Niels Jorgensen: New York Firefighters and the Heroes of 9/11

00:00:00.000 | The following is a conversation with Niels Jorgensen, a New York firefighter for over 21 years,

00:00:06.640 | who was there at Ground Zero on September 11th, 2001.

00:00:11.400 | He was forced to retire because of the leukemia he contracted from cleaning up Ground Zero.

00:00:17.680 | This podcast tells his story, and the story of other great men and women who were there that day.

00:00:24.520 | Some of the stories we talk about are part of a new limited podcast series that Niels hosts

00:00:30.160 | called "20 for 20" with 20 episodes for the 20 years since 9/11.

00:00:36.800 | To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.

00:00:41.440 | As a side note, please allow me to say a few words about the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001.

00:00:49.280 | I was in downtown Chicago on that day, lost in the mundane busyness of an early Tuesday morning.

00:00:55.600 | At that time, I was already fascinated by human nature, the best and the worst of it,

00:01:02.000 | exploring it through the study of history and literature.

00:01:05.880 | In the years before, as a young boy growing up in Russia, I saw chaos, uncertainty, and desperation

00:01:12.200 | in the Soviet Union of the 1990s, wrapping up a century of war and suffering.

00:01:18.360 | But after coming to America for me, there was a sense of hope, like all of it was behind us,

00:01:24.600 | a bad dream to be forgotten as we enter into the new century.

00:01:29.920 | On 9/11, when I saw the news of the second plane hitting the towers, my sense of hope had changed.

00:01:37.200 | I understood that the 21st century, like the century before, would too have its tragedies,

00:01:43.960 | its evildoers, its wars, and its suffering.

00:01:48.360 | And unlike the history books, these stories will involve all of us.

00:01:53.280 | They will involve me in however small and insignificant a role,

00:01:58.440 | but one that nevertheless carries the responsibility to help.

00:02:03.680 | I became an American that day, a citizen of the world.

00:02:08.440 | I felt the common humanity in all of us.

00:02:10.840 | I felt the unity and the love in the days that followed, and I think most of the world

00:02:15.080 | shared in this feeling, that we are all in this together.

00:02:19.000 | Evil cannot defeat the human spirit.

00:02:22.240 | There were many heroes sung and unsung on that day, and in the years after.

00:02:27.800 | Often, politicians fail to rightfully honor the service and sacrifice of these heroes.

00:02:33.640 | There is much I could say about that, but I don't want to waste my words on the failures of weak leaders.

00:02:40.400 | Instead, I want to say thank you to the men and women who rushed to ground zero to help,

00:02:45.800 | who put on a uniform to serve, who make me proud to be an American and a human being,

00:02:51.600 | and give me hope about the future of our civilization, here on a small spinning rock

00:02:57.840 | that despite the long odds, keeps kindling the fire of human consciousness and love.

00:03:05.600 | This is the Lex Friedman Podcast, and here is my conversation with Niels Jorgensen.

00:03:12.280 | Take me through the day of September 11th, 2001, as you experienced it, as you lived it.

00:03:20.280 | September 11th, 2001 was a bright, beautiful, sunny Tuesday morning.

00:03:25.280 | It was a late summer.

00:03:27.680 | There's a lot of folks who go to the beaches in New Jersey, call it the short summer.

00:03:32.640 | Everybody's left there for Labor Day, but it's still beautiful enough to enjoy the weather.

00:03:37.640 | I left my house about 6.30 in the morning, and my four-and-a-half-year-old daughter said to me,

00:03:45.640 | "Daddy, which truck are you driving today, the fire truck, the oil truck, or the Boar's Head truck?"

00:03:52.640 | Because I had three jobs at the time, most New York City firefighters and police officers, EMS.

00:03:59.640 | You don't make the most amount of money, so in order to live in that city, you have to hustle.

00:04:04.640 | My wife stayed at home raising the children.

00:04:08.640 | My daughter said, "Oh, you should be safe because you're on the oil truck."

00:04:12.640 | I told her I was going on the oil truck that day.

00:04:15.640 | She said, "You should be safe today, Daddy."

00:04:17.640 | I left and worked for this great company on the North Shore, Staten Island, Quinlan Fuel.

00:04:23.640 | Very nice people, treated me very well.

00:04:26.640 | It was my first day back, actually, for the winter season.

00:04:30.640 | I usually get laid off a couple months in the summer because things are too hot to need oil.

00:04:35.640 | I took the truck, started my route that day, and a plane hit the tower.

00:04:42.640 | 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,

00:04:48.640 | and he hit the building.

00:04:50.640 | Probably hit a bad turbulence, gust of wind.

00:04:55.640 | It was windy down in that area, Manhattan, so that was my first thought.

00:04:58.640 | Can we pause there for a second?

00:05:00.640 | 6.30 a.m., you wake up, you leave, and then the plane hits at 8.45, 8.50, 8.45 a.m.

00:05:08.640 | It's just interesting how you phrase it.

00:05:11.640 | How did you hear that a plane hit something?

00:05:16.640 | I'm a big news radio guy, news guy, bit of a buff.

00:05:20.640 | I've been that way since I was a kid, and I had the news radio on the local New York radio station.

00:05:26.640 | As I was driving the truck, I heard an emergency report, "This just in. Aircraft has just struck the World Trade Center."

00:05:37.640 | Where Quinlans is located, it's on the north rim of Staten Island, which is right on New York Harbor.

00:05:44.640 | You could see the Statue of Liberty a mile or two away in the distance, and then past that is the towers.

00:05:51.640 | I just literally stopped the truck and looked out, and I saw the smoke.

00:05:55.640 | There was smoke?

00:05:56.640 | Oh, it was dark, black smoke.

00:05:58.640 | It was just burning fully at that point.

00:06:02.640 | Did you have fear of what the hell happened?

00:06:05.640 | I was initially scared for anybody involved.

00:06:09.640 | I realized, I said, "There's going to be lots of fatalities, obviously, depending on the size of the aircraft."

00:06:15.640 | The business day there had started probably at 8, 830, so those buildings should have been packed at that moment.

00:06:23.640 | That was a thought that crossed my mind.

00:06:26.640 | From our being responder perspective, if you're off duty, normally you do not go to a scene.

00:06:34.640 | They don't want you to because of accountability and safety.

00:06:38.640 | The on-duty platoon will handle it, and if it's something very horrific, then they will have something called a recall,

00:06:46.640 | which is any police, firefighter, or EMS personnel is obligated to go to their command immediately, check in with their command,

00:06:57.640 | get their gear, and stand by and await orders for deployment or to remain in that command for routine duties.

00:07:06.640 | How often throughout history have there been recalls?

00:07:09.640 | I believe the one prior to that was in the 1968 riots, possibly, and then maybe in the '70s there was another blackout and riots.

00:07:18.640 | I remember my dad talking about it, and he actually always said, "Just remember if something bad's going down,

00:07:25.640 | don't just rush in. You will wait the recall, or at the very least, if there isn't a recall, you get to your firehouse."

00:07:34.640 | Because if you show up somewhere, there's a good chance that no one knows you're there,

00:07:39.640 | and now in your well-intended movements, you get lost or trapped, or no one's looking for you.

00:07:48.640 | So that's the whole thing with checking in, and now you're with a squad or group of guys, and everyone knows,

00:07:56.640 | "Hey, there's Nils, there's Lex. Okay, they're on this team."

00:08:01.640 | So I said, "All right, they're not going to need us. It's probably going to be a fifth alarm, and there'll be 250 firefighters there.

00:08:09.640 | They'll handle it. It's going to be a bad day for those guys, but our guys take on some heavy stuff, and they'll be fine."

00:08:17.640 | A few minutes later, the second plane hit, and I knew immediately, I'm like, "Okay, we're under attack."

00:08:25.640 | So I just flew the truck back in. I told my boss I have to go.

00:08:30.640 | He understood. He knew something was way wrong, and I just was flying.

00:08:35.640 | At the time, I actually had a yellow Volkswagen Beetle, kind of a goofy car to be driving, but I loved it.

00:08:41.640 | So for people who are just listening, you're kind of a big guy.

00:08:43.640 | Well, yeah, I definitely need to lose about 50 pounds.

00:08:47.640 | No, I don't mean it that way. You're framed. Big hands.

00:08:50.640 | As my beloved friend Bobby Adams would say to me, "I was driving around in a clown wagon,"

00:08:55.640 | and he also says, "I have a waving hairdo, waving bye-bye." So thanks, Bobby.

00:09:00.640 | Good luck.

00:09:01.640 | Yeah, he's a great friend.

00:09:02.640 | Yeah, so I took the Volkswagen, and I flew in, and I was heading over to Verrazano Bridge and hit the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

00:09:09.640 | My phone rang, and my wife normally doesn't curse or raise her voice, and she was yelling at me.

00:09:16.640 | She said, "Don't go in there. Go to your firehouse."

00:09:19.640 | Well, first she asked where. She knew I was on the way, but she just wanted to know where.

00:09:24.640 | I said, "I'm on the curve," which is 65th Street on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway called Dead Man's Curve.

00:09:31.640 | We actually used to do a lot of car wrecks up there, and I was hitting that curve pretty fast.

00:09:37.640 | Then right around the curve is the exit to the firehouse, 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?"

00:09:47.640 | I said, "But I have no gear. I'm going to be ineffective. How do I show up with no gear, no protection?"

00:09:54.640 | She said, "Do what your dad would follow the recall, go to the firehouse."

00:10:00.640 | I hung up the phone, said, "I love you. Got to go."

00:10:03.640 | I did. I went to the firehouse, and I'm glad I listened to her.

00:10:07.640 | I had my father ringing in my ears.

00:10:09.640 | My dad, beautiful guy. He's 82, did 34 years in New York City Fire Department.

00:10:15.640 | He came down and end-staged non-hodgkin's lymphoma.

00:10:20.640 | He's 38, going on 39, 1978.

00:10:26.640 | This guy, he's my hero.

00:10:32.640 | He was going to die. They sent him home.

00:10:34.640 | They said, "There's really not much we can do. Go get your affairs."

00:10:39.640 | He says, "But Doc, I have three young kids."

00:10:43.640 | She called him a couple hours later. She said, "I got in touch with Sloan Kettering, and they have a new drug.

00:10:50.640 | We want you to be a test pilot."

00:10:53.640 | He said, "Hey, Doc, he's got a heavy Brooklyn accent. I'm a fireman. I'm a fireman. I'm not a pilot."

00:11:02.640 | She said, "No, no. We want you to try this drug out. If it works, we might have some success.

00:11:08.640 | But if not," he says, "Yeah, I'm going to die. So let's do it."

00:11:11.640 | So every two weeks for four years, he'd go for treatment.

00:11:18.640 | But he was assigned to a desk job after that, after the cancer tumor removal and the heavy treatments.

00:11:26.640 | He'd get up every morning at 4 o'clock in the morning, and he'd walk down to the train station in Staten Island, take the train.

00:11:34.640 | Then he'd take the ferry across the harbor.

00:11:38.640 | He'd get off looking at the towers, and then he'd take a subway into Brooklyn.

00:11:43.640 | On every other Thursday, he'd leave at noon, do the same exact reverse route, and he'd get to the cancer center.

00:11:51.640 | My mom would meet him, and he'd get his infusion.

00:11:56.640 | Within two hours, he'd be violently ill for a few days, really badly ill.

00:12:02.640 | I just remember I was 10 years old, and he just had to have the room darkened out, and he'd be so sick.

00:12:10.640 | I'd 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.

00:12:21.640 | Maybe on Saturday, he'd start coming around a little bit, drink down a little bit of tea.

00:12:27.640 | On Sunday morning, he'd put his robe on, he'd go down, mom would make him black coffee and toast.

00:12:33.640 | He'd sit up, watch the news, watch a game, and then Monday morning, he'd go back to work.

00:12:38.640 | He did that for four years.

00:12:41.640 | He's 82, and he's still here.

00:12:45.640 | You said that your dad's a man of a few words, but when he talks, they're profound.

00:12:50.640 | What words were ringing in your ear when you were driving?

00:12:54.640 | I just always remember him saying, "Kid, they give the recall.

00:12:57.640 | You go to the firehouse.

00:12:59.640 | You don't go where you think you should.

00:13:01.640 | You go to the firehouse.

00:13:03.640 | You follow your orders."

00:13:04.640 | So do the smart thing, do your job.

00:13:06.640 | Yes, sir.

00:13:07.640 | Every time we'd hang up the phone, it's fireman talk.

00:13:10.640 | He'd say, "I love you.

00:13:12.640 | Keep low."

00:13:13.640 | My dad couldn't tell me he loved me until I told him when I first got on a fire department.

00:13:19.640 | I was 22, and my dad grew up in a tough household.

00:13:22.640 | My granddad was a good man, but a tormented man.

00:13:25.640 | He was sent away from home at 12 years old.

00:13:29.640 | He was from Denmark, and I'm named after him, Grandpa Nils.

00:13:34.640 | I think his demons took up a large part of his life, his anger, whatever it was, his fear.

00:13:42.640 | We got the sense that maybe when he was a child, he was an apprentice baker, living with strangers,

00:13:48.640 | working for them, and we think maybe he was abused, and that's why he took it out on my dad,

00:13:53.640 | and my grandma, and my aunts.

00:13:57.640 | They made it up to each other at the end of my granddad's life.

00:14:01.640 | My granddad turned out to be the best grandfather ever.

00:14:04.640 | I think he tried to heal and heal everyone by his change of behavior.

00:14:09.640 | He's proof that you can change.

00:14:11.640 | You can improve if you work on it.

00:14:14.640 | I know I'm going off track here.

00:14:16.640 | But you were a man enough, you say, in your 20s to tell your dad that you love him?

00:14:19.640 | My dad, yeah.

00:14:20.640 | I got on the job, and he said, "How'd it go, kid?

00:14:24.640 | "How was the tour?"

00:14:25.640 | We called it Tour of Duty.

00:14:27.640 | I said, "Oh, Dad, it was great.

00:14:28.640 | "It was great.

00:14:29.640 | "I love it."

00:14:30.640 | He goes, "Just remember, you keep low.

00:14:32.640 | "You always keep low, and keep low means you stay down below the flames.

00:14:37.640 | "If a room flashes over and it's burning, if you stay up high, you're going to get burned badly,

00:14:42.640 | "but if you get down on your belly and you crawl, you'll get out."

00:14:47.640 | He'd always say that when he'd hang up the phone.

00:14:49.640 | I said, "Well, I love you, Pop."

00:14:51.640 | He says, "Well, thanks, kid."

00:14:53.640 | I said, "Well, you can say it, too."

00:14:56.640 | Oh, nice.

00:14:57.640 | You pressured him.

00:14:58.640 | He did, and he said it.

00:14:59.640 | Now, every time we talk, he says it.

00:15:03.640 | They talk about masculinity and whatnot.

00:15:05.640 | My dad is one of those tough, tough guys with a soft edge,

00:15:09.640 | and that's how he brought me up, to be a protector.

00:15:15.640 | I hate bullies.

00:15:16.640 | I was bullied really badly as a kid, and I really hated it.

00:15:21.640 | Now I find myself sometimes throwing myself into situations to protect people that are being violated and hurt,

00:15:30.640 | and I just can't walk away from it, but that's my dad.

00:15:33.640 | My dad was that, just a great guy.

00:15:36.640 | But anyway--

00:15:37.640 | I still listen to you, therefore, see, you probably want to rush right to the towers, but you went--

00:15:43.640 | Yeah, so anyway, I did.

00:15:45.640 | I listened to him.

00:15:46.640 | I listened to my wife.

00:15:47.640 | I went to the firehouse, and it was really strange.

00:15:49.640 | It was eerie because the computer dispatch system was still beeping,

00:15:54.640 | which meant it sent a dispatch, and the truck received it, Ladder 114.

00:15:59.640 | My truck company received it, and they left.

00:16:01.640 | They were gone.

00:16:03.640 | It was this beautiful old building built in the 1880s with a spiral staircase,

00:16:08.640 | just a narrow old brick garage, and it was empty, and I just heard the computer chirping.

00:16:15.640 | I looked down on a ticket, and it said, "Ladder 114 respond.

00:16:18.640 | Vessian West World Trade Center aircraft into building."

00:16:22.640 | I said, "Oh, God, I just hope they're not on a death ride because this now was two towers,

00:16:29.640 | and they were burning.

00:16:31.640 | They were free burning, and I knew this was really, really bad."

00:16:35.640 | I got on the phone, and I called commands right away.

00:16:38.640 | I called the 40th Battalion, and Chief's Aid just said, "Look, get 12 guys.

00:16:43.640 | Sign them in."

00:16:44.640 | To the journal, there was a journal of daily events,

00:16:47.640 | everything that takes place in the firehouse 24/7 has to be logged.

00:16:53.640 | I logged myself as coming in, reporting for duty, and as the guys came in,

00:16:58.640 | I logged them in, and then one of our lieutenants took command.

00:17:03.640 | We grabbed up a bunch of gear, and they basically told us, "Get 12 guys.

00:17:07.640 | Get a city bus and get down to the battery tunnel."

00:17:12.640 | They said it would probably be closed.

00:17:14.640 | There was threats it was going to be blown up to get to the Brooklyn Bridge.

00:17:21.640 | So we did.

00:17:22.640 | We got a city bus.

00:17:23.640 | We flagged it down, and the bus driver said, "I'm sorry.

00:17:25.640 | I can't give you the bus.

00:17:26.640 | I will drive you."

00:17:28.640 | He took us, and we stopped at Engine 201, which is just about a quarter mile

00:17:32.640 | down the road from us.

00:17:35.640 | That's our affiliated engine company, and my childhood best friend here, Johnny,

00:17:41.640 | was assigned there, and he was on shift.

00:17:47.640 | They went through the tunnel.

00:17:52.640 | We picked up those guys, the off-duty guys from 201,

00:17:55.640 | and we kept going down 4th Avenue, and we picked up 239's crew.

00:17:59.640 | Then we hightailed it down the bridge, and there was a lot of traffic.

00:18:03.640 | There was a lot of people fleeing, coming over the bridge in waves,

00:18:07.640 | so it affected the inbound.

00:18:10.640 | What was the mood like among the crew?

00:18:13.640 | It was somber because just prior to getting on the bus, the first tower went down.

00:18:19.640 | So we figured that--I heard 114, my lieutenant, Dennis Oberg.

00:18:26.640 | I heard him on the radio, and he said, "114 to Manhattan.

00:18:32.640 | We're on your frequency.

00:18:33.640 | What do you need us?"

00:18:35.640 | They said, "Tally Ho," which is our nickname.

00:18:38.640 | "Tally Ho, respond in the Vessian West to the command post and receive your orders."

00:18:43.640 | I heard Dennis say, "Tally Ho, 10-4."

00:18:48.640 | Dennis, a little while after that, they were proceeding to go into--

00:18:55.640 | I believe it was--I get this mixed up, and I'm sorry.

00:18:58.640 | I should know this by the back of my hand, but sometimes it's just such a haze.

00:19:04.640 | The second tower hit was the first one to go down,

00:19:06.640 | and they were heading over to go in it, and all of a sudden he looked up,

00:19:10.640 | and he saw what he thought to be disintegration, and he turned the guys around.

00:19:14.640 | He said, "Run. Just run. Don't look back. Don't look up. Go."

00:19:17.640 | They sprinted as fast as they could, and they dove under a fire truck,

00:19:23.640 | and the guys that were sprinting behind him 40 feet away were underneath a pile

00:19:28.640 | that was 10 stories deep.

00:19:29.640 | They were killed, and just further into that pile was his rookie son,

00:19:35.640 | who Dennis' rookie son, who was working in Ladder 105,

00:19:39.640 | which was my first command on the department.

00:19:41.640 | I worked for--proudly served for three years,

00:19:45.640 | and just beside them was my childhood best friend, John Shard,

00:19:49.640 | and his crew from 201, and they were all killed.

00:19:58.640 | The strange irony to that is that Dennis' son, Dennis Jr.,

00:20:05.640 | was working underneath the--under the wing of a senior man, as we say.

00:20:10.640 | A senior man is a guy with a lot of experience,

00:20:12.640 | and he'll watch over you, make sure you don't veer off,

00:20:17.640 | like I veer off a lot in talking, and you don't veer off and you get yourself hurt.

00:20:23.640 | In the morning of the 1993 bombing, Henry Miller was my senior man,

00:20:35.640 | and I was the young guy under his wing, and he protected me,

00:20:40.640 | and toward the end of the day, he looked around, and he said,

00:20:43.640 | "Kid, it's a bad day."

00:20:45.640 | He said, "They didn't do it right.

00:20:48.640 | They blew it up in the middle.

00:20:50.640 | If they did it in a corner, they would have dropped this building

00:20:54.640 | half a mile down at Canal Street, but don't kid yourself.

00:20:58.640 | They'll be back, and they'll do it, and they'll do it right next time."

00:21:01.640 | And it's so strange and so prophetic because he was there with them,

00:21:06.640 | and he died with Dennis, and he knew it.

00:21:09.640 | In 1994, we had a training manual with a picture of the towers with a target,

00:21:14.640 | and it said, "Not a matter of if, but a matter of when be prepared."

00:21:21.640 | And it's haunting.

00:21:22.640 | It was like people knew, right?

00:21:24.640 | And we didn't stop it.

00:21:27.640 | And so we got off the bus, but just prior to that coming over the bridge,

00:21:33.640 | the second tower was gone now, and was just destroyed because we're like,

00:21:37.640 | "Our guys are there.

00:21:38.640 | They're all in there."

00:21:39.640 | Now we're feeling like cowards because we got there late,

00:21:43.640 | and initially we're thinking there's 500 guys that are gone because

00:21:47.640 | there was a 10th alarm assignment, which means 50, 60 fire trucks,

00:21:55.640 | five to six guys per.

00:21:57.640 | You're looking at at least--no, it was even more.

00:22:01.640 | A 10th alarm plus multiple alarms on top of it.

00:22:04.640 | It was a dispatch basically equivalent of five to six hundred firefighters.

00:22:10.640 | We figured they're all in there, all gone.

00:22:12.640 | All the police officers, Port Authority police, NYPD police,

00:22:16.640 | court officers just up the street from the courts,

00:22:20.640 | transit cops from the train tunnels.

00:22:23.640 | We knew everybody was going, and now they're gone.

00:22:28.640 | So what you saw--what were we looking at?

00:22:30.640 | What did it look like?

00:22:32.640 | So you saw rubble, and then you knew that 105 and 201,

00:22:37.640 | many of those guys are in the--they're dead.

00:22:40.640 | Yeah.

00:22:41.640 | What did you see?

00:22:42.640 | 114 was in there too.

00:22:43.640 | We didn't realize at that point--we didn't even realize that they had

00:22:45.640 | gotten under that truck.

00:22:47.640 | We thought they were all gone, but yeah, it looked like a movie scene

00:22:52.640 | with just end of the earth destruction.

00:22:55.640 | It's just massive piles of intertwined steel,

00:23:00.640 | what was left of the steel.

00:23:02.640 | And there was no cement.

00:23:04.640 | It was all just dust, and it was just a burning pile of dust

00:23:10.640 | and concrete and plastic, and it was just--everything was just pulverized.

00:23:15.640 | And it was truly hard to mentally compute that.

00:23:20.640 | It was like, what?

00:23:22.640 | And then there was just fighter jets, a couple of fighter jets just circling,

00:23:26.640 | and you just heard the--flying by over your head.

00:23:30.640 | I mean, you literally see the guy banking a turn around the Brooklyn Bridge

00:23:33.640 | and just coming back, and I'm like, holy shoot, we're under attack?

00:23:38.640 | And we couldn't really get concrete intel as to what exactly--we knew planes,

00:23:43.640 | but then we kept hearing there was multiple devices,

00:23:46.640 | there was devices in a battery tunnel, and there was devices on a

00:23:50.640 | George Washington Bridge, and in the subways, and it was just chaos.

00:23:54.640 | I mean, we kept it together, obviously, because that's kind of--we try,

00:23:57.640 | that's what we do, but the just constant barrage of different reports,

00:24:03.640 | it was like, holy shoot.

00:24:05.640 | And then as we were being deployed, it was a little frustrating,

00:24:08.640 | but they were trying to take command and send us in groups now

00:24:11.640 | because they realized we have to start searching this.

00:24:15.640 | You could hear the alarms on the Scott Airmasks,

00:24:18.640 | the packs we wear to go into the building.

00:24:21.640 | It has a motion alarm, and if you stop moving for 30 seconds,

00:24:24.640 | it just sounds like this whining, this screaming bell,

00:24:28.640 | and it just keeps going and going.

00:24:32.640 | And you could hear multiple units of those going off, and you're like,

00:24:36.640 | wait a minute, there's guys with those, where are they?

00:24:39.640 | And it's emanating from underneath the pile.

00:24:42.640 | And it was just surreal and truly like a war zone.

00:24:51.640 | I mean, I was a soldier in the reserves, and I never saw combat,

00:24:54.640 | and I would never claim that I did, but we trained.

00:24:57.640 | We trained for a lot of situations, and we trained in real-life atmospheres

00:25:02.640 | and whatnot, and this was just beyond that by leaps and bounds.

00:25:05.640 | It was bizarre.

00:25:07.640 | Did you see the towers collapse?

00:25:09.640 | As we were coming over the bridge, the first one,

00:25:12.640 | as we were deploying from the firehouse, we had a television on,

00:25:16.640 | and I saw it go down, and it just--it was just like--

00:25:20.640 | and we were so involved in getting gear together and getting, okay,

00:25:25.640 | team set up, and okay, you're going to be with these two guys.

00:25:29.640 | And I just yelled, I said, guys, and they're looking at me.

00:25:32.640 | I dropped to my knees, and I started praying.

00:25:34.640 | They're like, what the hell is wrong?

00:25:36.640 | I couldn't even say.

00:25:37.640 | It's like, 114, they're in there.

00:25:40.640 | And they're like, what?

00:25:41.640 | I said, the tower's gone.

00:25:43.640 | And all you saw on the TV was just this pile of dust.

00:25:47.640 | I guess because they didn't see it going down,

00:25:49.640 | they probably thought I truly lost it.

00:25:51.640 | And then the realization came, it was like, wow, the tower's down.

00:25:57.640 | So now it was like, wow, this is really on.

00:25:59.640 | So we just took off and got that boss.

00:26:04.640 | So if you thought many of the guys on 114 were dead,

00:26:10.640 | if you thought that, did you think you were going to die?

00:26:13.640 | I mean, if you're rushing into the--towards the rubble.

00:26:18.640 | As crazy as it sounds, I never thought that the other tower would go down.

00:26:23.640 | I said, okay, maybe some freak chance that one went down.

00:26:26.640 | But no, the other one's not going to go.

00:26:28.640 | Like, they're built so strong.

00:26:30.640 | I was in those towers so many times, and I mean,

00:26:32.640 | I ate dinner up in the top four restaurant windows in the world,

00:26:35.640 | and I'm saying, nah, there's no way.

00:26:38.640 | Like, how the hell did this one happen?

00:26:40.640 | But I was having a hard time mentally processing that the building was gone.

00:26:46.640 | And believe me, if you don't have fear in this industry,

00:26:51.640 | and police, fire, military, then you're kidding yourself

00:26:55.640 | or you're a danger to everyone.

00:26:57.640 | I don't care who it is, as tough as they are, this and that.

00:27:00.640 | Everybody has a certain level of fear with doing this.

00:27:03.640 | And I don't care how long you do it, there's always that chance of something going bad.

00:27:08.640 | And everyone who does it has that certain amount of fear.

00:27:12.640 | But at that point, it was such a feeling of disbelief,

00:27:16.640 | that fear wasn't even kicking in.

00:27:18.640 | It was just like, what the hell just happened?

00:27:21.640 | And I honestly think it was almost like a shock, and it just stayed that whole day.

00:27:27.640 | The building is, before it collapses, is burning.

00:27:30.640 | It's just burning.

00:27:31.640 | I mean, upper floors, up in the 78th, up to the 80s,

00:27:35.640 | and then there's the way that the cut was from the plane.

00:27:39.640 | It wasn't just straight across.

00:27:40.640 | It was from the 78th, then on up to maybe the 86th.

00:27:45.640 | Then the jet fuel had come down and was burning down,

00:27:49.640 | and there was people on the ground who were doused with jet fuel

00:27:55.640 | and were already burning, and they were lit on fire on the ground.

00:27:58.640 | It was just insane how vast the destruction path was.

00:28:03.640 | As a firefighter, what are you supposed to do with that scale of fire?

00:28:10.640 | I think the first bosses in, the first chiefs,

00:28:14.640 | were just going to do their best to get--

00:28:18.640 | as we get hose lines, what our whole theory is, or our tactics is,

00:28:23.640 | is to get water at the fire, at the base of the fire,

00:28:27.640 | and get the truck company, which is the ladder company.

00:28:30.640 | They're the guys who break the doors down, put ladders up, this and that,

00:28:33.640 | to get them to where the life is most expected

00:28:36.640 | and get them out of there.

00:28:38.640 | So I think the chief's tactics at that point was,

00:28:40.640 | "Let me get multiple engine companies.

00:28:42.640 | Let me get four, five, six hose lines fighting this fire,

00:28:46.640 | this massive fire, and let me get 15, 20 truck companies up there

00:28:50.640 | just yoking people out of there."

00:28:52.640 | Yeah, but you got to go up the stair. Everything's not working.

00:28:55.640 | Yeah, guys had to walk up 80, 90, 100 flights of stairs,

00:28:59.640 | and there's audio of officers and firefighters

00:29:05.640 | speaking to each other on the radio channels.

00:29:07.640 | And unfortunately, at that point in time,

00:29:09.640 | we had a very, very bad communication system.

00:29:11.640 | We'd been fighting for years to get radios that worked properly.

00:29:15.640 | We couldn't because it was a lot of money.

00:29:17.640 | We fought for years to get the full bunker firefighting suits,

00:29:21.640 | which is the pants and the coat.

00:29:23.640 | We used to have just coats and these roll-up rubber boots,

00:29:26.640 | and guys were burning to death, and we had to fight.

00:29:29.640 | And unfortunately, we lost three guys in one vicious, vicious fire in 1994,

00:29:35.640 | and then they finally said, "Enough's enough. Give these guys the gear."

00:29:40.640 | So it's a strange phenomenon in the first responder world

00:29:45.640 | and in the military world.

00:29:47.640 | It's really one of the most important things that takes place in society,

00:29:51.640 | the most pertinent organizations, and we can't get the funding we need.

00:29:56.640 | It's crazy.

00:29:57.640 | They'll throw money at every nonsensical thing,

00:30:00.640 | but when it comes to gear, equipment, protective equipment,

00:30:04.640 | trucks, this--couldn't get it.

00:30:07.640 | Just all the ways you could take care of people.

00:30:09.640 | I saw since 9/11, the wars in the Middle East

00:30:13.640 | have cost America over $6 trillion.

00:30:16.640 | And the amount of that money that was spent on the soldiers,

00:30:22.640 | in this case the first responders, is minimal.

00:30:25.640 | Compared to it, yeah.

00:30:26.640 | Almost nothing.

00:30:27.640 | They closed down--I believe it's either seven or eight.

00:30:32.640 | In May of 2002, they closed down nine firehouses in New York City

00:30:40.640 | for budget reasons.

00:30:42.640 | We hadn't even finished cleaning up the World Trade Center site,

00:30:45.640 | and they slashed the budget, and still to this day

00:30:50.640 | have not reopened those firehouses.

00:30:52.640 | There's a million more people now living in New York City

00:30:54.640 | than there were in 2001, and the fire protection is way less than it was.

00:31:00.640 | It's a sin.

00:31:02.640 | It's really a sin.

00:31:03.640 | Can I ask you a difficult question?

00:31:06.640 | So there's this famous photograph of a falling man.

00:31:13.640 | Many people had to decide when they're above the fire or in the fire

00:31:17.640 | whether to jump out of the building or to burn to death.

00:31:21.640 | What do you make of that decision?

00:31:23.640 | What do you make of that situation?

00:31:25.640 | Those people who jumped, those were acts of sheer desperation.

00:31:31.640 | I've been in fires, and just minor--burned, but minor--in situations.

00:31:37.640 | I've been trapped, caught somewhat,

00:31:39.640 | ended up in a burn center for nothing serious at all.

00:31:43.640 | But for those brief seconds, half a minute,

00:31:48.640 | thank God if I didn't have my fire gear on,

00:31:50.640 | I would have been burned to a very, very horrible level.

00:31:54.640 | Those people were burning alive,

00:31:58.640 | and they had the choice of either to stay there and burn alive

00:32:02.640 | or to launch themselves.

00:32:05.640 | And some of them, I don't fault them, but they had a few folks--

00:32:10.640 | they won't show it anymore because they say--

00:32:13.640 | I don't know why, I'd offend some people--

00:32:15.640 | but they had a couple folks that took umbrellas

00:32:18.640 | and they took garbage bags because they thought that it would

00:32:21.640 | slow down their acceleration rate to the ground

00:32:24.640 | and maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't be killed.

00:32:27.640 | And that's, to me, a true sense of desperation for humanity to say,

00:32:32.640 | "I'm going to die either way, but let me take my chance."

00:32:36.640 | And I don't know the exact number of those folks who did that,

00:32:40.640 | but our first member of the fire department killed,

00:32:43.640 | firefighter Daniel Serf, Engine 216,

00:32:46.640 | was struck by a jumper.

00:32:48.640 | And one of my dear friends was ordered to help take him,

00:32:54.640 | and they knew he was passed away because he was hit by a flying missile.

00:32:59.640 | I mean, 120 miles an hour, a body lands on you,

00:33:02.640 | those two bodies are now crushed.

00:33:05.640 | And they were ordered to take that firefighter

00:33:08.640 | and bring him across the street to Engine 10, Ladder 10.

00:33:11.640 | It was literally a firehouse, less than 100 yards

00:33:15.640 | from the facade of the Trade Center, from the Trade Center complex.

00:33:19.640 | They were literally right there.

00:33:21.640 | And there was plane parts that went into that firehouse,

00:33:24.640 | landed into the front doors, onto the roof,

00:33:27.640 | but the building itself was not destroyed.

00:33:30.640 | So it was used as a mini command center for quite a while.

00:33:34.640 | So my friend was ordered to take Daniel's body in respect

00:33:39.640 | and bring it over to this firehouse

00:33:43.640 | and give it some semblance of dignity

00:33:45.640 | and lay it out on one of the bunks we have in the bunkhouse

00:33:50.640 | and just cover it with a sheet and put a sign,

00:33:53.640 | "Please, firefighter killed, do not disturb,"

00:33:56.640 | and say that to him later because obviously

00:33:58.640 | this operation is going to go on for days.

00:34:01.640 | And my friend, who's such a great, wonderful guy,

00:34:03.640 | is so still to this day filled with guilt

00:34:07.640 | because if they weren't taking his body out

00:34:10.640 | with the respect and dignity that they did,

00:34:12.640 | it took a while because, you know, it's a tough situation.

00:34:17.640 | His ladder company was coming over the bridge.

00:34:20.640 | There's a famous picture of Ladder 118.

00:34:23.640 | You see this tractor trailer fire truck.

00:34:25.640 | It's the one where the guy in the back also drives.

00:34:28.640 | And it's a zoomed-out shot, and you see the Brooklyn Bridge,

00:34:31.640 | and you see only the fire truck in the middle,

00:34:34.640 | and you see the two burning towers in the distance.

00:34:37.640 | Well, his engine company was just ahead of them on the bridge,

00:34:41.640 | and the only reason that engine company lived

00:34:44.640 | is their initial duty assignment was to take that firefighter

00:34:47.640 | and bring his body over.

00:34:48.640 | It's like the military. We don't leave anyone behind.

00:34:51.640 | These are our guys.

00:34:52.640 | As some guys say, it's all about the guy right next to you,

00:34:55.640 | and nothing else really matters.

00:34:57.640 | When that guy right next to you goes down, it stops.

00:35:00.640 | You get that guy to safety, or if he's dead, you get him out.

00:35:04.640 | So in that time frame, that saved his life.

00:35:09.640 | But that's a heavy burden to carry now

00:35:11.640 | for the rest of your life because you say,

00:35:13.640 | "If I wasn't helping my dead friend, I'm dead."

00:35:15.640 | - Yeah.

00:35:17.640 | What did it look like at Ground Zero?

00:35:20.640 | What did it feel like? What did it smell like?

00:35:25.640 | You said there was a sense that it was almost like a war zone,

00:35:28.640 | but can you paint a picture of how much dust is in the air,

00:35:33.640 | how hot is it, how many people are there,

00:35:37.640 | and again, how did it feel like?

00:35:40.640 | - It was just--it was a scene of controlled chaos,

00:35:44.640 | controlled because there was a semblance of command,

00:35:47.640 | and we were just trying to do our jobs.

00:35:50.640 | But it was such a frantic pace because we're now digging frantically,

00:35:55.640 | knowing that there's life underneath this pile.

00:35:58.640 | - And this is throughout the afternoon of that evening?

00:36:01.640 | - Yeah, I mean, this was nonstop, you know,

00:36:04.640 | just nonstop really for days, but for my particular crew,

00:36:08.640 | we literally kept going.

00:36:10.640 | We initially were dispatched over towards number seven,

00:36:13.640 | had just gone down, and we were searching the post office

00:36:16.640 | that was there.

00:36:17.640 | There was reports of people trapped,

00:36:19.640 | and we painstakingly searched every single inch of that building

00:36:22.640 | to make sure no one was left in there.

00:36:24.640 | And then we were deployed to the pile,

00:36:27.640 | and the pile is sort of ambiguous

00:36:29.640 | because it was just such a vast, vast pile.

00:36:32.640 | I mean, it went for city blocks.

00:36:34.640 | And we were assisting in the retrieval of two Port Authority police officers

00:36:41.640 | who were lucky enough to survive, but they were trapped.

00:36:44.640 | They were deep down into a crevasse,

00:36:46.640 | and they had to be physically dug out and extricated.

00:36:49.640 | So there was a couple hundred, few hundred guys involved

00:36:52.640 | in that process of bringing in equipment,

00:36:55.640 | jaws of life, airbags to lift steel,

00:36:58.640 | just to cut pieces of steel.

00:37:00.640 | It was just a huge operation.

00:37:02.640 | And we were back toward the logistics end of it,

00:37:05.640 | shuttling in gear and bringing in stretchers,

00:37:08.640 | bringing in oxygen, you know, whatever was needed.

00:37:11.640 | And you were trying to climb over this jagged pile of debris.

00:37:16.640 | It wasn't like you just walked 100 feet on a street with something.

00:37:19.640 | You were trying to climb over this I-beam and then down into this hole

00:37:23.640 | and then back up that hole.

00:37:25.640 | I mean, just to run one piece of equipment took a half an hour

00:37:28.640 | to get 100 feet, 200 feet.

00:37:31.640 | Mind you, some of these pieces of equipment are 100 pounds.

00:37:34.640 | A generator for a Hurst tools is a massive motor on a frame.

00:37:39.640 | Unstable ground.

00:37:41.640 | Unstable ground, just horrible conditions.

00:37:43.640 | Fires were still burning aside you, beneath you.

00:37:46.640 | And at one point, I kind of veered off to the side

00:37:50.640 | and I was with this other fireman from my father's old ladder company, 172.

00:37:55.640 | And it was strange because we were down quite a bit down,

00:38:00.640 | like 70 feet down into this ravine of debris.

00:38:04.640 | And he says, "Brother, what do you hear?"

00:38:06.640 | And at the time, it was like dust.

00:38:08.640 | It was like sand just falling down a pile

00:38:11.640 | and it was hissing from gas pipes and water pipes.

00:38:14.640 | And I said, "I hear the gas lines. I hear the sand. I hear the concrete."

00:38:20.640 | He goes, "No, no. What else do you hear?"

00:38:23.640 | And just beside of us was a lady's pocketbook and a high-heeled shoe

00:38:28.640 | and someone's sneaker with nobody with it.

00:38:33.640 | And I said, "I don't know. I don't hear anything."

00:38:36.640 | He says, "Me neither." He goes, "No one's coming out of here."

00:38:40.640 | And I said, "No, no, no. There's got to be someone coming out of here.

00:38:43.640 | I mean, there's thousands of people in here and they're coming out."

00:38:46.640 | He says, "Brother, we would hear them calling for help. They're gone."

00:38:52.640 | And I still at that point thought there was a chance.

00:38:55.640 | And after about the fourth day, they just said, "This is a recovery now.

00:39:01.640 | There's no more life. There's no more chance."

00:39:04.640 | And on that first night, we went full tilt to my crew, my specific crew of 12, 15 guys.

00:39:11.640 | Four in the morning, we just couldn't breathe anymore.

00:39:13.640 | We couldn't see. We were caked just with--

00:39:16.640 | It was like if you took flour and just kept dousing yourself.

00:39:20.640 | And the lieutenant just said, "Look, guys, we're going to go back.

00:39:22.640 | We're going to get some medical aid, and then we'll come back in a few hours."

00:39:27.640 | And we took a city bus back through the battery tunnel.

00:39:33.640 | And unbeknownst to us, that morning, this off-duty firefighter, Stephen Siller,

00:39:39.640 | from Squad Company One, he raced down there with his pickup.

00:39:46.640 | And he couldn't go any further because the traffic was stopped up

00:39:48.640 | because they had a report of a bomb.

00:39:51.640 | So everything was held up.

00:39:53.640 | And he grabbed his fire gear, and he put it on.

00:39:56.640 | Stuff weighs about 60 pounds.

00:39:59.640 | And he ran through the tunnel, two and a half miles, got to the end of the tunnel.

00:40:05.640 | Fire truck was coming in from the other way.

00:40:07.640 | He hopped on the back, got him up to West Street, jumped off,

00:40:11.640 | tried to look for his company, where they were.

00:40:16.640 | And he was never seen again.

00:40:19.640 | He just ran through the tunnel.

00:40:21.640 | And he got there to help his team.

00:40:24.640 | It's all about the team.

00:40:26.640 | It's all about the guy right next to you.

00:40:28.640 | And he's the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, Stephen.

00:40:30.640 | His brother, Frank, decided in his name, in perpetuity, he's got a fund

00:40:35.640 | that now builds a home for every Gold Star family,

00:40:40.640 | for every seriously battle-wounded warrior,

00:40:43.640 | for every seriously wounded first responder

00:40:46.640 | or killed in a light and duty first responder.

00:40:48.640 | If they had a home, they'll pay the mortgage.

00:40:52.640 | If they didn't have a home, they give them a home.

00:40:55.640 | And especially if it's a severely battle-wounded,

00:40:58.640 | they give them a smart home because these poor guys come home with no limbs.

00:41:02.640 | And so the beauty of Stephen and his selfless act

00:41:08.640 | was that he's now helped thousands and thousands of people.

00:41:11.640 | I mean, the Tunnel to Towers is incredible.

00:41:13.640 | That's part of our mission is to bring awareness to these great people

00:41:17.640 | at Tunnel to Towers, what they do.

00:41:19.640 | They've raised $250 million to help protect the protectors,

00:41:24.640 | to rescue the rescuers in what's become, unfortunately,

00:41:29.640 | a somewhat ungrateful society.

00:41:32.640 | But they will not forget these great guys.

00:41:36.640 | So you tell Stephen's story.

00:41:39.640 | He's one of the 20 people that you talk about

00:41:42.640 | in the new Iron Labs 20 for 20 podcast series.

00:41:46.640 | If you could just linger on his story a little longer,

00:41:51.640 | what does that tell you about the human spirit,

00:41:53.640 | that this guy, you know, the Tunnel couldn't drive through,

00:41:58.640 | so he just puts on that heavy pack and runs?

00:42:02.640 | What do you make of that?

00:42:05.640 | That shows the depth of a man's soul.

00:42:08.640 | He didn't have to do that.

00:42:09.640 | He could have turned around and went home to his family,

00:42:12.640 | and nobody would have shamed him.

00:42:15.640 | But he's one of those beautiful, brave people that take a job

00:42:22.640 | that really doesn't pay a lot of money,

00:42:25.640 | and you become a cop or a firefighter or a nurse or an EMT

00:42:31.640 | or a medic or a soldier or a marine, an airman, sailor.

00:42:36.640 | When you take these jobs, you don't do it for fanfare.

00:42:41.640 | You definitely don't do it for money.

00:42:43.640 | Those 13 brave souls we lost a week or two ago in Afghanistan,

00:42:48.640 | they're brand-new soldiers and marines.

00:42:50.640 | They make $22,000 an hour, but they don't work 40 hours a week.

00:42:55.640 | They work 80.

00:42:56.640 | They work 90 hours a week, so they're making about $6 an hour.

00:43:00.640 | And you know what?

00:43:01.640 | They sign up, and firefighters and cops and medics and EMTs,

00:43:07.640 | nurses, emergency room doctors,

00:43:10.640 | they don't really make a lot of money.

00:43:12.640 | I mean, they're starting salary right now for a New York cop.

00:43:14.640 | I was a New York cop for two years first.

00:43:17.640 | I made $12.25 an hour back in 1989 to get shot at during the crack wars.

00:43:24.640 | If you made $11 an hour with a family of four,

00:43:29.640 | you were entitled to welfare back then.

00:43:32.640 | So I was just above the welfare level, risking my life.

00:43:38.640 | And these are the guys that are getting ripped up now, right?

00:43:41.640 | And look, I won't get into any politics,

00:43:44.640 | but that says something about someone's soul,

00:43:48.640 | that they're willing to take a job like that and now get zero respect.

00:43:53.640 | So a guy like Steven, what that shows is the depth of that man's soul

00:43:57.640 | and courage and determination.

00:44:00.640 | It's hard to be selfless in this world anymore,

00:44:03.640 | but I still know a lot of selfless people that just put on equipment every day,

00:44:08.640 | bulletproof vests, fire bunker gear, stethoscopes,

00:44:13.640 | flak jackets, military helmets, and they go in and they do it smiling.

00:44:19.640 | That young Marine that passed last week,

00:44:23.640 | she was photographed and quoted as saying,

00:44:26.640 | "I had my dream job," as she was holding a little Afghani baby.

00:44:30.640 | And she was dead a few days later.

00:44:33.640 | She was so thrilled to be making $7 an hour helping people.

00:44:36.640 | Isn't that huge?

00:44:37.640 | That to me says that's a true sign of character right there.

00:44:42.640 | And it's important for our society to elevate those people as heroes.

00:44:46.640 | Let me ask you about firefighting.

00:44:50.640 | What do you think it means to be a great firefighter and a great man,

00:44:55.640 | a great human being in a situation like you were in in 9/11?

00:45:03.640 | That's kind of a broad term.

00:45:06.640 | You can go to different firehouses,

00:45:08.640 | and they might have a different definition of what they consider a great firefighter.

00:45:14.640 | But I think in the industry as a whole,

00:45:17.640 | if you're willing to put everyone else before you, especially your team,

00:45:23.640 | as we say, there ain't no I in team, right?

00:45:26.640 | It's T-E-I-M, and there's no I in there.

00:45:28.640 | It's all about those guys and girls next to you.

00:45:32.640 | If you can do that, that makes you pretty great.

00:45:36.640 | You put everything else second, and you just run in,

00:45:39.640 | and you run in with that team for strangers.

00:45:43.640 | I've had the honor of--I spent almost 25 years of my adult life

00:45:48.640 | serving humanity, my country, my former city,

00:45:54.640 | and the people I worked with were giants.

00:45:57.640 | And I don't mean that in height, but I mean that in spirit and in soul.

00:46:01.640 | I saw some of the most heroic, selfless acts.

00:46:06.640 | And then I saw some of the behind-the-scenes that were so impressive.

00:46:09.640 | We'd go to a fire around Christmas, and a family would lose everything.

00:46:15.640 | And even when I was a cop, same thing.

00:46:17.640 | You'd come back either to the police precinct or the firehouse or the EMS station,

00:46:22.640 | and someone would put together a collection and say,

00:46:24.640 | "Hey, guys, hey, Lex, 50 bucks a man.

00:46:27.640 | The Smiths down the street just lost everything.

00:46:29.640 | We're going to go get some presents for the kids and some turkeys."

00:46:33.640 | And not one of those guys questioned that.

00:46:36.640 | And they were making $12, $25 an hour, and they still came up with 50 bucks

00:46:40.640 | for that family.

00:46:41.640 | But see, that's the stuff the press won't show you.

00:46:44.640 | They don't want to show that humanity, that soft edge.

00:46:48.640 | See, when you're a warrior, you need to have this rough shield,

00:46:51.640 | this rough exterior, because if you don't, you die.

00:46:56.640 | But a true great firefighter or responder or cop or military personnel,

00:47:04.640 | they have that rough exterior with that soft underbelly, that heart, right?

00:47:10.640 | It's there.

00:47:11.640 | And that's, to me, the true great ones.

00:47:14.640 | Some of them, they just have a hard time doing that.

00:47:17.640 | There's no shame in showing your soft side.

00:47:20.640 | Well, you got your dad to say, "I love you," back.

00:47:23.640 | No, that's right. That was huge, man.

00:47:25.640 | That took me 22 years, Lex.

00:47:27.640 | So you were a firefighter for 21, almost 22 years.

00:47:30.640 | Yeah.

00:47:31.640 | Why did you become a firefighter?

00:47:33.640 | Oh, my dad.

00:47:34.640 | I mean, I was 5 years old, and I went to his firehouse,

00:47:37.640 | and there was these--at the time, they looked like giants to me,

00:47:41.640 | with mustaches, and the trucks smelled like smoke,

00:47:46.640 | and the gear smelled like smoke, and the tires, and the diesel fuel.

00:47:50.640 | And I was like, "Ugh, this is what I'm going to do."

00:47:53.640 | And then they bring you in the kitchen,

00:47:55.640 | and they stuff you with ice cream and cake, and everything.

00:47:58.640 | And then I go home to my mom, shaking with a sugar cone,

00:48:02.640 | and she's mad at my dad.

00:48:03.640 | But yeah, it was just--I was like, "I got to do this."

00:48:06.640 | It was like--they were like a baseball team in a garage

00:48:09.640 | with a truck and these big tools and big coats and helmets,

00:48:12.640 | and they were just laughing and having fun.

00:48:14.640 | And I'm like, "Yeah, man, I'm doing this."

00:48:16.640 | And I knew. I was obsessed with it.

00:48:19.640 | I mean, I was so pissed that the fireman's test came out when I was 14,

00:48:22.640 | and I couldn't take it. You had to be 18.

00:48:25.640 | And it was done, the test was graded and whatever.

00:48:29.640 | So my dad--now there's a copy circulating because it's old now.

00:48:33.640 | And he goes, "Yeah, yeah, this is what you're in for."

00:48:36.640 | And I took it, and I did it like it was real, and I got a 99.

00:48:40.640 | I was so pissed. I said, "I want to get hired."

00:48:43.640 | He goes, "You can't. You're 14."

00:48:45.640 | But I just wanted to do it so bad, and I just wanted to help people.

00:48:50.640 | I just wanted to be like my dad.

00:48:53.640 | He'd come home smiling, as tired as he was,

00:48:56.640 | and he fought fires in the '60s and '70s when the city was burning.

00:49:00.640 | And he's still as exhausted as he was. He'd still be smiling.

00:49:04.640 | I wanted to smile at work, and I used to.

00:49:08.640 | I got paid to laugh and joke.

00:49:10.640 | I got paid to cry sometimes.

00:49:12.640 | But, man, we laughed a lot.

00:49:14.640 | It was the chop-breaking. It's just unending, and it's great.

00:49:19.640 | In your mind, can you tell me--

00:49:21.640 | you were really kind enough to give me one of these shirts with "114."

00:49:27.640 | Can you tell me the story of "114," of Tally Ho?

00:49:30.640 | I wear proudly. I served eight years in that command,

00:49:34.640 | and I didn't finish my career there.

00:49:36.640 | I passed the lieutenant's test, and once you do, you have to leave.

00:49:41.640 | The story behind Tally Ho is, back in World War II,

00:49:46.640 | there was this gentleman named Bad Jack Carroll.

00:49:48.640 | Jack was an airborne ranger,

00:49:50.640 | and my father-in-law was also on the department, and he knew Jack.

00:49:55.640 | And Jack came home.

00:49:57.640 | Jack jumped Normandy and stormed up through the Battle of the Bulge in Bastogne,

00:50:02.640 | and he came back, greatest generation as they all did,

00:50:07.640 | and they got jobs, and they went right to work.

00:50:11.640 | They were treated better back then, vets, right?

00:50:14.640 | And he got on the New York City Fire Department,

00:50:16.640 | and he got assigned a lot of 114.

00:50:19.640 | And they first got radios back then,

00:50:23.640 | and when Jack--he would drive the truck.

00:50:25.640 | You're up there with the officer, either the lieutenant or captain,

00:50:28.640 | so if the boss is off the truck, you operate the radio for them as the driver.

00:50:33.640 | So when they called him and they'd say, "A lot of 114, respond in to 52nd Street,

00:50:37.640 | 3rd Avenue, structure fire," you're supposed to get back and say,

00:50:41.640 | "A lot of 114, 10-4," but he refused to do that.

00:50:44.640 | He'd say, "A lot of 114, tally-ho," because that's what they'd yell

00:50:47.640 | when they'd jump out the plane.

00:50:49.640 | So all these years later, it's stuck, and it's a little bit of a bragging right,

00:50:54.640 | but out of 350 engine and truck companies in the whole New York City Fire Department,

00:50:59.640 | we're pretty much the only one that's called by their nickname on the radio,

00:51:02.640 | not their number.

00:51:04.640 | So it tweaks some guys off in other places.

00:51:06.640 | "Hey, F you, tally-ho," but it's just--yeah, it's a great, great heritage,

00:51:12.640 | and we're really proud.

00:51:14.640 | And Shamrock was--he was Irish, and a lot of the guys back then

00:51:19.640 | were Irish immigrants from the area, from the neighborhood,

00:51:23.640 | and they would actually take the fire truck to church on Sunday

00:51:26.640 | and park out front, and one guy would stay in it to hear the radio

00:51:30.640 | in case they got a call.

00:51:32.640 | So yeah, that's the proud history.

00:51:34.640 | And you said that if I wear this around New York,

00:51:36.640 | I might get in a little bit of--

00:51:38.640 | You might get a guy from the Bronx, "Hey, tally-ho, screw you,"

00:51:41.640 | but it's all that good rivalry.

00:51:44.640 | We like to kid each other back and forth.

00:51:48.640 | Guys from Manhattan will say, "Yeah, you guys in Brooklyn,

00:51:52.640 | yeah, short buildings, tall stories," and we're like, "Yeah, well,

00:51:55.640 | you guys in Manhattan, tall buildings, no stories."

00:51:58.640 | It's all that jocular ball breaking.

00:52:02.640 | It's good stuff.

00:52:04.640 | Let me ask, I guess, a difficult question.

00:52:07.640 | If we just step back in the events of 9/11,

00:52:11.640 | on the side of the people that flew into the towers,

00:52:15.640 | what do you take away from that day about the nature,

00:52:19.640 | about human nature, about good and evil?

00:52:23.640 | How did that change your view of the world?

00:52:28.640 | I witnessed evil firsthand.

00:52:32.640 | I remember later on, well into that night,

00:52:35.640 | when we were trying to help get those police officers out,

00:52:38.640 | I remember looking up at the building, Century 21,

00:52:41.640 | the store that runs along the east side of the towers,

00:52:45.640 | and it was still there, and the debris had come down

00:52:48.640 | right almost to the edge.

00:52:50.640 | Century 21 is this old-story department store in New York City.

00:52:54.640 | And the sign was there, and it was still lit up,

00:52:57.640 | like some of the neon was broken,

00:52:59.640 | but I think some of it was actually still lit up.

00:53:02.640 | And I just looked around, and I was like,

00:53:04.640 | "This is a war zone. We're at war."

00:53:07.640 | And we knew we were attacked.

00:53:09.640 | We heard the fighter planes.

00:53:12.640 | Back then, it wasn't the extensive communication network.

00:53:15.640 | And we had cell phones, but they were the old-school flip phones,

00:53:18.640 | and there was no news on them.

00:53:21.640 | Plus, we didn't have a signal down there anyway.

00:53:24.640 | I couldn't reach my family for like 12, 13 hours.

00:53:27.640 | And my dad had deployed down to the ferry terminal

00:53:30.640 | to retrieve bodies.

00:53:33.640 | He was retired, but he still went.

00:53:36.640 | And they deployed him to go be basically the morgue transport guys.

00:53:41.640 | They expected to be sending hundreds and thousands of bodies

00:53:44.640 | across on the ferry.

00:53:46.640 | And they set up these tractor trailers as a mobile morgue,

00:53:49.640 | and that never happened because there were no bodies to take.

00:53:53.640 | They were all buried.

00:53:57.640 | So I saw evil firsthand.

00:53:59.640 | I don't know how someone can inflict such revenge

00:54:05.640 | or a vengeful act in the name of anything,

00:54:08.640 | in the name of a religion, in the name of a cause,

00:54:11.640 | in the name--like, what the hell?

00:54:14.640 | Were you ever able to make sense of that,

00:54:16.640 | why men are able to commit such acts of terror

00:54:18.640 | in the days and the years after?

00:54:21.640 | No, Lex, I haven't.

00:54:25.640 | My mom's from Ireland, and I still have a lot of family there.

00:54:30.640 | And my great-uncles, one of them was dragged out and shot.

00:54:35.640 | He lived, but just based on a rumor that he was in the IRA.

00:54:40.640 | And I wasn't happy to see what happened to my mom's people

00:54:44.640 | because they were victimized and brutalized by England at that time.

00:54:50.640 | But blowing up bombs and killing innocents in the name of that,

00:54:57.640 | it doesn't make it right.

00:54:59.640 | I couldn't justify something like that.

00:55:02.640 | I can see, you know, I was a cop, I was a soldier,

00:55:07.640 | and you never want to take life in those jobs,

00:55:12.640 | but sometimes you have to.

00:55:14.640 | But you don't do it with a vengeance,

00:55:16.640 | you don't do it with a thirst.

00:55:18.640 | You do it because it's necessary for survival.

00:55:22.640 | When you do it out of a bloodlust, out of a thirst, out of a cause,

00:55:26.640 | that's evil, there's something wrong with you.

00:55:30.640 | I have no--I respect life to the highest level.

00:55:35.640 | I mean, life is sacred to me, it's precious, it's beyond--

00:55:39.640 | it's not a commodity, it's a gift.

00:55:43.640 | But to take life just so randomly,

00:55:46.640 | so there's something way wrong with that person.

00:55:49.640 | And maybe I'm a conflicted soul,

00:55:52.640 | but I would have no problem seeing someone like that put to death

00:55:55.640 | because they do not deserve life.

00:56:00.640 | There's many children around this world

00:56:04.640 | that are being taught to hate someone who's different than them

00:56:08.640 | just because the person who's allegedly teaching them says so.

00:56:13.640 | I don't understand it.

00:56:14.640 | - Well, that starts with just having a basic respect

00:56:18.640 | and appreciation of other human beings.

00:56:21.640 | And that starts with empathy.

00:56:23.640 | And one of the reasons I love this country,

00:56:26.640 | while joking that I'm Russian,

00:56:29.640 | maybe you could say the same as you being Irish,

00:56:32.640 | is you're actually truly an American.

00:56:34.640 | And that's why I consider myself very much an American.

00:56:37.640 | And one of the reasons I love this country is it serves as a beacon.

00:56:42.640 | I still believe it serves as a beacon of hope

00:56:46.640 | and that empathy and love for the rest of the world,

00:56:49.640 | that hate is not gonna get you far,

00:56:53.640 | that love will get you a lot farther.

00:56:55.640 | And I still think sometimes it's easy to see the press,

00:57:02.640 | mainstream media, you could see social networks,

00:57:05.640 | because you can make so much money on division,

00:57:08.640 | sometimes because it makes so much money,

00:57:11.640 | it's easy to think we're really divided.

00:57:14.640 | I honestly don't think we are.

00:57:15.640 | It's just the very surface level thing we see on Twitter.

00:57:19.640 | - You're 100% right.

00:57:22.640 | There's people out there that are maximizing

00:57:24.640 | off this whole division, right?

00:57:27.640 | They want us divided.

00:57:28.640 | They want people angry because it sells.

00:57:31.640 | A lot of these people that are in charge of certain organizations,

00:57:36.640 | well, they all seem to have nice cars and nice houses

00:57:39.640 | and nice vacations, and they're constantly trying

00:57:44.640 | to convince everybody that we hate each other.

00:57:46.640 | To me, I'll use a fireman analogy, right?

00:57:48.640 | It's like a little campfire,

00:57:50.640 | and if you just let the embers flutter, they'll go out,

00:57:55.640 | but if you take a little cup of gasoline with those embers,

00:57:58.640 | it'll blow right up in your face.

00:58:01.640 | And that's what a lot of these politicians

00:58:03.640 | and a lot of these media folks are doing,

00:58:06.640 | because there's something in it for them.

00:58:08.640 | - And I think it's possible to defeat them

00:58:10.640 | with great leaders, with great spokespeople,

00:58:14.640 | with great human beings having a voice.

00:58:16.640 | One of the powerful things of the internet

00:58:18.640 | is more and more people have a voice,

00:58:21.640 | and I ultimately believe, certainly in America,

00:58:24.640 | but in the world, the good people outnumber the assholes.

00:58:29.640 | - Oh, I agree.

00:58:30.640 | And you know, there's days when I think the assholes

00:58:32.640 | are overrunning us, but you know what?

00:58:37.640 | I think what the downfall of the world is

00:58:41.640 | is ego and arrogance,

00:58:43.640 | and people that think they're better than that other guy.

00:58:47.640 | My parents raised me to be this way.

00:58:49.640 | My mom is such a sweet, gentle soul.

00:58:51.640 | She's an immigrant.

00:58:52.640 | She came here at 16 years old.

00:58:54.640 | She helps everybody but herself, right?

00:58:57.640 | She's just one of those people.

00:58:58.640 | She's sick, she's got Parkinson's.

00:59:00.640 | You'd never know it, and she's still flying around

00:59:03.640 | to her condo complex helping everybody,

00:59:06.640 | 'cause that's what she does.

00:59:07.640 | She loves to help people, but she's been in their shoes.

00:59:11.640 | She's been poor.

00:59:13.640 | She's sick.

00:59:14.640 | Her husband was sick.

00:59:15.640 | She's had all sorts of suffering and loss in her life.

00:59:19.640 | My granddad died when my mom was 10,

00:59:22.640 | and she was one of 10 children that survived out of 14.

00:59:26.640 | She knows hard times, but she so appreciates the good times

00:59:32.640 | and the goodness of this country.

00:59:35.640 | You know, the fire department and the police department,

00:59:39.640 | military, taught me a lot about empathy

00:59:41.640 | and trying to really feel for someone

00:59:43.640 | and put yourself in their situation.

00:59:47.640 | I remember years back, I was a much younger fireman.

00:59:50.640 | I probably had five years on the job,

00:59:53.640 | and I was sent down to the next firehouse over to fill in.

00:59:58.640 | We would get sent around randomly

01:00:00.640 | when they needed an extra guy.

01:00:02.640 | And someone came banging on the firehouse door,

01:00:05.640 | and in the tenement apartment next door,

01:00:08.640 | they said there was an older woman that was unconscious.

01:00:11.640 | So we dispatched ourselves, and we ran over with a medical kit,

01:00:16.640 | and it was an elderly woman laying there on the bed,

01:00:19.640 | and she was obviously not breathing.

01:00:23.640 | She was obviously in cardiac arrest,

01:00:25.640 | and an older gentleman that was holding her hand

01:00:28.640 | just inconsolably crying,

01:00:31.640 | and it turned out it was her husband,

01:00:33.640 | and they were married for 65 years.

01:00:36.640 | And normally we would just respectfully ask the family members

01:00:41.640 | to just step aside and let us do our work,

01:00:44.640 | and I realized that he wouldn't leave her side.

01:00:47.640 | So I kind of gave the crew a wink,

01:00:49.640 | and they were doing CPR on what they had to,

01:00:53.640 | and I just let him keep holding her hand,

01:00:56.640 | and I said, "Sir, could you just come over just a little bit

01:00:59.640 | so we can work?"

01:01:01.640 | And I held his hand as he held hers,

01:01:05.640 | and I said, "Sir, do you have faith?"

01:01:09.640 | And he did, and I said,

01:01:11.640 | "Would you like to pray with me for your wife?"

01:01:14.640 | And he said, "I would like to."

01:01:16.640 | So we said the Lord's Prayer,

01:01:18.640 | and I just asked God to protect her and bless her,

01:01:22.640 | and I think he realized that she didn't have a chance,

01:01:26.640 | but we still gave her that chance,

01:01:30.640 | and we got her in the ambulance,

01:01:32.640 | and maybe it was wrong to try to make it look like we could save her,

01:01:36.640 | but you can't really not try.

01:01:40.640 | But the one beautiful moment was he thanked me,

01:01:44.640 | and he was almost okay with it at that point.

01:01:49.640 | Like he wasn't as upset, he wasn't as distraught,

01:01:52.640 | because I tried to just humanize that situation

01:01:55.640 | of what we were trying to do.

01:01:56.640 | We were trying to do our best,

01:01:58.640 | but we also tried to be compassionate to his sadness.

01:02:03.640 | I walked away just feeling so good,

01:02:05.640 | even though it was a tragic situation and she did pass,

01:02:08.640 | that he came by to thank us days later,

01:02:12.640 | and it's just heartbreaking.

01:02:15.640 | But it just happens many, many times

01:02:18.640 | throughout the country every day.

01:02:20.640 | People get that opportunity as a responder

01:02:22.640 | to be that last bridge to the family and the loved one,

01:02:27.640 | and you only get that opportunity once sometimes,

01:02:30.640 | and you really have to--

01:02:32.640 | To me, it's like your moment to shine.

01:02:34.640 | You could just be very, very dismissive and very rude,

01:02:37.640 | or you could be compassionate and just show,

01:02:40.640 | "Hey, I have a mom, I have a grandma,"

01:02:43.640 | and just in your mind pretend that that's who you're working on

01:02:46.640 | and that's who you're with.

01:02:47.640 | So that moment of compassion, that moment of empathy,

01:02:50.640 | even if it's brief, can be the thing that saves the person

01:02:54.640 | from suffering, make the difference between suffering

01:02:59.640 | and overcoming in the face of tragedy.

01:03:01.640 | Yes, I felt that even though obviously his loss was still huge,

01:03:06.640 | it just made it a little more bearable

01:03:08.640 | and tried to just take his grief down to a lower level,

01:03:12.640 | and it made me feel--just feel really good about doing it.

01:03:16.640 | That's a powerful way to see the job of a first responder.

01:03:19.640 | Of course, you have to deal with certain aspects of the tragedy,

01:03:22.640 | but it's to provide somebody with that moment of compassion.

01:03:26.640 | Yes, and I made it a little habit because sometimes with faith

01:03:30.640 | it's a little bit of a tricky subject.

01:03:33.640 | Every time I had someone who died, which unfortunately was many,

01:03:36.640 | many times, I would just touch their hand

01:03:39.640 | and just say a little quick prayer and just say,

01:03:41.640 | "Look, I hope you're moving on to a better place.

01:03:44.640 | I hope if you did have faith that it's strong as you depart,

01:03:49.640 | and if you didn't have faith, I hope maybe at your last moment

01:03:52.640 | that you found some and you just found some closure."

01:03:55.640 | So that was just my little ritual, I think.

01:03:58.640 | I just felt it was important that that person,

01:04:02.640 | even though they were a stranger, just had someone there,

01:04:04.640 | just sort of hoping for the best for them in their last moments.

01:04:09.640 | You mentioned cancer.

01:04:12.640 | You had a rare leukemia due to all the work that you did at Ground Zero.

01:04:22.640 | Can you maybe talk to the experience of just breathing through those days

01:04:28.640 | and what that was like, being unable to breathe,

01:04:32.640 | being overwhelmed by all of the dust in the air?

01:04:36.640 | Yes. The first day especially, we didn't have equipment.

01:04:43.640 | We didn't have breathing apparatus, and we were handed little 69-cent

01:04:48.640 | hardware store dust masks, those little thin paint masks

01:04:51.640 | that would just get sweated up and stick into your face within 30 seconds.

01:04:57.640 | So you would just--they were useless.

01:05:00.640 | What you wound up feeling like was that you swallowed a box of razor blades

01:05:04.640 | because there was glass and there was cement, and it was just so caustic.

01:05:10.640 | I remember that night when we went back just to get some medical relief

01:05:14.640 | for the few hours.

01:05:17.640 | We were walking up the hill to the firehouse because they dropped us off

01:05:20.640 | like a block away down at Engine 201 and quarters.

01:05:26.640 | One of the older firemen, as we're walking up the block,

01:05:29.640 | we're all struggling, we're all having a hard time breathing.

01:05:32.640 | I felt like I was dying, literally. It was pretty bad.

01:05:37.640 | I just remember the one guy going, "We're all dead."

01:05:39.640 | I said, "No, no, we made it, we made it."

01:05:41.640 | He goes, "No, you don't get it, kid."

01:05:43.640 | He said, "We just breathed in poison after poison for hours,

01:05:47.640 | and then that went into days and then went into months."

01:05:50.640 | He says, "We're all dead, man. This is going to take us all."

01:05:54.640 | I thought he was crazy.

01:05:56.640 | Now years later, starting in '03, '04, guys just started coming down

01:06:01.640 | with these really rare and advanced cancers.

01:06:06.640 | It just stopped being a coincidence with the number of guys,

01:06:10.640 | and they were young.

01:06:12.640 | One of the first guys, John McNamara, he was 33 or 34,

01:06:16.640 | and he came down with colon cancer, and it took him quickly.

01:06:20.640 | He was in 2005.

01:06:24.640 | I kind of said to friends and family, I said,

01:06:28.640 | "I feel like I'm running through a minefield,

01:06:30.640 | and I wonder when I'm going to step on my mine

01:06:33.640 | because everybody is going to get sick."

01:06:35.640 | I wasn't feeling well from 2008 on.

01:06:39.640 | I couldn't put my finger on it, but I just wasn't right.

01:06:44.640 | In 2011, I failed my medical.

01:06:49.640 | My bloods came back horrifically wrong,

01:06:53.640 | and they pulled me off the truck, but they strung me out for a month.

01:06:58.640 | I went to doctors in the fire department.

01:07:00.640 | One of them said my spleen was engorged

01:07:02.640 | because I was probably drinking myself to death,

01:07:05.640 | like, as he said, most of the guys did after 9/11,

01:07:09.640 | which was pretty wrong of him, just to stereotype and to categorize.

01:07:15.640 | The guy couldn't have cared less.

01:07:17.640 | He was so crude and nasty.

01:07:19.640 | Then my one doctor, who was my doctor on the outside,

01:07:22.640 | my blood pressure was 240 over 140.

01:07:25.640 | My spleen was about to rupture.

01:07:28.640 | She didn't even show up for my appointment,

01:07:30.640 | and I went down, passed out.

01:07:32.640 | The paramedics responded.

01:07:34.640 | She got into an argument with a paramedic for big ego

01:07:38.640 | and basically telling him there wasn't really anything wrong,

01:07:41.640 | and he's looking at my paperwork going, "This guy's got leukemia,"

01:07:44.640 | and he overrode her.

01:07:46.640 | He raced me out of there down to Brooklyn Methodist.

01:07:51.640 | The doctor, the charge physician, the ER physician, he says,

01:07:55.640 | "You're not leaving because you're in a bad way."

01:07:58.640 | And I said, "What is it?"

01:08:00.640 | He said, "I need a little while to figure it out."

01:08:04.640 | He goes, "But you probably have one of a few different types of leukemia."

01:08:09.640 | He said, "I'll drill into your hip, take your marrow and find out."

01:08:13.640 | And he said, "But in the meantime, we'll get the swelling on the spleen down,

01:08:17.640 | some sort of rapid medicines and whatnot

01:08:19.640 | because my spleen was about to rupture.

01:08:22.640 | I had no blood platelets left, which is your clotter,

01:08:25.640 | so I basically would have bled to death."

01:08:29.640 | I found out from my team of doctors that I had about 48 hours to live,

01:08:34.640 | and that really set me off.

01:08:36.640 | I was infuriated because I was telling them for a long time that I was sick.

01:08:41.640 | The doctors failed you.

01:08:42.640 | The few doctors in the beginning failed you.

01:08:44.640 | I felt very betrayed, and other guys had died.

01:08:49.640 | And I had it out with that one doctor.

01:08:53.640 | I basically told her she was fired from my case,

01:08:55.640 | and she's a pretty politically in-charge person, and I didn't care.

01:09:00.640 | I jeopardized my job for it because it was my life,

01:09:03.640 | and I got the sense that it didn't really matter to her.

01:09:07.640 | She didn't have any empathy, as you say.

01:09:09.640 | It was exact.

01:09:10.640 | So why for her, why for a few others?

01:09:13.640 | Was there not a special care, a special compassion for, first of all, humans,

01:09:20.640 | but human beings in your position, especially a firefighter, a first responder?

01:09:25.640 | You know, Alex, I think what it is in the department,

01:09:28.640 | their title is just to get us back to duty as quickly as possible

01:09:32.640 | when we are either injured or sick

01:09:35.640 | because what happens then is your replacement is now in overtime.

01:09:40.640 | So you're out being paid on medical leave,

01:09:43.640 | but then they need to replace your spot, and then that costs more money.

01:09:47.640 | So I think it just behooves them to get as many personnel back,

01:09:52.640 | and especially during the summertime, you know, they look at it like,

01:09:55.640 | "Oh, maybe you want a few extra days off to go to the beach."

01:10:01.640 | One doctor, he tipped his hand back as if I was drinking an alcohol beverage.

01:10:05.640 | He says, "Hey, busy summer?"

01:10:07.640 | Because I asked him to look at my spleen,

01:10:09.640 | which was sticking out of my abdomen like a football.

01:10:12.640 | And I said, "Excuse me, sir."

01:10:14.640 | I said, "How dare you assume that I'm abusing alcohol?"

01:10:17.640 | Because, you know, alcohol abuse sometimes will present itself

01:10:21.640 | as the spleen is engorged and having an issue.

01:10:25.640 | So he automatically just assumed that that was my situation.

01:10:28.640 | Wouldn't even give me an exam, and I was horrified.

01:10:31.640 | I was so angry.

01:10:33.640 | I mean, I wanted to punch this guy out, and I literally was screaming at him.

01:10:36.640 | And an executive officer came in to diffuse it and sent me to another doctor.

01:10:42.640 | And when I showed her my paperwork, she was horrified.

01:10:44.640 | She was like, "What did he say?"

01:10:46.640 | And she said, "Oh, okay, go to your regular doctor tomorrow,"

01:10:49.640 | who was one of the department doctors.

01:10:52.640 | And she just--it was just an indifference.

01:10:55.640 | It was like, I don't know.

01:10:57.640 | I was shocked at the lack of compassion.

01:11:00.640 | But you know what?

01:11:01.640 | That being said, I'm past it.

01:11:03.640 | You know, life moves on.

01:11:06.640 | The team of doctors--I ended up with a Methodist,

01:11:09.640 | and my subsequent oncologist, Dr. Peter Mencel, world-class,

01:11:14.640 | just incredible human being.

01:11:16.640 | My Dr. Pete is just--I love him.

01:11:18.640 | I love him like a friend, like a big brother, like a father.

01:11:23.640 | My primary oncology care nurse, Mike Nunez, was just an incredible human being.

01:11:28.640 | And he knew I was frightened because I had to get two and a half years of chemo

01:11:33.640 | compressed into seven days, or I was dead.

01:11:37.640 | These massive bags of chemo that never stopped.

01:11:40.640 | And they burned--the minute they went into your body,

01:11:45.640 | you felt like you were burning to death from the inside out.

01:11:49.640 | And when Mike came in to hook me up, he said, "Look, I have to wear a hazmat suit.

01:11:54.640 | This stuff is so caustic that if it drips, it'll burn whatever it touches."

01:11:59.640 | And I was like, "But Mike, you're going to put that in my body.

01:12:02.640 | How the hell is it not going to kill me?"

01:12:04.640 | He says, "No, no, this is exactly what it's supposed to do.

01:12:06.640 | Trust me."

01:12:08.640 | So when he prepped the IV tube to get it flowing,

01:12:11.640 | it spilled onto the tube, and the tube started to smoke and burn.

01:12:15.640 | And I said, "No effing way, Mike.

01:12:17.640 | You're not putting that in me. No way, no way."

01:12:20.640 | And he goes, "Listen, let me get another one. Let me start it over."

01:12:23.640 | And here he is wearing a hazmat suit looking at me, and I'm going, "This is insane."

01:12:27.640 | And he goes--he looked at me, he took my hand, and he says,

01:12:30.640 | "Nels, if you don't take it, you're dead."

01:12:33.640 | He says, "You got those three kids. I'm sorry. I have no other option.

01:12:37.640 | You're dead." And I said, "All right, Mike. Okay."

01:12:40.640 | And he hooked me up.

01:12:42.640 | And you know what? It was like if you do drink alcohol

01:12:46.640 | and you have a shot or want a strong-type spirit

01:12:50.640 | and you start feeling that burn.

01:12:52.640 | Well, the minute he hit me in the vein,

01:12:55.640 | it just started going up my arm, burning,

01:12:58.640 | and then up my shoulder, across my neck,

01:13:02.640 | into my head, across the rest of my body,

01:13:04.640 | within a minute down to my feet.

01:13:06.640 | And I was writhing in pain for seven days.

01:13:09.640 | And I was praying to die.

01:13:11.640 | I was the seventh rescuer in six months

01:13:14.640 | to come down with the rarest leukemia there is.

01:13:17.640 | There's only 500 cases in all of North America a year.

01:13:20.640 | And seven of us came down in six months.

01:13:22.640 | Two guys died during treatment.

01:13:24.640 | Seven responders, police, fire.

01:13:27.640 | Two guys died in the first couple days of the treatment

01:13:30.640 | because it's so vicious--your liver, your heart, your kidneys.

01:13:33.640 | Something will fail.

01:13:35.640 | And I was praying and I was praying, but I wanted to die.

01:13:38.640 | I was in so much pain.

01:13:40.640 | And I wouldn't take a painkiller because I know people with some issues

01:13:43.640 | don't want to go there.

01:13:45.640 | And finally on the last day, I gave in.

01:13:48.640 | I said, "Please, I can't do this anymore."

01:13:50.640 | I was literally, like, jumping out of my skin.

01:13:53.640 | And they gave me something.

01:13:55.640 | But it had burned out my mind. It burned out my body.

01:13:58.640 | I couldn't hear. I could barely see.

01:14:00.640 | It was vicious. But it worked.

01:14:03.640 | And my nurses especially, they just--

01:14:06.640 | they were so dedicated and devoted.

01:14:08.640 | And I was not an easy patient because I was in a lot of pain.

01:14:11.640 | It was bad.

01:14:13.640 | And it drove my friends, my family crazy.

01:14:16.640 | It wasn't good.

01:14:18.640 | But on that first night, I had a quick vision of all these people that I loved

01:14:24.640 | that were dead, that died, a lot of them in the Trade Center.

01:14:27.640 | And I saw Johnny. I saw friends I grew up with.

01:14:32.640 | The last one was my mother-in-law who had passed 6 months before,

01:14:35.640 | and she died of--she was in a coma. She had a stroke.

01:14:39.640 | She had a horrible, horrible last 6 months of life.

01:14:42.640 | It wasn't fair because she was so religious.

01:14:45.640 | She went to church every day, devout Catholic woman.

01:14:48.640 | And all of a sudden I see her, and she's smiling.

01:14:52.640 | We used to talk a lot. It's the Irish thing.

01:14:55.640 | Like the gab, the gift of gab.

01:14:57.640 | She used to call me her boyfriend because we'd sit and talk for hours

01:15:00.640 | and talk about books and about movies and about food.

01:15:03.640 | I loved her. She was my friend.

01:15:06.640 | She'd say, "My boyfriend's here." And all of a sudden she's smiling,

01:15:09.640 | and she goes, "Hi, my boyfriend." I says, "Dad, what are you doing?"

01:15:13.640 | She goes, "He's not ready. He doesn't want you.

01:15:16.640 | You got to go back. You got things to do."

01:15:19.640 | And I'm like, "No, Dad, it hurts so much. Please, please take me."

01:15:22.640 | And she left. She goes, "No, no, not yet. I'll see you."

01:15:25.640 | And she just faded away.

01:15:28.640 | And one of my doctors on my team, she was--

01:15:33.640 | she had a problem with religion, and that's okay. I understand that.

01:15:37.640 | I'm not a preacher. I have a faith, but I don't preach it.

01:15:40.640 | I don't push it. I just live and let live.

01:15:44.640 | So she sent in this shrink to see me, and I was messed up from the chemo,

01:15:49.640 | but I knew what I was seeing. I knew what I was saying.

01:15:53.640 | And he was a Jewish gentleman. He was a rabbi also in a synagogue,

01:15:58.640 | and I actually had responded in that district,

01:16:01.640 | and he knew 114 would run into Borough Park.

01:16:04.640 | "Oh, yeah, I see Tally Ho. They come down the street."

01:16:07.640 | And he asked me to tell him the story, and I did.

01:16:10.640 | And he started laughing, and he scared me now.

01:16:13.640 | I says, "Doc, am I really crazy?" He says, "No, no."

01:16:17.640 | He said, "I believe you, my friend."

01:16:19.640 | He said, "We share the same God."

01:16:22.640 | He goes, "We work in the same corporation, but in different departments."

01:16:27.640 | And he says, "You did see your mother-in-law."

01:16:30.640 | He says, "Your faith is that strong."

01:16:32.640 | He said, "I've had many patients express the same sentiments."

01:16:35.640 | He said, "So I want you to listen to her and fight and be strong."

01:16:40.640 | And he said, "So what else do you want to talk about?"

01:16:42.640 | I says, "Well, I don't know, Doc. Am I that messed up?"

01:16:44.640 | He goes, "No, no." He goes, "They're paying me for an hour.

01:16:46.640 | It only took 20 minutes." So we watched the Yankee game together.

01:16:49.640 | And that's the last. But it was just, again, it showed the human condition.

01:16:53.640 | Here's these two men of two totally different faiths,

01:16:56.640 | and yet we shared that bond of faith.

01:17:00.640 | And he had empathy, and he had sympathy.

01:17:03.640 | And he saw me in many other patients.

01:17:08.640 | So he just didn't assume. And he gave me a fair shake.

01:17:11.640 | And I will always be grateful to him for that.

01:17:14.640 | Through any of this, the pain you had to go through with the leukemia,

01:17:18.640 | but also the days of 9/11, after, did your faith get challenged?

01:17:24.640 | You know, Lex, it was strange.

01:17:27.640 | There were times I was so angry.

01:17:29.640 | There's that range of emotions, the anger, the denial, the depression,

01:17:33.640 | the this, the that. And this is the weirdest thing.

01:17:36.640 | It was mostly I knew my career was over.

01:17:40.640 | And they retired me out of the job.

01:17:43.640 | I got sick in August, and that October they told me I was out.

01:17:47.640 | And by the time I was processed and used up my leaves

01:17:52.640 | and whatever you want to say it was,

01:17:54.640 | I was officially retired in January of '02.

01:17:58.640 | And it was less than six months.

01:18:01.640 | And I'm there walking my dog one day, my rescued greyhound,

01:18:04.640 | who I miss. She was such a soul.

01:18:06.640 | God, she lived to be almost 13, Katie.

01:18:08.640 | And we're walking in the snow, and I got the call I was retired.

01:18:12.640 | And I looked at her, and I'm like, "Katie, what am I going to do?"

01:18:15.640 | And she just looked up and said, "We're going to go on a lot more walks."

01:18:18.640 | And I was so sad. I was so sad.

01:18:21.640 | I was so angry because I lost my priesthood.

01:18:23.640 | I loved helping people. I really--

01:18:25.640 | I would have done it for free.

01:18:27.640 | I would never tell Mayor Bloomberg that, right?

01:18:29.640 | He's all about the buck, right?

01:18:31.640 | But honestly, I would have been a New York City fireman.

01:18:34.640 | I would have paid them to do it.

01:18:36.640 | And I wasn't allowed anymore. That's it.

01:18:40.640 | You have over 20 years, and you have cancer.

01:18:43.640 | Back when my dad got sick, they'd let you hang around

01:18:45.640 | for 10, 12 years in an office.

01:18:47.640 | But not now. Now it's all about the bottom line.

01:18:50.640 | But I was more depressed about losing a job

01:18:55.640 | than almost losing my life, like as crazy as that sounds.

01:18:58.640 | And it just--

01:19:00.640 | - It's more than a job. I mean, it's a way of life.

01:19:03.640 | - Oh, man. Yeah.

01:19:05.640 | - It's also your family, your father.

01:19:07.640 | You're carrying torture, your father's--

01:19:09.640 | - Oh, my friend. I love my friends.

01:19:11.640 | I love--we work 24-hour shifts together.

01:19:14.640 | You cook, you clean, you break each other's jobs relentlessly.

01:19:17.640 | I mean, it was--I love those guys so much.

01:19:20.640 | I mean, I hope that my kids

01:19:23.640 | and anyone that I know and care about,

01:19:25.640 | I hope they can experience the bond of that brotherhood

01:19:30.640 | that I experienced in my life.

01:19:32.640 | It was so--God, I would give anything to have it back.

01:19:35.640 | Just, yeah.

01:19:37.640 | - Can I ask you about New York?

01:19:39.640 | So when I--I've--unfortunately, I've never lived in New York.

01:19:41.640 | I visit. I've always wanted to live there for a bit.

01:19:44.640 | Obviously, it's a very different experience

01:19:46.640 | to have really lived in New York for many, many years,

01:19:49.640 | but there's a few friends of mine that are from--

01:19:53.640 | they got similar accent as yours--

01:19:55.640 | - Yeah.

01:19:56.640 | - That are a little bit saddened.

01:19:59.640 | Perhaps it's temporary, but perhaps not.

01:20:02.640 | They don't seem to think so of what New York has become,

01:20:06.640 | especially with COVID.

01:20:07.640 | It's losing some of the spirit of New York.

01:20:10.640 | Do you have that sense?

01:20:12.640 | Do you have a hope for the city that has been so defining

01:20:17.640 | to what is America?

01:20:19.640 | - You know, my heart's broken.

01:20:21.640 | I had moved to New Jersey many years ago,

01:20:24.640 | but I still have a close attachment to New York.

01:20:26.640 | My parents are still there, many, many family members,

01:20:31.640 | and I've since now moved to Tennessee.

01:20:33.640 | I needed to go somewhere quiet.

01:20:35.640 | I wanted to heal my fractured soul,

01:20:37.640 | and I'm in the middle of a beautiful farming rural area

01:20:43.640 | in Middle Tennessee,

01:20:44.640 | and so they probably call me a sellout back in New York

01:20:48.640 | for leaving, but it's not the same city,

01:20:51.640 | and it's sad.

01:20:52.640 | You know, I'll refrain from the politics and the finger pointing,

01:20:58.640 | but it's a mess compared to what it was.

01:21:00.640 | And, you know, I did Broadway theater security

01:21:03.640 | for many years,

01:21:05.640 | and I started to see it slide,

01:21:08.640 | like with stuff that was happening,

01:21:11.640 | like, you know, public urination and defecation

01:21:14.640 | and just like, you know, tourists don't want to see that, right?

01:21:18.640 | And I had an unfortunate incident two years ago.

01:21:23.640 | I was jumped by four teenagers coming off the subway,

01:21:27.640 | and they were pissed off because I was wearing an American flag hat,

01:21:31.640 | and I don't know.

01:21:33.640 | I'm not really sure why, but it left me--

01:21:37.640 | I got out of it, okay,

01:21:39.640 | but I was taken back.

01:21:42.640 | They were literally videoing it,

01:21:44.640 | and the kid was just throwing shadow punches at my face

01:21:46.640 | wanting to beat me up,

01:21:47.640 | and I finally looked him in the eyes,

01:21:49.640 | and I was like, "Oh, boy, I'm a little too old for this."

01:21:52.640 | Body's a little broken down for chemo,

01:21:54.640 | and I finally just said, "All right."

01:21:56.640 | I just had enough.

01:21:57.640 | I wanted to go home.

01:21:58.640 | Just worked a 17-hour shift as a stagehand,

01:22:01.640 | and I was so taken back.

01:22:03.640 | I was so insulted.

01:22:04.640 | I'm saying, "You know, I spent my life protecting this city,

01:22:07.640 | and now I'm getting attacked for nothing?"

01:22:10.640 | And I just--I gave up,

01:22:11.640 | and maybe I should have given it a little more time,

01:22:14.640 | but it's--I don't know.

01:22:17.640 | It's turned into an angry place.

01:22:18.640 | It's turned into--

01:22:20.640 | I think there's a lot of people

01:22:22.640 | that aren't getting the resources they need in a sense.

01:22:25.640 | There's a lot of mental illness.

01:22:27.640 | There's a lot of homelessness.

01:22:28.640 | There's a lot of violent people just roaming around the streets,

01:22:32.640 | and it's not good.

01:22:33.640 | It's not safe,

01:22:34.640 | and tourists are not going to come back.

01:22:38.640 | Even just leading up to the COVID,

01:22:39.640 | I had some tourists saying to me, "I won't be back,"

01:22:42.640 | and now I can only imagine

01:22:43.640 | that it's just gotten exponentially worse,

01:22:45.640 | but I hope there's a chance it'll swing back, 'cause it is.

01:22:49.640 | It's the gateway to the world.

01:22:50.640 | I mean, my grandfather came, you know, from Denmark.

01:22:54.640 | He landed in Ellis Island in the '20s,

01:22:57.640 | you know, American success story,

01:22:59.640 | $25 in his pocket, didn't speak the language,

01:23:02.640 | had a sponsor family in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn,

01:23:06.640 | and he made it.

01:23:07.640 | You know, he ended up dying,

01:23:08.640 | owning a bakery at one point and then an apartment building,

01:23:11.640 | and he did pretty well for himself for an immigrant who was poor,

01:23:16.640 | and my mom, my Irish mother,

01:23:18.640 | landed in the same neighborhood, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn,

01:23:21.640 | 16 years old, worked as a cashier 50, 60 hours a week

01:23:25.640 | in a supermarket and finished school at night,

01:23:29.640 | married my father, the fireman,

01:23:32.640 | and, you know, lived the American dream,

01:23:35.640 | and it was all from New York,

01:23:37.640 | and my father's mom was from Irish immigrants,

01:23:40.640 | and they all landed in Ellis Island.

01:23:42.640 | Well, my mom didn't, 'cause it was closed at that point,

01:23:45.640 | but there's people breaking down the doors

01:23:49.640 | to come to this country, right?

01:23:51.640 | There's no one breaking down the doors to leave,

01:23:54.640 | and this is a problem I have with people

01:23:56.640 | that aren't grateful for being here,

01:23:58.640 | and this, again, it's not political.

01:24:00.640 | It's just straight down the middle fastball.

01:24:02.640 | If you don't like it here, I'll show you the door.

01:24:06.640 | I'll get you the plane ticket.

01:24:07.640 | I mean, would you want to live back in Russia compared to here?

01:24:11.640 | You might because of family ties,

01:24:13.640 | but I mean, if you had no ties to Russia,

01:24:15.640 | or would you want to go to China right now

01:24:17.640 | and possibly end up in a labor camp, right?

01:24:20.640 | There's people busting down the doors to get to this place.

01:24:23.640 | It's not perfect.

01:24:24.640 | It's got its flaws.

01:24:26.640 | It's got its blemishes, you know,

01:24:29.640 | but it's a damn great place,

01:24:31.640 | and it's the best country in the world.

01:24:33.640 | - Yeah, and some of it, so first of all,

01:24:35.640 | I have hope for New York.

01:24:36.640 | I think that culture is very difficult to kill.

01:24:40.640 | I think it will persevere,

01:24:41.640 | and I think ultimately the same story with New York

01:24:44.640 | as with the rest of the United States.

01:24:46.640 | It has to do with leaders,

01:24:48.640 | and I'm always hopeful that great leaders will emerge.

01:24:52.640 | - I agree.

01:24:53.640 | - And the kind of leadership we see now

01:24:57.640 | and the kind of conversations we have now,

01:24:59.640 | I think has to do with prosperity and comfort,

01:25:03.640 | and in the face of hardship,

01:25:05.640 | I think great leaders will emerge,

01:25:07.640 | and I just think ultimately in the long arc of history,

01:25:12.640 | - Well, leaders shouldn't become rich.

01:25:14.640 | They shouldn't become rich in the process, right?

01:25:16.640 | You shouldn't go into political office

01:25:18.640 | as an alleged lunchbox kind of guy

01:25:23.640 | and then come out eating at the best steakhouse in the world.

01:25:26.640 | I mean, that's the problem with politics, right?

01:25:29.640 | My Irish grandmother, God rest her, used to say,

01:25:32.640 | "Oh, those politicians, they're all like dirty diapers.

01:25:35.640 | They're full of shit, and they stink," and it's true.

01:25:37.640 | I don't give a crap what party they're in.

01:25:39.640 | - Yeah, greed and power.

01:25:40.640 | - We had to beg these guys,

01:25:42.640 | beg them for federal legislation

01:25:45.640 | to cover our medical bills, right?

01:25:47.640 | There's a gentleman, John Feal, from the Feel Good Foundation.

01:25:50.640 | This guy is a lion of a man, a general,

01:25:53.640 | but with a soft, big, great heart,

01:25:56.640 | and John is a former construction worker

01:26:00.640 | who came to the 9/11 site the day after.

01:26:04.640 | He was one of those guys cutting the steel with torches

01:26:07.640 | and craning it out of the air,

01:26:09.640 | one of those hardhats that just--

01:26:11.640 | that never got the credit and the praise

01:26:16.640 | that we did as responders,

01:26:18.640 | and I don't mean that as a knock to responders, right?

01:26:21.640 | I mean, we lost 37 Port Authority police officers,

01:26:25.640 | 23 NYPD officers,

01:26:27.640 | about a dozen emergency medical technicians and paramedics,

01:26:33.640 | three court officers from New York State courts,

01:26:36.640 | and two federal agents,

01:26:37.640 | and 343 New York City firefighters.

01:26:40.640 | We lost a ton of responders,

01:26:43.640 | but the recovery workers thankfully weren't killed

01:26:47.640 | in that process,

01:26:48.640 | but there's hundreds of them now who are dead from illnesses

01:26:52.640 | because they came down to recover our people

01:26:55.640 | and the civilians and the poor lost souls

01:26:57.640 | that were killed at work that day,

01:27:00.640 | and John literally almost lost his foot

01:27:04.640 | in a construction accident at the site,

01:27:07.640 | an 8,000-pound I-beam tore off half of his foot,

01:27:11.640 | ended up with massive sepsis,

01:27:13.640 | six months in the hospital,

01:27:15.640 | hundreds of thousand dollars in medical bills,

01:27:18.640 | and then no one wanted to pay him.

01:27:20.640 | So here's a guy who's gonna lose his house,

01:27:22.640 | lose his life, lose everything,

01:27:24.640 | and now the never forget, it started quick, right?

01:27:29.640 | And he went on a mission,

01:27:31.640 | formed his Feel Good Foundation,

01:27:34.640 | his last name is Feel, F-E-A-L, Feel Good Foundation,

01:27:37.640 | and this man literally went to Washington, D.C.

01:27:42.640 | with his army, as he called it,

01:27:44.640 | and I was honored and blessed to be with him

01:27:46.640 | only a couple times.

01:27:48.640 | I wish I had dedicated some more time to it,

01:27:51.640 | and what it was with John is he set out on a mission

01:27:55.640 | to get, and initially what he did is he got funding

01:27:58.640 | to take care of responders who were in that limbo,

01:28:01.640 | who couldn't get their medical bills paid,

01:28:03.640 | who couldn't make their mortgages,

01:28:04.640 | who couldn't make their car payments,

01:28:06.640 | who couldn't make their childcare payments,

01:28:08.640 | and John just took it upon his own to get donations

01:28:11.640 | and take care of you while you were suffering, right?

01:28:14.640 | I got a call when I got out of the hospital.

01:28:16.640 | You okay, you need anything?

01:28:17.640 | I said, who is this?

01:28:18.640 | It's John Feel.

01:28:19.640 | I said, aren't you that constructor?

01:28:21.640 | Yeah, you need anything?

01:28:23.640 | I'm pretty good right now.

01:28:24.640 | I said, I appreciate it.

01:28:25.640 | Phone ring again a few weeks later.

01:28:27.640 | Hey, it's John Feel, you need anything?

01:28:29.640 | I'm like, this guy's incredible,

01:28:31.640 | but there's people who needed stuff,

01:28:32.640 | and he was getting it done,

01:28:34.640 | and he with his army had to chase these politicians

01:28:38.640 | through the halls of Congress

01:28:40.640 | to get funding to cover the medical bills.

01:28:43.640 | I was getting sued for $125,000

01:28:45.640 | for my month stay in a cancer ward,

01:28:48.640 | and I couldn't believe it.

01:28:51.640 | I said, well, wait a minute, I have insurance.

01:28:53.640 | They're like, oh, no, no, this is terrorism related.

01:28:55.640 | We don't cover that.

01:28:57.640 | So usually then workers' comp

01:28:58.640 | will cover your on-duty injury or illness.

01:29:01.640 | Oh, no, no, no, leukemia is not covered under that.

01:29:03.640 | We don't cover that.

01:29:05.640 | So then the ping pong game starts,

01:29:07.640 | and I'm literally have people showing up,

01:29:09.640 | taking pictures of my kids in front of the house,

01:29:12.640 | and I went and grabbed the guy one day by the collar.

01:29:14.640 | I said, who the hell are you?

01:29:16.640 | Sir, I'm a private investigator.

01:29:17.640 | We're putting a lien on this property

01:29:19.640 | due to a nonpayment of a bill.

01:29:21.640 | I said, okay, I understand.

01:29:22.640 | Do your job.

01:29:23.640 | Let me bring my kids inside.

01:29:25.640 | Take all the pictures you want.

01:29:26.640 | Don't step on my front lawn.

01:29:29.640 | And I went in the house.

01:29:31.640 | I closed my room, my door, my door in my room, and I cried.

01:29:36.640 | I said, I can't believe this.

01:29:37.640 | I spent my entire adult life trying to help people,

01:29:41.640 | give of myself, and I can't even get my medical bill paid.

01:29:45.640 | Well, John Field got my medical bill paid.

01:29:47.640 | He finally got these politicians with his team,

01:29:50.640 | firefighter Ray Pfeiffer, who has since died,

01:29:53.640 | fought with terminal cancer for nine years in a wheelchair,

01:29:59.640 | literally at the end came out of hospice

01:30:01.640 | to go finalize getting us this coverage.

01:30:05.640 | Detective Luis Alvarez,

01:30:07.640 | who testified days before he died in front of Congress,

01:30:12.640 | and a bunch of other guys that were really, really sick,

01:30:16.640 | and we had to shame these people into signing on,

01:30:19.640 | and luckily we had Jon Stewart come on

01:30:21.640 | and literally just hound these guys

01:30:24.640 | and shame them and embarrass them.

01:30:27.640 | And what it all stemmed from was in 2006,

01:30:30.640 | the first death that was determined to be linked to 9/11,

01:30:35.640 | there was others,

01:30:36.640 | but the first one that was officially linked

01:30:38.640 | was a New York City police detective

01:30:40.640 | who initially the city said he died of advanced lung disease.

01:30:44.640 | His lungs were protruding out of his body,

01:30:46.640 | and he was on painkillers, and it was so bad at the end

01:30:49.640 | that the doctors said just grind him up, snort him, drink it,

01:30:52.640 | whatever you need to do to get instant relief.

01:30:55.640 | So when they found the talcum from the pill lining

01:30:58.640 | in his lungs, they said, "Oh, no, this is opiate abuse.

01:31:01.640 | He didn't die of lung disease."

01:31:03.640 | So they said, and the mayor was quoted as saying,

01:31:06.640 | "He is not a hero."

01:31:08.640 | Well, shame on you, Mr. Mayor.

01:31:10.640 | He was a hero.

01:31:11.640 | And his father, who was a retired police chief,

01:31:14.640 | married up with the Feel Good Foundation

01:31:17.640 | and Jon Stewart and Ray Pfeiffer,

01:31:20.640 | Detective Alvarez,

01:31:22.640 | and they got us all covered.

01:31:24.640 | But it took so long.

01:31:26.640 | Lexi, it was so heartbreaking.

01:31:27.640 | These people who were lining up, three deep, politicians,

01:31:31.640 | three deep to catch a picture with a responder

01:31:33.640 | so they can tweet #neverforget and #lookatme

01:31:37.640 | and "Hey, how am I doing?"

01:31:39.640 | All that bull crap.

01:31:40.640 | But they didn't know.

01:31:41.640 | They were nowhere to be freaking found.

01:31:43.640 | I literally witnessed them hiding in cloak rooms,

01:31:47.640 | running down hallways away from us, those freaking cowards.

01:31:50.640 | That's cowardice.

01:31:51.640 | Can I just linger on the Jon Stewart thing?

01:31:53.640 | The comedian, actor Jon Stewart,

01:31:56.640 | his testimony before Congress

01:31:58.640 | over the benefits for 9/11 first responders.

01:32:01.640 | I mean, there's a lot of important human beings in this story,

01:32:05.640 | but he has a big voice.

01:32:07.640 | Yes.

01:32:08.640 | And he spoke from the heart.

01:32:09.640 | What do you make of that testimony?

01:32:11.640 | Oh, it was heartfelt.

01:32:12.640 | I mean, he spoke--

01:32:15.640 | Look, I mean, Jon was a polarizing guy, right?

01:32:20.640 | There's certain things, like over the years,

01:32:21.640 | he was cutting edge, and I might not have agreed with all of his--

01:32:25.640 | Oh, yeah?

01:32:26.640 | Well, you know, some stuff, some not, right?

01:32:28.640 | But I tell you, I found him as funny.

01:32:30.640 | I enjoyed his humor.

01:32:32.640 | I would love the two of you to have a conversation.

01:32:34.640 | No, but again, I love a guy where you can have a difference in opinions.

01:32:38.640 | That's the beautiful thing about the Firehouse Kitchen.

01:32:40.640 | I mean, it could get raucous,

01:32:42.640 | and now, I don't know, it's a little different situation.

01:32:45.640 | But back in the day, some funny stuff.

01:32:48.640 | But yeah, Jon literally just took his talents.

01:32:51.640 | You would think he was speaking from the heart of a fireman

01:32:54.640 | or a cop or a soldier or a Marine, you know, someone who was there.

01:33:00.640 | But I think he especially got to know Ray so well,

01:33:04.640 | and Ray had this stack of mask cards from the funeral cards they give out.

01:33:11.640 | It looks like a larger business card that's laminated.

01:33:14.640 | And Ray had a stack of them he would carry around.

01:33:17.640 | I think it was close to 100 cards.

01:33:20.640 | And Jon saw it, and he said, "What's that?"

01:33:23.640 | He says, "These are my cards."

01:33:24.640 | He said, "For what?"

01:33:25.640 | He says, "For my brother's funerals."

01:33:27.640 | He was like, "Oh, my God, you've been to that many funerals?"

01:33:31.640 | He goes, "Yeah, this is just the ones I made."

01:33:35.640 | Like, you know, and Jon, I think, was just stunned.

01:33:40.640 | And Jon actually had that stack of cards after Ray passed

01:33:45.640 | and, like, said, "Look at these.

01:33:47.640 | There's going to be more of these cards."

01:33:49.640 | We have one guy a week or girl, one responder or recovery worker

01:33:54.640 | or someone who actually resided down there.

01:33:57.640 | There's more than one a week dying.

01:34:00.640 | It's one a day dying on average.

01:34:03.640 | And on average, two people are diagnosed with a 9/11 cancer or disease.

01:34:08.640 | Right now, the worst part is there's autoimmune diseases flying off the graph,

01:34:14.640 | and they're not covered under the legislation.

01:34:17.640 | By the grace of God, my cancer's covered.

01:34:19.640 | If my cancer comes back--I mean, I'm in remission.

01:34:22.640 | It's technically incurable, but I've been blessed.

01:34:25.640 | I'm staying ahead of this stuff going on 10 years.

01:34:28.640 | But if it comes back with a vengeance tomorrow and takes me,

01:34:31.640 | at least my wife will get my pension and be able to live her life without fear.

01:34:36.640 | But my friends who are suffering from these advanced autoimmunes,

01:34:40.640 | their wives get nothing.

01:34:41.640 | Their pension dies with them.

01:34:43.640 | And we're hoping that John and his army can shame these politicians once again

01:34:51.640 | to have the kindness and decency to cover these autoimmunes.

01:34:56.640 | They're throwing a lot of money around at a lot of things lately,

01:34:59.640 | and this is one that they won't.

01:35:02.640 | And these are lives in the balance who really need it.

01:35:05.640 | And John had this strong line, "They did their jobs, do yours,"

01:35:11.640 | talking to the politicians.

01:35:15.640 | It's a strong wake-up call that it's not about the Twitter or the social media

01:35:21.640 | or all that kind of stuff.

01:35:22.640 | You have a job to do, and you have to--it's that compassion

01:35:28.640 | implemented in the form of money, of helping people that were there for you

01:35:33.640 | when you needed help.

01:35:35.640 | Well, we had a guy--I mean, I might get audited out of this one.

01:35:38.640 | I hope not.

01:35:39.640 | We had a congressman from out west--I won't say where--

01:35:42.640 | but he prided himself on saying he was a retired cop.

01:35:45.640 | Busy cop, 22 years.

01:35:48.640 | He said no on the legislation.

01:35:51.640 | I witnessed a cop who was dying get out of his wheelchair and said,

01:35:56.640 | "Hey, brother, I got a half a million dollars in medical bills,

01:36:00.640 | and I'm a short-timer.

01:36:01.640 | I got a few months to live.

01:36:03.640 | Who the F is going to pay him?

01:36:05.640 | Do the right thing.

01:36:06.640 | You say you're a cop, you show me you're a cop,

01:36:08.640 | and you sign that paper."

01:36:10.640 | And the guy started tearing up the congressman, and he signed it.

01:36:13.640 | But he had to be freaking shamed.

01:36:15.640 | And you know what he said?

01:36:16.640 | "Well, this doesn't really confront me.

01:36:18.640 | This is pork as far as my district's concerned."

01:36:20.640 | He goes, "Oh, yeah?

01:36:21.640 | Do you know there's 10 guys from your district who came across the country

01:36:24.640 | to help us that are also dying?"

01:36:26.640 | He had no idea.

01:36:27.640 | He had no idea.

01:36:29.640 | And that's the sad part about it, Alex.

01:36:31.640 | It's a failure in leadership.

01:36:34.640 | I mean, I think some people would vote for Mickey Mouse,

01:36:38.640 | just because if he ran.

01:36:40.640 | I mean, no offense against Mickey Mouse.

01:36:41.640 | I like him.

01:36:42.640 | He's a good guy, right?

01:36:43.640 | Allegedly.

01:36:44.640 | Allegedly, supposedly.

01:36:45.640 | We don't know.

01:36:46.640 | Yeah, yeah.

01:36:47.640 | But seriously, I look at some of the leadership sometimes and go,

01:36:53.640 | "We're in trouble."

01:36:54.640 | And also, I think the way government is structured is people who are senators

01:37:00.640 | or people who are in Congress, they start playing a game between each other

01:37:07.640 | and they lose track of the connection to the people, to basic humanity.

01:37:11.640 | So you forget, even when you think of yourself as a cop,

01:37:15.640 | you forget what are the cops and the other people servicing the community

01:37:22.640 | actually experiencing all the troubles they're going through

01:37:25.640 | and how they can actually be helped, because you lose touch with that,

01:37:27.640 | because you're not actually living, you're not talking to them,

01:37:29.640 | you're not living among them.

01:37:31.640 | I mean, that's a natural part of the system,

01:37:33.640 | but I think that's why character and great leadership is important,

01:37:36.640 | is you say you leave the game of Congress and you go back to the people.

01:37:42.640 | I mean, that's what the country--

01:37:45.640 | it's like the George Washington ideal, is you're not playing a game of power.

01:37:50.640 | You ultimately see yourself as somebody who's servicing,

01:37:53.640 | this country's servicing the community,

01:37:55.640 | and that requires talking to the people in their time of hardship.

01:37:58.640 | Well, you have some people serving in congressional districts

01:38:02.640 | don't even live in that district.

01:38:04.640 | I mean, so how are they going to empathize?

01:38:06.640 | They're not even driving through there on a daily basis.

01:38:09.640 | And, you know, again, when anything becomes lucrative

01:38:15.640 | from a financial standpoint, it blurries people's vision.

01:38:20.640 | You have to take the potential of becoming rich out of politics.

01:38:25.640 | Politics is public service.

01:38:28.640 | Police and fire and EMS are public service.

01:38:32.640 | But cops and firemen and medics don't walk out of their career

01:38:38.640 | with gazillion-dollar contracts with this company and that company

01:38:43.640 | on that board of directors and this board of directors.

01:38:45.640 | They walk out with a pension and that's it.

01:38:48.640 | And you have to wonder the intentions of people getting into politics.

01:38:52.640 | Are they truly going into to help the human condition

01:38:56.640 | or are they trying to help their own damn condition

01:38:59.640 | with their wallet and their pocketbook?

01:39:01.640 | And I try to lean toward the latter lately, you know,

01:39:04.640 | with what I'm seeing out there.

01:39:05.640 | Well, some of them are the good ones

01:39:06.640 | and that's our job as a society is to elevate the good ones.

01:39:09.640 | That's it.

01:39:11.640 | And that has to do with the ideals that we elevate.

01:39:16.640 | There are a number of conspiracy theories around the events of 9/11.

01:39:21.640 | Do any of these hold true to you

01:39:24.640 | or do they just frustrate you, even anger you?

01:39:29.640 | I've been asked this by a few different people in my life.

01:39:35.640 | This is my take on it, right?

01:39:37.640 | You're a man of science and a man of education, so you--

01:39:42.640 | Allegedly.

01:39:43.640 | Allegedly, but yes.

01:39:44.640 | But you're a very, very intelligent man.

01:39:46.640 | And what I believe took place is this.

01:39:51.640 | Structural steel will fail at a sustained temperature

01:39:58.640 | of 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit.

01:40:00.640 | And I don't know exactly how long that would have to be sustained,

01:40:04.640 | but that's the temp, right?

01:40:06.640 | Diesel fuel, kerosene fuel, kerosene-based jet fuel,

01:40:11.640 | which was the ignition there,

01:40:14.640 | burns at 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit.

01:40:17.640 | So that continued burning of that diesel, that jet fuel,

01:40:23.640 | but kerosene-based, it's all kind of similar,

01:40:26.640 | exceeded the temperature needed for that steel

01:40:30.640 | in the structural members of the Trade Center to fail.

01:40:34.640 | In my heart of hearts, I would hate to ever think

01:40:39.640 | that somebody affiliated with our government,

01:40:43.640 | with some sort of agenda, would perpetrate that crime

01:40:48.640 | and that tragic just destruction of humanity and property

01:40:55.640 | for some other form of gain.

01:40:57.640 | Those planes rammed into those buildings at 450 miles an hour.

01:41:02.640 | They were loaded with thousands and thousands of gallons of jet fuel.

01:41:06.640 | Number 7 Trade Center had the backup

01:41:09.640 | for the emergency management system for the city,

01:41:14.640 | and there was an emergency generator in that complex

01:41:17.640 | which had a 25,000-gallon tank of diesel fuel

01:41:23.640 | to continually run for weeks to keep the 911 system,

01:41:27.640 | the backup system, going in the case of a catastrophic event.

01:41:32.640 | Well, that tank in 7 heated up from the fire

01:41:36.640 | that was already going on from the aircraft debris

01:41:39.640 | coming into the building.

01:41:41.640 | So once that diesel became ignited in 7,

01:41:45.640 | now you had enough temperature to fail that steel in that building.

01:41:51.640 | So I would like to truly believe what I've learned

01:41:54.640 | from the minimal fire science knowledge I have from my career,

01:41:59.640 | that it was just a matter of it burned too long,

01:42:03.640 | it burned too hot, and it failed.

01:42:06.640 | I mean, if you look at the way it came down,

01:42:09.640 | it came down as it was designed to

01:42:11.640 | in the God-forbid event that it was to collapse.

01:42:14.640 | It came down pancaking upon itself.

01:42:17.640 | If it had failed horizontally and just sprayed out side to side,

01:42:23.640 | those buildings would have dropped for a quarter, half a mile

01:42:26.640 | up to Canal Street.

01:42:29.640 | But you know, Lex--

01:42:30.640 | The fire and the destruction that could have resulted from that--

01:42:33.640 | Yeah, oh my gosh, it could have been so much worse.

01:42:35.640 | I mean, you would have taken out every building

01:42:38.640 | from that point all the way up.

01:42:41.640 | But in my heart, I'd like to just believe

01:42:43.640 | that it was just a fire that burned too long and too hot.

01:42:46.640 | These planes cause structural damage upon impact in both buildings,

01:42:51.640 | and it was just a matter of time.

01:42:53.640 | And then you think about it, you add all the plastics,

01:42:56.640 | the carpeting, all of the stuff that was burning on those floors,

01:43:00.640 | you add that to that fire load,

01:43:03.640 | I think it just had enough to collapse it.

01:43:05.640 | And you were in Building 7 for part of that day.

01:43:09.640 | I was just after it came down as well.

01:43:12.640 | We were aside it, and we weren't in it or next to it

01:43:15.640 | when it actually did come down, but moments after we were there.

01:43:20.640 | And again, I would like to believe that it just--

01:43:25.640 | it was just that that fuel was going,

01:43:28.640 | and it just took its--physics took its course, and it failed.

01:43:33.640 | So physics and science aside, it's hard--

01:43:37.640 | it's both I would like to believe,

01:43:40.640 | and it's hard to imagine that anybody would be so evil

01:43:42.640 | as to orchestrate parts of this from within the United States government.

01:43:47.640 | That's very difficult for me to imagine.

01:43:50.640 | You know what, though, Lex, there's people--

01:43:52.640 | and I won't elaborate, I won't get into it,

01:43:55.640 | any controversial subjects or what have you.

01:43:59.640 | There's some people that don't have any problem at all

01:44:02.640 | perpetrating any level of evil.

01:44:05.640 | People like you and I who have hearts and we have depth of soul,

01:44:09.640 | we couldn't imagine it, but there's other people

01:44:11.640 | who wouldn't even be a second thought.

01:44:13.640 | I mean, I've seen some horrific incidents in my career

01:44:17.640 | that I go home shaking my head at night going,

01:44:20.640 | "Human beings are just--they're not wired right."

01:44:23.640 | I mean, I look at animals, I love animals, I love dogs especially,

01:44:27.640 | and I see this dog park when I train to fly airplanes now

01:44:32.640 | and it's something I wanted to do.

01:44:34.640 | And there's a dog park across from the airport,

01:44:36.640 | and there's 60 dogs, and there's bones flying up in the air

01:44:40.640 | and chew toys and sticks, and they're running around

01:44:42.640 | having the time of their life, right?

01:44:45.640 | And they're all getting along, and they're not hurting each other,

01:44:48.640 | they're not violating each other, they're not canceling each other.

01:44:52.640 | And I'm going, "We really need to learn from these dogs."

01:44:56.640 | Right? And I just--yeah.

01:44:59.640 | I mean, sometimes it sounds crazy, but I think

01:45:01.640 | they're a better species than people.

01:45:04.640 | Unless they're rabid, they don't hurt on purpose,

01:45:06.640 | they don't cut you off in traffic and throw you the middle finger.

01:45:10.640 | They just don't do these acts of humanity

01:45:15.640 | that sometimes are so vicious.

01:45:17.640 | - Why do you think these conspiracy theories,

01:45:20.640 | of which there's a lot, take hold?

01:45:24.640 | Why do you think so many people believe

01:45:26.640 | some version of different conspiracy theories around 9/11?

01:45:31.640 | - Well, you know, like many things in life,

01:45:33.640 | it leaves me a little conflicted.

01:45:35.640 | I have to say this, I am at the point now

01:45:37.640 | I don't know who to believe anymore.

01:45:39.640 | So I could see that lending a hand to someone

01:45:44.640 | who's already a doubter, going,

01:45:46.640 | "Oh yeah, look, exactly, that's what they're doing."

01:45:49.640 | I mean, look at this whole virus.

01:45:52.640 | Who do you believe? Where did it come from?

01:45:56.640 | And if you plant that seed,

01:46:00.640 | it's like that little campfire we were talking about earlier.

01:46:03.640 | You just toss a little gas into those embers,

01:46:06.640 | you got a fire now.

01:46:07.640 | I also think there's a lot of people

01:46:09.640 | with a hell of a lot of extra time on their hands.

01:46:12.640 | And they're really bored.

01:46:13.640 | - And when the two are combined--

01:46:15.640 | - Yeah, man, you know, like, look,

01:46:17.640 | I was a three job Charlie, right?

01:46:18.640 | You know, one guy used to say to me,

01:46:20.640 | "Anything but home."

01:46:21.640 | I go, "No, I got deadlines, responsibilities."

01:46:24.640 | You know, like that's what it comes down to,

01:46:27.640 | is like, I mean, look, we all have our hobbies

01:46:31.640 | and things we like and, you know, little nuances.

01:46:34.640 | And that's what makes us special, we're unique.

01:46:37.640 | Every person is a unique being.

01:46:39.640 | But I also think some people just,

01:46:43.640 | they wanna cling to something.

01:46:45.640 | Like we all wanna feel accepted and belong to something.

01:46:48.640 | So all of a sudden you grew up with these people

01:46:51.640 | and you all believe this fervently,

01:46:53.640 | like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, they did it.

01:46:55.640 | "They took it down, they took it down."

01:46:57.640 | And now you start going, "Yeah."

01:46:59.640 | And I think what happens is when you're in company of people

01:47:02.640 | and you start telling each other the same thing often,

01:47:04.640 | you freaking believe it.

01:47:06.640 | I mean, if you keep telling me I got a gray head of hair,

01:47:08.640 | I'm gonna go, "You know what, I do."

01:47:09.640 | But no, I don't.

01:47:10.640 | I mean, right, I got that waving bye-bye do.

01:47:12.640 | But like, but you know, I think when you start hearing something often,

01:47:16.640 | you start believing it.

01:47:18.640 | But I'm not gonna doubt their intelligence,

01:47:20.640 | I'm not gonna doubt their intentions,

01:47:22.640 | but I just don't see it as being plausible.

01:47:25.640 | I just, it would be too big of an operation

01:47:30.640 | to successfully happen.

01:47:33.640 | You know, I mean, look, there's other things that, you know,

01:47:37.640 | I won't say it on the interview there,

01:47:39.640 | but like I have my doubts with certain things, you know, that...

01:47:45.640 | I mean, conspiracy theories take hold for a reason

01:47:48.640 | 'cause some of them are true.

01:47:50.640 | No, yeah.

01:47:51.640 | The hard thing is just to know which ones is the problem.

01:47:54.640 | Well, it's hard when you don't have facts, right?

01:47:56.640 | Or you don't know who to trust.

01:47:58.640 | Sometimes when you don't have facts,

01:47:59.640 | when you don't have figures and you don't have science,

01:48:02.640 | it's hard to take someone's word on it.

01:48:04.640 | You know, I had a conversation with someone a while back, right?

01:48:07.640 | And the guy's like a... just dedicated atheist,

01:48:12.640 | and he thinks I'm an idiot for believing in God.

01:48:15.640 | And he's like, "Yo, you're one of those jerks

01:48:17.640 | who believe in creation."

01:48:18.640 | And I said, "Well, I do."

01:48:20.640 | "Well, what about the Big Bang Theory?"

01:48:22.640 | He's going on this diatribe about the science

01:48:24.640 | and the gases and the chemistry, and I'm going,

01:48:26.640 | "Dude, I barely got through high school chemistry.

01:48:28.640 | Slow down."

01:48:30.640 | And he went on a tangent, and all of a sudden I stopped and went,

01:48:34.640 | "Who created the gas and the molecules

01:48:38.640 | and the stuff you're talking about and the collisions?"

01:48:41.640 | And he was furious and stormed off.

01:48:44.640 | And I got him.

01:48:45.640 | And again, I had no facts.

01:48:47.640 | I had no figure. He didn't either, but I stumped him.

01:48:51.640 | But sometimes when you can't show something,

01:48:53.640 | people need to see something tangible.

01:48:56.640 | They need to see it in their hand to believe it.

01:48:59.640 | And that's the real hard thing about faith.

01:49:02.640 | If I see it in action, people restore my faith.

01:49:06.640 | And then I say to myself, "Well, there can't be that many dummies

01:49:09.640 | in this world if there's so many billions of us

01:49:11.640 | believing in this higher power, this higher--right?"

01:49:14.640 | And you said earlier, like, you believe most people are good,

01:49:18.640 | and I do too.

01:49:20.640 | The bad outshine the good because the bad get the press.

01:49:24.640 | Right?

01:49:25.640 | If it bleeds, it leads.

01:49:26.640 | That's just, you know--like, think about it.

01:49:28.640 | How many more damn zombie apocalypse movies can we make?

01:49:31.640 | I didn't even know there was that many zombies.

01:49:33.640 | And it just seems like every other show is just guys, like,

01:49:37.640 | bashing each other's heads in with bats with nails in it.

01:49:40.640 | And it's like, after a while, it's like, "Oh, gosh,

01:49:42.640 | you got to get a new boogeyman here," you know?

01:49:44.640 | But seriously, like--

01:49:46.640 | But meanwhile, human civilization is getting better and better.

01:49:49.640 | We just like making Hollywood movies.

01:49:51.640 | We're getting better and better,

01:49:53.640 | but we're treating each other worse and worse.

01:49:55.640 | You would think with all this technology

01:49:57.640 | and all the--it's like, what the hell is going on sometimes?

01:50:01.640 | Like, I really want to see the good,

01:50:03.640 | and I think maybe the level of bad that we're seeing

01:50:06.640 | was always existing.

01:50:08.640 | It's just now everything is instantaneous news

01:50:10.640 | and flashes and tweets and this and this.

01:50:12.640 | Like, you know--

01:50:14.640 | Well, with the technology we have,

01:50:16.640 | it's also come to the light, so you get to see all these fights.

01:50:19.640 | It almost--I think that's step one of dealing with the problem

01:50:23.640 | is revealing it in its full, beautiful light.

01:50:26.640 | Oh, yeah.

01:50:27.640 | How much of a bickering species we are.

01:50:29.640 | 50 years ago, a guy like me who loves to talk,

01:50:31.640 | how the hell would I have gotten an opportunity

01:50:33.640 | to have someone listen to me and have--right?

01:50:35.640 | I love this. This is amazing.

01:50:37.640 | I think it's cool, but you didn't have that arena.

01:50:40.640 | You didn't have all these things.

01:50:42.640 | My grandfather Nels, God rest him, he died in 1979.

01:50:45.640 | I mean, that dude didn't even want to have a checking account.

01:50:48.640 | He would walk to each store, each--the phone company,

01:50:50.640 | the gas company, this company, and pay the bill in person.

01:50:54.640 | He didn't trust the bank.

01:50:56.640 | And it was like, now, ATMs, this, that,

01:51:00.640 | he would be overwhelmed. He'd be just like--

01:51:02.640 | I mean, I love my dad, but to watch him on his iPad is comical.

01:51:05.640 | Right? He calls my niece's boyfriend, who's a tech guy,

01:51:09.640 | Matt, if you listen, he's the greatest.

01:51:11.640 | He'll have this poor guy on the phone for, like, hours.

01:51:14.640 | Like, the second you walk in to see my father, my kids,

01:51:17.640 | "Hey, do me a favor, straighten out this bed."

01:51:20.640 | And it's comical because I'm looking at my dad,

01:51:23.640 | and I'm going, "He was born when Hitler started World War II."

01:51:27.640 | Yeah, wow.

01:51:28.640 | And I'm going, "He's seen all of that."

01:51:30.640 | Or my wife's grandmother was born in 1900 in Czechoslovakia,

01:51:33.640 | and she died in 1998.

01:51:35.640 | And I'm going, "Holy, the stuff she saw in the span of her life."

01:51:39.640 | It's just incredible.

01:51:41.640 | But what troubles me sometimes is with all of these advances

01:51:44.640 | and all these devices, this is what I say to my kids.

01:51:49.640 | Look up from the phone and look up, right?

01:51:54.640 | Because we don't talk anymore.

01:51:56.640 | I saw a girl literally--I shouldn't say girl, guy, whatever--

01:52:01.640 | I saw a person literally just about walk into an open manhole cover texting.

01:52:06.640 | And I'm going, "That's scary," because your awareness is gone.

01:52:11.640 | And I've been at restaurants with groups of people,

01:52:16.640 | and they're texting.

01:52:17.640 | They're texting each other, just sitting on the other side of the table.

01:52:20.640 | I'm like, "Put the freaking thing down and have a conversation."

01:52:23.640 | And that's the thing.

01:52:24.640 | We've lost the art of conversation.

01:52:27.640 | My wife, she has this running joke.

01:52:29.640 | She goes, "Oh, there's a lot going on up there."

01:52:31.640 | And I'm like, "Yeah, because I really am inquisitive.

01:52:33.640 | I'm excited about life.

01:52:35.640 | I love to meet people.

01:52:36.640 | I love to learn."

01:52:37.640 | And the only way you can do that is to have a conversation.

01:52:40.640 | The hilarious thing about this--so you're obviously very charismatic.

01:52:43.640 | You've got great stories.

01:52:44.640 | You're a great human being.

01:52:45.640 | Thank you.

01:52:46.640 | I'm not talking to a guy who spent most of his life behind a computer

01:52:48.640 | hiding from people.

01:52:49.640 | No, no, and I don't--

01:52:50.640 | No, no, but we're trying to bridge this.

01:52:52.640 | Right, but I don't mean that as a rip.

01:52:53.640 | I would never know that.

01:52:54.640 | It's real.

01:52:55.640 | I would never know that because you're very engaging.

01:52:57.640 | I would not know.

01:52:58.640 | Thank you.

01:52:59.640 | You don't have any impediments to your social skills, your personal--

01:53:04.640 | And again, I don't mean it as a knock to you and these young--

01:53:08.640 | Well, no, but this is me trying to look up from a smartphone.

01:53:10.640 | It's having these conversations, talking to people.

01:53:13.640 | I think it's important.

01:53:14.640 | I mean, some of it could be--it's always hard to know.

01:53:17.640 | Some of it could be just you and I being old school

01:53:21.640 | because you grew up before the internet.

01:53:24.640 | Maybe there is joy and deep human connection to be discovered

01:53:27.640 | inside the smartphone.

01:53:28.640 | It doesn't seem that way, but because the smartphone is so new,

01:53:32.640 | maybe we just haven't figured out those things

01:53:36.640 | because there's a globalizing aspect.

01:53:38.640 | There's an opportunity for you to connect with people from across the world

01:53:42.640 | in ways that--

01:53:44.640 | I have cousins in Ireland and England.

01:53:46.640 | I love it.

01:53:47.640 | I get a FaceTime or a WhatsApp and it's like, "Holy crap.

01:53:50.640 | They're 3,000, 4,000 miles away and I'm having a conversation now."

01:53:54.640 | I used to send my grandma in Ireland a letter.

01:53:56.640 | I adored her.

01:53:58.640 | She passed when I was 10.

01:54:00.640 | No, I'm sorry.

01:54:02.640 | I was 11.

01:54:03.640 | I'd send her a letter, airmail, and I'd wait and wait.

01:54:08.640 | About two weeks later, this airmail letter would come back

01:54:13.640 | and she called me Master Nils William Jorgensen.

01:54:16.640 | I would be so excited, "Open up that letter."

01:54:18.640 | Handwritten.

01:54:19.640 | Yeah, and then I'd write her another one

01:54:22.640 | and I just couldn't wait for letters from Granny.

01:54:25.640 | Now, it's like that's kind of faded away.

01:54:30.640 | I still write letters, by the way, handwritten.

01:54:32.640 | I do too.

01:54:33.640 | The way this all came about was I wrote a letter to someone

01:54:38.640 | to say thank you for cancer research.

01:54:42.640 | I'm blessed to be alive.

01:54:43.640 | My cancer--

01:54:44.640 | That's a good starting point for any story.

01:54:46.640 | I'm blessed to be alive.

01:54:47.640 | My cancer was one that if I got it 15 years prior to 19--

01:54:51.640 | Excuse me, 2011, I was a dead man.

01:54:55.640 | 15, 20 years before, there was no drug to treat.

01:54:57.640 | I was gone, going home to see him.

01:55:01.640 | There's this wonderful gentleman that donated

01:55:04.640 | hundreds of millions of dollars to cancer research,

01:55:07.640 | Mr. David Koch.

01:55:08.640 | He's since, God rest his soul, passed away.

01:55:11.640 | He's a controversial guy, big-time business titan.

01:55:17.640 | The press was just brutalizing him one day

01:55:19.640 | over something to do with his politics.

01:55:22.640 | Now, I'm a union guy.

01:55:24.640 | I'm proudly served in unions, still in a union.

01:55:27.640 | He was not--most business guys don't like unions.

01:55:32.640 | Most guys like me don't like working for $3 an hour,

01:55:35.640 | so we like our unions.

01:55:38.640 | I reached out, crossed the table, so to speak,

01:55:40.640 | and I sent him a handwritten letter to thank him,

01:55:43.640 | to say we may not agree on everything,

01:55:45.640 | but I can't thank you enough.

01:55:47.640 | There's this regular dude out there who is now

01:55:49.640 | living his life, watching his kids grow.

01:55:52.640 | Thanks to generous people like you who believe enough

01:55:54.640 | in cancer research, you've saved my life.

01:55:56.640 | Maybe--I can't say his exact dollars,

01:55:58.640 | but people like him.

01:56:00.640 | And he reached back out, and his secretary said,

01:56:03.640 | "Oh, he'd like to talk to you on the phone."

01:56:04.640 | I go, "Well, he's kind of a busy guy.

01:56:06.640 | He wants to talk to me. He's a billionaire."

01:56:08.640 | And he got on the phone.

01:56:09.640 | He was like the greatest guy in the world.

01:56:10.640 | Invited me up to Sloan-Kettering to dedicate

01:56:12.640 | a new cancer wing.

01:56:14.640 | It was like I was hanging out with my dad.

01:56:16.640 | And the sweetest man, just so kind, so empathy,

01:56:21.640 | because he was a cancer survivor.

01:56:23.640 | But now he's got the means to help people

01:56:27.640 | who've suffered his fate to a better place.

01:56:32.640 | And he was so real, and it was so beautiful

01:56:34.640 | just to get to know, say, "Hey, you know what?

01:56:36.640 | This guy is a big-time guy, but yet he's just

01:56:39.640 | a regular human like you and I.

01:56:41.640 | You know, I'm a guy who went to night college,

01:56:44.640 | and I went to the Army, and I'm a blue-collar kind of dude.

01:56:47.640 | And here's this guy who went to MIT like you,

01:56:49.640 | and he's a wildly successful billionaire, a genius.

01:56:53.640 | But yet he can sit down and mix it up with me

01:56:57.640 | and know that I was truly grateful."

01:56:59.640 | And that to me was just like one of the coolest

01:57:02.640 | little relationships I've ever had.

01:57:04.640 | It wasn't like we were hanging out,

01:57:05.640 | having barbecues together, but like, you know,

01:57:07.640 | it was just I was so touched by his decency.

01:57:10.640 | - Well, the basics of the, like, cancer reveals,

01:57:14.640 | you know, it's like fundamental to the human experience

01:57:18.640 | is trauma, is tragedy.

01:57:20.640 | It's like money, who gives a shit about money?

01:57:22.640 | Education, all of that is like weird new inventions.

01:57:26.640 | You know, life is short.

01:57:28.640 | You suffer with the various diseases,

01:57:30.640 | and that is a reminder that life is short

01:57:33.640 | and a reminder of the basic human connection.

01:57:35.640 | And that's why you can bridge that gap.

01:57:37.640 | - Oh, yeah.

01:57:38.640 | - All sparked by a handwritten letter,

01:57:39.640 | which just makes for a hell of a story.

01:57:42.640 | - And you know what, Lex?

01:57:43.640 | This is the commonality between us.

01:57:45.640 | A guy with three jobs to a billionaire.

01:57:47.640 | - Yeah.

01:57:48.640 | - We both had that sense of a sledgehammer to the chest.

01:57:51.640 | Boom, you have cancer, and you can't breathe

01:57:54.640 | for like 30 seconds.

01:57:56.640 | - Yeah.

01:57:57.640 | - And then when your heart's just about to kick off

01:57:59.640 | and you take a breath and you go,

01:58:01.640 | "I'm sorry, what'd you say, doc?"

01:58:03.640 | You have cancer.

01:58:05.640 | And it don't matter what kind.

01:58:07.640 | One of my best buddies, Bobby,

01:58:09.640 | is going through right now prostate,

01:58:11.640 | and I got way too many of my buddies with cancer, right?

01:58:14.640 | My buddy, Hugh, who became a vet since his first cancer.

01:58:17.640 | He was a fireman.

01:58:18.640 | He's now a veterinarian, right?

01:58:19.640 | He diagnosed me, actually, over the phone, by the way.

01:58:22.640 | When they couldn't figure out what was wrong with me,

01:58:25.640 | well, Dr. Hugh, he nailed it to the T.

01:58:28.640 | And we talk, and the same thing

01:58:32.640 | that the dozen of my close friends that have cancer,

01:58:35.640 | the same thing we say is the fear.

01:58:38.640 | So Mr. Coke and I, we shared that same sledgehammer

01:58:42.640 | to the chest and that same fear,

01:58:45.640 | and it didn't matter how much money he had

01:58:47.640 | and how much I didn't.

01:58:48.640 | And you know, it's just like the morning of the Trade Center.

01:58:51.640 | There was big-time brokers who went to their demise, right,

01:58:56.640 | working in these firms, God rest them.

01:58:58.640 | And there was dishwashers, excuse me,

01:59:00.640 | dishwashers up on the Windows on the World restaurant

01:59:03.640 | on 107th floor making five bucks an hour,

01:59:07.640 | and they died together.

01:59:09.640 | It didn't matter.

01:59:10.640 | It didn't matter if you had an armored car loaded with bills.

01:59:13.640 | You were done that day.

01:59:14.640 | And that's, I think, where people need to humanize each other.

01:59:18.640 | Just because you're driving around in a nice car

01:59:21.640 | and you got your own jet and you got this and you got that

01:59:24.640 | don't mean nothing.

01:59:26.640 | When you're in that vulnerable spot,

01:59:28.640 | you could have more money than the U.S. Reserves,

01:59:33.640 | Federal Reserve, or you could have a welfare check.

01:59:37.640 | You're going.

01:59:39.640 | I learned that in a cancer ward.

01:59:41.640 | I had people in my ward that died on me.

01:59:44.640 | I was going around as a little bit of an ambassador

01:59:47.640 | because I was trying to--I was putting on a fake--

01:59:50.640 | I was putting on a fake like I got this, I got this.

01:59:53.640 | I was so scared.

01:59:54.640 | But when I got past that seven days of torture

01:59:59.640 | and the days leading up to it,

02:00:01.640 | I'd go around and try to comfort the other cancer patients.

02:00:05.640 | I had this one older African-American gentleman.

02:00:07.640 | He couldn't talk because he had such advanced throat cancer.

02:00:10.640 | He was my roommate for a little while, but then he got worse.

02:00:13.640 | They had to put him by himself.

02:00:16.640 | And you couldn't understand what he was saying

02:00:18.640 | because his throat was just so radiated from the radiation.

02:00:21.640 | But if you put your ear down to him,

02:00:25.640 | you could make out what he was saying.

02:00:28.640 | And I'm not faulting the nurses for maybe not wanting to do that.

02:00:31.640 | They're busy. They got a ton going on.

02:00:33.640 | They can't spend--

02:00:35.640 | So if he was in need, I'd put my ear down,

02:00:39.640 | and I'd find out, and I'd go get it for him.

02:00:42.640 | So when they moved me down the hall,

02:00:47.640 | they asked me to come down with my IV tower.

02:00:50.640 | He needed me.

02:00:52.640 | And I knew it was bad because he just--his look was gone.

02:00:59.640 | And I said, "Sir, what do you need?"

02:01:03.640 | And he whispered, "Call my sister. I'm going."

02:01:07.640 | He had only one survivor in his whole life.

02:01:11.640 | And she was in North Carolina, and he wanted her to know

02:01:13.640 | she couldn't get up. She was elderly.

02:01:16.640 | And I got the nurse, and I got on the phone,

02:01:20.640 | and I called his sister, and I said, "Ma'am, I explained who I was."

02:01:25.640 | And I said, "He can't really verbalize too well right now,

02:01:29.640 | but he wants to say he loves you."

02:01:37.640 | And I put the phone down, and he told her he loved her,

02:01:41.640 | and he said, "I'm going home."

02:01:44.640 | And that was it, and I hung the phone up,

02:01:47.640 | and I just said, "Ma'am, I'm so sorry."

02:01:50.640 | I said, "They'll notify you."

02:01:53.640 | And I stayed with him for a while, holding his hand,

02:01:55.640 | and then they wanted him to rest, and then I left.

02:01:58.640 | And I got the tap an hour later, and they said, "I'm sorry. He's gone."

02:02:05.640 | And then there was another girl, and she was a young girl

02:02:09.640 | from one of the areas I worked, a young African-American girl

02:02:12.640 | where I used to respond.

02:02:14.640 | And I didn't know her, but I knew her neighborhood.

02:02:17.640 | And she had what I had, but they weren't sure which one.

02:02:20.640 | Leukemia is an elusive beast. There's 49 of them, right?

02:02:24.640 | Each one of them has got their own little nuances,

02:02:28.640 | their own specific treatments.

02:02:30.640 | So if they don't know what you have, they don't know what to do for you.

02:02:33.640 | And she refused to let him drill into her hip to take the marrow

02:02:36.640 | because it's vicious. It hurts so much.

02:02:38.640 | It's like someone's boring into your hip with a wood drill,

02:02:41.640 | and it's no joke.

02:02:45.640 | And they asked me to try to convince her to let them do that

02:02:50.640 | or she was going to die because if they couldn't figure it out,

02:02:53.640 | it was advancing quickly.

02:02:56.640 | So I talked to her, and she said, "I can't. I can't. I'm too scared."

02:03:01.640 | I said, "But are you more scared to die?"

02:03:03.640 | And she said, "I am." I said, "Okay. I'll stay with you.

02:03:06.640 | I'll hold your hand. You squeeze it as hard as you want."

02:03:10.640 | And I said, "If you want, they'll give you like a towel or something

02:03:13.640 | to bite on or whatever." I said, "But you get that pain out,

02:03:16.640 | but you need to do this so you can get saved."

02:03:21.640 | And she said, "Okay." And they came in, and they had this huge,

02:03:24.640 | thick needle. They just bore it into you, and she's screaming for her life.

02:03:28.640 | And she's squeezing my fingers so hard and so hard.

02:03:32.640 | And I said, "It's okay, hon. You keep going. You keep going.

02:03:34.640 | We got it. It's just 10 more seconds, 10 more seconds."

02:03:38.640 | They got it. They figured out her treatment,

02:03:42.640 | and they got her onto her road to recovery.

02:03:44.640 | And I spent a long time asking God, "Why do I have cancer?"

02:03:55.640 | But then I stopped, and I went, "Wait a minute.

02:03:57.640 | I didn't die that day with my friends."

02:04:01.640 | Shame on me for asking Him why I have cancer.

02:04:04.640 | I had 10 years after 9/11. It was such great years.

02:04:11.640 | And I got to watch my little girl being born when John never got to see his son.

02:04:16.640 | So it was all gravy after that.

02:04:19.640 | And I said, "But now I know why I have my cancer,

02:04:22.640 | because I can empathize with people who have it,

02:04:27.640 | and I can try to be their voice when they can't talk,

02:04:31.640 | be their shield to try to take that pain,

02:04:36.640 | because I can understand, I can walk their walk.

02:04:41.640 | And now I thank God for my cancer, because it's made me a better human being.

02:04:45.640 | It's made me--I'm not going to lie.

02:04:47.640 | It brought a lot of anger for a while, and my family suffered it.

02:04:51.640 | But I really tried to go past that and heal,

02:04:55.640 | and part of living out in the country,

02:04:57.640 | it's very, very healing for the mind and the soul.

02:05:00.640 | But I now thank God for the cancer, because it humbled me.

02:05:05.640 | I didn't really need humbling.

02:05:07.640 | I wasn't an arrogant, puffed-up type of person at all.

02:05:11.640 | But maybe I was running away at myself a little bit.

02:05:14.640 | I'm working on a TV show. I'm fine, man.

02:05:17.640 | At the time, I was 42. I got sick.

02:05:20.640 | Life was cruising, man. It was great.

02:05:23.640 | And then all of a sudden it was like a blowout on the highway

02:05:26.640 | in the middle of the night,

02:05:28.640 | and you're just veering off towards the guardrail.

02:05:31.640 | You're reminded that you're mortal,

02:05:34.640 | and that's ultimately a connection to all the rest of us.

02:05:38.640 | Oh, yeah. It's a good thing, though, because that's the problem, I think.

02:05:42.640 | There's a lot of people running around thinking they're immortal.

02:05:45.640 | When you look at it, Lex, you look at the heartache

02:05:48.640 | in a lot of segments of people.

02:05:50.640 | And any time someone that's got fame and wealth and success,

02:05:55.640 | and they die tragically, a lot of times it's from substance abuse

02:06:00.640 | or just some horrible death.

02:06:04.640 | And I used to say to myself,

02:06:06.640 | "How the hell would someone with that much money and that much fame

02:06:10.640 | and this freaking mansion and I love cars.

02:06:13.640 | My son and I are just big car heads."

02:06:16.640 | I'm like, "This guy's got a collection of cars."

02:06:19.640 | And he overdosed because he was sad.

02:06:23.640 | And I'm going, "How the frig are you sad?"

02:06:25.640 | But then I stop and I go,

02:06:27.640 | "Okay, because maybe he doesn't have any idea who loves him.

02:06:31.640 | He's got a lot of people clinging on to him because of his success.

02:06:34.640 | And he just can't fill that void."

02:06:39.640 | And then they fill the void with something destructive.

02:06:42.640 | And I'm not bashing people that have substance abuse problems

02:06:46.640 | or alcohol problems. I don't mean it that way.

02:06:48.640 | But what I mean is it's just sad that their level of despair is so high.

02:06:56.640 | On the surface, they look like they just got everything going on.

02:06:59.640 | It's all great.

02:07:00.640 | They're still humans. Still got to deal with the same.

02:07:02.640 | Exactly. Because they want love.

02:07:04.640 | They want love and they can't really find it.

02:07:10.640 | Well, first of all, that's true for all of us.

02:07:12.640 | I think we're deeply lonely and looking for love.

02:07:14.640 | When we find it, that's what friendship is.

02:07:16.640 | Absolutely.

02:07:17.640 | And then that's true for whether you're super rich or super poor.

02:07:22.640 | It's all the same journey.

02:07:23.640 | My dad said all the time, "Kid, you're going to end up working with hundreds of guys

02:07:27.640 | and you'll love a lot of them."

02:07:29.640 | But he says, "When it's all said and done and you're all like me

02:07:32.640 | and if you still got two or three of them that you talk to and you'll love."

02:07:35.640 | And I tell you what, I have thanked the Lord more than two or three of them.

02:07:41.640 | I have my six. I call it my six.

02:07:43.640 | Six guys that are going to carry my coffin when I'm gone.

02:07:46.640 | Because I know this cancer is going to come back.

02:07:49.640 | I know it. We get multiples.

02:07:51.640 | My friend Yvette just got his second.

02:07:53.640 | My friend Mike's had five of them.

02:07:55.640 | My other Mike has two.

02:07:58.640 | But I wasn't ready to accept it in 2011.

02:08:03.640 | There was so much more to do.

02:08:05.640 | I was so scared.

02:08:07.640 | I'm like, "Wow, who's going to take care of my kids?"

02:08:09.640 | They were little, 9, 11, and 14.

02:08:13.640 | It's like, "What the hell?

02:08:14.640 | I have two girls and a boy in between and they're beautiful kids.

02:08:17.640 | They're such good, good children."

02:08:18.640 | They're adults now.

02:08:20.640 | But my wife's a drill sergeant.

02:08:23.640 | She coughs. She don't mess.

02:08:25.640 | She's this big.

02:08:26.640 | So you're the softie in the family.

02:08:28.640 | I'm just kidding.

02:08:29.640 | It's funny because my son said to me--

02:08:32.640 | My son's 21 now. He's a good kid.

02:08:34.640 | And he says to me, back when he was 12,

02:08:38.640 | he goes, "Dad, I don't want you to be offended,

02:08:41.640 | but I'm really scared of mom.

02:08:42.640 | I'm not really that scared of you."

02:08:44.640 | I cracked up because it's true.

02:08:46.640 | She's got to stand on a milk crate to reach him

02:08:49.640 | because she's tiny and he's tall.

02:08:51.640 | But it's true.

02:08:52.640 | But she was hard but fair but loved.

02:08:55.640 | See, this is the thing.

02:08:56.640 | You take any child anywhere from any background,

02:09:03.640 | if you love them, you nurture them,

02:09:05.640 | you teach them, and you guide them,

02:09:06.640 | you have a successful adult.

02:09:09.640 | And see, that's the problem in our society.

02:09:12.640 | It's not judgmental.

02:09:13.640 | I'm not judging anyone.

02:09:15.640 | We need to try harder as parents,

02:09:19.640 | as siblings, as friends,

02:09:21.640 | but especially when we're blessed with a child.

02:09:26.640 | It's like you got to put that child first.

02:09:29.640 | It's like being a military personal responder.

02:09:32.640 | It's not about you anymore.

02:09:34.640 | Now it's the team.

02:09:35.640 | So that little child is now the team,

02:09:39.640 | and your wife or your significant other.

02:09:43.640 | It's not about you anymore.

02:09:44.640 | And see, that's the problem is people have a hard time

02:09:48.640 | not making it about them.

02:09:51.640 | Like now it's really weird.

02:09:52.640 | My kids are 19, 21, and 24,

02:09:54.640 | and they hardly want to hang with me

02:09:56.640 | because they're busy in their life.

02:09:57.640 | We love each other.

02:09:59.640 | They're probably tired of hearing me go on

02:10:01.640 | and preach and whatever, but they're adults.

02:10:04.640 | We did pretty much the crux of what we had to do

02:10:08.640 | to put them into adulthood.

02:10:11.640 | And I look back and I go, "Wow.

02:10:13.640 | "I wish I didn't work so much."

02:10:14.640 | But then I say, "No, but it was okay.

02:10:16.640 | "My wife stayed home.

02:10:18.640 | "Good lessons, good," you know, just--

02:10:21.640 | - But ultimately, like you said, it's love.

02:10:24.640 | - It is.

02:10:25.640 | It's the common, love is the most important ingredient

02:10:30.640 | on this earth, and that's the problem

02:10:32.640 | that's going on right now.

02:10:34.640 | Like take politics out of it.

02:10:36.640 | Take polarizing each other against each other.

02:10:39.640 | Take all that crap out of it

02:10:41.640 | and just airdrop a bunch of love, right?

02:10:45.640 | Like when I worked on "Rescue Me," right,

02:10:48.640 | I loved those people so much.

02:10:50.640 | They were such great--

02:10:51.640 | We had such a great crew, and they worked so hard.

02:10:53.640 | - You're a celebrity.

02:10:54.640 | - No, no, no, not at all.

02:10:55.640 | If I was, it didn't really work out so good.

02:10:58.640 | I went on to being a stagehand.

02:11:00.640 | No, I'm not pretty, but--

02:11:02.640 | And they don't want old guys waving bye-bye hairdos,

02:11:06.640 | but it was funny.

02:11:08.640 | The crew, we became really tight.

02:11:10.640 | We had like, shoot, like 80, 90 people on a set, right?

02:11:14.640 | And you know, the first few episodes,

02:11:17.640 | everybody's trying to feel each other out

02:11:19.640 | because you work with different crews, different people.

02:11:22.640 | And this is going back, starting in 2004,

02:11:25.640 | so it was a different time.

02:11:27.640 | And I love to hug people

02:11:29.640 | because to me, a hug is a true expression

02:11:33.640 | of love and caring.

02:11:35.640 | You may not know a person a long time,

02:11:37.640 | but you say, "I care about you," with a hug.

02:11:39.640 | - Just a tiny tangent.

02:11:40.640 | This was in the midst of COVID when I was in Boston

02:11:44.640 | and it was masks, like triple masks.

02:11:47.640 | And I went to see Joe here

02:11:51.640 | when he's trying to convince me to move to Austin, Joe Rogan.

02:11:53.640 | And then the first time I see him, he's like,

02:11:55.640 | "Ah, you motherfucking big-ass hug."

02:11:58.640 | And it felt so good.

02:12:00.640 | - People probably looked horrified.

02:12:01.640 | They're hugging.

02:12:02.640 | - Well, it was just him.

02:12:04.640 | - Oh, okay, I was gonna say,

02:12:05.640 | but if you do it in public now,

02:12:06.640 | it's like you committed a crime.

02:12:07.640 | - But that expression, because I was so...

02:12:09.640 | You forget how powerful that is.

02:12:13.640 | - Oh, I got some of my buddies.

02:12:14.640 | I give them a huge hug and a big sloppy kiss on their cheek.

02:12:19.640 | 'Cause I love them.

02:12:20.640 | These are my brothers, you know?

02:12:22.640 | But on this set, I swear to God,

02:12:24.640 | it got to the point, and I'm not trying to whatever,

02:12:27.640 | but there was people that would come up to me

02:12:29.640 | for the daily hug.

02:12:30.640 | And I said, "What are you doing?"

02:12:33.640 | And they said, "Come on, bring it in."

02:12:34.640 | And I give them the hug.

02:12:35.640 | And they said, "You don't understand.

02:12:36.640 | "It just makes me feel so good.

02:12:38.640 | "It makes me feel like you give a crap about my side."

02:12:40.640 | I really do.

02:12:41.640 | I said, "But it touched my heart

02:12:43.640 | "that people were seeking me out

02:12:45.640 | "to get that hug to start the day."

02:12:47.640 | And I remember there was a guy in Manhattan.

02:12:49.640 | He was selling hugs for like 50 cents,

02:12:51.640 | and I think he got arrested, right?

02:12:52.640 | It was just before COVID.

02:12:53.640 | But I wouldn't sell them if...

02:12:55.640 | - You're giving them away for free.

02:12:56.640 | - Well, now I got leukemia.

02:12:57.640 | I'd be kind of concerned to get into COVID.

02:12:59.640 | But I really think we need that.

02:13:02.640 | We need hugging booths in each city or each town.

02:13:05.640 | Because there's so many people

02:13:08.640 | that just want to know someone gives a shit about them.

02:13:10.640 | And that's the problem.

02:13:11.640 | It's like, that's what I love about small little towns

02:13:16.640 | like where I am now in Tennessee.

02:13:18.640 | And I'm not knocking New York.

02:13:20.640 | I'm not knocking big towns.

02:13:21.640 | But I guess it's easier to do in a smaller area

02:13:23.640 | because it's just not this massive humanity.

02:13:25.640 | But they'll stop and check on you.

02:13:28.640 | Like you're out in the road,

02:13:29.640 | and I'm cutting and cleaning or whatever.

02:13:31.640 | Occasionally, I'll roll a lawnmower or a tractor

02:13:34.640 | into a ditch because I'm not a farmer too good.

02:13:37.640 | But it's easier to drive a fire truck in New York.

02:13:40.640 | But they literally, "Oh, I was worried.

02:13:42.640 | I haven't seen you."

02:13:43.640 | And I'm like, "No, no, I'm okay."

02:13:44.640 | But they literally like check on you.

02:13:46.640 | They're worried about you.

02:13:47.640 | And I'm going, "These people hardly know me."

02:13:50.640 | But yet they're so caring.

02:13:52.640 | And that's the problem.

02:13:54.640 | That's what I love about my life.

02:13:57.640 | I spent a lot of time, especially as a young boy,

02:14:00.640 | a lot of time in Ireland at my grandma's farm.

02:14:03.640 | And my mom comes from this tiny, tiny little village.

02:14:07.640 | She's out in the middle of nowhere.

02:14:09.640 | And the childhood home she grew up in,

02:14:11.640 | still my aunt and uncle live in it still.

02:14:14.640 | I just love it there so much because everyone waves.

02:14:17.640 | Tennessee is similar.

02:14:18.640 | They wave, drive by, and you're like, "Who the hell is that?"

02:14:21.640 | And they just wave.

02:14:22.640 | But my cousin will point it out.

02:14:23.640 | I'm actually third cousin, second removed by Johnny.

02:14:26.640 | Like, "Holy shoot, I'm related to everyone here."

02:14:28.640 | But everyone stops to say hello and, "How are you?"

02:14:33.640 | And I have a problem doing that because my wife goes,

02:14:35.640 | "People think you're crazy.

02:14:37.640 | "Why are you talking to everybody?"

02:14:38.640 | I said, "I'll literally stop someone and say,

02:14:41.640 | "'How's your day going?'"

02:14:42.640 | I mean, I'll randomly on the sidewalk.

02:14:44.640 | Then it looks a little nuts.

02:14:45.640 | But if I'm buying a cup of coffee.

02:14:47.640 | - Oh, that happens here in Austin all the time.

02:14:49.640 | That's why I love it here.

02:14:51.640 | On the sidewalk randomly.

02:14:52.640 | - Yeah, no, it's just so nice.

02:14:54.640 | - They'll say hi to me.

02:14:55.640 | I thought they recognized me or something.

02:14:56.640 | They don't give a shit who you are.

02:14:57.640 | They're just being nice.

02:14:58.640 | (laughs)

02:15:00.640 | - I was on the road coming back,

02:15:02.640 | driving from my family up north down to Tennessee last week.

02:15:07.640 | I stopped in a bathroom and it was closed.

02:15:12.640 | The girl was cleaning it, whatever.

02:15:14.640 | She's working so hard, whatever.

02:15:15.640 | She goes, "Sir," she goes, "If you go down the hall,

02:15:17.640 | "there's a family restroom.

02:15:18.640 | "Feel free to use it."

02:15:19.640 | She didn't have to do that.

02:15:21.640 | And I went down and I'm old.

02:15:23.640 | You need a bathroom, you need a bathroom, right?

02:15:26.640 | And I walked back out and I said, "Ma'am,"

02:15:29.640 | I said, "I wanna thank you for being here today."

02:15:31.640 | I says, "The bathroom was immaculate."

02:15:33.640 | It was, it was like my army bathroom in the barracks.

02:15:36.640 | It was spotless, right?

02:15:38.640 | And I gave her $10.

02:15:40.640 | I said, "I'd really like you to buy lunch with me today."

02:15:42.640 | I said, "You really didn't have to do me that favor."

02:15:45.640 | And she goes, "No, sir."

02:15:46.640 | I said, "No, no, I want."

02:15:48.640 | And it was like I gave her a million bucks.

02:15:50.640 | And I say to my wife now,

02:15:51.640 | "I've been praying to be a billionaire."

02:15:54.640 | She goes, "That's a sin."

02:15:55.640 | I said, "No, no, you don't understand."

02:15:56.640 | Right?

02:15:57.640 | And she goes, "Oh, you're Mr., you know, Mr., you know, God."

02:15:59.640 | I said, "No, no, no."

02:16:00.640 | I said, "You're getting it wrong."

02:16:01.640 | I said, "I'm praying to be like a multi-gazillionaire

02:16:04.640 | because I wanna give all away."

02:16:06.640 | We used to have a sign in Ladder 114

02:16:08.640 | until some other rival truck company stole it, right?

02:16:11.640 | 'Cause that's what we do.

02:16:12.640 | You know, you get sent to cover your district

02:16:14.640 | when you're out of fire and now your stuff's missing.

02:16:16.640 | And the old-timers had a sign that says, "I am content."

02:16:20.640 | Because if you got to Ladder 114,

02:16:22.640 | that was considered such a great place,

02:16:25.640 | such a great assignment, such great guys.

02:16:27.640 | You had to be vetted to get there.

02:16:29.640 | You couldn't just randomly go.

02:16:31.640 | And it was a little exclusionary,

02:16:32.640 | but they wanted good guys.

02:16:34.640 | And I said to myself, "That's where I am in life right now.

02:16:38.640 | I am content, but I'm restless

02:16:41.640 | because I wanna really do a lot more good."

02:16:44.640 | It's like this podcast.

02:16:45.640 | I wanna make sure that it's not forgotten

02:16:48.640 | and I wanna make sure that these charities

02:16:51.640 | that are really, really helping people get recognized.

02:16:54.640 | But I'd like to take it a step further, right?

02:16:57.640 | A friend of mine runs this foundation

02:16:59.640 | for young folks suffering mental illness and in crisis.

02:17:05.640 | It's for someone that we love dearly.

02:17:07.640 | And he's on a mission now to get therapy dogs

02:17:13.640 | for really, really mentally wounded warriors, right?

02:17:18.640 | A lot of these young soldiers are having a really hard time.

02:17:22.640 | And now they could be out a while.

02:17:24.640 | They may have come back in country two, three years ago.

02:17:28.640 | Now it's just starting to set in.

02:17:30.640 | And there's a waiting list for thousands of therapy dogs.

02:17:34.640 | And he said that they can't get enough of them quick enough.

02:17:38.640 | But he said, "When you see the response,

02:17:41.640 | the way these veterans just light up

02:17:44.640 | when they get these dogs,

02:17:45.640 | it just changes their life radically, immediately."

02:17:49.640 | And I said, "That's it.

02:17:51.640 | God, I don't know how I'm gonna do it,

02:17:54.640 | but I wanna be a gazillionaire.

02:17:56.640 | And I don't want any picture, photo ops, this, that.

02:18:00.640 | I just wanna go, 'There's a dog, there's a dog,

02:18:02.640 | there's a dog, there's a dog.'

02:18:03.640 | And then I wanna build veterans land

02:18:05.640 | for these vets who just need a nice, clean place to live.

02:18:09.640 | So why don't we take these old army bases

02:18:11.640 | and Marine bases and Navy bases

02:18:14.640 | that have been shut down?

02:18:15.640 | They're just sitting there rotting away.

02:18:17.640 | I was in the army in Alabama.

02:18:19.640 | My old Fort McClellan is three quarters vacant.

02:18:22.640 | It's sitting there.

02:18:23.640 | They just did a documentary on it.

02:18:24.640 | It just looks like zombie land going back to zombies.

02:18:27.640 | So why don't we take that and renovate it

02:18:30.640 | and say to vets who are struggling,

02:18:32.640 | "Hey guys, you're gonna live here."

02:18:34.640 | And they take the old army,

02:18:38.640 | the places where they had all the supplies,

02:18:41.640 | there's massive buildings

02:18:42.640 | where you could just retrofit it

02:18:44.640 | and make light manufacturing within two weeks.

02:18:47.640 | Give these guys jobs.

02:18:49.640 | There they live, there they work,

02:18:50.640 | they'll take care of it.

02:18:51.640 | Military guys, they teach you how to take care of stuff.

02:18:54.640 | How the hell in this country

02:18:56.640 | should any vet come back home and be homeless?

02:18:59.640 | Because now they have to dedicate their lives

02:19:02.640 | for six, seven, 10, 12 years,

02:19:04.640 | five, six deployments making $7.50 an hour.

02:19:08.640 | And then they spend seven years

02:19:10.640 | or they get a whopping 16 an hour.

02:19:12.640 | They walk out making 35 grand.

02:19:15.640 | And now no one gives them a job.

02:19:18.640 | No one gives them a chance.

02:19:19.640 | So very quickly they end up homeless

02:19:22.640 | by no fault of their own.

02:19:25.640 | And I don't know how that's even possible.

02:19:28.640 | The people in this country who've given the very most

02:19:32.640 | and they're struggling, they're hurting.

02:19:34.640 | That's not fair.

02:19:35.640 | And my whole thing is

02:19:36.640 | if I can have this dream of succeeding, so to speak,

02:19:41.640 | I wanna try to change it.

02:19:43.640 | So that's why I'm praying to be a billionaire.

02:19:47.640 | (laughing)

02:19:48.640 | - Guzzillionaire.

02:19:49.640 | - Guzzillionaire.

02:19:50.640 | Well, my Irish mother probably wouldn't agree either

02:19:52.640 | 'cause you're not supposed to, right?

02:19:53.640 | - Well, I'm the same with you.

02:19:56.640 | The more money you have,

02:19:57.640 | the more you're able to help people.

02:20:00.640 | - You can put smiles on people's faces.

02:20:02.640 | - I have to ask you,

02:20:04.640 | the US invaded Afghanistan in October, 2001

02:20:08.640 | in response to terror attacks.

02:20:10.640 | Now, 20 years later, we still had a presence

02:20:13.640 | and abruptly withdrew all troops.

02:20:16.640 | What do you think about this war across the world

02:20:19.640 | that was sparked by this tragedy?

02:20:22.640 | - Whenever you do something quickly

02:20:24.640 | without thinking it out, thinking it through and planning,

02:20:28.640 | it doesn't succeed.

02:20:30.640 | I understand that we needed to exit.

02:20:33.640 | I mean, how long are we gonna stay over there?

02:20:36.640 | And we've lost over 7,000 of our young souls over there.

02:20:41.640 | For sometimes people,

02:20:43.640 | I don't know if they're grateful for it or not, right?

02:20:45.640 | I mean, I don't know.

02:20:47.640 | - So there's the other element,

02:20:49.640 | and sorry to interrupt.

02:20:50.640 | - Yeah, that's okay.

02:20:51.640 | - One is the financial of $6 trillion.

02:20:54.640 | And that money is not just money,

02:20:57.640 | it's education, it's everything.

02:21:00.640 | It's money that could have gone towards,

02:21:03.640 | first of all, the first responders,

02:21:05.640 | but all the service men and women

02:21:07.640 | of all kinds throughout this country.

02:21:09.640 | And then there's the other side,

02:21:11.640 | which is the over 800,000 people

02:21:14.640 | who died in direct result of this conflict.

02:21:17.640 | So not just the American side of the troops,

02:21:20.640 | but just people who died, those humans.

02:21:23.640 | And those humans,

02:21:27.640 | many of them civilians,

02:21:30.640 | that's spreading hate,

02:21:32.640 | especially if you have leaders on the other side

02:21:35.640 | who frame the death of those civilians in certain ways,

02:21:38.640 | that just spreads hate throughout the world.

02:21:41.640 | And so you think about this kind of 20 year saga

02:21:45.640 | and think what are the ways

02:21:47.640 | that money could be spent better?

02:21:50.640 | And what was the way that we could have spread

02:21:53.640 | more love in the world versus hate?

02:21:56.640 | And you wonder.

02:21:57.640 | But then the other side,

02:21:59.640 | what is it?

02:22:02.640 | I'm not sure who says this line,

02:22:04.640 | but it's something like,

02:22:06.640 | we sleep at night because there's rough men

02:22:10.640 | out there ready to fight for you.

02:22:13.640 | There is some sense in which we have to make sure

02:22:17.640 | that there's strength coupled with the love.

02:22:20.640 | Otherwise, evil men

02:22:25.640 | will do evil onto the world.

02:22:27.640 | So it's a very difficult decision,

02:22:29.640 | but then you look at the final picture,

02:22:31.640 | and it's like, what have we gotten for the $6 trillion?

02:22:34.640 | What have we gotten for this 20 years?

02:22:37.640 | The thousands of American soldiers who died,

02:22:40.640 | the hundreds of thousands of civilians who have died.

02:22:45.640 | - It's a troubling subject for me.

02:22:52.640 | I'm a patriot.

02:22:53.640 | I love this country.

02:22:54.640 | I love it with my soul.

02:22:56.640 | And I was just about to head over to the first Iraqi war,

02:23:01.640 | and we went out for desert warfare training,

02:23:04.640 | and then it ended.

02:23:05.640 | I was at that time a combat medic

02:23:07.640 | assigned to an armored cavalry unit,

02:23:08.640 | so basically tanks driving around

02:23:10.640 | an armored personnel carrier,

02:23:11.640 | and when it gets hit, then you tend to that guy

02:23:15.640 | and try to save his life.

02:23:17.640 | I didn't want to go.

02:23:18.640 | I may sound like a coward.

02:23:20.640 | I did not want to go to war.

02:23:22.640 | I would have went willingly if I was sent

02:23:26.640 | to defend my country.

02:23:27.640 | I took my oath.

02:23:29.640 | I didn't join the military to kill,

02:23:32.640 | but if necessary, I would.

02:23:35.640 | I'll use the analogy of cancer.

02:23:38.640 | If you have a cancer and you're aware of its presence

02:23:41.640 | and you don't annihilate those cells

02:23:44.640 | and take them out quickly,

02:23:46.640 | it's going to spread, and it's going to kill you.

02:23:50.640 | Those evil bastards that flew those airplanes,

02:23:54.640 | one of those airplanes had a little 3-year-old child in it

02:23:57.640 | from Ireland, where my mom's hometown.

02:24:00.640 | A friend of mine who's since died of a heart attack

02:24:02.640 | from 9/11 toxins, he found her shoe

02:24:05.640 | with human remains in it,

02:24:07.640 | and he thought someone was messing with us

02:24:09.640 | because we didn't know there was any kids in the building.

02:24:11.640 | He says, "Boss, there's a baby's shoe,

02:24:14.640 | "and it looks like there's something in it,

02:24:16.640 | "but there's no kids in the Trade Center."

02:24:17.640 | I went, "The plane, it's a little girl's shoe."

02:24:22.640 | I can never get that shoe out of my mind.

02:24:25.640 | The evil bastards who perpetrated that

02:24:27.640 | needed to have missiles strike and rain down upon them

02:24:31.640 | and annihilate them like a cancer that they are.

02:24:34.640 | What just fascinates me is they'll show videos

02:24:37.640 | of these guys flying around and pick up trucks

02:24:39.640 | with 50 cows on their back.

02:24:41.640 | It's like, "Well, wait a minute.

02:24:42.640 | "If a camera crew can get this footage,

02:24:44.640 | "you think all these freaking drones and planes

02:24:48.640 | "and radar-assisted systems can't just go,

02:24:51.640 | (whistles)

02:24:53.640 | "Goodnight, you're gone."

02:24:55.640 | So kill the cancer, kill the cells, get rid of it,

02:24:59.640 | get rid of it quickly, and go into remission.

02:25:03.640 | - It's an undeniable show of force

02:25:05.640 | that sends a message that gets rid of most

02:25:10.640 | of the obvious centers of terrorism.

02:25:15.640 | On that note, that's though, 'cause we offline mentioned

02:25:18.640 | a discussion with Jaco, and maybe a romanticized view

02:25:23.640 | and mentioning Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits

02:25:26.640 | and saying we're all Brothers in Arms

02:25:29.640 | even when it's on the opposite side of fighting,

02:25:32.640 | which is more of a vision, and growing up in the Soviet Union,

02:25:35.640 | you saw about World War II, that it's all just kids

02:25:39.640 | thrown into the, kids sent to die in all sides.

02:25:43.640 | But then presenting that to Jaco, who was in Iraq,

02:25:50.640 | he did not see it as Brothers in Arms,

02:25:55.640 | which is, his basic statement is there's evil people,

02:26:00.640 | and some people don't deserve the compassion.

02:26:03.640 | You give them a few chances,

02:26:05.640 | they don't take the chances they have to go,

02:26:07.640 | because they're spreading evil onto the world.

02:26:09.640 | And so it's not, we're not, all of us deserve a chance.

02:26:13.640 | - Oh no, absolutely, but the difference though,

02:26:16.640 | and believe me, Jaco, I am from a way, way minor league

02:26:21.640 | compared to him, right, I mean, this man was right there

02:26:24.640 | in the firing line, but I can understand his analogy,

02:26:27.640 | 'cause when you think about it, right,

02:26:29.640 | those young conscripts back in Germany and Russia

02:26:31.640 | and all the countries where they were being drafted,

02:26:33.640 | even our guys were being drafted and thrown into this.

02:26:36.640 | They were gallantly and bravely defending their country.

02:26:43.640 | Now, I'm sure the young Germans felt,

02:26:46.640 | well, hey, Hitler must be right, right,

02:26:48.640 | and the young Russians felt, hey, Stalin must be right,

02:26:51.640 | and the young Americans figured,

02:26:54.640 | hey, President Roosevelt must be right.

02:26:56.640 | So they were romantically, in a sense,

02:27:00.640 | defending the honor of their country, of their motherland.

02:27:03.640 | The difference between those, so they did have

02:27:06.640 | that commonality, if you and I were firing

02:27:08.640 | across each other from France to Germany,

02:27:11.640 | or from Germany to Russia, we're just these two kids

02:27:15.640 | who got thrown into this, we didn't freaking ask for this,

02:27:17.640 | but the difference with Jaco's enemy is

02:27:21.640 | no one was attacking their country over there, right?

02:27:25.640 | No one was taking their country over.

02:27:28.640 | Maybe in their mind, they didn't want people

02:27:30.640 | trying to build their government, this and that.

02:27:32.640 | I don't know, I don't know enough about the history there

02:27:35.640 | to really elaborate.

02:27:38.640 | We didn't attack them.

02:27:41.640 | And if a soldier attacks a soldier,

02:27:43.640 | that's an understood concept amongst warriors.

02:27:46.640 | But when a soldier attacks a civilian,

02:27:49.640 | now you're after a different beast,

02:27:51.640 | and you've written that beast off, if that makes any sense.

02:27:54.640 | - Yeah, and the enemy, I mean, as Jaco explains,

02:27:58.640 | the enemy in Iraq and just certain parts

02:28:02.640 | of the Middle East is essentially terrorists

02:28:06.640 | who don't value the lives of the civilians

02:28:10.640 | of their own country. - They don't.

02:28:12.640 | - And so it becomes like this weird guerrilla warfare/game

02:28:16.640 | of violence that ultimately allows them

02:28:19.640 | to gain more power within their country,

02:28:21.640 | but they don't care if they're playing

02:28:23.640 | with civilian lives as pawns.

02:28:26.640 | If you have a child who dies,

02:28:29.640 | that's a civilian in their country,

02:28:33.640 | that could be seen as a positive for them

02:28:35.640 | because they can use that to leverage

02:28:37.640 | for more and more power within that country.

02:28:40.640 | - Absolutely. - So when you're fighting

02:28:42.640 | an enemy like that, that's a vicious,

02:28:44.640 | that's an evil enemy. - Absolutely.

02:28:46.640 | It's like snakes are beautiful,

02:28:48.640 | but if you go pet a rattler, you're getting bit

02:28:50.640 | and you're getting dead, right? - Yeah.

02:28:52.640 | - And that's with terrorists.

02:28:53.640 | You've got to cut the head of the snake off.

02:28:55.640 | And I feel, no, don't commit our guys to me anymore.

02:28:58.640 | But what we need to do is go with tech warfare.

02:29:01.640 | If we have intel from drones or planes

02:29:03.640 | or whatever it is that so-and-so and so-and-so

02:29:06.640 | and so-and-so are driving down in that pickup

02:29:08.640 | or whatever, take it out and do it again tomorrow

02:29:11.640 | and tomorrow and tomorrow, and maybe they'll get

02:29:13.640 | the message after a while, oh shit,

02:29:15.640 | these guys aren't messing around.

02:29:17.640 | Instead of throwing wave after wave

02:29:19.640 | of our brave warriors, brave SEALs,

02:29:21.640 | brave special ops guys,

02:29:24.640 | and God bless them for what they do.

02:29:26.640 | I couldn't do it.

02:29:27.640 | I could not have done it.

02:29:29.640 | But they have to be now sitting home going,

02:29:33.640 | what the hell?

02:29:36.640 | My friends, my body, myself,

02:29:38.640 | they must feel so betrayed

02:29:41.640 | because they passionately went over there

02:29:43.640 | to cure a cancer, the cancer of terrorism.

02:29:47.640 | And now the cancer's back.

02:29:50.640 | And I hate to say it, but I think the cancer

02:29:52.640 | is going to start running wild.

02:29:54.640 | We need to change our tactics up.

02:29:55.640 | This is just my opinion.

02:29:57.640 | I can't see committing all of our guys

02:30:00.640 | to a continuous eternal war.

02:30:03.640 | But I think what we need to do is hit surgically

02:30:06.640 | and hit hard at that cancer that is over there.

02:30:10.640 | We are never going to rebuild that region.

02:30:13.640 | It's just, it's thousands of years of traditions

02:30:16.640 | that you're not going to change.

02:30:18.640 | It's just some people are unchangeable

02:30:21.640 | because they don't want to.

02:30:23.640 | And we have so many social problems here in our country,

02:30:27.640 | I think, that we need to fix first.

02:30:29.640 | You know, I heard this spoken in the past by many people.

02:30:33.640 | It's like the garden theory.

02:30:35.640 | You have your garden with a fence around it.

02:30:37.640 | You tend to your garden.

02:30:38.640 | There may be weeds on the outside of the fence,

02:30:40.640 | but as long as they're not inside your garden,

02:30:43.640 | your garden will prosper.

02:30:45.640 | And I know some people don't agree to that,

02:30:48.640 | America first and, you know, the whole take care of our own.

02:30:51.640 | But it's like, how are we going to take in more people now?

02:30:56.640 | And I have a human feeling for them.

02:31:00.640 | But it's almost like the lifeboat theory.

02:31:02.640 | How many people can we take into the lifeboat

02:31:05.640 | before the lifeboat itself sinks as the ship is going down?

02:31:09.640 | So if we can't take care of our own homeless vets

02:31:13.640 | and our own homeless people,

02:31:15.640 | and it's just going to become worse.

02:31:19.640 | And it doesn't make any sense.

02:31:21.640 | It's just like we need to just take a timeout

02:31:24.640 | and I think switch our tactics a little bit.

02:31:29.640 | And invest into helping people here at home.

02:31:32.640 | Absolutely. Absolutely.

02:31:34.640 | There's very few as obvious of cases

02:31:38.640 | as the first responders in 9/11.

02:31:42.640 | One of the things that I really want to kind of talk about,

02:31:47.640 | at least a little bit,

02:31:48.640 | we've already talked about the amazing project that you're doing,

02:31:51.640 | the 20 for 20 podcast that you host.

02:31:56.640 | We mentioned one story, Stephen Siller.

02:31:58.640 | Is there other stories,

02:32:00.640 | or maybe you can speak out at a high level,

02:32:02.640 | what are you hoping to tell?

02:32:04.640 | And all these different stories that are weaved about,

02:32:08.640 | that connect the tragedies and the triumphs,

02:32:13.640 | the heroism of that day

02:32:15.640 | and the days and the years that followed.

02:32:18.640 | You know, Lex, it seems like the common few themes,

02:32:21.640 | the common threads are being selfless,

02:32:26.640 | helping out others even though they might be a stranger,

02:32:30.640 | and acts of kindness, acts of love,

02:32:33.640 | and it seems to all be weaved together with faith.

02:32:36.640 | They all seem to have some sort of faith.

02:32:39.640 | I mean, we have one gentleman, Mark Hanna,

02:32:43.640 | and he's a Coptic Egyptian priest,

02:32:46.640 | and he's an immigrant to the United States.

02:32:48.640 | He was a Port Authority building engineer,

02:32:51.640 | and with his crew who subsequently passed away,

02:32:55.640 | the crew did,

02:32:56.640 | he was effectively rescuing dozens of people on the upper floors,

02:33:00.640 | and his boss ordered him to assist an elderly gentleman

02:33:03.640 | who was 89 down 78 flights of stairs to get him out.

02:33:08.640 | And in stopping on the 21st floor,

02:33:11.640 | he figured they would just wait there for medics.

02:33:14.640 | He came across Captain Patty Brown of Ladder Company 3

02:33:18.640 | who told him, "No, sir, you need to evacuate."

02:33:21.640 | And Captain Brown picked his brain a little bit about the structure

02:33:24.640 | because he figured, found out he was an engineer.

02:33:27.640 | And Captain Patty Brown continued on to effect rescues,

02:33:30.640 | and he and his crew were killed.

02:33:32.640 | But Mark was able to effectively evacuate this gentleman.

02:33:38.640 | They were the two known last survivors to come out of the tower.

02:33:42.640 | He now has dedicated his life to becoming a Coptic priest

02:33:45.640 | in St. Mary's Church in East Brunswick, New Jersey.

02:33:49.640 | He did this for a total stranger,

02:33:51.640 | and he said he was inspired by his bosses who died and his friends.

02:33:57.640 | One of his best friends was an Italian man,

02:33:59.640 | the other man was a retired Navy SEAL, a Hispanic man.

02:34:02.640 | And they were part of this melting pot.

02:34:04.640 | And no one looked at each other that day,

02:34:06.640 | what color, what race, what belief were you.

02:34:08.640 | They just said, "Hey, you're a human in need. Let's go."

02:34:11.640 | And we have the story about John Feale

02:34:15.640 | and his mission to help the responders.

02:34:18.640 | We have a young lady, Mariah, whose birth father was on Flight 93.

02:34:23.640 | She had not even met him.

02:34:25.640 | And she had this premonition that somebody in her family

02:34:28.640 | was killed that day, and her adoptive mom said,

02:34:31.640 | "No, everyone's fine."

02:34:33.640 | Three years later, when she was legally able to find out who her dad was,

02:34:36.640 | she found out that her dad, Tom, was actually on that plane

02:34:39.640 | as part of the Let's Roll team.

02:34:42.640 | And we have a gentleman, Robert Burke, who's an actor,

02:34:47.640 | sweetheart of a man, he's a gentleman,

02:34:50.640 | and he's a very, very popular actor in Hollywood.

02:34:53.640 | He was on Rescue Me, Blue Bloods, Gossip Girls.

02:34:56.640 | And Bobby, my friend, as I call him, is a volunteer fireman now.

02:35:00.640 | This man doesn't need to get out of bed at 2 o'clock in the morning

02:35:03.640 | and help people with a stroke or a burning garage or a burning house,

02:35:06.640 | but he does because he wants to,

02:35:09.640 | because his best friend was Captain Patty Brown,

02:35:11.640 | and his other best friend was Father Michael Judge,

02:35:14.640 | who was our chaplain, who was killed literally blessing victims at the site,

02:35:19.640 | had just given last rites to the firefighter I mentioned earlier,

02:35:22.640 | Danny, who was killed.

02:35:24.640 | And Father Judge was in the lobby of the building giving a blessing,

02:35:27.640 | praying to God to please stop this.

02:35:29.640 | And he was struck by debris, and he was killed.

02:35:32.640 | And Bobby goes on to elaborate about Father Judge's story.

02:35:37.640 | Father Judge used to walk the streets of New York City

02:35:39.640 | helping AIDS patients just with whatever they needed.

02:35:42.640 | And he was a Franciscan friar.

02:35:44.640 | They wear sandals and a robe.

02:35:46.640 | They just live very humble lives.

02:35:49.640 | And just a common denominator is loving each other

02:35:54.640 | and helping each other regardless if you know the person or not.

02:35:59.640 | And really when you think about it, that's how America was made.

02:36:03.640 | We fought for independence.

02:36:05.640 | Stranger fought next to stranger and fought tyranny

02:36:11.640 | because they wanted freedom.

02:36:13.640 | They wanted to be able to live, love, pray, and prosper.

02:36:20.640 | And they fought and died alongside of strangers.

02:36:22.640 | And it's sort of symbolic of what happened that day.

02:36:25.640 | And then strangers from around this great country

02:36:27.640 | just flocked in by the thousands to help.

02:36:31.640 | They didn't know who was in that pile, but they didn't care.

02:36:34.640 | That was another American.

02:36:36.640 | And what I ultimately am trying to do involved in this beautiful project

02:36:40.640 | is spread the message of doing the right thing.

02:36:45.640 | Look at these examples, these brave people who didn't have to,

02:36:51.640 | especially the civilians.

02:36:52.640 | They weren't paid to run back in there and help person after person.

02:36:56.640 | They had no obligation.

02:36:58.640 | They could have just said, "Hey, man, I'm out of here," and just bolted.

02:37:02.640 | But they didn't.

02:37:04.640 | So we're just trying to say to people,

02:37:07.640 | let's bring back that unity and that feeling of 9/12.

02:37:11.640 | As strange as 9/12 of a day was, it was so sad

02:37:14.640 | because it was the first dawn of the sun where we realized

02:37:19.640 | this wasn't a dream, this was real, and it's not going away.

02:37:24.640 | But the beauty of it was there was thousands of people

02:37:26.640 | lined up along the West Side Highway with signs and American flags.

02:37:31.640 | And they were from every country and every race and every creed.

02:37:36.640 | And it didn't matter who they were, but they all shared one bond, love.

02:37:41.640 | And they were hugging and crying and thanking rescuers.

02:37:46.640 | And it brought the morale so high for a group of people

02:37:51.640 | that was so beaten down the day before.

02:37:54.640 | It just started lifting the morale and making us realize,

02:37:57.640 | you know what, people really do give a crap.

02:38:01.640 | They really do love each other.

02:38:03.640 | And now I'm going to be honest with you,

02:38:05.640 | I've been doubting that a little bit lately.

02:38:07.640 | I still have these examples of it, you know,

02:38:09.640 | that lady who helped me last night with the phone.

02:38:12.640 | I know there's these shining little examples,

02:38:15.640 | but sometimes I think, I don't know, are we running out of them?

02:38:19.640 | - Well, I've got to give you some advice.

02:38:22.640 | There's two words that were repeated often in the days and the years

02:38:27.640 | after 9/11, which is never forget.

02:38:30.640 | So might I remind you to never forget about 9/12.

02:38:35.640 | I mean, those words you talked about that, you know, there's people,

02:38:39.640 | what is it, college freshmen maybe?

02:38:42.640 | - Yeah, they weren't even born.

02:38:43.640 | - They weren't even born.

02:38:44.640 | And there's people in the 20s that were too young to remember

02:38:47.640 | or to understand the events of that day.

02:38:50.640 | But I think what that day, as you're describing, means,

02:38:53.640 | it's not about a terrorist attack.

02:38:55.640 | It's about the unity that followed.

02:38:57.640 | - It was tremendous, Lex.

02:38:59.640 | I never felt so proud.

02:39:00.640 | I was always proud of this country.

02:39:02.640 | You know, I remember my Grandpa Nails used to walk by, see a flag,

02:39:05.640 | or hear a Star-Spangled Banner, and he'd tear up, and I'd say,

02:39:08.640 | "Grant, why are you crying?"

02:39:09.640 | He said, "I'm not crying.

02:39:11.640 | It's the tears of joy.

02:39:12.640 | I love this country so much."

02:39:14.640 | And I just remember, like, feeling that way.

02:39:16.640 | I felt that way 9/10.

02:39:18.640 | I felt that way on 9/11.

02:39:20.640 | But then on 9/12, I was just so proud of just the people,

02:39:24.640 | the way they stepped up.

02:39:26.640 | And I just want to try to see if that can happen again,

02:39:29.640 | and I hope it's not necessary for us to have another tragedy

02:39:32.640 | to bring that about.

02:39:34.640 | Let's do that without the tragedy.

02:39:36.640 | Let's just stop and say, "Hey, you know what?

02:39:40.640 | Let me listen to what this guy has to say,

02:39:42.640 | and maybe he probably won't convince me, but maybe I'll go,

02:39:45.640 | 'Well, you know, I never thought of it that way.'"

02:39:48.640 | Stop the finger-pointing, the bickering, the tantrums, the fighting.

02:39:54.640 | It's just not necessary.

02:39:55.640 | It gets you nowhere.

02:39:56.640 | It's like I was 2 years old and I'd stomp around because I wanted a cookie

02:39:59.640 | or a piece of candy.

02:40:00.640 | I still didn't get it.

02:40:02.640 | Turned blue in the face and whatever, got a swat in the rear end,

02:40:05.640 | but I didn't get the candy.

02:40:07.640 | And that's what we got going on right now.

02:40:09.640 | Everybody's just stomping around, being a baby.

02:40:11.640 | Stop.

02:40:12.640 | Just stop.

02:40:13.640 | We're really lucky.

02:40:14.640 | Look, the country's not perfect, right?

02:40:17.640 | But it's damn good.

02:40:19.640 | It gives us all these opportunities.

02:40:21.640 | Like I said, no one's rushing out the gates to get out of here.

02:40:24.640 | They're freaking-- I got a cousin of mine.

02:40:26.640 | I love him dearly, my cousin Tony in Ireland.

02:40:29.640 | And he said he's just a little older than me.

02:40:31.640 | He's in his 50s.

02:40:32.640 | He said, "Man, I should have done it.

02:40:35.640 | I should have went to America."

02:40:36.640 | My dad said, "Go to America."

02:40:37.640 | I went to England.

02:40:39.640 | And he went back to Ireland.

02:40:41.640 | But he's happy in Ireland.

02:40:42.640 | It's his home.

02:40:43.640 | But he said, "Wow, what a place of opportunity."

02:40:46.640 | And I said, "It's never too late."

02:40:48.640 | He goes, "Yeah, but you know what?

02:40:49.640 | You get tied down."

02:40:50.640 | And I understand that.

02:40:52.640 | I thank God my mom came here at 16.

02:40:55.640 | I thank God my grandpa got on that ship in his 20s, 27, I think,

02:41:00.640 | with not a nickel to rub together.

02:41:02.640 | I thank God they did it because I don't know where else I would have ended up.

02:41:06.640 | There's no place else I want to be.

02:41:09.640 | And I thank God that there's people like you who rushed towards ground zero

02:41:13.640 | to help other human beings.

02:41:16.640 | I believe that that human spirit ultimately represents the best of this

02:41:20.640 | country and the best of this world.

02:41:22.640 | Thank you for the stories you're telling, for your perseverance in that.

02:41:27.640 | And thank you for welcoming me to the crew.

02:41:30.640 | You're very welcome.

02:41:31.640 | I'm proud.

02:41:32.640 | We'll take you any day.

02:41:33.640 | You look like you could do the job just fine.

02:41:35.640 | I love lifting heavy things and doing dangerous things.

02:41:38.640 | So I'm proud to be part of this country and part of the telly hole now.

02:41:43.640 | Well, you are definitely an attribute to America,

02:41:46.640 | and we're glad you chose to come here.

02:41:48.640 | You know, Lex, it's such a beautiful place.

02:41:50.640 | It's a beautiful melting pot.

02:41:52.640 | If we were all the same, it would be kind of a boring place, right?

02:41:55.640 | Yeah, kind of boring.

02:41:56.640 | It really would.

02:41:57.640 | But it's just such a great place, and I just want to say thanks.

02:42:00.640 | It's an honor.

02:42:01.640 | It's an honor to have someone to let me sound off,

02:42:04.640 | and it'll be an even bigger honor if somebody will listen to me and just say,

02:42:07.640 | "Hey, let me just try to do something good today."

02:42:10.640 | And, you know, that's the tunnel to towers mantra is let us do good.

02:42:14.640 | And I just, you know, I got a really big credit card with God, a big balance, right?

02:42:23.640 | I need to pay him back a lot, and I need to pay him forward.

02:42:27.640 | And I'm just going to spend the rest of my days trying my best.

02:42:30.640 | I don't know where this is going to go, what it'll lead into,

02:42:33.640 | but I really would like to get those dogs for those vets,

02:42:37.640 | build them that village, and just keep going on from project to project

02:42:41.640 | and just say, "When my final day comes and I'm laying there and I say,

02:42:46.640 | 'You know what? I really made the most of that second chance God gave me

02:42:50.640 | way back in 2011.'"

02:42:52.640 | I hope it's 30, 40 years from now, but even if it's 30 months from now,

02:42:57.640 | I'm giving it the best shot.

02:42:59.640 | So thank you, sir.

02:43:00.640 | I appreciate it, and wishing you blessings and success in your career.

02:43:03.640 | Keep up the good fight.

02:43:05.640 | And you're always welcome back to Texas.

02:43:07.640 | Oh, I love it.

02:43:08.640 | It's great food and a little hot, but I can deal with it.

02:43:13.640 | We don't do so good to Irish in the sun, you know?

02:43:16.640 | Well, the barbecue and the people are worth it.

02:43:18.640 | Oh, yeah. No, they are. They're awesome.

02:43:20.640 | I was down here for some storm relief a few years ago,

02:43:23.640 | and I tell you what, I fell in love with it.

02:43:25.640 | The people are great. It's a great state.

02:43:27.640 | And yeah, I'll definitely be back again for sure.

02:43:30.640 | Thanks for talking to me, Daniel.

02:43:31.640 | Thank you, sir. Appreciate it.

02:43:33.640 | Thanks for listening to this conversation with Niels Jorgensen.

02:43:36.640 | To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.

02:43:40.640 | And now let me leave you with some words from Franklin D. Roosevelt.

02:43:44.640 | "Human kindness has never weakened the stamina

02:43:48.640 | or softened the fiber of a free people.

02:43:50.640 | A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough."

02:43:55.640 | Thank you for listening.

02:43:57.640 | I hope to see you next time.

02:43:59.640 | [ Silence ]

02:44:05.640 | (Session concluded at 4pm)

Niels Jorgensen: New York Firefighters and the Heroes of 9/11 | Lex Fridman Podcast #220

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