Jack Carr

And I try to humanize it and personalize it in this book because you can read about, I think it's the importance of reading fiction also, because you're, you can, you get a compassion there and an empathy for people because you're living a

something through their eyes even though it's fiction uh that you don't get really through through non-fiction you can read about all these numbers you can read about 58 000 but when you read a story like this uh then you're getting to know these characters and you're going through this thing with them and that then becomes part of your experience uh so even you

Say, let's say buds going through going through SEAL training.

Yeah, I'm thinking back to Normandy and I'm thinking back to to Iwo Jima.

I'm thinking back to Vietnam and what these guys had to go through.

And then I'm realizing I can do a few more pushups in the sand here in Coronado, California.

Those guys died and sacrificed so much so that I could be here.

But some of that comes through the works of fiction to the thrillers that I was reading growing up from guys who had.

Backgrounds in Vietnam or just from things they're dealing with in contemporary thrillers of the day But that became part of my experience and I didn't have to and it's almost like you're living it even though it's all made up so that's the important of important of reading in general and The beacon of reading when we go when we look at 2003 to 2025 and the drop-off in reading that has occurred That is scary

Oh, yeah.

I mean, it corresponds almost directly with the rise of the smartphone.

And, of course, it continues to drop today.

So I think I'm getting into publishing and Hollywood in probably one of the worst times in the last hundred years that one could decide to do something like this with AI and all the rest of it.

And less people reading and less people.

There's no backside.

There's no box office for movies anymore.

No, the worst time to get into it is tomorrow.

Yeah, good point.

Yeah, I mean, it's a thing.

I think CAA, my talent agency, just sent me a thing the other day and said that one of these open AI deals, I think it was a $1.5 billion settlement or something, and that they'd used my books.