Episode 110: T.S. Ransdell, Marine, Former Teacher, Author Part 1
Listen in as KP and T.S Ransdell chat about all things Marines, history, current events and more. Read more about T.S. Ransdell below.
About T.S. Ransdell
“I grew up in Topeka, Kansas. Throughout my childhood I loved stories of heroic warriors and adventurers, be they from history or literature. Seeking adventures of my own, I volunteered as an infantryman in the United States Marine Corps. Through Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, along with a WestPac, I managed to see a big chunk of the world. After the Marines, I earned a BA in Literature and a MA in History. This led to me working jobs that ranged from a bouncer at a night club, a deckhand on a boat, and a tour guide at Taliesin West (Scottsdale, Arizona). Eventually, I decided to get to get a MA in Education and go into teaching. This turned out to be one of my best decisions for it led to me meeting my future wife. I taught high school history for over a decade before I published my first novel.”
T.S Ransdell
Transcription
Kenny: Alright, so we're going to get started today. I have a special guest here with me, who is part of my fraternity. The United States Marine Corps, semper fi, so my special guest is a author of two books right now, soon to be three.
T.S.: Soon to be three
Kenny: and he's uh—uh from the same timeline that I was in the Marine Corps, so, he's got a little gray hair, more hair than I do to prove it. But, T.S. Ransdell is your your pen name, aka I like to call him Randy, by mistake, so when we first met Mr. Travis Ransdell here let's welcome him to the show. [Crowd Yay] Yeah, there you go, fans love you.
T.S.: Yeah
Kenny: So, semper fi to you.
T.S.: Well, thank you. Semper fi
Kenny: Randy, Randy Travis. I don't know, you know, we we met over instagram. um the Marine Corps had published uh a day where they were celebrating diversity, and I kind of gave them a what for, for my son who has a number of tattoos on his left arm, that you know supports family members, of our family in a lifetime even all the way back to his grandmother that's up here on his his chest. And so the Marine Corps didn’t like where his tattoos were, Travis. So they told him he couldn't be a jarhead, and that was that post I wrote that you responded to, which that degree of separation has you now sitting in a seat in my studio in Virginia Beach.
T.S.: Yeah, just think of that. Yeah, I remember just—I remember going through it that day and being just kind of angry about the post to begin with, and um, yeah, I remember you saying that because I thought well, first of all, you know, how many marines didn't have tattoos on their forearms?
Kenny: Yeah
Kenny: I mean, I was an oddity, I didn’t—i didn't get any of my forearms but that was, that was kind of rare.
Kenny: Yeah you were odd man out.
T.S.: I was yeah.
Kenny: And I even went a step further, when I was in, I didn't want to do the devil dog and have this old bulldog on my arm that looked like a droopy Shar Pei by the time I'm 50. Which here I am.
T.S.: Yeah
Kenny: So I got a superman tattoo over here on my left arm before, before Shaq
T.S.: Okay, yeah.
Kenny: You know, Shaquille O'Neal made the superman tattoo pretty famous, but,
T.S.: Yeah
Kenny: it was one of my favorite cartoon characters growing up in the justice league.
T.S.: Yeah
Kenny: So I wanted to get the superman tattoo. And, then I'd tell my kids, “hey did you know hair grew on steel?” You know, “look right here.” So I got a superman tattoo and then a little 2 7 5 which is a special number for our family.
T.S.: okay
Kenny: A little family tat. That’s, that’s all I have, I got a couple, my wife has more tattoos than I do. So throw her under the bus today, she’ll appreciate that. But yeah, you—you made it all the way through the Marine Corps with no tats huh?
T.S.: Well no i—i did. Uh I did get a tat—just not on my forearms.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: But I'd gotten, um, was it in the Philippines, I'd gotten a—
Kenny: Oh, tattoo in the Philippines. Some of the marines listening to this are going to go, “oookay, alright.”
T.S.: It was, uh, yeah, we were pulling—in fact it was on the way to, um—so we'd sailed out of a boat from Okinawa and we're going to Saudi Arabia. So this is at the very, very early stages of the whole Desert Shield and we stopped off in the the Philippines and so I'd gotten a dragon tattoo, and
Kenny: A dragon
T.S.: Yeah
Kenny: Why—why a dragon?
T.S.: Um, I thought it was cool. I—I always thought dragons were kind of cool looking, uh, animals and yeah I got a red dragon, because I was also kind of into—yeah I liked reading a lot and read Arthurian legends about, you know, King Arthur using the red dragon as his symbol and so I thought it was cool. So yeah, I got it. It's not red anymore. The reds faded from it and, you know, like you said when you’re fifty and you got a tattoo, but it doesn't look as good as it did at the time, and yeah another one is the—i got the gadsden tattoo on my chest, you know, the
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: Liberty words ‘liberty or death’ with the gold rattlesnake, don't tread on me. So, I ended up with one of those.
Kenny: That’s awesome. Well if I didn’t feel real bad about myself and my fitness right now, I'd say, “hey take a shirt off, show us your tats.” But we’ll—we'll save that for another show. No we're not that kind of podcast.
T.S.: Like I said, they don't look as good as they used to.
Kenny: Right, right. So you know while we’re on the marine subject, I always like to take a couple of minutes, even though I'm a little pissed off with the Marine Corps right now and their-their diversity policy, that's not really diverse.
T.S.: Yeah
Kenny: I'm okay with if someone—if a dude wants to like another dude, and you know, i-i may have a spiritual difference about that, in my my religious beliefs, but I'm-i'm not going to hate on them for that. you know, I'm going to love everybody and try to love everyone equally. The same as with the kid that's got a tattoo in his arm, that's representing his family and diversity and his culture. I'm like—Marine Corps, I'm asking you, what's the big deal with tats? Reach out to me. Let's have a conversation, commandant. Who's the new commandant? I don't know
T.S.: I have no idea
Kenny: I'd love to talk to you. Sergeant major, love to talk to you even more. No-no disrespect to the commandant but,
T.S.: Well if
Kenny: educate me
T.S.: if in theory, if somebody's sexual practices are not going to have an impact on their mission, hows somebody's tattoo gonna have an impact on their mission?
Kenny: Yeah,
T.S.: You know
Kenny: and marines don’t get captured anyway, so lets just be clear,
T.S.: No
Kenny: it’s not like it's going to be a giveaway.
T.S.: No
Kenny: Right? So yeah. Well that's not what we're here to talk about. We're here to talk about your book, and, man we're probably going to raise some some eyebrows and hair is going to stand up on people’s arms, when we start talking about The Last Marine.
T.S.: I hope so.
Kenny: We’ll-we’ll get to that, in a few minutes, but would you with me—and I know your Doc has told you, no alcohol right now. You’re-you're in a, a testing phase so, but, we can at least throw the glass up and salute our nation's military and a little Blue Label, shout out to Johnny Walker. Marines love a little bit of spirit, right?
T.S.: A little bit, yeah, just a little.
Kenny: Cheers to our—our nation’s military. Thank you for what you do and the sacrifice of you and your families, who every day put it on the line. We just lost eight marines, out your way. You were at camp Pendleton.
T.S.: Yeah. I saw that the amtrac, that sank.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: Yeah
Kenny: Yeah so, I'm sorry to those family members that lost their-their loved ones. You know the marines on it—that vehicle, we called them amtracs, so I'm not sure what they’re using now. But, Kathleen, my wife, was reading an article and the-the age of those young men were 18 to 23 years old. 23 was the oldest. And what most people don't know, you know, for 20 years we've been sending our young people to war to protect our way of life and in the Marine Corps the average age of an infantryman—I don't know if you realize this, but you can probably relate to the time we were in, the average age of a marine infantry warrior, nineteen years old. And I don't know if that's changed in the Marine Corps today, if that's still the average, but when I was coming up, I looked around me, and man, the squad bay, I was an old man at twenty-one. When I had just turned twenty-one. And so, I was like grandpa in the—in the squad bay of First Battalion Delta Company, platoon 1056.
T.S.: Yeah I can remember seeing like twent—twenty-three, twenty-five year olds and thinking they were old men.
Kenny: Yeah. “What are you doing here?” But salute to those guys. Cheers, thanks for coming out, all the way from Arizona.
T.S.: Thank you for having me, I appreciate it.
Kenny: So we appreciate having you here. When you get the doctor's orders and you're okay, you get the green light, I'll send you a bottle of Blue Label for coming out.
T.S.: I’ll have to give it a shot then.
Kenny: Good stuff, sitting here on the table. So one day, Blue Label Johnny Walker that they'll like us so much that they'll sponsor us and we’ll give a bottle of Blue Label to all our guests. That's what we're going to—that’s the goal.
T.S.: Yeah
Kenny: And then we'll give everybody a bag of Miller House Coffee which behind the scenes over here on the other side is my son-in-law, who directs and runs this thing and makes it sound good and look good, he and my daughter make coffee or roast coffee, would be the proper term.
T.S.: Okay, yeah.
Kenny: So you know, we had a little coffee this morning at a local coffee shop but if you like where we were this morning, and I'll give them a shout out, Three Ships Coffee. Really good local coffee barista, here in town, but if you like their stuff you'll love Miller House. So shout out to Miller House Coffee here. Ian you have to send me a check at the end of the episode. So I'll be looking for that. What's that? Okay alright. So anyways, man, I've been looking forward to this conversation for about four weeks now. We truly did meet on instagram and so I just want to support my marine brother and
T.S.: Yeah
Kenny: the the book you've written, or two books you've written, and the one on the way, called The Last Marine. And pretty interesting story. And I love the book so much that I left it at my house this morning. So I'm such a dip-shit for doing that. I apologize or I’d have them here on camera for you. But we're gonna put it on our site. We'll have the books up there, if you go to blackbox.co—BlackBoxGRP.com you'll be able to see the book there on the sites and you can go to amazon to pick up your books there. But let's get into that and have a conversation about a little bit on your background. Now you-you used to be, in your first life there, a history teacher in Phoenix.
T.S.: Yeah
Kenny: So give—give me a little insight on-on that.
T.S.: Um, well, yeah. I got into teaching, um, was never a career goal by any means, in fact, honestly as a kid I didn't like school.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: But when I did go to college, everybody kept saying, you know, “study what you like” and I know—when I took classes I didn’t like, I didn't do well in them. So I-I’m drifted towards taking literature courses and history courses, and so, I ended up with that with a degree in a Bachelor's in Literature and then a Master's in, uh, History.
Kenny: Wait a minute, a marine has two degrees?
T.S.: I—I’ve actually got three, believe it or not.
Kenny: What? You’re making me look bad over here.
T.S.: And uh,
Kenny: Are you sure you really were a marine?
T.S.: I was. I was. But, uh yeah, so um—
Kenny: So what was your third degree in?
T.S.: Uh, that was in education.
Kenny: okay
T.S.: I later on would go, before I got into teaching, I-I went back to school and got a Master’s degree in Education, in order to get credentialed to teach.
Kenny: I got you.
T.S.: Because I actually had a time period before that where, um, yeah I got out of college and I think my first full-time job I ended up working as a bouncer at a nightclub for a while.
Kenny: Really? I think we all went through that phase at some point.
T.S.: Yeah and then I got a job, uh, working on boats and, um, technically I was an assistant engineer but I was spent a lot of time scrubbing seagull crap off the-the deck.
Kenny: Which you got that certification in the Marine Corp too.
T.S.: Yeah I got that,
Kenny: Professional janitor
T.S.: plenty of experience there.
Kenny: Right
T.S.: And, um, I then, uh, moving to Arizona, I worked as a tour guide for the Frank Lloyd Wright Association for a while.
Kenny: Amazing architect.
T.S.: Yeah and umm, took that job about as far as it could go and then decided to to go into teaching and so to do that-that was when I'd gone back through the University of Phoenix get a master's degree in education, which is how I met my wife by the way,
Kenny: Wow
T.S.: and um yeah, and that led to 11 years, uh, teaching in the, uh, Scottsdale Unified school district.
Kenny: Wow. So you-you were a teacher, I think—so your wife's an educator and you have three boys.
T.S.: Three sons.
Kenny: Three sons. And you were telling me over coffee this morning that you guys are now homeschooling your boys and I can relate to that, with five kids, we-we had a season of doing that. So, you're a full-time author, father of three boys, your-your wife's at home. How do you get any writing done?
T.S.: Some days it's hard, but uh, we got—I got a spare bedroom. I'll shut myself in. I've got some noise cancelling headphones, I'll put on and I just kind of lock myself in there, and um, I-I do come out occasionally. But it seems like more often, if I try to go out for even like a quick drink of water or get a soda or something a five-minute break will turn into like a 15 or even 30-minute break.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: So I try to to limit that, but yeah, that's basically—I just kind of have to seclude myself and um, you know, my sons know when I'm in there, they don't knock on the door, they don't come in unless there's an emergency of course.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: But yeah, I just kind of have to seclude myself and-and I—I do because I can get distracted easily so.
Kenny: Man
T.S.: I've got like the phone—the phone's on mute, there's no social media, everything's shut down. I'll even set my computer up the night before so all I have to do is flip it open and I've got right there, what I'm going to work on. So I don’t even get—because I don't even want the distraction of like checking out the news first or anything like that.
Kenny: Because you can go down a rabbit hole pretty quickly, right?
T.S.: Exactly, yeah
Kenny: I can relate
T.S.: I've done that, I've done that before. I like—I like to warm up with reading. I used to try to like, yeah, warm up by may—you know, reading some news or something like that and next thing I know I'd wasted an hour piddling around on something or an hour and a half. And so, now, I just—I’ll have the book ready that I'm going to read, I'll read—its ready— do that for a half hour and then go right into writing.
Kenny: So when we were talking this morning, I actually, I-I told you, man folks, guys like you or just people in general who have written, just like your first book a few hundred pages or the first book, how many pages were the first book?
T.S.: Um, it was about—I want to say it was about 95 000 words and I think in the print form—it’s 300 plus.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: Yeah
Kenny: And book two?
T.S.: Book two was longer, I think by the time it was edited it came out like around 120 000 words.
Kenny: Right
T.S.: And I think it’s—in the print form it's like around 500 plus pages.
Kenny: So I wrote a little book, we were talking about this morning that has a, you know, financial background that the mindset mentality, more of a self-help,
T.S.: Yeah
Kenny: Called The Billionaire Within, selfish plug for myself there, get it on amazon, but you know, I wrote mine with a different purpose. Mine was really to help people understand what I do professionally, in my financial services firm, so it was really more designed as a calling card. “Hey, here's our concepts, here's our strategies, we should probably have a conversation if you like what I've wrote.” For you, this is what you do full-time. This is your occupation, but what's amazing, I mean what I love, what I love most about finding out from entrepreneurs is what-what’s your passion? What's your burning desire? What makes you tick? And putting pen to paper for you is-is your passion. You-you were sharing with me, I think when we first talked, back to that instagram post and got an introduction to each other, that's really your drive. It's not about money for you. It's about that cathartic feeling you get by getting into the characters
T.S.: Yeah
Kenny: of your book. And if you can, just for those out there who are entrepreneurs and maybe trying to understand how to get started writing a book—this goes back a number of years for you in terms of-of how you got your start at writing, Last Marine, the-the first book in your series. But when you finally, you and your wife, you were telling me you got serious about it. What was the turning moment where you said, “okay I’m-I'm going to take a shot at this. I'm going to do it” and what was day one like?
T.S.: What was the day? Well the-the turning point was it the things in my life had um come to a point where, you know I wasn't happy teaching anymore and there were personal events I, you know, as I was telling earlier, I had a death my father, my mother had some health issues, felt a lot of, a lot of stress. Mental, emotional stress.
Kenny: Yeah.
T.S.: And I remember telling my wife, you know, I-I’m just tired of it. I'm tired of feeling like I was in this rat race and not ever having enough time for anything. Feeling you know, that kind of over, overworked, underpaid kind of feeling.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: And just saying, “this just isn't worth it anymore.” I-I wasn't happy. I-I remember we-we’d taken the kids to the park and they were playing, we were sitting on a bench drinking a coffee talking. I told her, I really felt I was at a point where I just I wanted to sell everything we had and go move into a trailer somewhere, you know, go live in the mountains.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: And even if we didn't have much, at least just not be stressed out.
Kenny: Right
T.S.: You know
Kenny: Right
T.S.: And that was when she suggested that-that I give writing, really a full, a full-time try and it was something that—
Kenny: What a massive support when you can have a family member go, “hey I know you’re-you're not making any money at this, but you need to do this.”
T.S.: Yeah she—and she’s been very supportive.
Kenny: That’s awesome.
T.S.: Very, very supportive.
Kenny: Whats her name?
T.S.: Her name is Shannon.
Kenny: Shannon. Shannon good for you. Way to support him. That’s awesome.
T.S.: Yeah she—no yeah, she's been-she’s been a great, great wife throughout all this.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: Because otherwise, I'd probably be in a trailer somewhere in the mountains, you know, but no. And she knew I'd been wanting—she knew I'd always, ever since I'd met her, you know, she knew that-that was kind of my ultimate goal, was to be an author. I wanted to be a writer, a storyteller, and I tried it multiple times—a couple times while I was teaching and it just hadn't worked out. And even before that I would try it and I just always seemed busy and for years it was just always something that I would do like, you know, after I got out of the Marine Corps I thought, “I'll have to write." “When I get out of college, then I’ll-then I'll focus on writing.”
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: Then it was getting a job, well then it's just trying—about you know get—you know and then—then I started having to get married and then I have children and life becomes less about trying to pursue that interest I had and more about just trying to survive more on a-a week by week basis. And being a writer is something that goes back to, I wanna say, when I was around five or six even. I can remember, I remember watching a, it was a western on tv,
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: and it was a gunfight, that was just so dramatic. These guys standing there in the music and the the idea of two men facing each other, this conflict where, you know, one man is going to die and the other—only one will live. I just, it struck a chord with me. And I remember getting on my parent’s typewriter. It was back in the 70s.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: So I got on the typewriter and started trying to type out my own story and I think I only got about a page into it but—
Kenny: Was it the ol’ return too on that typewriter? Where you hit the thing and it moved the roller back over to the left?
T.S.: I can picture in my mind. You'd hit the thing. It was electric but, uh yeah, so this thing you, this button you'd hit and then it would slap over and make it—
Kenny: Right
T.S.: The—the ding noise.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: You know. And I don't know how my brother and I didn’t break it because we'd often just hit it just to hear the ding noise, you know?
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: But yeah that was my firs—
Kenny: You felt so accomplished, “Okay, line one. Accomplished” Ding!
T.S.: But yeah that was my first attempt at writing and I always enjoyed it for writing assignments as a kid in school, but um, like I said I never—I never really made it a priority. It was just always something that I thought I would have time to, to do later. And then, you know, let me get through my thought was, “let me get through this stage in life and then I'll get serious about it.”
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: And I actually even got to a point where I thought, “you know I'm just not going to—I probably won't get done until after I retired from teaching or something like that.” Because with teaching you just, as we were discussing earlier, I'd just be exhausted at the end of the day. My mind would just be worn out, because you're on so much, managing that many kids during the day.
Kenny: What grade are you teaching?
T.S.: High School.
Kenny: Oh geez
T.S.: And most my courses were World History courses. So, I primarily had the-the freshman and the sophomore.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: So about fourteen, fifteen, some sixteen year olds.
Kenny: So some kids wanted to be there, wanted to learn and then another group
T.S.: Some kids do. Yeah, and some don’t. And you're fighting, and you know, you’re kind of the bad guy,
Kenny: Right
T.S.: when you’re the teacher. You know and everybody it—I've joked about being like a prison guard. They're always waiting for you to make-you make one, you know, a little—any little sign of weakness or inconsistency that they can exploit, they’re-they're on you. And it’s not always done like in a malicious way.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: They’re just kind of kids being kids. That’s just kind of the atmosphere. That's just kind of the culture. You don't go in there expecting to be liked or to be the cool guy and that's really not your purpose, that's not your mission. I always looked at like my job is to-to teach them history the best I can. And so that's what I would try to do.
Kenny: I'd have probably been a nightmare for you. I actually enjoyed History growing up and that was the classes that I really did pay attention in. But I was that classic sixteen-seventeen year old, where the frontal lobe had not fully developed and, you know, I was you know checking out girls and daydreaming and you know not not in the point of really wanting to learn but I was in history class it was always intriguing to me especially the Roman Empire.
T.S.: Yeah, oh yeah.
Kenny: Was really interesting to me, which you know, I want to get to that part in a few minutes. And really let's spend some time around the book and the story line and the characters. But, if we can spend a little minute—a few minutes, talking about your style. And especially for young writers out there who are trying to get started and the person, like me years ago, someone could have said to me, “Kenny, look, really just get your yellow pad out and start writing some thoughts down and and get your your big idea on paper." So and for Last Marine in order to come up with that storyline, in order to come up with that—those characters for Last Marine, how did you get there? What—tell us about these characters, tell us about your writing style.
T.S.: Alright, yeah, yeah. That's a great question, ‘cause it’s—for the first book, I actually really, I can realize now, I’ve been working on two other books since then. That first book especially, I had spent about twenty, twenty-five years writing it. Mentally. Without really realizing I was working on it.
Kenny: No kidding.
T.S.: Yeah.
Kenny: Expand on that.
T.S.: I was gonna say—you know daydreaming basically.
Kenny: Yeah.
T.S.: That's what we would call it. I’d think in my mind. Like those jobs, I can remember, I was telling you, I had a job were—working on a boat. I can remember days of cleaning the boat or painting the boat, my body would be doing one thing but my mind had that story playing in my head.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: And that was the thing about teaching that I think made writing so difficult, where I had to be so focused on what I was doing with that, the story wasn't playing in my head.
Kenny: Yeah. Do you journal?
T.S.: I—no. I never—I never, and I never have.
Kenny: Interesting.
T.S.: Yeah so I just would always have that—in school, you know, I-I always daydreamed in school. I always had stories playing through my head. I get bored, I'd have stories playing through my head, and so—
Kenny: But you could recall these stories that you've turned that now into characters within a book. You've got a—I mean you've put those ideas on paper.
T.S.: Yeah
Kenny: Collectively a couple hundred thousand words in a final draft, which, I gotta imagine was probably much larger than that.
T.S.: It was—yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, you try-you try to edit-edit a lot of it out. Because, a lot of it you don't need. So like I said, with the first book, in some ways I found it easier than my—these-these next two books.
Kenny: Okay
T.S.: Because a lot of that was just kind of already there and I just didn't appreciate how it was there.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: Then with the second book, I knew how I wanted to end. Because actually the first book was meant to be a backstory to the second book, but grew into its own story. So I knew with the second book where I wanted it to end. But was, well how-how do I get that going? And that-that was harder for me, because then I—
Kenny: Did you pin that stuff down? Like you go, “okay here's the ending.” This is, this is—like reverse engineer it? Did you start with the end in mind and
T.S.: Well I did. Not at—
Kenny: you know build the story?
T.S.: Not at first. Because the first book had flowed for me so well, that then, I just took that same approach into the second book. Didn’t—didn’t outline it or plan it out or anything.
Kenny: No outline
T.S.: No outline. And because I didn't need to with the first one, but this—that was misleading. Because I got—the book two, I got about 90 000 words into it, that I'd written and I was not happy with. It I realized the book was not going where I wanted. Just kind of sitting down and just seeing where the story took me that day.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: It was not going where I wanted it to go and I realized that the trajectories I had set—because book two’s got a lot of parallel stories, of all these people, leading up to one major event. And I realized about, like I said, about 90 000 words into 88 to be somewhere a little over 88 000 words into it. It wasn't what I wanted. It wasn't where I had wanted it to go, and so, I had to make the decision, am I going to write a different book or stick with that same kind of story that I wanted? And I decided to stick with what I wanted. So I started over and then I got—I stepped back and really kind of thought to myself, “what-what is it I'm wanting to accomplish with this story?” And that's where I started plotting it out and planning it out. And spent a lot more time than thinking. I-I think a lot about what I write. A lot of my writing isn't actually like sitting down at the typewriter or computer these days writing, but, just even sitting and thinking. And I've actually kind of, over time, have grown to appreciate how important that is, at least to my process,
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: to think about what I want. And I've got like a stack of legal pads like you've got there, where I would write out, and outline, timelines and sit and think. And write so much. And then step back, and then think. Because things change while you write.
Kenny: Sure.
T.S.: And how I could work that in? Or is that going to work? Because then, kind of like in a chess game, I wanted to think about what would be the logical step after those events, to get to that kind of event that I wanted. Because I wanted that kind of, with no spoilers, I wanted that kind of climax. I wanted that kind of twist at the end that the reader would say, “oh yeah” and—
Kenny: So, let me let me take you back for, you know, our podcast we're going to have a number of entrepreneurs and people who are, you know, looking for the ideas from other business people to see kind of how they did it. And I've been through some informal training with book writers and professional book writers who, you know, wanted that outline, wanted that structure, wanted a plot, you know wanted you to lay the course of the book out. Kind of like the way we learned in high school English,
T.S.: Yeah
Kenny: how to write a term paper. But you didn't approach book one that way.
T.S.: No.
Kenny: You took twenty-five years of a story, it sounds like, and just started putting idea—started taking this fantasy for lack of a better term
T.S.: Yeah
Kenny: and putting it on paper. Is that—am I tracking right?
T.S.: Yeah, basically. And like—and keep in mind, I had made attempts to write this book before.
Kenny: Okay
T.S.: In fact, it wasn’t, I know on my instagram post, my uh-uh wife, clearing some junk out found some old floppy disk that has The Last Marine written on it.
Kenny: A floppy disk.
T.S.: A floppy disk.
Kenny: We got to explain what a floppy disk is for our 18 year olds out there so.
T.S.: Yeah, it’s, uh well, it was a little plastic disc you put in and it was about what, three and a half inch disc?
Kenny: Yeah.
T.S.: It says The Last Marine on there. And, you know, and I—
Kenny: No kidding. Were you able to extract that?
T.S.: I mean—not yet anyway. I’d—because then I know, and I can remember what I was writing back then. And it was, it was different than what the story ended up. But, uh, because again, you know that-that dates back to around 1998, 99 somewhere in there.
Kenny: So Noah, when he says floppy disk do you actually know what he's talking about? Noah: Yes.
Kenny: You do? Oh, okay.
Noah: I've never used one.
Kenny: Okay. Five and a quarter or three and—three and a half. Ian, you did? Old Dos computer probably? Right? Just a word processor.
T.S.: It would have been, it was a—it was an ol’ Dell, it was a dell computer. It's for-for well no actually not a Dell or was it? It was either a Dell or a Compact. I forget what I had.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: Um, but yeah. You'd have the-the floppy disk.
Kenny: Sorry man, I'm like a squirrel. You can get me off on a story and I’m chasing it.
T.S.: Yeah, I understand. And I had, um, actually the idea—I remember when I came up, came up with the idea for the Last Marine in 1992. So I was still in the Marine Corps at that time.
Kenny: Okay, let's add some context to that. You came up with the idea in 1992, you published book one in what year?
T.S.: 2016.
Kenny: Holy shit, excuse my French.
T.S.: Yeah. That was—that was what? 24-year process from conception to completion to publication.
Kenny: Wow
T.S.: And actually if you want to count, because actually book two was kind of part of that, um yeah, that came out what last October of 2019.
Kenny: So there’s—there's a story in that, that I love to cheerlead. Is that, if you have an idea, if you have passion about something, don't give up on it.
T.S.: Absolutely.
Kenny: Don’t quit. Every special forces guy that I've ever met, every seal that I've ever met, every marine that I've ever met who were worth their weight, who was real marine, not the guys that quit on us.
T.S.: Yeah.
Kenny: The ‘q’ word.
T.S.: Yeah.
Kenny: But the moral of that story I'm getting from you, you didn't give up hope. You didn't quit on the idea of one day you would write a book. And what-what did that feel like when you publish?—You go I'm sending this to my publisher. I'm sending this to the printer. That-that had to be a pretty amazing day for you personally.
T.S.: It was the, yeah, it—the first one was almost kind of surreal. Almost like it just wasn’t—it-it just, it didn't quite seem real, and I still had a lot of things still going on in my life then. It's really with the second book, right, I really—the gravity of it hit me, that I had accomplished something that I really had wanted to do all my life. That I had this story and just that-that you know, there's just that really good feeling that you realize you had something that seemed—that was a dream and you've seen it, you know, met—you—you’re—you put the work into it
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: and you make it right there. And I could look at these two books and realize that this was an idea I'd had decades ago and that I persevered. I made that happen. So it was, yeah, it was a very good feeling.
Kenny: And you, when you wrote the first book, and even since the first book, and you’re on your third, and you have many ideas for for others, you've taken the stance right now to self-publish. Help me through that, help-help our listeners and entrepreneurs who may be thinking about writing a book. Why did you choose self-publishing?
T.S.: Mainly because, um, I wanted to make it happen. I didn't want it to be dependent upon somebody else’s decision or somebody else's ‘okay’ and it's not a knock against traditional publishing, mainly to me, it just seemed easier. It seemed more direct, um, I had another friend who had self-published and, uh, he advocated it and so I thought, “why-why not just do it?” and not worry then about trying to sell it to somebody else or to get somebody's okay or somebody’s approval.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: I could just do it. Because to me, um, it’s not that I didn't or don't want to make money at it, I do, but I wanted, yeah, I wanted to get that done. And so I just wanted that-that-that independence
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: to do that.
Kenny: So maybe the idea that if you were shopping it to a publisher, waiting for somebody to pick up your story, and then them having some control or maybe timeline over when you would release it or how the story would-would be told.
T.S.: Yeah
Kenny: You wanted to have the the continuity of that being yours not—
T.S.: Well, just not face the rejection of it either.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: You know, you send it off and they say, “ah, no. Forget it.” Uh, I just wasn't in the mood to even—but I wasn't in the mood to put up with that, or—if you could say or maybe it’s just a matter of pride, I wanted to get it done.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: And then see how it would be accepted. Um, now again too, I also had no idea, going through it the first time of just—you kind of—I kind of had this notion, alright you write a book, put it out there and see what happens. I've since learned, there's a lot more work that goes to it
Kenny: So this is giving me context now. I'm sitting here writing down, twenty-four years, twenty-five years or so, this idea was in your head, about book one, The Last Marine. Here's what's interesting to me, when-when I started reading your book, I really felt like that you were mirroring present day, and the geopolitical world that we’re in right now and-and everything from this woke environment and a very left-leaning agenda that we've seen in our media, in the world that we we live in, that it felt like to me that you were taking a fictional story with real life characters and just changing the name of-of the guilty and the innocent.
T.S.: Yeah, yeah and uh, yeah.
Kenny: But this is twenty-five years ago, you had these ideas and these characters were being developed.
T.S.: Yeah. Well, I can remember, um, well around the time we were in the Marine Corps, I don’t know if you saw this, but I remember something was released through the Marine Corps about how China had, I think like a 10 year plan or something like that, on how they could conquer the United States. And it was kind of laughed at-at the time, because, they didn't even have rifles for all their soldiers—
Kenny: Without firing a shot
T.S.: Yeah
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: Well, well this is—that they would become a superior military power to us, and I remember it was kind of fluffed off, and I thought well that's a huge red flag. You got somebody saying they're coming after you, oh that’s really dangerous to, to just ignore that.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: And meanwhile what we see, you know, over the decades after that, then we saw a lot of our leaders warming up to these people, a lot of businesses shutting down here, moving over there, outsourcing there, um, and only now are we kind of seeing some of the repercussions of that. Um, so that—and that was one of the reasons why, you know, in this book I have the—th-this fictional, Sino-American war.
Kenny: Okay
T.S.: Where China has risen up to be a greater world power than United States, very much with our help, and this goes back to, you know, thirty years ago when they were saying that they’re coming after us and we're not doing anything to stop it.
Kenny: What’s interesting about that is one of, one of the world’s best performing portfolio managers, a guy named Ray Dalio, who he has a hedge fund that’s, if not the largest, one of the largest hedge funds in the world, and he's kind of writing uh, I call it a manifesto, that he's calling a book, where he's alluding to present world power being challenged by up-and-coming world power aka China. And going—he did a really good job—and you as a history major will appreciate this, if you haven't read any of Ray’s work, I'd encourage you go read
T.S.: I'll have to check it out, I haven’t, yeah, but
Kenny: some of his stuff. But, he's got a book now, that he's been releasing in chapters through LinkedIn, that goes into what you’re talking about in your story, 25 years ago, coming to fruition. Now in the book that you've written, fictionally feels real life to me. And I got to give you kudos to that. That’s—that’s, um, the intuition maybe we'll call it. That you had to write this and to look into the future with this fiction, that has in some eerie way
T.S.: Yeah. Well it all—
Kenny: come true.
T.S.: Studying history helps with that too. Because, yeah, yeah I know it sounds cliche to say “history repeats itself”
Kenny: I say that to folks a lot,
T.S.: Yeah
Kenny: in my business.
T.S.: Well and that's because, you know, the facts don't really repeat themselves. But what is it—human character, no matter what facts change, human character remains the same.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: I mean, you—you read Old Testament in The Bible and you can read, um, like—well my boys and I’ve been reading through, uh, what’s the book—Ezekiel. And you can see—you’re like—I mean we’re they're talking about how the, uh, the jews have rejected their culture. They are re—their-their people have—they’re so far gone from what their culture was that they you know, they've re—they’ve rejected, they don’t realize they're rejecting God.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: They’re—they’re disobeying their ten commandments. They've taken on polytheism. They've even gotten into like, uh, human sacrifices with small children. Babies being put into fires.
Kenny: Oh god
T.S.: And—
Kenny: Sounds a lot like today.
T.S.: Well as I said, they're sacrificing their children, they're rejecting their—their culture, their values of their ancestors that got them to where they were at and they don’t even realize they're rejecting it and when Ezekiel tells them this, you know, they're throwing him in jail. Um, human charac—I mean you can go through history, look at the French Revolution, um, Maximilien Robespierre and his Committee of Public Safety, the thing—that they slaughter people in the name of public safety, in the name of the good.
Kenny: Covid.
T.S.: Exactly, uh, you know, we have to do—we have to all comply to be safe and if you don’t then it's not just you disagreeing, it’s you committing treason.
Kenny: Gees
T.S.: Um, yeah—like what the, uh, the Nazis did in the name of-of doing good for the people.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: Um, the Soviets—the Russian Soviets have slaughtered, you know, what?—forty million plus of their own people.
Kenny: Yeah, we were talking about that this morning.
T.S.: Yeah.
Kenny: I think it was closer to sixty million between the war with
T.S.: Yeah, if you include—
Kenny: add it all up.
T.S.: Well yeah, you get them—uh one of, the Reign of Terror in the 1930s and this Great Purge that Stalin went through trying to hold on to power, um you know, keep in mind too, when you know the-the Germans were invading Russia, they were initially uh hailed as liberators
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: and then yeah and then they started killing russians and they decided they were better off sticking with the the com—Communists.
Kenny: You know, you and I talked about that this morning, and-and I see that-that going through Last Marine and kind of the story that you're sharing and I—I talked about this concept, that redistribution of wealth is one of the things, and I pay attention to that, being in the financial business. But that's one of the common themes that I see happening in, in our society today is this this ‘f’ word and it's not F-U-C-K, it's “fair”.
T.S.: Yeah
Kenny: That feels a lot like fuck.
T.S.: Because somebody, it seems to always—
Kenny: Somebody's always feeling like they’re getting screwed uh, in the system, and-and we the-the thought I want to get-get across to you is this, is that, I had talked about this Irish philosopher, that had made the comment I think in the 14th or 15th century that said, if you took the world’s wealth and you redistributed the world’s wealth and at that time you got to think about the monarchy, and you're going to you know think about the time when this philosopher’s—what his world was. But effectively saying if you disperse the world's wealth among everyone, took it from the king and gave it to everyone, that the idea was that within six months—180 days—it would be back in the control of the elite. Someone's going to rise to the top. Someone's going to figure out a way in order to, uh, manage population and it goes back to, I think, this human desire to be led. That's why the Marine Corps has done so well over 200 plus years. Is that you have to have strong leadership.
T.S.: Yeah.
Kenny: You have to have strong, um, and you need a strong moral compass to have strong leadership. [coughs] Excuse me. But this is the thing that has really stood out to me, is that we're in this culture now where people are feeling like, you know, we've seen this happen in Portland. We've seen it happen
T.S.: Yeah
Kenny: on the west coast and we-we are seeing this great divide between the haves and the have-nots but it's not because the haves did it to the have-nots, it's because the have-nots chose to not let their story play out and I want to bring this back to you.
T.S.: Yeah well—
Kenny: 25 years. You had this idea that you cultivated and this idea of-of, think about this like human capital, that you let an idea, a seed was planted, over 25 years ago in this book, The Last Marine, for you. And you didn't just plant the seed and let it be planted on rocky soil, you planted the seed in fertile soil and you allowed it to cultivate, cultivate, cultivate, and then all of a sudden the rooting system that went down, sprouted up, and this-this idea, this dream, became reality. Because of your passion, your commitment, your stick-to-itiveness and so I got to salute you for that.
T.S.: Well, thank you.
Kenny: I think that-that just shows—that’s why you joined the Marine Corps. You didn't give up.
T.S.: Yeah.
Kenny: And I think that's what we have in society today, is we have a lot of, we have a lot of people—I was going to use a ‘p’ word, but I-I want to be careful that your boys may be listening to this podcast. But we've become a wimpy nation of people who start something and give up.
T.S.: Right.
Kenny: And, uh you know, reading through this Last Marine and the character you talked about, with a young man and conversations with his grandfather, who really just had these-these core beliefs, even though he had kind of allowed society around him to get a little weird.
T.S.: Yeah.
Kenny: A lot like what we have today. He didn't give up on those core beliefs. And it really helped develop the grandson, the character in this book, so share with us a little bit about that.
T.S.: Well yeah, well, it kind of plants that seed in that character. And well, I thought when I wrote the-the character, uh, Abe Levine um I'm thinking back
Kenny: Which is the character in this book we are talking.
T.S.: Which is the character, yeah, the grandfather. Um, yeah, I’m—there I'm pulling from a lot of what was old America and I think back of, you know, I'm fortunate where I look at—look at the-the men in my life, my own father, um, very intelligent, hard-working man. A very strong man. I have two grandfathers, uh, that were the same. Yeah, you know, these are guys who got through the depression, that got through—uh you know, one of my grandfathers never-never went to high school
Kenny: Wow
T.S.: and then still had worked his way up to even being elected Mayor in his city. And was an accomplished, uh, business owner and my—another grandfather also an accomplished entrepreneur. Guy started up several businesses that were successful and I mean these were—these were hard men who lived through hard times and their attitude was, you know, you either win or you die. I mean you just, you just you-you just keep fighting. You know, it's not easy, not meant to be easy, um you know, I mean there were times like one of my grandfathers—but I mean they supplemented their diet, because he'd go out and shoot squirrels, uh as a boy, he'd take his 22 rifle out and he'd shoot squirrels.
Kenny: That’s awesome.
T.S.: And, uh in fact, me and my dad talked about, he got in trouble—he used to hunt, uh, chickens. There was a, I guess, a chicken slaughter house where he grew up and he loved to go down there and shoot ‘em with his bow and arrow. And his dad got mad at him for doing that because that was something, you know, he'd hunt squirrels to feed the family and he wasn't going to have his son out hunting chickens to feed them, you know. So you know, so I mean I grew up with-with men like this, with this kind of an attitude and um you just, you just slug it out. You just grind your way through these tough times and you don't get—it’s not supposed to be easy.
Kenny: So twenty-four years of grinding on a book. I mean, you had this grind in your head and you-you had these these ideas of probably, I don't want to try to psychoanalyze you here, but I would guess that over twenty-three years, you had a lot of moments of self-doubt that, “am I really worthy of writing this book?” And you know, “what if it fails?”
T.S.: Yeah
Kenny: What was—what was the trigger? Was it your—was it your wife? Was it just being fed up with the school system, as a teacher?
T.S.: Yeah, well kind of, kind of a little of both.
Kenny: What flipped the switch to go, “I'm doing this, dammit.”
T.S.: Just—basically, because, um—yeah I felt like I was uh—felt like I was dying a slow death working at the school, in the school district. I wasn't happy with it.
Kenny: I'm sure a lot of teachers today can relate to that.
T.S.: Yeah, I mean I think a lot-a lot do. Cause a lot of teachers—I remember I started and talking to another guy when, we start at the same time, we're like why’s everybody's been here so long, they all look sad and depressed they’re angry all the time, they're cynical all the time.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: You know, and after, you know decade plus in there, I can understand why. You know.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: Um and so I-I-I
Kenny: Do you consider yourself a cynic? So somebody on the outside, maybe reading, The Last Marine, may look at you and go, “oh you're just, you're one of those guys who just have this kind of negative Nancy outlook on life.” Not that I've seen that in the book,
T.S.: Yeah
Kenny: but I can see where someone might accuse you of that.
T.S.: I could see so too. I-I-I may have a little cynical—sometimes I think I am a little too cynical, then ironically, it seems that then facts or the person will back me up when I see how—I see it play out.
Kenny: Right
T.S.: And somehow, you know, we get kind of conditioned in our society we're not supposed to think poorly or to assume the worst of people.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: And I do understand some, uh, wisdom in that. On the other hand, I think it's just as dangerous to be naive when something—you see something bad happening, it doesn't do any good to stick your head in the sand and say, “no it's not that bad”, “It'll be okay”, because sometimes it's not. If you ignore a problem it's not always alright or you ignore um a social behavior or destructive behavior, it's probably not going to be alright unless you do something to stop it or to stop that person.
Kenny: I-I listened to a professor—I actually listened to Joe Rogan's podcast a lot. JRE. And I was listening to uh I think it was a professor that he had interviewed, maybe, no this guy was a mathematician. Um, Lindsay, I think is his last name. But he's kind of studied this whole woke movement and where it started in the at the university level. Where we got to a point in our society and a lot of universities and a lot of secondary education, where critical thinking was no longer being challenged and-and where—especially in a lot of the liberal arts schools—where if an idea was put out or a way of thinking was put out, there was no one there challenging that idea or behavior. Which is where this whole kind of woke
T.S.: Right
Kenny: agenda has risen to the top and has become a little bit of a um, a shit show for us in our country.
T.S.: Well I’d even argue it's critical—critical and analytical thinking is not being taught anymore. I saw it as a teacher. A lot of other teachers don't teach really to—don’t—do not teach students to think critically or analytically. They may not even realize that they’re not doing that but like a common assignment I saw with teachers using say in American History, was teaching about slavery in the United States, and you know, that the—I’ve seen this actually, the same technique applied with other lessons or other other scenarios, but with this one like, “how would you feel if you were a slave?” “How would you feel if your family was sold to different owners and were separated and how would you feel if you had the person, you know, your owner, you know wouldn't feed you, would beat you, you'd have to see—you know, you had no new clothes”
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: You see this-this kind of circumstances. Well that-that’s not critical and analytical thinking nor, honestly, is that teaching about American slavery or the slave trade worldwide, which has existed everywhere. What it teaches is for people to have an emotional reaction. They're teaching emotionalism.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: And so, what they're teaching is just this very negative reaction and not really knowing why. And most of the negative reaction is or the emotional response is, “boy this is a bad country” you know, “boy the United States is bad.” “American culture is bad”.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: And I think we see that play out in our streets today. People are angry and don't even—if you ask most these people like in chad or anyone who claims to be a marxist, what do you stand for? What is it about marxism you like? More than likely—or what is it about, you know, their cause that they like? They're going to tell you that the United States is an evil country. They're going to tell you capitalism isn't fair. A lot of them do not strike me that they even know what it is they believe in or what it is they're advocating for, they just know what they're against and they’re against America. They're against freedom and that's what capitalism. Is-is an expression of freedom.
Kenny: Sure
T.S.: And they're against all that because they think it's bad. They think it's evil and they've been—most people do not think, you cannot logically conclude that freedom is a bad thing, unless you’re an aspiring tyrant.
Kenny: Yeah, I think, that goes back to and feel free for you to disagree and if you're watching the podcast today you don’t have to agree with anything that we’re-we’re chatting over that's okay. You have your right to believe what you want, and as my daughter says, “I'll believe the truth.” You believe what you want, I'll believe the truth.
T.S.: Yeah.
Kenny: But you know, I saw this happening years ago, where I was in a—I was in a church league at a church I used to be a part of. And we-we had this basketball league called Upward Basketball. And I-I was an athlete, a competitor, growing up and I wanted to win. I wanted to win everything I-I put my heart into and that I tried at. Nothing wrong with Upward Basketball, love the league, but hear me out what I'm about to say here, it created a generation of children, even in the the church community that everyone got a trophy. And my daughter even pointed this out to me, I coached girls basketball at a christian high school for a number of years. And she got this award one year, we call it, it was called the Gator Award. And she was like, “Dad, I really just got that trophy because there was, you know, I was on this team and” she—she wasn't the best basketball player on team. She had heart. She would go for it. She was—and that’s why I gave her the award, it meant something to me, but to her it was like everybody's got to get a trophy. So
T.S.: Yeah
Kenny: I-I get the first place loser trophy called, the gator award.
T.S.: Yeah
Kenny: Sorry gators. But, that's kind of what-what it feels like with me, in this this woke generation now. Is that, it comes back to that ‘f’ word, they feel like they're getting effed, and they think everything should be fair and they get to define fair.
T.S.: Yeah
Kenny: If I define fair as someone who's had success in this capitalistic society then, oh I'm just I'm part of that group, who’s trying to hold this other group down, and that's not fair.
T.S.: Well, I think the evidence of indoctrination in this country is that a lot of these people we see out there protesting about fairness, come from upper middle class families. A lot of them are kids, they're young or young adults, who you know, they've gone to college, they've had a lot of advantages that a few just, you know, two-three generations ago most Americans didn't have.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: And that says something there for our system, that has allowed for a creation of wealth and advancement of technology and elevation of lifestyle, um, that these people aren't just trying to survive. They’re not figuring out, how can I work an extra 20 hours a week, you know, sleeping two to three hours a night, just to try to survive or feed the family. But they're like I said, that they can go through college, they come from upper middle class background, but yet, the system isn't fair. Eh, because, supposedly people aren't doing well. This isn't their personal experience that they're relating to.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: They’re relating to what they’ve been taught or what they've been told in-in school or in college. And they, in my opinion, have been I don't even say they've been sold a bill of goods, they've just basically been indoctrinated
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: to hate themselves. Because these are not these are not natural. There's nothing fact based in what they claim is wrong about American culture or about their freedoms. There's nothing logical in hating yourself or your own nation. That really has to be taught, to reach that level of destruction and self-hate, that's not natural. That's not a natural reaction, and yeah I'd put it equivalent to someone who's been raised in a dysfunctional family, abusive parents, where they are taught to hate themselves to the point—in fact I've got some characters that reflect this in the second book.
Kenny: I was going to say, this—this kind of comes out of in, in your book and in your writing, which I thought was it was really intriguing for me, and it's even more so intriguing, that this was in the making twenty-four, twenty-five years and we're seeing kind of these predictions, for lack of a better term, prophecy, of what you were—what you were saying was going to happen has started happening.
T.S.: Well yeah and the events, the last few weeks, really was a kind of the validation I look for. You know, my second book, I have this big riot that takes place in San Diego, it’s designed to look spontaneous. Like I said, it's designed. And I have several characters that trace the events and not just write—and what I like, what I love about stories, is not just characters doing something but why they do it.
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: And so I like to give a lot of background to the characters, to what motivates them to act the way they act. Because sometimes seemingly, like in book one, I have a marine and a Chinese soldier who on the surface, you know, they can look like killers. But I try to get into what motivates them to kill why—I try to treat killing, really it’s kind of a neutral act, whereas you have—you have a marine who's killing to defend what he loves, and the other, you have someone who kind of enjoys that-that rush of power and control
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: when he kills. And it's the same—same with the the writing here, we have people that, on the surface look like they’re wanting to destroy, but what is motivating them
Kenny: Yeah
T.S.: to do this.
Kenny: This is so interesting to talk with you about it and we’re hitting all around book one. And we're at one hour right now, with eight seconds left. Let's take a potty break.
T.S.: Okay.
Kenny: For-for the young kids at home, that means we got to go pee. As old men our-our prostates are pushing on our bladder something like that. Something gross like that. So let's take a little break here and can you hang around for another hour and we will do part two.
T.S.: You bet, yeah. Sounds good.
Kenny: Alright, let’s take a little break.