1KHO 707: The Best Bad Option | Brad Thor, Cold Zero

Oh, it's a beautiful world Ain't nothing on the screen It's never gonna beat this view Oh, it's a beautiful world And I just wanna share it with, I just wanna share it with you It's a beautiful world Such a beautiful world Welcome to the 1000 hours outside podcast My name is Ginny Eurant, I'm the founder of 1000 hours outside And I just read a fantastic book I'm a whole goal in my life Like all I really wanted to do is read fiction I read a lot of nonfiction for interviews But I'm like, I just wanna 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 mine I got an inviants reader copy And I wrote all these notes And I bought one for my boys My teenage boys were 14 and 17 So I pre-ordered my own copy It's called Cold Zero With an incredible premise, the author, Brad Thor Who is 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 Yeah, oh my gosh, you're talking about my career before I was an author Yes, thank you Ginny, good to see you 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 pagejourner And I was telling, I got to talk to awards So you co-authored this book together I was telling word It was one of those books where I liked it so much That I use it as motivation to get chores done That I didn't want to do I love that I was like, if I can just get these things done That 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 Lucerne Lucerne And I loved this one too And how did these guys come up with so many twists You're like, you know, we're pelling the ice thing and then he falls And then it's like his gun thing And then they got to cut free And you're constantly like, another twist and another twist So 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 can I And you're like this I watch one of them You're like, you're like, pulling on your ears And I was like, you're like, in Paris And you're like, how can you, how can you cheaply travel through Paris One of the ideas was To stay at a place that didn't have much plumbing And I was like, 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 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 Southside 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 Oh my, that's such a change That's massive change I had taken a lot of money And I was like, oh my god I'm so happy 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 It 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 101 All of these like artsy film TV and creative writing But classes were shown 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 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, it came back, brought a laptop And they got about two or three chapters into a journey 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 we That which we fear the most That which we fear the most is often that Which we're most destined to do in life And I checkered out And I shipped the laptop back home I had worked leasing apartments As my job in college And I 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 I was talking about 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 in 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 a 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? Did she have a thing? Did she have it? Oh god, I think I make me look like a terrible husband now She is like a honeymoon She was already doing her thing She 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 Okay that is so interesting Because skiing is apart of both of these books And it's like this cold weather All this excitement And you had written at the back of lines of I got to them in the sand Lucerne Lucerne, it's like a ur Okay, in line of Lucerne Your wife Trisha helps you with the medical sections of the novel Trisha helps you with the medical sections of the novel Trisha, yeah Her willingness to read your chapters over and over again Because she is already like invested In your dream, what a cool thing And you said your parents, your parents helped And still a lot of reading into your life You've always wanted to do since you were a child which is right books And you're already a TV producer, writer, host So is that pretty What's that transition like then To have your, so these 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 Correct What's that transition like? Writing To go from TV to books To go from, well, you're now you're going back the other way From book to TV to To have my stuff be made into movie and TV 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 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 All of her movies combined And you can throw in Jennifer Lopez too And I've been left any more time 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 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 That's when I'm going to be like Yes, we did it But I will say this The book that comes out February 10th The Deep 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 Prime Evil He's done a cajillion movies with Mark Wahlberg Including Loan Survivor He did the Kingdom with Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner He's fabulous And our writer is Nick Pizalato Who created True Detective That first season with Woody Harrelson And Matthew McConaughey Which is amazing And then that's for Cold Zero Just the standalone movie And then on the TV side from my Scott Harbath books Which by the way, I tell everybody in my Harbath 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 Jenny did and started the beginning The Purist love to do that You could because it's a ragged book Absolutely, thank you So that's the John Wick director For that TV show And then it's the writer who wrote the Punisher 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 That's so fun! And 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 teams and you want them to read more So what's interesting to me that 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 So this one, this first one, this first Scott Harvath comes out in 2002 And then on your website Because you can sell your books It's 2003, 2004, 2005 Every year! Every year since I mean, up through 2025 was edge of honor And then 2026 is called 0 And then Ward made a town like there's another one coming Of yours So there's another one of mine that comes in my series With my protagonist Scott Harvath I have a new one coming out in June called Chok Point Of course you do Because it'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 Before we jump into that, I just want people to know that you have these reader experiences The ultimate reader experiences on your website at breadthor.com And the one that I looked at, which is this first Scott Harvath book It take you go through It's really cool! You're like the gear, the food You know the different places And then Not only that, there's conversation starters Nobody knows how to start a conversation today So that's both club questions All that kind of stuff So we tried it, we tried to Kind of build a mini universe for each book So if the book So you can 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 that before you read the book or after you read the book Because 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 been a lot of fun So we do one of those for each and every book All right, Brad has been called the Master of Thrillers America's Favorite Author Your best selling novels have been published in over 30 countries 25 thrillers that you've written in this new one called zero It's really interesting to me all these books are You know, like you got to throw AI in there So can you talk about, I talked about this with Ward Because he had books that were from early 2002 So it's an interesting situation Where when you read the first book You know people are like I'm going to go to the internet cafe Yeah Up to a new book That's like this AI technology Basically is like a malware That is you know inserted into your Vehicle or your plane And it can basically shut the whole thing down And then you can just go to the internet And you can basically shut the whole thing down So can you talk about your study Do you have to have pretty deep study Until like what's going on with AI In the battlefield currently Not too much 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 Muguffin He nicknamed it And the Muguffin 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 Muguffin 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 locals and the books Jenny Are so glamorous and international It's kind of armchair travel when you read my books And I became fascinated just not as an author Just as a traveler 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 box 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 A couple of CIA agents are sneaking them 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 gonna 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 Alright, let's do this Let's have a glass of champagne Let's celebrate And all the sudden the airplane develops engine trouble And goes down It's such a fun idea of then Okay, China's racing their America's racing their And the Russians are all racing their 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 gonna be this Awesome, huge blockbuster film So that's really cool Oh, it sure is It sure is it's like engine failure And then this is like in the page 20 You know that you're at the beginning How we gonna land it in the ice You know and then the plane is landing And it's like we can't backwards Thrust, we can't put down the landing gear You've been talking to award What is gonna happen with this plane So then it's interesting that you brought up the international travel Because the book, The Lions of Lucerne This is Switzerland So you're learning about all these different areas There plus Germany, you know Is like Herman the German, you know there's a lot going on there And then this one is the Arctic Of all places Yeah 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 for different countries And so I love that the 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 Chinese are coming in on the icebreaker That can cut the ice that's 10 feet 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 And all converging in this place That 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 A location for an entire book Spring has a way of filling 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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 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 the best way to do it And then we can get 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 phone A bunch of hand warmers You don't even need to eat it 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 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 get 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 pretty cool Val is brand new characters So Casey shared in she is one of the main characters So as his first officer Brett Sharp There's a little bit of a connection that these two have Little Spark Yeah they both have these backgrounds that have equipped them She was a D1 athlete who was a runner Finished fourth place at the NCAA finals And 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 To try and escape and it's just like this It's one of those things that you can imagine yourself in And being just completely mortified 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 The ice is not some stand It's not contiguous Yeah So that was a word and a word actually said You learn that word from you It was a word I didn't know called a lead Yeah Is that right? Yeah 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 how And they're like huge cracks in the ice that can go down Hundred to 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 can actually find a safe place to cross Yeah, or am I going to jump? Am I going to jump? Exactly It's quite the thing The spot where 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 The Chinese special forces Their winter warfare team 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 It 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 and it's enough to give to your kids you know Your teens that they want to read it It's got 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 Mm-hmm and what are you going to 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 Mm-hmm Yeah that is 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 going to 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 track by fixing So I'm like you don't want to give anything away Sure 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 Mm-hmm Because they're just constantly getting thrown All these different situations And they're having to deal with the lead Or they're having to deal with the polar bear Or they're having to deal with people skiing in to try and save them I mean it's just so many things happening I actually think 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 Mm-hmm I think most people would fold Yeah and so one of the things 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 going to find the piece of technology The scientist on board She's got to 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 Sharp? His duty is very clear It's to the passengers He's the surviving aircraft personnel And his job 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 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 rooting for her So that was a big part of what we went through with writing That character in particular And dealing with that theme I loved when she said She had acquired a sixth sense for how far she could stretch allies and deception And that comes up a couple times where they're having to be deceptive You know what the different countries converging But also with Brett And you know, that's the whole thing And you can see that You know, if this is your job, 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 ascendances in the book was when you said Casey, who had ignored the routine safety briefing That's a great line We all do We do And then the plane's going down and you're like, oh my goodness what is going to happen here Okay, so then talking about duty and loyalties Then the other book I read of yours, which I'm so excited Because now I have a new series, I told Ward I'm like, gosh, I love to read And 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 going to read the, you know, this romcom Or what happened That's okay, that's okay too, those are fun It is okay, but then to name you, you're like I don't, I lost, like I don't have another book Or what am I, you know, when you're in that spot What am I going to read next? What are you next? 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 Mmm, we're just so cool Scott loses the president Yep, yes So what's his duty? 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 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 going to be Half the time nobody recognizes the president because 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 lines 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 man hunt 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 Claudium 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 would put either one of them in the situation by themselves They wouldn't have had all the puzzle pieces out of the box to solve it Yeah, this one had so many twists and turns too And also it has this cold weather element So both books have this, are you talking about the polar seals So like in a certain spot like Scott's in the water He ends up in the water and he knew that in cold water the heater survival was to move as little as possible Swimming desperately takes the heat away from your center of your body The core, yeah Yeah, yeah, radiate 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 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 climb and steam up the mountain How hard is it to re, I mean, you seem like you, it seems like you just read it yesterday Yeah, you know what, it's kind of neat because there's so much stuff that spy zoo And then what we call our tier one operators The most elite units of the US military, whether that's Delta Force, whether it's, and these names have changed I mean everybody knows Delta Force and CLT 6, they've changed their names a couple of times since then So that, you know, politicians can deny those units exist But the trade craft, if you will, kind of 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 water 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, the whether it's to find clients or help with marketing I've got the same thing where I reach out to people I 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, Ginny, 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 Okay, so let's talk about this real life thing, how often does this happen? So in both books, the 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, there's a whole premise. And then in the Lions 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, vice president I could take the president's spot like that this could be actually fairly common. Yeah, 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. Sometimes truth can be stranger than fiction. And we have multiple incidents. There was a there was a young air national guardsman about two years, I think it was two or three years ago who released a bunch of sensitive military information that got convicted for that. And you know, we saw what's his face, Julie and Assange and there was Chelsea Manning and all this kind of stuff. So we do see these situations where US intelligence is either we see a lot of idealistic people that put stuff out there because they they don't agree with it tends to be young men or young women in their 20s. 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 giving it, putting it out there so our enemies can see it is the right way to do it. But unfortunately, anytime you gather two or more people together, 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 is 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 fixture right or worth their salt does because they like to keep you guessing who's the bad guy who's the good guy. There's a twist. I didn't think it was that person. So yeah, absolutely. Like we've been infiltrated. Who, you know, who is it? Who can be trusted. 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 joining on this and what this person and you're like trying to figure out like, can we can we play on their ego and all of that. All of these sort of methods that are used really to kind of use people. 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 are 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. It's called mice. And it's mo it. It's so it's an acronym for like money, ideology, something, something I'm told I'm drawn a blank right now because I've not had enough coffee. But it basically is here for 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 the personnel is because they want to know does this guy who handles sensitive information to see 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 don't don't change it the core who we are. And so these traditional ways of blackmailing people. It's ever green. It's it's work forever. And it's going to continue to work forever. Unfortunately, I found it. It's a counter intelligence framework explaining why individuals betray their country. It's money, ideology, coercion. It says coercion slash compromise into ego 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 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, no. You didn't get suddenly better looking funny or more intelligent just because you hopped out of plane and went to a conference. You're getting set up. So yeah, but very good. You got that that is mice. 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 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. Very good. 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 at this Herman, you know, when they're raising their so excited to see each other, I 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 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 doctor, Cheng Lee takes this technology has been working on. He betrays the country and leaves. But his like protege. She steps up like, you know, she's going to try to double crap him, right? So like on the positive and the negative, your human relationships 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 to the end of helping Scott, like they had it. There was a tria tria tria triage of relationships where they like someone knew one and he knows her and then they end up all together and it helps. So can you talk about I mean the relationships are really strong in these books. Yeah, 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 an intelligence officer, part of what you're doing is you're 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 build what are called networks. That's what they call these, these groups of, of people and 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. 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 going to get a job, that 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 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 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. 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. What can my body actually do? So Scott's talking about it. He's saying, my mind is my most important weapon. Just turning off the fear, moving ahead. I'm just going to 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. It's like one of the characters 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's a really interesting part. So can you talk about this? I just feel like so many of us, myself included, are so soft. So you read these books and you're like, gosh, there's really a different level of person out there. Yeah, there's a mental toughness in you, particularly. So I first came into contact with that. My dad, 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 the Navy Seals and you look at the people that show up 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 people that are fighting financial difficulties. You have a child who's 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 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. So, okay, what about this motto? The only easy day was yesterday. Yeah, a big Navy CO1. 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. Steal 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 to 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 super charging your brain to be successful, to propel you forward. That's such a parenting piece of parenting advice there. I interview this man in Peter Moodabazi who was a street kid in Uganda and just grew up like abused and no family. 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? I don't know about that story. It could be, but at this point it's been a long time since he was a street kid. He lives in America and he's a foster dad. He's in his 40s and he's written a couple of books and he talks about how you know these foster kids will come in and every 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's like, I'm going to celebrate that. I celebrate all the all the small wins. I think it's great parenting advice. Absolutely. It's terrific parenting advice. This is like such an odd transition. Go for it. How do you make a good disguise? That is constantly changing. So what I would have told you 15 or 20 years ago, I will not tell you now. So, 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 impossible now to do that. So that's an issue. That's a really difficult thing. Okay. Wow, Brad. I'm so glad that you said that and I'm glad I asked because I was maybe going to skip it. I thought it was an interesting part because Scott's like trying to come up with this disguise 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. 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 how you would disguise yourself that I learned about 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 Ginny. Where Michigan? Where Michigan? Okay. So you're in Michigan. So you go into, is it a Myers? In Michigan? Okay. My wife is from Detroit. So 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. In 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 blow in your identity. How about that? Oh, I'm bad. 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. This in lines of Lucerne. And then also you're talking about the yellow pages. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a whole old. 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 of these cabs take as before rideshare? Yeah. Yeah. Before Uber. So it's just, I mean, it's just, it's something to be aware of. Like the technology is changing rapidly. It makes books fun. It's fun. And there's always, I would imagine there's always new things than 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 going to 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. I love that. There's one book that got brought up in lines of Lucerne, the white spider. Well, 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 known, Jerece. And I'm planning. Yes, I'm in Jerece. Yeah. Okay. All right. So can you just give us what kind of books do you like? What inspires you? Any other book suggestions for the listeners? 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 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 five and six and eight and nine. 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 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 a Robert Ludlum books, Clancy books, John the Coray books, Freddie Forsyth books. So I've always loved espionage international thrillers. And I'm also a big nonfiction fan. One of 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 moved 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 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 mistake wouldn't have made it through. And she's like, he had a great copy editor. That's who made that's who made in the Garden of Beasts so good. So so he I'm a there's so many good writers in my genre. You mentioned Simon Jervace. He's one Ward Larson's books are fantastic. I'm a big fan of James Rawlings and Steve Berry. They write great thrillers. Dan Brown, the author of DaVinci Code is a good friend of mine and I just absolutely live for every new book Dan comes out with because his books are so exciting and so smart. So that's a handful of people. You're never going to run out of stuff to read. I love it. I'm just thankful for my like I'm like for my own little reading journey. I'm like, well, I've got oh, I read awards for spoke to and that was like about like a shipwreck and an assassin and these are great. Oh, I got two new authors and now you listen to all these other ones but the authors are fun because they're total page tuners. I I make notes if I find if I find in a books like mistakes. Yeah, 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. Well, you know, it's funny typo type one page 210 or whatever. And it happens at what's really neat about the experiment that you ran, Ginny, by going back to my first book, The Lines 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 being you get a shot of chemicals going in your brain. What's funny is is I change my style very much from The Lines 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 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, I'm proud of the chapters before, but an original Brad Thor chapter would probably be three chapters now if that makes sense for five chapters even. And interesting though, it's like as the world has changed, you know, this technology, it's like the stories are still so compelling because it's really about the human elements. Yes, they're like, okay, it doesn't matter that there's yellow pages as someone like my kid read it. They would be like, what is the yellow pages? Exactly. He knows congrats. Brad, what an honor to meet you. I love these books. I'm super excited about the TV series and the new Scott Harvath book that's coming out and the movie. And 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. I was like, 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? Oh, I remember. It's funny. It 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 of 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 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. What a dad. How fun. My dad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I love it. Huge congrats, Brad. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks, Jenny. Oh, it's a beautiful world. Ain't nothing on the screen. It's ever gonna beat this view. Oh, it's a beautiful world. And I just want to share it with you. I just want to share it with you. It's a beautiful world. It's such a beautiful world.