel
4:44
for a week. I'm going to tell a story about what it's like to ski in Breckenridge. And I'm like,
4:49
that's when the light bulb went off. I can be, you know, I've been reading these magazines forever.
4:53
I love writing. That's where I excelled in school. More the right brain type of, you know, history,
4:59
English were, were my areas that I didn't even have to think about. I could just do it.
5:03
And math and science were, were I had to struggle. And so I thought, hey, I'm going to write for a
5:10
magazine. I'm going to see the world on someone else's dime. I'm going to do it for myself. I'm
5:14
going to do it for my mom. And, you know, that live life along the way. I think that was a great
5:20
message. So the sub message from that is you never know where you're going to get these little hints
5:26
about life. For me, who has seen a guy single in the single line at the chairlift and saying,
5:32
Hey, are you single? And I hopped up on a ride with him. And he basically gave me a little bit
5:37
of knowledge about his what he was doing there. That led me down the path that where I am here,
5:43
you know, 30 years later. So you mentioned Oklahoma real quick, where in Oklahoma, because that's
5:51
where I'm at. Well, my dad grew up in Kingfisher County. And he grew up, he was went to a high school
5:59
called Big Four, which was a culmination of four one room schoolhouses that then combined to make a
6:06
high school, which barely had enough room to feel the baseball team. You know, they had a basketball
6:10
and baseball didn't have enough people for football. And so it was, you know, he grew up poor in a
6:16
home who had no electricity, when I first visited my grandma, it was literally an outhouse that would
6:21
go out to the back. There was propane versus, you know, electricity. And I think before she passed
6:27
away, she had her first like real bathroom installed in her house when she was in her 90s. So yeah,
6:33
so this is an area where he grew up. At the high school kid, he was renting a land to grow wheat.
6:41
I mean, how many people can say, you know, their high school job was, you know, growing wheat on,
6:46
you know, 10 acres or something like that, and then trying to sell it. That was what he did. And so
6:51
that work ethic, I think, is something that I would look at and see where where he came from,
6:56
where my mom came from. And it was always a, you know, a driving force for me.
7:01
I got you. Well, I kind of interrupted you there because I didn't want to forget about the Okey
7:05
connection since I am an Oklahomaan. But you know, you kind of had your story about how you got into
7:09
journalism. But specifically, as you get down to telling stories about those who serve, how did you
7:14
kind of make that transition? Yeah, the transition for that was really 9/11. I graduated from
7:21
journalism. I'd actually worked for a magazine on staff for about five years, quit my job,
7:29
traveled around the world with my girlfriend at the time. She's now my wife. And then 9/11 hit.
7:35
It actually hit three days before our wedding day. And we, you know, the show must go on. We
7:44
kind of considered it the ultimate FU to terrorism was, you know, of course, the wedding we've been
7:48
planning for a year. We're going to do this. And during that whole surge of kind of patriotism,
7:56
I just kind of, I took a step back and I was kind of like, what's your part in all this? What can you
8:00
do? I had never served in the military. The closer I came to the military here in Southern
8:04
California was when I was in high school, I would keep my hair cropped short so I could drive past
8:08
the guards at Camp Pendleton because they have a great wave called Del Marjettis. And you know,
8:13
they knew they must have known I wasn't a Marine, but I would drive by with my surfboards on top
8:17
of my buddies and my salute drive past the gate and go straight to their surf right there on base.
8:22
And other than that, I really wasn't in my DNA. I wasn't a family tradition. I never thought of
8:31
serving in the military, but I was respected it. I grew up reading books, like I was saying earlier,
8:38
in the hospitals, Battle of Midway, a lot of the Vietnam era stories. I knew of Vietnam veterans
8:44
that lived near me. And I just had this great respect for the military. And I thought at that
8:52
time, there was it was kind of during the period when Stephen Ambrose and Band of Brothers and
8:58
saving private Ryan came out and you'd start hearing these stories, how there was so many World War
9:02
II veterans that would passing away and their stories were dying with them, they'd never talked
9:07
of their experiences in World War II. And I thought, well, after 9/11, when we were getting ready to,
9:14
figure out what the response was to that, I figured, you know, this is history happening right now.
9:21
This is our greatest generation. And what can I do to do my part? And I thought I'm a writer. I'm
9:29
a good journalist. I don't insert myself into the story. I don't get political. I stay true to the
9:35
characters. And I thought, you know what, I want to document what's going on now. And so I kind of
9:41
just put it out there to my agent, my literary agent at the time, that I would like to keep my
9:48
eyes open for a story that's going to tell something to kind of earmark this time in history and
9:55
hopefully allow some of the men and or women who are serving to tell their stories. And in a way
10:01
that they don't have to try and recount it, you know, 30 years later. Like, let's do it now.
10:05
Right. And we're going to spend some time getting into your books now. So that's awesome to get
10:10
some insight into how you kind of stumble upon stories. But to everyone listening to this
10:14
podcast right now, here's your call to action. Here's your commercial, whatever you want to call
10:17
it before we get started. Go buy these books and read them because we're not about to do a 12-hour
10:23
podcast. Okay. We're going to be going into some detail on Eric's books. We're going to spend a
10:27
lot of time talking about fearless here towards the end. But you've got to pick them up for yourselves
10:32
and just take the ride. Because that's one thing about your writing is it does take people on the
10:36
ride. They feel like the writing shotgun on the stories with these people. And so I think that's
10:40
why your books have done so well and why they've had such an impact on people. But the very first
10:44
book that you published was called The Last Season. And so this is a story of Randy Morgensen. He was
10:49
a really legendary back country ranger and, you know, outdoorsman. And this book has won a lot of
10:55
awards. And it was named one of the greatest adventure biographies ever written by Outside
10:59
Magazine. I feel like they know what they're talking about. And this book really puts you on the map.
11:02
So what I want to know is how did you come across Morgensen's story? And why was it so fascinating
11:09
that you decided to write an entire biography about the guy? You know, it really, again, it came to
11:16
me kind of how I mentioned earlier how you never know where you're going to get these little bits of
11:21
advice or nuggets in life. And for me, when I got my degree in journalism, I had to have a minor.
11:28
And my minor, I chose with outdoor recreation. And I thought, that's a no brainer, right? That's
11:32
simple. It's actually a very difficult major or minor. And it really is, you know, people who work
11:39
in the tourism industry or, you know, park rangers, things like that, do go into recreation or recreation
11:45
management. And in that, I learned about the history of the national parks. And I also had one
11:52
professor, his name was Dan Dustin, another professor with Larry Beck at San Diego State
11:57
University. And they introduced me to a lot of writers like Bill McKibben or Edward Abbey and
12:05
really environmentalist, but people who love nature. And the professor, Dan Dustin, had hyped
12:10
the John Muir Trail solo in this one story that he assigned to read, it was like an essay
12:16
called The World According to Gorp. And he, he's the one who inspired me. I thought, you know what?
12:22
I'm in school now. I'm, you know, I have summers off, you know, I'm working, but that's an adventure
12:28
I can do. So the John Muir Trail and the Heisiera is right in my backyard, Southern California.
12:34
And so I started asking around, just, you know, doing my research to write out, hike this trail.
12:40
And a friend of a friend was actually an old retired ranger, just, or just about to retire
12:47
ranger who was in charge of all the backcountry rangers on the John Muir Trail. And he told me
12:52
when I asked him about, you know, what I should do. And he sort of hints for the trail, he said,
12:56
well, I'll tell you what, when you walk through McClure Meadow this summer, when you were going
13:00
to, how was it going to do it? Did you have to meet Randy Morgensen? He said, if you can take a walk
13:05
with Randy Morgensen, it would be like walking with John Muir himself. He grew up in the Heisiera.
13:10
He knows the mountains better than anybody. And so, long story short, he wasn't at his ranger
13:17
station as I walked through that section of the John Muir Trail. And I just walked on. Well,
13:22
the following year later, that ranger who I spoke with, the retired ranger who was kind of the
13:28
supervisor to all the backcountry rangers told me, hey, did you ever meet with Randy Morgensen?
13:33
And I said, no, he wasn't at his station when I went through. And he said, well, he's missing now.
13:36
He went on patrol. And there's a huge search and rescue operation going right now trying to find
13:43
out what happened to him. And this was a guy who was famous for finding people who were missing
13:49
in the woods. And here all of a sudden, he was the one that went missing himself. And I thought,
13:54
immediately, boom, that's a story. Well, that was how I came to it. And it really became just a
14:00
amazing story of this gentleman who had a lot of, he was a flawed character. And he had some
14:06
marital problems. And he had an affair. And he took with him into the backcountry that
14:14
seasoned divorce papers. And he said that those were the most, the heaviest item in his pack,
14:19
which was kind of metaphorical and powerful. And that became a seven year project for me. As I
14:26
followed along, I actually searched for Randy, Randy, either his body, or some people thought he
14:32
might have just left the mountains to start a life somewhere else. And ultimately, the mystery
14:38
was solved. I won't give it away here. But it really became a story where I was able to piece
14:43
together a person's biography combined with this massive search and rescue saw our operation
14:50
searching for him in the very rugged mountains. And it was just a beautiful
14:54
coming together of an exciting search restoration and a fascinating biography. And it really just
15:01
in a mountain range that I loved. And I learned one thing with this story that
15:09
the setting can be a main character in a book. And that really became a reason why I spent
15:17
50 days in the high country, I would read his journals and try and find the spots where he wrote
15:23
certain excerpts. And he was very descriptive. So for me, it was a great excuse to get into the
15:27
mountains and spend time out in the high Sierra. But at the same time, I'm piecing together this
15:33
life. So it was kind of like a detective detective work, as well as, again, my opportunity to
15:40
live life along the way. You know, here I am writing a story, but experiencing so many great
15:45
things and great places and great people at the same time, and solving a mystery or attempting to
15:51
solve a mystery at the same time. Right, that's a wonderful place to start your writing career,
15:56
essentially writing a book about that story. And guys, again, you need to go check that out. We'll
16:00
have the links in the show notes to all these books, but we're going to be moving on to the
16:03
next book now. So another book that you wrote, which was released in 2011, I believe, is the only
16:08
thing worth dying for. And so this was a story that you wrote about an 11 man team of Green Barrays.
16:13
And these were one of, if not the first team on the ground in Afghanistan to start the war on terror
16:19
after 9/11. And more on that here in a second. But you learned about the story of this 11 man
16:25
Green Barrays team because you were embedded with Army Rangers previous to this. So what's kind of
16:30
the story behind that? Because you were embedded with the Army Rangers before most journalists were,
16:35
is that correct? Yeah, I believe it was 1999. And my girlfriend at the time, wife now,
16:43
wrote, she was an editor at Outside Magazine as an assistant editor. And she was doing a story
16:50
about the military's like clothing and outerwear and backpacks and how at that time they were
16:57
still shooting. I mean, some of the stuff, the rucksacks, whatnot, were like Korean war era
17:01
gear and be her being in the outside industry, outdoor industry, and all the new technical fabrics
17:08
and things like that. She did a story basically saying then and now why is our military still
17:13
using this archaic equipment? And during that course of that research that she was doing,
17:20
there was a public affairs officer with the Army that said, you know, we're considering
17:25
letting a journalist tag along with one of our Army Ranger units or platoons in a training
17:32
mission like a mock war. Do you think outside would be interested in it? And she said, well,
17:36
I'd love to introduce you to my boyfriend. That's exactly what he's been wanting to do.
17:40
And it's kind of highlight the military and bring some visibility to what they do, you know,
17:48
fighting for our freedoms and also just the amazing athletes for lack of a better word
17:54
and warriors that they are. So that's how it came together. Again, just a random thing and I
17:59
jumped on it and they allowed me. When I was told I was the first journalist that they'd ever allowed
18:05
to actually try and keep pace with these guys in what ended up being a mock war on the Oregon
18:11
coast in a rainforest. And I got to tell you, Kyle, I mean, it kicked my ass. I was by the end of this,
18:18
you know, 36 hours of no sleep trudging through this rainforest. Sometimes I felt like you were
18:23
in Vietnam. I met up to my waist in water and then continuing onward, I was basically [inaudible]
18:29
[inaudible] blood by the end of that 36 hours. My kidneys weren't used to their gear. They gave me,
18:36
they gave me night vision goggles that I'd never worn before. And then it started raining. So I
18:42
was basically just in a vacuum at one point. It was pretty funny. They would have actual firefights,
18:49
you know, they had an enemy that was, you know, watching for them, hunting for them. And there
18:52
was an ambush. And I had been following a gentleman in front of me, another, like a radio operator.
18:58
And somehow I got past him. And this firefight started. And I hit the deck, went straight down.
19:05
And there was this sergeant that looked over at me and says, who the hell are you open it?
19:09
Where's your weapon? And I'm like, I'm the journalist. Those journalists, he said,
19:12
where the hell are you? And I said, well, I'm following Aaron's, I think with his name,
19:17
he said, I'm following Aaron's. He said, Aaron's, he said, you're at the point, son. He said,
19:21
Aaron's is like 40 yards behind us. And so I had crept up not even knowing following the wrong
19:26
person. And it was in the middle of this firefight where they had like the Sims rounds and, you know,
19:30
static going off and tracers going. And I was on the ground. And it was a pretty funny moment. But
19:35
it was kind of a little introduction of the chaos that can happen. And these weren't real bullets.
19:39
Yeah. And I mean, just even being a situation like that is pretty incredible. Just even as a
19:46
journalist, because you're trying to think about how you're going to write all these things. You're
19:49
trying to think about how this is going to end up in a story. And then you have to try to think,
19:52
am I going to survive this? Like I can't be the guy that quits whenever I just basically begged
19:56
for this opportunity. So that's awesome. That being embedded with that group kind of led to
20:01
some other opportunities. And one of the opportunities was to get some, you know, pretty behind the
20:05
scenes access to the incredible people that are the subject matter of the only thing we're dying
20:09
for. But the book really is a story of how an incredible group of men essentially went behind
20:14
enemy lines blind with almost no support and even less direction at the time. But they were given
20:21
a seemingly impossible mission. And that was to create a tribal revolt that would force the Taliban
20:27
to surrender almost immediately. I mean, no big deal. Like, that's what you guys are going to go
20:31
behind enemy enemy lines and try to like pull off no bit like, yeah, let's just go ahead and move
20:36
with that idea. Could you just even I know this is going to be hard? Could you just give us a
20:40
cliff notes version of the story of this group of green berets? And again, guys, you're going to
20:44
have to go get the book to get all the details, but just give us a primer as to kind of what we
20:48
would see with this book. Yeah, well, first of all, the special forces were tasked with this mission
20:56
to be the first, you know, boots on the ground in Afghanistan after 9/11 as a as the response to
21:02
either find Osama bin Laden and kill him and also to get the Taliban out of out of power in Afghanistan.
21:09
And we had no battle plan for that. And one thing that special forces a lot of people have this
21:17
misnomer of special forces are all the special forces, like the Rangers, the seals. These are
21:24
considered special operations operations, right? Right. And the special forces in particular are
21:30
army and they are the green brazes. And they work with the indigenous people within a country,
21:36
oftentimes starting a guerrilla war. And that was what these guys were tasked with while a lot of the
21:43
original special forces that went in, they went into the north and teamed up with the Northern
21:47
Alliance, which were battle hardened warriors in their own right, you know, working under warlords
21:54
and whatnot against the Taliban. Well, this team in particular, ODA 574, that I was really honored
22:02
and humbled to be able to tell the story of, they were, they were teamed up with an unknown
22:07
statesman in the south. And the south was where the Taliban stronghold was. This was the posh
22:12
tune tribal belt, which was the dominant tribal unit in Afghanistan. And their admission was,
22:19
hey, you're going to go right into the thick of it, you're going to go into the posh tune
22:22
tribal belt, which is dominated by the Taliban. And we want you to foment a rebellion among these
22:28
tribal groups. And they ended up teaming up with a little known states been named
22:33
Hamid Karzai, who ended up being the individual who came, as you know, the first democratically elected
22:39
president, he was an interim leader. And by talking to these guys and literally reading like their,
22:45
their log books, their notes from after this mission, this entire team was inserted into
22:52
southern Afghanistan. And within just a couple weeks, Hamid Karzai rose up from virtual obscurity
23:02
to become the interim leader of a nation. And every member of this 11 man, it was a one,
23:07
one team, normally they're 12 members. This was a little bit low strength with 11. This 11 man
23:13
team, every single person on this team was either wounded or killed. And I'm like, wow, that is a
23:18
story. And at the end of the day, they're there, they were faced with a moment where the locals
23:28
realized that the Americans were on the ground and they thought that they could rise up. And the
23:32
Taliban sent a retribution force to a village and this team was faced with this moment. We're either
23:38
going to bug out, we're going to get out of here, or we're going to face this massive force of
23:43
Taliban that are coming to literally destroy a town, you know, put down this, this uprising.
23:49
And that's really the, the kind of the gist of the beginning of the, the story and the little
23:53
known story where some people don't understand where Karzai got his first credibility in Afghanistan
23:59
that led to him being that first leader. You hear all these things about him being corrupt and his
24:04
brother being corrupt, you'll find some pretty interesting stuff by speaking to the people who
24:08
worked with him firsthand. And, and also just the crazy battles that took place afterwards. But it
24:15
really did change the course of the war. And even today, it was the most significant mission,
24:20
geopolitically, in the entire war. And yeah, I got to meet all the guys. I got to interview
24:25
Hamid Karzai face to face. I was between Sarah Palin and Condoleezza Rice when I interviewed him.
24:31
It was just quite a while, quite a wild ride, I have to say, and the mission is just unbelievable
24:38
when you see what these guys did. And then special forces, what they're famous for is they're the
24:43
guys who can go in and when everything goes to hell, they can wing it. And that's what they do best.
24:50
They they can go down. And when when the first bullets are fired and the mission goes south,
24:55
they are able to take with what they have and do the best they can with it. And that's what these
25:01
guys did. It really is a wonderful story. And guys, there's so much detail in this story. And
25:07
especially if you follow the war on terror, which most of my listeners, some of them even
25:11
participated, but most of you have have at least followed it. It's incredible to hear about what
25:16
it's such a small group of men were able to do and the impact that it had and the ripple effect
25:21
that it had thereafter. So that is basically the story of the only thing we're dying for.
25:25
Now I want to move on to your latest book. And it was a book called legend. And so I just want
25:29
to read the short description here of the book. It's the story of the US Army's 240th assault
25:34
helicopter company and a Green Beret Staff Sergeant's heroic mission to rescue a special forces team
25:40
trapped behind enemy lines during the Vietnam War. So this is the story about special forces
25:45
Staff Sergeant Roy Benavidez. He was eventually a Medal of Honor recipient. And again, I know I'm
25:51
kind of putting you on the spot as hard as it's going to be. Can you give our listeners basically
25:55
a primer on how Staff Sergeant Benavidez ended up earning the Medal of Honor during his time in
26:01
the Vietnam War, but also a little bit as to the maybe the circuitous process that he went through
26:06
to even be given that honor to begin with. Yeah. So what we're going to jump to fearless
26:13
eventually here. And that's that was the next book. And I know you're we're going to do that at the
26:16
end. But after I wrote fearless, which was an unbelievable story of just unbelievable personal,
26:22
you know, courage and fortitude and redemption, really, I thought, how am I ever going to top this
26:27
story? How could I find somebody that tops what he did? And I started searching. I was tipped off
26:34
actually by my literary agent's mom, who was a I'd had no idea. She read my books. She loved
26:39
fearless. She said, this guy Roy Benavidez should be Eric's next book. And I looked into it. And
26:46
I found out about this guy who via just YouTube videos and articles that had stepped on a land
26:55
mine on his first tour in Vietnam, and was told he'd never walk again. He was paralyzed from the
27:02
waist down. He actually had been in a coma for a couple of weeks, I believe didn't know who he was
27:08
at first. And he was told he'd never walk again. And he said he overcame that. And he did. He
27:14
walked out of the hospital. And then what did he do? He decided that he wanted to try and become a
27:19
green beret himself. And that was at the time the most difficult, you know, military school or
27:27
or soldier to to qualify for in the world. And this is a guy who couldn't even walk, you know,
27:35
several months earlier. So if you fast forward from that, he made it through all this very,
27:42
very difficult qualification process. And this is a kid, by the way, who came up from his his
27:48
parents died when he both his parents died when he was very young. He was adopted by an uncle.
27:54
He was a sharecropper. You know, part of the year school year, he was picking cotton in Texas.
28:00
He grew up in a time when he was a Mexican and Indian. And and as he will tell you,
28:07
very much American, but he grew up in a time when Mexicans and blacks were not allowed
28:14
in movie theaters. And and he would be relegated to sitting in the balcony. And he couldn't even
28:20
eat in the restaurant where he washed dishes, things like that. So he overcame this racism
28:26
at that time during that period and joined the military. And that's that's ultimately, you know,
28:32
if you look at it, that's worthy of an award in itself, what he overcame in life. And he was always
28:40
such a amazing and inspiring soul where he would say, you know, it's not the color of your skin,
28:46
you know, we're American, we're, you know, the color that we're only concerned about is red,
28:50
white and blue. And so he ended up making it back and just within a couple weeks of going back to
28:57
Vietnam for his second tour of duty. He was heard about this on a radio that there was a group of
29:05
his unit were surrounded. And they were basically about to be overrun. And they were helicopters
29:13
limped back to this base near the Cambodian border. He found out that this mission was actually going
29:18
on in Cambodia, which was, you know, we weren't even supposed to be there. The enemy wasn't supposed
29:24
to be there. It was a secret war that was going on. And he volunteered to fly in and try and help
29:32
this team that was being decimated. I mean, they were using the bodies of their teammates as cover
29:37
while they were trying to get extracted from this small clearing in the Cambodian jungle.
29:44
And so he jumped on board. And when they flew in, they couldn't get him close. And it was too hot.
29:50
The helicopter was taking way too much fire from the ground. This team had accidentally,
29:54
obviously, been inserted into an area that was like an enemy base. You know, there's so many
29:59
tunnels and things you couldn't tell from the air where, you know, enemy bases were. So they
30:03
were basically surrounded, you know, hundreds, if not thousands of enemies surrounding this
30:09
group of 12, again, indigenous, plus American special forces, and half of them were dead.
30:18
And he volunteered to jump in. And when they couldn't fly him and get him close enough,
30:22
you told the pilot, he said, just get me as close as you can. I'll get to them.
30:25
So they landed, or they didn't land, they hovered about 15 feet off the deck, about 70 yards from
30:32
this team. He jumped without even a weapon, just a medical bag, and ran through enemy fire,
30:38
70 yards, where he then bolstered a defense for this team that was basically ready to be overrun.
30:45
And through the course of it all, just, he was wounded more than 30 times. A second helicopter
30:51
crashed, and he then took those individuals, crew that survived that, plus the man on the ground,
30:58
organized them into another defense hand-to-hand combat. At one point, his own intestines were
31:05
spilling out, and the guy was superhuman, and he kept going. And at the end of it, they thought
31:12
he was dead. He crawled on board. Finally, he got these guys out, he was credited with saving
31:16
eight individuals that day. And then, back home, they were not giving medals of honor to
31:26
for missions that were going down in Cambodia, because they did not want to risk, to risk,
31:30
letting the public know that we were operating within the border of neutral Cambodia. And so,
31:36
it became a battle, a 13-year battle, for him to ultimately get the Medal of Honor. And he was
31:43
awarded it by Ronald Reagan at the Pentagon, in the Garden in the center. And one of the things
31:50
that Reagan said, which really encapsulates the whole thing, he said, "If this story was a Hollywood
31:54
script, you would not believe it." And that was really, again, an opportunity where I was able to tell
32:00
that story. And one thing that he said in his own accounts of the story he did, he said that the
32:05
story of the helicopter company was never told. And you can't tell a story about Vietnam without
32:11
including the helicopter and the men and women who supported these units. And so, for my opportunity,
32:18
I was able to tell the story from the perspective of the ground and the air on this horrific day,
32:25
May 2nd, 1968, which was the year I was born. That's an amazing story. And really, guys,
32:32
the detail you go into in terms of what he experienced while he was on the ground,
32:36
and everything thereafter really makes the story worth reading. And again, you're going to have to
32:39
get the book for yourself to check that out. But now we're going to transition to Fearless. And
32:43
we've talked about this. I told you offline. I've told everybody on this podcast again. It is my
32:47
number one most favorite book of all time. Really, there is no close second either. It is included on
32:53
the 100 books every modern Christian man should read list, which is on our website. But I really
32:59
love the subtitle of the book as well. So it's Fearless, the undaunted courage and ultimate sacrifice
33:04
of Navy SEAL Team six operator Adam Brown. And guys, if I'm not if I'm obsessed with anything,
33:10
I'm obsessed with these two concepts, one, being undaunted into being resilient. Again,
33:16
we are called undaunted life that world the word is literally in the subtitle of your book. And I
33:21
don't think that there is a greater story of resilience that I know of other than the story of Adam
33:26
Brown. So I want to read something from the end of the author's note in the book. It's this quote,
33:32
"What you are about to read is the account of an American hero who bravely gave permission in his
33:36
final written requests to share his journey from small town America to the gutter to jail to Jesus
33:43
to war to the top tier of the US military seal team six." Unquote. And that really is the story
33:50
of Adam Brown. And there's no spoiler alert here. I think everybody knows this by now, but Adam Brown
33:54
did die on March 17th of 2010 while on mission in Afghanistan. And there's a lot of stuff that
33:59
goes into the story of Adam Brown and we'll get into some more here in a second. But just in general,
34:04
how hard is it for you to piece together a biography about a person that lived such an amazing life,
34:10
especially after they had already passed away? You know, you could never as an author,
34:16
writer, journalist, you could never tell a story like this without the support of the people who
34:21
were closest to that individual. And in this case, it was Adam's family, his closest friends,
34:27
and his seal brothers that had been both on the seal teams and in dev group, seal team six,
34:33
who were at the end next to him with him carrying him after he was wounded mortally in the final
34:41
mission of his life. So without that support, if people aren't willing to share, you wouldn't
34:47
have a story. And that was really a brave thing for them to do. And at the end of the day, they
34:52
did it because Adam said literally in his final written request, if I'm killed, I'm paraphrasing
34:59
here, tell the story of who I was before I became a seal before he found faith in in in jail before
35:10
he met his wife Kelly, who is the second hero in this book. Because I mean, how many people
35:16
have their own skeleton in their closet? How many of you listening right now have things that
35:20
maybe you don't want your kids to know you did, right? And for him, he had two kids who had no idea
35:30
that he had been a drug addict, they had no idea that he'd been in jail. He had overcome all that
35:35
and was a Navy seal. At the top tier, seal team six, I mean, he had overcome other things we'll
35:40
talk about later as well. Physical mentally always had this. He was addicted to crack cocaine, which
35:46
few people overcome even that to live a life and to do that and then still get to the level that
35:53
he was is amazing. Yet he could have passed away and been buried a hero and that would have been the
36:00
end of it. But he went ahead and gave permission in fact, encouraged them to tell the story about
36:07
when I was this, you know, dirt bag, drug addict, living in the gutter, you know, pushing himself
36:13
in a crack house that I would that was me once upon a time. And you can car him out of that dark
36:19
hole and you can overcome that. And that to me, you know, probably one of the bravest things he did
36:25
was after he passed away, giving that permission. Because who wants, you know, who wants that to be
36:31
told? Who wants that to be the legacy? And I think at the end of the day, just by the feedback
36:37
and the response to the book and his story, how many people he's inspired? I mean, that's the answer
36:42
right there. He knew intuitively that his, you know, the story of the darkness in his story
36:50
was really the important part about his story. Because as his mom said, you know, hey, that's
36:56
gonna be really hard to tell some of these part stories, you know, you know, speaking ill of the
37:00
dead, for example, telling these horrible things that she said. And she knew that you cannot show how
37:06
far Adam had risen without showing how far he'd fallen, how dark and deep of a hole that he was
37:13
in. So that, to me, is really Adam's, you know, the bravest thing he ever did, the most fearless
37:20
thing, was just allowing his story to be told. And I'm still floored that I was the one chosen to
37:27
write this story. And really Adam's story is a gift. It was a gift to me. It was a gift to everybody
37:32
who's who's read it. And that's no, you know, that's not patting myself as a writer. It's Adam's story.
37:39
And what his life was is what really is so powerful his life.
37:45
When I think they certainly chose right in having you put all this together. And there are a lot
37:51
of different stories that make up the life of Adam Brown. And you can only put so many in a book.
37:56
But is there a story in particular from Adam's life? It doesn't necessarily have to be in the book.
38:01
But is there just a story from his life that stands out in your mind? Maybe a favorite story of his?
38:07
God, there are so many. And that's what's so difficult as a writer. When someone has so many
38:13
defining moments in their life, then you have to pick and choose. Because you don't want to do too
38:18
many. If you do too many, eventually it kind of wears out. It makes them all seem kind of flat.
38:25
One, as a kid, I think really stands out about his character. And when he played football,
38:31
he was a little guy. He was scrawny little as his coach described him once. He was all helmet.
38:37
He looked like a toothpick with a helmet on top. And so if you imagine that, imagine he didn't grow
38:44
much from middle school up into high school. And when he was, I believe, a freshman on the high
38:50
school football team, they would do an alley drill or one of his coaches in Pop Warner, I think,
39:00
called the Blood Alley. And basically what it was in Arkansas, and you can imagine this is the land
39:04
of Friday night lights. This is, you know, football is everything. Adam goal in life was to play for
39:10
the Lake Hamilton wolves on his high school football team. That was like his goal as a kid,
39:15
because his brother was a star football player. So he got to this point where he's one of the
39:19
little guys. And the coaches at the end of practice would get the freshman, the JV, the varsity
39:24
all gathered up together. And they would do this blood alley to kind of like test the testosterone
39:29
and just pair people up. And most of the little guys would kind of be shrieking back into the back
39:36
of the group like, please don't pick me coach, please don't pick me coach. He was upfront saying,
39:41
pick me coach, pick me coach. And he kept doing this against like the biggest senior linemen,
39:47
linebackers running back, whoever, where they would basically get in a three point stance,
39:52
you know, paired off from each other, he'd blow the whistle and they would buy and ball each other
39:55
in this alley. And he finally got called to do this. And the coaches were always kind of like Adam
40:01
Brown. He's crazy. You know, we did our job isn't only to teach them football, but also to keep them
40:07
safe. And finally, they let him do it. And he went head to head with a big old alignment, I believe
40:12
it was. And the guy just bold them over. He jumped right back up, got a three point answer. Let's do
40:19
it again. Let's go again. Give me another chance. And he did it three times against this guy who
40:24
just basically rolled him up. And then afterwards, he went over and thanked the guys and thanks for
40:30
not going easy on me. Well, you know, 20 years later, 25 years later, when I or 20 years later,
40:35
when I interviewed him, his coach, he remembered that moment of this little kid, a little freshman,
40:42
who was, you know, one of the smallest kids on the team who begged to go against the biggest guy,
40:46
thanked the guy for not going hard on him. And he said that to this day, he said, you know,
40:51
coaches, we try and find these moments where we can inspire and, you know, get our team fired
40:56
up. He said, Adam Brown, during that couple of minutes, told us more and told that team more about
41:04
character than any other practice in my entire life. And that really, I think encapsulates who Adam
41:11
Brown was and how he was able to overcome everything he did later in life, including no crack addiction.
41:17
I think something that's kind of interesting about the seals, especially the seals that make it
41:22
to that top tier, to dev grew level. You know, people often say, what is the one, what is the one
41:29
factor that all these guys share? Is there anything that you found in your research that is something?
41:36
And the one thing that I think has kind of made itself clear to me is that a lot of these guys
41:41
are their children of adversity. I mean, they had something that they overcame at a young age and
41:48
that gave them that gumption to overcome and to make it through all the qualification processes
41:53
that they have to do. You know, so many people fail, you know, buds and have to ring the bell.
41:58
And same thing was dev grew. But Adam Brown, he did not know the meaning of the word quit.
42:04
He did not have a regulator. He was all out 100 miles per hour or he was going to go down.
42:12
And that's in a sense what you need to do at that level. And his childhood really,
42:19
really encapsulated that for me as I told these stories. And that one in particular was the one
42:24
story that made me realize this guy special. Yeah, I would say that is certainly a great story.
42:29
There is a story that most people will remember. It's about somebody pulling a shotgun on him and
42:34
his friends and kind of how he responded to that. If you don't know what I'm talking about,
42:37
you got to read the book. But probably the story for me and the most insane display of resilience
42:41
was when Adam lost his eye in a training accident. So for just to get a little bit into that story,
42:47
he went through green team qualifications and which was the potential thing of joining the
42:52
Navy Special Warfare Development Group. That's dev grew, as you just mentioned, AKA cell team six.
42:57
So it's likely the hardest screening green team is the hardest screening for the most elite military
43:02
unit that we know of in the world. But before that, before going and trying to do something that
43:08
that was that hard, he decided that the best way to get ready for green team qualification would be
43:12
to go through perhaps the hardest sniper school in the entire world. And that was the Naval Special
43:17
Warfare Sniper School. And you know, that's a school that Adam had previously failed when he had
43:22
both of his eyes working properly. Now he basically had one working properly. This guy had to change
43:28
his shooting stance. He had to learn to shoot left handed. He had to learn to shoot with his non-dominant
43:32
eye. And for guys that are shooters, you know how ridiculously hard doing any of those things are,
43:38
especially at an elite level. But he did graduate from sniper school. And then he did go on to become
43:44
a member of dev grew and still team six. And I was just absolutely blown away by that story.
43:50
And from that story, from something just just like that, that's kind of a all encapsulating
43:55
story of his resilience, is it not? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you're leaving a little bit of a
44:01
of a something for the readers to discover, but I'm just going to put it out there because it's
44:06
amazing and it doesn't spoil anything. But he also lost, you know, his fingers on his right hand
44:11
were crushed off in a before he qualified in a Humvee accident in Afghanistan. And so he also had
44:20
to teach himself to shoot off handed with a pistol. And in room clearing, I imagine, you know, this
44:26
is like the sniper team scenario where they have to go into a room and charge and clear a room
44:30
with enemy and or noncombatants and do it all in a split second. He basically taught his whole body
44:37
to react left when his everything in his being from his entire life had been right. It was one
44:43
guy I described to me as imagine a NFL quarterback being told two months before the Super Bowl
44:51
that you're going to have to throw left now, even though you're right handed, right, and then do it
44:56
at the per at that level under duress. And by the way, instead of only having, you know, the defense
45:02
coming after you and the linebackers blitzing in, he said, let's throw grenades at you as well.
45:09
And so that was kind of what he overcame and was still able to qualify at that level. I mean,
45:14
his one of the armors who helped him to set his sights on his gun. So it would work, you know,
45:21
with that offhanded style shooting, both as a sniper and with his his sidearm. He after Adam
45:28
turned around and trained himself to do everything left handed and did it at such a level that he
45:34
could qualify. And man, keep in mind, you know, 70% of people fail that are using what, you know,
45:40
got intended them to have whatever their dominant whatever was. So he did this. And I remember that
45:46
that was another very, very telling quote was from the armor that he said he asked Adam one day,
45:51
he said, come on, Adam, come clean, you're a Jedi, right? And Adam just in his own, you know,
45:57
hasty, you know, Arkansas, draw, said, nah, I just pray a lot. And he was also so stinking humble
46:05
about the whole thing. Yet that was Adam, you know, yeah, I just pray a lot. That was his response
46:11
to the fact that he just did something no one on the planet had ever done before. And that was
46:16
qualify using, you know, everything backwards in his life and still doing it at that split second
46:23
speed and target acquisition and accuracy required to make that, you know, amazing team.
46:32
Right. And by that point of the book, you're not surprised at all that Adam had done that. It's
46:36
still impressive. It still boggles the mind, but you're not surprised considering everything else
46:40
he had overcome. But I was getting ready for this podcast yesterday, Eric. And I didn't want to do
46:46
this, but then I did at the same time, I wasn't sure how I was going to kind of go through this
46:50
section. But it is absolutely gut wrenching and brutal how you detail when Adam Brown's wife Kelly
46:58
learned about Adam being killed. And so I was going to actually read a section of that chapter.
47:04
But I don't want to sit here and cry like a punk on my own show, because even just reviewing it,
47:08
I wasn't even in the narrative last night, because it's been a year or two since I've read the book.
47:12
I wasn't even in the narrative, but just reading over the notes that I'd made the last time I read
47:17
it. I was I was getting upset and I was getting teary-eyed because it's like it's so impactful.
47:22
And again, you make us feel like we're in the room whenever the people, you know,
47:28
bring the doorbell and you know, it's bad when you get a ring of the door and not a phone call.
47:32
What was it like for you as an author learning about how the whole process of how Kelly was
47:40
notified went down? Because I don't know if you talked to Kelly directly or kind of how you got
47:45
those details. But what was that like for you? Yeah, you nailed it. I mean, gut wrenching is
47:51
definitely accurate. I did speak to everybody that's quoted in the book. I interviewed personally,
47:57
recorded interviews. So everything in all of my books, I'll just go backwards a little bit.
48:04
There is nothing that I that I sensationalize or dramatize or fill in, you know, some some writers
48:10
will do that. And I always try and say, you know, it's better to have a hole in your story than to
48:15
fill it with [inaudible]. And in my mind, everything in there is an absolute direct quote from either
48:20
an eyewitness or a statement that was written at the time or a report. And yeah, I talked to,
48:27
I talked to the entire family about that. I talked to the people who had to notify Adam,
48:33
his best friends. One of his best friends was there on hand as well. And I think, you know,
48:41
some friends of mine say that, you know, how do you do that? And I feel like it's in a way,
48:47
it's a calling because I'm keeping their story, his story alive. And, you know, there's so much
48:54
love for Adam from Kelly and the whole Brown family, Larry Brown, Janice, Sean, Amanda,
49:03
they are such inspirations because even having gone through this horrible loss,
49:07
they have just kept their eye on the ball and uses a way to use his legacy to help other people,
49:15
really. And that is what I just kept my eye on the ball when that was all going on. I mean, I
49:19
writing this book, I cried multiple times. One time my, my wife brought dinner in to me in my
49:25
office and she opened the door and I was sitting there sobbing over one part. And I mean, and she,
49:31
and you can get an idea because her response was, she looked at me, she set the food down on my
49:36
desk and said, again, that was how it was to tell this, you know, to recount it and to answer your
49:46
question, how do I do it? I just listen, I let them go and let them talk and stay true to what they
49:53
say. And certain things are just obvious when you hear it in a quote, you know, you know that that's
49:59
got to go in the book. And it was, you know, there's, there's moments in the book that will, you know,
50:05
this strongest, most stoic, you know, stone-faced people I know have written me and said, like,
50:13
I finished the book on an airplane and I am so [inaudible] off. I had that I was sitting there sobbing
50:18
like a baby. I had to excuse myself and go to the bathroom to straighten myself up because it is.
50:23
And that's, that's how it was when I was, when I was telling the story. And as you know, and it's,
50:27
I won't even go there in this, but some people within the story are, don't, don't survive the
50:32
war. And these are people I got, you know, close with and telling Adam's story. And it's, it's what
50:39
they do. And they, the Warriors, you know, it's, it, that is, at the end of the day, that is their,
50:46
their, they don't want it. But it is something they understand is a possibility. It is a, an honorable
50:54
Warriors death. And as one guy, Heath Robinson said, you know, there are people who die well.
51:02
And there are others who kind of wish they could probably, if they had another chance, have a redo.
51:07
And, you know, in this case, Adam, Adam died well. He, he, the, the very beginning of the book,
51:15
the first sentence I wrote when I sat down to write this book was when Adam Brown woke up on
51:19
March 17th, 2010. He didn't know he would die that night in the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan,
51:25
but he was ready. And that, and I'm quoting that just from memory. That was the first thing I wrote
51:33
down. And when I started writing this story, and it stayed, remained the opening line of the book
51:39
through the entire writing and editing process. And at the end of the day, it, it really tells so
51:46
much because whether it's spiritually, whether it's just has a father as a, as a warrior, he, he was
51:56
ready to give his life for his teammates and for his country. And in doing so, he was giving, he was
52:03
doing it knowing that he was providing safety and freedom to his family at home. And he just, he, he
52:11
marched to a different drummer. He, he walked the walk. He didn't talk the talk. He was an example.
52:18
And I think that's why so many people love him as, as a man, as a warrior, as a Christian.
52:23
And as a, an example, really. Right. And I think that was evidenced by a lot of the speeches that
52:31
were given at his funeral. And specifically, one of his seal brothers, John Fos said this,
52:36
and you record this in the book, quote, and two Adams brothers in arms. Today, we mourn the
52:42
passing of our brother, and we celebrate his life and the example he set for us. Tomorrow,
52:47
we avenge him. Today, we honor the passing of Adam's unconquerable soul into the eternal glory of
52:53
Christ Jesus, and into the halls of Valhalla. Tomorrow, we dispatch the souls of Adam's enemies
52:59
to the hell that surely awaits them. Tomorrow, we bring that hell to their doorstep. Long live
53:04
the brotherhood. And I remember reading that for the first time and just getting chills because
53:10
in the right now, yeah, I mean, in that you get this intensity about the retribution and the payback
53:18
that these men want to get. But in addition to that, you get a deep sense of how these men felt
53:23
about Adam Brown. Can you describe you? You've mentioned it a little bit, but can you give us a
53:27
little bit more detail as to how Adams fellow seals and fellow warriors thought of him?
53:34
Oh, wow. He they, a lot of them didn't know. They thought highly of him just for what he
53:43
overcame as a seal, meaning this, you know, losing his eye, losing his fingers. They had a lot of
53:49
them had no idea that he had battled, you know, crack addiction and drug addiction and had waivers
53:55
given to even make the team. So if you imagine not even knowing that, they only knew maybe half
54:03
of what he was up against into his achievements, and they still loved him for that. He was the guy
54:10
who was always the first one to volunteer to go into a dangerous situation, but he was also the
54:17
first one after a raid to try and calm down like the local like pulling out a light stick or a candy
54:25
bar to give to a young Afghan after they'd raided their home where they were going after a suicide
54:30
bombing group or something like that. He had this ability to flip the switch and go from warrior
54:38
to a kind-hearted soul like that, you know, and I think that they really did see that. I mean,
54:46
there was one particular mission that comes to mind as we bring this up and one of his buddies,
54:50
they had gone after a suicide bombing ring and they knew this for a fact that it was
54:56
imminent because all these men were shaved, they'd shave their bodies and apparently that is what
55:00
they would do before they are going to strap the bombs on and go and become martyrs, you know,
55:05
suicide bomb and do wherever it was, they were going to do it. And they'd killed like, there's
55:13
like seven of these guys lined up in the dirt and it ended up, it was Easter morning, which is,
55:19
you know, for Adam with the resurrection was a very poignant day, right, for his faith. And
55:28
one of his buddies came over to Adam and he was kind of slumping around and he said,
55:34
"What's going on? You doing okay?" He said, "Well, it's Easter." And then the guy told him, he said,
55:38
"Adam," he said, "I don't understand how you can be religious and do what we do." And Adam
55:45
without a beat said, "You know what?" He said, "First of all, I'm spiritual. I'm not religious.
55:51
And second, I can't believe you can do what I do. We do and not be." And I think that those
55:59
types of moments, you know, he's not being a Bible thumper, he's not being, he's not, he's not,
56:06
you know, condescending. He just kind of had this aura about him of just who he was
56:14
and what he stood for and that what he stood for was right. And I think that he gravitated,
56:19
people gravitated to him for that. Well, and you've mentioned several times about his Christian
56:24
faith, but I mean, the process of getting to Jesus was not a straight line one for him.
56:30
He wasn't at church camp and, you know, the person singing was really impressive and they gave a
56:34
great invitation. Like, it wasn't that type of a story. Man, he absolutely hit rock bottom. A lot
56:40
of people say that like, "Oh, man, I hit rock bottom." It's like, no, you didn't, no, you didn't,
56:44
like, as you mentioned earlier, you weren't [inaudible] on yourself in a crack house somewhere in rural
56:48
Arkansas. No, you have not hit rock bottom, but how did the process of how Adam hitting rock bottom
56:54
and then how he found Jesus affect you and your faith personally? Well, I mean, I'm still on my
57:02
own private personal journey of faith myself. I mean, I hadn't, when I got this book opportunity,
57:09
I told Larry Brown, I said, "Hey, I'm telling you, I'm not a Christian." I mean, I hadn't been to
57:14
church or picked up a Bible in, you know, 15 years, except for funerals and weddings. And so, I was
57:19
honest with Larry and having a mom who passed away from cancer, I had a lot of my own doubts
57:25
and my own cynicism about, you know, what I considered religion. And so, I wanted to become
57:30
queen and be honest with him. And Larry Brown, Adam's dad, said, "You know, I think that's
57:35
greater." He said, "It's better that you're not a Christian as you write this book because
57:40
it's not going to come across as propaganda." And I will say that, you know, learning about Adam
57:47
and what he did and his version of faith and his own personal relationship and also his parents'
57:56
journey as well, I felt, you know, they made me question a lot of what I questioned religion and
58:03
faith before this story. It opened it up to the possibilities. And I think that that's what's
58:08
really pretty powerful about Adam because there's people that read this book that, you know,
58:14
I talk about, you know, he talks about his testimony and, you know, there's just some of
58:20
his favorite Bible verses and those things that are scattered throughout. I didn't want to pound
58:24
it into the reader, but it would be unfair and untrue to not include it because it was so important
58:30
in Adam's life. And so I walked that line, I think, very carefully. And at the end of the day,
58:36
I think it kind of represented who Adam was. He walked that line carefully as well as an example.
58:42
And I can tell you, I mean, I can just say that I was such a cynic before and it really did open
58:49
my mind to, you know, the beauty and the power that faith does give people. And it changed things
58:59
for me as well. I mean, it just, again, it really opened up my eyes to the positives versus when
59:05
many things in my mind were very negative. And I'm hopeful in the book that, unfortunately,
59:11
some people see, oh, it's a Christian publisher and they just won't read the book. People that give
59:15
it a chance who are not Christians who are, I've had atheists and agnostics write me and just say,
59:22
this is an amazing book. And I'm so glad that I overlooked the fact that it was published by
59:26
Christian publisher because at the end of the day, it comes down to faith. And sometimes you need
59:34
something bigger than yourself to get through things, then get through life. And Adam, I think,
59:39
tells that really loud and clear. Well, I would certainly agree with that, Eric. And in addition
59:43
to that, you mentioned that you were a cynic, a lot of people think that in order to become a
59:49
Christian, they need to go straight from being a cynic to being a Christian. And for some people,
59:54
that is a straight line path. But for you, perhaps it might be a better way to describe that you've
59:58
moved from being a cynic to a skeptic. And you have a conversation with a skeptic,
1:00:04
because I'm skeptical about a lot of things within the church, within the Bible. But skepticism
1:00:09
leads you to do research. It leads you to dig in and lead you to have conversations. But a cynic
1:00:15
is basically the person that's always just kind of like, nah, nah, this is stupid. This is dumb.
1:00:19
That's a fairytale. Like, you can't have a conversation with that person. And so even just
1:00:24
moving slightly from cynic to skeptic, it might seem like we're just splitting hairs at this point.
1:00:29
But I think that that's an important distinction where it's interesting that the story of Adam
1:00:32
Brown has moved you in that direction. Is that a fair assessment? Absolutely. Absolutely.
1:00:38
Well, the good thing about what we've done here today is we've been able to cover
1:00:43
all the books that you've written up to this point and one of them in very, very good detail.
1:00:47
So thanks as a fearless nerd that I am. Thanks for allowing us to go deep on that. But
1:00:51
you do have a new project that you were in the process of working on. And I know you can't give
1:00:56
us a ton of details. But the sense I get is that this is a very different project than the other
1:01:02
books that you've put out before. So can you give us a little bit of detail as to kind of what you're
1:01:05
working on? Yeah, I, you know, I like all of my stories to, they need to have a message. They
1:01:13
need to have something that is inspiring in them. And in this case, I've gone away from
1:01:19
the military and that type of service or it's like Randy Morgensen was served as a park ranger
1:01:26
and kind of got back to my roots in the mountains. And you know, there's a lot of mountains,
1:01:30
mountaineers, legends in the world of skiing, snowboarding, climbing. And that's what I've delved
1:01:37
back into a very inspiring story that takes me back to my mountain roots. And it's been really,
1:01:44
I feel almost like I was getting trained up to tell this story that, you know, was close close
1:01:49
to my heart and close to my, it was somebody I knew personally, basically, who, who was killed.
1:01:58
And I'm finally going to tell the story of this individual because he was such an inspiration
1:02:05
to the world of mountains and snowboarding and skiing and climbing and adventuring.
1:02:11
And without giving too much, you know, it's, it's, it's, for me, I feel like all this other,
1:02:17
these other stories and biographies with the military was kind of training. You know, I kind
1:02:22
of con full circle. I started my writing career writing about snowboarding and adventures and
1:02:26
things like that. I went into the whole biography genre very deeply. And now I'm coming back and
1:02:34
kind of combining both. And so it's, it's, it's an honor. It's, it's more difficult to write, I have
1:02:40
to say, because I am closer to it personally. But at the same time, it's also, it feels like I'm
1:02:46
going home at the same time as well. So that's always special in a genre. And I know it's being
1:02:52
pretty cryptic, but it's a special book and hopefully we can talk about it when it comes out in maybe
1:02:56
a year or so. Okay, very good. We will certainly look forward to that. And before we let you go,
1:03:01
one thing that we like to do is at the end of our interviews, if we have time, we like to do a
1:03:05
segment called what would you say to someone that said? And so this is our lightning round,
1:03:10
where basically I'm going to say that beginning of the sentence. And then I'm going to fill in the
1:03:14
blank and you got 30 seconds maximum to answer each one of these questions. We just want the meat
1:03:20
and potatoes answers to these topics regardless of how much or how much you want to go on about it.
1:03:25
So are you up for it? Oh boy. Yeah, I think so. Let's do it. I'm putting you on the spot. I'm not
1:03:32
really giving you much of a choice about it, but you could hang up at any point. So it's not that
1:03:36
big a deal, but it should it should be all right. So we'll go ahead and get into the first one here.
1:03:40
What would you say to someone that said the US military lost the Vietnam war?
1:03:49
I would say that there's still a whole lot of conjecture about that among those who were there
1:03:55
and the people who they helped. The media gives you a lot of tragedy and things like that. But
1:04:03
there are still plenty who look at the Vietnam war. No differently that stopping the tide of
1:04:07
communism, no different than in World War II, we were stopping the tide of the Nazi Germany and
1:04:13
imperialist Japan who have been on world domination. So I think that I think the jury is still out.
1:04:19
And I say so, especially for those who served and all of them deserved to be welcomed home
1:04:23
because they got a short the short end of this dick as far as as far as veterans who served our
1:04:28
country. All right. Next lightning around question here. What would you say to someone that said
1:04:32
because of how the war on terror has progressed, it seems apparent that our military members died
1:04:38
for nothing. I completely denounced that because first of all, go back to the beginning of the
1:04:48
Afghan war when there were women being paraded out into soccer fields by the Taliban and being
1:04:54
beheaded for reasons as minor as maybe they went and flew a kite in their backyard in Afghanistan.
1:05:04
Now you go to Afghanistan and there is, you know, there are women playing soccer. I think that
1:05:10
some of these things, you know, a lot of bad happened. Yes, they went after the war on terror,
1:05:15
but they were byproducts that did help people. You can't help everybody, you know, being an
1:05:20
international police force, you know, is impossible. But there is a lot of good and the American
1:05:25
soldier like Adam Brown, male and female, I believe has shed, you know, positivity at a personal level.
1:05:34
To individuals around the world. And that is important. All right, next one here. And guys,
1:05:41
I feel the need after that last one. A lot of these statements I'm reading, these aren't things I
1:05:44
necessarily agree with because I wouldn't agree with that statement either. But these are things
1:05:48
that I just heard people say I've heard it in the ether. So just keep that in mind as we go forward.
1:05:52
But here's something that you did mention. So it's interesting that this is the next one I have for
1:05:55
you. What would you say to someone that said the US military should not try to be the world police?
1:06:05
It's a tough one because at the same time I've seen a lot of people who have lost loved ones.
1:06:09
And, you know, I've asked some of the people before who are friends or family and they say,
1:06:14
you know, was this worth the life of so-and-so? And they will say, no, it wasn't. I'd rather have
1:06:19
so-and-so live with us right now. So it's a tough one. It's a case-by-case situation. I mean,
1:06:28
there are times when there is such atrocities going on where, you know, I believe that we do need
1:06:33
to step in as just as human beings. But in other cases, maybe they need to be encouraged to fight
1:06:43
their own battles. So it's a tough one. I mean, I'm kind of-I'm fairly moderate in general and
1:06:48
I'm moderate on that one because I see the pros and cons of both. But there is a place for it.
1:06:54
There is a time to shed blood and there is a time to walk away. And I think it has to be looked at
1:06:58
very closely by people with compassion but also strength of conviction. All right. Next lightning
1:07:05
round question. What would you say to someone that said, Eric Blem needs to write a fiction novel?
1:07:10
I would say Eric Blem himself says he needs to write a fiction novel at some point.
1:07:17
That's personal growth. I will say, you know, the truth is stranger than fiction. I love non-fiction.
1:07:25
But as, you know, everybody wants to, you know, do, you know, everyone wants to progress their
1:07:32
own personal career. And there is fiction in me. The thing is that I keep coming up with and are
1:07:38
given stories that come to mind that I feel need to be told and it eats at me. So at some point,
1:07:44
hopefully I'll be at a point in my life where I can just pick and choose and not have to worry
1:07:48
about earning a paycheck as well. But I'm not Stephen King or John Grisham yet, maybe someday.
1:07:54
All right. Next question here. What would you say to someone that said, I regret not serving
1:07:58
in the military? Well, that, like myself, I look back and I feel like, yeah, that's something that
1:08:08
I could have done. But look what I have done personally. I did find a way to serve my country
1:08:15
by telling the story that I believe in telling them honestly and accurately without politics
1:08:21
involved, just telling the story as it occurred. And I think that maybe not in the military,
1:08:26
but I think that it's important that, you know, if you feel that way, you can find a way
1:08:33
to serve your country. And it's not too late for that at a younger age. You know, it's not for
1:08:39
everybody either. You know, everybody has their own personal strength. And you have to find that
1:08:44
path. And I feel fortunate that I was able to do it. And, you know, I had that regret, but at the same
1:08:50
time, I was able to fill it with something that has given me purpose and fortunate for that.
1:08:57
All right. Just a few more left. What would you say to someone that said,
1:09:01
the military industrial complex is alive and well?
1:09:04
Well, I'm not so much into the industry side of things within, you know, if you're looking at it,
1:09:17
you know, exactly as that. But yeah, I mean, it's really tough because, you know, you hear
1:09:24
things when like, oh, do we spend, you know, millions of dollars on one missile when, you know,
1:09:29
kids maybe don't have something that we need in our country and school? I feel like there is that
1:09:35
that issue as well. You know, there is not to get political, but we haven't started or been in
1:09:40
any wars for the past four years. We'll see how the next four years go. But we have kind of
1:09:46
toned back as far as that police force with active military troops and more smaller,
1:09:54
you know, special operations troops. And I think that's a good thing.
1:09:58
As far as it being, I think you said it is alive and well, I would say it is, but it's being refined.
1:10:06
And in a way, minimize, but minimize doesn't necessarily mean less power. It just might mean
1:10:11
less people. All right. Next one. What would you say to someone that said war should be illegal?
1:10:17
God, I would love if that was true. But unfortunately, to me, if you're being a realist,
1:10:26
there are bad people. There is evil. I've lived, you know, from the books I've written and the
1:10:31
people who have been there firsthand, there is evil in this world. And in some cases,
1:10:37
if that evil will not answer to anything else, what is the choice? Do you let it go? I think people
1:10:44
with heart and with compassion, good-hearted people will look at that and say, well, we can't
1:10:51
let it go. And if there's another option, what do you do? It's a tough one. I wish it was true.
1:10:58
I wish the war wasn't necessary. But I think humanity has proven historically that in some ways,
1:11:06
it's inevitable. Hopefully, that will become less and less as we progress into the future.
1:11:12
But it seems to me that it will still be a reality just because of that evil in man and woman kind.
1:11:21
All right, Eric, last question of the day. What would you say to someone that said,
1:11:26
Fearless is my favorite book ever? I would say, first of all, thank you, Adam Brown,
1:11:34
for being brave enough to have the story told and his family and friends for allowing it to be told.
1:11:40
It's, I can't say it's my favorite because all of my books are my favorite. I've come close to all
1:11:46
of them. But every time I hear that, it puts a smile on my face and I share it with the Brown
1:11:51
family because it gives them the solace that, you know, telling a story and doing it like they did
1:11:57
was the right response. Well, Eric, we really appreciate your time and for letting us go into
1:12:03
all this detail. But that is all for me. Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
1:12:06
I will just say, geez, man, not lightning around. I hope I don't come off as an idiot.
1:12:12
Why I always like to put people on their heels a little bit just for fun. It's fun for me. I don't
1:12:17
care if it's fun for you or not, but I enjoyed it. Well, you know what? It makes you, it makes you
1:12:21
realize, honestly, you know, politicians or whoever gets put on the spot by the media and they have
1:12:29
to come up with a question and answer. And then they're on the spot. That one thing that they say
1:12:33
wrong might be the one that becomes every headline. It's, it's tough. It gives you some respect and
1:12:39
hopefully understanding to those type of situations because when you go through it yourself, you're
1:12:44
like, wow, I may not have really conveyed that exactly, but it's on tape now and it's forever.
1:12:49
And so, you know, you got to live with it. So it's, it's, it's interesting.
1:12:52
All right, Eric Blim. Thanks for coming on Daunted Life, a man's podcast.
1:12:58
Kyle, really appreciate it. Thank you. And thanks for all your kind words and also just getting
1:13:02
the stories out and to all your listeners out there, those who serve, family members who serve.
1:13:06
Thank you for your service. And yeah, I think that the topic of your, of your podcast is an
1:13:13
important one. So I'm, I'm happy to be a part of it.
1:13:20
All right, there you go, guys. Thanks so much for listening to this episode, guys. I've really,
1:13:23
really enjoyed this interview with him because we were able to get into a lot of the subject matter
1:13:27
on a lot of these books that I was just so excited to get into because when you can get into the
1:13:32
mind of the author, you get a better idea as to why the story ended up in the way that it did,
1:13:36
especially when you're dealing with real people. You know, he's not just like pulling these
1:13:39
characters, characters out of his butt and developing their backstory. He's trying to
1:13:43
dedicate his entire artwork and his entire ability as a writer and as an artist to bringing out the
1:13:50
truth of what these people were going through and what they experienced. And so I just thought that
1:13:54
was absolutely fantastic. All right, guys, before we let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience
1:13:58
boost. As you know, by now, and Daunted Life is here to help you cultivate mainly resilience and
1:14:02
specifically we do that by helping you with content that for just spiritual, mental and physical
1:14:06
toughness. So the resources I got for you today, I've got Eric Blim's website. So that's just
1:14:10
ericblim.com. And then I've got Amazon link to all the books that we talked about in this podcast
1:14:15
today. So you can go check all of those out for yourselves. All right, guys, thanks so much
1:14:18
listening to the show. We really do appreciate it. If you would, please subscribe on Apple podcasts,
1:14:22
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to this, please leave us five stars and a few sentences letting us know why you like the content.
1:14:34
I'm currently booking speaking engagements for the remainder of 2021. So if you want
1:14:38
me to come speak on your podcast at your men's event at your team, whatever hit me up email is
1:14:42
info@undaunted.life. That's iNFO@undaunted.life. The website is www.undaunted.life. You can follow
1:14:50
us on Instagram and Twitter @undauntedlife or facebook.com/undauntedlife. Check out our free
1:14:55
devotionals on the U version Bible app. Just search "undaunted life" under plans. And as always,
1:14:59
we want to thank the band August Burns read for allowing us to use their entire music library
1:15:03
for our content. The entire outro track on this podcast is our song Defender, which is off their
1:15:07
latest record entitled "Guardians." The links are in the description. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
1:15:13
Remember, keep cultivating manly resilience, keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical toughness.
1:15:20
Keep seeking the line of Judah.
1:15:50
[Music]