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This episode is sponsored by 511, a company that I've used for well over a decade and continue to use to this day.

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And 511 is offering you guys, the audience of the Behind the Shield podcast, a discount on every purchase you make with them.

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Before we get to that code, I want to highlight a couple of products that again, I personally use today.

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One of the most impressive products they just released is their Rush Backpack 2.0.

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Now for many of you, whether you're going to the fire station, the police station, whether you're traveling with your family,

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whether you're taking training courses, we have to fly, we have to drive, we have to take trains.

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And I have to say, I own multiple backpacks, many of 511's different ones, but as far as a daypack, this one was the most impressive.

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There are so many different compartments. The way it sits on your back is incredibly comfortable.

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If you are a concealed carry person, there's also a spot for a weapon.

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So they've thought of multiple, multiple things that a man or woman would have to do on a daily basis.

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We live in Florida here, so I wear a lot of their shorts, which again, very, very lightweight material.

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You can get it wet and it will dry almost immediately.

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And then moving to the fitness and tactical space, I used to have just a regular weight vest.

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Recently, I switched to a 511 vest and actually bought ballistic plates as well.

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My thinking was simply, if I'm going to have a vest, why not have one that protects me as well?

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And that tack vest is trusted by law enforcement all around the country.

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So I mentioned they were going to offer you a discount code.

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And if you want to learn more about 511, their mission, their products,

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then listen to episode 338 of the Behind the Shield podcast with the CEO and founder, Francisco Morales.

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Welcome to episode 529 of Behind the Shield podcast.

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As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show Robert Burke.

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Now, Bobby has an extensive acting career, including Rescue Me, Generation Kill and Black Klansman to name but a few.

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But a lesser known fact is he's actually served as a volunteer firefighter for 19 years,

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signing up after losing his FDNY friend Captain Paddy Brown in 9-11.

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So we discuss a host of topics from his early life in Washington Heights,

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his journey into acting, martial arts, the fire service and so much more.

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Before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment, go to whichever app you listen to this on,

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subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating.

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Every five star rating truly elevates this podcast, making it easier and easier for others to find.

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And this is a free library of almost 530 episodes now.

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So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so I can get them to everyone else who needs to hear them.

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So with that being said, I introduce to you Robert Burke.

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Enjoy.

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Well, Bobby, I want to start by saying thank you so much for taking the time to come on the Behind the Shield podcast today.

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Thanks for having me, James. It's a pleasure, honor.

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So there are many parallels, obviously a lot of folklore in our profession about Steve Buscemi, who was FDNY firefighter and became an actor.

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But I've had some people on the show like Josh Brolin, who was an actor and then volunteered as a firefighter for a while, for a few seasons as a wildland firefighter.

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So when I realized that that was your background too, that you were well embedded in the acting realm and then decided to volunteer in the fire service,

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I thought that was absolutely incredible. So I would love to start my opening question.

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Where on planet Earth are we finding you today?

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We're in a place called Ocean Beach Fire Island, New York. It's in Suffolk County, Long Island.

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It's a barrier island, a couple of hundred yards wide by 36 miles long.

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Beautiful. And they have a volunteer fire service, is that correct?

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We have several departments on the island. Only one, no, I shouldn't say that.

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You know, seven different departments on the island. But in the winter and the off season, we just say, hey, we're just, you know, five different engine companies.

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The mutual aid has to happen. Not only are we volunteer, but we're seasonally staffed, you know what I mean?

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So that November, December, January, February, March, April, May, you may respond to a multi-structure operation with four or five guys until mutual aid is struck

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and departments from the mainland come over to supplement the operation.

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So, yeah, I mean, it's a lot of area to cover. It's, you know, it is what it is.

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This is where I live. This is where I serve. We do the jobs that we do, you know, gas leaks, pretty much straightforward structure fires, a lot of EMS in the summer, spring and fall.

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And then in the winter, it kind of gets quiet. But in the winter, you know, people are trying to stay warm in silly ways, as you know, or don't know.

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And that's what will turn us out also.

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Yeah, yeah, we don't have too much of the, you know, the fire based fires as far as warming.

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The ones I saw most in certainly California were actually the candles, you know, some of the Catholic faiths that have the shrines.

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And those are a big one. Unattended open flame. Yeah. And cigarettes and all the rest too.

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Yeah. Yeah. So just before we kind of get into your timeline, as a side note, one of the, I think the real issues we have in fire police is sometimes when there's

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a lack of communication, a lack of relationship between two departments, two communities that are side by side.

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How, I mean, you said necessity. How has your island be able to overcome that when, you know, when the season goes into fall and you are relying on each other at that point?

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Well, it's experiential and it's absolute necessity.

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I can't tell you how many times I have been so glad to see these guys show up and I've been told the same thing by them.

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You know, there's, you know, you have a couple of guys, you know, you have a two and a half inch pumping out 120 pounds and you're just slaying.

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You're just trying to really keep this thing from. We had a fire. I remember November of 2019 with, you know, 68 mile an hour gusts.

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And when the mutual aid companies started to file in, you know, sometimes you're like, oh, yeah, I got it.

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But other times you're like, it's great to see, you know, it's great sense of relief and, you know, that you're going to be able to contain this.

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These operations, mostly I'm talking about our exterior operations where you're not certainly you have certainly no window to make an interior push.

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When calls are within our district and stuff like that, we can contain them. That's fine.

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We'll put people on standby. But there's no shame here in seeking mutual aid from other departments, none whatsoever.

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That's you are you are obliged to do that.

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Yeah, I think a lot of career departments could take a lesson from that. I really do. I think it's about humility.

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And today it's about serving the people and getting over your own egos.

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I think the new generation is cognizant of that. Why not?

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You know, why not have these guys stand by?

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Because certainly calling them when it's too late, you know, the cat gets out of the bag very quickly in this business.

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And so it behooves a chief, it behooves command, fire company officer to, you know, have guys stand up and then you stand them down.

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And in the volunteer service and the paid service, that's why we do it. You know what I mean?

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Sure, I'd like to sit and watch television all day. But guess what?

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You know, I joined up to serve and I want to serve. And, you know, as you know, on different alarms, you know, people will be embarrassed.

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Oh, we didn't want to call you. No, no, no, no. Call. Call.

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You know, we don't want you to have a cardiac arrest because you were embarrassed.

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We don't want your house to burn down because you were embarrassed. We can build a new house.

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We can't build a new you. So call.

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Absolutely. I agree 100 percent. Well, you have a very powerful story about your journey into the fire service, but I would love to start at the very beginning.

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So tell me where you were born and then tell me a little bit about your parents, what they did and how many siblings you had.

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Oh, I was born in a neighborhood in Manhattan called Washington Heights.

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We used to call it the Irish Alps, upstate Manhattan.

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It's the neighborhood above Harlem.

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Essentially, when I was a child, it was Irish, Cuban, Puerto Rican and German Jewish.

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You know, real. I heard somebody say recently New York is really a melting pot as much as it is a TV dinner.

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You know, you have the Irish over here and Puerto Ricans over here. I know that was very funny.

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Both my parents were immigrants from Galway, Ireland.

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My mother was a seamstress and dressmaker.

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She trained in Ireland and my father was a farmer.

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And my mother came here first in 1949 and then my father followed her in 1950.

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They were in their 30s and they settled in this working class Irish neighborhood.

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My father was the super of the building, the superintendent.

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He bartended and he worked on the docks downtown.

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So real.

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It's almost a story that is akin to or tied them on to the story of friends of mine's grandparents or great grandparents.

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But it was my parents who actually had the experience.

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Do you know what I mean?

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So I'm first generation American.

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I have a twin brother, Bill, who is in medical equipment sales and I have three older sisters.

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My sister, Margaret, is a retired oncology specialist.

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Eileen was a speech pathologist and my sister Maureen was a nurse practitioner who did care with transplant coordination, burn care, AIDS patients.

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She touched a lot of different areas in the medical service.

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Beautiful. Well, I'm a first generation immigrant myself.

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So what when they talk about Ireland, what was it that made them make the decision to move to the US?

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Opportunity. My mother had no affinity.

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My mother was the ninth child out of 13 siblings and you really had to make your way.

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It was just coming out of World War Two.

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Not a lot of opportunity in her part of Ireland, very rural, East Galway, I would say.

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And my father, I don't think he ever wanted to leave Ireland.

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He loved Ireland, but I suppose he loved my mother more.

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So he would talk about Ireland all the time, like, you know, thrashing and horses.

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Ninety, 98 percent of my family is still there, you know, and there are many, I must say.

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And I go back all the time and I love them desperately.

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One of my father's brothers married one of my mother's sisters.

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So I have double first cousins and, you know, they're great.

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We just, I have a very beautiful, wonderful, they're just the nicest people in the world.

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And I love going there.

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So when we think of, say, racial tension, for example, and obviously Washington Heights has had its share of difficulties over the past few decades.

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And we'll get into that in a minute.

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But did they have any stories of kind of, you know, injustice as Irish immigrants?

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No, no. I remember the Cubans and the Puerto Ricans and the Irish.

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We were all trying to out catholicize each other, like, you know, with the towers and the statues and the knees and the, you know, my recollection is that everybody got along.

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Do you know what I mean? We all seem to be in the same immigrant boat somehow.

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This is the perspective of a child.

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But at the same time, no, no, I'm sure there were people used to be fascinated. My father's brogue was so deep and thick and, you know, people really couldn't understand him.

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Then, of course, my mother didn't think she had a brogue, which was hilarious.

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But no, I don't I don't remember anything like that.

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And then subsequently moved to Long Island.

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My father got a job as a church custodian, and it was anything really at that time to get us out of that neighborhood.

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So I finished my elementary education in Long Island. We were very happy.

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I was very happy to get out of there. It was not a good situation. It was not going to say it was traumatic, but it wasn't.

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You didn't feel safe. It was just.

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Maybe I will say it was too bad. It was it was it was hard.

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It was. But you see, we didn't I didn't know any better. I was a kid.

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But I know certain of the ways that I formed in my young adulthood was definitely informed by my experience as a child there and being tough and all that kind of thing.

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But really what the toughness was, was fear.

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So, yeah, we moved to Long Island. I finished my education, my primary and secondary education in Long Island. Great, great high school, very liberal, progressive.

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You know, if you want to be a cartographer, they're going to find something for you to do.

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Like really, they allowed for anything. That's where the acting started with me in an experimental acting class, not like the usual schools that do guys and dolls and all that stuff.

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I didn't do any of that. But this was kind of an experimental acting.

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And it afforded me the opportunity to audition for an internship. And the internship was with a professional acting theater.

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And I got it. And I was supposed to be sweeping floors and answering phones and stuff like that and painting scenery.

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But what happened was I auditioned for two of their shows and I got into both of them. So I put the broom down and I went on the road and we toured the Eisenhower Theater in D.C.

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And the Brown Palace in Denver and all these stops around the country. And I remember I was paid $150 cash per diem to eat with in 1977.

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I might be lucky if I could eat $8 worth of food a day in 1977. So I had all this cash in literally a shoe box when I came home.

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And my dad said, What are you going to do with your life? I think they pretty much wanted me to be a policeman, a policeman or a fireman. That's what was opened to us.

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That's what everybody else's kid was. And I said, I want to be an actor. And so I will drop the F-bomb.

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My father said the three famous words, he goes, a fucking what? An actor. And he goes, an actor. We don't do that. We don't even know anybody who does that.

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You know, said to my mother, Mary, come in here. He's crazy. So then I showed him the shoe box. And, you know, in his brogue, he said, we'll stop.

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And I said, that's what they gave me for acting. And he's like, he said, you know, James, wait, not be about to, you know.

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And so, so he said, can you go to a college for that? Because that was a big thing. Education, education.

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And I said, yes, you can go to college for this. And he goes, OK.

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And so I went to a couple of different universities. I wound up at a state university of New York at Purchase, a town called Purchase, State University of New York at Purchase.

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And they had a tremendous acting program. Very difficult to get in. I got in.

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Trained with some some of today's finest actors. Wesley Snipes was in my company.

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A Dina Porter, Edie Falco, Stanley Tucci, Adrian Brody attended after me. So a lot of really strong actors. And and so, yeah, that brings me to college, I guess.

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But I had some problems there. My father was dying in my last years of university.

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So when I got out of school, I wasn't feeling very well. And I figured I'd take a couple of weeks off from pursuing acting.

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And I had the big agent, William Morris, and the big manager.

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Attorney and all this. And I didn't understand any of it.

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And so the six weeks or six months turned out to be six years away from acting.

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And I did different things. I taught school a learning enhancement program that I had absolutely no accreditation to teach, but I taught it.

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And I did a lot of carpentry, plastering, painting, brickwork, stonework with a contracting company, sometimes out on my own.

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And then one day in 1988 or 89, a colleague of mine from SUNY Purchase University said, Hey, I'm doing an independent film.

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Would you be interested in doing it? And I said, Yeah, how long will it take? And he said, 11 days.

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And I thought, Oh, why so long? And I ended up shooting that.

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And that film was bought by Miramax. And I was on a plane doing a press tour and everything changed.

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Everything changed. There was no more contracting.

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And that was 31 years ago, I suppose. And I've been lucky enough to continuously work for these 31 years.

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Beautiful. Well, firstly, I'm sorry to hear about your father. Was the impact of that what kept you away from auditioning for so long?

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Yes, yes. I had had a condition we refer to as the Irish virus.

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And that's what kept me away. And it wasn't until I took care of that, and I did 37 years ago, that was the key.

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Because I was drinking my sorrow. And, you know, until I got a hold of that, I didn't dare do acting because I thought, you know, if I'm successful here,

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this condition could rear its head. So I wasn't going to serve two masters. I wasn't going to serve sobriety and show business.

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I was going to go on the path of, you know, the Irish would say, learn about lifting the load.

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And it was it was great education. I learned more about show business when I was doing contracting and bricklaying.

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Like how to negotiate with people and, you know, how to show up. How to just do your job. No excuses. Be early. Be professional.

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All these things I had learned, I implemented in contracting in the building trade.

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And then once I arrived in the show business portion, everything seemed not easy per se, but I was so grateful.

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I would pinch myself. I still pinch myself 30 years later that I get to do this. It's just crazy.

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And, you know, and yeah, so it worked out.

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Yeah. Well, it's also very, very firstly powerful to hear.

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But a reoccurring theme that I've had, I've had like over 500 people on here now, is the element of childhood trauma.

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And you touched on, you know, early life in Washington Heights and fear and, you know, this manifests in many, many ways, whether it's addiction, whether it's depression.

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But to be able to realize that and knock it on the head, especially before you're standing on the fire, on the pile, before you're working as a first responder,

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is, you know, an incredibly powerful testimony, because sadly, so many of us don't realize until in a first responder professions, we're deep in it.

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And then that is compounded by all the other elements of our job.

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Yeah, it's ego.

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I think a lot of times it's ego. It's how you set yourself up to survive.

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You know, when I was doing ice rescue, there was a teacher, he was wonderful. His name was Butch Hendrickson, nationally known ice rescue guy.

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And he used to, I never heard it until he said it.

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And he used to talk about the rescue beast and, you know, how you show up in your first on scene, no gear.

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But you're going to you're going to save this kid from the ice and you get out there and then two seconds later, you're the victim.

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Or you go into the ocean after a drowning victim with no flotation device, you're going to save this person and you become the victim.

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And so you have to continually speak to this rescue beast within you. If you're a first responder, you have to temper it and hold back.

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And the other aspect of that is when you're the victim of depression or substance abuse or alcohol or whatever it is, I can handle it.

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I can handle it. You know, it's always the rescue beast that can handle everything.

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And and and usually, as we know, in the fire service, by the time you realize you can handle it alone, you need help.

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It's too late. And so the true strength, I think, and I've seen is when somebody waves the white flag and says, you know what?

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I need help over here. And we're finding I find that that's the that's the strong guy.

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That's the strong woman who says, I need help over here and and gets it, you know, as opposed to because anybody can drink or drug themselves to death.

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We know that. But I think that the real, you know, and then it just sensitizes you for when you do go out on the road to, you know,

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in talks, calls and we everything here is designated as overdose.

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Never forget when I was a new firefighter, I was driving the ambulance and the first time the designation came over as overdose.

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I thought, oh, this person deserves a second chance. Let me well, we call intoxicated.

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We call everything over. So I'm thinking this person took pills by an accident.

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You know, they were just drunk.

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But the fact of the matter is, you know, you kind of see yourself sometimes when you go out, you know, you obviously we go out

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a good portion of the time when people are having the worst day of their life, you know, and

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yeah, I can see I think Americans are most people are reticent to call 911.

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And as you also know, some are not.

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They'll call two or three times a week, you know, and have their bags back when you get there.

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But so, yeah, I think I'm trying to follow your question here.

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And I think I'm I think what we're getting toward is the foundation upon which, you know, first responder near the experience begins, maybe.

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I'll speak to that. My first responder experience began on the pile of the World Trade Center.

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And my best friend was a fire captain named Patrick Brown.

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He was the captain of Ladder Company Three, highly, highly decorated, highly respected, beautiful guy, gentleman, soft spoken, into yoga, black belt in karate,

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golden gloves boxer, Vietnam veteran, combat veteran.

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So he was a warrior, you know, but he was a very peaceful warrior in the end.

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And his path was just terrific.

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We became very close friends.

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And I refer to it as in a large anonymous organization.

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And so when he fell in the line of duty, along with so many thousands of others,

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that was a that was where he was my friend for many years.

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And I knew he was a firefighter.

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We shared a car together and he was a bachelor.

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So he would work holidays and I would borrow the car for Easter or Thanksgiving.

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And then I would return it to the firehouse and I would come in and have a second meal.

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And I was I was I was not a buff.

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I was really not interested in the fire service.

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I kind of didn't know what they do. If you ask me, you know what firemen do? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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But, you know, it wasn't until I started my fire training that I realized I don't know anything about what these guys do.

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It just kind of happens. I guess they get on the truck and they get off the truck and I guess everything's OK.

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The amount of information, the amount of training, certification, qualification is daunting.

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I had no idea. And so.

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Sometimes I think that my fire service began on that first night at the World Trade Center with Patrick's brother, Mike,

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who came in from Las Vegas to search for Pat.

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And, you know, that was.

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Those were times that you don't forget, although I was just last year, last February, put on the 9-11 registry.

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After years of hemming and hawing and.

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And so the guys at Ladder 3 and other they're all some of them are chiefs and captains now.

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They were writing these things and placing me doing different tasks and some of the tasks I had completely forgotten about, just like completely forgotten about.

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And I think that, oh, I remember and I ruminate.

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I think I had complete and it's compartmentalization. My mind did this thing where it just locked certain things away.

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And anyway, so I didn't know what firemen did, had no idea, even though one of my friends,

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my best friend was one of the preeminent firemen in the history of New York City.

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And still I had no idea. And.

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Maybe it was a good thing, but.

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But yeah, I tell a story that.

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I was a firefighter for a couple of months and I passed firefighter one and my practical and my written.

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I was still probationary and here comes a fire.

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And it's, you know, three rooms, residential structure, room and contents, blowing out the windows.

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And. Oh, and this famous chief named Billy Goldfeder.

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He goes around the country.

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OK, so Billy Goldfeder is standing in front of my engine with a camera.

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And I look at him and I go, hey, chief, and he's he's here to give us a seminar.

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And I said to him, a little performance pressure, huh? And he goes, oh, I'll get the fuck out of here if you want.

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I said, no, you're fine. And then I thought to myself, I got to push these rooms.

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You know what I mean? And the hallway we were going down was like 26 inches wide, super narrow, super hot, super hot.

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The guy behind me is yelling, it's too hot. And I said, what's too hot?

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He goes, the floor. And I said, if you think the floor is hot, don't stand up.

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Anyway, we operate, knock down the first room, knock down the second room, and I don't shut the line down.

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So I bring the line across my chest. It hits the wall and like blast me back.

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But I I wrestle it and I get into that third room.

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And I get out of there. This is my first fire. And, you know, your wrist, my neck, anything exposed.

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And I remember just before I pushed that hallway.

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And the flames are coming out. And I thought to myself, I'm an actor.

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The fuck am I doing? And I remember I remember saying to myself, this is exactly what I said.

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I said, I didn't sign on for this. And the voice that came back to me was my friend Pat Brown.

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And it was like a whisper. And, you know, I have my mask on and the whisper says, this is exactly what you signed on for.

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Amazing. Yeah. And to have Billy sitting there with his camera as well.

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So Billy gives the seminar and they say, oh, super aggressive attack. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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And I just, you know, all I did that day was simple. I did what I was trained to do.

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You know, operate, push, move the line the way I was shown to move the line, operate the knob and the way I was shown to operate the knob.

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Be constantly aware. Listen to the fire, not just see it. All these things.

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We go to the Suffolk County Fire Academy and we're trained by FDNY. These guys are moonlighting.

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It's a second job for them to, you know, work and instruct at our academy. It's top notch.

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If you listen to these guys, you know, you'll save your life.

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But my friend Patrick, the fire captain, he had a famous kind of quote.

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He was quoted as saying, you can do this job absolutely right and still get killed.

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And that spoke to Patrick's humility. Vietnam veteran, boxer, karate, firefighter.

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And here he tells you, you can do everything absolutely right on this job and still get killed.

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So that's cognizance and that's humility and that's respect of each job.

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You know, benign automatic alarm. Well, guess what?

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It could be the Super Bowl by the time you get there. You know what I mean?

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See, you know, we always say, I treat every job and we get lax and we get lazy.

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But the smart guy knows in the back of his head, you should be respectful of every alarm.

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And even if it's a benign alarm, you say to your guys, hey, guys, what if we had, you know, somebody hanging out that window up there?

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The one with the three sets of bars on it? Yeah, that one.

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You know, so always, you know, try to instruct even a little.

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Like, I don't want to bore my guys. They want to get home. They're volleys. They're going to go back to their jobs.

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But use the run a little bit here and there, just a little bit sometimes.

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You know, sometimes you get guys who like say, hey, Cap, you know, this hallway here, is this code?

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And you're like, what's going on? We're never going to push a line. You know, there are guys who are really into it.

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As Joseph DiBenoito said, you know, are you on the job or are you into the job?

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And, you know, in any station, firehouse, fire service, volunteers, there are guys who are there and then there are guys who are really into it.

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And, you know, a good officer will be aware of who's where in the passion, you know, index.

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And so the guys who are not really into it, you know, you got to kind of, you know, shepherd them a little further into it.

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But the guys who are into it, you know, you really discuss and you just try to be the best you can be.

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That's what's expected of you. You know? Yeah.

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Yeah. And I've had several volunteers on here and that's what I've said when I'm talking to them.

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You know, when I have career, I'm going to say I, it's not like I'm a bugle leader.

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But yeah, but when I have peers that are complacent, you know, and then in the same breath, there are volunteer firefighters that are out there training their ass off.

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You know, it's basically it's pretty piss poor that you're getting paid to do what many people are volunteering to do.

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And I think the volunteers should get paid.

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Ultimately, you know, in any area that has, you know, a decent density of population.

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But yeah, I mean, I always tell people like, you know, this job will kill you.

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You know, the logo of this podcast said lives depend on you.

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You know, and the big thing that I tell myself is how would I feel if my family died because the rescuer hadn't trained?

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That's a very, so forget about me. I can die on a fire, whatever.

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But if my son and my sons and my wife died because someone hadn't taken this job seriously, how would I feel?

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So now put yourself in that rescues position.

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You owe it to the people that you respond to to be the best version of yourself.

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And as Patrick said, it's not a guarantee you're going to come home, but you're controlling every element that you can and only leaving what's left as chance as the variable that decides if you do or not.

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It's what keeps us up at night.

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You know, every once in a while, I'll get into a weird, you know, we'll get a notification.

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The fire index is through the roof. You know, winds are at 70 miles an hour, hasn't rained in 21 days.

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And you're, you know, I started I started playing head games.

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And, yeah, there's this, there's a sign up at the FDNY Academy. It's let no man's ghost come back to say his training failed him.

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I love all these little anecdotal, you know, you don't train until you get it right. You train until you can't get it wrong.

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It is. It's to be cognizant of the fact that you're in a business where that particular situation, whatever it is, only has to happen once.

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But you need to train for it. You know what I mean? Because if it happens and you're not ready, you're screwed.

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And like even responding to jobs, you know, these guys tear assing in their trucks to get to the fire station and, you know, killing somebody that they say,

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if you miss the first truck out, nobody will ever remember. But if you kill someone on the way here, no one will ever forget.

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And all these little anecdotal sayings and every one of them are based on horrifying tragedy.

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You have to really think it through. You have to think why do they say these things? Well, because they're true.

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Never, never want to, you know, in my volunteer, modest district, have to go to somebody's family and say, I'm so sorry, I gave the wrong order or, you know, I conducted the operation poorly.

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Yeah, you just don't want to ever be in that position. It's funny. Well, I'm not even going to continue on that thought. But yeah, you should be as good as you can be.

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And, you know, we've rise to the level of our training and we sink to the level of what's that other anecdote. But they're all good, man.

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I try and send my guys, you know, these little Instagram feeds and, you know, guys, you know, little things. Get off the rig with your gloves on. You see some of these Stockton firefighters and Baltimore guys, Gary Indiana and Detroit, guys who work a lot.

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And, you know, they're stretched, they got water, they're knocking down the fire in one minute and nine seconds. You know what I mean? Why? Because they do it a lot.

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You know what I mean? Whereas I don't. But at the same time, you know, going back to the volunteer, did I say that? Oh, I tell my guys, you know, the firemen are volunteers. The fire isn't, you know, the fire is the fire, bro.

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And, you know, we've had some pretty massive jobs here where we were, we contained and we stopped, you know, the FDNY guys who are who are instructors are hilarious.

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They'll say things, you know, history tells us that all fires eventually burn out. This is like, okay, you know, but when you're there and it's your district and and the other thing too, like this time of year from November, let's say until April, when the EMS tones go, there's a good chance you're going to know that person, you know, you're going to know who it is, you're going to know what their condition is.

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So, more so with people having moved out from the city during COVID. We don't know a lot of these people, their homes aren't winterized, they're getting creative trying to stay warm, because it gets desperately cold here for just those months.

347
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And, but yeah, you're going to know the people who are ill or injured. And, you know, it feels good when you help somebody that you know, obviously when you don't know the person.

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Because as you know, lots of times, you never hear what happens to somebody you medevac or, but here you do somehow, you know, people will send notes, they'll send a check, they'll, there's gratitude here because where we are, we do, I think we do the number one amount of medevacs in the state of New York.

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And if you're the out, the designation is Alpha Bravo Charlie, if you're Charlie or above, we're not driving you off this island over the bridges, you know, we'll break your neck doing that, because it's all four wheel.

350
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So, any injury, you're going to go out by helicopter. And when that happens, we pull an engine out obviously standard operating procedure.

351
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I'll shut up for a second.

352
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No, no, no, no, I love it. And, you know, it's funny because I've rarely landed a helicopter in most of my career, and I have, you know, but because I've worked in urban sprawl. So it's the opposite.

353
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Usually it's faster to get in a rig and just haul ass to a trauma center than it is to wait for a bird.

354
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And you mentioned on one of the other podcasts and it, obviously it wouldn't kind of ring to the hosts of those podcasts because they weren't in the fire service but you talked about when you get a call at home, your children get to see you leave, they go outside, they get to see the smoke.

355
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And that was something that I had a group of firefighter wives on the show. Some were career wives, some were, you know, wives of volunteers and the volunteer wife said, you know, contrary to the career when the career guy or, you know, woman goes to the station, we leave at, you know, 5am.

356
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And then we're gone and you don't know what we're doing. So there's an element of not worrying because we just walk out the door. Conversely, in the volunteer world, you know, the pager may go off at 2am.

357
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And, you know, it sounds like something horrific. And then your family are acutely aware that you've just gone running out. So what has been your observation of that volunteer element and your family's perspective of fear for you for your own well-being?

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I came home from working on Rescue Me once, one day, it was a 16 hour day. Two things happened this day.

359
00:42:32,000 --> 00:42:52,000
And my pager goes off and it says, working structure fire, East walk, you know, Cornell town. And I go, what? And I know that if I push back in the chair I'm sitting in, in my living room, look out the east window, I'm going to see where they're talking.

360
00:42:52,000 --> 00:43:04,000
And the flames are 50, 60 feet. And I go, whoa, how did I miss that? So I run to the, you know, I get to the firehouse to get in the truck and the driver's name is Timmy O'Rourke.

361
00:43:04,000 --> 00:43:14,000
He goes, what's up? And I was like, yeah, we got a job. And he's looking at me and he's looking at me and he's looking at me. He goes, can I ask you a question? I go, what? He goes, do you have makeup on?

362
00:43:14,000 --> 00:43:23,000
I go, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, I just come from a 16 hour day of shooting and they keep putting pancake makeup on your pager and I didn't get a chance to literally take it off.

363
00:43:23,000 --> 00:43:34,000
So here's a fireman. That'll never happen to anybody else's career. But so we get to the fire and my son, my youngest son was watching the whole operation.

364
00:43:34,000 --> 00:43:50,000
So he's got three houses really. And what happens here is at some point it's going to get to the, or not, to the LPG, to the propane. And, you know, you can have 400 pounders, obviously 100 pounders, the 20 pounder, you know, barbecue stuff.

365
00:43:50,000 --> 00:43:56,000
But the 400 pounders, they get your attention. They definitely get your attention when they let go and blebby.

366
00:43:56,000 --> 00:44:04,000
And so we call that the Medal of Honor run, you know, send the new guy to shut the propane off.

367
00:44:04,000 --> 00:44:19,000
So there's been nights where I've awakened for mutual aid to communities eight to 10 miles east of me. And my wife says, what is it? And I said, it's working. It's a working structure.

368
00:44:19,000 --> 00:44:31,000
Where? And I tell her, she goes, well, are you going to say, yeah, she goes, well, it can't be that bad if you're going to the bathroom. I'm going to the bathroom because I'm a seasoned firefighter and I know I'm going to the bathroom first, because I'm not going to get an opportunity.

369
00:44:31,000 --> 00:44:36,000
And she said to me that particularly she goes, well, it can't be that bad. I said, look out the window.

370
00:44:36,000 --> 00:44:47,000
And she looked out the window to the east and it was just an orange ball, you know, and she's like, oh my God, you know, there was another night, I'll never forget where I was.

371
00:44:47,000 --> 00:44:58,000
And the daytime I was doing bench pressing, you know, I guess the chest workout or something. And the pager went off and the pager dropped to the floor and I went down to the floor and all of a sudden I got this pain in my chest.

372
00:44:58,000 --> 00:45:09,000
And I'm like, oh, I'm dying. And my wife was like, are you going to shut that thing off? And I was like, I thought I was having a heart attack. It was just like a cramp in my pectoral.

373
00:45:09,000 --> 00:45:22,000
But I thought, you know, here I am dying on the floor of a heart attack. And she's like yelling me about the pager. No, I'm only joking. But anyway, so yeah, they say to me, going out the door, be careful.

374
00:45:22,000 --> 00:45:37,000
And I am careful. You know, I'm as careful as I can be. I remember there was a fire where a couple of the propane tanks went off and gosh, they could have only been 15, 20 feet away from me.

375
00:45:37,000 --> 00:45:51,000
And three of them went off. And these mutual aid guys asked me if they wanted to take this fence away. And I said, no, leave it there. It's keeping the heat off of us. Well, it's what kept the shrapnel off of us in the end.

376
00:45:51,000 --> 00:46:03,000
Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And the first one let go and command it's like, the command was my chief too. He took over the operation.

377
00:46:03,000 --> 00:46:08,000
And I said, no, everybody accounted for continuing to operate. Boom.

378
00:46:08,000 --> 00:46:15,000
You know, 325. Yeah, command continuing to operate. Yeah, another LPG. Boom.

379
00:46:15,000 --> 00:46:22,000
You know, all I could think about was people in a war zone, you know, like what's it like with mortars coming in?

380
00:46:22,000 --> 00:46:34,000
Because, you know, it just rattled your chest and your bowels and it's humbling those types of explosions in close proximity. So

381
00:46:34,000 --> 00:46:40,000
there was another time in town where we had taxpayer.

382
00:46:40,000 --> 00:46:51,000
I mean, it was it was a massive fire and it was a propane facility, you know, next door, getting the propane out and it's a big fire and

383
00:46:51,000 --> 00:46:56,000
so by the time I stop operating, it's like four hours later and I can't.

384
00:46:56,000 --> 00:47:01,000
Oh, no, my phone was wrecked. My phone was and I go into the police station. I said, you mind if I call my house?

385
00:47:01,000 --> 00:47:11,000
And they said, yeah. And so my wife sees, you know, Ocean Beach Beach Police Department and she thought, oh, you know, but I said, it's me.

386
00:47:11,000 --> 00:47:14,000
I'm fine. She was, why do you call me on your phone?

387
00:47:14,000 --> 00:47:21,000
My phone is, you know, no longer. My phone drowned, you know, probably about four hours ago.

388
00:47:21,000 --> 00:47:26,000
So it is what it is. You know, again, you can do it absolutely right.

389
00:47:26,000 --> 00:47:37,000
So get hurt. But, you know, when you're when you leave and your children see you leaving, you have a commitment to them to to operate as safely as possible.

390
00:47:37,000 --> 00:47:51,000
You know, I like to think that I'm aggressive, but I think what I tried to do is just mitigate the problem as safely and as assertively as possible.

391
00:47:51,000 --> 00:47:58,000
I choose to put the word assert in for aggression, you know, assertion rather than aggression.

392
00:47:58,000 --> 00:48:08,000
Be very, you know, quick, slow, slow, smooth, those types of things. You know what I mean? Let's knock this fucker down quickly and efficiently.

393
00:48:08,000 --> 00:48:15,000
I don't want people pushing in, you know, wood frame, balloon construction, you know, filled with plastic furniture.

394
00:48:15,000 --> 00:48:19,000
Bullshit. Let it burn. I can we can build another one of those, you know.

395
00:48:19,000 --> 00:48:30,000
But and I think my guys would tell you as much that I look out, that I try and look out for their, you know, you know, grab somebody just before a power line falls on them.

396
00:48:30,000 --> 00:48:38,000
Because there are guys who said to me, fathers who have said to me, hey, you got to watch out for my kid because he's in the department now.

397
00:48:38,000 --> 00:48:46,000
It's like, I will. I will watch out for him. That's happened a couple of times, too, where, you know, great kids, great kids.

398
00:48:46,000 --> 00:48:52,000
And I think I hair on your head cannot get hurt under my watch.

399
00:48:52,000 --> 00:48:54,000
You know, so it's all good.

400
00:48:54,000 --> 00:48:57,000
Beautiful. Well, thank you for the perspective there.

401
00:48:57,000 --> 00:49:08,000
I want to get to your acting journey, because obviously there's some, you know, cross pollination with fire, with military and then black Klansman, which we'll get to in a little bit.

402
00:49:08,000 --> 00:49:16,000
But so going back to your laboring, you know, you overcome the Irish virus, as you say, you mentioned William Morris.

403
00:49:16,000 --> 00:49:24,000
I actually went to drama school in England for a year, and it was amazing because it's I spent a year to learn I was a fucking awful actor.

404
00:49:24,000 --> 00:49:30,000
So that was money well spent. But but I seem to have an affinity with stunts.

405
00:49:30,000 --> 00:49:33,000
And even to this day, I still do some as my side gig.

406
00:49:33,000 --> 00:49:39,000
I had read that. Yeah, which is which is great, actually, because that's a whole science in and of itself.

407
00:49:39,000 --> 00:49:43,000
Yeah. And then there's obviously, you know, the fire service definitely lends itself to that, too.

408
00:49:43,000 --> 00:49:47,000
But when I came out of drama school, I did a monologue.

409
00:49:47,000 --> 00:49:54,000
You know, we had the showcase and I did the thing, a monologue from Tony March and it's called Welcome Home, which is about the Falklands War.

410
00:49:54,000 --> 00:49:57,000
And it was a British soldier and he was basically going through PTSD stuff.

411
00:49:57,000 --> 00:50:00,000
And you mentioned about karate. I was a martial artist, too.

412
00:50:00,000 --> 00:50:12,000
So I threw some kicks in there. And at the end, I had a William Morris agent reach out to me and said, I love what you do, but I'm not the person in the department that will be handling you.

413
00:50:12,000 --> 00:50:18,000
So let me know when you get some work and I'll get them to go and watch you.

414
00:50:18,000 --> 00:50:25,000
Well, then, as an Englishman in what was that, 98, I was in this vicious circle.

415
00:50:25,000 --> 00:50:28,000
You need an agent to get work. You need work to get an agent.

416
00:50:28,000 --> 00:50:33,000
So you obviously were at SUNY in a very prestigious school when it comes to acting.

417
00:50:33,000 --> 00:50:42,000
Did you have any issues transitioning from construction into the acting space again?

418
00:50:42,000 --> 00:50:47,000
Yes, I didn't know what was happening.

419
00:50:47,000 --> 00:50:57,000
I didn't know what's an AD, what's MOS, what's your, you know, all this vocabulary I had no idea of.

420
00:50:57,000 --> 00:51:02,000
The first film was a very modest independent film called The Unbelievable Truth.

421
00:51:02,000 --> 00:51:06,000
And I was shooting it with people I had gone to university with.

422
00:51:06,000 --> 00:51:14,000
And so it was a tight amount to trying to achieve a grade for a professor because these were all my colleagues.

423
00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:18,000
These were all the actors and the filmmakers I went to school with.

424
00:51:18,000 --> 00:51:28,000
So I did have a basis of some of the vocabulary. And the second film was Rambling Rose with Robert Duvall and Laura Dern and her mom, Diane Ladd.

425
00:51:28,000 --> 00:51:38,000
And Robert Duvall, I'll tell you, James, right now, I was nauseous for a week before I got to that set.

426
00:51:38,000 --> 00:51:45,000
I was just so nervous. It was I said to myself, I'm not going to last 10 minutes in this business.

427
00:51:45,000 --> 00:51:51,000
You know, he was like a god to me. I revered his work as an actor.

428
00:51:51,000 --> 00:51:57,000
I always thought he's just so consummate. Just I don't know. There's something about him.

429
00:51:57,000 --> 00:52:02,000
And the next thing you know, I'm playing Frisbee with him, you know, and his little Jack Russell dog.

430
00:52:02,000 --> 00:52:06,000
And then one day he says to me on set, he goes, do you like history?

431
00:52:06,000 --> 00:52:09,000
And I said, yeah, he goes, like military history? I said, yeah.

432
00:52:09,000 --> 00:52:17,000
He goes, come here. And somebody had furnished him with a early copy of the Civil War documentary by Ken Burns.

433
00:52:17,000 --> 00:52:20,000
And I practically watched the whole thing with him.

434
00:52:20,000 --> 00:52:28,000
And I said, you know, funny how life where life puts you, you know, and we talked and we discussed it.

435
00:52:28,000 --> 00:52:33,000
I'll never forget. He said, it's still photography and it's narration.

436
00:52:33,000 --> 00:52:36,000
And I'm begging for more. Well said, you know.

437
00:52:36,000 --> 00:52:42,000
But he was just such a gentleman. Could not have been nicer to me.

438
00:52:42,000 --> 00:52:53,000
I'll always remember his kindness. And that informed my working with other, let's say, young actors now that I'm a sixty one year old man.

439
00:52:53,000 --> 00:52:59,000
Yeah, kindness doesn't cost anything. And he was very, very good to me.

440
00:52:59,000 --> 00:53:01,000
He wasn't Robert Duvall any longer.

441
00:53:01,000 --> 00:53:08,000
He was just like a person who was sharing and telling me things and, you know, oh, don't stand there.

442
00:53:08,000 --> 00:53:12,000
You're blocking my light. So just these little things.

443
00:53:12,000 --> 00:53:18,000
So I was a pretty quick study. I'm going to I'll say that around a set.

444
00:53:18,000 --> 00:53:23,000
The thing on a movie set and a television set is you can yell cut.

445
00:53:23,000 --> 00:53:26,000
You can say cut. I'm not. You know, this is a writer.

446
00:53:26,000 --> 00:53:34,000
They they say cut, but having been classically trained for the stage, you don't get to say cut.

447
00:53:34,000 --> 00:53:40,000
So you're obliged to when they say, you know, when the curtain goes up, you go.

448
00:53:40,000 --> 00:53:42,000
No excuses. Do you know what I mean?

449
00:53:42,000 --> 00:53:54,000
What was very complimentary to my sobriety, to my acting, to every aspect of my life was my training in karate.

450
00:53:54,000 --> 00:53:58,000
When the your teacher says, Hajime means begin.

451
00:53:58,000 --> 00:54:02,000
You begin. You don't say, well, oh, let me scratch my nose.

452
00:54:02,000 --> 00:54:06,000
No, no, no, no, fucker. You go. You know what I mean?

453
00:54:06,000 --> 00:54:11,000
And and you don't stop until the Kata has ended under any circumstance.

454
00:54:11,000 --> 00:54:14,000
And so, you know, people say action.

455
00:54:14,000 --> 00:54:18,000
And to this day, I still hear Hajime, you know, or as my.

456
00:54:18,000 --> 00:54:21,000
They really what did you trade in, James?

457
00:54:21,000 --> 00:54:29,000
So I did some karate as well. I started with WTF Taekwondo, then Shota Kan for a few years and then went back to Taekwondo.

458
00:54:29,000 --> 00:54:39,000
And I talk about this quite a bit. And then then on a road of humility, because every time I switch to boxing, Muay Thai, Jiu Jitsu, it was like, oh, OK, so those parts don't work very well.

459
00:54:39,000 --> 00:54:41,000
So it was this kind of journey of humility.

460
00:54:41,000 --> 00:54:46,000
And recently, I luckily have managed to jump back into Jiu Jitsu and a little bit of Muay Thai again.

461
00:54:46,000 --> 00:54:55,000
So I've managed to keep it going, but as I'm sure is probably the issue with you as well, as you age, you know, you get more injuries, time commitments.

462
00:54:55,000 --> 00:55:01,000
You know, it becomes quite a deliberate effort to stay in the training.

463
00:55:01,000 --> 00:55:04,000
Yeah, it really takes a toll. It really does.

464
00:55:04,000 --> 00:55:15,000
I find it like almost like a parabolic kind of graph as your technique goes up and really becomes efficient.

465
00:55:15,000 --> 00:55:18,000
Your body goes down, you know.

466
00:55:18,000 --> 00:55:24,000
So I was executing different blocks and different strikes and pulling muscles while I was doing it.

467
00:55:24,000 --> 00:55:27,000
It was like, whoa. So I let go of the training.

468
00:55:27,000 --> 00:55:31,000
Like I have my Sai and my bowl outside. I have a Makahara.

469
00:55:31,000 --> 00:55:34,000
I do my Kata pretty much daily, let's say.

470
00:55:34,000 --> 00:55:37,000
You know, I'll throw one Kata or two or three.

471
00:55:37,000 --> 00:55:45,000
But the way we used to train, there'll never be a day when I can train like that ever again.

472
00:55:45,000 --> 00:55:48,000
It was very, very hard training.

473
00:55:48,000 --> 00:55:52,000
It was called Kama-wan training, the Kama.

474
00:55:52,000 --> 00:55:56,000
You know, the Kama is the sickle and the Wan is a bowl.

475
00:55:56,000 --> 00:56:05,000
And in Okinawa, if those two things were in the window, a Kama and a Wan, together those words mean I don't care.

476
00:56:05,000 --> 00:56:09,000
So we don't care if you come here or don't come here. We don't care if you pay or don't pay.

477
00:56:09,000 --> 00:56:14,000
The only thing we care about is if we teach you something, you remember it.

478
00:56:14,000 --> 00:56:21,000
And the level of training was just like, so it was not a commercial school.

479
00:56:21,000 --> 00:56:28,000
It was like 20 black belts who had broken away from their teacher because of a medical issue, actually.

480
00:56:28,000 --> 00:56:31,000
It's too long and complicated to go into.

481
00:56:31,000 --> 00:56:35,000
So anyway, they just wanted to get a space and train and they weren't interested in taking new students.

482
00:56:35,000 --> 00:56:39,000
And I was kind of a new student that came along. That's a whole story.

483
00:56:39,000 --> 00:56:42,000
When I was a child, I wanted to take it. My parents couldn't afford it.

484
00:56:42,000 --> 00:56:45,000
And it was that style of karate, Matsubayashi-shirin-ru.

485
00:56:45,000 --> 00:56:48,000
And I looked through the window and I looked through the window.

486
00:56:48,000 --> 00:56:53,000
And finally, a teacher named Joseph Kabanaro came outside and he said, you're always looking through the...

487
00:56:53,000 --> 00:56:58,000
I was like little Kwai Chang came. He's like, you're always looking through the window. Come on in and I'll train you.

488
00:56:58,000 --> 00:57:03,000
And I said, no, no, no, it's okay, because I literally $5 a month we didn't have.

489
00:57:03,000 --> 00:57:10,000
And then he came out one day and he had a gi and he threw the gi to me and I let it hit my chest and it dropped.

490
00:57:10,000 --> 00:57:15,000
And he said, I'll train you for free. And I turned and I ran away.

491
00:57:15,000 --> 00:57:21,000
Even at like 12 years old, I was a proud little Irish guy. Nobody's given me anything for free.

492
00:57:21,000 --> 00:57:26,000
And years later, I was 24 and I was having coffee with a friend of mine, Steve Panopoulos.

493
00:57:26,000 --> 00:57:32,000
And his arms were like completely bruised. I mean, like I said, dude, what happened?

494
00:57:32,000 --> 00:57:37,000
He goes, oh yeah, that's from training. I was like, what? He goes, oh, that's called ukelaza. It's karate.

495
00:57:37,000 --> 00:57:43,000
And I said, what kind of karate? And he said, and you know, it's like shirin-ru. What kind of shirin-ru? Matsubayashi.

496
00:57:43,000 --> 00:57:47,000
I said, where do you do this? He goes, oh, and I said, I want to train with you.

497
00:57:47,000 --> 00:57:52,000
And he goes, well, we suggest you watch first. And I said, I watched. I did my watching.

498
00:57:52,000 --> 00:57:58,000
And I have friends who will tell you Bill Sage, Paulie Schultz, who are actors who trained with me.

499
00:57:58,000 --> 00:58:08,000
When we would do the arm training, the arm banging, I would get a smile on my face because as a man, I manifested what I wanted to do as a child.

500
00:58:08,000 --> 00:58:12,000
And, you know, this is really, I mean, you can break your fucking arms doing this training.

501
00:58:12,000 --> 00:58:16,000
And I would smile and my teacher would look at me and he couldn't say, hey, Burke, stop smiling.

502
00:58:16,000 --> 00:58:23,000
But what he would say is, Mr. Burke, close your mouth. And I must have looked psychotic.

503
00:58:23,000 --> 00:58:26,000
But it was the pain. It was the entrance into a new life.

504
00:58:26,000 --> 00:58:30,000
It was being able to do something for myself that I wasn't able to do as a kid.

505
00:58:30,000 --> 00:58:38,000
And for whatever affinity I had for martial arts, and believe me, it wasn't going out there to kick somebody's ass.

506
00:58:38,000 --> 00:58:41,000
It was the structure. It was the discipline.

507
00:58:41,000 --> 00:58:48,000
You know, for five bucks a class, you're getting a trainer, let's say the sensei, who says, no, Mr. Burke, that's wrong.

508
00:58:48,000 --> 00:58:54,000
Drop. And you're doing sit ups until he comes back or you're doing push ups on your knuckles until he comes back.

509
00:58:54,000 --> 00:59:00,000
So it could be, you know, 100 or 200 or, you know, 400 sit ups when he comes back.

510
00:59:00,000 --> 00:59:06,000
Okay, stand up. Let's try it again. And they weren't macho guys. They're all matter of fact.

511
00:59:06,000 --> 00:59:11,000
We used to call them Clark Kent because the minute they put on the key, they were supermen.

512
00:59:11,000 --> 00:59:16,000
Literally, the guys I trained with could just tighten their belt before Akata.

513
00:59:16,000 --> 00:59:20,000
And you would see the fucking electricity come off of these guys.

514
00:59:20,000 --> 00:59:24,000
You know, it was very traditional. And we sat down.

515
00:59:24,000 --> 00:59:31,000
That's where the war, that's where I found the real war was between my ears.

516
00:59:31,000 --> 00:59:37,000
It was great. It was like a journey. It was like this fantastic journey.

517
00:59:37,000 --> 00:59:42,000
And, you know, all the time I was there, I thought, I can't do this.

518
00:59:42,000 --> 00:59:48,000
Like five, ten years into it, I'd be like, I can't do this. I'm not good at this.

519
00:59:48,000 --> 00:59:52,000
This is we'd always watch the door. You know, we'd be warming up.

520
00:59:52,000 --> 00:59:57,000
And if if if sensei showed up, oh, good, because you're going to learn something.

521
00:59:57,000 --> 01:00:02,000
But if I'll name him, his name is Gene Kiffer, Mr. Kiffer.

522
01:00:02,000 --> 01:00:07,000
He was like the wrench. He was the right hand man. He was going to condition you.

523
01:00:07,000 --> 01:00:11,000
And if he if just he showed up, you were in for an awful night.

524
01:00:11,000 --> 01:00:16,000
It was just going to be and it was was going to be any way around it at all.

525
01:00:16,000 --> 01:00:22,000
You know, and I loved it. You know, it was my thing. I loved it so much.

526
01:00:22,000 --> 01:00:26,000
But and my buddies who trained with me, you know, my buddy Paul said,

527
01:00:26,000 --> 01:00:31,000
oh, you're always complaining. And I said, why don't you come down? Oh, yeah, I will come down.

528
01:00:31,000 --> 01:00:35,000
It's first night there. We ended up like, you know, 200 kicks each leg.

529
01:00:35,000 --> 01:00:39,000
And like I looked over, it was like starting to whimper a little.

530
01:00:39,000 --> 01:00:46,000
Oh, yeah, I love you. You ever hear this? But he broke his hand on my body like twice during that class.

531
01:00:46,000 --> 01:00:51,000
We had so much fun, you know, and we were in such awe, awe.

532
01:00:51,000 --> 01:00:55,000
And reverence of the men who trained us.

533
01:00:55,000 --> 01:01:00,000
They were just. They were so good at this. It was so beautiful.

534
01:01:00,000 --> 01:01:02,000
It was like the most powerful thing.

535
01:01:02,000 --> 01:01:06,000
But these senior guys get up there and did a kata. Forget about it.

536
01:01:06,000 --> 01:01:11,000
I mean, it was just it was the most powerful and shiru much.

537
01:01:11,000 --> 01:01:14,000
Why should shiru is very natural.

538
01:01:14,000 --> 01:01:18,000
No super wide stances or, you know, sunshine.

539
01:01:18,000 --> 01:01:22,000
It was very natural for the body to do these moves.

540
01:01:22,000 --> 01:01:29,000
You know, nothing extreme about it. And that's why I think that generated so much power.

541
01:01:29,000 --> 01:01:32,000
Sorry. There's my little karate spiel. It'll happen. Sorry.

542
01:01:32,000 --> 01:01:35,000
No, no, don't apologize. Well, I was also thinking as well, timeline.

543
01:01:35,000 --> 01:01:42,000
Was there a parallel between when you found sobriety and when you began karate?

544
01:01:42,000 --> 01:01:46,000
It was at the exact same time. The exact same time.

545
01:01:46,000 --> 01:01:50,000
Because you sound so passionate about it. It seems like it was more than just karate to you.

546
01:01:50,000 --> 01:01:56,000
Yeah, it was. It was everything. It was it was it was, you know,

547
01:01:56,000 --> 01:02:00,000
birth is painful, but rebirth is always painful.

548
01:02:00,000 --> 01:02:04,000
And this type of pain was like the entrance into a new life.

549
01:02:04,000 --> 01:02:07,000
And it was just fantastic. I was so accepting of it.

550
01:02:07,000 --> 01:02:12,000
And you had to be there early and there was no way around it.

551
01:02:12,000 --> 01:02:16,000
You couldn't talk your way out of it or think your way out of it or, you know,

552
01:02:16,000 --> 01:02:20,000
I'm not going to do my pushups while he's not looking bullshit.

553
01:02:20,000 --> 01:02:25,000
Yes, you are. I remember doing Kata one night.

554
01:02:25,000 --> 01:02:28,000
No, that's wrong. And they weren't sadistic or vindictive.

555
01:02:28,000 --> 01:02:31,000
Oh, come on. That's wrong. Drop. And they drop you.

556
01:02:31,000 --> 01:02:37,000
And you're on the knuckles. And all of a sudden, OK, up is brick.

557
01:02:37,000 --> 01:02:44,000
Try it again. Full power. You know, Kata is no power. Snap. Full power. Full power.

558
01:02:44,000 --> 01:02:48,000
No, please again. And I remember one day I was in the middle of a Kata.

559
01:02:48,000 --> 01:02:53,000
And the next thing you know, I was over at the window with two guys holding me up, you know.

560
01:02:53,000 --> 01:03:00,000
And that was the night I decided it would be a better idea to breathe during Kata than not to breathe.

561
01:03:00,000 --> 01:03:03,000
I remember these guys like I'd be soaking fucking wet.

562
01:03:03,000 --> 01:03:08,000
There'd be a pool underneath me during the warm up, a pool of sweat.

563
01:03:08,000 --> 01:03:11,000
And I'd look at these guys, they had a little moisture above their lip. That was it.

564
01:03:11,000 --> 01:03:14,000
I was like, how is this possible that these guys are not fucking sweating?

565
01:03:14,000 --> 01:03:18,000
Well, you know what? They had done their sweating and they learned to breathe.

566
01:03:18,000 --> 01:03:22,000
And that was another key. But it was very complementary to life.

567
01:03:22,000 --> 01:03:27,000
And it was mental. It was physical. It was spiritual.

568
01:03:27,000 --> 01:03:34,000
If you're in the fire service, I suggest I see a lot of guys, a lot of young people now overweight.

569
01:03:34,000 --> 01:03:47,000
And these corporations spent billions of dollars figuring out how to get you to eat their shit, putting candy and sugar at eye level, all this, putting salt in everything, even things that.

570
01:03:47,000 --> 01:03:51,000
So you're all suffering from this.

571
01:03:51,000 --> 01:04:02,000
And I would suggest martial arts as a as a training tool to a more physically fit firefighter or yoga.

572
01:04:02,000 --> 01:04:10,000
I never did yoga. Even now, when I train outside every day, I wear a vinyl work suit every time.

573
01:04:10,000 --> 01:04:18,000
My kids will tell you they call it the clown suit because if I'm not pouring, pouring sweat, I don't feel I don't feel that it was a workout.

574
01:04:18,000 --> 01:04:22,000
And that's that harkens back to my day's training in karate.

575
01:04:22,000 --> 01:04:30,000
Yeah. Well, I agree with you completely with the martial arts because it's about the only sport where there's an element that you can actually protect another person to.

576
01:04:30,000 --> 01:04:39,000
Yeah, that's true, too. Yeah. Usually, usually, I know there was times in New York City.

577
01:04:39,000 --> 01:04:47,000
Two or three times when I thought I was going to be attacked. And, you know, I said, well, I've been counter punching for two years.

578
01:04:47,000 --> 01:04:51,000
I hope this guy doesn't punch me because it's not going to go well for him.

579
01:04:51,000 --> 01:05:01,000
And nothing happened. But I'll tell you what happened afterwards is I got terribly nauseous because, you know, the way we trained was it's not a good day to fight.

580
01:05:01,000 --> 01:05:06,000
This is this is a good day to die. And so it's all going to happen. It's all going to happen.

581
01:05:06,000 --> 01:05:15,000
And then when it didn't happen, you know, the massive adrenaline dump, you know, just like after a fire sometimes really like, oh, they should have my tired.

582
01:05:15,000 --> 01:05:25,000
That's why I tell my guys always you've expended your adrenaline. Your heart needs that to inform the electricity.

583
01:05:25,000 --> 01:05:29,000
Go home and take an aspirin and thin your blood. Cooperate.

584
01:05:29,000 --> 01:05:37,000
Cooperate with your heart function, you know, because guys go home and get heart attacks because they don't have the hormones and stuff like that.

585
01:05:37,000 --> 01:05:43,000
The adrenaline, the heart needs to function properly after a good, hard job.

586
01:05:43,000 --> 01:05:50,000
Yeah. Well, the other thing I've noticed from, you know, again, hearing so many stories here is is the false alarms.

587
01:05:50,000 --> 01:05:53,000
So it sounds like a big job. It sounds like a shooting.

588
01:05:53,000 --> 01:05:58,000
It sounds something, you know, that you're going to have to, as you said, get off the rig and move with purpose.

589
01:05:58,000 --> 01:06:04,000
And then someone else gets there first. Or it was a misunderstanding with dispatch.

590
01:06:04,000 --> 01:06:07,000
And now you go back and you haven't had any physical exertion.

591
01:06:07,000 --> 01:06:15,000
So all that stress and adrenaline hasn't been exerted as it would be if you were fighting, running, you know, working a fire, whatever it was.

592
01:06:15,000 --> 01:06:17,000
And dispatch is a perfect example of that.

593
01:06:17,000 --> 01:06:23,000
Some of these men and women, you know, have to process the most horrific stuff, but they're strapped to a chair.

594
01:06:23,000 --> 01:06:31,000
So, you know, whether you actually worked on a fire, even if you didn't work on a fire, to go, you know, walk a few laps to the station or, you know,

595
01:06:31,000 --> 01:06:49,000
if you go in home, can you jump in a pool or whatever it is that's your environment that you can get that blood pumping a little bit and flush out that cortisol and some of the other hormones that you, you know, were flushed with when you got the call in the first place.

596
01:06:49,000 --> 01:06:59,000
I read something recently, maybe you can substantiate it, that the guy with the highest BP on scene is the chauffeur, the engineer, the pump operator.

597
01:06:59,000 --> 01:07:12,000
I can imagine that would be true because, you know, you can have high BP with exertion and it's healthy, but high BP just from stress standing at the panel, maybe knowing that lives are, you know, you're responsible for lives.

598
01:07:12,000 --> 01:07:15,000
And if that line goes dry, you know, there's a lot of pressure there.

599
01:07:15,000 --> 01:07:23,000
And, you know, let's be honest as well, a lot of engineers tend to be some of our less, you know, athletic members of our crew.

600
01:07:23,000 --> 01:07:31,000
When I read that, I thought to myself, if you had asked me, I would have said the guy pulling the first line, you know, the knob.

601
01:07:31,000 --> 01:07:34,000
But certainly see here in these little pockets.

602
01:07:34,000 --> 01:07:43,000
This is what I like, the data, the research, the underwriter laboratory burns that they did on Governor's Island with FDNY.

603
01:07:43,000 --> 01:07:46,000
You know,

604
01:07:46,000 --> 01:08:01,000
any information, the biggest thing about the Bioservice to me and the thing that fascinates me and the humility of it is it's a learning culture, learning culture, learning culture, always learning.

605
01:08:01,000 --> 01:08:02,000
No one ever knows it.

606
01:08:02,000 --> 01:08:14,000
And so, yeah, when you find out about things like, you know, it's not, you know, expended cortisol or cortisol dumps and how to get, you know, I was reading about it this morning, you know,

607
01:08:14,000 --> 01:08:20,000
boot up on that potassium, boot up on that magnesium, you know, help it out.

608
01:08:20,000 --> 01:08:33,000
But yeah, it's even my pager, it's taken me so many years, you know, the minute to train myself, the minute I hear those tones, you know, and the fucking thing was on too loud.

609
01:08:33,000 --> 01:08:34,000
And it's, you know, it goes right through you.

610
01:08:34,000 --> 01:08:46,000
And I it's like a karate kind of thing where I just drop my breath, you know, into my belly, tandon, cushy, hot on a low, low belly, as opposed to Americans, we, we breathe up and we lift our chest.

611
01:08:46,000 --> 01:08:47,000
That's not the way you're supposed to breathe.

612
01:08:47,000 --> 01:08:49,000
You're supposed to drop the breath.

613
01:08:49,000 --> 01:08:52,000
And so when the tones go, I drop my breath.

614
01:08:52,000 --> 01:09:02,000
And I, you know, my friend Pat used to say, you know, when you're masked up and you're sitting there drinking that beautiful air, you know, and you're all hyped up.

615
01:09:02,000 --> 01:09:10,000
He said, he said, the best thing to do is become indifferent to the operation.

616
01:09:10,000 --> 01:09:11,000
Become indifferent to it.

617
01:09:11,000 --> 01:09:16,000
You know, you can, you're going to talk about the operation and debrief with your guys afterwards.

618
01:09:16,000 --> 01:09:19,000
But when you have this going on, just just calm the fuck down.

619
01:09:19,000 --> 01:09:25,000
You know, I mean, and and really kind of step back a little and observe it.

620
01:09:25,000 --> 01:09:34,000
You know, you know, like, don't become dramatic inside that mask, you know, I mean, because you're going to drink that air down and no time flat.

621
01:09:34,000 --> 01:09:37,000
So breath control.

622
01:09:37,000 --> 01:09:45,000
And I think it's yeah, you have to be physically fit, but you have to be emotionally fit inside the mask, too, I think sometimes.

623
01:09:45,000 --> 01:09:48,000
And I'm guilty of it sometimes.

624
01:09:48,000 --> 01:09:49,000
Like, oh, look at this.

625
01:09:49,000 --> 01:09:50,000
This shit is wild.

626
01:09:50,000 --> 01:09:53,000
And I'm like drinking, drinking down the air.

627
01:09:53,000 --> 01:10:01,000
And but to become indifferent to it and to really get breath control again, the karate helped with that, too.

628
01:10:01,000 --> 01:10:02,000
No, absolutely.

629
01:10:02,000 --> 01:10:07,000
That's something I've talked about a lot, especially in a profession where we have a finite amount of air on our back.

630
01:10:07,000 --> 01:10:11,000
You mean your breath is invaluable.

631
01:10:11,000 --> 01:10:16,000
I remember doing training once and one of my my O rings was like, let me go like this.

632
01:10:16,000 --> 01:10:17,000
And I was new.

633
01:10:17,000 --> 01:10:19,000
I said to the instructor, am I good?

634
01:10:19,000 --> 01:10:20,000
He goes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

635
01:10:20,000 --> 01:10:28,000
Just don't breathe too much, you know, and in I go, you know, and, you know, it gave me, you know, seven, ten minutes.

636
01:10:28,000 --> 01:10:32,000
And I was like trying to crawl around.

637
01:10:32,000 --> 01:10:34,000
Anyway, it's hilarious.

638
01:10:34,000 --> 01:10:44,000
Well, getting back on your acting path before we get to some of the soldiers and fire service related TV and film that you did.

639
01:10:44,000 --> 01:10:47,000
One interesting one, I think that you were part of was Oz.

640
01:10:47,000 --> 01:10:54,000
So I remember watching it in England and actually had the DVD set and watched on a laptop while I was lifeguarding, not actually lifeguarding.

641
01:10:54,000 --> 01:10:56,000
And, you know, when there was no one there.

642
01:10:56,000 --> 01:11:06,000
But I remember being struck at what a different complete world that was that HBO created with with the violence, with the graphic nature.

643
01:11:06,000 --> 01:11:07,000
But it wasn't gratuitous.

644
01:11:07,000 --> 01:11:16,000
It was to actually tell the story the way it was supposed to rather than the cliche kind of version of prisons before that.

645
01:11:16,000 --> 01:11:19,000
So tell me about that experience for you.

646
01:11:19,000 --> 01:11:22,000
Well, my time on Oz was kind of limited.

647
01:11:22,000 --> 01:11:28,000
I think I only did I don't even remember four or five, six could be eight episodes.

648
01:11:28,000 --> 01:11:30,000
I played an FBI agent.

649
01:11:30,000 --> 01:11:36,000
The show was created by a man named Tom Fontana, who I think is a genius to this day.

650
01:11:36,000 --> 01:11:38,000
City on a Hill is his new show.

651
01:11:38,000 --> 01:11:48,000
You look at some of the actors, Dean Winters, Chris Maloney, Lee Turgenson, the late Granville Adams, who just passed away last week.

652
01:11:48,000 --> 01:11:52,000
Oh, I'm leaving a lot of people out.

653
01:11:52,000 --> 01:12:01,000
But it was it was this amalgam of these pockets of stories, you know, within the penitentiary system.

654
01:12:01,000 --> 01:12:08,000
So, again, my time was limited on the show, but it was it was really tough stuff.

655
01:12:08,000 --> 01:12:11,000
I did not watch that show.

656
01:12:11,000 --> 01:12:13,000
OK, my wife watched that show.

657
01:12:13,000 --> 01:12:17,000
I said, honey, for me, this isn't exactly Sunday night relaxing.

658
01:12:17,000 --> 01:12:20,000
No, it's not. No, it's not.

659
01:12:20,000 --> 01:12:23,000
J.K. Simmons, you know.

660
01:12:23,000 --> 01:12:30,000
So so what they were doing was, you know, again, very advanced guard by HBO.

661
01:12:30,000 --> 01:12:33,000
They were always trying to be cutting edge and they were and and are.

662
01:12:33,000 --> 01:12:36,000
And it was hard stuff.

663
01:12:36,000 --> 01:12:42,000
It was hard stuff. And but, you know, I guess that's what we're supposed to be doing.

664
01:12:42,000 --> 01:12:46,000
I mean, we have a condition now in Rikers Island.

665
01:12:46,000 --> 01:12:51,000
Apparently, it's so bad that nobody even nobody even knows where it's where to begin.

666
01:12:51,000 --> 01:12:58,000
You know what I mean? So as artists, what you're doing is you're holding up that mirror, you know, and.

667
01:12:58,000 --> 01:13:02,000
That's what Tom Fontana was doing.

668
01:13:02,000 --> 01:13:05,000
It was it was a wild show, a special show.

669
01:13:05,000 --> 01:13:10,000
I don't know. It was such a powerful show.

670
01:13:10,000 --> 01:13:17,000
Incarceration, you know, in a democracy.

671
01:13:17,000 --> 01:13:24,000
The racial questions, the sociological questions, the medical questions, the emotional questions.

672
01:13:24,000 --> 01:13:31,000
Boy, every week it was going to come at you. So but I had such a great time on the show.

673
01:13:31,000 --> 01:13:35,000
Tom was nice enough. He said, I said, but Tom, I never solved anything.

674
01:13:35,000 --> 01:13:38,000
I mean, the stupidest FBI agent is like that.

675
01:13:38,000 --> 01:13:41,000
We like we like seeing you every once in a while.

676
01:13:41,000 --> 01:13:47,000
So, yeah, I was I was very honored to be a part of that ensemble because those guys were heavy hitters.

677
01:13:47,000 --> 01:13:51,000
I thought, yeah, the actors and it was it was a very important show.

678
01:13:51,000 --> 01:13:56,000
I mean, sadly, you know, the Orange is the New Black is a new kind of standard for prison shows,

679
01:13:56,000 --> 01:14:01,000
which I think is, you know, I'm sure there are very minimal security prisons that maybe that reflects as well.

680
01:14:01,000 --> 01:14:06,000
I don't know to some degree, but, you know, it's something I've addressed a lot on the show.

681
01:14:06,000 --> 01:14:10,000
You know, our prison system, you know, sadly doesn't seem to rehabilitate most of our people.

682
01:14:10,000 --> 01:14:14,000
It gets, you know, as time goes on, you know, there's more and more prisons being built.

683
01:14:14,000 --> 01:14:19,000
So I think it was just a very important topic to be visited to the average person

684
01:14:19,000 --> 01:14:24,000
and to really just portray some of the brutality that I've heard firsthand from people who've been on the show

685
01:14:24,000 --> 01:14:28,000
is very present in a lot of these prisons.

686
01:14:28,000 --> 01:14:34,000
It is present and prevalent and not getting better.

687
01:14:34,000 --> 01:14:41,000
Not getting better. You have some progressive minds, I think, who are going to work now trying to, you know,

688
01:14:41,000 --> 01:14:43,000
you know, a lot of the question is rehabilitation.

689
01:14:43,000 --> 01:14:47,000
And you're talking about people who were never habilitated in the first place, you know,

690
01:14:47,000 --> 01:14:54,000
because social network and structure and it's just absent.

691
01:14:54,000 --> 01:15:02,000
The gap between the rich and poor, social services, they're frowned upon now.

692
01:15:02,000 --> 01:15:09,000
And, you know, you're not we're speaking to giving somebody a hand up, not a handout.

693
01:15:09,000 --> 01:15:16,000
You know what I mean? And I don't know who says that it's easier to.

694
01:15:16,000 --> 01:15:24,000
I want to quote to fix a young man than it is to fix a broken adult or something.

695
01:15:24,000 --> 01:15:33,000
Yeah. Hand up is the way to go, you know, because again, you're going to be spending money

696
01:15:33,000 --> 01:15:38,000
incarcerating and caring for these individuals at some point.

697
01:15:38,000 --> 01:15:43,000
You might as well do it when they're young in terms of education and social services.

698
01:15:43,000 --> 01:15:51,000
Absolutely. And I've had people on the show that countries that address drug prohibition and stop criminalizing addiction,

699
01:15:51,000 --> 01:15:55,000
you know, prisons in Norway that use their prisons as a community.

700
01:15:55,000 --> 01:16:00,000
They have no freedom, but they live as you know, live in a house, they go to work, they get education.

701
01:16:00,000 --> 01:16:07,000
And you've got to ask ourselves, you know, whether it's the UK or the US or Australia, how Norway, Iceland, Sweden,

702
01:16:07,000 --> 01:16:11,000
you know, some of these more progressive countries, Portugal, how are they doing it?

703
01:16:11,000 --> 01:16:17,000
They're human beings too. What are we doing wrong that they're doing right where their children aren't murdering each other in the street

704
01:16:17,000 --> 01:16:24,000
and their prisons haven't magnified hundreds of percent over the last few decades?

705
01:16:24,000 --> 01:16:36,000
Yeah. And these are very large questions. The experiment that is democracy, you know, in order to form a more perfect union,

706
01:16:36,000 --> 01:16:48,000
you're finding these situations, you know, these rather large pockets of dysfunction and, you know,

707
01:16:48,000 --> 01:17:03,000
criminality and drug abuse and substance abuse, you know, as we go further down the road of our country and its history.

708
01:17:03,000 --> 01:17:15,000
I don't know. I don't know. Lots of times I think, you know, it's the capitalism that and the disparagement between the haves and the have nots.

709
01:17:15,000 --> 01:17:28,000
You know what I mean? I don't know. You know, religion, you know, what Christ purported to have said and his teachings,

710
01:17:28,000 --> 01:17:35,000
huge disparagement between his teachings and what actually happens.

711
01:17:35,000 --> 01:17:43,000
I do completely. I love that whole be Christ-like. You know, that's, I mean, if a man's there walking with no prejudice and healing people,

712
01:17:43,000 --> 01:17:48,000
and yet we see a very different thing from many, many people who hail from certain religions.

713
01:17:48,000 --> 01:17:54,000
It's like there's a disconnect. There's a common theme of being kind and compassionate and forgiving

714
01:17:54,000 --> 01:17:59,000
that seems to be cast aside by many people when it comes to application in the real world.

715
01:17:59,000 --> 01:18:06,000
Absolute disconnection, absolute disconnection. And you know what? Sometimes it's a willful disconnection.

716
01:18:06,000 --> 01:18:13,000
And the hypocrisy of that just kills me. I'm going to interject here. Father Michael Judge.

717
01:18:13,000 --> 01:18:19,000
He was the first death recorded on 9-11. He was the FDNY chaplain.

718
01:18:19,000 --> 01:18:27,000
He was a friend of mine. And he used to talk about, he turned to me and said, can you imagine living like Christ?

719
01:18:27,000 --> 01:18:38,000
I mean, really, Bob? And I was like, no, I can't. And he used to say to me, the question was not who needs my help or who's my brother.

720
01:18:38,000 --> 01:18:45,000
He said that what Christ asked was who is the least of my brothers.

721
01:18:45,000 --> 01:18:54,000
And he goes, the prospect of that is daunting. I'm supposed to not only help a poor guy, but the poorest, the very least.

722
01:18:54,000 --> 01:19:01,000
And we used to talk about that. They used to rattle my cage. I'm like, oh, I hope he doesn't want me to.

723
01:19:01,000 --> 01:19:07,000
Now I'm a missionary somewhere. But that was the question. That was the prospect.

724
01:19:07,000 --> 01:19:11,000
Who is the least of my brothers? When you have done it for him, certainly you have done it for me.

725
01:19:11,000 --> 01:19:18,000
It was pretty simple teaching. You know what I mean? Pretty simple.

726
01:19:18,000 --> 01:19:22,000
But I'd never forget that. I never forget that.

727
01:19:22,000 --> 01:19:32,000
Many stories about Father Mike. Yeah. I had Jules and Gédion Naudet, the two French brothers that made the documentary and were actually with him.

728
01:19:32,000 --> 01:19:37,000
So that was a very, very heartbreaking and powerful perspective.

729
01:19:37,000 --> 01:19:48,000
That the universe put those brothers there that day was just tremendous.

730
01:19:48,000 --> 01:19:59,000
You know, tremendous. You know, tremendous for me anyway, because I just on a podcast, I was just talking about Father Mike in the lobby.

731
01:19:59,000 --> 01:20:04,000
And he's praying. You can see his lips moving. He's praying. He's praying hard.

732
01:20:04,000 --> 01:20:15,000
And, you know, the topic was not what a man thinks or says or feels.

733
01:20:15,000 --> 01:20:26,000
The topic of look at what the man does. And he has his helmet on and his turnout coat and he is reported for duty.

734
01:20:26,000 --> 01:20:35,000
So that's what he is doing. And my father used to always say, you know, I don't judge a man by his color or what he says or what he thinks.

735
01:20:35,000 --> 01:20:42,000
I judge a man by his actions. And so Father Mike's actions, he could have been outside. He could have been across the street.

736
01:20:42,000 --> 01:20:51,000
He could have been a few blocks away. He could have monitored it from, you know, from his rectory parish, parish rectory.

737
01:20:51,000 --> 01:21:01,000
But he chose to be there on the fire ground. That was his duty. So tremendous lesson in that man and his life.

738
01:21:01,000 --> 01:21:06,000
Absolutely. Well, thank you for sharing some of those stories. I'd never heard some of those perspectives before.

739
01:21:06,000 --> 01:21:14,000
Now, speaking of FDNY, at this point, you obviously got, you know, years of acting under your belt. You're also a firefighter.

740
01:21:14,000 --> 01:21:20,000
So how did you find your way into Rescue Me and then talk to me about that experience?

741
01:21:20,000 --> 01:21:29,000
Dennis and I kind of knew each other a little bit after 9-11. He spoke about my buddy, Patty Brown, on David Letterman.

742
01:21:29,000 --> 01:21:36,000
I think it was very soon after the towers had come down and we would see each other at fundraisers and things like this.

743
01:21:36,000 --> 01:21:47,000
And Dennis had set up the Dennis Leary Firefighter Foundation or the Leary Firefighter Foundation in the wake of what's referred to as the Worcester Cold Storage Fire,

744
01:21:47,000 --> 01:21:59,000
in which six firefighters perished, namely his cousin, Jeremiah Lucy, and his very close friend of his firefighter, Spade, I think his last name was.

745
01:21:59,000 --> 01:22:08,000
And, you know, four other guys. Worcester Cold Storage, you have two guys who go in searching for reported squatters.

746
01:22:08,000 --> 01:22:19,000
Two more guys go in, two more guys go in, and then a chief who says nobody else is going in because all these firefighters are reported missing now.

747
01:22:19,000 --> 01:22:28,000
So Dennis starts this foundation to train firefighters, you know, give them the tools, whatever the fire service needs.

748
01:22:28,000 --> 01:22:36,000
I refer to the Leary Firefighter Foundation now as a first responder to the first responders.

749
01:22:36,000 --> 01:22:41,000
And so Dennis calls and goes, hey, listen, I'm doing this show. Would you ever consider playing my cousin?

750
01:22:41,000 --> 01:22:45,000
I said, yeah, sure. And he goes, he's a priest. And I said, no, no, not interested.

751
01:22:45,000 --> 01:22:53,000
He goes, no, no, no, hold on. So, so anyway, he goes, no, he's hard hitting. He's he's a drunk. He's a, you know, he's a good guy. He's a fan.

752
01:22:53,000 --> 01:22:59,000
I says, listen, and he says he's only going to be a priest for one season and then he's leaving the ice.

753
01:22:59,000 --> 01:23:06,000
Okay. So I said, you throw me a curve ball with that. And I said, you know, won't be good.

754
01:23:06,000 --> 01:23:18,000
So anyway, I wasn't always in agreement with some of the subject matter and how it was presented.

755
01:23:18,000 --> 01:23:29,000
I was aware of the greater good we were. Well, he was raising a lot of money for the fire service through the foundation.

756
01:23:29,000 --> 01:23:39,000
You know, and I can go through the litany fire boats in New Orleans, rebuilt, I think, 14 firehouses in New Orleans.

757
01:23:39,000 --> 01:23:51,000
I was down there for that Worcester fire department training facility. You know, thermal imaging for Detroit.

758
01:23:51,000 --> 01:23:57,000
High rise simulator from Manhattan mobile command. But it goes on and on and on and on.

759
01:23:57,000 --> 01:24:04,000
How much good he's done for the fire service. So, again, it was my professional life and my volunteer life.

760
01:24:04,000 --> 01:24:10,000
Colliding a lot of the storyline of the show.

761
01:24:10,000 --> 01:24:22,000
Seemed to me to be very personal to me because it was absolutely mimicking, you know, aspects of my own life.

762
01:24:22,000 --> 01:24:34,000
But, you know, we went ahead with it and, you know, Dennis would say to me, you know, this is going to be a finite prospect. We're going to do seven seasons.

763
01:24:34,000 --> 01:24:44,000
And then that's it. I said, OK. And that's what it was. But the foundation continues very effectively, I have to say.

764
01:24:44,000 --> 01:24:54,000
We have these or he has these it's called the firefighter challenge. You could be a hero for a day, get these executives and they pay money and they come to the FBI.

765
01:24:54,000 --> 01:25:07,000
Academy and they're doing rope rescues, you know, burn rooms, searches, you know,

766
01:25:07,000 --> 01:25:17,000
NBA extrication. They do every aspect of the fire service that's taught at the rock. And if you're an executive or whoever you are, you pay to do this.

767
01:25:17,000 --> 01:25:28,000
And it's a great day. It's a fantastic day. Jeff Bezos was one of the people who participated a few years back.

768
01:25:28,000 --> 01:25:39,000
And his brother Mark is a fire captain, volunteer fire captain in Scarsdale. I'll tell you, Jeff Bezos, say what you want. But that guy has no fear of fire or really anything.

769
01:25:39,000 --> 01:25:48,000
You know, he got in there and he's, you know, he's in good shape and everything. He did every evolution successfully and he was ready for more.

770
01:25:48,000 --> 01:26:00,000
So, you know, a lot of people there that day, Michael J. Fox, Juliana Margulies, John Slattery, certainly Steve Buscemi, Stallworth.

771
01:26:00,000 --> 01:26:07,000
So a lot of, you know, celebrity types turn out and they pack up too and go in,

772
01:26:07,000 --> 01:26:13,000
which is just really tremendous to see.

773
01:26:13,000 --> 01:26:28,000
You know, I have fun because I get to observe and see how they react. And, gosh, there was one year I went in, I forget with who, and I found the baby, you know, in the search, you know, little baby doll.

774
01:26:28,000 --> 01:26:35,000
And then like a year or two later, I bring in somebody else, I think Juliana Margulies, and I'm searching. I'm like, oh, man, I'm killing myself.

775
01:26:35,000 --> 01:26:38,000
There's the wall. There's the radiator. There's a window. And I'm searching and searching.

776
01:26:38,000 --> 01:26:43,000
And one of the instructors who was probably a friend of mine, I go, what are you killing yourself in there? And I said, I'm looking for the baby.

777
01:26:43,000 --> 01:26:47,000
He goes, oh, no, we lost the baby. Jimmy, you know where the baby is?

778
01:26:47,000 --> 01:26:53,000
I had the baby in the room. It was like for nine months nobody saw the baby, but I was determined to find it that day. Of course I didn't.

779
01:26:53,000 --> 01:27:00,000
But I remember I was so gassed out after that, sir, after that evolution. I said, when you're broke, you're really working.

780
01:27:00,000 --> 01:27:04,000
And I was like, yeah, I found the baby last year. I wonder if, oh, yeah, baby's gone.

781
01:27:04,000 --> 01:27:08,000
So anyway, it's a great day. It's a lot of fun. We raise a lot of money.

782
01:27:08,000 --> 01:27:14,000
And again, Dennis continues to be super effective with the foundation.

783
01:27:14,000 --> 01:27:19,000
Love it. Well, firstly, you just made me think we should always carry a baby with you when you do a training search.

784
01:27:19,000 --> 01:27:21,000
That way you can always be a rock star.

785
01:27:21,000 --> 01:27:25,000
That's a great idea, James. Jesus.

786
01:27:25,000 --> 01:27:29,000
You know, but I think I've seen the Leary Foundation do so many great things.

787
01:27:29,000 --> 01:27:34,000
I had Nancy from Friends of Firefighters on here. They do some great things as well.

788
01:27:34,000 --> 01:27:37,000
I'm actually working on getting Steve. I don't know how close I am.

789
01:27:37,000 --> 01:27:42,000
I know the perception might be different than reality, but I have communication now, which is beautiful.

790
01:27:42,000 --> 01:27:47,000
I think his story would be another great one for our profession to hear.

791
01:27:47,000 --> 01:28:03,000
Yeah, he's just an amazing, a more quiet, earnest, genuine gentleman you will not meet in this life than this man.

792
01:28:03,000 --> 01:28:11,000
I was when I was at the site of the World Trade Center working one night, and I remember somebody going, hey, hey, hey, like this.

793
01:28:11,000 --> 01:28:15,000
And I turned over and it was him. He was sitting on a wall with a line of guys.

794
01:28:15,000 --> 01:28:26,000
He goes, how are you doing? I said, good. And he said to somebody later, he goes, is that guy Burke, an actor who wants to be a fireman or a fireman wants to be like, what's the story?

795
01:28:26,000 --> 01:28:31,000
No, no, he's here. Patty Brown was his friend. A lot of three brought him down.

796
01:28:31,000 --> 01:28:35,000
But what a human being, you know.

797
01:28:35,000 --> 01:28:40,000
Yeah, absolutely. Well, you said about the Trade Center. I actually kind of full circle.

798
01:28:40,000 --> 01:28:55,000
I've been a firefighter for, I guess, a few years by that point. I was in L.A. and I actually basically was a glorified extra, but I got work on the World Trade Center movie they did with Nicolas Cage about the Port Authority cops that survived.

799
01:28:55,000 --> 01:28:59,000
But it's another funny casting story because I ended up corralling.

800
01:28:59,000 --> 01:29:03,000
They said we need more people. So I got some more of the Anaheim guys.

801
01:29:03,000 --> 01:29:12,000
And then when it came to it, she almost didn't cast me. And we're talking about extras. We ended up being silhouettes, but they wanted real firefighters for this film.

802
01:29:12,000 --> 01:29:18,000
And she said, and I quote, you look too Californian. And I'm like, you understand I'm English, right?

803
01:29:18,000 --> 01:29:23,000
And secondly, you understand New York has lots of different people that look all, you know, colors and creeds.

804
01:29:23,000 --> 01:29:28,000
But yeah, I was like, really? This is, you know, this is Hollywood casting. But in the end, it was it was fine.

805
01:29:28,000 --> 01:29:33,000
And I got on and there was Long Beach Firefighters and some other sprinkle from other places.

806
01:29:33,000 --> 01:29:39,000
But that was a really unique experience because none of us obviously were there at the time.

807
01:29:39,000 --> 01:29:48,000
We're West Coast firefighters. But, you know, we're replicating, as you did with Generation Kill, you know, we're we're recreating a very tragic event.

808
01:29:48,000 --> 01:29:59,000
You know, so it was a very kind of it was a fun time, but a very sobering experience, you know, being around these mockups of the inside the world trade.

809
01:29:59,000 --> 01:30:08,000
Yeah, it's, you know, somebody said to me one night when we were leaving, it's like it's like a movie set.

810
01:30:08,000 --> 01:30:12,000
And they said, I've been on movie sets. This is not like a movie set.

811
01:30:12,000 --> 01:30:21,000
And I never used the designation Ground Zero, because that's a designation for a nuclear explosion.

812
01:30:21,000 --> 01:30:29,000
So that's an improper designation. And, you know, that day may come. You know what I mean?

813
01:30:29,000 --> 01:30:38,000
But yeah, that's misappropriated. I hate that expression.

814
01:30:38,000 --> 01:30:46,000
But to be there was just, you know, there's no the scale of it was very large. I had nothing. I had no point of reference.

815
01:30:46,000 --> 01:30:54,000
I had never been a fireman. I was just down there and I was just staring off like kind of, you know, into space.

816
01:30:54,000 --> 01:31:00,000
And I was doing what I was told to do. No more, no less.

817
01:31:00,000 --> 01:31:09,000
So yeah, and how nobody ever got hurt or killed.

818
01:31:09,000 --> 01:31:22,000
You know, I used to come home and I used to be like I used to get overwhelming anxiety that like somebody would slip and fall through a crevice or one of the guys I was operating with a fireman.

819
01:31:22,000 --> 01:31:32,000
He it's in it's in my friend, my friend's brother, Pat Brown, his brother Mike wrote a book called What Brothers Do.

820
01:31:32,000 --> 01:31:45,000
Mike passed away last year, October 30th of 9-11 related cancer. He was a fireman at

821
01:31:45,000 --> 01:31:56,000
Engine 37, Lat. 40, 125th Street. He was a fireman for a bunch of years and then he became a medical doctor and went to Las Vegas, practiced medicine there and emergency medicine.

822
01:31:56,000 --> 01:32:01,000
And they came back to search for Pat.

823
01:32:01,000 --> 01:32:11,000
And he pointed me and goes, and you're coming with me. And I had no affinity. I didn't know what to say. I said nothing. And they put gear on me and down I went.

824
01:32:11,000 --> 01:32:16,000
And that's how that came about.

825
01:32:16,000 --> 01:32:23,000
But he passed away just a year, almost a year ago, a few days short, 10 more days shorter of his year.

826
01:32:23,000 --> 01:32:28,000
And so that place was bad, you know.

827
01:32:28,000 --> 01:32:37,000
The smells of it and, you know, there were different things burning, I guess mixing, you know, the toxicity was no joke, you know, and

828
01:32:37,000 --> 01:32:45,000
you would, it would smell one way one day and then two days later it would smell a different way. I don't know how to explain that.

829
01:32:45,000 --> 01:32:56,000
But, you know, and these firemen, these, the old guard, the fathers, you know, they would use this expression, we're not leaving here until it's broom clean.

830
01:32:56,000 --> 01:33:01,000
You know, that's like at the firehouse, fire station. So, you know, broom place has to be immaculate.

831
01:33:01,000 --> 01:33:12,000
And these were men who had lost their sons or sons-in-laws or, you know, it was

832
01:33:12,000 --> 01:33:18,000
very still hard to like articulate. It's

833
01:33:18,000 --> 01:33:26,000
I don't even, I can't even, I can't articulate it. I cannot, I cannot articulate it because of the scale, you know.

834
01:33:26,000 --> 01:33:33,000
Again, but again, one of my preoccupations was the fact that nobody got killed or hurt.

835
01:33:33,000 --> 01:33:42,000
Like, obviously people have become very ill in the aftermath and continue to be ill and will continue to be ill.

836
01:33:42,000 --> 01:33:49,000
But the fact that like, you know, when a cable would break on a crane and it would whip around and,

837
01:33:49,000 --> 01:33:56,000
you know, firemen and the cops, everybody would duck except the local 40 iron workers. They didn't duck. They were just used to it, I guess.

838
01:33:56,000 --> 01:34:05,000
And it was so strange and, you know, how everybody would get quiet, you know, because they thought they had heard somebody.

839
01:34:05,000 --> 01:34:11,000
Just your observations of like, where's the doorknob? Where's the computer? Where's the, where is everything?

840
01:34:11,000 --> 01:34:21,000
You know, sure, there's paper and iron and steel and like this compressed sheetrock, what have you.

841
01:34:21,000 --> 01:34:28,000
But where is everything? You know, and I think by virtue of how many men you lost in your company,

842
01:34:28,000 --> 01:34:36,000
like ladder three lost both complements of two shifts. So they weren't down on the bucket brigade.

843
01:34:36,000 --> 01:34:46,000
You know, they were up on the top of that thing and that's where we operated. And, you know, other companies from outlying areas, volunteer companies,

844
01:34:46,000 --> 01:34:51,000
different municipalities, you know, they would be in the lower sections, let's say.

845
01:34:51,000 --> 01:35:00,000
But certainly, you know, you would take a while to get up there. And then as the initial search became recovery,

846
01:35:00,000 --> 01:35:10,000
then they started to bring in the big claws and stuff like that. And so you knew the characteristic of the operation is changing.

847
01:35:10,000 --> 01:35:14,000
Because, you know, we were just scratching the surface. It was just everywhere you look,

848
01:35:14,000 --> 01:35:25,000
there was somebody trying to affect some type of, you know, discovery or rescue.

849
01:35:25,000 --> 01:35:32,000
And it was just like, it was like a therapy session. Nothing's going to get done until we start pulling this thing, you know, really apart.

850
01:35:32,000 --> 01:35:39,000
And just even that task alone was just crazy. You know, the scale, scale. Anyway.

851
01:35:39,000 --> 01:35:44,000
Yeah, it must have been horrendous. Now, before we started recording,

852
01:35:44,000 --> 01:35:50,000
you touched on your sister, Margaret, being an oncologist and her perspective of the 911 cancer.

853
01:35:50,000 --> 01:35:57,000
If you're OK with kind of going over that again, I think it's a very important perspective for people to hear.

854
01:35:57,000 --> 01:36:07,000
I think that what they arrive at is what the construct of the cancer cell is.

855
01:36:07,000 --> 01:36:12,000
It's kind of weird. It's kind of different. It's kind of off. It's not recognized as, you know, your basic this or your basic that.

856
01:36:12,000 --> 01:36:17,000
I'm not an oncologist. But so there's something sketchy about the cell itself.

857
01:36:17,000 --> 01:36:30,000
And then the speed, the metastatic speed, the speed with which it spreads and goes from lymph to bone to, you know, that that then becomes.

858
01:36:30,000 --> 01:36:37,000
Recognizable as 911 related, because that's the way I think a lot of them are presenting.

859
01:36:37,000 --> 01:36:44,000
You know, there's this model and joke about, oh, if you're a firefighter, you're just going to die. You're going to die of cancer.

860
01:36:44,000 --> 01:36:53,000
You just don't know which type. Well, that goes back to I think the fire loads that are burning now or this, you know, these plastics.

861
01:36:53,000 --> 01:36:59,000
You know, the trusses are plastic. The furniture is plastic. Everything is plastic. Where is it made?

862
01:36:59,000 --> 01:37:05,000
Well, I'm not going to say, but, you know, what kind of materials are being used? We have no idea.

863
01:37:05,000 --> 01:37:11,000
You know, and when you light this stuff on fire, you know, are you kidding me? And you're breathing that.

864
01:37:11,000 --> 01:37:21,000
And you're coming back to the firehouse, the fire station with that stuff on your gear, you know, around your neck, you know, where your glands are.

865
01:37:21,000 --> 01:37:27,000
You know, that stuff, you know, seeps in through your skin, which is an organ.

866
01:37:27,000 --> 01:37:39,000
So as in the fire service, just need to be a lot more cognizant and a lot more diligent, because that's what's killing us a lot of the time is our own.

867
01:37:39,000 --> 01:37:47,000
Well, it was, I think, kind of a innocence in terms of what could harm us and what could make us sick.

868
01:37:47,000 --> 01:37:55,000
But certainly hoods and fire gear that's not decontaminated and then washed is not helping our cause.

869
01:37:55,000 --> 01:38:00,000
You know, back when it was horse hair and wood and cloth have at it.

870
01:38:00,000 --> 01:38:07,000
But now it's just, you know, as they say, the metal metal bad shit. You have no idea what's burning.

871
01:38:07,000 --> 01:38:15,000
You know, we had like a benign igloo cooler, you know, you could put, you know, whatever.

872
01:38:15,000 --> 01:38:20,000
And this thing was burning on a stove top. And we went, what the fuck is this? It's stunk.

873
01:38:20,000 --> 01:38:24,000
It was like you didn't you didn't want to be a little cooler, stupid cooler.

874
01:38:24,000 --> 01:38:32,000
But you know what? You knew intrinsically don't breathe that and all the tough guy bullshit in the world.

875
01:38:32,000 --> 01:38:37,000
Oh, yeah, no, no big deal. Oh, yeah. Live and learn.

876
01:38:37,000 --> 01:38:39,000
You know what I mean? Because I'll tell you one thing.

877
01:38:39,000 --> 01:38:51,000
There's, you know, Billy Goldfeder, when he gives his seminars and we all, you know, poo poo and just say, oh, yeah, you know, it's just, you know, just smoking.

878
01:38:51,000 --> 01:39:02,000
You know what? There's no reason to leave your family and your children alone because you chose to breathe shit, you know, on a food on the stove call.

879
01:39:02,000 --> 01:39:14,000
You know what I mean? Why? You know, wash your shit, take care of yourself, you know, prolong your life because you're only this is an address rehearsal.

880
01:39:14,000 --> 01:39:16,000
This is the only one you're getting.

881
01:39:16,000 --> 01:39:24,000
Yeah, 100 percent. I tell people think of it like an EMS call. If you have blood and shit all over your shirt, would you wash it?

882
01:39:24,000 --> 01:39:29,000
You're damn straight. We act like, you know, we're going to die of cholera when we get biohazard on us.

883
01:39:29,000 --> 01:39:32,000
But when we get, you know, smoke, it's like it was a badge of honor.

884
01:39:32,000 --> 01:39:39,000
And I started the fire service in 2002. So, you know, it was kind of like one foot in each.

885
01:39:39,000 --> 01:39:42,000
You know, we were definitely under a lot of the old school mentality.

886
01:39:42,000 --> 01:39:48,000
But you listen to the Swedish guys behind healthy firefighters who really kind of push the clean cab element.

887
01:39:48,000 --> 01:39:51,000
And there's a misnomer there. They're not talking about surgically clean.

888
01:39:51,000 --> 01:39:55,000
You're talking about not breathing in the off gassing from the fire.

889
01:39:55,000 --> 01:39:58,000
But that was because they were burying their friends and they were sick of it.

890
01:39:58,000 --> 01:40:08,000
But one of the things I see now is this kind of, as you said, machismo bullshit from this small but very loud section like, you know, clean cabs, stop grabs.

891
01:40:08,000 --> 01:40:18,000
No, no. If you're running off an engine with your pack on and you haven't even looked at the fire and you're leaping in, you're probably going to die in the fire.

892
01:40:18,000 --> 01:40:25,000
There's a reason why we take our time and why you're looking and assessing and listening to your LT or your captain or doing a 360.

893
01:40:25,000 --> 01:40:29,000
You're snapping on your pack and then you're ready to go.

894
01:40:29,000 --> 01:40:33,000
But you don't need to be completely masked out, breathing air inside an engine.

895
01:40:33,000 --> 01:40:41,000
So that that whole mindset needs to change. If we're going to be good at what we do, take that moment while you take it.

896
01:40:41,000 --> 01:40:44,000
I love the packs on the outside. I was a tiller man in California and that's where my pack was.

897
01:40:44,000 --> 01:40:48,000
And it took six seconds to throw it on my shoulder and snap it together.

898
01:40:48,000 --> 01:40:55,000
So, you know, I think there's a lot of that almost like romanticizing about the dirty gear.

899
01:40:55,000 --> 01:41:02,000
There's nothing romantic about watching a coffin with an American flag over, which is then folded and given to grieving children, wives and husbands.

900
01:41:02,000 --> 01:41:05,000
So they need to get over that.

901
01:41:05,000 --> 01:41:12,000
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's you know, it is the culture and the culture is hard to change.

902
01:41:12,000 --> 01:41:20,000
And, you know, there's only like two times a fireman complains when he goes to work and when he does.

903
01:41:20,000 --> 01:41:26,000
And, you know, there's there's only, you know, that Dennis Lear was telling me about.

904
01:41:26,000 --> 01:41:32,000
So most of the guys said about we, you know, we hate change and the only thing we hate as firemen, we hate change.

905
01:41:32,000 --> 01:41:35,000
The only thing we hate more than change is when things stay the same.

906
01:41:35,000 --> 01:41:41,000
You know, it's so listen, it's 2021.

907
01:41:41,000 --> 01:41:45,000
A lot of the answers are here in terms of how to protect ourselves.

908
01:41:45,000 --> 01:41:53,000
And like even the last 20 years, these answers have arrived and we know that the fire loans are just poison shit.

909
01:41:53,000 --> 01:42:07,000
You know, off gassing 800 times greater carbon emission, you know, black fire and, you know, smoke that just forget about it and blow your head off.

910
01:42:07,000 --> 01:42:10,000
And not and I'm not putting myself in those situations.

911
01:42:10,000 --> 01:42:18,000
I'm not saying that I'm experiencing that, but I know that, you know, that when it is going off, just be careful.

912
01:42:18,000 --> 01:42:25,000
Just take, you know, and if you have to be the jerk and the dick and the captain who says, bro, you know, put the mask on.

913
01:42:25,000 --> 01:42:27,000
I'm just pulling ceiling. Yeah.

914
01:42:27,000 --> 01:42:31,000
The fucking place is still on fire. So just put your fucking mask on, you know.

915
01:42:31,000 --> 01:42:35,000
And we had it. We were pulling ceiling like three or four weeks ago.

916
01:42:35,000 --> 01:42:40,000
And I don't know what was burning, but I had the mask on, took it off.

917
01:42:40,000 --> 01:42:44,000
I was, you know, switching out guys because it was a big task.

918
01:42:44,000 --> 01:42:48,000
And, you know, give me two fresh guys, give me that big guy over there.

919
01:42:48,000 --> 01:42:52,000
And I got near the door and the smoke hit me and it just felt like getting punched in the chest.

920
01:42:52,000 --> 01:42:56,000
I was like, fuck this. And I moved out a little further.

921
01:42:56,000 --> 01:43:04,000
You know, at 61 years old, I'm not interested in breathing, like, you know, taking the meal any longer.

922
01:43:04,000 --> 01:43:09,000
No. When I first got hired with Anaheim, one of the captains is now actually the chief, the fire chief.

923
01:43:09,000 --> 01:43:16,000
He's a big, big guy and he was outside and he was just kind of like doing a 360, but he was kind of close.

924
01:43:16,000 --> 01:43:23,000
And I don't know if it was a host stream or whatever, but there was, you know, superheated gases came through the window.

925
01:43:23,000 --> 01:43:27,000
He took a breath and he was intubated for days. So in that one moment.

926
01:43:27,000 --> 01:43:34,000
So, you know, it's the only thing that can change overnight on the fire ground is everything.

927
01:43:34,000 --> 01:43:40,000
And that fire, I was telling you, with Billy Goldfeder, you know, I sent somebody down to see where's the seat.

928
01:43:40,000 --> 01:43:43,000
And I could see the guy was sitting a little. He wasn't really making it.

929
01:43:43,000 --> 01:43:48,000
I said, come on back out. And I pulled him. And then I tried to get under the smoke without my mask.

930
01:43:48,000 --> 01:43:51,000
And I'm telling you, boy, I didn't get very far.

931
01:43:51,000 --> 01:43:55,000
I felt like literally getting punched in the throat.

932
01:43:55,000 --> 01:44:00,000
And so I masked up and went down and I said, oh, it's in a utility room back here.

933
01:44:00,000 --> 01:44:04,000
And but, yeah, there's no reason to do it anymore to show that you're macho.

934
01:44:04,000 --> 01:44:11,000
It's like, and I think the new generation, you know, that point is being expressed to them.

935
01:44:11,000 --> 01:44:18,000
And again, it's the culture begins in your training, begins with your officers.

936
01:44:18,000 --> 01:44:25,000
And hopefully, you know, a lot more guys, you know, because you're sitting at these funerals.

937
01:44:25,000 --> 01:44:32,000
And I've gone to my fair share of funerals and you're thinking, you know, I needed to be here.

938
01:44:32,000 --> 01:44:37,000
I didn't need to be here because this guy conducted himself on the fire ground.

939
01:44:37,000 --> 01:44:46,000
It was a funeral for a poor kid, Jared Lloyd, Lieutenant Jared Lloyd, Spring Valley, the height of valor.

940
01:44:46,000 --> 01:44:50,000
You know, masked up trying to evacuate an old age home.

941
01:44:50,000 --> 01:44:55,000
A lot of code violations in this old age home, the spring course system was probably turned off.

942
01:44:55,000 --> 01:44:58,000
But they rescued a bunch of people.

943
01:44:58,000 --> 01:45:04,000
And this poor kid got caught in a collapse and just a good kid doing everything right.

944
01:45:04,000 --> 01:45:07,000
We were at his funeral, I think, in April.

945
01:45:07,000 --> 01:45:12,000
And, you know, it's it's it's you got to respect it.

946
01:45:12,000 --> 01:45:16,000
That's all there is to it. You have to respect it. You have to respect it.

947
01:45:16,000 --> 01:45:22,000
Respect is lacking in our culture, I think a little more than it used to be.

948
01:45:22,000 --> 01:45:27,000
But, you know, the fire service will straighten you out.

949
01:45:27,000 --> 01:45:31,000
You know, there's there's there's spiritual awakenings and there's rude awakenings.

950
01:45:31,000 --> 01:45:35,000
And you can be rudely awakened very quickly, very quickly.

951
01:45:35,000 --> 01:45:39,000
Absolutely. Well, I got one more area to touch on before we go to the closing questions.

952
01:45:39,000 --> 01:45:42,000
If you're still OK with time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

953
01:45:42,000 --> 01:45:45,000
Beautiful. All right. Well, you mentioned Ron Stalworth.

954
01:45:45,000 --> 01:45:49,000
I had Ron on the show. So an incredible story.

955
01:45:49,000 --> 01:45:54,000
So what was it like working on Black Klansmen? Oh, did I mention Ron?

956
01:45:54,000 --> 01:45:59,000
I think you said I think you said Ron was one of the people on the fire ground that tried the training.

957
01:45:59,000 --> 01:46:03,000
Did I did I pick up on that? No, it wasn't. No, Ron was not.

958
01:46:03,000 --> 01:46:07,000
But anyway, I'll talk about Ron.

959
01:46:07,000 --> 01:46:15,000
Again, you know, in my career, you do these films and you meet people like Rudy Reyes.

960
01:46:15,000 --> 01:46:21,000
You know what I mean? I've met Jim Lovell, Apollo 8, Apollo 11.

961
01:46:21,000 --> 01:46:25,000
I've met these in Apollo 13.

962
01:46:25,000 --> 01:46:32,000
And certainly Ron Stalworth is in the, you know, the higher echelon.

963
01:46:32,000 --> 01:46:39,000
He is he's a quiet, soft spoken professional, literally the quiet professional.

964
01:46:39,000 --> 01:46:48,000
And you find out about his time in the Colorado Springs Police Department and the way he conducted this operation.

965
01:46:48,000 --> 01:46:55,000
And, you know, it's it's daunting to listen to. It's like, holy smokes.

966
01:46:55,000 --> 01:46:59,000
So, yeah, he was another great guy to get to work with.

967
01:46:59,000 --> 01:47:05,000
And actually, you know, you have a question. Here's the guy, you know, ask your question.

968
01:47:05,000 --> 01:47:11,000
And because sometimes you don't get that, you know, you don't get the when you get a good consultant.

969
01:47:11,000 --> 01:47:14,000
But very rarely do you get the guy.

970
01:47:14,000 --> 01:47:16,000
There was a film I did called Bright Shining Lie.

971
01:47:16,000 --> 01:47:24,000
It was an HBO movie about based on Neil Sheehan's Pulitzer Prize winning book about the Vietnam War,

972
01:47:24,000 --> 01:47:31,000
about a man named John Paul Vann, who became a civilian two star general and one of the.

973
01:47:31,000 --> 01:47:34,000
Captains, he was a captain.

974
01:47:34,000 --> 01:47:42,000
In the book, he retired as a colonel. His name was Richard Cassidy, and he was on set with us in Thailand.

975
01:47:42,000 --> 01:47:47,000
And you could turn to him and ask a question and he'd give you the answer.

976
01:47:47,000 --> 01:47:55,000
I remember one day we were doing simulating the. A B 52 strike, you know, in Doctel.

977
01:47:55,000 --> 01:48:02,000
You know, a lot of NBA were. KIA that day.

978
01:48:02,000 --> 01:48:07,000
Anyway, I said to him. Hey, Colonel, is this the way it was?

979
01:48:07,000 --> 01:48:14,000
And he's like, what? I said, you know, are we getting it like anywhere? Oh, no, no.

980
01:48:14,000 --> 01:48:20,000
Your job is to like tell these guys, no, no, no, you can't simulate a B 52 arc like, you know, strike.

981
01:48:20,000 --> 01:48:24,000
And I was like, well, I guess you can't because these guys had so much.

982
01:48:24,000 --> 01:48:34,000
Explosives and these jerry cans and these 55 gallon drums, as far as the eye could see, and they were going boom, boom, boom, going, you know, 70, 80 feet in the air.

983
01:48:34,000 --> 01:48:36,000
And he said, no, that ain't it.

984
01:48:36,000 --> 01:48:44,000
It's like, oh, God, but getting back to Ron Stallworth, he just sent me something in the mail like this detective's badge.

985
01:48:44,000 --> 01:48:55,000
And, you know, when he when he produces that card that says Ron Stallworth, you know, a member of the KKK, it's like and it's signed by David Duke.

986
01:48:55,000 --> 01:49:01,000
You're like, you know, what do you say to somebody like that?

987
01:49:01,000 --> 01:49:07,000
It's like you literally say you must be out of your mind. I mean, but in the best way possible.

988
01:49:07,000 --> 01:49:17,000
Gentlemen, his wife, Patsy, the nicest people you would ever want to meet and work with Spike ultimately.

989
01:49:17,000 --> 01:49:20,000
Spike is a terrific guy.

990
01:49:20,000 --> 01:49:35,000
I got to do another film with him called Miracle at St. Anna, where I played General Ned Almond, who was in charge of the 92nd Division of the Buffalo Soldiers, another guy who actually lived.

991
01:49:35,000 --> 01:49:39,000
So I got to read about him.

992
01:49:39,000 --> 01:49:41,000
It's fun because I'm a history buff.

993
01:49:41,000 --> 01:49:55,000
So when you get to I remember Generation Kill being online for the Chow, my first day there in Namibia, my third trip to Namibia and Rudy Reyes is in front of me on the food line.

994
01:49:55,000 --> 01:49:58,000
He was, hey, who are you?

995
01:49:58,000 --> 01:49:59,000
I'm Bob Burke.

996
01:49:59,000 --> 01:50:00,000
He goes, oh, yeah. Who are you playing?

997
01:50:00,000 --> 01:50:03,000
I said, playing General James Mattis.

998
01:50:03,000 --> 01:50:04,000
Fuck me.

999
01:50:04,000 --> 01:50:05,000
Fuck.

1000
01:50:05,000 --> 01:50:06,000
God damn it.

1001
01:50:06,000 --> 01:50:11,000
And he's like, fuck it. Like because I was in pretty good shape those days.

1002
01:50:11,000 --> 01:50:14,000
They didn't send us some bullshit.

1003
01:50:14,000 --> 01:50:16,000
And he was he was just really.

1004
01:50:16,000 --> 01:50:19,000
Listen, I was happy that he was happy.

1005
01:50:19,000 --> 01:50:21,000
But, you know, we stayed in touch.

1006
01:50:21,000 --> 01:50:28,000
He has with my fire department, we do a warrior appreciation event.

1007
01:50:28,000 --> 01:50:47,000
COVID obviously shot us down, but, you know, we invite wounded veterans, able bodied veterans, what have you, to come out and just, you know, have a bit of a parade and big old meal and, you know, give literally cash and prizes.

1008
01:50:47,000 --> 01:50:58,000
And Rudy, we invited Rudy and there's a couple of Marine contingents in New York, you know, that I work with a foundation called the Vet Hack.

1009
01:50:58,000 --> 01:51:01,000
Anyway, so we invite Rudy, but then I forget about it.

1010
01:51:01,000 --> 01:51:02,000
You know what I mean?

1011
01:51:02,000 --> 01:51:09,000
And all of a sudden, the parade is happening and I'm in charge of the color guard, what have you.

1012
01:51:09,000 --> 01:51:17,000
And I see this dude, like this jack dude, like leaning against the garbage can and it's Rudy. I'm like, Rudy, like you're here.

1013
01:51:17,000 --> 01:51:19,000
And he goes, yeah, you invited me, right?

1014
01:51:19,000 --> 01:51:21,000
I said, yeah, I said, you're supposed to be the parade.

1015
01:51:21,000 --> 01:51:23,000
He goes, yeah, no, I'm not going to be in the dog.

1016
01:51:23,000 --> 01:51:26,000
I'll get the chow and the booze afterwards.

1017
01:51:26,000 --> 01:51:39,000
Dude, you flew in from California and the guy who's in charge of the Marines here, former Marine Sergeant named Gene Wu, who I work with a lot. And he goes, oh, yeah, Gene's my brother. I come anywhere from Gene.

1018
01:51:39,000 --> 01:51:49,000
They said it so matter of factly, you know, like flying in from L.A. on my own dime to be here at this moment on time for you all and for my brothers.

1019
01:51:49,000 --> 01:52:00,000
It was just so matter of fact, it was like, what's the big deal? And I was like, I was I couldn't thank him enough, you know, and and then he does he does that a lot.

1020
01:52:00,000 --> 01:52:11,000
He just pops up. We had these it's called the vet hack rock march and you invite all the services, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, and then we all get together.

1021
01:52:11,000 --> 01:52:22,000
Central Park and we do PT and then we march around its designated route in Manhattan and we go to a police station and they have hot dogs and hamburgers.

1022
01:52:22,000 --> 01:52:37,000
It's just a day of fellowship amongst these services. And, you know, you know, a lot of connection in terms of job prospects and job hunting and that type of thing can happen.

1023
01:52:37,000 --> 01:52:45,000
And it's a great thing. You know, all this interservice rivalry and disparagement and bullshit.

1024
01:52:45,000 --> 01:52:50,000
You know, you can get from the Coast Guard talking to a fucking Marine and it's like, yeah, Jimmy, call Monday.

1025
01:52:50,000 --> 01:52:54,000
We have a job for an IT opening. It's all it's very beautiful with this new generation.

1026
01:52:54,000 --> 01:52:58,000
They're not again, harkening back to this.

1027
01:52:58,000 --> 01:53:08,000
I'm not saying that there's not an element of it, but there's a lot of fellowship and these guys are having to put the pieces back together and they're doing it themselves.

1028
01:53:08,000 --> 01:53:19,000
And we as civilians, we have a lot to learn from these guys. These guys have lessons in life and service that we can't even dream of.

1029
01:53:19,000 --> 01:53:26,000
So as civilians, we have a lot to learn from them. That's why, you know, that's one of the reasons I support them.

1030
01:53:26,000 --> 01:53:29,000
Especially something like Rudy.

1031
01:53:29,000 --> 01:53:35,000
Plus, he's like, some days I don't want to work out and I'll think, oh, fucking Rudy comes up with my Instagram page.

1032
01:53:35,000 --> 01:53:37,000
I'm like, I gotta go.

1033
01:53:37,000 --> 01:53:40,000
His tiny pants. No shirt.

1034
01:53:40,000 --> 01:53:53,000
Now I got to go out and crucify myself just to try and, you know, you know, he's such an inspiration and, you know, and literally a guy who walks the walk almost every moment of his waking life.

1035
01:53:53,000 --> 01:54:01,000
Yeah, and just such positivity as well. I know he does a lot of work with Force Blue and I have one of his teammates from there.

1036
01:54:01,000 --> 01:54:08,000
But yeah, I'm just kind of making sure we can reach out and get some dates. But I mean, he was going to a while ago. We just kind of reconnected.

1037
01:54:08,000 --> 01:54:16,000
So I'm hoping that will happen soon. Can hear his whole perspective, not only of the real work that he did, but also his experience on set.

1038
01:54:16,000 --> 01:54:21,000
With you portraying General Mattis, were you ever able to meet him?

1039
01:54:21,000 --> 01:54:33,000
No, I was not. And I think the best we were able to do months later was get his assistant or some colonel who was his aide on a phone.

1040
01:54:33,000 --> 01:54:40,000
And that happened because I'm going to try and truncate this story.

1041
01:54:40,000 --> 01:54:46,000
My mother had a doctor and this doctor had a son and the son wanted to be a Marine.

1042
01:54:46,000 --> 01:54:56,000
Only the son had cancer when he was six years old and 11 years old. And MEPs, Medical Evaluation Processing Center, MEPs would not let him be a Marine.

1043
01:54:56,000 --> 01:55:00,000
They said, You're a cancer boy. You're not going to be a Marine. And he asked me could I help.

1044
01:55:00,000 --> 01:55:12,000
And we wrote to Chuck Schumer, Peter King, all these congressmen. And then myself and this other Marine, former Marine Sergeant, tried to get a message to General Mattis.

1045
01:55:12,000 --> 01:55:17,000
General Mattis, he was still with the Marines then. And we got a reply.

1046
01:55:17,000 --> 01:55:26,000
What's the kid's date of birth, social, who's his recruiter after 18 months of trying to get to Mattis?

1047
01:55:26,000 --> 01:55:31,000
Because Mattis did send a message to me that said, whatever, if I could ever do anything for you.

1048
01:55:31,000 --> 01:55:35,000
I'm like, well, what can this guy do for me? Well, certainly.

1049
01:55:35,000 --> 01:55:43,000
I said, this is the actor who betrayed you in Generation Kill. And he's asking that the Marines reevaluate this prospective recruit.

1050
01:55:43,000 --> 01:55:49,000
Well, the kid calls one day and he says, I'm in. My recruiter calls. I'm in.

1051
01:55:49,000 --> 01:55:55,000
And I said, That's great. Congratulations. I can't tell this story without filling up.

1052
01:55:55,000 --> 01:56:02,000
I said to him, Justin, why do you want to be a Marine so bad? And he goes, Oh, Mr. Burke, he goes,

1053
01:56:02,000 --> 01:56:10,000
When I was having my chemo, I didn't have the chemo in a place for children. I had it in the hospital. It was very scary.

1054
01:56:10,000 --> 01:56:20,000
He goes, I want to go back to that hospital. If there's kids there, I want to be in my dress flues and tell them they can get through this.

1055
01:56:20,000 --> 01:56:33,000
So, you know, the ideals of being a Marine, you know, being efficient killer, that was not what was foremost in his mind.

1056
01:56:33,000 --> 01:56:45,000
What was foremost in his mind was instilling children with power and confidence and hope and faith.

1057
01:56:45,000 --> 01:56:52,000
And I think that, you know, isn't the highest ideals in the Marine Corps. And he was able he's over in Okinawa.

1058
01:56:52,000 --> 01:57:00,000
He's I think with Marine intelligence now. He's on a second ending a second tour.

1059
01:57:00,000 --> 01:57:07,000
Just a complete consummate gentleman. He's got a wife, beautiful wife and child.

1060
01:57:07,000 --> 01:57:19,000
Yeah, he's a special guy. We stay in touch. I don't want to mention his name here, but if he hears this, he'll know who he is.

1061
01:57:19,000 --> 01:57:22,000
Beautiful. I'm so glad I asked that question.

1062
01:57:22,000 --> 01:57:31,000
I want to tell you a story. As he was finishing recruit training at Parris Island, the DI or somebody comes in and says, I want you to write a one page.

1063
01:57:31,000 --> 01:57:38,000
Everybody one page as to why you wanted to become a Marine. And he tells the story that I just told you to go back to.

1064
01:57:38,000 --> 01:57:42,000
And it's for Stars and Stripes magazine, the one that's pretty good will be picked.

1065
01:57:42,000 --> 01:57:49,000
So finally, his one is picked and it's the items and he goes, are you fucking are you fucking trying to make me cry?

1066
01:57:49,000 --> 01:57:54,000
And he goes, is this shit true? And he's like, yeah, yeah, Sergeant. Are you fucking?

1067
01:57:54,000 --> 01:58:02,000
And so finally, next thing you know, he's with the commandant, you know, getting his picture taken and his story was picked.

1068
01:58:02,000 --> 01:58:08,000
It's all true. You know, you know, cancer twice as a kid becomes Marine.

1069
01:58:08,000 --> 01:58:11,000
You know, just won't take no for an answer.

1070
01:58:11,000 --> 01:58:22,000
That is absolutely amazing. And again, I mean, as you said, with the vets helping each other at the the vet hack event, you know, I think that's the thing is people helping people, you know, and through.

1071
01:58:22,000 --> 01:58:31,000
I had an opportunity to help a firefighter who was terminally ill through some of the connections I've made through this.

1072
01:58:31,000 --> 01:58:37,000
And so, you know, there's this path that we lead when we're able to, you know, to help someone else out and give back.

1073
01:58:37,000 --> 01:58:43,000
I mean, that's, you know, that's humanity. And what an incredibly powerful story that is.

1074
01:58:43,000 --> 01:58:56,000
I hope I hope it I hope it. I hope it jumps over all these, you know, these walls of these political walls and these ideological walls.

1075
01:58:56,000 --> 01:59:03,000
They mean nothing. I think they're meant to keep us away from each other and control each other.

1076
01:59:03,000 --> 01:59:18,000
You know, I'm very disheartened by it. This is the United States of America. And and when I read things like the left wing and the right wing is part of the same bird, you know, and the Democrats and Republicans.

1077
01:59:18,000 --> 01:59:25,000
I would, you know, you go out on a call, you're not. Excuse me. Are you a Republican? Bullshit. You're pulling line off that truck so fast.

1078
01:59:25,000 --> 01:59:35,000
You know, you're getting that stretcher ready. You're not asking somebody's ideology, you know, or their sexual orientation or their race or their fucking nothing.

1079
01:59:35,000 --> 01:59:39,000
You're there to help them as one human to another human.

1080
01:59:39,000 --> 01:59:48,000
So let's see if you have the balls and let's see if you have the commitment to keep it there.

1081
01:59:48,000 --> 02:00:00,000
You know what I mean? You know, all this bullshit that goes on, all this bullshit, as far as I'm concerned, it's a waste of time and energy.

1082
02:00:00,000 --> 02:00:05,000
And we could be pulling together. You know, that's the way the whole country started pulling together.

1083
02:00:05,000 --> 02:00:10,000
And I can't stand it when people try and separate us. You know what I mean?

1084
02:00:10,000 --> 02:00:16,000
Or you're stupid and you're stupid and you don't know what the fuck and fuck you. You know what I mean?

1085
02:00:16,000 --> 02:00:20,000
It's just it's just a waste of time and energy. You know what I mean?

1086
02:00:20,000 --> 02:00:26,000
I don't really care what anybody else does there. You know, they want to wear pink fucking hats or what?

1087
02:00:26,000 --> 02:00:33,000
It's all good. That's what we're here for. It's an experiment who says, you know, racism, it doesn't serve our species.

1088
02:00:33,000 --> 02:00:39,000
It just doesn't serve us. If you go 150 feet and you look down on a species, it doesn't serve us.

1089
02:00:39,000 --> 02:00:47,000
You know, pollution doesn't serve us. You know, it's like get out there and clean up, bro.

1090
02:00:47,000 --> 02:00:55,000
You got to understand that, you know, resources and you know, what's what's not finite, though, is love and compassion.

1091
02:00:55,000 --> 02:01:01,000
There's plenty of it. You just got to mine it from within yourself and extend it.

1092
02:01:01,000 --> 02:01:04,000
But these other resources are fine.

1093
02:01:04,000 --> 02:01:15,000
So but yeah, the whole ideological and political thing that pisses me off greatly because half the fucking guys who promote this shit never wore a uniform.

1094
02:01:15,000 --> 02:01:22,000
Their family never wore a uniform and not saying that I'm some kind of, you know, B all or anything.

1095
02:01:22,000 --> 02:01:29,000
There's something about like a guy who's never been, you know, roughed up by life.

1096
02:01:29,000 --> 02:01:39,000
You know what I mean? And, you know, or sits on his armchair, you know, stuffing Cheetos up his ass and talking about what a bad guy this guy that guy is.

1097
02:01:39,000 --> 02:01:43,000
Everybody deserves a hand up, I believe.

1098
02:01:43,000 --> 02:01:48,000
You know, I think that'll work for us. But but all this other energy wasted.

1099
02:01:48,000 --> 02:01:52,000
It's just it's just wasted energy. It's not going to work. It's not going to help us in the end.

1100
02:01:52,000 --> 02:01:58,000
No, no. And I agree. You are preaching to the choir. I've talked about this all the time on the show.

1101
02:01:58,000 --> 02:02:04,000
I see my friends. I just spoke to a friend yesterday and I was checking on them and immediately started talking about the Democrats who are in the country.

1102
02:02:04,000 --> 02:02:13,000
And I'm like, oh, fuck. Here we go again. You know, I'll tell you right now, when we were kids, we got we used to call it crap in the can.

1103
02:02:13,000 --> 02:02:18,000
My brother and I, we marched down this avenue, eight, nine, ten years old.

1104
02:02:18,000 --> 02:02:23,000
And we come home with these cans of food that was given to us. I think it was even illegal.

1105
02:02:23,000 --> 02:02:28,000
You know, we weren't signed up for anything, but we went down and got them. You know what I mean?

1106
02:02:28,000 --> 02:02:32,000
And my mother had help from Catholic charities.

1107
02:02:32,000 --> 02:02:37,000
She got this terrible infection in her hands and she had three small girls and we're living in a tenement.

1108
02:02:37,000 --> 02:02:46,000
And and so we had we needed help. You know, and and and I just, you know,

1109
02:02:46,000 --> 02:02:50,000
one of the great things about the way I was read was there was everything it was colorblind.

1110
02:02:50,000 --> 02:02:54,000
We saw people for who they were because in our neighborhood, we had to pull together.

1111
02:02:54,000 --> 02:03:01,000
Everybody had to pull together. And or because the sinking, you're really paycheck away from being homeless.

1112
02:03:01,000 --> 02:03:06,000
You know what I mean? And and so everybody, you know, you could see it, the butcher shop.

1113
02:03:06,000 --> 02:03:09,000
Oh, pay me Friday. It's all right. You know, and then Friday would come in.

1114
02:03:09,000 --> 02:03:13,000
I forget about it. You know, people help each other. But now there's more people.

1115
02:03:13,000 --> 02:03:20,000
There's more, you know, again, this is big disparate. We're getting very sociologically.

1116
02:03:20,000 --> 02:03:23,000
No, no, it's brilliant. I love it. It was funny as well.

1117
02:03:23,000 --> 02:03:30,000
I get so much more English and I swear a lot more when I get passionate and you just got so much more New York esque when you were talking.

1118
02:03:30,000 --> 02:03:34,000
Yeah, no, I know. I let the F bomb so I find it.

1119
02:03:34,000 --> 02:03:39,000
It comes back. I could track classically trained.

1120
02:03:39,000 --> 02:03:44,000
Here it comes. Where were you from?

1121
02:03:44,000 --> 02:03:48,000
So I'm from a place called Bath, which is a beautiful Roman city near Stonehenge.

1122
02:03:48,000 --> 02:03:51,000
So the southwest countryside area, beautiful part of the world.

1123
02:03:51,000 --> 02:03:58,000
Wow. Southwest. That's intense. That's amazing. Yeah. Wow.

1124
02:03:58,000 --> 02:04:06,000
I didn't I've never spent much time in London a bunch of times, you know, walking around the tourist spots and then back onto the plane.

1125
02:04:06,000 --> 02:04:12,000
But but I spent a lot of time in Ireland.

1126
02:04:12,000 --> 02:04:15,000
Wow. That's that's and why did you leave there?

1127
02:04:15,000 --> 02:04:20,000
So my story actually involved show business, funny enough, in a way.

1128
02:04:20,000 --> 02:04:26,000
I went on a round the world trip with a girlfriend. We were kind of pretty much fragmented by that point.

1129
02:04:26,000 --> 02:04:33,000
And when I was in Australia, I got a job working for Universal Studios as a stunt man, opening the park, the theme park in Osaka.

1130
02:04:33,000 --> 02:04:39,000
I was playing the T1000 in the Terminator 2 show. Robert Patrick's character doubling him.

1131
02:04:39,000 --> 02:04:46,000
That's hilarious. Yeah. I'm working on getting Robert on the show because he was in Ladder 49 too, but we'll see.

1132
02:04:46,000 --> 02:04:52,000
But so anyway, I met an American girl, my son's mother, my now ex-wife.

1133
02:04:52,000 --> 02:05:00,000
I'm remarried very, very, very happily. But so it was either, you know, moved to the UK and stay there or move back to the US.

1134
02:05:00,000 --> 02:05:04,000
I'd worked here for several years on summer camps, so I knew I loved it over here.

1135
02:05:04,000 --> 02:05:09,000
So that was what brought me over. And I'd been told as a young boy, I was colorblind.

1136
02:05:09,000 --> 02:05:13,000
I could never be a firefighter. Well, when I came over here, had an epiphany. Yeah, I read that.

1137
02:05:13,000 --> 02:05:16,000
Yeah. I mean, I'm not the sharpest tool in the box, as I always say.

1138
02:05:16,000 --> 02:05:24,000
It took me a long time to figure out I wasn't. But challenge the test and start in my fire service career here.

1139
02:05:24,000 --> 02:05:37,000
Oh, I see. Oh, OK. Wow. That's pretty wild. You talk about a circumventive way to arrive at the fire service.

1140
02:05:37,000 --> 02:05:44,000
Wow. That's pretty interesting. That's pretty interesting. And where are you stationed now?

1141
02:05:44,000 --> 02:05:51,000
So I actually transitioned out. We started talking before we started recording that picture with all the names on my back.

1142
02:05:51,000 --> 02:05:57,000
That's what started me, made me start this podcast. I was looking for good wellness information.

1143
02:05:57,000 --> 02:06:03,000
My background is also an athlete, a coach, a sports science major in college.

1144
02:06:03,000 --> 02:06:10,000
And so by no means an expert, but definitely an understanding of wellness and the information we should be getting.

1145
02:06:10,000 --> 02:06:16,000
As podcasts started becoming more popular and I started listening to them, I'm like, wow, these people have information that the fire service needs.

1146
02:06:16,000 --> 02:06:24,000
And it just wasn't permeating our siloed profession. So I started it five years ago.

1147
02:06:24,000 --> 02:06:31,000
And then three years ago, I was at I moved around because I was divorced and was taking care of my son.

1148
02:06:31,000 --> 02:06:37,000
And I was in, let's just say, a very complacent department. And so I was rehabbing a knee injury, was at a crossroads.

1149
02:06:37,000 --> 02:06:44,000
And I'm like, you know what? I told my wife now, I'm like, I'm going to take my pension, cash it out, pay myself a salary.

1150
02:06:44,000 --> 02:06:50,000
I'm going to go all in on the podcast. So I've actually been, retired is the wrong word because I'm not retired.

1151
02:06:50,000 --> 02:07:02,000
I don't get any money. But I've transitioned out to doing this full time because the force multiplier effect of thousands of people listening to a conversation like this,

1152
02:07:02,000 --> 02:07:08,000
to me now outweighs riding a rig, running one call at a time. So I did it for 14 years, absolutely loved it.

1153
02:07:08,000 --> 02:07:17,000
But, you know, the universe God, they basically gave me a kick, swift up the ass and said, I mean, a swift kick up the ass and said, all right, this is what you're supposed to do now.

1154
02:07:17,000 --> 02:07:26,000
So here I am from from riding the tiller bucket of a truck to sitting behind a microphone.

1155
02:07:26,000 --> 02:07:43,000
You know, Father Judge, the day before 9-11, he was up at some engine company or ladder company and he gave the speech and that speech is referred to a lot.

1156
02:07:43,000 --> 02:07:49,000
And, you know, he talks about, you know, the fire service being the greatest job.

1157
02:07:49,000 --> 02:08:02,000
And he I don't know the speech and, you know, I should know it. I should have it committed to our place. There's one sentence where he says something like, you never know what God wants you to do when you get off that rig.

1158
02:08:02,000 --> 02:08:08,000
And but and I remember that sentence. And but the rig is different. The rig can be leaving your home.

1159
02:08:08,000 --> 02:08:29,000
The rig can be doesn't have to be the fire apparatus. You know what I mean? It's just like, you know, finding your purpose. You, James could potentially be of greater service doing this than being on a fire truck.

1160
02:08:29,000 --> 02:08:38,000
You know what I mean? And so it's just really having the facility and the clarity to listen to what you're calling is in 14 years.

1161
02:08:38,000 --> 02:08:44,000
I mean, you've earned your stripes. So, you know, good on you.

1162
02:08:44,000 --> 02:08:56,000
Thank you. Well, it was so much fun as well. I mean, it really was. And it was interesting, though. I've spoken to quite a few operators and there's a kind of shift that happens around 10 years, I think, as a career firefighter where, you know,

1163
02:08:56,000 --> 02:09:05,000
as you were talking about your first fire was a bomb burner. You know, a lot of a lot of ours, you know, a room of contents or mattress fire or, you know, kitchen cabinets, whatever it is.

1164
02:09:05,000 --> 02:09:16,000
And when you're a rookie, you're like, oh, my God, you know, I just slayed the dragon. And then 10 years in, you know, it needs to be, you know, fully involved, maybe one room not involved to really get your heart rate up.

1165
02:09:16,000 --> 02:09:29,000
So, you know, I think I got to see some great stuff. I was at departments, definitely the peak. But, you know, like I tell people when we transition out, whether you're injured, whether you're retiring, you know, whatever it is, it's the same purpose.

1166
02:09:29,000 --> 02:09:36,000
Just like you said, just like Father Judge said, it's the same mission. You're just wearing a different uniform.

1167
02:09:36,000 --> 02:09:52,000
A friend of mine, he's one of the assistant chiefs, recently said to me, he goes, hey, be kind of quiet lately. I said, dude, you know better than to say that. He goes, I could use a job.

1168
02:09:52,000 --> 02:10:06,000
And right now, like I'm the happiest guy in the world, you know, when, you know, the training is up, let's say, but the nonsense, the craziness is low. I don't need it anymore. You know what I mean?

1169
02:10:06,000 --> 02:10:11,000
You know, 19 years went by very quickly for me.

1170
02:10:11,000 --> 02:10:29,000
And, you know, yeah, wherever you're going to be effective, you know, wherever you feel like you're practicing seeing the presence of the universe and of God, if you want to put it, that's where you need to be.

1171
02:10:29,000 --> 02:10:45,000
And, you know, I had a bailout of an EMT, EMR class recently. I was four classes in and the work thing happened and I couldn't just study.

1172
02:10:45,000 --> 02:10:56,000
And it's my second attempt at it. My wife goes, you're never going to be an EMT. I said, I know. I just realized that. I just accepted the fact.

1173
02:10:56,000 --> 02:11:06,000
And so I had to accept that. And, you know, it's not going to happen. And it's never going to happen. I should say never. I never say never. But at the same time, it's a high probability that it won't happen.

1174
02:11:06,000 --> 02:11:14,000
But again, is that my path? I thought it was. You know, at 61 years old, I don't want to be incompetent at something. I want to be very competent.

1175
02:11:14,000 --> 02:11:29,000
I want to I want to polish the confidence. Do you know what I mean? As opposed to, you know, being in a classroom with 21 year olds again. But yeah, these types of podcasts have become very inspirational.

1176
02:11:29,000 --> 02:11:50,000
A friend of mine, Jason Bresler, is a lieutenant at Rescue 2 and he's a Marine major and his podcast, Leadership on the Fire, you know, boy, oh boy, it's super effective, super inspirational, super informative.

1177
02:11:50,000 --> 02:11:54,000
So yeah, these types of things are very, very, very important, I think. These conversations.

1178
02:11:54,000 --> 02:12:06,000
Yeah, Jason and I have just gone back and forth very briefly, but I think he was writing a book. So I don't know if his book's done, then then I'll reach out to him again, because that's what he wanted to do is wait till till that was out. But he's someone I want to get on the show at some point.

1179
02:12:06,000 --> 02:12:27,000
Terrific you being another guy just talk about walk the walk. Holy smokes. You know, reminds me of a young Patty Brown, to tell you the truth, just in terms of his Marine Corps service and his, you know, his free decor and the way he's he takes his tasks and the job seriously, but not himself so much.

1180
02:12:27,000 --> 02:12:43,000
And just a super great guy, you know, super great guy. Beautiful. Well, I'm going to transition some closing questions so I can let you go. We've been chatting over two hours and it's been incredible. But I want to be mindful of your time. Yeah, it's amazing when you get into a good conversation.

1181
02:12:43,000 --> 02:12:54,000
The first one I love to ask, is there a book that you love to recommend? It can be related to our discussion today or completely unrelated or books, plural.

1182
02:12:54,000 --> 02:12:59,000
Good question.

1183
02:12:59,000 --> 02:13:02,000
No, not one single book.

1184
02:13:02,000 --> 02:13:12,000
No problem. I'll deviate to the second one then if if that's a struggle, movies and or documentaries so any of those that you feel would be an easy answer.

1185
02:13:12,000 --> 02:13:27,000
I have to tell you, I'm in movies, I'm on television, and it wasn't until COVID that I actually watched television, you know what I mean? My wife screaming to me, you have to come and watch Game of Thrones. I'm like,

1186
02:13:27,000 --> 02:13:44,000
and or like so like, I have no allegiance to any television show I've watched a couple documentaries I've seen so many, you know, books with me it's history.

1187
02:13:44,000 --> 02:14:03,000
So, I'm fascinated by Mesoamerica, megalithic ancient cultures. I'm fascinated by who taught these fucking guys. How are they cutting stone like this? How are they placing stone like this? I'm just simply fascinated by that.

1188
02:14:03,000 --> 02:14:15,000
But no, it's funny. I read lots of, well, again, lots of history. What am I reading now?

1189
02:14:15,000 --> 02:14:27,000
I'm not reading anything but work. It's all scripts, scripts, scripts, scripts. But I'll read about Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo or Einstein.

1190
02:14:27,000 --> 02:14:36,000
Those are three Isaacson books in a row, I must say. And, you know, I do so much reading for work.

1191
02:14:36,000 --> 02:14:48,000
So, right by my bed, there's this book, The Teachings of Jesus, the Holy Bible King James Version. And let me see who it's by. Let me see how many pages this book is.

1192
02:14:48,000 --> 02:14:54,000
This book is 53 pages.

1193
02:14:54,000 --> 02:14:58,000
It's the smallest book you've ever seen in your life. It's about four inches by four inches.

1194
02:14:58,000 --> 02:15:01,000
And it's by Penguin.

1195
02:15:01,000 --> 02:15:09,000
And it's from 1995. So it's like a little pamphlet.

1196
02:15:09,000 --> 02:15:14,000
It's all in there. And I don't even call myself a Christian.

1197
02:15:14,000 --> 02:15:24,000
I was raised Catholic, blah, blah, blah, all these religions. Not my thing. But this dude, this fella here, I think he was on to something.

1198
02:15:24,000 --> 02:15:36,000
And so, you know, Buddha, Allah, whoever it is, they were all on to something. If you read them simply, it's just about a kindness.

1199
02:15:36,000 --> 02:15:47,000
That's the religion, babe, right there. Fucking just be nice to people. Start there, you know, and see what happens to you in your life in terms of karma.

1200
02:15:47,000 --> 02:15:54,000
See what comes back at you, you know, if you respect others and if you're kind to them, see what comes back to you.

1201
02:15:54,000 --> 02:16:03,000
So the book is called, it's here, it's Penguin's, Penguin 60s. It's this little Penguin pamphlet. I swear to God, I'll send you a picture of it. It's hilarious.

1202
02:16:03,000 --> 02:16:11,000
But this book I've been reading for 37 years. It's going to go back further, actually.

1203
02:16:11,000 --> 02:16:17,000
Yeah, it's, you see, because about Jesus, we're not really sure what he said. You know what I mean?

1204
02:16:17,000 --> 02:16:22,000
His brother James started a movement called The Way. It wasn't called Christianity.

1205
02:16:22,000 --> 02:16:27,000
And it was just these very simple tenets due unto others, you know, who was the least of my brothers.

1206
02:16:27,000 --> 02:16:38,000
It was really about just picking up a lowly guy. And as Father Mike used to say to me, if you go down that road, you won't have anything to worry about.

1207
02:16:38,000 --> 02:16:46,000
You know what I mean? You'll be coming. Because I said to him, Mike, I don't really know. I'm not getting this white beard and long hair thing.

1208
02:16:46,000 --> 02:16:56,000
So anyway, you asked about a book. Music, I'm going to, traditional Irish music, traditional Irish music, not we drink, we get drunk, not that Irish music.

1209
02:16:56,000 --> 02:17:06,000
Traditional, the Chieftains, Iliad Pipes, jigs, reels, that type of music. I don't know why.

1210
02:17:06,000 --> 02:17:13,000
Maybe because I heard it as a child. That's what's in my blood. When I hear it, I respond to it.

1211
02:17:13,000 --> 02:17:26,000
Traditional, not trad, they call it. And I love poetry, believe it or not. Contemporary poets, the old poets, the classical poets.

1212
02:17:26,000 --> 02:17:37,000
Obviously, drama, Shakespeare, Stimberg, Ibsen, Shaw. I'll go back and read those again, some of them.

1213
02:17:37,000 --> 02:17:44,000
So yeah, any art like that, anything that really moves me, anything that's like, well, I fucking couldn't do that, I'll tell you that.

1214
02:17:44,000 --> 02:17:49,000
Anything that moves me. And it can be anything. It can be like really anything. I'm wide open.

1215
02:17:49,000 --> 02:17:56,000
But gosh, I should have a book, but I don't. It's anything. It's all, they're all good.

1216
02:17:56,000 --> 02:17:58,000
No, that's a great book.

1217
02:17:58,000 --> 02:18:12,000
My kids will tell you, I eat books. I'll read many of them. I'll read about military drones. And then the next minute I'll be reading about, you know, megalithic structures.

1218
02:18:12,000 --> 02:18:15,000
So it's pretty diverse.

1219
02:18:15,000 --> 02:18:21,000
Beautiful. Well, thank you for that. I mean, that book, I mean, sums up what I talk about all the time. Don't be a dick, basically.

1220
02:18:21,000 --> 02:18:24,000
You can sum it up in a few words.

1221
02:18:24,000 --> 02:18:31,000
Apparently, it's a lot to ask. Just don't be a dick. Exactly. And that eliminates. Be respectful. Yes.

1222
02:18:31,000 --> 02:18:37,000
Be respectful to everybody because you know, like they say, oh, you never know. Everybody's going through a struggle. Well, that's the goddamn truth.

1223
02:18:37,000 --> 02:18:43,000
That's the truth. Everybody is going through something. Guy who's got all the money, the guy who's got the world by bullshit.

1224
02:18:43,000 --> 02:18:49,000
Everybody's going through something, you know, be mindful because you never know.

1225
02:18:49,000 --> 02:18:58,000
You never know who and how you're going to affect that. I'm like, you know, oh, Robert's on television. Oh, oh, oh, bullshit.

1226
02:18:58,000 --> 02:19:03,000
You know what I mean? What I want to present is somebody who helps the community. You know what I mean?

1227
02:19:03,000 --> 02:19:06,000
You know, I think these guys thought they were going to get something different out of me.

1228
02:19:06,000 --> 02:19:11,000
It's like, hey, he's an actor.

1229
02:19:11,000 --> 02:19:15,000
Yeah, but he's he's he wants you to clean the rig the next time you put it. You know what I mean?

1230
02:19:15,000 --> 02:19:24,000
That's what they got out of me. Hopefully, you know, it's been a privilege to be of service to be able.

1231
02:19:24,000 --> 02:19:33,000
I remember I was 40. Yes. 41 years old in class with 20 year olds and.

1232
02:19:33,000 --> 02:19:43,000
And and and so it was a privilege. It was a privilege to be able to, you know, at 41 years old, God said, now you're going to be a farming.

1233
02:19:43,000 --> 02:19:47,000
It's like, oh, you know, so anyway.

1234
02:19:47,000 --> 02:19:52,000
No, I think it's so good to hear. And like I said at the beginning of the conversation, you know, that's what I love.

1235
02:19:52,000 --> 02:19:54,000
I mean, there's people on here that are, you know, are in Hollywood.

1236
02:19:54,000 --> 02:20:00,000
There's people on here that are only known by their own department, but they're all great human beings.

1237
02:20:00,000 --> 02:20:05,000
They're all kind human beings. And it doesn't matter if you're, you know, a celebrity, quote unquote,

1238
02:20:05,000 --> 02:20:12,000
or if you're an elite sports player or a special operator or a firefighter, you know, if you're if the nucleus of who you are

1239
02:20:12,000 --> 02:20:17,000
is doing good in the world, then that's who I have on this podcast. And this is what I love.

1240
02:20:17,000 --> 02:20:21,000
And it's also good. Like Josh and I had a conversation, Josh Brolin.

1241
02:20:21,000 --> 02:20:26,000
It's like, you know, the other side of the coin is, you know, oh, what does he know? He's just an actor.

1242
02:20:26,000 --> 02:20:32,000
He needs to shut the fuck up. No, he's a human being who's been through an entire life who acts for a living.

1243
02:20:32,000 --> 02:20:38,000
And yes, there are some people, actors, plumbers, accountants who, you know, walk around like that.

1244
02:20:38,000 --> 02:20:43,000
You know, the shit doesn't stink. And there's a lot of people in the acting industry that do incredible work.

1245
02:20:43,000 --> 02:20:51,000
As you said, Dennis Leary and Steve and some of his other ones that are out there using their platforms to really do good in the world.

1246
02:20:51,000 --> 02:21:00,000
Yeah, yeah. And again, it's like the son of Irish immigrants. You know what I mean?

1247
02:21:00,000 --> 02:21:08,000
You know, the sky was the limit. We were told to get an education, go help somebody, go do something.

1248
02:21:08,000 --> 02:21:15,000
Like my dad used to say, don't tell me about it. Don't tell me your feelings and know that.

1249
02:21:15,000 --> 02:21:20,000
Do it. Go out and do it. And that was the motto.

1250
02:21:20,000 --> 02:21:27,000
Just, you know, my sister eulogized my mother. And I'll never forget it because she said my mother was not interested in your happiness.

1251
02:21:27,000 --> 02:21:31,000
I was like, what? What is she talking about? Like during the funeral?

1252
02:21:31,000 --> 02:21:35,000
My mother wasn't interested. And she said, my mother wanted results.

1253
02:21:35,000 --> 02:21:40,000
She wanted to know what you were doing and were you being effective and were you being successful at it?

1254
02:21:40,000 --> 02:21:48,000
Were you trying hard enough? And if you all those things, if you were doing the best you could and you were getting results,

1255
02:21:48,000 --> 02:21:53,000
well, then the happiness would take care of itself. She knew she couldn't give you the happiness.

1256
02:21:53,000 --> 02:21:58,000
You had to give it to yourself. And I said, oh, okay. Yeah, I agree with that.

1257
02:21:58,000 --> 02:22:05,000
But nobody took my sister eulogizing my mother to actually formulate what the message was.

1258
02:22:05,000 --> 02:22:13,000
And I was in total agreement with it. You couldn't give anybody happiness. You had a forage for your own.

1259
02:22:13,000 --> 02:22:20,000
Absolutely. Well, one more question before we make sure everyone knows where to find you, follow you online.

1260
02:22:20,000 --> 02:22:24,000
What do you do to decompress when you're not acting, when you're not at the station?

1261
02:22:24,000 --> 02:22:26,000
Workout.

1262
02:22:26,000 --> 02:22:29,000
And what does your workout look like?

1263
02:22:29,000 --> 02:22:42,000
The kids call it the prison yard. A lot of rusty weights, a lot of jerry-rigged stuff.

1264
02:22:42,000 --> 02:22:51,000
It's right outside on my deck. My wife was here in the room with me.

1265
02:22:51,000 --> 02:22:55,000
What are some of the sounds when I work out? What does that sound like?

1266
02:22:55,000 --> 02:22:59,000
Someone's dying.

1267
02:22:59,000 --> 02:23:03,000
She goes, or someone's being killed. Because if I hit the Machuar or something like that,

1268
02:23:03,000 --> 02:23:13,000
sometimes I'll punch the posts that are holding up my deck for the hand training.

1269
02:23:13,000 --> 02:23:20,000
But yeah, I fish, I surf cast. I play basketball with my youngest son.

1270
02:23:20,000 --> 02:23:25,000
I watch my older son. He's a big time surfer, very, very good surfer.

1271
02:23:25,000 --> 02:23:30,000
And I live in an island that's a barrier island. It's seven miles out into the ocean.

1272
02:23:30,000 --> 02:23:35,000
It's just so beautiful that you can't believe it.

1273
02:23:35,000 --> 02:23:38,000
Yeah, and again, read and stuff like that to decompress.

1274
02:23:38,000 --> 02:23:41,000
And I said during the pandemic and everything, lockdown and all that,

1275
02:23:41,000 --> 02:23:50,000
I started to binge watch stuff and become compliant.

1276
02:23:50,000 --> 02:23:54,000
Because I had my son and his girlfriend and my other son.

1277
02:23:54,000 --> 02:23:58,000
And so we were all together watching these shows. And it was great.

1278
02:23:58,000 --> 02:24:04,000
It was a very happy time in lieu of what was happening.

1279
02:24:04,000 --> 02:24:11,000
So again, decompression for me is really just I like to work out.

1280
02:24:11,000 --> 02:24:17,000
And if you look at my, yeah, I'm in okay shape, but I'm not like, you know, cut up and all this.

1281
02:24:17,000 --> 02:24:20,000
I just like to go out there and hammer myself for a couple hours.

1282
02:24:20,000 --> 02:24:27,000
And, you know, I just, in my mind's eye, in my own self-evaluation perspective,

1283
02:24:27,000 --> 02:24:29,000
I don't even see myself as somebody who works out.

1284
02:24:29,000 --> 02:24:34,000
And yet I do like almost every day for an hour or two or sometimes three.

1285
02:24:34,000 --> 02:24:41,000
And, you know, it's funny because I had an argument with a guy the other day.

1286
02:24:41,000 --> 02:24:46,000
And, you know, my shoulder is bad, my hip is bad, my back is bad, my knees are going.

1287
02:24:46,000 --> 02:24:49,000
And he goes, that's not being in shape, Bob.

1288
02:24:49,000 --> 02:24:53,000
And I said, wow, you're right. You know, being in shape is about being in shape.

1289
02:24:53,000 --> 02:24:56,000
It's about feeling good. It's about being effective in your body.

1290
02:24:56,000 --> 02:24:59,000
And none of those things are true for me.

1291
02:24:59,000 --> 02:25:02,000
He goes, you're out there hammering yourself.

1292
02:25:02,000 --> 02:25:05,000
And I was like, yeah. And he goes, yeah, that's not it, bro.

1293
02:25:05,000 --> 02:25:10,000
And so, oh, God, someday I'll get to yoga, maybe when I'm 90 or something like this,

1294
02:25:10,000 --> 02:25:13,000
because everybody's slamming me in the head for 20 years.

1295
02:25:13,000 --> 02:25:18,000
You gotta do yoga. And I'm just like, nah, you know, unless my hands are bleeding

1296
02:25:18,000 --> 02:25:22,000
and, you know, I'm soaking wet, then I don't feel like it's a workout.

1297
02:25:22,000 --> 02:25:28,000
And that's just the, you know, 37 years ago when I started training.

1298
02:25:28,000 --> 02:25:32,000
That's still in my head. You know, try to teach it.

1299
02:25:32,000 --> 02:25:36,000
I'm sorry, I was going to say there's a thing called foundation training that I do,

1300
02:25:36,000 --> 02:25:41,000
and it's not yoga. It's actually started by a chiropractor who jacked up his own back

1301
02:25:41,000 --> 02:25:46,000
and through trial and error found basically a series of poses,

1302
02:25:46,000 --> 02:25:52,000
but they do wonders for, you know, lower back, knees, ankles, shoulders,

1303
02:25:52,000 --> 02:25:55,000
everything that we all get beat up by.

1304
02:25:55,000 --> 02:25:58,000
And you literally do it like 10, 15 minutes a day.

1305
02:25:58,000 --> 02:26:02,000
And it's hard. So you will actually, you know, feel like you've worked out.

1306
02:26:02,000 --> 02:26:04,000
But if you can't get yourself to be...

1307
02:26:04,000 --> 02:26:06,000
15 minutes? Nah.

1308
02:26:06,000 --> 02:26:07,000
15 minutes.

1309
02:26:07,000 --> 02:26:11,000
No, not a full workout, but you put it at the front or the end of a regular workout,

1310
02:26:11,000 --> 02:26:15,000
and now you get that mobility as well thrown in there.

1311
02:26:15,000 --> 02:26:19,000
I'm going to share something that I don't think I've ever shared with anybody.

1312
02:26:19,000 --> 02:26:24,000
There are these series of tapes that were made in 1995

1313
02:26:24,000 --> 02:26:29,000
about class 234 SEAL teams in Coronado.

1314
02:26:29,000 --> 02:26:30,000
Buds?

1315
02:26:30,000 --> 02:26:32,000
Yeah, Buds. Do you know that tape?

1316
02:26:32,000 --> 02:26:35,000
Yes, I've seen it. Actually, I think if I'm not mistaken,

1317
02:26:35,000 --> 02:26:37,000
one of my friends, Jeff Nichols, was actually one of the guys in.

1318
02:26:37,000 --> 02:26:39,000
So actually Ryan Parrott would have been too.

1319
02:26:39,000 --> 02:26:41,000
So I think I've even had some guys that were in that class.

1320
02:26:41,000 --> 02:26:42,000
Oh, Birdman?

1321
02:26:42,000 --> 02:26:44,000
Yeah. Yeah, you know, Ryan?

1322
02:26:44,000 --> 02:26:47,000
Birdman, yeah, I attended an event with him.

1323
02:26:47,000 --> 02:26:52,000
He attended the Joseph D. Bernardo seminar in 2019.

1324
02:26:52,000 --> 02:26:54,000
He was one of the guest speakers.

1325
02:26:54,000 --> 02:26:59,000
Birdman, who? Tough way to get that nickname.

1326
02:26:59,000 --> 02:27:00,000
Yes.

1327
02:27:00,000 --> 02:27:05,000
One of my things is that literally, my kids will tell you,

1328
02:27:05,000 --> 02:27:11,000
every day for 19 years that I've worked out, it's been to one of those tapes.

1329
02:27:11,000 --> 02:27:13,000
And I just put it on in the background.

1330
02:27:13,000 --> 02:27:18,000
I can recite like all six hours in my head.

1331
02:27:18,000 --> 02:27:22,000
It's an obsessive OCD kind of thing.

1332
02:27:22,000 --> 02:27:27,000
That tape has to play in my head while I'm working out because it's the lessons.

1333
02:27:27,000 --> 02:27:30,000
And you can't learn them enough.

1334
02:27:30,000 --> 02:27:34,000
You know, attention to detail, you know, that's the big one.

1335
02:27:34,000 --> 02:27:42,000
And, you know, the humor, the gut wrenching, the guys who tap out,

1336
02:27:42,000 --> 02:27:45,000
not likening myself as a seal at all.

1337
02:27:45,000 --> 02:27:47,000
I'm just saying the inspiration.

1338
02:27:47,000 --> 02:27:50,000
And my son said to me, he goes, why don't you fucking listen to something else?

1339
02:27:50,000 --> 02:27:55,000
You've been listening to this thing for fucking years, you know, 19 years.

1340
02:27:55,000 --> 02:28:01,000
And after I'm done with you here, James, I'll go out, turn that tape on,

1341
02:28:01,000 --> 02:28:02,000
and start my work.

1342
02:28:02,000 --> 02:28:03,000
And it's just that's it.

1343
02:28:03,000 --> 02:28:05,000
It's like I'm like a fucking robot.

1344
02:28:05,000 --> 02:28:06,000
You know what I mean?

1345
02:28:06,000 --> 02:28:14,000
I don't need to hear, you know, it's the old thing like 10,000 inspirational tapes, you know, to be to master something.

1346
02:28:14,000 --> 02:28:16,000
I need to hear one 10,000 times.

1347
02:28:16,000 --> 02:28:18,000
We know that from the martial arts.

1348
02:28:18,000 --> 02:28:19,000
Do you know what I mean?

1349
02:28:19,000 --> 02:28:27,000
So attention to detail, you know, hammered into your head, hammered into your head, you know,

1350
02:28:27,000 --> 02:28:33,000
and to the point, you know, you say you train not to get it right.

1351
02:28:33,000 --> 02:28:36,000
You train so that you can never get it wrong, you know.

1352
02:28:36,000 --> 02:28:40,000
And so, yeah, I've always listened to those tapes.

1353
02:28:40,000 --> 02:28:43,000
It's a weird thing, but it's the truth.

1354
02:28:43,000 --> 02:28:47,000
Yeah, no, that's I mean, I can see why I really can.

1355
02:28:47,000 --> 02:28:52,000
Well, for people listening, I'm obviously, you know, they're able to see your work on the screen.

1356
02:28:52,000 --> 02:29:00,000
Are there any places online they can learn more about you or follow you on social media?

1357
02:29:00,000 --> 02:29:05,000
Gosh, on Instagram, Bobby 1960.

1358
02:29:05,000 --> 02:29:11,000
And, you know, I'm on there looking at your stuff.

1359
02:29:11,000 --> 02:29:15,000
I'm not on there a lot posting my stuff.

1360
02:29:15,000 --> 02:29:25,000
And I was always cognizant not making my the only important things to me seem to be the lives of first responders or like military guys.

1361
02:29:25,000 --> 02:29:28,000
And, you know, let's say they're they're deaf and posting about.

1362
02:29:28,000 --> 02:29:30,000
And I said, you know, I don't want to make it.

1363
02:29:30,000 --> 02:29:41,000
This is my own thing. So I'm just going to, you know, on 9-11, I'll post something about my friend, Pat, that he, you know, that that whole prospect of never forget.

1364
02:29:41,000 --> 02:29:44,000
And I remember talking to Jason Bresler. I was like, never.

1365
02:29:44,000 --> 02:29:46,000
That's the stupidest fucking thing I ever heard. How could you forget?

1366
02:29:46,000 --> 02:29:51,000
Well, society, you know, John Q. Public, he's going to forget.

1367
02:29:51,000 --> 02:30:01,000
There's nothing you can do for him, you know, like Pearl Harbor and the main, you know, but to tell people, you must.

1368
02:30:01,000 --> 02:30:06,000
I'll never forget it. It's it's with me every day. Guys wanted to get tattoos.

1369
02:30:06,000 --> 02:30:10,000
I wear a bracelet. Why? Because I have to put that bracelet on every day.

1370
02:30:10,000 --> 02:30:14,000
I take my friend up every day and attach it to my wrist every day.

1371
02:30:14,000 --> 02:30:17,000
It's not like a tattoo and just forget it and forget about it.

1372
02:30:17,000 --> 02:30:22,000
My father didn't like ink or holes either. And that wasn't going to happen on his watch.

1373
02:30:22,000 --> 02:30:26,000
My friend, Freddie, got a tattoo and he's what are you a fucking land pirate?

1374
02:30:26,000 --> 02:30:30,000
And we thought those two words together. Land pirate was the funniest thing in the world.

1375
02:30:30,000 --> 02:30:34,000
Nobody in my crew ever got earrings or tattoos.

1376
02:30:34,000 --> 02:30:45,000
But I don't disparage anybody who wants to get a tattoo. My father used to say, if you were if you were on a destroyer in the South Pacific in World War II, if you're a Maori tribesman, knock yourself out.

1377
02:30:45,000 --> 02:30:50,000
But he's the foot. The rest of it is just cultural appropriation.

1378
02:30:50,000 --> 02:30:54,000
But of course, you know, that cat is out of the bag in the United States.

1379
02:30:54,000 --> 02:31:02,000
I pick my friend up, I put him around my wrist each day, you know, and and that's how I honor him and remember him.

1380
02:31:02,000 --> 02:31:07,000
He would have gotten an awful kick out of being able to discuss the fire service.

1381
02:31:07,000 --> 02:31:14,000
I would have loved if he were alive and to discuss the fire service with him.

1382
02:31:14,000 --> 02:31:25,000
But I hope he's you know, I know he informs like almost everything I do in the fire service and his brother, Mike, who I miss the two of them.

1383
02:31:25,000 --> 02:31:48,000
You know, this is the anniversary of Michael's passing and Mike and I, we did everything to protect and propagate and cultivate Pat's legacy. And, you know, after he fell on that day and we became like brothers and very painful.

1384
02:31:48,000 --> 02:31:57,000
You know, my grandfather, I was told I never met any of my grandparents. They were always in Ireland and they're dead.

1385
02:31:57,000 --> 02:32:04,000
And my grandfather came in one day to my aunts and uncles when they were children. And by virtue of their numbers, there were 13 of them.

1386
02:32:04,000 --> 02:32:09,000
He said, you will know great joy, but you will also know great sorrow.

1387
02:32:09,000 --> 02:32:19,000
You know, and the people we get to meet in the fire service are the really great people, you know, and when they leave us, it's very hard. It's just that much more difficult.

1388
02:32:19,000 --> 02:32:28,000
So with them, we know great joy, but when they go, we know great sorrow, you know, and but I read something recently.

1389
02:32:28,000 --> 02:32:34,000
Boy, it won't leave me is grief is just love with nowhere to go.

1390
02:32:34,000 --> 02:32:46,000
You know, and when that grief comes upon you, you know, find somewhere in your actions for that love to go and your grief will lift your depression may lift.

1391
02:32:46,000 --> 02:33:01,000
But, yeah, certainly you'll ride out that sorrow. You know, if you could find somewhere to put that love that you had for that fallen person, you'll be more effective as a human being because they these people who leave us.

1392
02:33:01,000 --> 02:33:09,000
They don't want us to be unhappy. They want us to be happy. And, you know, and continue on.

1393
02:33:09,000 --> 02:33:15,000
I couldn't agree more. I think that's why altruism is so healing as well as being good for the people that you're helping.

1394
02:33:15,000 --> 02:33:20,000
Yeah, it should be natural. Yeah, yeah.

1395
02:33:20,000 --> 02:33:25,000
Absolutely. Well, we have been talking, like I said, for two and a half hours.

1396
02:33:25,000 --> 02:33:33,000
We have gone all over the place. I just want to thank you. Thank you for your generosity with the time today. Thank you for saying yes in the first place.

1397
02:33:33,000 --> 02:33:42,000
But also thank you for, you know, your courage and your transparency and your vulnerability, because, you know, there are many areas that we've been that, you know, aren't all happy and smiley.

1398
02:33:42,000 --> 02:33:49,000
And, you know, and I think that's as if not more important than, you know, some of the funny stories and some of those other areas.

1399
02:33:49,000 --> 02:33:55,000
So I just want to say, you know, I'm so appreciative. So thank you so much for being so generous with your time today.

1400
02:33:55,000 --> 02:34:11,000
Well, I looked you up a little bit and I said, boy, this guy's on the path, you know, and it's just so it's an honor to be to be on your show here and to be a part of your path.

1401
02:34:11,000 --> 02:34:24,000
And that's what we do. We stick together. We respond together. And this is to me like responding, you know, because we don't know, you know, potentially somebody can listen to this and say, you know what, I'm going to change things about my life today.

1402
02:34:24,000 --> 02:34:30,000
I never know. We never know. I'll give you a story about Patty Brown.

1403
02:34:30,000 --> 02:34:34,000
Highly decorated fireman, you know.

1404
02:34:34,000 --> 02:34:37,000
Oh, I'm getting banged out, buddy.

1405
02:34:37,000 --> 02:34:41,000
Got to go. All the best. Best way to finish it. Be safe.