0
SPEAKER_00
The following is a conversation with Niels Jorgensen, a New York firefighter for over 21 years who was there at Ground Zero on September 11, 2001.
0
SPEAKER_00
He was forced to retire because of the leukemia he contracted from cleaning up Ground Zero.
0
SPEAKER_00
This podcast tells his story, and the story of other great men and women who were there that day.
0
SPEAKER_00
Some of the stories we talk about are part of a new limited podcast series that Neal s hosts called 20 for 20, with 20 episodes for the 20 years since 9-11.
0
SPEAKER_00
To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
0
SPEAKER_00
As a side note, please allow me to say a few words about the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
0
SPEAKER_00
I was in downtown Chicago on that day, lost in the mundane busyness of an early Tuesday morning.
0
SPEAKER_00
At that time, I was already fascinated by human nature.
0
SPEAKER_00
the best and the worst of it, exploring it through the study of history and literature.
0
SPEAKER_00
In the years before, as a young boy growing up in Russia, I saw chaos, uncertainty and desperation in the Soviet Union of the 1990s, wrapping up a century of war and suffering.
0
SPEAKER_00
But after coming to America, for me, there was a sense of hope, like all of it was behind us, a bad dream to be forgotten as we enter into the new century.
0
SPEAKER_00
On 9-11, when I saw the news of the second plane hitting the towers, my sense of hope had changed.
0
SPEAKER_00
I understood that the 21st century, like the century before, would too have its tragedies, its evildoers, its wars, and its suffering.
0
SPEAKER_00
And unlike the history books, these stories will involve all of us.
0
SPEAKER_00
They will involve me in however small and insignificant a role, but one that nevertheless carries the responsibility to help.
0
SPEAKER_00
I became an American that day, a citizen of the world.
0
SPEAKER_00
I felt the common humanity in all of us.
0
SPEAKER_00
I felt the unity and the love in the days that followed.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I think most of the world shared in this feeling that we are all in this together.
0
SPEAKER_00
Evil cannot defeat the human spirit.
0
SPEAKER_00
There were many heroes sung and unsung on that day and in the years after.
0
SPEAKER_00
Often politicians fail to rightfully honor the service and sacrifice of these heroes.
0
SPEAKER_00
There is much I could say about that, but I don t want to waste my words on the failures of weak leaders.
0
SPEAKER_00
Instead, I want to say thank you to the men and women who rushed to Ground Zero to help, who put on a uniform to serve, who make me proud to be an American and a human being, and give me hope about the future of our civilization, here on a small spinning rock that despite the long odds, keeps kindling the fire of human consciousness and love.
0
SPEAKER_00
As usual, I ll do a few minutes of ads now, no ads in the middle.
0
SPEAKER_00
I try to make these interesting, so hopefully you don t skip.
0
SPEAKER_00
But if you do, please still check out the sponsor links in the description.
0
SPEAKER_00
It is the best way to support this podcast.
0
SPEAKER_00
I use their stuff, I enjoy it, maybe you will too.
0
SPEAKER_00
This show is brought to you by a new sponsor, an awesome one, called Roka, the makers of glasses and sunglasses that I love wearing for their design, their feel, and the innovation on material, optics, and grip.
0
SPEAKER_00
Roka was started by two all-American swimmers from Stanford and was born out of an obsession with performance.
0
SPEAKER_00
When it comes to appearance, when it comes to fashion, I like minimalist, classy, and functional.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I don t think too much about it.
0
SPEAKER_00
But I do like stuff that looks good.
0
SPEAKER_00
So that s why Roko immediately jumped out.
0
SPEAKER_00
They designed it to be active in, it s extremely lightweight, the grip is comfortable but strong, and the style is classy.
0
SPEAKER_00
So it holds up in all conditions, when I m wearing a suit or when I m wearing running gear, including on long runs in 100 degree Austin weather.
0
SPEAKER_00
Check them out for both prescription glasses and sunglasses at Roka.com and enter code LEX to save 20% off your first order.
0
SPEAKER_00
That s Roka.com and enter code LEX.
0
SPEAKER_00
Now s a great time to go support them, buy their stuff, because it s an amazing sponsor and I hope they stick around for a long time.
0
SPEAKER_00
This show is also brought to you by Mud Water, M-U-D-W-T-R, a coffee alternative with 1 7th of caffeine as a cup of coffee and a ton of ingredients that are good for you.
0
SPEAKER_00
But I drink it because it s delicious.
0
SPEAKER_00
In fact, I just recently had it and it s now late in the evening and I feel good.
0
SPEAKER_00
It tastes like a delicious treat, but has no sugar or any of those sneaky sweeteners added.
0
SPEAKER_00
In the morning and afternoon, I definitely enjoy the caffeine aspect of coffee, but when it gets later on in the day, I m trying to recently minimize the amount of caffeine, even though I m not sure it has an effect on me, but I m trying to be a responsible adult.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so that s why I go with mud water.
0
SPEAKER_00
Again, it tastes delicious, makes me feel comfortable, helps focus my mind and just almost celebrate a productive day.
0
SPEAKER_00
So if you re trying to keep the caffeine down and still drink something delicious, you should definitely try out mud water.
0
SPEAKER_00
Visit them at mudwater.com slash Lex again spelled MUDWTR.com slash Lex to support the show and use code Lex at checkout for five bucks off.
0
SPEAKER_00
That s mudwater.com slash Lex and use code Lex.
0
SPEAKER_00
This episode is also brought to you by Magic Spoon, low-carb, keto-friendly cereal.
0
SPEAKER_00
It has zero grams of sugar, 13 to 14 grams of protein, and only 49 grams of carbs.
0
SPEAKER_00
Oh, and 140 calories in each serving.
0
SPEAKER_00
You can build your own box or get a variety pack with available flavors like cocoa, fruity, frosted, peanut butter, blueberry, and cinnamon.
0
SPEAKER_00
In fact, they re bringing back two awesome flavors, cookies and cream and maple waffle.
0
SPEAKER_00
They re bringing those back permanently.
0
SPEAKER_00
They were temporary and they sold out almost immediately.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so Magic Spoon is making them permanent staples, but I have to be honest with you.
0
SPEAKER_00
Cocoa is still my favorite, and it is in fact still the flavor of champions.
0
SPEAKER_00
It reminds me of childhood, it reminds me of happiness, it also reminds me of wrestling season when I would celebrate life irresponsibly by eating cereal even though I m making huge weight cuts.
0
SPEAKER_00
Now, I wish I had Magic Spoon back then, because I wouldn t have to pay the cost of all that sugar in my system.
0
SPEAKER_00
Anyway, Magic Spoon has a 100% happiness guarantee, so if you don t like it, they refund it.
0
SPEAKER_00
Go to magicspoon.com slash lex and use code lex at checkout to save $5 off your order.
0
SPEAKER_00
That s magicspoon.com slash lex and use code lex.
0
SPEAKER_00
This episode is also brought to you by Blinkist, my favorite app for learning new things.
0
SPEAKER_00
Blinkist takes the key ideas from thousands of nonfiction books and condenses them down into just 15 minutes that you can read and listen to.
0
SPEAKER_00
A bunch of people actually walked up to me because of the little book project I started of reading some of the classics, and they ve been suggesting me different books.
0
SPEAKER_00
I mean, so much love and depth of intellectual connection comes from reading a book together, as I m starting to realize.
0
SPEAKER_00
So I m really glad I know some of the books I m reading and get to sort of share in the joy of that together with others.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so Blinkist has a bunch of the books that I suggested, including Sapiens and Homo Deus by Yuval Harari.
0
SPEAKER_00
But there s countless other ones, and I use Blinkist to both preview books I haven t read yet, and review books that I ve already read.
0
SPEAKER_00
So go to Blinkist.com slash Lex to start your free seven-day trial and get 25% off a Blinkist premium membership.
0
SPEAKER_00
That s Blinkist.com slash Lex, spelled Blinkist, B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T.com slash Lex.
0
SPEAKER_00
This is the Lex Friedman Podcast, and here is my conversation with Niels Jorgensen.
0
SPEAKER_00
Take me through the day of September 11th, 2001, as you experienced it, as you lived it.
0
SPEAKER_01
September 11th, 2001 was a bright, beautiful, sunny Tuesday morning.
0
SPEAKER_01
It was late summer.
0
SPEAKER_01
There s a lot of folks who go to the beaches in New Jersey, call it the short summer.
0
SPEAKER_01
Everybody s left there for Labor Day, but it s still beautiful enough to enjoy the weather.
0
SPEAKER_01
I left my house about 6.30 in the morning.
0
SPEAKER_01
And my four-and-a-half-year-old daughter said to me, Daddy, which truck are you driving today?
0
SPEAKER_01
The fire truck, the oil truck, or the Boar s Head truck?
0
SPEAKER_01
Because I had three jobs at the time.
0
SPEAKER_01
Most New York City firefighters and police officers, EMS, we don t make the most amount of money.
0
SPEAKER_01
So in order to live in that city, you have to hustle.
0
SPEAKER_01
And my wife stayed at home raising the children.
0
SPEAKER_01
So my daughter said, oh, so you should be safe, because you re on the oil truck.
0
SPEAKER_01
I told her I was going on the oil truck that day.
0
SPEAKER_01
So she said, you should be safe today, Daddy.
0
SPEAKER_01
So I left and worked for this great company on the North Shore, Staten Island, Quinlan Fuel, very nice people, treated me very well.
0
SPEAKER_01
And it was my first day back, actually, for the winter season.
0
SPEAKER_01
I usually get laid off a couple months in the summer, because things, you know, too hot to need oil.
0
SPEAKER_01
So I took the truck, started my route that day, and a plane hit the tower.
0
SPEAKER_01
So initially, I m like, oh, it s probably some silly Learjet pilot, and he veered off track to get a better picture for a client, and he hit the building, probably hit a
0
SPEAKER_01
You know, bad turbulence, gust of wind.
0
SPEAKER_01
It s very windy down in that area, Manhattan.
0
SPEAKER_01
So that was my first thought.
0
SPEAKER_00
Can we pause there for a second?
0
SPEAKER_00
So 6.30 a.m., you wake up, you leave, and then the plane hits at 8.45, 8.50, 8.45 a.m.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_00
It s just interesting how you phrase it.
0
SPEAKER_00
So how did you hear that a plane hit something?
0
SPEAKER_01
I m a big news radio guy, news guy, bit of a buff.
0
SPEAKER_01
I ve been that way since I was a kid, and I had the news radio on the local New York radio station.
0
SPEAKER_01
And as I was driving the truck, I heard, you know, an emergency report.
0
SPEAKER_01
This just in, aircraft has just struck the World Trade Center.
0
SPEAKER_01
And where Quinlans is located, it s on the north rim of Staten Island, which is right on New York Harbor.
0
SPEAKER_01
And
0
SPEAKER_01
you could see Statue of Liberty, you know, mile or two away in a distance and then past that is the towers.
0
SPEAKER_01
So I just literally stopped the truck and looked out and I saw the smoke.
0
SPEAKER_01
So there was smoke.
0
SPEAKER_01
Oh, it was dark black smoke.
0
SPEAKER_01
It was just, yeah, I mean, it was burning fully at that point.
0
SPEAKER_01
And, uh,
0
SPEAKER_01
Did you have fear of what the hell happened?
0
SPEAKER_01
I was initially scared for anybody involved.
0
SPEAKER_01
I realized, I said, there s going to be lots of fatalities, obviously, depending on the size of the aircraft.
0
SPEAKER_01
You know, the business day there had started probably at 8, 830, so those buildings should have been packed at that moment.
0
SPEAKER_01
So that was a thought that crossed my mind.
0
SPEAKER_01
But from our being responder perspective, if you re off duty, normally you do not go to a scene.
0
SPEAKER_01
They don t want you to because of accountability and safety.
0
SPEAKER_01
the on-duty platoon will handle it, and if it s something very horrific, then they will have something called a recall, which is any police, firefighter, or EMS personnel is obligated to go to their command immediately, check in with their command, get their gear, and stand by and await orders for deployment, or to remain in that command for routine duties.
0
SPEAKER_00
How often throughout history have there been recalls?
0
SPEAKER_01
I believe the one prior to that was like in the 1968 riots, possibly, and then maybe in the 70s, there was another blackout and riots.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I remember my dad talking about it, and he actually always said, just remember if something bad s going down, don t just rush in, you will wait the recall.
0
SPEAKER_01
Or at the very least, if there isn t a recall, you get to your firehouse.
0
SPEAKER_01
And because if you show up somewhere, there s a good chance that no one knows you re there.
0
SPEAKER_01
And now you, in your well-intended movements, you get lost or trapped or no one s looking for you.
0
SPEAKER_01
So that s the whole thing with, you know, checking in and now you re with a squad or, you know, group of guys and everyone knows, you know, hey, there s Nels, there s Lex.
0
SPEAKER_01
Okay, they re on, you know, this team.
0
SPEAKER_01
So I said, all right, they re not going to need us.
0
SPEAKER_01
It s probably going to be a fifth alarm and, you know, there ll be 250 firefighters there.
0
SPEAKER_01
They ll handle it.
0
SPEAKER_01
It s going to be a bad day for those guys.
0
SPEAKER_01
But, you know, our guys take on some heavy stuff and they ll be fine.
0
SPEAKER_01
A few minutes later, the second plane hit and I knew immediately, I m like, okay, we re under attack.
0
SPEAKER_01
So I just flew the truck back in.
0
SPEAKER_01
I told my boss I have to go.
0
SPEAKER_01
He understood, he knew something was way wrong and I just was flying.
0
SPEAKER_01
At the time, I actually had a yellow Volkswagen Beetle, kind of a goofy car to be driving, but I loved it.
0
SPEAKER_00
So for people who are just listening, you re kind of a big guy.
0
SPEAKER_01
Well, yeah, I definitely need to lose about 50 pounds.
0
SPEAKER_01
No, I don t mean it in that way.
0
SPEAKER_01
You re framed, big hands.
0
SPEAKER_01
As my beloved friend Bobby Adams would say to me, I was driving around in a clown wagon and he also says I have a waving hairdo, waving bye-bye.
0
SPEAKER_01
So thanks, Bobby.
0
SPEAKER_01
Good luck.
0
SPEAKER_01
But yeah, he s a great friend.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so I took the Volkswagen and I flew in and I was heading over to Verrazano Bridge and hit the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
0
SPEAKER_01
And my phone rang and my wife normally doesn t curse or raise a voice and she was yelling at me.
0
SPEAKER_01
And she said, don t go in there, go to your firehouse.
0
SPEAKER_01
Well, first she asked where, she knew I was on the way, but she just wanted to know where.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I said, I m on the curve, which is 65th street on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway called Dead Man s Curve.
0
SPEAKER_01
We actually used to do a lot of car wrecks up there.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I was hitting that curve pretty fast.
0
SPEAKER_01
And then right around the curve is the exit to the firehouse.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I had to decide, well, am I driving right in to the battery tunnel, to the city, or am I going to the firehouse?
0
SPEAKER_01
And then I said, but I have no gear.
0
SPEAKER_01
I m gonna be ineffective.
0
SPEAKER_01
How do I show up with no gear, no protection?
0
SPEAKER_01
So she said, do what your dad would follow the recall, go to the firehouse.
0
SPEAKER_01
I hung up the phone.
0
SPEAKER_01
I said, I love you, gotta go.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I did, I went to the firehouse.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I m glad I listened to her.
0
SPEAKER_01
I had my father ringing in my ears.
0
SPEAKER_01
My dad, beautiful guy.
0
SPEAKER_01
He s 82, did 34 years in New York City Fire Department.
0
SPEAKER_01
He came down on end stage non-Hodgkin s lymphoma.
0
SPEAKER_01
He s 38, back in, going on 39, 1978.
0
SPEAKER_01
And this guy, he s my hero.
0
SPEAKER_01
He was gonna die, they sent him home.
0
SPEAKER_01
They said, there s really not much we can do.
0
SPEAKER_01
Go get your affairs in order.
0
SPEAKER_01
And he says, but Doc, I have three young kids.
0
SPEAKER_01
And she called him a couple hours later.
0
SPEAKER_01
She said, I got in touch with Sloan Kettering and they have a new drug.
0
SPEAKER_01
We want you to be a test pilot.
0
SPEAKER_01
And he said, hey, Doc, he s got a heavy Brooklyn accent.
0
SPEAKER_01
I m a fireman, I m a fireman, I m not a pilot.
0
SPEAKER_01
And so she said, no, no, we want you to try this drug out.
0
SPEAKER_01
And if it works, we may have some success.
0
SPEAKER_01
But if not, he says, yeah, I m gonna die, so let s do it.
0
SPEAKER_01
So every two weeks for four years, he d go for treatment.
0
SPEAKER_01
But he was assigned to a desk job after that,
0
SPEAKER_01
the cancer tumor removal and, you know, the heavy treatments.
0
SPEAKER_01
And he d get up every morning, four o clock in the morning, and he d walk down to the train station in Staten Island, take the train, and then he d take the ferry across the harbor.
0
SPEAKER_01
And he d get off looking at the towers, and then he d take a subway into Brooklyn.
0
SPEAKER_01
And on every other Thursday, he d leave at noon, do the same exact reverse route, and he d get to the cancer center, and my mom would meet him, and he d get his infusion, and within two hours he d be violently ill for
0
SPEAKER_01
few days really badly ill and I just remember um you know he s 10 years I was 10 years old and uh he just had to have the room darkened out and he he d be so sick and I just go in and wipe the vomit on his face just try to give him a little water but he couldn t take it down because he d throw it up and uh
0
SPEAKER_01
Maybe on Saturday, he d start coming around a little bit, drink down a little bit of tea, and on Sunday morning, he d put his robe on, he d go down, Mom would make him black coffee and toast, and he d sit up, watch the news, watch a game, and then Monday morning, he d go back to work, and he did that for four years.
0
SPEAKER_01
And he s 82, and he s still here.
0
SPEAKER_00
You said that your dad s a man of a few words, but when he talks, they re profound.
0
SPEAKER_00
So what words were ringing in your ear when you were driving?
0
SPEAKER_01
I just always remember him saying, kid, they give the recall.
0
SPEAKER_01
You go to the firehouse.
0
SPEAKER_01
You don t go where you think you should.
0
SPEAKER_01
You go to the firehouse.
0
SPEAKER_01
You follow your orders.
0
SPEAKER_00
So do the smart thing, do your job.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yes, sir.
0
SPEAKER_01
And every time we d hang up the phone, it s fireman talk.
0
SPEAKER_01
He d say, I love you, keep low.
1
SPEAKER_01
My dad couldn t tell me he loved me until I told him when I first got out of the fire department.
1
SPEAKER_01
I was 22.
1
SPEAKER_01
And my dad grew up in a tough household.
1
SPEAKER_01
My granddad was a good man, but a tormented man.
1
SPEAKER_01
He was sent away from home at 12 years old.
1
SPEAKER_01
He was from Denmark, and I m named after him, Grandpa Nils.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I think his demons
1
SPEAKER_01
Took up a large part of his life.
1
SPEAKER_01
He s his anger his whatever.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was his fear I we got the sense that maybe when he was a child.
1
SPEAKER_01
He was an apprentice baker would you know living?
1
SPEAKER_01
With strangers working for them, and we we think maybe he was abused and that s why he took it out on my my dad and my grandma my aunts, but um
1
SPEAKER_01
They made it up to each other at the end of my granddad s life.
1
SPEAKER_01
My granddad turned out to be the best grandfather ever.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think he tried to heal and heal everyone by his change of behavior.
1
SPEAKER_01
So he s proof that you can change, you can improve if you work on it.
1
SPEAKER_01
But I know I m going off track here.
1
SPEAKER_00
But you were a man enough, you said, in your 20s to tell your dad that you love him?
1
SPEAKER_00
My dad, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
I got on a job.
1
SPEAKER_01
He said, how d it go, kid?
1
SPEAKER_01
How was the tour?
1
SPEAKER_01
We call it tour duty.
1
SPEAKER_01
I said, oh, that was great, it was great, I love it.
1
SPEAKER_01
And he goes, just remember, you keep low, you always keep low.
1
SPEAKER_01
And keep low means you stay down below the flames.
1
SPEAKER_01
You know, if a room flashes over and it s burning, if you stay up high, you re gonna get burned badly, but if you get down on your belly and you crawl, you ll get out.
1
SPEAKER_01
So he d always say that when he d hang up the phone.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I said, well, I love you, Pop.
1
SPEAKER_01
And he says, well, thanks, kid.
1
SPEAKER_01
I said, well, you can say it, too.
1
SPEAKER_01
Nice depression and he did and now every time we talk he says it so, you know You know, they talk about masculinity and whatnot And my dad is one of those tough tough guys with a soft edge and that s that s how he brought me up You know to be a protector I hate bullies I was bullied really badly as a kid and I
1
SPEAKER_01
I really hated it.
1
SPEAKER_01
And now I find myself sometimes throwing myself into situations to protect people that are being, you know, violated and hurt.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I just can t walk away from it.
1
SPEAKER_01
But that s my dad.
1
SPEAKER_01
My dad was that, you know, just a great guy.
1
SPEAKER_01
But anyway,
1
SPEAKER_00
You still listened to, therefore, see, you probably wouldn t have rushed right to the towers, but you went.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so anyway, I did, I listened to him, I listened to my wife, I went to the firehouse, and it was really strange, it was eerie, because the computer dispatch system was still beeping, which meant it sent a dispatch, and the truck received it, Ladder 114, my truck company received it, and they left, they were gone.
1
SPEAKER_01
So there was this beautiful old building built in the 1880s with a spiral staircase, just a narrow old brick garage, and it was empty.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I just heard the computer chirping.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I looked down on a ticket, and it said Lotta 114 respond, the Vessien West World Trade Center aircraft into building.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I said, oh God, I just hope they re not on a death ride.
1
SPEAKER_01
Because this now was two towers and they were burning.
1
SPEAKER_01
They were free burning.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I knew this was really, really bad.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I got on the phone and I called commands right away.
1
SPEAKER_01
I called the 40th Battalion and Chief s aide just said, look, get 12 guys, sign them in to the journal.
1
SPEAKER_01
There s a journal of daily events.
1
SPEAKER_01
Everything that takes place in the firehouse 24-7 has to be logged.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I logged myself as coming in, reporting for duty.
1
SPEAKER_01
And as the guys came in, I logged them in.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then one of our lieutenants took command.
1
SPEAKER_01
We grabbed up a bunch of gear and they basically told us, get 12 guys, get a city bus and get down to the battery tunnel.
1
SPEAKER_01
They say it would probably be closed.
1
SPEAKER_01
There was threats it was gonna be blown up to get to the Brooklyn Bridge.
1
SPEAKER_01
And
1
SPEAKER_01
So we did, we got a city bus, we flagged it down and the bus driver said, I m sorry, I can t give you the bus, I will drive you.
1
SPEAKER_01
And he took us and we stopped at engine 201, which is just about a quarter mile down the road from us.
1
SPEAKER_01
That s our affiliated engine company and my childhood best friend here, Johnny Shard was, he was assigned there and he was on shift.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then they went through the tunnel.
1
SPEAKER_01
And we picked up those guys, the off-duty guys from 201, and then we kept going down 4th Avenue, and we picked up 239 s crew.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then we hightailed it down to the bridge, and there was a lot of traffic.
1
SPEAKER_01
There was a lot of people fleeing, coming over the bridge in waves, so it affected the inbound.
1
SPEAKER_01
What was the mood like?
1
SPEAKER_01
It was somber because just prior to getting on the bus, the first tower went down.
1
SPEAKER_01
So we figured that, I had heard 114, my lieutenant, Dennis Oberg, I heard him on the radio and he
1
SPEAKER_01
He said, 114 Manhattan, we re on your frequency, what do you need us?
1
SPEAKER_01
And they said, Tally Ho, which is our nickname, Tally Ho responds in the Vessian West to the command post and receive your orders.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I heard Dennis say, Tally Ho, 10-4.
1
SPEAKER_01
And Dennis,
1
SPEAKER_01
Little while after that, they were proceeding to go into, I believe it was, I get this mixed up and I m sorry, I should know this by the back of my hand, but sometimes it s just such a haze, but the second tower hit was the first one to go down and they were heading over to go in it and all of a sudden he looked up and he saw like what he thought to be disintegration and he turned the guys around, he said, run, just run, don t look back, don t look up, go.
1
SPEAKER_01
They sprinted as fast as they could and they dove under a fire truck and the guys that were sprinting behind them 40 feet away were
1
SPEAKER_01
underneath a pile that was 10 stories deep.
1
SPEAKER_01
They were killed.
1
SPEAKER_01
And just further into that pile was his rookie son, Dennis  rookie son, who was working in Ladder 105, which was my first command on the department.
1
SPEAKER_01
I worked for, proudly served for three years.
1
SPEAKER_01
And just beside them was my childhood best friend, John Shard, and his crew from 201.
1
SPEAKER_01
They were all killed.
1
SPEAKER_01
And the strange irony to that is that Dennis s son, Dennis Jr.
1
SPEAKER_01
was working underneath the, under the wing of a senior man, as we say.
1
SPEAKER_01
A senior man is a guy with a lot of experience and he ll watch over you, make sure you don t veer off, like I veer off a lot in talking, and you don t veer off and you get yourself hurt.
1
SPEAKER_01
In the morning of the 1993 bombing,
1
SPEAKER_01
Henry Miller was my senior man.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I was the young guy under his wing.
1
SPEAKER_01
And he protected me.
1
SPEAKER_01
And toward the end of the day, he looked around and he said, kid, it s a bad day.
1
SPEAKER_01
And he said, they didn t do it right.
1
SPEAKER_01
They blew it up in the middle.
1
SPEAKER_01
If they did it in a corner, they would have dropped this building half mile down at Canal Street.
1
SPEAKER_01
but don t kid yourself, they ll be back and they ll do it and they ll do it right next time.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it s so strange and so prophetic because he was there with him, he died with Dennis, he knew it.
1
SPEAKER_01
And like 1994, we had a training manual with a picture of the towers with a target.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it said, not a matter of if, but a matter of when be prepared.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it s haunting, it was like people knew, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
And we didn t stop it.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so we got off the bus, but just prior to that, coming over the bridge, the second tower was gone now.
1
SPEAKER_01
And we re just destroyed because we re like, our guys are there, they re all in there.
1
SPEAKER_01
Now we re feeling like cowards because we got there late.
1
SPEAKER_01
And initially we re thinking there s 500 guys that are gone because there was a 10th alarm assignment, which means, you know,
1
SPEAKER_01
50, 60 fire trucks, five to six guys per, you re looking at at least, no, it was even more, 10th alarm plus multiple alarms on top of it.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was a dispatch basically equivalent of five to 600 firefighters.
1
SPEAKER_01
We figured, oh, they re all in there, they re all gone.
1
SPEAKER_01
All the police officers, Port Authority police, NYPD police, court officers just up the street from the courts, transit cops from the train tunnels.
1
SPEAKER_01
We knew everybody was going and now they re gone.
1
SPEAKER_00
So what you saw, what were we looking at?
1
SPEAKER_00
What did it look like?
1
SPEAKER_00
So you saw rubble and then you knew that many, that 105 and 201, many of those guys are in the, they re dead.
1
SPEAKER_00
What did you see?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and we thought 114 was in there too.
1
SPEAKER_01
We didn t realize at that point, we didn t even realize that they had gotten under that truck.
1
SPEAKER_01
We thought they were all gone.
1
SPEAKER_01
But yeah, it looked like a movie scene with just end of the earth destruction.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s just massive piles of
1
SPEAKER_01
intertwined steel, what was left of the steel and there was no cement, it was all just dust and it was just a burning pile of dust and concrete and plastic and it was just, everything was just pulverized and it was truly hard to
1
SPEAKER_01
mentally compute that.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was like, what?
1
SPEAKER_01
And then there was just fighter jets, a couple of fighter jets just circling.
1
SPEAKER_01
And you just heard the flying by over your head.
1
SPEAKER_01
I mean, you d literally see the guy banking a turn around the Brooklyn Bridge and just coming back.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I m like, holy shoot, we re under attack.
1
SPEAKER_01
And we couldn t really get concrete intel as to what exactly, we knew planes, but then we kept hearing there was multiple devices, there was devices in a battery tunnel, and there was devices on a George Washington Bridge, and in the subways, and it was just chaos.
1
SPEAKER_01
I mean, we kept it together, obviously, because that s kind of, we try, that s what we do.
1
SPEAKER_01
But the
1
SPEAKER_01
the just constant barrage of different reports.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was like, holy shoot.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then as we were being deployed, it was a little frustrating, but they were trying to take command and send us in groups now because they realized we have to start searching this.
1
SPEAKER_01
You could hear the alarms on the Scott Air Mass, the packs we wear to go into the building.
1
SPEAKER_01
It has a motion alarm.
1
SPEAKER_01
And if you stop moving for 30 seconds, it just sounds like this whining, you know,
1
SPEAKER_01
this screaming bell and it just keeps going and going.
1
SPEAKER_01
And you could hear multiple units of those going off and you re like, wait a minute, there s guys with those, where are they?
1
SPEAKER_01
And it s emanating from underneath the pile.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it was just surreal and truly like,
1
SPEAKER_01
Like a war zone, you know, I mean I was a soldier in reserves and I never saw combat and I would never claim that I did but You know, we trained we trained for a lot of situations and we trained in you know real-life Atmospheres and whatnot and this was just beyond that by leaps and bounds.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was it was bizarre Did you see the towers collapse as we were coming over the bridge the first one?
1
SPEAKER_01
As we were deploying from the firehouse, we had a television on and I saw it go down.
1
SPEAKER_01
And we were so involved in getting gear together and getting, okay, team set up and, okay, you re going to be with these two guys.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I just yelled, I said, guys, and they re looking at me.
1
SPEAKER_01
I dropped to my knees and I started praying.
1
SPEAKER_01
They re like, what the hell s wrong?
1
SPEAKER_01
I said, I couldn t even say, it s like, I said, 114, they re in there.
1
SPEAKER_01
And they re like, what?
1
SPEAKER_01
I said, the tower s gone.
1
SPEAKER_01
And all you saw on the TV was just this pile of dust.
1
SPEAKER_01
I guess because they didn t see it going down, they probably thought I truly lost it.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then the realization came was like, wow, the tower s down.
1
SPEAKER_01
So now it was like, wow, this is really on.
1
SPEAKER_01
So we just took off and got that boss.
1
SPEAKER_00
So if you thought many of the guys in 114 were dead,
1
SPEAKER_00
If you thought that, did you think you re going to die?
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, if you re rushing into the, towards the rubble.
1
SPEAKER_01
As crazy as it sounds, I never thought that the other tower would go down.
1
SPEAKER_01
I said, okay, maybe some freak chance that one went down, but nah, the other one s not gonna go.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like, they re built so strong.
1
SPEAKER_01
You know, I was in those towers so many times, and I mean, I ate dinner up in the top four restaurant windows on the world, and I m saying,
1
SPEAKER_01
Nah, there s no way, like how the hell did this one happen?
1
SPEAKER_01
But I was having a hard time mentally processing that the building was gone.
1
SPEAKER_01
And believe me, if you don t have fear in this industry and police, fire, military, then you re kidding yourself or you re a danger to everyone.
1
SPEAKER_01
I don t care who it is, as tough as they are, this and that, everybody has a certain level of fear with doing this.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I don t care how long you do it,
1
SPEAKER_01
there s always that chance of something going bad.
1
SPEAKER_01
And everyone who does it has that certain amount of fear.
1
SPEAKER_01
But at that point, it was such a feeling of disbelief, that fear wasn t even kicking in.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was just like, what the hell just happened?
1
SPEAKER_01
And
1
SPEAKER_01
I honestly think it was almost like a shock, and it just stayed that whole day.
1
SPEAKER_01
So the building is, before it collapses, is burning?
1
SPEAKER_01
It s just burning.
1
SPEAKER_01
I mean, upper floors, you know, up in the 78th, up to the 80s, and then it s, you know, there s the way that the cut was from the plane.
1
SPEAKER_01
It wasn t just straight across.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was, you know, from the 78th, then, you know, on up to maybe the 86th, and, you know, then
1
SPEAKER_01
The jet fuel had come down and was burning down and there was people on the on the ground who were doused with
1
SPEAKER_01
jet fuel that was already burning and they were lit on fire on the ground.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was just insane how vast the destruction path was.
1
SPEAKER_00
As a firefighter, what are you supposed to do with that scale of fire?
1
SPEAKER_01
I think the first bosses in, the first chiefs, were just gonna do their best to get
1
SPEAKER_01
as we get hose lines, what our whole theory is, or our tactics is, to get water at the fire, at the base of the fire, and get the truck company, which is the ladder company, they re the guys who break the doors down, put ladders up, this and that, to get them to where the life is most expected and get them out of there.
1
SPEAKER_01
So I think the chief s tactics at that point was let me get multiple engine companies, let me get four, five, six hose lines fighting this fire, this massive fire, and let me get 15, 20 truck companies up there just yoking people out of there.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but you gotta go up the stair, everything s not working.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, guys had to walk up 80, 90, 100 flights of stairs, and there s audio of
1
SPEAKER_01
Officers and firefighters speaking to each other on the radio channels.
1
SPEAKER_01
And unfortunately at that point in time, we had very, very bad communication system.
1
SPEAKER_01
We ve been fighting for years to get radios that work properly.
1
SPEAKER_01
We couldn t because it was a lot of money.
1
SPEAKER_01
We fought for years to get the full bunker firefighting suits, which is the pants and the coat.
1
SPEAKER_01
We used to have just coats and these roll-up rubber boots, and guys were burning to death.
1
SPEAKER_01
And we had to fight.
1
SPEAKER_01
And unfortunately, we lost three guys in one vicious, vicious fire in 1994.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then they finally said, enough s enough.
1
SPEAKER_01
Give these guys the gear.
1
SPEAKER_01
So it s a strange phenomenon in the first responder world and in the military world.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s really one of the most important things that takes place in society, the most pertinent organizations, and we can t get the funding we need.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s crazy.
1
SPEAKER_01
They ll throw money at every nonsensical thing, but when it comes to gear, equipment, protective equipment, trucks, this...
1
SPEAKER_00
Couldn t get it.
1
SPEAKER_00
Just all the ways you could take care of people.
1
SPEAKER_00
I saw since 9-11, the wars in the Middle East have cost America over $6 trillion.
1
SPEAKER_00
And the amount of that money that was spent on the soldiers, in this case, the first responders, is minimal.
1
SPEAKER_00
Compared to it, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Almost nothing.
1
SPEAKER_01
Lex, they closed down.
1
SPEAKER_01
I believe it s either seven or eight.
1
SPEAKER_01
In May of 2002, they closed down nine firehouses in New York City for budget reasons.
1
SPEAKER_01
We hadn t even finished cleaning up the World Trade Center site and they slashed the budget
1
SPEAKER_01
And still to this day have not reopened those firehouses.
1
SPEAKER_01
There s a million more people now living in New York City than there were in 2001.
1
SPEAKER_01
And the fire protection is way less than it was.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it s a sin.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s really a sin.
1
SPEAKER_00
Can I ask you a difficult question?
1
SPEAKER_00
So there s this famous photograph of a falling man.
1
SPEAKER_00
So many people had to decide when they re above the fire or in the fire whether to jump out of the building or to burn to death.
1
SPEAKER_00
What do you make of that decision?
1
SPEAKER_00
What do you make of that situation?
1
SPEAKER_01
Those people who jumped, those were acts of sheer desperation.
1
SPEAKER_01
I ve been in fires and just minor burns, but minor in situation, but I ve been trapped or caught somewhat, ended up in a burn center for nothing serious at all.
1
SPEAKER_01
But I, for those brief seconds, half a minute was, thank God, if I didn t have my fire gear on, I would have been burned to a very, very horrible level.
1
SPEAKER_01
Those people were burning alive.
1
SPEAKER_01
and they had the choice of either to stay there and burn alive or to launch themselves.
1
SPEAKER_01
And some of them,
3
SPEAKER_00
a call by their nickname on the radio, not their number.
3
SPEAKER_00
So it tweaks some guys off in other places, you know, they may have a few, but it s just, yeah, it s a great, great heritage and we re really proud.
3
SPEAKER_00
And Shamrock was, he was Irish and a lot of the guys back then,
3
SPEAKER_00
were Irish immigrants from the area, from the neighborhood, and they would actually take the fire truck to church on Sunday and park out front, and one guy would stay in it to hear the radio in case they got a call.
3
SPEAKER_00
So, yeah, that s the proud history.
3
SPEAKER_00
And you said that if I wear this around New York, I might get in a little bit of a... You might get a guy from the Bronx, go ahead, tell him, I don t screw you, you know, but I mean, it s all that good rivalry, you know, we like to, you know, we like to kid each other back and forth, you know,
3
SPEAKER_00
Guys from Manhattan will say, yeah, you guys in Brooklyn, yeah, short buildings, tall stories.
3
SPEAKER_00
And we re like, yeah, but you guys in Manhattan, tall buildings, no stories.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s all that jocular ball breaking.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s good stuff.
3
SPEAKER_01
Let me ask, I guess, a difficult question.
3
SPEAKER_01
If we just step back in the events of 9-11, on the side of the people that flew into the towers,
3
SPEAKER_01
What do you take away from that day about the nature, about human nature, about good and evil?
3
SPEAKER_01
How did that change your view of the world?
3
SPEAKER_00
I witnessed evil firsthand.
3
SPEAKER_00
I remember later on, well into that night when we were trying to help get those police officers out, I remember looking up at the building, Century 21, the store.
3
SPEAKER_00
runs along the east side of the towers, and it was still there, and the debris had come down right almost to the edge.
3
SPEAKER_00
Century 21 is this old storied department store in New York City.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the sign was there, and it was still lit up.
3
SPEAKER_00
Some of the neon was broken, but I think some of it was actually still lit up.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I just looked around, and I was like, this is a war zone.
3
SPEAKER_00
We re at war.
3
SPEAKER_00
And we knew we were attacked.
3
SPEAKER_00
We heard the fighter planes.
3
SPEAKER_00
you know back then it wasn t uh the extensive communication network and we had cell phones but they were the old school flip phones and there was no news on them and so plus we we didn t have a signal down there anyway i couldn t reach my family for like 12 13 hours and my dad had deployed down to the ferry terminal to retrieve bodies uh he was retired but he still went
3
SPEAKER_00
and they deployed him to go be basically the morgue transport guys.
3
SPEAKER_00
They expected to be sending hundreds and thousands of bodies across on the ferry, and they set up these tractor trailers as a mobile morgue, and that never happened because there were no bodies to take.
3
SPEAKER_00
They were all buried.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I saw evil firsthand.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t know how someone can inflict such
3
SPEAKER_00
revenge or a vengeful act in the name of anything, in the name of a religion, in the name of a cause, in the name, like what the hell, you know?
3
SPEAKER_01
Were you ever able to make sense of that, why men are able to commit such acts of terror in the days and the years after?
3
SPEAKER_00
No, Lex, I haven t.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, my mom s from Ireland and I still have a lot of family there and you know, my great uncles,
3
SPEAKER_00
One of them was dragged out and shot.
3
SPEAKER_00
He lived, but just based on a rumor that he was in the IRA.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I wasn t happy to see what happened to my mom s people, because they were victimized and brutalized by England at that time.
3
SPEAKER_00
But blowing up bombs and killing innocents in the name of that, it doesn t make it right.
3
SPEAKER_00
I couldn t justify something like that.
3
SPEAKER_00
I can see, you know, I was a cop, I was a soldier, and you never wanna take life in those jobs, but sometimes you have to.
3
SPEAKER_00
But you don t do it with a vengeance, you don t do it with a thirst, you do it because it s necessary for survival.
3
SPEAKER_00
When you do it out of a bloodlust, out of a thirst, out of a cause, that s evil, there s something wrong with you.
3
SPEAKER_00
I have no, I respect life to the highest level.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I m very, life is sacred to me.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s precious.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s beyond, it s not a commodity.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s a gift.
3
SPEAKER_00
But to take life just so randomly, so there s something way wrong with that person.
3
SPEAKER_00
And maybe I m a conflicted soul, but I would have no problem seeing someone like that put to death because they do not deserve life.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s many children around this world that are being taught to hate someone who s different than them just because the person who s allegedly teaching them says so.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t understand it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, that starts with just having a basic respect and appreciation of other human beings.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that starts with empathy.
3
SPEAKER_01
And one of the reasons I love this country, while joking that I m Russian,
3
SPEAKER_01
maybe you can say the same as you being Irish, you re actually truly an American.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that s why I consider myself very much an American.
3
SPEAKER_01
And one of the reasons I love this country is it serves as a beacon.
3
SPEAKER_01
I still believe it serves as a beacon of hope and that empathy and love for the rest of the world that like hate,
3
SPEAKER_01
is not going to get you far.
3
SPEAKER_01
That love will get you a lot farther.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I still think, you know, sometimes it s easy to see the press, mainstream media, you can see social networks, because you can make so much money on division.
3
SPEAKER_01
sometimes because it makes so much money, it s easy to think like we re really divided.
3
SPEAKER_01
I honestly don t think we are.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s just like the very surface level thing we see on Twitter.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s that you re 100% right.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s people out there that are maximizing off this whole division, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
They want us divided.
3
SPEAKER_00
They want people angry because it sells.
3
SPEAKER_00
A lot of these people that are in charge of certain organizations, well, they all seem to have nice cars and nice houses and nice vacations.
3
SPEAKER_00
And they re constantly trying to convince everybody that we hate each other.
3
SPEAKER_00
To me, I ll use a fireman analogy, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
It s like a little campfire.
3
SPEAKER_00
And if you just let the embers flutter, they ll go out.
3
SPEAKER_00
But if you take a little cup of gasoline with those embers, it ll blow right up in your face.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that s what a lot of these politicians and a lot of these media folks are doing, because there s something in it for them.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I think it s possible to defeat them with great leaders, with great spokespeople, with great human beings having a voice.
3
SPEAKER_01
One of the powerful things of the internet
3
SPEAKER_01
is more and more people have a voice.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I ultimately believe, certainly in America, but in the world, the good people outnumber the assholes.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, I agree.
3
SPEAKER_00
And you know, there s days when I think the assholes are overrunning us.
3
SPEAKER_00
But you know what?
3
SPEAKER_00
I think what the downfall of the world is,
3
SPEAKER_00
is ego and arrogance, and people that think they re better than that other guy.
3
SPEAKER_00
My parents raised me to be this way.
3
SPEAKER_00
My mom is such a sweet, gentle soul.
3
SPEAKER_00
She s an immigrant, she came here at 16 years old.
3
SPEAKER_00
She helps everybody but herself, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
She s just one of those people.
3
SPEAKER_00
She s sick, she s got Parkinson s, you d never know it, and she s still flying around to her condo complex helping everybody, because that s what she does.
3
SPEAKER_00
She loves to help people.
3
SPEAKER_00
But she s been in their shoes.
3
SPEAKER_00
She s been poor.
3
SPEAKER_00
She s sick.
3
SPEAKER_00
Her husband was sick.
3
SPEAKER_00
She s had all sorts of suffering and loss in her life.
3
SPEAKER_00
My granddad died when my mom was 10, and she was one of 10 children that survived out of 14.
3
SPEAKER_00
She knows hard times.
3
SPEAKER_00
But she so appreciates the good times and the goodness of this country.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, the fire department and the police department, military, it taught me a lot about empathy and trying to really feel for someone and put yourself in their situation.
3
SPEAKER_00
I remember years back, I was a much younger fireman.
3
SPEAKER_00
I probably had five years on the job.
3
SPEAKER_00
And...
3
SPEAKER_00
I was sent down to the next firehouse over to fill in.
3
SPEAKER_00
We would get sent around randomly when they needed an extra guy.
3
SPEAKER_00
And someone came banging on the firehouse door and in the tenement apartment next door, they said there was an older woman that was unconscious.
3
SPEAKER_00
So we dispatched ourselves and we ran over with the medical kit.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it was an elderly woman laying there on the bed, and she was obviously not breathing.
3
SPEAKER_00
She was obviously in cardiac arrest.
3
SPEAKER_00
And an older gentleman that was holding her hand, just inconsolably crying.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it turned out it was her husband, and they were married for 65 years.
3
SPEAKER_00
And normally we would just respectfully ask the family members to just step aside and let us do our work.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I realized that he wouldn t leave her side.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I kind of gave the crew a wink, and they were doing CPR on what they had to, and I just
3
SPEAKER_00
let him keep holding her hand.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I said, sir, could you just come over just a little bit so we can work?
3
SPEAKER_00
And I held his hand as he held hers.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I said, sir, I said, do you have faith?
3
SPEAKER_00
And he did.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I said, would you like to pray with me for your wife?
3
SPEAKER_00
And he said, I would like to.
3
SPEAKER_00
So we said the Lord s Prayer.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I just asked God to protect her and bless her.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think he realized that she didn t have a chance, but we still gave her that chance and we got her in the ambulance and maybe it was wrong to try to make it look like we could save her, but you can t really not try.
3
SPEAKER_00
But the one beautiful moment was he thanked me and he was almost okay with it at that point.
3
SPEAKER_00
He wasn t as upset, he wasn t as distraught.
3
SPEAKER_00
because I tried to just humanize that situation of what we were trying to do.
3
SPEAKER_00
We were trying to do our best, but we also tried to be compassionate to his sadness.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it just, I walked away just feeling so good, even though it was a tragic situation and she did pass that, you know, he came by to, you know, thank us days later and just heartbreaking.
3
SPEAKER_00
But, you know, there s just, it s just happens many, many times throughout the country every day.
3
SPEAKER_00
people get that opportunity as a responder to be that last bridge to the family and the loved one and you only get that opportunity once sometimes and you really have to to me it s like your moment to shine you know you could just be very very dismissive and very rude or you could be
3
SPEAKER_00
compassionate and just show, hey, I have a mom, I have a grandma, you know, and just in your mind pretend that that s who you re working on and that s who you re with.
3
SPEAKER_01
So that moment of compassion, that moment of empathy, even if it s brief, can be the thing that saves the person from suffering, make the difference between suffering and overcoming in the face of tragedy.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yes, like I felt that even though obviously his loss was still huge, it just made it a little more bearable and, you know, tried to just take his grief down to a lower level.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it made me feel, just feel really good about doing it.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s a powerful way to see the job of a first responder.
3
SPEAKER_01
Of course, you have to deal with certain aspects of the tragedy, but it s to provide somebody with that moment of compassion.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and you know, I made it a little habit because sometimes with faith it s a little bit of a tricky subject.
3
SPEAKER_00
So every time I had someone who died, which unfortunately was many, many times, I would just touch their hand and just say a little quick prayer and just say, look, you know, I hope you re moving on to a better place.
3
SPEAKER_00
I hope if you did have faith that it s strong as you depart.
3
SPEAKER_00
And if you didn t have faith, I hope maybe at your last moment that you found some and you just found some closure.
3
SPEAKER_00
So that was just my little my little ritual.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think I just, you know, I felt it was important that that that person, even though they were a stranger, just had someone there just sort of hoping for the best for them in their last moments.
3
SPEAKER_01
You mentioned cancer.
3
SPEAKER_01
You had a rare leukemia due to
3
SPEAKER_01
all the work that you did at Ground Zero.
3
SPEAKER_01
Can you maybe talk to the experience of just breathing through those days and what that was like, being unable to breathe, being overwhelmed by all of the dust in the air?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
3
SPEAKER_00
The first day, especially, we didn t have equipment.
3
SPEAKER_00
We didn t have breathing apparatus, and then we were handed little 69-cent hardware store dust masks, those little thin paint masks that would just get
3
SPEAKER_00
Sweated up and fit, you know sticking to your face within 30 seconds.
3
SPEAKER_00
So you would you just they were useless and what what you wound up feeling like was that you you swallowed a box of razor blades because there was glass and it was cement and it was just so caustic and I Remember that night, you know when we went back just to get some medical relief for the few hours We were walking up the hill to the firehouse because they dropped us off like a block of
3
SPEAKER_00
away down at Engine 201 s and quarters, and one of the older firemen, as we re walking up the block, we re all struggling, we re all having a hard time breathing, and just, I mean, I felt like I was dying, literally.
3
SPEAKER_00
It was pretty bad, and just remember the one guy going, now we re all dead.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I said, no, no, we made it, we made it.
3
SPEAKER_00
He goes, no, you don t get it, kid.
3
SPEAKER_00
He said, we just breathed in poison after poison for hours, and then that went into days, and then went into months.
3
SPEAKER_00
He says, we re all dead men.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is gonna take us all.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I thought he was crazy.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then now years later, like starting in 03, 04, guys just started coming down with these really rare and advanced cancers.
3
SPEAKER_00
It just stopped being a coincidence with the number of guys, and they were young.
3
SPEAKER_00
One of the first guys, John McNamara, he was 33 or 34, and he came down with colon cancer, and it took him quickly.
3
SPEAKER_00
He was in 2005, and
3
SPEAKER_00
I kind of said to friends and family, I said, I feel like I m running through a minefield and I wonder when I m going to step on my mine because everybody s going to get sick.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I wasn t feeling well from 2008 on.
3
SPEAKER_00
I couldn t put my finger on it, but I just wasn t right.
3
SPEAKER_00
And in 2011,
3
SPEAKER_00
I failed my medical, my bloods came back horrifically wrong, and they pulled me off the truck, but they strung me out for a month.
3
SPEAKER_00
The doctors in the fire department, one of them said my spleen was engorged because I was probably drinking myself to death like, as he said, most of the guys did after 9-11, which was pretty wrong of him and stereotypical, you know, just to stereotype and to categorize.
3
SPEAKER_00
The guy couldn t have cared less.
3
SPEAKER_00
He just, he was so crude and nasty.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then my one doctor who was my doctor on the outside, my blood pressure was 240 over 140.
3
SPEAKER_00
My spleen was about to rupture.
3
SPEAKER_00
She didn t even show up for my appointment.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I went down, I passed out.
3
SPEAKER_00
The paramedics responded.
3
SPEAKER_00
She got into an argument with a paramedic for big ego and basically telling him there wasn t really anything wrong.
3
SPEAKER_00
And he s looking at my paperwork going, this guy s got leukemia.
3
SPEAKER_00
He overrode her, he raced me out of there, down to Brooklyn Methodist.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the doctor, the charge physician, the ER physician, he says, you re not leaving, you re in a bad way.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I said, what is it?
3
SPEAKER_00
He said, I need a little while to figure it out.
3
SPEAKER_00
He goes, but...
3
SPEAKER_00
you probably have one of a few different types of leukemia.
3
SPEAKER_00
He said, I ll drill into your hip, take your marrow and find out.
3
SPEAKER_00
And he said, but in the meantime, we ll get the swelling on the spleen down with some sort of rapid medicines and whatnot, because my spleen was about to rupture.
3
SPEAKER_00
I had no blood platelets left, which is your clotter.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I basically would have bled to death.
3
SPEAKER_00
I found out from my team of doctors that I had about 48 hours to live and that really set me off.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was infuriated because I was telling them for a long time that I was sick.
3
SPEAKER_00
The doctors failed you.
3
SPEAKER_00
The few doctors in the beginning failed you.
3
SPEAKER_00
I felt very betrayed and other guys had died.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I had it out with that one doctor.
3
SPEAKER_00
I basically told her she was fired from my case and she s a pretty politically in charge person and I didn t care.
3
SPEAKER_00
I jeopardized my job for it because it was my life and I got the sense that it didn t really matter to her.
3
SPEAKER_00
She didn t have any empathy, as you say.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was, exactly.
3
SPEAKER_01
So why for her, why for a few others was there not a,
3
SPEAKER_01
a special care, a special compassion for, first of all, humans, but human beings in your position, especially a firefighter, a first responder.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, Alex, I think what it is in the department, their title is just to get us back to duty as quickly as possible when we are either injured or sick, because what happens then is your replacement is now in overtime.
3
SPEAKER_00
So you re out being paid on medical leave, but then they need to replace your spot and then that costs more money.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I think it s just behooves them to get as many personnel back.
3
SPEAKER_00
And especially during the summertime, you know, they look at it like, oh, maybe you
4
SPEAKER_00
want a few extra days off to go to the beach.
4
SPEAKER_00
And this one doctor, he tipped his hand back as if I was drinking an alcohol beverage.
4
SPEAKER_00
He says, hey, busy summer?
4
SPEAKER_00
Because I asked him to look at my spleen, which was sticking out of my abdomen like a football.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I said, excuse me, sir.
4
SPEAKER_00
I said, how dare you assume that I m abusing alcohol?
4
SPEAKER_00
Because alcohol abuse sometimes will present itself as the spleen is engorged and having an issue.
4
SPEAKER_00
So he automatically just assumed that that was my situation.
4
SPEAKER_00
wouldn t even give me an exam.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I was horrified.
4
SPEAKER_00
I was so angry.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I wanted to punch this guy out.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I literally was screaming at him and an executive officer came in to defuse it and sent me to another doctor.
4
SPEAKER_00
And when I showed her my paperwork, she was horrified.
4
SPEAKER_00
She was like, what did he say?
4
SPEAKER_00
And she said, oh, okay, go to your regular doctor tomorrow, who was one of the department doctors.
4
SPEAKER_00
And she just, it was just an indifference.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was like, I don t know, I was shocked at the lack of compassion.
4
SPEAKER_00
But you know what, that being said, I m past it.
4
SPEAKER_00
Life moves on.
4
SPEAKER_00
the team of doctors, I ended up with a Methodist and my subsequent oncologist, Dr. Peter Mencel, world-class, just incredible human being.
4
SPEAKER_00
My Dr. Pete is just, I love him.
4
SPEAKER_00
I love him like a friend, like a big brother, like a father, like a
4
SPEAKER_00
My primary oncology care nurse Mike Nunez was just incredible human being and and he knew I was frightened because I had to get two and a half years of chemo Compressed into seven days or I was dead these massive bags of chemo that never stopped and and
4
SPEAKER_00
the minute they went into your body, you felt like you were burning to death from the inside out.
4
SPEAKER_00
And when Mike came in to hook me up, he said, look, I have to wear a hazmat suit.
4
SPEAKER_00
This stuff is so caustic that if it drips, it ll burn whenever it touches.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, but Mike, you re gonna put that in my body, how the hell is it not gonna kill me?
4
SPEAKER_00
He says, no, no, this is exactly what it s supposed to do, trust me.
4
SPEAKER_00
So when he prepped the IV tube to get it flowing, it spilled onto the tube, and the tube started to smoke and burn.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I said, no effing way, Mike, you re not putting that in me, no way, no way.
4
SPEAKER_00
And he goes, listen, let me get another one, let me start it over.
4
SPEAKER_00
And here he is, wearing a hazmat suit, looking at me, and I m going, this is insane.
4
SPEAKER_00
And he goes, he looked at me, he took my hand, and he says, Nels, if you don t take it, you re dead.
4
SPEAKER_00
He says, you got those three kids.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m sorry, I have no other option, you re dead.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I said, all right, Mike, okay.
4
SPEAKER_00
And he hooked me up.
4
SPEAKER_00
And you know what, it was like, you know, if you do drink alcohol and you have like a shot or want, you know, strong type spirit and you start feeling that burn,
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, the minute he hit me in the vein, it just started going up my arm, burning, and then up my shoulder, across my neck, into my head, across the rest of my body, within a minute down to my feet, and I was writhing in pain for seven days.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I was praying to die.
4
SPEAKER_00
I was the seventh rescuer in six months to come down with the rarest leukemia there is.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s only 500 cases in all of North America a year.
4
SPEAKER_00
And seven of us came down in six months.
4
SPEAKER_00
Two guys died during treatment.
4
SPEAKER_00
Seven responders, police, fire.
4
SPEAKER_00
Two guys died in the first couple of days of the treatment because it s so vicious.
4
SPEAKER_00
Your liver, your heart, your kidneys, something will fail.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I was praying and I was praying, but I wanted to die.
4
SPEAKER_00
I was in so much pain.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I wouldn t take a painkiller because I know people with some issues and I just didn t want to go there.
4
SPEAKER_00
And finally on the last day I gave in, I said, please, I can t do this anymore.
4
SPEAKER_00
I was literally like jumping out of my skin and they gave me something.
4
SPEAKER_00
But it had burned out my mind, it burned out my body, I couldn t hear, I could barely see, it was vicious.
4
SPEAKER_00
But it worked.
4
SPEAKER_00
And my nurses especially, they just were so dedicated and devoted.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I was not an easy patient because I was in a lot of pain.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was bad.
4
SPEAKER_00
It drove my friends, my family crazy.
4
SPEAKER_00
It wasn t good.
4
SPEAKER_00
But on that first night, I had a quick vision of all these people that I loved.
4
SPEAKER_00
that were dead, that died, a lot of them in a trade center.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I saw Johnny, I saw friends I grew up with.
4
SPEAKER_00
The last one was my mother-in-law who had passed six months before and she died of, she was in a coma, she had a stroke.
4
SPEAKER_00
She had a horrible, horrible last six months of life and it wasn t fair because she was so religious, she went to church every day, devout Catholic woman.
4
SPEAKER_00
And all of a sudden I see her and she s smiling.
4
SPEAKER_00
And we used to talk a lot.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s the Irish thing, like the gab, the gift of gab.
4
SPEAKER_00
And she used to call me her boyfriend because we d sit and talk for hours and talk about books and about movies and about food.
4
SPEAKER_00
I loved her, she was my friend.
4
SPEAKER_00
And she d say, you know, my boyfriend s here.
4
SPEAKER_00
And all of a sudden she s smiling and she goes, hi, my boyfriend.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I says, dad, dad, what are you doing?
4
SPEAKER_00
She goes, he s not ready, he doesn t want you.
4
SPEAKER_00
You gotta go back, you got things to do.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I m like, no, no, no, it hurts so much, please, please take me.
4
SPEAKER_00
And she laughed, she goes, no, no, not yet, I ll see you.
4
SPEAKER_00
And she just faded away.
4
SPEAKER_00
And one of my doctors on my team, she was, you know,
4
SPEAKER_00
She had a problem with religion, and that s okay, I understand that.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m not a preacher, I have a faith, but I don t preach it, I don t push it, I just live and let live.
4
SPEAKER_00
So she sent in this shrink to see me, and I was messed up from the chemo, but I knew what I was seeing, I knew what I was saying.
4
SPEAKER_00
And he was a Jewish gentleman, he was a rabbi also in a synagogue, and I actually had responded in that district, and he knew 114 would run into Borough Park, oh yeah, I see Tally Ho, they come down the street.
4
SPEAKER_00
And he asked me to tell him the story, and I did.
4
SPEAKER_00
And he started laughing, and he scared me now.
4
SPEAKER_00
I says, Doc, am I really crazy?
4
SPEAKER_00
He says, no, no.
4
SPEAKER_00
He said, I believe you, my friend.
4
SPEAKER_00
He said,
4
SPEAKER_00
We share the same God.
4
SPEAKER_00
He goes, we work in the same corporation but in different departments.
4
SPEAKER_00
And he says, you did see your mother-in-law.
4
SPEAKER_00
He says, your faith is that strong.
4
SPEAKER_00
He said, I ve had many patients express the same sentiments.
4
SPEAKER_00
He said, so I want you to listen to her and fight and be strong.
4
SPEAKER_00
And he said, so what else do you want to talk about?
4
SPEAKER_00
I said, well, I don t know, Doc, am I that messed up?
4
SPEAKER_00
He goes, no, no.
4
SPEAKER_00
He goes, they re paying me for an hour.
4
SPEAKER_00
It only took 20 minutes.
4
SPEAKER_00
So we watched the Yankee game together, and that s the last.
4
SPEAKER_00
But it was just, again, it showed the human condition.
4
SPEAKER_00
Here s these two men of two totally different faiths.
4
SPEAKER_00
And yet, we shared that bond of faith, and he had empathy, and he had sympathy, and he saw me in many other patients, so he just didn t assume, and he gave me a fair shake, and I will always be grateful to him for that.
4
SPEAKER_01
Through any of this, the pain you had to go through with the leukemia, but also the days of 9-11, after, did your faith get challenged?
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, Lexi, it was strange.
4
SPEAKER_00
There was times I was so angry.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s that range of emotions, the anger, the denial, the depression, the this, the that.
4
SPEAKER_00
And this is the weirdest thing.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was mostly I knew my career was over.
4
SPEAKER_00
And they retired me out of the job.
4
SPEAKER_00
I got sick in August and that October they told me I was out.
4
SPEAKER_00
And by the time I was processed and used up my leaves and whatever you want to say it was, I was officially retired in January of 02.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it was less than six months.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I m there walking my dog one day, my rescued greyhound, who I miss.
4
SPEAKER_00
She was such a soul.
4
SPEAKER_00
God, she lived to be almost 13, Katie.
4
SPEAKER_00
And we re walking in the snow, and I got the call.
4
SPEAKER_00
I was retired, and I looked at her.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m like, Katie, what am I going to do?
4
SPEAKER_00
And she just looked up and said, we re going to go on a lot more walks, you know?
4
SPEAKER_00
And I was so sad, and I was so sad, I was so angry, because I lost my priesthood.
4
SPEAKER_00
I loved helping people, I really... I would have done it for free.
4
SPEAKER_00
I would never tell Mayor Bloomberg that, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
He s all about the book, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
But honestly, I would have been a New York City fireman, I would have paid them to do it.
4
SPEAKER_00
I wasn t allowed anymore, that s it.
4
SPEAKER_00
You have over 20 years and you have cancer.
4
SPEAKER_00
Back when my dad got sick, they d let you hang around for 10, 12 years in an office, but not now.
4
SPEAKER_00
Now it s all about the bottom line.
4
SPEAKER_00
But I was more depressed about losing a job than almost losing my life, like as crazy as that sounds, you know?
4
SPEAKER_01
And it just... It s more than a job.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s a way of life.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s also is your family, your father, you re carrying torture, your father s...
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, my friend, I love my friends.
4
SPEAKER_00
I love, we work 24 hour shifts together.
4
SPEAKER_00
You cook, you clean, you break each other s chops relentlessly.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it was, I love those guys so much.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I hope that my kids and anyone that I know and care about, I hope they can experience the bond
4
SPEAKER_00
of that brotherhood that I experienced in my life.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was so, God, I would give anything to have it back.
4
SPEAKER_00
Just, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
Can I ask you about New York?
4
SPEAKER_01
Unfortunately, I ve never lived in New York.
4
SPEAKER_01
I visit.
4
SPEAKER_01
I ve always wanted to live there for a bit.
4
SPEAKER_01
Obviously, it s a very different experience to have really lived in New York for many, many years, but there s a few friends of mine that are from, they got similar accent as yours,
4
SPEAKER_01
that are a little bit saddened, perhaps it s temporary, but perhaps not, they don t seem to think so, of what New York has become, especially with COVID.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s losing some of the spirit of New York.
4
SPEAKER_01
Do you have that sense?
4
SPEAKER_01
Do you have a hope for the city that has been so defining to what is America?
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, my heart s broken.
4
SPEAKER_00
I had moved to New Jersey many years ago, but I still have a close attachment to New York.
4
SPEAKER_00
My parents are still there, many, many family members.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I ve since now moved to Tennessee.
4
SPEAKER_00
I needed to go somewhere quiet.
4
SPEAKER_00
I wanted to heal my fractured soul.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I m in the middle of a beautiful farming rural area in middle Tennessee.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so,
4
SPEAKER_00
They d probably call me a sellout back in New York for leaving, but it s not the same city and it s sad.
4
SPEAKER_00
I ll refrain from the politics and the finger pointing.
4
SPEAKER_00
but it s a mess compared to what it was.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I did Broadway theater security for many years and I started to see it slide like with stuff that was happening, like public urination and defecation and just like tourists don t wanna see that, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
And I had an unfortunate incident two years ago.
4
SPEAKER_00
I was jumped by four teenagers coming off the subway
4
SPEAKER_00
And they were pissed off because I was wearing an American flag hat and I don t know, I m not really sure why, but it left me, I got out of it, okay.
4
SPEAKER_00
I was taken back, they were literally videoing it and the kid was just throwing shadow punches at my face wanting to beat me up and I finally looked him in the eyes and I was like, oh boy, I m a little too old for this.
4
SPEAKER_00
Body s a little broken down for chemo and I finally just said, all right, all right.
4
SPEAKER_00
I just had enough, I wanted to go home.
4
SPEAKER_00
Just worked a 17 hour shift as a stagehand.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I was so taken back, I was so insulted.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m saying, you know, I spent my life protecting this city and now I m getting attacked like for nothing?
4
SPEAKER_00
And I just, I gave up and maybe I should have given it a little more time.
4
SPEAKER_00
But it s, I don t know, it s turned into an angry place.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s turned into, I think there s a lot of people that aren t getting the resources they need in a sense.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s a lot of mental illness.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s a lot of homelessness.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s a lot of violent,
4
SPEAKER_00
people just roaming around the streets and it s not good.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s not safe.
4
SPEAKER_00
And tourists are not going to come back.
4
SPEAKER_00
Even just leading up to the COVID, I had some tourists saying to me, I won t be back.
4
SPEAKER_00
And now I can only imagine that it s just gotten exponentially worse.
4
SPEAKER_00
But
4
SPEAKER_00
I hope there s a chance it ll swing back, because it is.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s the gateway to the world.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, my grandfather came from Denmark.
4
SPEAKER_00
He landed in Ellis Island in the 20s.
4
SPEAKER_00
American success story, 25 bucks in his pocket, didn t speak the language, had a sponsor family in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and he made it.
4
SPEAKER_00
He ended up dying owning a bakery at one point and then an apartment building.
4
SPEAKER_00
And he did pretty well for himself for an immigrant who was poor.
4
SPEAKER_00
And my mom, my Irish mother, landed in the same neighborhood, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, 16 years old.
4
SPEAKER_00
Worked as a cashier 50, 60 hours a week in a supermarket and finished school at night.
4
SPEAKER_00
Married my father, the fireman, and lived the American dream.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it was all from New York.
4
SPEAKER_00
And my father s mom was from Irish immigrants.
4
SPEAKER_00
And they all landed in Ellis Island.
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, my mom didn t, because it was closed at that point.
4
SPEAKER_00
But there s people breaking down the doors to come to this country, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
There s no one breaking down the doors to leave.
4
SPEAKER_00
And this is a problem I have with people that aren t grateful for being here.
4
SPEAKER_00
And this, again, it s not political.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s just straight down the middle fastball.
4
SPEAKER_00
If you don t like it here, I ll show you the door.
4
SPEAKER_00
I ll get you the plane ticket.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, would you wanna live back in Russia compared to here?
4
SPEAKER_00
You might because of family ties, but I mean, if you had no ties to Russia, or would you wanna go to China right now and possibly end up in a labor camp?
4
SPEAKER_00
There s people busting down the doors to get to this place.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s not perfect.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s got its flaws, it s got its blemishes, but it s a damn great place.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s the best country in the world.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and some of it, so first of all, I have hope for New York.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think that culture is very difficult to kill.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think it will persevere.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I think ultimately the same story with New York as with the rest of the United States, it has to do with leaders.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I m always hopeful that great leaders will emerge.
4
SPEAKER_00
I agree.
4
SPEAKER_01
And the kind of leadership we see now and the kind of conversations we have now, I think has to do with prosperity and comfort.
4
SPEAKER_01
And in the face of hardship, I think great leaders will emerge.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I just think ultimately in the long arc of history- Well, leaders shouldn t become rich.
4
SPEAKER_00
They shouldn t become rich in the process, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
You shouldn t go into political office
4
SPEAKER_00
as an alleged lunchbox kind of guy and then come out eating at the best steakhouse in the world.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, that s the problem with politics, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
My Irish grandmother, God rest her, used to say,
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, those politicians, they re all like dirty diapers.
4
SPEAKER_00
They re full of shit and they stink.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it s true.
4
SPEAKER_00
I don t give a crap what party they re in.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, greed and power.
4
SPEAKER_00
We had to beg these guys, beg them for federal legislation to cover our medical bills, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
There s a gentleman, John Feel from the Feel Good Foundation.
4
SPEAKER_00
This guy is a lion of a man, a general, but with a soft, big, great heart.
4
SPEAKER_00
And John is a former construction worker who came to the 9-11 site the day after.
4
SPEAKER_00
He was one of those guys cutting the steel with torches and craning it out of there.
4
SPEAKER_00
One of those hard hats that just, that never got the credit.
4
SPEAKER_00
and the praise that we did as responders.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I don t mean that as a knock to responders, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, we lost 37 Port Authority police officers, 23 NYPD officers, about a dozen emergency medical technicians and paramedics, three court officers from New York State courts and two federal agents, and 343 New York City firefighters.
4
SPEAKER_00
We lost a ton of responders.
4
SPEAKER_00
But the recovery workers,
4
SPEAKER_00
thankfully weren t killed in that process, but there s hundreds of them now who are dead from illnesses because they came down to recover our people and the civilians and the poor lost souls that were killed at work that day.
4
SPEAKER_00
And John
4
SPEAKER_00
literally almost lost his foot in a construction accident at the site, an 8,000 pound I-beam tore off half of his foot, ended up with massive sepsis, six months in the hospital, hundreds of thousand dollars in medical bills, and then no one wanted to pay him.
4
SPEAKER_00
So here s a guy who s gonna lose his house, lose his life, lose everything.
4
SPEAKER_00
And now the never forget, it started quick, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
And he went on a mission, formed his Feel Good Foundation.
4
SPEAKER_00
His last name is Feel, F-E-A-L, Feel Good Foundation.
4
SPEAKER_00
This man literally went to Washington, D.C.
4
SPEAKER_00
with his army, as he called it.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I was honored and blessed to be with him only a couple times.
4
SPEAKER_00
I wish I had dedicated some more time to it.
4
SPEAKER_00
And what it was with John is he set out on a mission to get, and initially what he did is he got funding to take care of responders who were in that limbo, who couldn t get their medical bills paid, who couldn t make their mortgages, who couldn t make their car payments, who couldn t make their childcare payments.
4
SPEAKER_00
And John just took it upon his own to get donations and take care of you while you were suffering, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
I got a call when I got out of the hospital.
4
SPEAKER_00
You okay, you need anything?
4
SPEAKER_00
I said, who is this?
4
SPEAKER_00
It s John Feel.
4
SPEAKER_00
I said, aren t you that construction worker?
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you need anything?
4
SPEAKER_00
I m pretty good right now, I appreciate it.
4
SPEAKER_00
Phone ring again a few weeks later, hey, Sean Field, you need anything?
4
SPEAKER_00
I m like, this guy s incredible.
4
SPEAKER_00
But there s people who needed stuff, and he was getting it done.
4
SPEAKER_00
And he, with his army, had to chase these politicians through the halls of Congress to get funding to cover the medical bills.
4
SPEAKER_00
I was getting sued for $125,000 for my month stay in a cancer ward.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I couldn t believe it.
5
SPEAKER_00
I said, well, wait a minute, I have insurance.
5
SPEAKER_00
They re like, oh no, no, this is terrorism related.
5
SPEAKER_00
We don t cover that.
5
SPEAKER_00
So usually then workers comp will cover your on-duty injury or illness.
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh no, no, no, leukemia is not covered under that.
5
SPEAKER_00
We don t cover that.
5
SPEAKER_00
So then the ping pong game starts and I m literally have people showing up, taking pictures of my kids in front of the house.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I went and grabbed the guy one day by the collar.
5
SPEAKER_00
I said, who the hell are you?
5
SPEAKER_00
Sir, I m a private investigator.
5
SPEAKER_00
We re putting a lien on this property due to a nonpayment of a bill.
5
SPEAKER_00
I said, okay, I understand.
5
SPEAKER_00
Do your job.
5
SPEAKER_00
Let me bring my kids inside.
5
SPEAKER_00
Take all the pictures you want.
5
SPEAKER_00
Don t step on my front lawn.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I went in the house, I closed my room, my door in my room, and I cried.
5
SPEAKER_00
I said, I can t believe this.
5
SPEAKER_00
I spent my entire adult life trying to help people, give of myself, and I can t even get my medical bill paid.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, John Field got my medical bill paid.
5
SPEAKER_00
He finally got these politicians with his team, firefighter Ray Pfeiffer, who has since died, fought with terminal cancer for nine years in a wheelchair.
5
SPEAKER_00
literally at the end, came out of hospice to go finalize getting us this coverage.
5
SPEAKER_00
Detective Luis Alvarez, who testified days before he died in front of Congress, and a bunch of other guys that were really, really sick, and we had to shame these people into signing on.
5
SPEAKER_00
And luckily we had Jon Stewart come on and literally just hound these guys and shame them and embarrass them.
5
SPEAKER_00
And what it all stemmed from was in 2006, the first death that was determined to be linked to 9-11, there was others, but the first one that was officially linked was a New York City police detective who initially, the city said he died of advanced lung disease.
5
SPEAKER_00
His lungs were protruding out of his body.
5
SPEAKER_00
And he was on painkillers and it was so bad at the end that the doctors said just grind him up, snort him, drink it, whatever you need to do to get instant relief.
5
SPEAKER_00
So when they found the talcum from the pill lining in his lungs, they said, oh no, this is opiate abuse.
5
SPEAKER_00
He didn t die of lung disease.
5
SPEAKER_00
So they said, and the mayor was quoted as saying, he is not a hero.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, shame on you, Mr. Mayor.
5
SPEAKER_00
He was a hero.
5
SPEAKER_00
And his father, who was a retired police chief, married up with the Feel Good Foundation and Jon Stewart and Ray Pfeiffer, detective Alvarez, and they got us all covered.
5
SPEAKER_00
but it took so long, like it was so heartbreaking.
5
SPEAKER_00
These people who were lining up three deep, politicians three deep to catch a picture with a responder so they can tweet, hashtag never forget and hashtag look at me and hey, how am I doing?
5
SPEAKER_00
All that bull crap.
5
SPEAKER_00
They were nowhere to be freaking found.
5
SPEAKER_00
I literally witnessed them hiding in cloak rooms, running down hallways away from us, those freaking cowards.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s cowardice.
5
SPEAKER_01
What can I just linger on the Jon Stewart thing the comedian actor Jon Stewart?
5
SPEAKER_01
His testimony before Congress over the benefits for 9-11 first responders.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, there s a lot of important human beings in this story, but he has a big voice and he spoke from the heart.
5
SPEAKER_01
What do you make of that testimony?
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh, it was heartfelt.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, he spoke, look, I mean, John was a polarizing guy, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
There s certain things like over the years he was cutting edge and I might not have agreed with all of his, you know, well, you know, some stuff, some not, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
You know, like we all, but I ll tell you, I found him as funny.
5
SPEAKER_00
I enjoyed his humor.
5
SPEAKER_00
I would love the two of you to have a conversation.
5
SPEAKER_00
No, but again, I love a guy where you can have a difference in opinions.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s the beautiful thing about the firehouse kitchen.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it could get raucous, and now, I don t know, it s a little different situation, but back in the day, some funny stuff.
5
SPEAKER_00
But yeah, John literally just took his talents.
5
SPEAKER_00
You would think he was speaking from the heart of a fireman, or a cop, or a soldier, or a Marine, or someone who was there.
5
SPEAKER_00
But I think he,
5
SPEAKER_00
especially got to know Ray so well.
5
SPEAKER_00
And Ray had this stack of mass cards from the funeral cards they give out.
5
SPEAKER_00
It looks like a larger business card that s laminated.
5
SPEAKER_00
And Ray had a stack of them he would carry around.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think it was close to 100 cards.
5
SPEAKER_00
And John saw it and he said, what s that?
5
SPEAKER_00
He says, these are my cards.
5
SPEAKER_00
He said, for what?
5
SPEAKER_00
He says, for my brother s funerals.
5
SPEAKER_00
He was like, oh my God, you ve been to that many funerals?
5
SPEAKER_00
He goes, yeah, this is just the ones I made.
5
SPEAKER_00
And John, I think, was just stunned.
5
SPEAKER_00
And John actually had that stack of cards after Ray passed and said, look, look at these.
5
SPEAKER_00
There s gonna be more of these cards.
5
SPEAKER_00
We have one guy a week or girl, one responder or recovery worker or someone who actually resided down there.
5
SPEAKER_00
There s more than one a week dying
5
SPEAKER_00
It s one a day dying on average.
5
SPEAKER_00
And on average, two people are diagnosed with a 9-11 cancer or disease.
5
SPEAKER_00
Right now, the worst part is there s autoimmune diseases flying off the graph and they re not covered under the legislation.
5
SPEAKER_00
By the grace of God, my cancer s covered.
5
SPEAKER_00
If my cancer comes back, I mean, I m in remission.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s technically incurable, but I ve been blessed.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m staying ahead of this stuff going on 10 years.
5
SPEAKER_00
But if it comes back with a vengeance tomorrow and takes me,
5
SPEAKER_00
At least my wife will get my pension and be able to live her life without fear.
5
SPEAKER_00
But my friends who are suffering from these advanced autoimmunes, their wives get nothing.
5
SPEAKER_00
Their pension dies with them.
5
SPEAKER_00
And we re hoping that John and his army can shame these politicians once again to have the kindness and decency to cover these autoimmunes.
5
SPEAKER_00
They re throwing a lot of money around at a lot of things lately.
5
SPEAKER_00
this is one that they want.
5
SPEAKER_00
And these are lives in the balance who really need it.
5
SPEAKER_01
And John had this strong line, they did their jobs, do yours.
5
SPEAKER_01
Talking to the politicians.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it s a strong wake up call that it s not about the Twitter or the social media or all that kind of stuff.
5
SPEAKER_01
You have a job to do and you have to,
5
SPEAKER_01
It s that compassion implemented in the form of money, of helping people that were there for you when you needed help.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, we had a guy, I mean, I might get audited out of this one, I hope not, but we had a congressman from out west, I won t say where, but he prided himself on saying he was a retired cop.
5
SPEAKER_00
Busy cop, 22 years.
5
SPEAKER_00
He said no on the legislation.
5
SPEAKER_00
I witnessed a cop who was dying get out of his wheelchair and said, hey brother,
5
SPEAKER_00
I got a half a million dollars in medical bills, and I m a short timer.
5
SPEAKER_00
I got a few months to live.
5
SPEAKER_00
Who the F is gonna pay him?
5
SPEAKER_00
Do the right thing.
5
SPEAKER_00
You say you re a cop, you show me you re a cop, and you sign that paper.
5
SPEAKER_00
And the guy started tearing up, the congressman, and he signed it.
5
SPEAKER_00
But he had to be freaking shamed.
5
SPEAKER_00
And you know what he said?
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, this doesn t really confront me.
5
SPEAKER_00
This is pork as far as my district s concerned.
5
SPEAKER_00
He goes, oh yeah?
5
SPEAKER_00
Do you know there s 10 guys from your district who came across the country to help us that are also dying?
5
SPEAKER_00
He had no idea.
5
SPEAKER_00
He had no idea.
5
SPEAKER_00
And that s the sad part about it, Lex.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s a failure in leadership.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I think some people would vote for Mickey Mouse, just because if he ran.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, no offense against Mickey Mouse.
5
SPEAKER_00
I like him.
5
SPEAKER_00
He s a good guy, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, but like- Allegedly.
5
SPEAKER_00
Allegedly, supposedly.
5
SPEAKER_00
We don t know.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
But seriously,
5
SPEAKER_00
I look at some of the leadership sometimes and go, we re in trouble.
5
SPEAKER_01
And also you lose, I think the way government is structured is people who are senators or people who are in Congress, they start playing a game between each other and they lose track of the connection to the people, to the basic humanity.
5
SPEAKER_01
So you forget, even when you think of yourself as a cop, you forget what are like the cops and the other people servicing the community actually experiencing all the troubles they re going through and how they can actually be helped because you lose touch with that because you re not actually living, you re not talking to them, you re not living among them.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I mean, that s a natural part of the system, but I think that s why character and great leadership is important is you say,
5
SPEAKER_01
you leave the game of Congress and you go back to the people.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, that s what the country, you know, it s like the George Washington ideal is you re not playing a game of power.
5
SPEAKER_01
You re ultimately see yourself as somebody who s servicing this country service in the community.
5
SPEAKER_01
And that requires talking to the people in their time of hardship.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, you have some people serving in congressional districts don t even live in that district.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, so how are they going to empathize?
5
SPEAKER_00
They re not even driving through there on a daily basis.
5
SPEAKER_00
And again, when anything becomes lucrative from a financial standpoint, it blurries people s vision.
5
SPEAKER_00
You have to take the potential of becoming rich out of
5
SPEAKER_00
Politics.
5
SPEAKER_00
Politics is public service.
5
SPEAKER_00
Police and fire and EMS are public service.
5
SPEAKER_00
But cops and firemen and medics don t walk out of their career
5
SPEAKER_00
with gazillion dollar contracts with this company and that company on that board of directors and this board of directors, they walk out with a pension and that s it.
5
SPEAKER_00
And you have to wonder the intentions of people getting into politics.
5
SPEAKER_00
Are they truly going into to help the human condition or are they trying to help their own damn condition with their wallet and their pocketbook?
5
SPEAKER_00
And I try to lean toward the latter lately, with what I m seeing out there.
5
SPEAKER_01
Well, some of them are the good ones, and that s our job as a society is to elevate the good ones.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s it.
5
SPEAKER_01
And that has to do with the ideals that we elevate.
5
SPEAKER_01
There are a number of conspiracy theories around the events of 9-11.
5
SPEAKER_01
Do any of these hold true to you, or do they just frustrate you, even anger you?
5
SPEAKER_00
I ve been asked this by a few different people in my life.
5
SPEAKER_00
This is my take on it, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
You re a man of science and a man of education, so you.
5
SPEAKER_00
Allegedly.
5
SPEAKER_00
Allegedly, but yes, but you re a very, very intelligent man.
5
SPEAKER_00
What I believe took place is this.
5
SPEAKER_00
Structural steel will fail.
5
SPEAKER_00
a sustained temperature of 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I don t know exactly how long that would have to be sustained, but that s the temp, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Diesel fuel, kerosene fuel, kerosene-based jet fuel, which was the ignition there, burns at 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit.
5
SPEAKER_00
So that continued burning of that diesel, that jet fuel, but kerosene-based, you know, it s all kind of similar,
5
SPEAKER_00
exceeded the temperature needed for that steel in the structural members of the trade center to fail.
5
SPEAKER_00
In my heart of hearts, I would hate to ever think that somebody affiliated with our government, with some sort of agenda, would perpetrate that crime and that tragic just destruction of humanity and property for some other form of gain.
5
SPEAKER_00
Those planes rammed into those buildings at 450 miles an hour.
5
SPEAKER_00
They were loaded with thousands and thousands of gallons of jet fuel.
5
SPEAKER_00
Number seven trade center had the backup for the emergency management system for the city and it was an emergency generator in that complex which had a 25,000 gallon tank of diesel fuel to continually run for weeks to keep the 911 system, the backup system going in the case of a catastrophic event.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, that tank and seven heated up
5
SPEAKER_00
from the fire that was already going on from the aircraft debris coming into the building.
5
SPEAKER_00
So once that diesel became ignited in seven, now you had enough temperature to fail that steel in that building.
5
SPEAKER_00
So I would like to truly believe what I ve learned from the minimal fire science knowledge I have from my career,
5
SPEAKER_00
that it was just a matter of it burned too long, it burned too hot, and it failed.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, if you look at the way it came down, it came down as it was designed to in the God forbid event that it was to collapse.
5
SPEAKER_00
It came down pancaking upon itself.
5
SPEAKER_00
If it had failed horizontally and just sprayed out side to side, those buildings would have dropped for a quarter, half a mile up to Canal Street.
5
SPEAKER_00
But you know, Lex, I can t- The fire and the destruction that could have resulted from that is- Yeah, oh my gosh, it could have been so much worse.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, you would have taken out every building from that point all the way up.
5
SPEAKER_00
But in my heart, I d like to just believe that it was just a fire that burned too long and too hot.
5
SPEAKER_00
These planes cause structural damage upon impact in both buildings.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it was just a matter of time.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then you think about it, you add all the plastics, all the carpeting, all of the stuff that was burning on those floors, you add that to that fire load.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think it just had enough to collapse it.
5
SPEAKER_01
And you were in building seven for part of that day.
5
SPEAKER_00
I was just after it came down as well.
5
SPEAKER_00
We were aside it and we weren t in it or next to it when it actually did come down, but moments after we were there.
5
SPEAKER_00
And again, I would like to believe that it was just that that fuel was going
5
SPEAKER_00
and physics took its course and it failed.
5
SPEAKER_01
So physics and science aside, it s both I would like to believe and it s hard to imagine that anybody would be so evil as to orchestrate parts of this from within the United States government.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s very difficult for me to imagine.
5
SPEAKER_00
You know what, though, Lex, there s people, and I won t elaborate, I won t get into it,
5
SPEAKER_00
any controversial subjects or what have you, there s some people that don t have any problem at all perpetrating any level of evil.
5
SPEAKER_00
People like you and I who have hearts and we have depth of soul, we couldn t imagine it.
5
SPEAKER_00
But there s other people, wouldn t even be a second thought.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I ve seen some horrific incidents in my career that I go home shaking my head at night going, human beings are just, they re not wired right.
5
SPEAKER_00
You know, I mean, I look at animals, I love animals, I love dogs especially, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
And I see this dog park when I train to fly airplanes now and it s something I wanted to do.
5
SPEAKER_00
And there s a dog park across from the airport and there s 60 dogs and there s bones flying up in the air and chew toys and sticks and they re running around having the time of their life, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
and they re all getting along, and they re not hurting each other, they re not violating each other, they re not canceling each other, and I m going, we really need to learn from these dogs, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
And I just, yeah, I mean, sometimes it sounds crazy, but I think they re a better species than people.
5
SPEAKER_00
Unless they re rabid, they don t hurt on purpose.
5
SPEAKER_00
They don t cut you off in traffic and throw you the middle finger.
5
SPEAKER_00
They just don t do these acts of humanity that sometimes are so vicious.
5
SPEAKER_01
Why do you think these conspiracy theories, of which there s a lot, take hold?
5
SPEAKER_01
Why do you think so many people believe some version of different conspiracy theories around 9-11?
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, you know, like many things in life, it leaves me a little conflicted.
5
SPEAKER_00
I have to say this, I am at the point now, I don t know who to believe anymore.
5
SPEAKER_00
So I could see that lending a hand to someone who s already a doubter, going, oh yeah, look, exactly, that s what they re doing, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, you know, look at this whole virus, like, who do you believe?
5
SPEAKER_00
Like, where did it come from?
5
SPEAKER_00
You know, like, and you know, if you plant that seed,
5
SPEAKER_00
It s like that little campfire we were talking about earlier, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
You just toss a little gas into those embers, you got a fire now.
5
SPEAKER_00
I also think there s a lot of people with a hell of a lot of extra time on their hands, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
And they re really bored.
5
SPEAKER_01
And when the two are combined.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, man, you know, like, look, I was a three job Charlie, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
You know, one guy used to say to me, anything but home, I go, no, I got deadlines, responsibilities.
5
SPEAKER_00
You know, like that s what it comes down to is like,
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, look, we all have our hobbies and things we like and, you know, little nuances, and that s what makes us special.
5
SPEAKER_00
We re unique.
5
SPEAKER_00
Every person is a unique being.
5
SPEAKER_00
But I also think some people just they want to cling to something.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like, we all want to feel accepted and belong to something.
5
SPEAKER_00
So
5
SPEAKER_00
All of a sudden, you group up with these people and you all believe this fervently, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, they did it, they took it down, they took it down.
5
SPEAKER_00
And now you start going, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I think what happens is when you re in company of people and you start telling each other the same thing often, you freaking believe it.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, if you keep telling me I got a gray head of hair, I m gonna go, you know what, I do.
5
SPEAKER_00
But no, I don t.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, right, I got that waving bye-bye do.
5
SPEAKER_00
But like,
5
SPEAKER_00
But I think when you start hearing something often, you start believing it.
5
SPEAKER_00
But I m not gonna doubt their intelligence, I m not gonna doubt their intentions, but I just don t see it as being plausible.
5
SPEAKER_00
It would be too big of an operation to successfully happen.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, look, there s other things that, I won t say it on the interview there, but I have my doubts with certain things.
6
SPEAKER_01
I mean, conspiracy theories take hold for a reason, because some of them are true.
6
SPEAKER_01
The hard thing is just to know which ones is the problem.
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, when you don t have facts, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
Or you don t know who to trust.
6
SPEAKER_00
Sometimes when you don t have facts, when you don t have figures and you don t have science, it s hard to take someone s word on it.
6
SPEAKER_00
You know, I had a conversation with someone a while back, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
And the guy s like a just dedicated atheist and he thinks I m an idiot for believing in God.
6
SPEAKER_00
And he s like, yo, you re one of those jerks who believes in creation.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I said, well, I do.
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, what about the Big Bang Theory?
6
SPEAKER_00
He s going on this diatribe about the science and the gases and the chemistry.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I m going, dude, I barely got through high school chemistry.
6
SPEAKER_00
Slow down.
6
SPEAKER_00
And he went on a tangent.
6
SPEAKER_00
And all of a sudden, I stopped.
6
SPEAKER_00
I went,
6
SPEAKER_00
who created the gas and the molecules and the stuff you re talking about and the collisions, and he was furious and stomped off, and I got him.
6
SPEAKER_00
And again, I had no facts, I had no figure, he didn t either, but I stumped him.
6
SPEAKER_00
But sometimes when you can t show some, people need to see something tangible.
6
SPEAKER_00
They need to see it in their hand to believe it.
6
SPEAKER_00
And that s the real hard thing about faith.
6
SPEAKER_00
I see it in action.
6
SPEAKER_00
People restore my faith.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then I say to myself, well, there can t be that many dummies in this world if there s so many billions of us believing in this higher power, this higher, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, and you said earlier, you believe most people are good, and I do too.
6
SPEAKER_00
the bad outshine the good because the bad get the press, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
If it bleeds, it leads.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s just, you know, like, think about it.
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, how many more damn zombie apocalypse movies can we make, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
I didn t even know there was that many zombies.
6
SPEAKER_00
And it just seems like every other show is just guys bashing each other s heads in with bats with nails in it.
6
SPEAKER_00
And it s like, after a while, it s like, all right, gosh, you gotta get a new boogeyman here, you know, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
But seriously,
6
SPEAKER_01
But meanwhile, human civilization is getting better and better.
6
SPEAKER_01
We just like making Hollywood movies that just, uh.
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, we re getting better and better, but we re treating each other worse and worse.
6
SPEAKER_00
You would think with all this technology and all the knowledge and all the, it s like, what the hell is going on sometimes?
6
SPEAKER_00
Like, I really wanna see the good, and I think maybe the level of bad that we re seeing was always existent.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s just now everything is instantaneous news and flashes and tweets and this and this.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like, you know,
6
SPEAKER_01
Well, with the technology we have, it s also come to the light, so you get to see all these fights.
6
SPEAKER_01
I think that s step one of dealing with the problem is revealing it in its full, beautiful light.
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh, yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
How much of a bickering species we are.
6
SPEAKER_00
50 years ago, a guy like me who loves to talk, how the hell would I have gotten an opportunity to have someone listen to me and have, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
I love this, this is amazing.
6
SPEAKER_00
Right, and I think it s cool, but like,
6
SPEAKER_00
But you didn t have that arena.
6
SPEAKER_00
You didn t have all these things.
6
SPEAKER_00
My grandfather Nels, God rest him, he died in 1979.
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, that dude didn t even want to have a checking account.
6
SPEAKER_00
He would walk to each store, the phone company, the gas company, this company, and pay the bill in person.
6
SPEAKER_00
He didn t trust the bank.
6
SPEAKER_00
And it was like, now, ATMs, this, that he would be overwhelmed.
6
SPEAKER_00
He d be just like, I mean, I love my dad, but to watch him on his iPad is comical, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
He calls my niece s boyfriend, who s a tech guy, Matt, Matt, if you listen, he s the greatest.
6
SPEAKER_00
He ll have this poor guy on the phone for like hours.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like the second you ll walk in to see my father, my kids, hey, do me a favor, straighten out this bed.
6
SPEAKER_00
And it s comical because I m looking at my dad, I m going, he was born,
6
SPEAKER_00
when Hitler started World War II.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, wow.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I m going, he s seen all of that.
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh, my wife s grandmother was born in 1900 in Czechoslovakia, and she died in 1998.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I m going, holy, the stuff she saw in the span of her life, it s just incredible.
6
SPEAKER_00
But what troubles me sometimes is with all of these advances and all these devices, this is what I say to my kids.
6
SPEAKER_00
Look up.
6
SPEAKER_00
from the phone and look up, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
Because we don t talk anymore.
6
SPEAKER_00
I saw a girl literally, and I shouldn t say girl, guy, whatever.
6
SPEAKER_00
I saw a person literally just about walk into an open manhole cover texting.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I m going, that s scary.
6
SPEAKER_00
Because your awareness is gone.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I ve been at restaurants with groups of people.
6
SPEAKER_00
And they re texting, they re texting each other, they re sitting on the other side of the table.
6
SPEAKER_00
I m like, put the freaking thing down and have a conversation.
6
SPEAKER_00
And that s the thing, we ve lost the art of conversation.
6
SPEAKER_00
My wife, she has this running joke, she goes, oh, there s a lot going on up there.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I m like, yeah, because I really, I m inquisitive, I m excited about life, I love to meet people, I love to learn.
6
SPEAKER_00
And the only way you can do that is to have a conversation.
6
SPEAKER_01
The hilarious thing about this, so you re obviously very charismatic, you got great stories, you re a great human being.
6
SPEAKER_01
And you re talking to a guy who spent most of his life behind a computer hiding from people.
6
SPEAKER_01
But we re like trying to bridge this.
6
SPEAKER_00
Right, but I don t mean that as a rip, but you, I would never know that.
6
SPEAKER_00
I would never know that because you re very engaging, you re very like, I would not know, like you don t have any impediments to your social skills, your personal, and that s,
6
SPEAKER_00
And again, I don t mean it as a knock to you and these young people.
6
SPEAKER_01
Well, no, but this is me trying to look up from a smartphone.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s having these conversations, talking to people.
6
SPEAKER_01
I think it s important.
6
SPEAKER_01
I mean, some of it could be, it s always hard to know.
6
SPEAKER_01
Some of it could be just you and I being old school.
6
SPEAKER_01
because you grew up before the internet.
6
SPEAKER_01
Maybe there is joy and deep human connection to be discovered inside the smartphone.
6
SPEAKER_01
It doesn t seem that way, but because the smartphone s so new, maybe we just haven t figured out those things, because there s a globalizing aspect.
6
SPEAKER_01
There s an opportunity for you to connect with people from across the world.
6
SPEAKER_00
in ways that- I have cousins in Ireland and England.
6
SPEAKER_00
I love it.
6
SPEAKER_00
I get a FaceTime or a WhatsApp and it s like, holy crap, they re 3,000, 4,000 miles away and I m having a conversation now.
6
SPEAKER_00
I used to send my grandma in Ireland a letter.
6
SPEAKER_00
I adored her.
6
SPEAKER_00
She passed when I was 10.
6
SPEAKER_00
No, I m sorry, I was 11.
6
SPEAKER_00
I sent her a letter.
6
SPEAKER_00
and I d wait, and I d wait, and about two weeks later, this airmail letter would come back, and she d call me Master Nils William Jorgensen, and I would be so excited, open up that letter.
6
SPEAKER_00
Handwritten, just like.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and then I d write her another one, and I just couldn t wait for letters from Granny.
6
SPEAKER_00
And now it s like,
6
SPEAKER_00
that s kind of faded away.
6
SPEAKER_01
I still write letters, by the way, handwritten.
6
SPEAKER_00
I do too.
6
SPEAKER_00
The way this all came about was I wrote a letter to someone to say thank you for cancer research.
6
SPEAKER_00
I m blessed to be alive.
6
SPEAKER_01
That s a good starting point for any story.
6
SPEAKER_00
I m blessed to be alive.
6
SPEAKER_00
And my cancer was one that if I got it 15 years prior to 19, excuse me, 2011, I was a dead man.
6
SPEAKER_00
Right, 15, 20 years before there was no drug to treat, I was gone, going home to see him.
6
SPEAKER_00
So there s this wonderful gentleman that donated hundreds of millions of dollars to cancer research.
6
SPEAKER_00
Mr. David Koch, he s since, God rest his soul, passed away.
6
SPEAKER_00
And he s a controversial guy, big time business titan.
6
SPEAKER_00
And the press was just brutalizing him one day over something to do with his politics.
6
SPEAKER_00
Now, I m a union guy, I m proudly served in unions, still in a union, and he was not, most business guys don t like unions, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
But most guys like me don t like working for $3 an hour, so we like our unions, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
And I reached out, crossed the table, so to speak, and I sent him a handwritten letter to thank him, to say, we may not agree on everything, but I can t thank you enough.
6
SPEAKER_00
There s just this regular dude out there who is now living his life, watching his kids grow.
6
SPEAKER_00
Thanks to generous people like you who believe enough in cancer research, you ve saved my life.
6
SPEAKER_00
Maybe I can t say his exact dollars, but people like him.
6
SPEAKER_00
And he reached back out.
6
SPEAKER_00
And his secretary said, oh, he d like to talk to you on the phone.
6
SPEAKER_00
I go, well, he s kind of a busy guy.
6
SPEAKER_00
He wants to talk to me.
6
SPEAKER_00
He s a billionaire.
6
SPEAKER_00
And he got on the phone.
6
SPEAKER_00
He was like the greatest guy in the world.
6
SPEAKER_00
Invited me up to Sloan Kettering to dedicate a new cancer wing.
6
SPEAKER_00
It was like I was hanging out with my dad.
6
SPEAKER_00
And the sweetest man, just so kind, so empathy, because he was a cancer survivor.
6
SPEAKER_00
But now he s got the means to help people who ve suffered his fate to a better place.
6
SPEAKER_00
And he was so real, and it was so beautiful just to get to know, say, hey, you know what, this guy is a big time guy, but yet he s just a regular human like you and I. I m a guy who went to night college, and I went to the army, and I m a blue collar kind of dude, and here s this guy who went to MIT like you, and he s a wildly successful billionaire, a genius.
6
SPEAKER_00
But yet he can sit down and mix it up with me and know that I was truly grateful.
6
SPEAKER_00
And that to me was just like one of the coolest,
6
SPEAKER_00
little, you know, relationships I ve ever had.
6
SPEAKER_00
It wasn t like we were hanging out, having barbecues together.
6
SPEAKER_00
But like, you know, it was just I was so touched by his decency.
6
SPEAKER_01
Well, the basics of the like cancer reveals.
6
SPEAKER_01
You know, it s like fundamental to the human experience is trauma, is tragedy.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s like money, who gives a shit about money?
6
SPEAKER_01
Education, all of that is like weird new inventions.
6
SPEAKER_01
You know, life is short.
6
SPEAKER_01
You suffer with the various diseases.
6
SPEAKER_01
And that is a reminder that life is short and a reminder of the basic human connection.
6
SPEAKER_01
And that s why you can bridge that gap.
6
SPEAKER_01
All sparked by a handwritten letter, which just makes for a hell of a story.
6
SPEAKER_00
And you know what, Lex, this is the commonality between us.
6
SPEAKER_00
Guy with three jobs to a billionaire.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, we both had that sense of a sledgehammer to the chest.
6
SPEAKER_00
Boom.
6
SPEAKER_00
You have cancer And you can t breathe for like 30 seconds And then when your heart s just about to kick off and you you take a breath and you go, I m sorry.
6
SPEAKER_00
What d you say doc?
6
SPEAKER_00
You have cancer and it don t matter what kind
6
SPEAKER_00
One of my best buddies, Bobby, is going through right now, prostate, and I got way too many of my buddies with cancer, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
My buddy, Hugh, who became a vet since his first cancer, he was a fireman, he s now a veterinarian, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
He diagnosed me, actually, over the phone, by the way.
6
SPEAKER_00
When they couldn t figure out what was wrong with me, well, Dr. Hugh, he nailed it to the T. And we talk.
6
SPEAKER_00
And the same thing, the dozen of my close friends that have cancer, the same thing we say is the fear.
6
SPEAKER_00
So Mr. Koch and I, we shared that same sledgehammer to the chest and that same fear, and it didn t matter how much money he had and how much I didn t.
6
SPEAKER_00
And you know, it s just like the morning of the Trade Center.
6
SPEAKER_00
There was big time brokers.
6
SPEAKER_00
who went to their demise, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
Working in these firms, God rest them.
6
SPEAKER_00
And there was dishwashers, excuse me, dishwashers up on the Windows on the World restaurant, 107th floor, making five bucks an hour.
6
SPEAKER_00
And they died together, it didn t matter.
6
SPEAKER_00
It didn t matter if you had an armored car loaded with bills, you were done that day.
6
SPEAKER_00
And that s, I think, where people need to humanize each other.
6
SPEAKER_00
Just because you re driving around in a nice car and you got your own jet and you got this and you got that,
6
SPEAKER_00
Don t mean nothing.
6
SPEAKER_00
When you re going, when you re in that vulnerable spot, you could have more money than the U.S.
6
SPEAKER_00
Reserves, Federal Reserve, or you could have a welfare check.
6
SPEAKER_00
You re going.
6
SPEAKER_00
I learned that in a cancer ward.
6
SPEAKER_00
I had people in my ward that died on me.
6
SPEAKER_00
I was going around as a little bit of an ambassador because I was trying to, I was putting on a fake, I was putting on a fake like I got this, I got this, I was so scared.
6
SPEAKER_00
But when I got past that seven days of torture and the days leading up to it, I d go around and try to comfort the other cancer patients.
6
SPEAKER_00
I had this one older African American gentleman, he couldn t talk because he had such advanced throat cancer.
6
SPEAKER_00
He was my roommate for a little while, but then he got worse, so they had to put him by himself.
6
SPEAKER_00
And you couldn t understand what he was saying because his throat was just so radiated from the radiation.
6
SPEAKER_00
But if you put your ear down to him, you could make out what he was saying.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I m not faulting the nurses for maybe not wanting to do that, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
They re busy, they got a ton going on, they can t spend, you know.
6
SPEAKER_00
So if he was in need, I d put my ear down and I d find out and I d go get it for him.
6
SPEAKER_00
So when they moved me down the hall,
6
SPEAKER_00
They asked me to come down with my IV tower.
6
SPEAKER_00
He needed me.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I knew it was bad, because he just, his look was gone.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I said, sir, what do you need?
6
SPEAKER_00
And he whispered, call my sister, I m going.
6
SPEAKER_00
He had only one survivor in his whole life.
6
SPEAKER_00
And she was in North Carolina and he wanted her to know she couldn t get up, she was elderly.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I got the nurse and I got on the phone and I called his sister and I said, ma am, I explained who I was.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I said, he can t really verbalize too well right now, but he wants to say he loves you.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I put the phone down.
6
SPEAKER_00
And he told her he loved her, and he said, I m going home.
6
SPEAKER_00
And that was it, and I hung the phone up, and I just said, ma am, I m so sorry.
6
SPEAKER_00
I said, you know, they ll notify you, and I stayed with him for a while holding his hand, and then, you know, they wanted him to rest, and then I left, and then I got the tap an hour later, and they said, I m sorry, he s gone.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then there was another girl, and she was a young girl from,
6
SPEAKER_00
One of the areas I work, young African American girl, where I used to respond, and I didn t know her, but I knew her neighborhood, and she had what I had, but they weren t sure which one.
6
SPEAKER_00
Leukemias, they re an elusive beast.
6
SPEAKER_00
There s 49 of them, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
And each one of them is like, got their own little nuances, own specific treatments, so if they don t know what you have, they don t know what to do for you.
6
SPEAKER_00
And she refused to let him drill into her hip to take the marrow because it s vicious, it hurts so much.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s like someone s boring into your hip with a wood drill and it s no joke.
6
SPEAKER_00
And they asked me to try to convince her to let them do that or she was gonna die.
6
SPEAKER_00
Because if they couldn t figure it out, it was advancing quickly.
6
SPEAKER_00
So I talked to her and she said, I can t, I can t, I m too scared.
6
SPEAKER_00
I said, but are you more scared to die?
6
SPEAKER_00
And she said, I am.
6
SPEAKER_00
I said, okay, I ll stay with you.
6
SPEAKER_00
I ll hold your hand.
6
SPEAKER_00
You squeeze it as hard as you want.
6
SPEAKER_00
I said, if you want, they ll give you like a towel or something to bite on, whatever.
6
SPEAKER_00
I said, but you get that pain out, but you need to do this so you can get saved.
6
SPEAKER_00
And she said, okay.
6
SPEAKER_00
And they came in and they, this huge thick needle, they just bore it into you.
6
SPEAKER_00
And she s screaming for her life.
6
SPEAKER_00
And she s squeezing my fingers so hard and so hard.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I said, it s okay, hon, you keep going, you keep going, we got it.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s just 10 more seconds, 10 more seconds.
6
SPEAKER_00
They got it.
6
SPEAKER_00
They figured out her treatment.
6
SPEAKER_00
And they got her onto her road to recovery.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then I spent a long time asking God,
6
SPEAKER_00
Why do I have cancer?
6
SPEAKER_00
But then I stopped and I went, wait a minute.
6
SPEAKER_00
I didn t die that day with my friends.
6
SPEAKER_00
Shame on me for asking them why I have cancer.
6
SPEAKER_00
I had 10 years after 9-11.
6
SPEAKER_00
It was such great years.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I got to watch my little girl being born when John never got to see his son.
6
SPEAKER_00
So it was all gravy after that.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I said, but now I know why I have my cancer.
6
SPEAKER_00
Because I can empathize with people who have it.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I can try to be their voice when they can t talk.
6
SPEAKER_00
Be their shield to try to take that pain.
6
SPEAKER_00
Because I can understand, I can walk their walk.
6
SPEAKER_00
And now I thank God for my cancer.
6
SPEAKER_00
because it s made me a better human being, it s made me, I m not gonna lie, it brought a lot of anger for a while, and my family suffered it, but I really tried to go past that and heal, and part of living out in the country, it s very, very healing for the mind and the soul.
6
SPEAKER_00
I now thank God for the cancer because it humbled me.
6
SPEAKER_00
I didn t really need humbling.
6
SPEAKER_00
I wasn t an arrogant, puffed up type of person at all, but maybe I was running away at myself a little bit.
6
SPEAKER_00
I m working on a TV show.
6
SPEAKER_00
I m fine, man.
6
SPEAKER_00
At the time, I was 42.
6
SPEAKER_00
I got sick.
6
SPEAKER_00
Life was cruising, man.
6
SPEAKER_00
It was great.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then all of a sudden, it was like a blowout on the highway in the middle of the night and you re just veering off towards the guardrail.
6
SPEAKER_00
You remembered, you re reminded that you re mortal.
6
SPEAKER_01
And that s ultimately a connection to all the rest of us.
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh yeah, it s a good thing though.
6
SPEAKER_00
You know, because that s the problem, I think.
6
SPEAKER_00
There s a lot of people running around thinking they re immortal, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
You know, when you look at it, Lex, you look at the heartache in a lot of segments of people.
6
SPEAKER_00
And anytime someone that s got fame and wealth and success, and they die tragically, a lot of times it s from a substance abuse or just some horrible death.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I used to say to myself, how the hell would someone with that much money and that much fame and this freaking mansion, and I love cars, my son and I are just big car heads, and I m like, this guy s got a collection of cars,
6
SPEAKER_00
And he overdosed because he was sad.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I m going, how the frig are you sad?
6
SPEAKER_00
But then I stop and I go, okay, because maybe he doesn t have any idea who loves him.
6
SPEAKER_00
He s got a lot of people clinging on to him because of his success.
6
SPEAKER_00
And he just,
7
SPEAKER_01
you can t fill that void.
7
SPEAKER_01
And then they fill the void with something destructive.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I m not bashing people that have substance abuse problems or alcohol problems.
7
SPEAKER_01
I don t mean it that way.
7
SPEAKER_01
But what I mean is,
7
SPEAKER_01
It s just sad that their level of despair is so high.
7
SPEAKER_01
On the surface, they look like they just got everything going on.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s all great, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
They re still humans.
7
SPEAKER_00
Still got to deal with the same.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, exactly.
7
SPEAKER_01
Because they want love, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
They want love.
7
SPEAKER_01
They want love.
7
SPEAKER_01
And they can t really find it.
7
SPEAKER_00
Well, first of all, that s true for all of us.
7
SPEAKER_00
I think we re deeply lonely and looking for love, and when we find it, that s what friendship is.
7
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely.
7
SPEAKER_00
And then that s true for whether you re super rich or super poor.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s all the same journey.
7
SPEAKER_01
My dad said all the time, kid, you re going to end up working with hundreds of guys, and you ll love a lot of them.
7
SPEAKER_01
But he says, when it s all said and done, and you re all like me, and if you still got two or three of them that you talk to and you love.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I tell you what, I mean, I have
7
SPEAKER_01
and thank the Lord more than two or three of them.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I have my six, I call it my six, six guys that are gonna carry my coffin when I m gone, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
Because I know this cancer s gonna come back.
7
SPEAKER_01
I know it, like we get multiples, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
My friend Yvette just got his second.
7
SPEAKER_01
My friend Mike s had five of them.
7
SPEAKER_01
My other Mike has two.
7
SPEAKER_01
But I m,
7
SPEAKER_01
I wasn t ready to accept it in 2011.
7
SPEAKER_01
There was so much more to do, and it was so much, I was so scared.
7
SPEAKER_01
I m like, wow, who s gonna take care of my kids?
7
SPEAKER_01
They were little, 9, 11, and 14, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
It s like, what the hell?
7
SPEAKER_01
I have two girls and a boy in between, and they re beautiful kids.
7
SPEAKER_01
They re such good, good children, adults now.
7
SPEAKER_01
I mean, but they,
7
SPEAKER_01
My wife s a drill sergeant.
7
SPEAKER_01
She s tough.
7
SPEAKER_01
She don t mess.
7
SPEAKER_01
She s this big, but like- So you re the softie in the family.
7
SPEAKER_00
I m just kidding.
7
SPEAKER_01
No, it s funny because my son said to me, my son s 21 now.
7
SPEAKER_01
He s a good kid.
7
SPEAKER_01
And he says to me, back when he s like 12, he goes,
7
SPEAKER_01
I don t want you to be offended, but I m really scared of mom.
7
SPEAKER_01
I m not really that scared of you.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I cracked up because it s true.
7
SPEAKER_01
She s got to stand on a milk crate to reach him because she s tiny and he s tall.
7
SPEAKER_01
But it s true.
7
SPEAKER_01
But she was hard, but fair, but loved.
7
SPEAKER_01
See, this is the thing.
7
SPEAKER_01
You take any child anywhere from any background, if you love them, you nurture them, you teach them, and you guide them, you have a successful adult.
7
SPEAKER_01
And see, that s the problem in our society.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s not judgmental.
7
SPEAKER_01
I m not judging anyone.
7
SPEAKER_01
But we need to try harder as parents, as siblings, as friends, but especially when we re blessed with a child, it s like,
7
SPEAKER_01
You gotta put that child first.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s like being a military personal responder.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s not about you anymore.
7
SPEAKER_01
Now it s the team.
7
SPEAKER_01
So that little child is now the team and your wife or your significant other, it s not about you anymore.
7
SPEAKER_01
And see, that s the problem is people have a hard time not making it about them.
7
SPEAKER_01
You know, like now it s really weird.
7
SPEAKER_01
My kids are 19, 21, and 24, and they hardly wanna hang with me because they re busy in their life.
7
SPEAKER_01
We love each other.
7
SPEAKER_01
They re probably tired of hearing me go on and preach and whatever, but they re adults.
7
SPEAKER_01
We did pretty much the crux of what we had to do to put them into adulthood.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I look back and I go, wow, I wish I didn t work so much.
7
SPEAKER_01
But then I say, no, but it was okay.
7
SPEAKER_01
My wife stayed home.
7
SPEAKER_01
good lessons, just like.
7
SPEAKER_00
But ultimately, like you said, it s love.
7
SPEAKER_01
It is, it s the common, love is the most important ingredient on this earth, and that s the problem that s going on right now.
7
SPEAKER_01
Take politics out of it, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
Take polarizing each other against each other, take all that crap out of it, and just airdrop a bunch of love.
7
SPEAKER_01
Right?
7
SPEAKER_01
Like when I worked on Rescue Me, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
I love those people so much.
7
SPEAKER_01
They were such great.
7
SPEAKER_01
We had such a great crew and they worked so hard.
7
SPEAKER_00
You re a celebrity.
7
SPEAKER_01
No, no, no, not at all.
7
SPEAKER_01
If I was, it didn t really work out so good.
7
SPEAKER_01
I went on to being a stagehand.
7
SPEAKER_01
I m not pretty.
7
SPEAKER_01
And they don t want old guys waving bye-bye hairdos.
7
SPEAKER_01
But it was funny.
7
SPEAKER_01
The crew, we became really tight.
7
SPEAKER_01
We had like, shoot, like 80, 90 people on a set, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
And the first few episodes, everybody s trying to feel each other out because you work with different crews, different people.
7
SPEAKER_01
And this is going back, starting in 2004, so it was a different time.
7
SPEAKER_01
I love to hug people.
7
SPEAKER_01
Because to me, a hug is a true expression of love and caring.
7
SPEAKER_01
You may not know a person a long time, but you say, I care about you with a hug.
7
SPEAKER_00
Can I do just a tiny tangent?
7
SPEAKER_00
This is in the midst of COVID when I was in Boston and it was masks, like triple masks, nobody.
7
SPEAKER_00
And when I went to see Joe here when he s trying to convince me to move to Austin, Joe Rogan,
7
SPEAKER_00
And then the first time I see him, he s like, ah, you motherfucking big ass hug.
7
SPEAKER_00
And it felt so good.
7
SPEAKER_01
People probably looked horrified.
7
SPEAKER_01
They re hugging.
7
SPEAKER_01
It was just him and I. But if you do it in public now, it s like you committed a crime.
7
SPEAKER_00
But that expression, because I was so, you forget.
7
SPEAKER_00
how powerful that is.
7
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I got some of my buddies, I give them a huge hug and a big sloppy kiss on their cheek, because I love them.
7
SPEAKER_01
These are my brothers.
7
SPEAKER_01
But on this set, I swear to God, it got to the point, and I m not trying to whatever, but there was people that would come up to me for the daily hug.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I said,
7
SPEAKER_01
What are you doing?
7
SPEAKER_01
And I said, come on, bring it in.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I give him the hug.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I said, you don t understand.
7
SPEAKER_01
It just makes me feel so good.
7
SPEAKER_01
It makes me feel like you give a crap about me.
7
SPEAKER_01
I really do.
7
SPEAKER_01
I said, but it touched my heart that people were seeking me out to get that hug to start the day.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I remember there was a guy in Manhattan, he was selling hugs for like 50 cents, and I think he got arrested, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
It was just before COVID.
7
SPEAKER_01
But like, I wouldn t sell them if... Yeah, you re giving them away for free.
7
SPEAKER_01
Well, now I got leukemia, I d be kind of concerned to get into COVID.
7
SPEAKER_01
I mean, but like, I really think we need that.
7
SPEAKER_01
We need hugging booths, like in each city or each town.
7
SPEAKER_01
Like, because there s so many people that just want to know someone gives a shit about them.
7
SPEAKER_01
And that s the problem.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s like,
7
SPEAKER_01
Like, you know, that s what I love about small little towns like where I am now in Tennessee.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I m not knocking New York, I m not knocking big towns, but I guess it s easier to do in a smaller area because it s just not this massive humanity.
7
SPEAKER_01
But they ll stop and check on you.
7
SPEAKER_01
Like you re out in the road and you know, like I m cutting and cleaning or whatever.
7
SPEAKER_01
Occasionally I ll roll a lawnmower or a tractor into a ditch because I m, you know, not a farmer too good.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s easier to drive a fire truck in New York, but they literally, oh, I was worried.
7
SPEAKER_01
I haven t seen you.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I m like, no, no, I m okay.
7
SPEAKER_01
But they literally like check on you.
7
SPEAKER_01
They re worried about you.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I m going, people hardly know me, but yet they re so caring.
7
SPEAKER_01
And that s the problem.
7
SPEAKER_01
That s what I love about my life.
7
SPEAKER_01
I spent a lot of time, especially as a young boy,
7
SPEAKER_01
a lot of time in Ireland at my grandma s farm.
7
SPEAKER_01
And my mom comes from this tiny, tiny little village, she s out in the middle of nowhere.
7
SPEAKER_01
And the childhood home she grew up in, still, my aunt and uncle live in it still.
7
SPEAKER_01
I just love it there so much, because everyone waves.
7
SPEAKER_01
Tennessee s similar.
7
SPEAKER_01
They wave, drive by, and you re like, who the hell s that?
7
SPEAKER_01
Just wave, you know?
7
SPEAKER_01
But my cousin will point it out.
7
SPEAKER_01
Actually, third cousin, second removed by Johnny.
7
SPEAKER_01
Like, holy shoot, I m related to everyone here.
7
SPEAKER_01
Right, but like everyone stops to say hello and how are you?
7
SPEAKER_01
And I have a problem doing that because my wife goes, people think you re crazy.
7
SPEAKER_01
Why are you talking to everybody?
7
SPEAKER_01
I said, like, I ll literally stop someone and say, how s your day going?
7
SPEAKER_01
Like, I mean, I ll randomly on the sidewalk, then it looks a little nuts.
7
SPEAKER_01
But like, if I m buying a cup of coffee.
7
SPEAKER_00
Oh, that happens here in Austin all the time.
7
SPEAKER_00
That s why I love it here.
7
SPEAKER_00
On the sidewalk randomly.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, no, it s just so nice.
7
SPEAKER_00
They ll say hi to me.
7
SPEAKER_00
I thought they recognized me or something.
7
SPEAKER_00
They don t give a shit who you are.
7
SPEAKER_00
They re just being nice.
7
SPEAKER_01
I was on the road coming back, driving from my family up north down to Tennessee last week.
7
SPEAKER_01
I stopped in a bathroom and it was closed.
7
SPEAKER_01
The girl was cleaning it, whatever.
7
SPEAKER_01
She s working so hard, whatever.
7
SPEAKER_01
She goes, sir, she goes, if you go down the hall, there s a family restroom, feel free to use it.
7
SPEAKER_01
She didn t have to do that.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I went down and I m old.
7
SPEAKER_01
You need a bathroom, you need a bathroom, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
And I walked back out.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I said, ma am, I said, I wanna thank you for being here today.
7
SPEAKER_01
I says, bathroom was immaculate.
7
SPEAKER_01
It was, it was like my army bathroom in the barracks.
7
SPEAKER_01
It was spotless, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
And I gave her $10.
7
SPEAKER_01
I said, I d really like you to buy lunch with me today.
7
SPEAKER_01
I said, you really didn t have to do me that favor.
7
SPEAKER_01
And she goes, no, sir.
7
SPEAKER_01
I said, no, no.
7
SPEAKER_01
I said, I want.
7
SPEAKER_01
And it was like I gave her a million bucks.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I say to my wife now,
7
SPEAKER_01
I m been praying to be a billionaire.
7
SPEAKER_01
She goes, that s a sin.
7
SPEAKER_01
I said, no, no, you don t understand, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
And she goes, oh, you re Mr., you know, Mr., you know, God.
7
SPEAKER_01
I said, no, no, no.
7
SPEAKER_01
I said, you re getting it wrong.
7
SPEAKER_01
I said, I m praying to be like a multi-gazillionaire because I wanna give all away.
7
SPEAKER_01
We used to have a sign in Ladder 114 until some other rival truck company stole it, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
Because that s what we do.
7
SPEAKER_01
You know, you get sent to cover your district when you re out of fire and now your stuff s missing.
7
SPEAKER_01
And the old-timers had a sign that says, I am content.
7
SPEAKER_01
Because if you got to ladder 114, that was considered such a great place, such a great assignment, such great guys.
7
SPEAKER_01
You had to be vetted to get there.
7
SPEAKER_01
You couldn t just randomly go.
7
SPEAKER_01
And it was a little exclusionary, but they wanted good guys.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I said to myself, that s where I am in life right now.
7
SPEAKER_01
I am content.
7
SPEAKER_01
But
7
SPEAKER_01
I m restless because I wanna really do a lot more good.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s like this podcast.
7
SPEAKER_01
I wanna make sure that it s not forgotten, and I wanna make sure that these charities that are really, really helping people get recognized.
7
SPEAKER_01
But I d like to take it a step further, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
A friend of mine runs this foundation for young folks suffering mental illness and in crisis.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s for someone that we love dearly.
7
SPEAKER_01
He s on a mission now to get therapy dogs for really, really mentally wounded warriors, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
There s a lot of these young soldiers are having a really hard time.
7
SPEAKER_01
And now they could be out a while.
7
SPEAKER_01
They may have come back in country two, three years ago.
7
SPEAKER_01
Now it s just starting to set in.
7
SPEAKER_01
And there s a waiting list for thousands of therapy dogs.
7
SPEAKER_01
And he said,
7
SPEAKER_01
that they can t get enough of them quick enough.
7
SPEAKER_01
But he said, when you see the response, the way these veterans just light up when they get these dogs, it just changes their life radically, immediately.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I said, that s it.
7
SPEAKER_01
God, I don t know how I m gonna do it, but I wanna be a gazillionaire and I don t want
7
SPEAKER_01
any picture, photo ops, this, that.
7
SPEAKER_01
I just want to go, there s a dog, there s a dog, there s a dog, there s a dog.
7
SPEAKER_01
And then I want to build veterans land for these vets who just need a nice clean place to live.
7
SPEAKER_01
So why don t we take these old army bases and Marine bases and Navy bases that have been shut down.
7
SPEAKER_01
They re just sitting there rotting away.
7
SPEAKER_01
I was in the army in Alabama.
7
SPEAKER_01
My old
7
SPEAKER_01
Fort McClellan is three quarters vacant.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s sitting there.
7
SPEAKER_01
They just did a documentary on it.
7
SPEAKER_01
It just looks like zombie land, going back to zombies.
7
SPEAKER_01
So why don t we take that and renovate it and say to vets who are struggling, hey guys, you re gonna live here?
7
SPEAKER_01
And they take the old...
7
SPEAKER_01
Army, the places where they had all the supplies, there s massive buildings where you could just retrofit it and make light manufacturing within two weeks.
7
SPEAKER_01
Give these guys jobs.
7
SPEAKER_01
There they live, there they work, they ll take care of it.
7
SPEAKER_01
Military guys, they teach you how to take care of stuff, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
How the hell in this country should any vet come back home and be homeless?
7
SPEAKER_01
Because now they have to dedicate their lives for six, seven, 10, 12 years, five, six deployments making $7.50 an hour.
7
SPEAKER_01
And then they spend seven years or they get a whopping $16 an hour.
7
SPEAKER_01
They walk out making 35 grand.
7
SPEAKER_01
And now no one gives them a job.
7
SPEAKER_01
No one gives them a chance.
7
SPEAKER_01
So very quickly they end up homeless by no fault of their own.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I don t know how that s even possible.
7
SPEAKER_01
The people in this country who ve given the very most.
7
SPEAKER_01
And they re struggling, they re hurting.
7
SPEAKER_01
That s not fair.
7
SPEAKER_01
And my whole thing is, if I can have this dream of succeeding, so to speak, I wanna try to change it.
7
SPEAKER_01
So that s why I m praying to be a billionaire.
7
SPEAKER_01
My Irish mother.
7
SPEAKER_01
Well, my Irish mother probably wouldn t agree either, because you re not supposed to, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
Well, I m the same with you.
7
SPEAKER_00
The more money you have, the more you re able to help people.
7
SPEAKER_01
You can put smiles on people s faces.
7
SPEAKER_00
I have to ask you, the U.S.
7
SPEAKER_00
invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 in response to terror attacks.
7
SPEAKER_00
Now, 20 years later, we still had a presence and abruptly withdrew all troops.
7
SPEAKER_00
What do you think about this war across the world that was sparked by this tragedy?
7
SPEAKER_01
Whenever you do something quickly without thinking it through and planning, it doesn t succeed.
7
SPEAKER_01
I understand that we needed to exit.
7
SPEAKER_01
I mean, how long are we going to stay over there?
7
SPEAKER_01
And we ve lost over 7,000 of our young souls over there.
7
SPEAKER_01
For sometimes people, I don t know if they re grateful for it or not, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I don t know.
7
SPEAKER_00
So there s the other element, and sorry to interrupt.
7
SPEAKER_00
That s okay.
7
SPEAKER_00
One is the financial of $6 trillion, and that money is not just money, it s education, it s everything.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s money that could have gone towards, first of all, the first responders, but all the service men and women of all kinds throughout this country.
7
SPEAKER_00
And then there s the other side, which is the over 800,000 people who died in direct result of this conflict.
7
SPEAKER_00
So not just the American side of the troops, but just people who died, those humans.
7
SPEAKER_00
And those humans,
7
SPEAKER_00
many of them civilians, that s spreading hate, especially if you have leaders on the other side who frame the death of those civilians in certain ways that just spreads hate throughout the world.
7
SPEAKER_00
And so you think about this kind of 20 year saga and think, what are the ways that money could be spent better?
7
SPEAKER_00
And what was the way that we could have spread more love in the world versus hate?
7
SPEAKER_00
And you wonder.
7
SPEAKER_00
But then the other side, what is it?
7
SPEAKER_00
I m not sure who says this line, but it s something like, we sleep at night because there s rough men out there ready to fight for you.
7
SPEAKER_00
there is some sense in which we have to make sure that there s strength coupled with the love, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
Otherwise, evil men will do evil onto the world.
7
SPEAKER_00
So it s a very difficult decision, but then you look at the final picture, it s like, what have we gotten for the $6 trillion?
7
SPEAKER_00
What have we gotten for this 20 years?
7
SPEAKER_00
The thousands of Americans, soldiers who died,
7
SPEAKER_00
the hundreds of thousands of civilians who have died?
7
SPEAKER_01
You know, it s a troubling subject for me.
7
SPEAKER_01
I m a patriot.
7
SPEAKER_01
I love this country.
7
SPEAKER_01
I love it with my soul.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I was just about to head over to the first Iraqi war, and we went out for desert warfare training, and then it ended.
7
SPEAKER_01
I was, at that time, a combat medic assigned to an armored cav unit, so basically tanks driving around an armored personnel carrier, and when it gets hit, then you tend to that guy, try to save his life.
7
SPEAKER_01
I didn t want to go.
7
SPEAKER_01
I may sound like a coward, I did not want to go to war.
7
SPEAKER_01
I would have went willingly if I was sent to defend my country.
7
SPEAKER_01
I took my oath.
7
SPEAKER_01
I didn t join the military to kill, but if necessary, I would.
7
SPEAKER_01
I ll use the analogy of cancer.
7
SPEAKER_01
If you have a cancer and you re aware of its presence and you don t annihilate those cells and take them out quickly, it s gonna spread and it s going to kill you.
7
SPEAKER_01
Those evil bastards that flew those airplanes, one of those airplanes had a little three-year-old child in it from Ireland, where my mom s hometown.
7
SPEAKER_01
A friend of mine who s since died of a heart attack from 9-11 toxins, he found her shoe with human remains in it.
7
SPEAKER_01
And he thought someone was messing with us because we didn t know there was any kids in the building.
7
SPEAKER_01
He says, boss, there s a baby shoe and it looks like there s something in it, but there s no kids in the Trade Center.
7
SPEAKER_01
I went, the plane.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s a little girl s shoe.
7
SPEAKER_01
I can never get that shoe out of my mind.
7
SPEAKER_01
The evil bastards who perpetrated that needed to have missiles strike and rain down upon them and annihilate them like a cancer that they are.
7
SPEAKER_01
What just fascinates me is they ll show videos of these guys flying around and pick up trucks with 50 cows on the back.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s like, well, wait a minute.
7
SPEAKER_01
If a camera crew can get this footage, you think all these freaking drones and planes and radar assisted systems can t just go.
7
SPEAKER_01
goodnight, you re gone.
7
SPEAKER_01
So kill the cancer, kill the cells, get rid of it, get rid of it quickly, and go into remission.
7
SPEAKER_00
Like an undeniable show of force that sends a message that gets rid of most of the obvious centers of terrorism.
7
SPEAKER_00
And then no, that s the, because we offline mentioned a discussion with Jaco,
7
SPEAKER_00
maybe a romanticized view and mentioning Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits and saying we re all brothers in arms even when it s on the opposite side of fighting.
8
SPEAKER_01
which is more of a vision and growing up in the Soviet Union, you saw about World War II, that it s all just kids thrown into the, kids sent to die in all sides.
8
SPEAKER_01
But then presenting that to Jacko, who was in Iraq,
8
SPEAKER_01
he did not see as brothers in arms, which is, his basic statement is there s evil people, and some people don t deserve the compassion.
8
SPEAKER_01
You give them a few chances, they don t take the chances they have to go, because they re spreading evil onto the world.
8
SPEAKER_01
And so it s not, we re not
8
SPEAKER_01
All of us deserve a chance.
8
SPEAKER_00
Oh, no.
8
SPEAKER_00
But but the difference, though, and believe me, I jockle.
8
SPEAKER_00
I am from a way, way minor league compared to him.
8
SPEAKER_00
Right.
8
SPEAKER_00
I mean, this man was right there in the firing line.
8
SPEAKER_00
But I can understand his analogy, because when you think about it, right, those young conscripts back in Germany and Russia and, you know, all the countries where they were being drafted, even our guys were being drafted and thrown into this.
8
SPEAKER_00
they were gallantly and bravely defending their country.
8
SPEAKER_00
Now, I m sure the young Germans felt, well, hey, Hitler must be right.
8
SPEAKER_00
And the young Russians felt, hey, Stalin must be right.
8
SPEAKER_00
And the young Americans figured, hey, President Roosevelt must be right.
8
SPEAKER_00
So they were romantically, in a sense, defending the honor of their country, of their motherland.
8
SPEAKER_00
The difference between those, so they did have that commonality.
8
SPEAKER_00
If you and I were firing across each other from France to Germany or from Germany to Russia, we re just these two kids who got thrown into this.
8
SPEAKER_00
We didn t freaking ask for this, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
But the difference with Jocko s enemy is,
8
SPEAKER_00
No one was attacking their country over there, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
No one was taking their country over.
8
SPEAKER_00
Maybe in their mind they didn t want people trying to build their government, this and that.
8
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, I don t know enough about the history there to really elaborate.
8
SPEAKER_00
We didn t attack them.
8
SPEAKER_00
And if a soldier attacks a soldier, that s an understood concept amongst warriors.
8
SPEAKER_00
But when a soldier attacks a civilian, now you re after a different beast.
8
SPEAKER_00
And you ve written that beast off, if that makes any sense.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and then the enemy, I mean, as Jocko explains, the enemy in Iraq and just certain parts of the Middle East is essentially terrorists who are
8
SPEAKER_01
who don t value the lives of the civilians of their own country.
8
SPEAKER_01
They don t.
8
SPEAKER_01
And so it becomes like this weird guerrilla warfare slash game of violence that ultimately allows them to gain more power within their country, but they don t care if they re playing with civilian lives as pawns.
8
SPEAKER_01
If you have a child who dies,
8
SPEAKER_01
that s a civilian in their country, that could be seen as a positive for them because they can use that to leverage for more and more power within that country.
8
SPEAKER_01
And so when you re fighting an enemy like that, that s a vicious, that s an evil enemy.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s like snakes are beautiful, but if you go pet a rattler, you re getting bit and you re getting dead, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
And that s with terrorists.
8
SPEAKER_00
You gotta cut the head of the snake off.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I feel, no, don t commit our guys to me anymore.
8
SPEAKER_00
But what we need to do is go with tech warfare.
8
SPEAKER_00
If we have intel from drones or planes or whatever it is that so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so are driving down in that pickup or whatever, take it out and do it again tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
8
SPEAKER_00
And maybe they ll get the message after a while, oh shit, these guys aren t messing around.
8
SPEAKER_00
instead of throwing wave after wave of our brave warriors, brave seals, brave, you know, special ops guys.
8
SPEAKER_00
And God bless them for what they do.
8
SPEAKER_00
I couldn t do it.
8
SPEAKER_00
I could not have done it.
8
SPEAKER_00
But they have to be now sitting home going,
8
SPEAKER_00
What the hell?
8
SPEAKER_00
My friends, my body, myself, they must feel so betrayed because they passionately went over there to cure a cancer, the cancer of terrorism.
8
SPEAKER_00
And now the cancer s back.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I hate to say it, but I think the cancer might start running wild.
8
SPEAKER_00
We need to change our tactics up.
8
SPEAKER_00
This is just my opinion.
8
SPEAKER_00
I can t see committing all of our guys to a continuous,
8
SPEAKER_00
Eternal war but I think what we need to do is hit Surgically and hit hard at that cancer that is over there.
8
SPEAKER_00
We are never going to rebuild that region It s just it s it s thousands of years of traditions that you re not going to change.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s it s just some people are unchangeable because they don t want to
8
SPEAKER_00
And we have so many social problems here in our country, I think, that we need to fix first.
8
SPEAKER_00
You know, I heard this spoken in the past by many people.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s like the garden theory.
8
SPEAKER_00
You have your garden with a fence around it.
8
SPEAKER_00
You tend to your garden.
8
SPEAKER_00
There may be weeds on the outside of the fence, but as long as they re not inside your garden, your garden will prosper.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I know some people don t agree to that, America first, and the whole take care of our own, but it s like, how are we gonna take in more people now?
8
SPEAKER_00
And I have a human feeling for them.
8
SPEAKER_00
But it s almost like the lifeboat theory.
8
SPEAKER_00
How many people can we take into the lifeboat before the lifeboat itself sinks as the ship is going down?
8
SPEAKER_00
So if we can t take care of our own homeless vets and our own homeless people, it s just gonna become worse.
8
SPEAKER_00
And it doesn t make any sense.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s just like we need to just take a timeout and I think,
8
SPEAKER_00
switch our tactics a little bit.
8
SPEAKER_01
And invest into helping people here at home.
8
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
8
SPEAKER_01
There s very few as obvious of cases as the first responders in 9-11 that
8
SPEAKER_01
One of the things that I really want to kind of talk about, at least a little bit, we ve already talked about the amazing project that you re doing, the 20 for 20 podcast that you host.
8
SPEAKER_01
We mentioned one story, Steven Siller.
8
SPEAKER_01
Is there other stories, or maybe you can speak out at a high level, what are you hoping to tell?
8
SPEAKER_01
And all these different stories that are weaved about, that connect the,
8
SPEAKER_01
the tragedies and the triumphs, the heroism of that day and the days and the years that followed.
8
SPEAKER_00
You know, Lex, it seems like the common few themes, the common threads are being selfless, helping out others even though they might be a stranger, and acts of kindness, acts of love, and it seems to all be weaved together with faith.
8
SPEAKER_00
They all seem to have some sort of faith.
8
SPEAKER_00
We have one gentleman, Mark Hanna, and he s a Coptic Egyptian priest, and he s an immigrant to the United States.
8
SPEAKER_00
He was a Port Authority building engineer, and with his crew, who subsequently passed away,
8
SPEAKER_00
the crew did, he was effectively rescuing dozens of people on the upper floors, and his boss ordered him to assist an elderly gentleman who was 89 down 78 flights of stairs to get him out.
8
SPEAKER_00
And in stopping on the 21st floor, he figured they would just wait there for medics.
8
SPEAKER_00
He came across Captain Patty Brown of Ladder Company Three, who told him, no sir, you need to evacuate.
8
SPEAKER_00
And Captain Brown picked his brain a little bit about the structure because he figured, found out he was an engineer.
8
SPEAKER_00
And Captain Patty Brown continued on to defect rescues and he and his crew were killed.
8
SPEAKER_00
But father, he s now, Mark was able to effectively evacuate this gentleman.
8
SPEAKER_00
They were the two known last survivors to come out of the tower.
8
SPEAKER_00
He now has dedicated his life to becoming a Coptic priest in St.
8
SPEAKER_00
Mary s Church in East Brunswick, New Jersey.
8
SPEAKER_00
He did this for a total stranger.
8
SPEAKER_00
And he said he was inspired by his bosses who died and his friends.
8
SPEAKER_00
One of his best friends was an Italian man.
8
SPEAKER_00
The other man was a retired Navy SEAL, Hispanic man.
8
SPEAKER_00
And they were part of this melting pot.
8
SPEAKER_00
And no one looked at each other that day, what color, what race, what belief are you?
8
SPEAKER_00
They just said, hey, you re a human in need, let s go.
8
SPEAKER_00
And we have the story about John Feale and his mission to help the responders.
8
SPEAKER_00
We have a young lady, Mariah, whose birth father was on flight 93.
8
SPEAKER_00
She had not even met him.
8
SPEAKER_00
And she had this premonition that somebody in her family was killed that day, and her adoptive mom said, no, everyone s fine.
8
SPEAKER_00
Three years later, when she was legally able to find out who her dad was, she found out that her dad, Tom, was actually on that plane as part of the Let s Roll team.
8
SPEAKER_00
And we have a gentleman, Robert Burke, who s an actor, sweetheart of a man, he s a gentleman, and he s a very, very popular actor in Hollywood.
8
SPEAKER_00
He was on Rescue Me, Blue Bloods, Gossip Girls.
8
SPEAKER_00
And Bobby, my friend, as I call him, is a volunteer fireman now.
8
SPEAKER_00
This man doesn t need to get out of bed at two o clock in the morning and help people with a stroke or a burning garage or a burning house, but he does because he wants to.
8
SPEAKER_00
Because his best friend was Captain Patty Brown.
8
SPEAKER_00
his other best friend was Father Michael Judge, who was our chaplain, who was killed literally blessing the victims at the site, had just given last rites to the firefighter I mentioned earlier, Danny, who was killed.
8
SPEAKER_00
And Father Judge was in the lobby of the building giving a blessing, praying to God to please stop this.
8
SPEAKER_00
And he was struck by debris, and he was killed.
8
SPEAKER_00
And
8
SPEAKER_00
Bobby goes on to elaborate about Father Judge s story.
8
SPEAKER_00
Father Judge used to walk the streets of New York City helping AIDS patients just with whatever they needed.
8
SPEAKER_00
And he was a Franciscan friar.
8
SPEAKER_00
They wear sandals and a robe.
8
SPEAKER_00
They just live very humble lives.
8
SPEAKER_00
And it s just a common denominator is loving each other.
8
SPEAKER_00
and helping each other regardless if you know the person or not.
8
SPEAKER_00
And really when you think about it, that s how America was made.
8
SPEAKER_00
We fought for independence.
8
SPEAKER_00
Stranger fought next to stranger and fought tyranny because they wanted freedom.
8
SPEAKER_00
They wanted to be able to live, love,
8
SPEAKER_00
pray and prosper, and they fought and died alongside of strangers, and it s sort of symbolic of what happened that day.
8
SPEAKER_00
And then strangers from around this great country just flocked in by the thousands to help.
8
SPEAKER_00
They didn t know who was in that pile, but they didn t care, that was another American.
8
SPEAKER_00
And what I ultimately am trying to do, involved in this beautiful project,
8
SPEAKER_00
is spread the message of doing the right thing.
8
SPEAKER_00
Look at these examples.
8
SPEAKER_00
These brave people who didn t have to, especially the civilians, they weren t paid to run back in there and help person after person.
8
SPEAKER_00
They had no obligation.
8
SPEAKER_00
They could ve just said, hey man, I m outta here and just bolted.
8
SPEAKER_00
But they didn t.
8
SPEAKER_00
So we re just trying to say to people,
8
SPEAKER_00
Let s bring back that unity and that feeling of 9-12.
8
SPEAKER_00
As strange as 9-12 of a day it was, it was so sad because it was the first dawn of the sun where we realized this wasn t a dream, this was real and it s not going away.
8
SPEAKER_00
But the beauty of it was there was thousands of people lined up along the West Side Highway with signs and American flags.
8
SPEAKER_00
And they were from every country and every race and every creed.
8
SPEAKER_00
And it didn t matter who they were, but they all shared one bond, love.
8
SPEAKER_00
And they were hugging and crying and thanking rescuers.
8
SPEAKER_00
And it brought the morale so high for a group of people that was so beaten down the day before.
8
SPEAKER_00
It just started lifting the morale and making us realize, you know what?
8
SPEAKER_00
People really do give a crap.
8
SPEAKER_00
They really do love each other.
8
SPEAKER_00
And now I m going to be honest with you, I ve been doubting that a little bit lately.
8
SPEAKER_00
I still have these examples of it, you know, that lady who helped me last night with the phone and just, you know, I know there s these shining little examples, but sometimes I think, I don t know, are we running out of them?
8
SPEAKER_01
Well, I got to give you some advice.
8
SPEAKER_01
So there s two words that were repeated often.
8
SPEAKER_01
in the days and the years after 9-11, which is never forget.
8
SPEAKER_01
So might I remind you to never forget about 9-12.
8
SPEAKER_01
I mean, those words you talked about, that there s people, what is it, college freshmen, maybe?
8
SPEAKER_01
They weren t even born.
8
SPEAKER_01
They weren t even born, and there s people in their 20s that were too young to remember or to understand the events of that day.
8
SPEAKER_01
But I think what that day, as you re describing, means, it s not about a terrorist attack.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s about the unity that followed.
8
SPEAKER_00
It was tremendous, Lex.
8
SPEAKER_00
I never felt so proud.
8
SPEAKER_00
I was always proud of this country.
8
SPEAKER_00
You know, I remember my grandpa Nels used to walk by, I d see a flag, I d hear a Star Spangled Banner and he d tear up and I d say, Grant, why are you crying?
8
SPEAKER_00
He said, I m not crying, it s the tears of joy.
8
SPEAKER_00
I love this country so much.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I just remember like feeling that way.
8
SPEAKER_00
I felt that way 9-10, I felt that way on 9-11, but then on 9-12, I was just so proud of just the people, the way they stepped up.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I just want to try to see if that can happen again.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I hope it s not necessary for us to have another tragedy to bring that about.
8
SPEAKER_00
Let s do that without the tragedy.
8
SPEAKER_00
Let s just stop and say, hey, you know what?
8
SPEAKER_00
Let me listen to what this guy has to say.
8
SPEAKER_00
And maybe he probably won t convince me, but maybe I ll go, well, you know, I never thought of it that way.
8
SPEAKER_00
Stop the finger pointing, the bickering, the tantrums, the fighting.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s just not necessary.
8
SPEAKER_00
It gets you nowhere, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
It s like, you know, I was two years old and I d stomp around because I wanted a cookie or a piece of candy.
8
SPEAKER_00
I still didn t get it, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
You know, turned blue in the face and whatever, got a swat in the rear end, but it didn t get the candy.
8
SPEAKER_00
And that s what we got going on right now.
8
SPEAKER_00
Everybody s just stomping around, being a baby.
8
SPEAKER_00
Stop, just stop.
8
SPEAKER_00
We re really lucky.
8
SPEAKER_00
Look, the country s not perfect, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
But it s damn good.
8
SPEAKER_00
It gives us all these opportunities.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like I said, no one s rushing out the gates to get out of here.
8
SPEAKER_00
I got a cousin of mine, I love him dearly, my cousin Tony in Ireland.
8
SPEAKER_00
And he said, he s just a little older than me, he s in his 50s.
8
SPEAKER_00
He said, man, I should have done it.
8
SPEAKER_00
I should have went to America.
8
SPEAKER_00
My dad said, go to America.
8
SPEAKER_00
I went to England.
8
SPEAKER_00
And he went back to Ireland.
8
SPEAKER_00
But he s happy in Ireland.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s his home.
8
SPEAKER_00
But he said, wow, what a place of opportunity.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I said, it s never too late.
8
SPEAKER_00
He goes, yeah, but you know what?
8
SPEAKER_00
You get tied down.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I understand that.
8
SPEAKER_00
I thank God my mom came here at 16.
8
SPEAKER_00
I thank God my grandpa got on that ship in his 20s, 27 I think, with not a nickel to rub together.
8
SPEAKER_00
I thank God they did it, because I don t know where else I would have ended up.
8
SPEAKER_00
There s no place else I want to be.
8
SPEAKER_01
And I thank God that there s people like you who rushed towards ground zero to help other human beings.
8
SPEAKER_01
And I believe that that human spirit ultimately represents the best of this country and the best of this world.
8
SPEAKER_01
Thank you for the stories you re telling, for your perseverance in that.
8
SPEAKER_01
And thank you for welcoming me to the crew.
8
SPEAKER_01
You re very welcome.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m proud.
8
SPEAKER_00
And we ll take you any day.
8
SPEAKER_00
You look like you could do the job just fine.
8
SPEAKER_01
I love lifting heavy things and doing dangerous things.
8
SPEAKER_01
So I m proud to be part of this country and part of the Detailio now.
8
SPEAKER_00
Well, you are definitely an attribute to America, and we re glad you chose to come here.
8
SPEAKER_00
You know, Lex, it s such a beautiful place.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s a beautiful melting pot.
8
SPEAKER_00
If we were all the same, it would be kind of a boring place, right?
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, kind of boring.
8
SPEAKER_00
It really would, but it s just such a great place, and I just want to say thanks.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s an honor.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s an honor to have someone to let me sound off, and it ll be an even bigger honor if somebody will listen to me and just say, hey, let me just try to do something good today.
8
SPEAKER_00
And that s the Tunnel to Towers mantra, is let us do good.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I just, you know, I...
8
SPEAKER_00
I got a really big credit card with God, a big balance, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
I need to pay him back a lot, and I need to pay him forward, and I m just gonna spend the rest of my days trying my best.
8
SPEAKER_00
I don t know where this is gonna go, what it ll lead into, but I really would like to get those dogs for those vets, build them that village, and just keep going on from project to project to just say,
8
SPEAKER_00
when my final day comes, and I m laying there, and I say, you know what?
8
SPEAKER_00
I really made the most of that second chance God gave me way back in 2011.
8
SPEAKER_00
I hope it s 30, 40 years from now, but even if it s 30 months from now, I m giving it the best shot.
8
SPEAKER_00
So thank you, sir, I appreciate it, and wishing you blessings and success in your career.
8
SPEAKER_01
Keep up the good fight, and you re always welcome back to Texas.
8
SPEAKER_00
Oh, I love it, it s great food, and a little hot,
8
SPEAKER_01
It s a little hot, but I can deal with it.
8
SPEAKER_00
We don t do so good to Irish in the sun.
8
SPEAKER_00
Well, the barbecue and the people are worth it.
8
SPEAKER_00
No, they are, they re awesome.
8
SPEAKER_00
I was down here for some storm relief a few years ago, and I tell you what, I fell in love with it.
8
SPEAKER_00
The people are great, it s a great state, and yeah, I ll definitely be back again for sure.
8
SPEAKER_01
Thanks for talking to me.
8
SPEAKER_00
Thank you, sir, appreciate it.
8
SPEAKER_01
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Niels Jorgensen.
8
SPEAKER_01
To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
8
SPEAKER_01
And now let me leave you with some words from Franklin D. Roosevelt.
8
SPEAKER_01
Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people.
8
SPEAKER_01
A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.
8
SPEAKER_01
Thank you for listening.
8
SPEAKER_01
I hope to see you next time.