#1467 - Jack Carr

Joe Rogan (0:01)

And we're live. Hey, what's up, how are you?

Jack Carr (0:03)

Hey, thanks for having me on, this is awesome.

Joe Rogan (0:04)

My pleasure, my pleasure, good to see you again. Great to see you. You know, when we first met, I knew you were an author, and I knew that Chris Pratt was involved in doing that thing with you, and that you guys were working towards making a, which is happening now, which is very exciting. Crazy. But I never read any of your work until now, so getting ready for this, I actually listened to the audio book, which is really well done. The guy who reads it, what is his name?

Jack Carr (0:26)

Ray Porter.

Joe Rogan (0:27)

He's fucking great.

Jack Carr (0:29)

Yeah, he's awesome.

Joe Rogan (0:30)

It's a little disturbing when he does a girl's voice, but.

Jack Carr (0:32)

No getting around that. Like if a guy's doing a girl voice, especially putting an accent to it, there's like no getting around the creepy part of that.

Joe Rogan (0:37)

It's a little weird. But you take, he's so good at like Russian accents and then South African accents, and it's a really good book, man. Thank you. It's fucking riveting.

It's hard to put down. It's really good. And most of it I listened to either on workouts, walking, hikes with the dog or in the sauna.

Jack Carr (1:01)

Perfect place to listen to it.

Joe Rogan (1:02)

I burned through it in a few days. It's really good, man.

Jack Carr (1:06)

Yeah, do you know like half the characters are the one people that were inspired by actual people?

Joe Rogan (1:09)

I know, that was what's crazy is like so many people, whether it was John Dudley or Barclow or Half-Faced Blades, like Black Rifle Coffee, Icon 4x4, there's like so many different things. Sitka, so many different things that I...

Jack Carr (1:26)

It would be strange for me not to talk about gear, just because I was a gear guy before I went in the Navy, and then of course in the SEAL teams, you're like, that's your time to shine and to like go down these rabbit holes and try to make the gear better or anything that's going to make you more effective and efficient on the battlefield. So he really gets it go all in. And then just after the military, same thing, I'm just a gear guy. So it'd be strange just to say, he pulled out a rifle, you know, or something like that. I couldn't do it. It wouldn't sit right.

Joe Rogan (1:48)

When you were in the SEAL team, did you think you were ever going to become an author? Is this something that you had always had in the back of your head, you would like to dabble in someday?

Jack Carr (1:58)

Yeah, it wasn't even a thing I was gonna dabble in. I was going to do it. And since I was a little kid, my mom was a librarian. So I grew up surrounded by books and this love of reading from a very early age.

And back then, like so early eighties, there's hardly anything written about SEALs.

But what there is written is a lot of times from fiction. So protagonists in different stories by guys like Tom Clancy, David Morrell, Nelson DeMille, HA. Quinnell, all these guys in the eighties who had protagonists with backgrounds I wanted to have in real life one day. And I enjoyed reading them so much. I knew that after the military, then I would write. So I just said, that's gonna be the path.

Joe Rogan (2:30)

So you had kind of mapped it out. Join the military first, join the SEALs.

And then after you retire, and how many years were you in for?

Jack Carr (2:40)

20

Joe Rogan (2:40)

You were in for 20 And then during that time, you had always mapped out that you were going to be an author when you were done.

Jack Carr (2:46)

Yep, yep. I didn't really thought it while I was in. Again, I wasn't writing, I wasn't practicing, but I was reading. So first, I'm a fan. I'm always a reader, both fiction and non. So all those guys I read in the 80s, those were like my professors in the art of storytelling. And then I coupled that with the academic study of warfare, terrorism insurgencies, counterinsurgencies, and then the practical application from Afghanistan, from Iraq, and then it all kinda came together at the right time and place as I was getting out. So for that last year, year and a half, then I started writing because I wasn't taking guys down range anymore. My job was essentially to get out of the military.