Joe Rogan Experience #2579 - Gary Sinise

Joe Rogan 0:00 [upbeat music]

Joe Rogan 0:02 Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

Speaker 0:04 The Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe Rogan 0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. [upbeat music] Pleasure to meet you, man.

Gary Sinise 0:13 Thank you, Joe. Good to be with you.

Joe Rogan 0:15 It's always weird when you see someone, you meet them, and you're like, "Fuck, I've seen this guy in movies since I was a kid."

Gary Sinise 0:21 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 0:22 And now here you are [laughs] , you know, it's...

Gary Sinise 0:24 Yeah, you're not-

Joe Rogan 0:24 I'm sure it's weird for you too.

Gary Sinise 0:26 Uh, th- th- thank you.

Joe Rogan 0:27 You know, when you meet people like that, like, you know.

Gary Sinise 0:30 Oh, sure. I've seen your show and, and whatnot, and some of the UFC fights and all that, and now we're here together. It's, it's great.

Joe Rogan 0:37 Yeah, it's very odd. It, like, I just want people to know, it's ne- it never stops being odd. [laughs]

Gary Sinise 0:42 [laughs] Well, I'm harmless. It's all right.

Joe Rogan 0:44 Oh, I know you are.

Gary Sinise 0:45 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 0:45 You're, you're a very nice guy. But it's just, like, you've been in so many giant movies, man.

Gary Sinise 0:50 Some good ones, yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:51 Yeah. Oh my God. You were in both Forrest Gump and The Green Mile, two of my all-time favorite movies.

Gary Sinise 0:55 Yeah. The good ones.

Joe Rogan 0:56 Those are amazing movies. And-

Gary Sinise 0:58 Yeah, the '90s were good. I, I did, uh, three movies with Tom that year, and they were all, they were all successful, all very good movies. Uh, Forrest Gump and Apollo 13 I did right after. That was Tom's next movie, and I, I did that after Forrest Gump, and then Green Mile was a few years later, I think. But, uh, only one little part, but it was a good pa- good part, and it was a couple of days with Tom on the set.

Joe Rogan 1:24 It was a good part. And you were, again, you're... Just to be a part of that. Green Mile's a huge movie. It's one of my favorite Stephen King movies.

Gary Sinise 1:31 Ah, very good. Yeah. Thank you.

Joe Rogan 1:34 Um, you're writing a, you wrote a memoir. It was just, like, what everyone who's lived an extraordinary life should do at some point in time, write a memoir.

Gary Sinise 1:42 Well, I, I, I, I wrote a couple. I got, I... Uh, the first one wa- is called Grateful American. That w- that came out in 19- or in 2020. 2019, actually. Um, came, came out that year, and it w- it kinda documents how I got so involved with our veteran community and our first responders and all of that. I, I, I'd been on so many tours overseas, USO, hospital visits, what- whatnot. I was encouraged by my agent, who I'd never... Eh, this is a book agent, and I'd never worked with her before, but she approached me and said, "Why don't you document some of this stuff that you're doing?" And so I started to do that, and then it turned into an autobiography. I went back to the, through the history of my family, serving in World War I, World War II, Korea era. Uh, my wife's side of the family, Vietnam, Cold War, all of that, Afghanistan. And then it just traveled all the way to the creation of the Gary Sinise Foundation, which sh- I set up in 2011. And so it kinda tracks all of that. That book came out in 2019, and now I've got a new one coming out.

Joe Rogan 2:52 When did you first start getting res- uh, involved with first responders and military? Wh- wh- when did this all start for you?

Gary Sinise 3:01 Well, I th- I think it was kind of different steps along the way. Uh, again, the family on both my side of, uh, f- family of veterans on my side and my wife's side of the family. Um, back in the '80s, I, uh, because of my wife's brothers who had served in Vietnam, and her sister's husband, a combat medic, uh, I started to get, you know, I started to spend time with them and, uh, talk to them quite a bit about what it was like for them to go and serve in Vietnam and then come home. And of course, it was a bad time to be in the service coming home from Vietnam.

Joe Rogan 3:36 Yeah. Maybe the first time ever in American history where people were angry at you for fighting in a war.

Gary Sinise 3:42 That, that, that's right.

Joe Rogan 3:43 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 3:43 And it was a very divided nation at that time, and the Vietnam veteran had to crawl into the closet and, you know, hide in the, in the shadows. It was a difficult time for them. And I felt a lot of compassion for them after I started to actually meet Vietnam veterans through my wife. And so I wanted to help them. I started helping them in the '80s, and in the '90s I got to play a Vietnam veteran in Forrest Gump. He was a wounded guy. So I started supporting our wounded after that through the Disabled American Veterans organization. And then September 11th was, uh... In, in the book Grateful American, there's a chapter called Turning Point, and everything up to that chapter is kinda teeing up what would happen after the attack on our country on September 11th. And that was a, truly a turning point toward a greater level of service. I started raising my hand in all kinds of ways for the USO, and just going out to the hospitals and visiting our wounded. And, you know, having been involved with the DAV, Disabled American Veterans, in the '90s, I was impacted greatly by the real-life Lieutenant Dans out there, and wanted to help, you know, our returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. And so started supporting them in various ways, and that all led to the creation of my own foundation, which is now in its 16th year. We've raised a lot of money and deployed those resources all over the country doing all kinds of things, and overseas as well.

Joe Rogan 5:13 Well, that's phenomenal that you put so much energy and effort into that, because Lord knows they need it. And they, they, I'm sure they appreciate it, because it's, uh, it, uh, especially in today's day and age, it's such a s- we're, we're live in s- such a divided country, and at least we should be able to love and respect and take care of the people that sacrifice everything, put their life on the line to serve our country.

Gary Sinise 5:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:44 I mean, it's, it is the, the ultimate sacrifice, and it gets, you know, depending on what, whether or not you agree with the war, or whether or not you agree with the president, and whether or not you'd agree with the, the political movement of the time, you know, it, that's how people feel about the military themselves, and I think that's-

Gary Sinise 6:03 Yeah

Joe Rogan 6:03 ... that's terrible.

Gary Sinise 6:03 I, I don't, I don't care a- at, uh, at all about that stuff. Um, I remember what it was like f- to come home from Vietnam from these... [clears throat] I was greatly impacted by the veterans that I met coming home from Vietnam. I was, uh- 18 years old, uh, 1973, the end of combat operations in Vietnam. Uh, and then I met my wife's brothers, and they started to really tell me what it was like to serve in Vietnam and come home to feel like the nation had abandoned them and crapped on them.

Joe Rogan 6:34 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 6:35 And all that is, that is the foundation, that is a motivator for me to, to kinda take up the charge with those who deployed in reaction to the horrific attack that we all witnessed on September 11th. We had a lot of people raising their hands after that and going off to serve, and they started getting hurt, they started getting killed, families started losing loved ones. I was... And I, I just felt called to try to do something to help them, and to try to ensure that if they were gonna return from war, that they would return to a grateful nation. And you could see, remember, in 2004, 2005, initially everybody was, like, behind the service member. They were, uh, responding to Afghan- uh, what happened, uh, with, uh, Osama bin Laden and the attack on our country. People were raising their hand, they were going to Afghanistan. Then we went into Iraq, and the nation started... It, it, it had come together after September 11th, and it started to divide and split again. And you could see one side was supportive of George Bush and what he was trying to do in Iraq, and then there was a whole other side that was, you know, really not in support of it. Having so many Vietnam veterans in my family and remembering what it was like for them to get caught in the middle of that crap-

Joe Rogan 7:56 Yeah

Gary Sinise 7:56 ... uh, I didn't want that to happen to our Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. So [laughs] you know, at, at a certain point, I just started raising my hand and saying, "Hey, I wanna, I wanna go visit them and let them know that there are people that, that care about them and appreciate them." And that turned into just a, a life, life mission. I don't want, ever want somebody who volunteers to serve our country, go into harm's way, you know, sacrifice e- limbs and lose friends and all of that, to ever feel like nobody cares about that. You know, we should, we should protect and defend our, our defenders. They... That's... Look at what they do for us. If we had nobody that wanted to serve in the military or put on a uniform, uh, as a police officer, a firefighter, what, what, what would we do? What would we do? We'd have to make people do it. That's what happened in Vietnam. There was a draft, and that split the nation in half. We don't have a draft now, so I'm, I'm grateful that we have people that are willing to do this work.

Joe Rogan 8:56 You know, I agree. I agree with you very much so. Um, I had my first experience with a Vietnam veteran when I was in high school. I had a history teacher that was a very nice guy, but he had a fuse that was the short... Like, you, you couldn't light that firecracker or it was gonna blow your fingers off. His, his fuse was so short, and it took me a while to figure out, like, what is, why is he... What is going on? 'Cause he's normal, and then he would snap. Like, I remember one time a kid didn't bring a pencil, and, uh, he said, "Can I, can I borrow a pencil?" And he pulls the desk out, grabs the drawer, yanks the drawer out with all the pencils in it, and slams it on the ground. He goes, "Get a fucking pencil. Pick up a pencil." And I was like-

Gary Sinise 9:41 This is the, this is the teacher?

Joe Rogan 9:42 Yeah, this is the teacher. Out of his mind. And we're all like, "Yo." [laughs]

Gary Sinise 9:46 Something's going on in there, yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:47 100%.

Gary Sinise 9:48 Yeah. [laughs]

Joe Rogan 9:48 And it took us, like... I... No teacher had ever done that before. Like, it wasn't that the kid was, like, starting fights or lighting a fire in the cra- He just didn't bring his pencil.

Gary Sinise 9:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:58 And so he pulls the drawer out of the dra- out of the, uh, desk and slams it with all the pencils. The pencils are scattering all over the place, and, and I remember sitting in class going, "Should I run?"

Gary Sinise 10:08 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 10:09 Like, what the fuck is this guy gonna do next?

Gary Sinise 10:11 He got everybody's attention that day, obviously.

Joe Rogan 10:13 Oh, he definitely got everybody's attention.

Gary Sinise 10:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:14 But it was in a d- completely disproportionate way, but it... When we found out, you know, 'cause we would, you know, and I'll go have lunch afterwards, like what the fuck? I forget his name. Um, I wish I could remember it, because he was really... He was a cool guy, a really cool guy. It was just, he had been through it.

Gary Sinise 10:31 How did, how... Did you know he was a Vietnam veteran?

Joe Rogan 10:34 Yes.

Gary Sinise 10:34 At that-

Joe Rogan 10:34 We found out from other teachers, we found out from other classmates. And, uh-

Gary Sinise 10:39 After the, after that incident?

Joe Rogan 10:41 No.

Gary Sinise 10:41 Or before?

Joe Rogan 10:41 I think it was along the way, 'cause it wasn't just that incident. The, he, his fuse was, he was ready to pop at any moment.

Gary Sinise 10:49 Yeah, sure.

Joe Rogan 10:49 It was like, and it would come out of nowhere, and like, maybe it was a b- in response to unruly kids and teaching them how to get in line, but I went to a pretty soft school in high school. I went to Newton South High School, a really nice-

Gary Sinise 11:03 Where is that?

Joe Rogan 11:03 ... suburb of Massachu- uh, Boston-

Gary Sinise 11:05 Okay

Joe Rogan 11:05 ... Massachusetts. Very nice neighborhood. Very... No, no gang fights at my school. It was very, very peaceful. Great academic school. Everyone was nice. I mean, normal shit. Kids got in fights and normal stuff, but w- it wasn't anything scary. We weren't scary kids.

Gary Sinise 11:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:20 So when he would pop and snap, it was like, "Whoa, where is this coming from?"

Gary Sinise 11:25 It makes me... I grew up in the same kind of, uh, environment. We had a nice suburb of Chicago. Um, great high school, Highland Park High School. It was a g- great high school, and it makes me think, I wonder if there were teachers at my high school who, uh, had gone through the war and then came, came home and, and taught. I never met-

Joe Rogan 11:44 Had to be, right?

Gary Sinise 11:44 Never met any until my wife's brothers. I never met a Vietnam veteran until then.

Joe Rogan 11:50 Had to be. Now that I'm thinking about it, this might not have been in high school. It might have been in eighth grade.

Gary Sinise 11:56 Ah.

Joe Rogan 11:56 I have to be, I have to be careful with this, 'cause I don't really remember if it was... So fuck- I'm so old. I'm 59 now.

Gary Sinise 12:02 You're not old. [laughs]

Joe Rogan 12:03 But I'm thinking through it, I'm like, it might have been eighth grade, which makes more sense, 'cause I was in Jamaica Plain, and it was a little bit of a sketchy neighborhood, but I'm not sure. Uh, either way, this guy, this was my first experience with anybody that had been through Vietnam, whether it was eighth grade or ninth grade, different schools. But he was, uh, really smart and, and just- I could tell even as a 13-year-old kid, this guy was tortured. You know, something had happened. And then as I got older and saw a bunch of movies on Vietnam and, you know, saw Apocalypse Now, and it's like, "Whoa, Jesus." Like, and you just think of, we thought of war as World War II soldiers going over there to fight the Nazis and, you know, and stop evil from progressing across the globe. And we remember that photo of that, uh, the, the Navy sailor kissing that lady in Times Square.

Gary Sinise 12:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:55 It's like one of the most iconic-

Gary Sinise 12:56 Welcome home, yeah

Joe Rogan 12:56 ... photos in history, right? And that's what s- war meant is like, we're the good guys. We go over there. And then you see Apocalypse Now, and you go, "Okay. Well, what the fuck is this?" [laughs] Like, what is... Is this really what they dealt with? And then you have these accounts of these guys that had to go into the, the, the tunnels, and, and-

Gary Sinise 13:18 Yeah, the tunnel rats, yeah

Joe Rogan 13:19 ... Jesus Christ. You know, like, and then there's no reason whatsoever that we should've been there in the first place. And like, wow. Okay, well, this is war.

Gary Sinise 13:28 Yeah, yeah. And if you look at, and that's not the only movie, Apocalypse Now, uh, from that era, right?

Joe Rogan 13:33 Right.

Gary Sinise 13:33 '70s and '80s produced Platoon-

Joe Rogan 13:36 Yep

Gary Sinise 13:36 ... Casualties of War-

Joe Rogan 13:37 Yep

Gary Sinise 13:38 ... Coming Home. I mean, there were a lot, there were a lot of movies. Um-

Joe Rogan 13:41 I think Platoon was a little later, right?

Gary Sinise 13:43 Platoon was '80s, yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:44 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 13:45 '80s. Uh, Deer Hunter, another one.

Joe Rogan 13:47 Right, Deer Hunter.

Gary Sinise 13:48 That-

Joe Rogan 13:48 That was another great one

Gary Sinise 13:49 ... what happens to Chris Walken at the end of that movie?

Joe Rogan 13:51 Oh, God.

Gary Sinise 13:52 So you, you look at all those movies, Joe, and if you look at all those movies, just like Apocalypse Now, you just wonder, uh, I don't think these Vietnam veterans g- are gonna be okay at the end of this film, right?

Joe Rogan 14:05 Right.

Gary Sinise 14:06 Forrest Gump was the first time that a story about a Vietnam veteran was a happy ending story. We had never seen that story before. We'd never seen a Vietnam veteran come home, process all his anger, process, you know, isolate himself through d- booze and, you know, loneliness and all that anger, all the things-

Joe Rogan 14:26 Yeah

Gary Sinise 14:26 ... that were going on with Lieutenant Dan. But what happens at the end of that story is he's standing up again. He's got legs. He's moving on. He's successful in business. Uh-

Joe Rogan 14:36 Yeah

Gary Sinise 14:37 ... he forgives himself. You know, we hadn't seen that positive story about a Vietnam veteran. I think that's, in some ways, why so many Vietnam veterans kind of appreciate that story because, yes, there were those who came home from Vietnam and isolated themselves. My wife's, one of her brothers, it was like that. He just, he just, you know, had, had a lot of trouble after Vietnam. And we heard that story over and over again, but we never heard the story of the guy who came home from war, was able to p- kind of process the war years and move beyond them, and that's, that was, that's... Of course, that's the story we want for anybody-

Joe Rogan 15:17 Yeah

Gary Sinise 15:17 ... who goes off to war. We want them to come home and be okay.

Joe Rogan 15:20 We do, and we, we like when that happens, and I think part of the reason why we like it is because we know it's so unlikely, 'cause it's so difficult to come back from that and, and r- reemer- and just reenter society, and they don't get any help. And this is the thing that I found most shocking. When, uh, I got older and I, I met a lot of, uh, military guys, specici- specifically through jujitsu, through martial arts, met a lot of military guys, and the thing that astounded me the most is how little help they get in reemerging or reentering into society. And that you go from being involved in firefights every day and breaching buildings and shooting terrorists, and then all of a sudden, you're back in regular life, and it doesn't make any sense, and you... No one's telling you how to deal with this. No one's giving you tools. You can get a little bit of counseling. That doesn't seem to help. They could put you on medication. You wanna, you wanna numb yourself to the whole world? You could do that. No one wants to do that. And then no one wants to talk to you about it. It's, and it's crazy to ask that of people.

Gary Sinise 16:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:28 To take a regular person and just put them through boot camp, put them, you know, give them some training, and then have them go kill people, and then a few years later, here they are back working at an insurance company, just sitting at a desk. Like, what? How do you process that? It's hard to process regular life. Like, regular life is baffling to people. I mean, how many Millennials and Generation Z kids are just, like, so confused about life itself?

Gary Sinise 16:53 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 16:54 Imagine that.

Gary Sinise 16:56 Yeah.

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Gary Sinise 18:11 Yeah. Thankfully, I mean, even with things like that that do happen today, think back to what it was like to come home from Vietnam and-

Joe Rogan 18:21 Right

Gary Sinise 18:21 ... have no services at all and have the nation-

Joe Rogan 18:23 People spitting on you

Gary Sinise 18:24 ... be completely-

Joe Rogan 18:25 Yeah

Gary Sinise 18:25 ... uh... You know, I had people that had bags of crap thrown on them when they got off the airplane-

Joe Rogan 18:31 Yeah

Gary Sinise 18:31 ... and whatnot. Today, there are multiple services provided You know, there are thousands of nonprofits that have emerged since September 11th, 2001 that are out there trying to fill the gaps where the government kind of falls down and we, we don't have enough support. So there is support out there for a lot of people. Unfortunately, many of our service members that come home, they don't seek it out. They don't seek that help out. They isolate. And we, we don't want them to do that at the Gary Sinise Foundation. We try our best to be very, very proactive if we hear about anything. We don't wait for them to call. We call them. We try to, we try to reach out. Mental wellness is a big part of what we do at the Gary Sinise Foundation, and I know a lot of people that are in, in, uh, in that business to make sure that, uh, like your, your teacher who's-

Joe Rogan 19:24 Right

Gary Sinise 19:24 ... who's containing all that stuff. He's not talking about it. He's keeping all that in. We wanna provide opportunities for them to tell their stories and come out. The more they talk about what they've been through, the more the, the, the, the, the better it is, the better the chance that we save somebody from doing something bad to themselves.

Joe Rogan 19:43 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I'm, I mean, um, it's one of the things that I've learned through jujitsu, um, in particular is so many guys who came over there and needed something to really, like, push them and test themselves and just, like, release the demons and get out all the, the pent-up anxiety, and that extreme physical exertion in jujitsu, and also the camaraderie of jujitsu really helped them with a lot of that.

Gary Sinise 20:09 Yeah, it's hard. It's, it, it's hard. You know-

Joe Rogan 20:12 Yeah

Gary Sinise 20:12 ... if you, if you've seen a lot of buddies go down, you know, you've seen a lot of bad stuff, and you come home and just try to go on with life, uh, I, I think it's difficult. The, the one, the one thing that I will say is I had, my wife had two br- uh, two brothers. One, one died of cancer in 1983, but he, he was a West Pointer, uh, two tours in Vietnam. Uh, went as a platoon leader, uh, uh, a lieutenant, then went back as a captain, a company commander. Came back, taught at West Point as a major, was teaching at Fort Leavenworth. He was just rising the rank. He would've been a four-star, and he would've been involved right along... He was Tommy Franks' age, so he would've been involved with General Franks and, and serving in Iraq. I have no doubt about that. He did better than the younger brother who came back and got out, right? He did his tour and got out.

Joe Rogan 21:08 Mm.

Gary Sinise 21:08 And he didn't have the community around him.

Joe Rogan 21:11 Mm.

Gary Sinise 21:11 You know, my ol- the older brother had the military community around him.

Joe Rogan 21:15 Right.

Gary Sinise 21:16 All these guys had served in Vietnam. They're all around each other. They're still serving in the Army, whatever it is. But the younger brother came out, and he got out of the service and tried to do exactly that, you know, go work in a, you know, he ended up being a prison guard and ended up doing these, just trying to get a job. He tried to go to college. He, he never adjusted properly. So we want, we want people to, to know that there are services out there constantly, uh, available to them if they're, you know, if anybody's listening to this, you can go to the Gary Sinise Foundation. But there are multiple services out there that, uh, can be provided if somebody i- is in need of help.

Joe Rogan 21:55 So for-

Gary Sinise 21:55 We want them to know that

Joe Rogan 21:55 ... people listening to this, uh, your website, what, is it GarySiniseFoundation.com? Is that-

Gary Sinise 22:00 .org

Joe Rogan 22:01 .org? Okay.

Gary Sinise 22:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:01 Just to let people know to go there. Um, yeah, it's just, like, the, just the task of coming back and reintegrating completely makes sense that someone who stays in the military can adjust to it much better. You're just used to being around other-

Gary Sinise 22:16 Mm

Joe Rogan 22:16 ... there's a lot of camaraderie and community, people being around other people that are experiencing the same thing you're experiencing.

Gary Sinise 22:21 Or experienced, you know, because they went to war together.

Joe Rogan 22:24 Right.

Gary Sinise 22:24 You know?

Joe Rogan 22:25 Right, right, right. Support each other.

Gary Sinise 22:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:27 Yeah. It's, uh, it's, y- you know, just, it's the most demanding thing you could ever ask of someone, ever, by far. Risk your life, go kill others, and, and then when you come back and you find out, like, "Hey, maybe we shouldn't have even really been there," you know? And that's insanely difficult to deal with.

Gary Sinise 22:45 And people are questioning. Yeah, people qu- uh, question, and what did I go through for? I mean-

Joe Rogan 22:50 Right

Gary Sinise 22:50 ... think about our Afghanistan veterans, you know.

Joe Rogan 22:52 Right.

Gary Sinise 22:52 20 years in Afghanistan, and we give it back to the Taliban, along with $80 billion of, you know, hardware-

Joe Rogan 23:00 Yeah

Gary Sinise 23:00 ... uh, American military eq- equipment, and you've got a lot of Afghanistan veterans who lost a lot of buddies, saw a lot of bad stuff, went through difficult, difficult things saying, "Well, why did we do all that?"

Joe Rogan 23:13 The-

Gary Sinise 23:13 "What was it for?"

Joe Rogan 23:13 ... extraction-

Gary Sinise 23:14 Yeah

Joe Rogan 23:14 ... the l- the leaving was one of the most insane things I think I've ever seen.

Gary Sinise 23:18 Terrible, yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:18 It, it, it made no sense. It was like the, I mean, I don't w- uh, I, I wanna look at this as charitably as possible, but it was one of the stupidest fucking decisions I think I've ever seen, to just leave all that stuff there and just aban- and just do it all in one sweep-

Gary Sinise 23:35 Yeah

Joe Rogan 23:35 ... where people are climbing on top of airplanes and falling from the sky, and this is, a lot of these people are people that cooperated with our troops while they were over there, people who were translators, people who helped them, people who worked with our troops, and then they just abandoned those people there.

Gary Sinise 23:52 They abandoned them, yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:52 And a lot of them were killed. A lot of them were killed and probably tortured by the Taliban.

Gary Sinise 23:56 Terrible, yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:57 Yeah, it's, it's insane. The, the, the, just the desperation to climb onto a jet that's on the runway, climb onto the wheels, and watching people fall from the sky.

Gary Sinise 24:09 Crazy.

Joe Rogan 24:09 [sighs]

Gary Sinise 24:10 It, it was a, it was a, it was a, a botched withdrawal, as they say.

Joe Rogan 24:15 Well, it doesn't even make sense.

Gary Sinise 24:16 [laughs] It was nuts.

Joe Rogan 24:17 It's like, and then leaving behind all those tanks and helicopters. Look, at the very least, blow them up.

Gary Sinise 24:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:25 At the very least. The fuck are we doing?

Gary Sinise 24:28 Yeah, it was crazy.

Joe Rogan 24:28 Where you have These parades now where the Taliban does parades-

Gary Sinise 24:33 With our equipment, yeah

Joe Rogan 24:34 ... with our equipment.

Gary Sinise 24:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:35 Billions of dollars of tanks, flying overhead with Black Hawks. It's crazy to watch.

Gary Sinise 24:41 Yeah. It, it was bad. Imagine being one of those service members who, who used to drive in those, in that out- in that equipment.

Joe Rogan 24:48 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 24:48 You know, [laughs] and seeing that happen.

Joe Rogan 24:50 No, just absolutely insane. It doesn't make any sense. And then the, you know, you get into the conspiracy theorists, like they wanna keep them armed. They want us to be able to have some sort of a reason to go back over there, and you're like, "Please, God, I hope that's not true."

Gary Sinise 25:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:02 I just hope that's not true.

Gary Sinise 25:03 You, you, you hope, you hope not. It was like, "We're gonna get out by September 11th. That's gonna be our date, and we're gonna withdraw no matter what." And that's what it was. They set a date of September 11th and, and get out.

Joe Rogan 25:15 How about pick another date, first of all?

Gary Sinise 25:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:18 M- maybe.

Gary Sinise 25:19 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:19 Maybe pick another day.

Gary Sinise 25:20 That's the date they picked.

Joe Rogan 25:21 It's... You mean just because it's September 11th? Oh, don't do that.

Gary Sinise 25:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:24 You know, that, that date means a lot to this country. I mean, it, to, to leave in a terrible way on the day that marks the reason why we went there when we shouldn't have even really been there.

Gary Sinise 25:35 I have, I have very good friends, uh, you know, Special Forces guys, uh, who were very involved in trying to do something to get people out of there during that time, during, uh... My buddy Scott Mann, uh, lieutenant colonel, um, he, he served over there, had a lot of Afghan allies that he was... A Special Forces guy, so they worked in tandem with our Afghan allies and whatnot, and all of a sudden he's, he's out of the service and he's sitting back here, and he jumped in with something called Operation Pineapple, uh, Express to try to get a lot of people out of there. They did their best, and they were, you know, they were really hurting. I mean, these guys were hurting, and they, you know, the, they didn't know what to do, and they did their best to get people out, uh, through various networks and, and whatnot.

Joe Rogan 26:23 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 26:23 Uh, it was, you know, and they did get some people out, and that, that was important, but they felt terrible for the ones that they couldn't get out. And it was just a very, very sad and tragic thing, I think. You know, so you got a lot of Afghanistan veterans that are in a lot of pain, and w- we wanna help them through. We, we don't want them to think that their service, you know, was in vain or anything. There were, there were people that were free for a, a period of time because they were there.

Joe Rogan 26:51 Right.

Gary Sinise 26:51 And, and that's a good thing.

Joe Rogan 26:53 Yeah. Um, my buddy Evan Hafer, uh, he runs Black Rifle Coffee.

Gary Sinise 26:57 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:57 And, uh, you know Evan?

Gary Sinise 26:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:58 Do you know him?

Gary Sinise 26:59 I, I may have met Evan, but I, I love them.

Joe Rogan 27:02 He's the best.

Gary Sinise 27:02 They're, they're fantastic.

Joe Rogan 27:03 I love him to death. Uh, he employs a lot of people from Afghanistan. Afghanis work for him, uh, in his pla- guys that he worked with overseas.

Gary Sinise 27:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:11 He brought them and their family to America-

Gary Sinise 27:13 That's

Joe Rogan 27:13 ... when they helped us. 'Cause it, this is before the extraction, so it was before everything went completely sideways. But, uh-

Gary Sinise 27:21 It sure did

Joe Rogan 27:22 ... yeah. It's just... I, I mean, why would anybody trust us after that, you know? If you're in a country that Americans come in, they say, "Hey, uh, work for us even though you live here. Work for us, and w- we're gonna help you get rid of this terrorist organization that's running your, your country." And then we're like, "Actually, we're not. We're out. See ya."

Gary Sinise 27:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:43 "You're, you're on your own."

Gary Sinise 27:44 Yeah. Good luck.

Joe Rogan 27:45 "Even though you worked for us for 10 years here, yeah, bye bye."

Gary Sinise 27:48 Good luck.

Joe Rogan 27:49 Fucking insane.

Gary Sinise 27:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:50 Insane. And then to leave all those weapons behind, all... It's like this is the most chaotic th- mil- it, it just, like, makes you question everything of your leaders. Like, if you're willing to do that, if that's your decision, that's the b- if you looked at all the possible options, this is the best way to handle this?

Gary Sinise 28:07 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 28:08 That seems insane.

Gary Sinise 28:09 Hard, hard, hard to think that that was the best way to handle it.

Joe Rogan 28:12 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 28:12 Sure.

Joe Rogan 28:13 It seems like even if you wanted us to not be involved in there anymore, you just by virtue of the fact that we were there for 20 fucking years, you've gotta maintain some kind of a strong presence there. You have to.

Gary Sinise 28:26 Yeah. Um, I mean, there were, there were better ways to do it, for sure.

Joe Rogan 28:29 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 28:30 You know? Um, and, and, and I, I, you know, I want these people to know that, okay, regardless of, you know, government decisions that may have gone wrong and, and whatnot, uh, and they may have been affected by those things, there are grateful Americans out there-

Joe Rogan 28:45 Yes

Gary Sinise 28:45 ... you know, that are involved in support, and you should always know that. Uh, and that was one of my great motivators back in the early days of, you know, after September 11th, is to make sure that they knew that they had support services and there were people that were, that cared about them. And you could see the nation starting to split and divide once we went into Iraq and things were sta- and all of a sudden, you know, it was a bad time to be in the service.

Joe Rogan 29:14 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 29:15 And the news was always bad news and everything like that. I was going over to the war zones at that time, and I was seeing a completely different side of what was going on when I went there. For example, um, in '03, I, I went to Iraq twice in '03, and first tour was, uh, something called Project Salute, and we were on a big entertainment tour. Kid Rock was on, on the tour, and, uh, LeAnn Womack and Paul Rodriguez and Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders and all. I mean, football players, basketball. It was a giant tour. Northwest Airlines gave us a 747. We all flew over there, and we split up into three groups and we covered a lot of ground in a week and saw a lot of people and lifted them up. This was about... Remember when that statue got pulled down in the square? That was in April of '03, the Saddam Hussein statue.

Joe Rogan 30:09 Mm-hmm.

Gary Sinise 30:09 Well, in June of '03, I was, I was over there, and we were doing the first big USO tour, and I went back six months later in November, and I was in a convoy, and they took, took me out to show me a school. I was with Wayne Newton. I was with Chris Isaak. Remember Chris Isaak?

Joe Rogan 30:27 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 30:28 And I was with Neal McCoy, uh, country singer Neal, great guy. It was a great group. And they took us, they wanted to show us an Iraqi school that they had rebuilt for the, for the For the kids. And we pull up in a convoy, and we're driving down the road, and we got helicopters and, you know, a lot of protection, driving down the road. We pull in, we start getting out, and the, the entire school of kids just runs out to the soldiers and starts hugging them and loving on them and everything. This is-

Joe Rogan 31:02 Wow

Gary Sinise 31:02 ... this is November of 2003. So I had not heard about anything like that going. It was all bad news.

Joe Rogan 31:10 Right.

Gary Sinise 31:10 We were getting a lot of bad news. You see these kids just hugging on these soldiers and the soldiers picking up the kids, and it was just, it was very heartwarming. Um, the four of us ended up singing You Are My Sunshine to a classroom full of kids, and they didn't know what we were saying, but they were laughing at us.

Joe Rogan 31:27 [laughs]

Gary Sinise 31:28 And it was very positive. I saw a lot of kids-

Joe Rogan 31:31 There it is right there

Gary Sinise 31:31 ... like, yeah, that's, that's, that, that's the trip. That's the school right there.

Joe Rogan 31:36 Wow.

Gary Sinise 31:36 So that's Neil right there next to, next to me. There's Wayne over there. There's Chris. And this is, uh, the Abu Hasan School in Balad, Iraq, in November of 2003, and it was a beautiful, beautiful day. The s- these soldiers had, they, they had all been out there before. They had refurbished the school. The school was in disrepair. So these kids and these Iraqis just loved our soldiers, and we weren't hearing anything about these stories, you know, these kind of civil affairs stories about our troops. So I came home from that trip, and I started a school supply program, and we started shipping school supplies over to those soldiers, and they would take them out to not only that school. First it was that school, because I saw these kids. They're, they're, like, they had these long desks in the classroom, and there'd be four kids to a desk, little Iraqi kids, and they'd have one little half pencil, you know, that they'd be sharing.

Joe Rogan 32:37 Wow.

Gary Sinise 32:37 No, no, they'd had nothing. Absolutely. So we started sending paper and pencils and crayons and erasers and stuffed animals, all kinds of stuff over, soccer balls, sending all that stuff over. We started a program called Operation Iraqi Children. Eventually, we turned it into Operation International Children because we were shipping to Afghanistan and Djibouti and Haiti and all these different places where our troops were deployed. The, the motto of it was helping soldiers help children. We wanted to provide these materials for our soldiers to take out into these communities that could be very hostile. Let's say, you know, you, the convoy moves in, and guys with guns get out, and the community is, like, very suspicious and very hostile. But when they pull in and start unloading all these boxes of stuffed animals and school supplies, all of a sudden the community comes out. And we had people write us letters saying, "Your supplies helped to save lives. Your suppli- we delivered your supplies to, um, to an Iraqi village, and two days later we were going down the same road and the kids ran out and, and waved and stopped our convoy and pointed down the road, and there were bombs on the road. And the kids that got those supplies just two or three days later-

Joe Rogan 33:58 Oh, wow

Gary Sinise 33:59 ... saved that convoy from getting blown up." And we, we got a lot of letters like that from people that, you know, were serving in our military who were very, very grateful that the American people supported Operation International Children and provided these, these school supplies. You weren't hearing anything about these kinds of things-

Joe Rogan 34:19 No, you don't

Gary Sinise 34:19 ... at a certain point during Iraq. You were just hearing the bad news. You know, another convoy got blown up. Uh, things are going bad. Things are going terrible, you know-

Joe Rogan 34:28 Yeah

Gary Sinise 34:28 ... and, and all that. And you could feel, like, the nation starting to really split and divide over whether we should be in Iraq or not, and I could just feel the service members over there just getting caught in the middle of that, and I did not want that to happen. So I just kept ramping it up and doing, doing what I could to let them know we appreciated them.

Joe Rogan 34:49 That's really beautiful. Uh, that's, that's really cool. And it, it, say what you want about who decides where we go to war and what happens. W- I can't think of another army that would do that other than the American Army, that would go in and bring school supplies and set up programs to try to help kids. That's-

Gary Sinise 35:12 Yeah. Well, well, it, it sort of-

Joe Rogan 35:14 Regardless of whether or not you think we should have been there or you think it's a good idea to be in that war, that's, that's a very uniquely charitable thing to do.

Gary Sinise 35:24 It kind of reminds you of the GIs going through the German towns that we just decimated with, with just multiple bombs everywhere, carpet bombing everywhere, and then walking through those, those towns and handing out pencils and chocolate and, you know, trying to, trying to engage the community. This was a very much a hearts and minds project, you know, just trying to provide our troops with something that would let them know that we're thinking about them back home and we're sending them these things, but also that would help them, you know, engage, uh, with the communities that they were, that they were going through over there. It was a very positive program.

Joe Rogan 36:06 What was it like for you to have been there and see things like that, but then come back and see the news and see this version of it where it's obviously, especially the news on television-

Gary Sinise 36:20 Yeah

Joe Rogan 36:20 ... there's a very limited amount of time. Obviously, there's a lot of different things going on there all at once, and the things that are gonna get people to pay the most attention are the horrific ones.

Gary Sinise 36:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:28 It's casualties-

Gary Sinise 36:29 Bad news

Joe Rogan 36:30 ... bad news, things that people are gonna get upset about, whatever it is.

Gary Sinise 36:35 Yeah, I remember [laughs] ... Well, here's one example. Uh, we had a convoy going out with our supplies to a school, and, um, a news crew was with them Right? Uh, documenting, uh, for the nightly news or whatever, our program going out there and providing all these school supplies to a school. Um, it was, it was beautiful. The footage was great. The kids were happy. They got all these supplies. Uh, the convoy left, and it was attacked on the way out. You know? I mean, it left the school, and down the road it gets attacked. The gunfight was on the news that night, and the whole purpose for the convoy never made it to the nightly, nightly news.

Joe Rogan 37:20 Oh.

Gary Sinise 37:20 So we're, we... You know, the, the, the part of the story that said, "Why was the convoy even... Where were they going? Why w- what were they doing?" Well, they were delivering school supplies to a, to a school. They were trying to help a school. We weren't seeing that, you know? And it was unfortunate, and I remember feeling, [smacks lips] uh, I just felt pretty bad about that. You know, that the purpose for the convoy was eliminated from the story, but the... all we saw was the gunfight. And that was, that, that's the way our troops were feeling. Like, "Hey, we, we're doing a lot of good things over here to try to help people through this difficult situation." And all it looks like on the, on the nightly news is that, you know, it's all going to hell. You know, nothing's working. So I felt, uh, you know, I can't control what the decisions that are made or what somebody's gonna tell them to do, but as a citizen, I can control, you know, trying to help them through that experience. And, and that's what our programs were, were like. And I think, you know, as I said, you know, we, we heard from a lot of people that the programs were very, very helpful. Uh, that, that particular school supply program lasted for about nine years. It was, uh, it was a program that started in 2004 and went to whatever that, uh, 2012 or something, uh, something like that. And, uh, it was a very, very positive program, and there were lots of programs like that from people here on, in the States that just felt like they had to do something to help these, these service members through a very, very difficult situation.

Joe Rogan 38:56 Yeah, it's gotta be extremely frustrating when you're over there and you're seeing the news, and you see this one version of what's happening. And part of it, I, I think is, it almost inevitable because the news, just the format of what they're doing by covering a certain amount of things over a one-hour period of time, they just don't have any time.

Gary Sinise 39:14 Right.

Joe Rogan 39:14 And they have commercial breaks, and it's like... And then you have editors, and the editor's job is to get the most ratings possible. And the most ratings, what does, what does that mean?

Gary Sinise 39:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:23 Make things exciting. Put a bunch of dun, dun, dun, bunch of crazy music, lights, graphics. They gotta keep-

Gary Sinise 39:29 Show the guns going off

Joe Rogan 39:30 ... keep people locked in-

Gary Sinise 39:32 Mm-hmm

Joe Rogan 39:32 ... and then show them something disturbing. And then if the, sort of the narrative in the country is that this war is a disaster and everything's going wrong, the last thing you wanna do is show a positive story from the war, you know?

Gary Sinise 39:44 Yeah, it's not dramatic.

Joe Rogan 39:45 Right.

Gary Sinise 39:46 You know, I guess. You know, um-

Joe Rogan 39:47 It doesn't fit what they're doing

Gary Sinise 39:48 ... I remember doing an interview with one news, uh, uh, national news outlet. I said, "Why aren't you reporting this, you know, any of these good things that are happening?" [laughs] He was very honest with me. "Bad news sells." I mean-

Joe Rogan 40:01 Mm

Gary Sinise 40:01 ... that's what he said.

Joe Rogan 40:02 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 40:03 You know? And-

Joe Rogan 40:03 It's the Don Henley song

Gary Sinise 40:04 ... the, yeah. That was, that was hard for me to hear because I wa- I felt like one role that I had to play was to, to talk to people about what I saw firsthand by going to the war zones and going to the hospitals and meeting and engaging with the troops and the, and the p- people that were serving our country. You know, I, you know, not everybody can go over to the war zone and, and visit the troops and everything, but I could. I, um, you know, I'm in entertainment. Lieutenant Dan showing up on a military base was uplifting to the troops, and then I could come back and talk about what I'd witnessed and all the courageous things that I'd seen and the, and the good work that I saw them doing, and I wanted people to know about that. And I felt the way that I could serve was just by talking about what I saw.

Joe Rogan 40:53 That's, uh, a very noble thing. It, it i- it is really kind of the opposite of what a lot of people think of when you think of Hollywood movie star.

Gary Sinise 41:01 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 41:01 You think of someone who's very selfish, very self-centered-

Gary Sinise 41:04 [clears throat]

Joe Rogan 41:04 ... egotistical, Googling their name all day. [laughs]

Gary Sinise 41:08 [laughs] Well, let's see, Joe. Is that-

Joe Rogan 41:10 You know what I'm saying?

Gary Sinise 41:11 Am I in here?

Joe Rogan 41:11 I mean, that's what people think about instead of-

Gary Sinise 41:13 Mm

Joe Rogan 41:13 ... someone who does something that's very selfless and is probably way more rewarding and, um, it probably enriches your soul, like who you are as a person, far more than anything you're ever gonna get from-

Gary Sinise 41:27 Ce- celebrity can have a purpose beyond yourself, you know? I, I've, I, I, I'm, I'm grateful that I had, you know, uh, you know, I, I've had good, good opportunities and fun opportunities. You, you talked about some of them earlier. Great opportunities in the movie business. I was on television for 11 years, CSI: New York, and then I did Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders. Hollywood's been... You know, I, I had a lot of good, m- wonderful experiences with a lot of great, great folks, and thankfully, I, you know, I had some success and I did, did well, uh, made some money, uh, had a, have a public profile that I can talk about things. And [laughs] I'll, I'll tell you though, um, the, you know, I've been doing this a long time. It's, it's long, it goes back a long time. But in the beginning, uh, and I've told this, this story before, but I really wanted to go to Iraq after we first went in there, and I told you I went on this trip with Kid Rock. Well, I had done some movies, you know, Apollo 13 and, uh, some of these different movies, and I hadn't done CSI: New York, where you're on television every week for nine years, and people get used to you and that kind of thing. But I remember calling the USO after we went into Iraq. I had wanted to go to Afghanistan, uh, but I was, I was caught up doing a lot of movie stuff. And now I wanted, you know, we went into Iraq and I really wanted to go and support. And I called the USO and I left a message on their machine and said, "You know, it's Gary Sinise. I wanna, I wanna go on a tour. I want, wanna, you know, wanna support the troops. Please call me back." And I didn't hear anything. And then I called again. I said, "It's Gary Sinise. I'm leaving a message again. I'd really love to go on a, if, if you're going on, taking a tour over to Iraq, please call me. I really wanna do it." [laughs] And I didn't hear anything. And then I started thinking, "Hmm. Well, I'll call them back right now and leave another message. 'Hi, this is Gary Sinise. I'm the guy who played Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump. I'd like to do a tour.'" And then they called me back.

Joe Rogan 43:37 [laughs]

Gary Sinise 43:38 [laughs] So, so they didn't know who Gary Sinise was. I hadn't done that many movies, I guess, you know, um-

Joe Rogan 43:45 Well, it's probably very young-

Gary Sinise 43:46 You know, at the time

Joe Rogan 43:46 ... people working there, too.

Gary Sinise 43:48 Uh, maybe. You know, this was, so this was in 2003. You know, I, I'd done Ransom. I'd done Apollo 13.

Joe Rogan 43:54 That's true.

Gary Sinise 43:55 But-

Joe Rogan 43:55 Yeah

Gary Sinise 43:56 ... I was still kind of a character actor, uh, who, the s- supporting guy, all that kind of thing. But everybody knew who Lieutenant Dan was. And I sort-

Joe Rogan 44:05 Right

Gary Sinise 44:05 ... I sort of figured out, "Okay, they, they're not sure who Gary Sinise was." So-

Joe Rogan 44:09 [laughs]

Gary Sinise 44:09 So they called me back, and I ended up on, on the next tour that they... It was the first big tour to Iraq that they sent over there.

Joe Rogan 44:16 Well, good for you for being persistent. What was, uh, that first big tour like?

Gary Sinise 44:21 Incredible. Um, yeah, and they called it Project Salute. A lot of, there were a lot of sponsors on this tour. The USO, um, the Intrepid Foundation was one. Uh, the Intrepid Foundation, uh, is based in, in New York City. Um, Vanity Fair, I believe, was one of the sponsors of that. Tribeca Films, I think w- I think Robert De Niro had something to do with being a sponsor of that tour. He ended up on that tour as well. Kid Rock was on the tour. Um, I think I mentioned Leon MoMo- Mack, Paul Rodriguez. There was another band named Nappy Roots was on that tour. Uh, football players, basketball players, Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, and I was Lieutenant Dan, you know. And I would just go out and shake hands and take pictures, uh, sign autographs. You know, Lieutenant Dan. You know, tell them stories and sit with them and visit with them and whatnot. And we were all over the place. We went into Baghdad. I remember fir- my, my first trip was, uh, we, we did a lot in Kuwait, and then we got on a C-130 and we went up to Baghdad, and we landed at the airport. And Kid Rock was on that C-130. Um, there were, there were other singers. Uh, Nappy Roots was on that. And we pulled up, the airplane pulls up, and there are thousands and thousands of troops lined up from the airplane, where the airplane put all the way into this giant hangar where there must have been 5,000 troops in there sweating. It was 140 degrees. It was June. I mean, it was hot. It was messy. And we walked this gauntlet all the way into the hangar, uh, and got up on a stage. Thankfully, they had some equipment up there, 'cause they had kind of an Army band, like, playing, entertaining people until we got there. So Kid Rock grabbed a guitar, and you know, John Stamos was with us on that tour, and he jumped on the drums, started playing. Kid Rock's guitar player grabbed a bass, and they all started playing. And we s- just put on this impromptu USO show. Nobo- nobody really knew we were gonna even do that. But we just started entertaining, and thousands of troops there. There's footage of, of all of that. We have, we have footage on my, on my website, garysinisefoundation.org, our YouTube, where you can see, like, there was a... We put a video out, 20th anniversary of my first trip to Iraq. That was the first big trip, and it was, it was incredible that day to do that. Go and see. And then I got home that night, and we get a call. Tommy Franks, General Franks, who was running the whole war in Afghanistan and Iraq, uh, wants to take a small group back up to Baghdad, and he wanted me to be on that, on that trip, to go on that trip. So it was a handful of people. De Niro was there. Um, Stamos, John Stamos, and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos were there. Um, handful of people were on that. Uh, and we went up, and then we went into Baghdad proper, right? We spent that whole day at the airport the day before. We went in, and we went to the palaces, and we saw the palaces that we were now occupying, and that was eye-opening. We saw a lot of troops, did a lot of handshaking, picture-taking, all that kind of stuff. That wa- that was, that was incredible to be in one of Saddam Hussein's palaces. And that wasn't the only time. I went back, you know, four more times to Iraq after that and, you know, got to see a lot of, lot of stuff and meet a lot of people.

Joe Rogan 48:07 What was it like being in Baghdad? Like, what is, what is that? It's gotta be like a completely different world.

Gary Sinise 48:13 Yeah, it w- yeah. Yeah, it was. It w- was. There's a big memorial there. I don't know if you've ever seen it, but those big giant sabers over a, over one of the highways. And everyw- everywhere you went at that time, there were statues and photographs and paintings of Saddam Hussein. You couldn't go anywhere in that country, in that city that we were in anyway, you couldn't go anywhere without seeing Saddam Hussein. So he had a lock on that, on that country.

Joe Rogan 48:46 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 48:46 It was incredible. Uh, there's one palace that we went to that had giant, giant Saddam Hussein heads on every, like, post, and you're pulling in and you see just Saddam's head. It was just like a-

Joe Rogan 49:01 I wanna see some of those, Jamie. See if we can find them.

Gary Sinise 49:02 You, you could probably find them. It's, it's, it's-

Joe Rogan 49:04 I wanna see the Sabres, too

Gary Sinise 49:05 ... it's incredible. The Sabres, you know-

Joe Rogan 49:08 The Sabres over the highway

Gary Sinise 49:08 ... you can see the, the, the trip into the hangar and all that stuff. It was incredible. And we had... So Tommy Franks is in, on that trip with us. He's the general who's running the whole thing, and he flew on the C-130 with us up there.

Joe Rogan 49:23 There's the Sabre there.

Gary Sinise 49:24 There they are. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:24 That's crazy.

Gary Sinise 49:26 That's incredible. So Tommy, Tommy Franks is with us. We're in a convoy, and surrounding us in that convoy were gunships. We had... I remember looking out the window. I had a helmet on, flak jacket, all that stuff, and gunships are just flying along with the convoy on both, both sides.

Joe Rogan 49:45 [exhales deeply]

Gary Sinise 49:45 There must have been four or five gunships protecting the convoy, you know?

Joe Rogan 49:49 How did that feel? What was, what does that feel like?

Gary Sinise 49:51 It was surreal. I mean, I, it was hard to believe that, uh... Well, I knew I was there and everything like that.

Joe Rogan 49:57 Right, right, right.

Gary Sinise 49:58 I thought I was just gonna do these entertainment type things-

Joe Rogan 50:01 Right

Gary Sinise 50:01 ... like we did the day before.

Joe Rogan 50:03 These statues.

Gary Sinise 50:03 Yes. There you go. You know-

Joe Rogan 50:05 Wow

Gary Sinise 50:05 ... everywhere, everywhere you went, you had-

Joe Rogan 50:08 That's crazy

Gary Sinise 50:08 ... you had Saddam Hussein everywhere.

Joe Rogan 50:11 Wow.

Gary Sinise 50:12 Yeah. There, there's the heads right there. Yeah, it's pr- it's pretty crazy.

Joe Rogan 50:17 [laughs] Oh.

Gary Sinise 50:19 And there's the statue coming down. Uh, and I was there just a short time after that.

Joe Rogan 50:26 I've read a bunch-

Gary Sinise 50:27 Yeah

Joe Rogan 50:27 ... of stuff about his sons.

Gary Sinise 50:29 Crazy. Yeah, insane.

Joe Rogan 50:30 It, they are some of the most horrific stories I think I have ever read about, like, the evil son of a, and of an evil king-

Gary Sinise 50:40 Yeah

Joe Rogan 50:40 ... doing terrible things.

Gary Sinise 50:42 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:42 That they would just find a woman who was getting married. They would take her from her husband, kill her husband, take her, rape her, feed her to dogs.

Gary Sinise 50:51 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:52 Feed her to dogs, and-

Gary Sinise 50:54 And they would watch. You know-

Joe Rogan 50:55 And they would watch

Gary Sinise 50:55 ... they'd have, like, a ceremony. I was in a soccer stadium-

Joe Rogan 50:58 Oh

Gary Sinise 50:58 ... where they used to torture people.

Joe Rogan 50:59 God.

Gary Sinise 51:00 Yeah. Crazy stuff. I mean, it was that kind of intimidating the population to the point where they just submit, and now they're just living in fear all the time, uh, of the supreme leader, you know?

Joe Rogan 51:13 There's a, an account. I think, God, I don't know. I can't remember if it was a book or just a long article, but I r- I read a, a passage from it where there was a doctor who was treating, whether it was Uday or Qusay, I don't remember which one, got shot a bunch of times, and he had to get a bunch of physical therapy. So some doctor was going over there and taking care of him, and the doctor told... It, it was like he acted completely normal, like you would never know he was a monster. He was very polite. And then you hear the stories of the things that him and his brother did, and you're like, "Good Lord."

Gary Sinise 51:46 Crazy, crazy stuff.

Joe Rogan 51:47 Like Joffrey on steroids. Joffrey from Game of Thrones on steroids.

Gary Sinise 51:51 It w- it pure, p- pure evil.

Joe Rogan 51:53 Pure evil.

Gary Sinise 51:53 It was, it was evil. I was in a, uh, one of the palaces. There's a swimming pool in there, and there was blood on the... You know, it was drained, but there's blood on the side of the walls. They used to take people down there and just kill them and torture them.

Joe Rogan 52:05 They could do whatever they wanted. They had no-

Gary Sinise 52:07 Pretty much.

Joe Rogan 52:08 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 52:08 Hey, pull over. There's a pretty girl. Um, you know.

Joe Rogan 52:11 Insane amounts of money, completely evil and sociopathic. Their father's a monster, and-

Gary Sinise 52:16 Yeah

Joe Rogan 52:17 ... and that's how they were raised, and they had all the money in the world and all the power in the world, and you watch that. You would hope that, like, one of them would be, like, a Jesus figure.

Gary Sinise 52:26 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 52:27 Like, one of... You know what I mean? Like, you'd hope one of them would realize, like-

Gary Sinise 52:30 Turn

Joe Rogan 52:30 ... this is wrong.

Gary Sinise 52:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:31 I'm gonna reject all of this. I'm gonna, you know, study Buddhism or something.

Gary Sinise 52:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:36 You know? No.

Gary Sinise 52:36 I think they were living high, you know? They were living high at that time. I went to one of the p- one of the palaces that he was building. It was called the... And this is surreal, and you could, you could probably look this up, too. This is weird. Uh, one of the pro- problems he, uh, the palaces he was building at the time of the invasion, he called the Victory Over America Palace.

Joe Rogan 53:00 [laughs]

Gary Sinise 53:02 Victory Over America.

Joe Rogan 53:03 It's kind of wordy.

Gary Sinise 53:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:03 [laughs]

Gary Sinise 53:04 And it, it was very, very strange because outside of the Victory Over America Palace that was under construction when the invasion happened, were French construction cranes. You know, so a little, little, little weird. You re- remember, uh, some of our allies were not too keen on us going into Iraq at the time we did.

Joe Rogan 53:22 Right, right.

Gary Sinise 53:23 French construction cranes outside of the palace. We go into the palace. A lot of it is bombed out. Um, I have some weird pictures of me, um, sitting in the rubble, and in a, in a golden chair, and all this stuff. Come in, and y- y... There's a, there's a... Yeah, that's the Victory Over America. A- and you, uh... I remember sitting, you know, being on a balcony, and there it is. That-

Joe Rogan 53:53 Wow

Gary Sinise 53:53 ... I walked in there. I was right in the middle of that. Uh, and that was, like, the big, one of the big ballrooms and everything. Um, walking in there was very surreal, uh, during a time where, you know, it had been bombed. And they had it closed off, right? It was surrounded by fence. So not a lot of people got to go in there. But you see all this water around it?

Joe Rogan 54:15 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 54:15 There was so much water around his palace that some of these farmers out there didn't have any water. He was taking all the water.

Joe Rogan 54:22 To make a moat.

Gary Sinise 54:23 Yeah, to make his, his beautiful little thing.

Joe Rogan 54:25 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 54:26 A- and you can look up, on, on the opposite side of that water there, the Flintstones was one of his favorite shows. So for his grandchildren, he built a Flintstone village for them to play in, and you could probably find that. Uh, that, that was the weirdest thing, just... There it is.

Joe Rogan 54:47 Whoa.

Gary Sinise 54:48 You can pro- yeah, Flintstone Village. And that was for just-

Joe Rogan 54:53 What a great grandpa

Gary Sinise 54:54 ... simply for his grandkids to play in the Flintstone Village there.

Joe Rogan 54:58 Wow, that's insane.

Gary Sinise 54:59 It-

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Gary Sinise 55:51 It was insane, and I s- I saw all that, and, you know, standing there and, and we had, you know, we had a tour guide. They didn't let a lot of people go in there. There it is. It was right across from the palace, the Flintstone Village over there. They didn't let a lot of people go in there, um, but they, they took me in so I could, I could see it. And, uh, I, I had a crew with me at that time that was documenting some of the things that I was doing for the troops, and so we put some of that on a film in a documentary that's called, uh, Lieutenant Dan Band: For the Common Good. And they were making a movie about all my band concerts for the troops and the work that I'm doing and everything like that. M- thankfully, we got some of that on film.

Joe Rogan 56:33 Well, that's cool. It had to be very weird being in the Flintstone Village that-

Gary Sinise 56:37 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 56:37 ... Saddam Hussein created for his grandchildren. How, I mean, how-

Gary Sinise 56:40 Totally bizarre

Joe Rogan 56:41 ... the energy in that-

Gary Sinise 56:42 Yeah

Joe Rogan 56:42 ... spot must have been very strange.

Gary Sinise 56:44 Yeah. You're get- and you got, you have farmers that got let in after that, and I remember one soldier who was showing us around told me that the farmers would just come in and see this palace and see what he was building while the people were starving.

Joe Rogan 57:00 Right.

Gary Sinise 57:01 And s- and, uh, and the farmers didn't have any water, and they didn't even know that some of that water was there, but they came in and saw that palace and saw all that water, water that they didn't have to water their own crops and everything like that, and they would just break down and fall down and cry, and with such rage, you know. He, he really was an oppressor.

Joe Rogan 57:22 He really was an oppressor, and he's not unique in history. That's what's really crazy is that there's so many people, when they get to that kind of a position, or is it the ki- type of people that get to that p- position in the first place are just like that, which is horrible. It's a-

Gary Sinise 57:37 Yeah

Joe Rogan 57:37 ... it's a horrible idea that the only kind of people that are gonna rise to power are ruthless, d- driven psychopaths.

Gary Sinise 57:47 Yeah. Har- hard, you know. I'm, I'm, I've also stood on the border between North and South Korea.

Joe Rogan 57:54 Another example.

Gary Sinise 57:55 Yeah. There you are.

Joe Rogan 57:56 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 57:56 You know, I'm standing on the border.

Joe Rogan 57:57 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 57:57 You know, you've probably seen, remember President Trump, and he stood.

Joe Rogan 58:01 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 58:01 He stepped across the border and went into North Korea.

Joe Rogan 58:04 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 58:04 Well, I've been there. I've been to that spot, you know, and you can, you, you could easily step over. It's just a little, like, cinder block thing that's on the, you know, that's separating the two s- two sides, and you've got the ROK soldiers, Republic of Korea soldiers, behind you here staring, just like this, staring at the North Korean soldiers who are right over here. And very, very easy, you realize, you know, they're free over here. These guys behind me are free, and these guys over here, they're, they're slaves. They have no idea what freedom is, no concept. They've been born into oppression, and they're there to serve the supreme leader, and that's the way they've been raised. They have no concept. One, one Korean soldier walked up to me, and all that's, all that's between us is this little cinder, cinder block thing about a foot high, and I'm standing there, and he's standing right, you know, this close, you and I, you and I.

Joe Rogan 59:04 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 59:04 And I'm staring into the eyes of this slave, and he's got no idea, and he starts taking pictures of me. You know, he came down. There's a building up here, and they spy on you. Yeah, there we are. Oh, right there. There, and that's, that's, that's the guy who started taking pictures of me.

Joe Rogan 59:22 That's the same guy?

Gary Sinise 59:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 59:24 Wow. So he's gotta-

Gary Sinise 59:26 Yeah

Joe Rogan 59:26 ... document whoever-

Gary Sinise 59:28 Yeah

Joe Rogan 59:28 ... is on the other side.

Gary Sinise 59:29 Yeah, he was looking at us through the window. There he is.

Joe Rogan 59:33 Wow.

Gary Sinise 59:33 He... Yeah, that building straddles the border, right? Half of it is on the North Korean side, that blue building there, and the other half is on the South Korean side, and there's a table in the middle of it, in the middle of the building, and the South Koreans can come in and sit on their side of the table, and the North Koreans can come in and sit on their side of the table, and they have little meetings and things like that. That, that's it. That's-

Joe Rogan 1:00:01 There it is right there. That is so insane.

Gary Sinise 1:00:05 Yeah. I took my band over there. We, we... That's, that's a bunch of my band members there. We've been there, you know, I don't know, four or five times. Uh, there's the table. There, there [laughs] ... And that's-

Joe Rogan 1:00:17 I just-

Gary Sinise 1:00:17 ... that's the North Korean building that's, that's right there.

Joe Rogan 1:00:21 How could they not work that out? [laughs]

Gary Sinise 1:00:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:23 Just 'cause they're right next-

Gary Sinise 1:00:24 It's so weird

Joe Rogan 1:00:24 ... to each other.

Gary Sinise 1:00:25 You know, yeah. But-

Joe Rogan 1:00:26 Also, you're all Korean. That's what's even more crazy.

Gary Sinise 1:00:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:29 It's like-

Gary Sinise 1:00:29 And they, they don't, and they don't, they don't have any concept of what's going on, you know-

Joe Rogan 1:00:33 No, I'm sure

Gary Sinise 1:00:33 ... in the free world. They-

Joe Rogan 1:00:35 I had a woman on my podcast a few years back. Her name is Yeonmi Park, and she escaped from North Korea when she was really young. Do you know her, of her?

Gary Sinise 1:00:42 I've heard of her, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:43 Yeah. It is a heart-wrenching story. It is, it's insane what her mother had to do to get her out and what her mother endured, what she saw her mother endure, what she endured.

Gary Sinise 1:00:53 Terrible. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:53 She went into China and then eventually made her way into Europe and then to the United States, and it's like... And You know, her, her stories. It's like this can happen, this can happen when people get into positions of power, and you have to be very careful of who gets into positions of power, and be ve- very careful what you give up, very careful what rights you give up, what g- what concessions you make. 'Cause one of the, the big premises with North Korea was give up your land to the state so that everyone will have food. What a great idea.

Gary Sinise 1:01:25 Yeah. [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:01:26 What a great idea. Oh, th- this way the farmers can't, you know, uh, wrench us over, or rake us over the coals for the price of crops. The government's gonna be in control of that.

Gary Sinise 1:01:35 Of course, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:35 Everyone will have food. Wonderful. Eh.

Gary Sinise 1:01:38 Le- leave the government in charge.

Joe Rogan 1:01:40 How's it go? Well, the leader gets fat and rich, and everybody else is basically starving to death-

Gary Sinise 1:01:45 Mm

Joe Rogan 1:01:45 ... 'cause that's the only way he can maintain power. And then you have to-

Gary Sinise 1:01:47 And the military gets fed.

Joe Rogan 1:01:49 Exactly.

Gary Sinise 1:01:49 The military gets fed well, so.

Joe Rogan 1:01:50 Exactly, so you should probably w- join the military. It's a lot better than being a farmer 'cause they'll steal your crops.

Gary Sinise 1:01:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:56 And then on top of that, y- like, you, everyone has to rat on everyone else. It's a part of the culture. Like, you have to tell on people. People went to jail because when Kim Jong Il died, they didn't cry hard enough.

Gary Sinise 1:02:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:10 So have you ever seen those videos-

Gary Sinise 1:02:11 Yeah. Oh, sure

Joe Rogan 1:02:11 ... of performative crying? Jamie, pull up those videos of performative crying.

Gary Sinise 1:02:15 Yeah, no, they're standing there in the entire crowd.

Joe Rogan 1:02:17 They had to do it for months.

Gary Sinise 1:02:18 Yeah, it's crazy.

Joe Rogan 1:02:19 Months.

Gary Sinise 1:02:20 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:02:20 They had to weep and wail in the street, and if you didn't do it right, if you were like, "Man, sucks that he's dead," "No, sucks for you, motherfucker."

Gary Sinise 1:02:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:26 They just put you in jail. [laughs]

Gary Sinise 1:02:27 Yeah. You're, you're going, you're going down.

Joe Rogan 1:02:28 They'd probably kill you.

Gary Sinise 1:02:29 Yeah, terrible.

Joe Rogan 1:02:30 They're like, they could do whatever they wanna do. It's the, and it's just complete fear, and again, a culture of ratting on everybody. Everybody rats on everybody else. No one has any power. No one has any money. Communism, folks.

Gary Sinise 1:02:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:42 That's what it really boils down to. That's where it goes.

Gary Sinise 1:02:45 And, and-

Joe Rogan 1:02:45 Don't let it happen here. [laughs]

Gary Sinise 1:02:46 That's what the Nazis did, of course.

Joe Rogan 1:02:48 That's what the Nazis did.

Gary Sinise 1:02:49 Yeah. Yeah. Of course.

Joe Rogan 1:02:50 It's like, like here's, so here-

Gary Sinise 1:02:51 Yeah, there they are

Joe Rogan 1:02:51 ... here's the performative crying.

Gary Sinise 1:02:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:53 I mean, it is absolutely crazy. These poor people.

Gary Sinise 1:02:58 A bunch of actors there, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:59 I mean, it's just really crazy. The entire-

Gary Sinise 1:03:01 Oh, you're not freaking out enough.

Joe Rogan 1:03:03 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 1:03:03 No, wait. You're not doing anything.

Joe Rogan 1:03:04 I don't like that guy. Lock him up.

Gary Sinise 1:03:05 [laughs] Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:07 Yeah, it's-

Gary Sinise 1:03:07 I remember that really, really well. Paul.

Joe Rogan 1:03:11 There's a guy named Robert Sapolsky. He's a... A- is he a bi- What is his exact, Sapolsky's work? I know he's a, a biologist.

Speaker 1:03:23 Neuroscientist and primatologist.

Joe Rogan 1:03:25 That's it. Um, he believes in determinism, you know, and he thinks that it's gonna be one of the, uh, the, the big things that we look back on this day and age, and with, uh, punishment and the way we treat people. He doesn't believe in free will at all. He believes that human beings are the product of everything that's ever happened to them leading up to that moment. You don't really have free will. And I think it's a really interesting intellectual sort of exercise, like this idea that you are a product of everything that's ever happened to you, and it's determinism. Like, all these things have taken place, your genetics, where you're born, what you experienced, all these different things that lead you up to that point.

Gary Sinise 1:04:07 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:04:09 It's... You're laughing.

Gary Sinise 1:04:10 Yeah. [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:04:11 Yeah, because I don't believe that.

Gary Sinise 1:04:13 I don't either. [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:04:13 I don't. Well, but I don't think it's not a factor. This is what I think. I think the idea of making that a binary, uh, distinction, uh, that's one or zero, I don't think that's accurate.

Gary Sinise 1:04:24 It, it can be a factor in a society like that-

Joe Rogan 1:04:26 Yes

Gary Sinise 1:04:27 ... where you are raised with nothing else.

Joe Rogan 1:04:29 Right.

Gary Sinise 1:04:29 You know?

Joe Rogan 1:04:29 And you have zero-

Gary Sinise 1:04:31 Yeah

Joe Rogan 1:04:31 ... free will.

Gary Sinise 1:04:31 That's right.

Joe Rogan 1:04:32 Right, and so it's not a coincidence that all those people have the same kind of lives.

Gary Sinise 1:04:36 They don't know.

Joe Rogan 1:04:37 Right.

Gary Sinise 1:04:37 They don't know anything.

Joe Rogan 1:04:38 'Cause they don't have free will.

Gary Sinise 1:04:39 That's why we have to be so grateful.

Joe Rogan 1:04:42 Right.

Gary Sinise 1:04:42 You know? I'm a grateful American. That's why [laughs] I w- I wrote my book, Grateful American, because I am grateful that I'm here in this country, and I'm grateful for the men and women who provide that freedom for us so that, that I can... I've, you know, been able to pick and choose some of the things that I wanted to do in this life. Uh, there are, you know, we have a military that is there to protect that, whereas a military like the K- North Korean military, they are there to take that away from you.

Joe Rogan 1:05:12 Right.

Gary Sinise 1:05:13 They're there to oppress you.

Joe Rogan 1:05:14 Right.

Gary Sinise 1:05:15 Uh, and militaries can be used for that. They're n- they're not the only, uh, country on Earth that, that does that.

Joe Rogan 1:05:21 And through most of human history, that was the norm.

Gary Sinise 1:05:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:24 Yeah, this is, this is-

Gary Sinise 1:05:24 That's right. The king, you know, or the, you know, the emperor-

Joe Rogan 1:05:28 Yeah

Gary Sinise 1:05:28 ... or whatever.

Joe Rogan 1:05:29 This is the rare exception.

Gary Sinise 1:05:31 Yeah. We have to protect it.

Joe Rogan 1:05:32 This is the very unusual... Yeah, and, and, and it's not a coincidence. This is the only country that has like the real, other than the Greeks, the first experiment in self-government.

Gary Sinise 1:05:40 Yeah, that's right.

Joe Rogan 1:05:41 And this idea that you can really figure out your own path in life. That's why that whole determinism thing, it's like, so d- does Saddam Hussein take no, he has no fault in all the things that he did, and all, and his sons? His sons are a, a product of determinism? So this, the idea like if you were Uday Kus- Hussein, you would've, like, killed those people and fed women to dogs? Really?

Gary Sinise 1:06:08 Sure. [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:06:09 Is that-

Gary Sinise 1:06:09 Yeah, it's sick

Joe Rogan 1:06:09 ... oh, it's hard to believe. It's hard to believe, but I mean, I have never lived as the son of a dictator that has unlimited resources and is exposed to evil and psychopathy from the moment I'm very, very young, so who knows?

Gary Sinise 1:06:23 Can you imagine?

Joe Rogan 1:06:24 I don't, I don't know. I, we don't like to believe that. Everyone likes to think that they are, um, capable of not ever falling into these traps that you see so many human beings fall, that we're all uniquely wise and uniquely different.

Gary Sinise 1:06:40 Yeah. Just im- just imagine, you know, on those kids being raised by a psychotic dictator like that. You know, I mean, they had no choice really. [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:06:51 In a lot of ways, right? I mean, if you, you, kids very uniquely imitate their atmosphere, and you have children, I have children. It's, uh, you watch them. Y- y- you watch, like, cool things that they do. You're like, "Oh, I know where they learned that," and then- If you're a murderer, you know, then they, they think, "Oh, it's cool to kill people."

Gary Sinise 1:07:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:10 It's fun. It's fun to just pick somebody up off the street and say, "Today's the last day of your life," boom.

Gary Sinise 1:07:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:16 And just laugh and go have a beer.

Gary Sinise 1:07:18 Feed them to the lions.

Joe Rogan 1:07:19 And-

Gary Sinise 1:07:20 You know?

Joe Rogan 1:07:20 Yeah, feed them to the lions, and no consequences. I, I mean, we all would like to think that there's no way that you would enjoy that. There's no way that you would become those people.

Gary Sinise 1:07:33 Yeah. I mean, you, you, you hope. You know, I, I mean, n- we're free here in this country. We don't, we don't have to go down that road, clearly, you know.

Joe Rogan 1:07:42 What is it like just being in his castle? I have a buddy of mine who sent me a picture of him using his toilet. He, he... Saddam had a golden toilet, and he's sitting on it.

Gary Sinise 1:07:49 Probably more than one. [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:07:51 Oh, yeah. I'm sure he had a ton of golden toilets.

Gary Sinise 1:07:53 It was, it was like bad Vegas, you know?

Joe Rogan 1:07:55 [laughs]

Gary Sinise 1:07:55 Uh, when I went, I walked through.

Joe Rogan 1:07:57 [laughs]

Gary Sinise 1:07:57 I see this kinda gaudy looking stuff around, and there-

Joe Rogan 1:08:00 What is it about dictators that love gold?

Gary Sinise 1:08:03 Uh-

Joe Rogan 1:08:03 They'll... Everything's gotta be gold.

Gary Sinise 1:08:04 Y- you know, well, the... I mean, it was just... There, there's, there was a... One of the palaces had this giant chair. Everybody liked to get their pictures taken in this giant Saddam Hussein chair.

Joe Rogan 1:08:16 Is that it?

Gary Sinise 1:08:16 There it is. [laughs] You, you-

Joe Rogan 1:08:17 [laughs]

Gary Sinise 1:08:17 ... grabbed that really fast. That was-

Joe Rogan 1:08:19 Oh.

Gary Sinise 1:08:19 So I've got, I've got pictures in that chair. And, and-

Joe Rogan 1:08:22 That's a cool thing to the right of the, of the left-

Gary Sinise 1:08:24 Yeah

Joe Rogan 1:08:24 ... rather, of the chair.

Gary Sinise 1:08:25 In one of, in one of the palaces. I've, I've got a... There's a picture of me somewhere in that chair.

Joe Rogan 1:08:30 What is that thing to the right of it?

Speaker 1:08:32 Yeah, I don't... Maybe, like, a-

Gary Sinise 1:08:33 It's like Aladdin's lamp

Speaker 1:08:35 ... yeah, a genie bottle or whatever.

Joe Rogan 1:08:36 Oh, is that what it really is? [laughs]

Speaker 1:08:37 I don't know.

Joe Rogan 1:08:39 Wow.

Speaker 1:08:40 I was sitting in this one 'cause it's right up front.

Joe Rogan 1:08:42 It's pretty cool looking.

Speaker 1:08:43 It's pretty cool.

Gary Sinise 1:08:43 Everybody wanted a picture in that chair.

Joe Rogan 1:08:45 Oh, of course.

Gary Sinise 1:08:46 Yeah. And-

Joe Rogan 1:08:46 Look at that. [laughs]

Gary Sinise 1:08:47 I got... [laughs] I, I've got a few. Look at that.

Joe Rogan 1:08:52 It had to be so-

Gary Sinise 1:08:53 Yeah. That's, that's a, like, a USO tour somewhere.

Joe Rogan 1:08:56 Yeah, it'd be so weird.

Gary Sinise 1:08:56 And that's in one of the palaces, one of his main palaces in Baghdad. I've got pictures in front of that. Those missiles are actually pointed at Israel.

Joe Rogan 1:09:05 Wow.

Gary Sinise 1:09:05 That's what I was told. I, I've got a picture in front of that.

Joe Rogan 1:09:09 He's got, th- For people that are just listening, he's got these comic book-looking missiles painted on the wall behind his golden throne.

Gary Sinise 1:09:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:18 And the missiles are shooting up into the skies. Pretty, pretty decent artwork.

Gary Sinise 1:09:21 And, and, and I was told they're, they're shooting up in the direction of Israel.

Joe Rogan 1:09:26 Makes sense.

Gary Sinise 1:09:26 So that's... Yeah. That's what they, that's what they said.

Joe Rogan 1:09:29 Wild.

Gary Sinise 1:09:30 It, it's, it, it's strange stuff. That's inside the palace there that was, was bombed out. [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:09:36 It's also interesting because this is kinda the first time in history where we get a real detailed look inside of, like, the palace of an evil dictator. Like, you really get to see inside of it, whereas-

Gary Sinise 1:09:49 Yeah

Joe Rogan 1:09:49 ... in history, we just have stories. We have stories of how people lived and what they did, but this, you get to see his throne, see the pictures on the wall.

Gary Sinise 1:09:59 Yeah. And n- that's one palace.

Joe Rogan 1:10:01 Right.

Gary Sinise 1:10:01 So, you know, that's not the Victory Over America Pal- He needed another one just down the street. He's gonna build another one. But he had palaces in multiple cities around, around the country.

Joe Rogan 1:10:11 Of course he did.

Gary Sinise 1:10:11 He had-

Joe Rogan 1:10:11 What, are you gonna want him to have one palace?

Gary Sinise 1:10:13 Multiple. No, he had to have, had-

Joe Rogan 1:10:14 Come on, dude

Gary Sinise 1:10:14 ... he had to have... I, I was in the, I was in the ones in Baghdad. Th- those are the ones I went to. But I went to multiple cities around the country and visited our, our, our troops and did a lot of traveling around. And, you know, I, I, I did, uh, I did five different trips over.

Joe Rogan 1:10:31 There must have been a lot of laughing when the people were inside the palace. Must have been a lot of, like, "What the fuck is this?" [laughs]

Gary Sinise 1:10:37 It, it was surreal for everybody. I just, I-

Joe Rogan 1:10:40 I'm sure

Gary Sinise 1:10:40 ... you know. I mean, people are looking around, and all of a sudden we're occupying the palaces.

Joe Rogan 1:10:45 Right.

Gary Sinise 1:10:46 And the dictator's on the run. He was on the run at that time, you know.

Joe Rogan 1:10:49 How about, how long after that-

Gary Sinise 1:10:50 Yeah

Joe Rogan 1:10:50 ... did they catch him?

Gary Sinise 1:10:51 Not, not, not too long after. I was there, uh, in '03. And, uh, the, um, the, the Fourth ID from, uh, Fort Hood, uh, actually, uh, they were the ones I believe that captured him under General Ray Odierno. And I went to, uh, Fort Hood in April of 2004, and that, and the Fourth had just come back, and they were the ones who ca- found him in the spider hole and, and dug him out and, and got him, you know. And they, they captured him. So it, it was some- somewhere between November of, uh, '03 and April. I don't know. You could probably find the date.

Speaker 1:11:37 December 13th.

Gary Sinise 1:11:38 Hm?

Speaker 1:11:38 December 13th.

Gary Sinise 1:11:38 December, yeah. So just after I was there, they found him.

Joe Rogan 1:11:41 What is a... That is a surreal video, the video of them pulling him out of that hole in the ground.

Gary Sinise 1:11:46 Oh, yeah. And remember the pictures of him. He, now he's got a beard and-

Joe Rogan 1:11:50 Yeah

Gary Sinise 1:11:50 ... this crap. You know, he just looked like a rat. I mean, just a terrible rat.

Joe Rogan 1:11:53 Well, how long has he been hiding in there for?

Gary Sinise 1:11:55 [laughs] In the spider hole?

Joe Rogan 1:11:57 There he is.

Gary Sinise 1:11:57 There he is, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:58 Look at that dude. Hey, Mom. [laughs]

Gary Sinise 1:12:00 Yeah.

Speaker 1:12:00 [laughs] Gotcha.

Gary Sinise 1:12:03 Terrible. Oh.

Joe Rogan 1:12:03 He's... [laughs] Dude, take, "Yo, take a picture of me."

Gary Sinise 1:12:06 That's... Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:12:07 [laughs] Yeah, he looked crazy.

Gary Sinise 1:12:10 Look at him.

Joe Rogan 1:12:10 It looked really crazy. So, and everyone's taking photos of him, smiling.

Gary Sinise 1:12:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:12:16 That'd be so strange.

Gary Sinise 1:12:18 The fall of the king.

Joe Rogan 1:12:19 And that was the hole?

Gary Sinise 1:12:21 There it is.

Speaker 1:12:21 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:12:21 Wow. And how was he getting-

Gary Sinise 1:12:23 Yeah, there he is

Joe Rogan 1:12:24 ... who was-

Gary Sinise 1:12:24 That, that's the, that's what they had on the hole, and they pulled that up-

Joe Rogan 1:12:26 Wow

Gary Sinise 1:12:26 ... and they found him in there.

Joe Rogan 1:12:28 How was he getting food and water and everything down there?

Gary Sinise 1:12:32 Yeah. He had people helping him, you know, take, uh, hiding him, protecting him.

Joe Rogan 1:12:36 And how did they wind up-

Gary Sinise 1:12:37 You know

Joe Rogan 1:12:37 ... catching him? What was the story behind that?

Gary Sinise 1:12:39 I, you know, I'm, I'm not completely sure. Uh, but they were, they were on the hunt for him, you know-

Joe Rogan 1:12:45 Yeah

Gary Sinise 1:12:45 ... everywhere.

Joe Rogan 1:12:46 For sure.

Gary Sinise 1:12:46 And remember the deck of cards? You remember that? I mean, the, the military made a deck of cards that had all the, Saddam and all his leaders, all his top generals and everything, all their faces on these cards.

Joe Rogan 1:12:59 Mm-hmm.

Gary Sinise 1:12:59 And they handed them out to troops all over the place. "This is who we're after. We're after all these guys."

Joe Rogan 1:13:04 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 1:13:04 "Go find them."

Joe Rogan 1:13:05 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 1:13:06 Yeah. They found a lot of them.

Joe Rogan 1:13:07 Well, I'm sure once people knew that this fucking evil dictator was, uh, not in power anymore, well, they were probably willing to talk.

Gary Sinise 1:13:16 Yeah. And, and he had to, he had to have, uh, like an inner circle of people that were helping to protect him because-

Speaker 1:13:23 Here's a real brief. Uh, they had two different spots they were going after. They code named them Wolverine 1 and Wolverine 2. 600 soldiers went after it, didn't find him at either spot.

Joe Rogan 1:13:33 Wow.

Speaker 1:13:33 And then someone kicked something.

Joe Rogan 1:13:36 What?

Gary Sinise 1:13:36 Yeah, the spider hole. There it is.

Joe Rogan 1:13:38 Kicked a piece of flooring to one side exposing a spider hole, prepared to throw a grenade into it in case it led to an insurgent tunnel system, when suddenly Saddam appeared. Soldier struck him with the stock of his M14, M4 carbine, disarmed him of a Glock 18C. Wow. [laughs]

Gary Sinise 1:13:55 Saddam-

Joe Rogan 1:13:55 Saddam surrendered. Wow.

Gary Sinise 1:13:59 Yep.

Speaker 1:14:00 He had a million dollars in cash on him.

Joe Rogan 1:14:01 [laughs]

Speaker 1:14:03 [laughs] That's crazy.

Joe Rogan 1:14:04 $750,000 of US bank notes were recovered from the spider hole and a Glock. Wow. Where was he gonna go?

Gary Sinise 1:14:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:14:13 Wasn't that... That was also the story with his sons too.

Gary Sinise 1:14:14 He lived seven in a hole.

Joe Rogan 1:14:16 Didn't his sons, didn't they try to leave the country with like a million dollars in cash too, or several million?

Speaker 1:14:21 I, I stumbled across a picture of like the proof of death that they posted on like the New York Times of one of his sons dying when I was looking for photos earlier.

Joe Rogan 1:14:28 Yeah, I've seen that. It's rough.

Speaker 1:14:30 But I didn't see where they were when I was looking, though.

Joe Rogan 1:14:32 I think one of them tried to flee the country with a lot of cash, too.

Gary Sinise 1:14:35 It was a crazy, crazy time.

Speaker 1:14:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:14:38 Well, it just, I mean, throughout history there have been people like that that have ruled over their country. Like, for people that don't think that a military's important, like it w- you live a beautiful life in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, okay? I'm sure.

Gary Sinise 1:14:53 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:14:53 I'm sure you got a great coffee shop you go to. I'm sure there's a g- a g- great local theater that you like to attend. I'm sure you're a wonderful person. You know, I'm sure you got restaurants you really enjoy. I'm sure you're great. I'm sure. But that's not the whole world.

Gary Sinise 1:15:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:15:06 There's parts of the world like North Korea, there's parts of the world like Kuwait or Afghanistan or where they're in trouble, where there's people invading them, where there's all kinds of shit going on. We're just extraordinarily lucky that we're separated on oceans on the East and West Coast.

Gary Sinise 1:15:23 Many parts of the world.

Joe Rogan 1:15:25 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 1:15:25 It's, it's hard to believe there are still slaves in the world, you know? [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:15:29 There's more slaves in the world today than there were before we abolished slavery in America.

Gary Sinise 1:15:33 It's a bad thing.

Joe Rogan 1:15:34 It's crazy.

Gary Sinise 1:15:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:15:35 Well, that's like the Libya situation. Libya's the craziest one. Like that story, that photo of the, uh, Americans with Saddam Hussein, I mean, for him, bad day. Very bad day. Not as bad a day as when the rebels captured Gaddafi.

Gary Sinise 1:15:51 Gaddafi, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:15:52 That, that video's crazy when they stick that bayonet up his ass.

Gary Sinise 1:15:56 Yeah. Bad stuff.

Joe Rogan 1:15:57 Phew. Uh, just the look on his face of horror that he's being captured by these rebels.

Gary Sinise 1:16:03 Just hated him. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:16:05 And then afterwards, uh, Libya essentially becomes a failed state and, uh, you have open air slave markets. Like you could watch open air slave markets on YouTube for a while. Uh, what I understand, people have contacted me from Libya and they said it's gotten a lot better since then, so I wanna say that. You know, people that live there said it's, Libya's not a failed state anymore. Like, okay.

Gary Sinise 1:16:28 Okay, good.

Joe Rogan 1:16:29 Noted.

Gary Sinise 1:16:30 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:16:30 But for a while, pretty fucking horrific. And, uh, the idea that human beings are still willing to enslave people in 2026 i- is insane, that, that, that is still a pro- So for people that don't think a military's necessary, for people that... Maybe not necessary in your neighborhood, right, but just understand the o- the world is a, a very dangerous place still, and not much less dangerous out there than it was 100 years ago or 200 years ago in a lot of places.

Gary Sinise 1:17:02 And, and I'll, I'll support them. You know, th- these are, these are our defenders, right? We have-

Joe Rogan 1:17:06 Yes

Gary Sinise 1:17:06 ... young kids who raise their hand right out of high school or right out of college, uh, raise their hand to go defend the country and they w- uh, th- you know, they, they wanna do that work. We're, we're grateful and we're glad that we have people that want to do that.

Joe Rogan 1:17:23 Yes.

Gary Sinise 1:17:24 And so we need to support them no matter what. We don't have any control over where they go-

Joe Rogan 1:17:29 Right

Gary Sinise 1:17:29 ... once they sign up. But we do have control over how we treat them and how we support them.

Joe Rogan 1:17:35 Unfortunately, this country is so oddly divided left and right, um, that for a lot of people, support for the military and support for veterans is a very right-wing idea, whereas Hollywood is a very left-wing place. Did, did you ever experience like some pushback or some weirdness that you felt because you were involved with so many veterans?

Gary Sinise 1:18:01 You know, and I, I guess I never, never did. I just, you know, I was... I had a television show. I was doing well on the TV show. The, I got the TV show, um, CSI: New York right ar- around the time I had just do- I'd done my first trip to, uh, first two trips to Iraq in '03. Uh, in '04 I was heading over to Korea for my first trip over there and I had been offered the lead role in CSI: New York, and I, I remember being on that trip trying to decide if I wanted to go into a television show or if I wanted to just keep doing movies. I didn't know what I should do. But when I got back, I decided to go into CSI: New York. I had that show for nine years, and it came right at the right time because I wanted to... In, in my book Grateful American, the chapter's called Perfect Timing, and it's the CSI: New York timing, uh, uh, chapter which I talk about ramping up everything I wanted to do for the military and trying to do my best to help them through, and at the same time having this public platform on w- a weekly television series-

Joe Rogan 1:19:09 Mm

Gary Sinise 1:19:09 ... and how perfect that was at the time. And I just kept, kept working, kept working hard, uh, on the TV show. Didn't feel a lot of, you know, I, I try to tell everybody h- "Hey, I'm going on a trip, uh, next week. I'm doing this, I'm doing that. I'm playing concerts o- on military bases all around the, the country and overseas." Uh, my hiatus from the TV show, I'm overseas doing some kind of trip. I come back, I talk about it. I never really felt, I don't think, that people didn't think that that was a good thing for me to do. They may have had a lot of, uh, difficulty with George Bush at the time, who was, you know, when I was first really getting involved in going on trips, he was the president, and there were people in, in the business that, uh, didn't ap- didn't like him or, you know, didn't agree with him or whatever. But I wasn't gonna let that dissuade me from supporting the troops because I remember what it was like, again, for our Vietnam veterans to get caught in the middle of all that political stuff, and I didn't want that to happen. So I just ramped up and did my thing. Um, and I, I don't recall ever feeling, you know, like the community turned its back on me or anything like that. I, I just was doing my thing.

Joe Rogan 1:20:24 Well, that's great. Well, you'd already been very established by then, too. That helps. And it also helps that you're on a cop show. I mean, that would be pretty-

Gary Sinise 1:20:31 It was, and I was pla- you know, it was great. My detective on that show, Mack Taylor, um, was a, a Marine, you know, and he was a Beirut veteran, you know, who was at the Beirut bombing in 198- 83 when we lost 241 service members. And we made him, I wanted to make him a Be- Beirut veteran. So, and we even had episodes where I talked a lot about what was going on there. And he was not only a Beirut veteran, but he was a 9/11 family member. W- I wanted to make him somebody who had lost his wife on, on September 11th at the World- World Trade Center. So I felt honored to be able to represent those 9/11 families and also veterans that, you know, we forget about what happened in Beirut, but, uh, that was a very, very bad day for the country during the Reagan administration when we lost so many to a Iranian terrorist bomb- bombing. And, um, you know, I just wanted to draw some attention to that. So I've been able to use the platform for, you know, to, to do some good out there.

Joe Rogan 1:21:38 That's very cool that they let you put that into the storyline. Um, I'd forgotten about Beirut until you just brought it up.

Gary Sinise 1:21:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:21:45 You know? I, I-

Gary Sinise 1:21:46 It's different

Joe Rogan 1:21:46 ... didn't remember that attack.

Gary Sinise 1:21:48 Different.

Joe Rogan 1:21:48 What year was that?

Gary Sinise 1:21:49 1983.

Joe Rogan 1:21:51 Yeah, I was in high school. I was in high school when that had happened. I remember it.

Gary Sinise 1:21:55 Yeah. And I was, I was working on a play about Vietnam veterans, uh, to, uh, in Chicago at the time that that happened, and I remember that day and my, I got all these calls from my cast members who are now focusing on our military and our veterans and, and whatnot. And, uh, I remember, I remember exactly where I was, um, in my apartment when I heard about it, and it was terrible. And since then I've met, you know, Beirut survivors, people that survived that bombing and, uh, you know, they, they go through a lot of, a lot of pain on those anniversaries for sure.

Joe Rogan 1:22:30 Yeah, for sure. Um, most people in this country aren't even aware of how many times we've been in conflict with Iran other than, like, what's going on right now. Like, a vast majority-

Gary Sinise 1:22:41 [clears throat]

Joe Rogan 1:22:41 ... es- especially young people, they don't know about what happened during the Carter administration with the kidnappings.

Gary Sinise 1:22:46 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:22:47 You know?

Gary Sinise 1:22:48 Yeah. This, this has been going on a long time, you know. We've lost a lot of people over the proxies and all, all that that, uh, they've supported over the years, you know. I... Look, I, again, I just want, I just want anybody who serves our country to know that there's grateful people out there, and we don't take what they're going through for granted. We wanna help them through, and we want them to be okay. That's what we do every day at the Gary Sinise Foundation.

Joe Rogan 1:23:16 That's a beautiful thing that you do, man. It really is. And that sentiment I can tell is honest and real and that that's really what you're doing. That's your real focus. That's awesome, man.

Gary Sinise 1:23:26 Thank you.

Joe Rogan 1:23:26 It really is. It really is awesome, and again, especially from someone who's a movie star. [laughs]

Gary Sinise 1:23:31 [laughs] Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:23:33 Although I gotta say, having these conversations with people, like, you know, I mean, I've talked to so many actors on this podcast that turned out to be really cool, who I was, uh, a little hesitant, you know? I was like... 'Cause I had-

Gary Sinise 1:23:45 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:23:45 ... I've had very good experiences with, uh, actors in Hollywood, but, but also some ones that weren't so fun and, you know.

Gary Sinise 1:23:52 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:23:53 But that's just-

Gary Sinise 1:23:53 You don't have to tell me who that is.

Joe Rogan 1:23:55 I won't.

Gary Sinise 1:23:55 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:23:55 But you could s- you could say the same about comedians or athletes or anything else. There's good people everywhere, but there's people that have, uh... It's a very uniquely weird situation to be a movie star, you know? And much like being a dictator, you can kinda get a big head. [laughs]

Gary Sinise 1:24:15 You know, uh, I mean, I c- I come from Chicago. I scrapped around in theater. I've... N- didn't make any money for the longest time building a theater company there, Steppenwolf Theatre. It's, it's over 50 years old now.

Joe Rogan 1:24:29 Oh, wow.

Gary Sinise 1:24:29 Yeah, we start- we started with absolutely nothing.

Joe Rogan 1:24:31 And you started it?

Gary Sinise 1:24:32 I was 18 years old-

Joe Rogan 1:24:33 Wow

Gary Sinise 1:24:34 ... you know, when we started.

Joe Rogan 1:24:35 That's amazing.

Gary Sinise 1:24:35 And now it's a... And in, in... If you go to Chicago, it's an entire city block in, on the north side of Chicago. It started with nothing. We didn't even charge for tickets. We would put a... I remember bringing a shoebox in in one of our first plays that we did. I was, like, 18, and I wrote donations on the side of the shoebox, and we'd put it in the lobby and hope people would throw some money in so we could, you know, do another play after that. And now if you look at it, we've done hundreds of plays all over the world. You know, won a lot of awards. We built a building from the ground up. It's an entire city block. There's three theaters in there. There's restaurants, bars. I mean, it's, uh... Classrooms. It, it's, it's giant. When you look at it and you think, "That was started by kids," you know, here in this country, we can do some great things if we just, we just bear down, right? You-

Joe Rogan 1:25:28 Yeah

Gary Sinise 1:25:28 ... you bear down and you put your... You know, I didn't go to college. I, I just wanted to start a theater company. And that's where I learned how to act. I ended up making a living at it, uh, and I'm, I'm, I feel blessed, you know, to have grown up in this country, and certainly grateful to the men and women who provide our freedom for us.

Joe Rogan 1:25:47 How old were you when you first got interested in acting? Was it-

Gary Sinise 1:25:50 16.

Joe Rogan 1:25:51 16?

Gary Sinise 1:25:52 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:25:52 So two years later you start a theater company.

Gary Sinise 1:25:55 Y-

Joe Rogan 1:25:55 You had a lot of get up and go, I'll tell you that

Gary Sinise 1:25:57 It was, yeah. I was a, a sophomore in coll- in high school when I did my first play, and then I graduated from high school when I was 18, and I didn't wanna go to college. I, I was just really struggling as a student. And, and in fact, I had to go back, uh, to high school for, for an extra semester because I didn't have enough credits to graduate. So I went back for another semester, did another play. It was great, and I, I loved it. Graduated, and didn't wanna go to college, and so I just started doing some plays, you know, in a little church. We found a space, and we went in there with a bunch of kids, and we did plays for free. We, nobody made any money. We didn't charge for tickets. It was all free in the beginning. It was just a passionate desire to kind of act, and I loved it. And then, then the theater company started. And if you look at the early history of Steppenwolf, it goes, that's 50 years ago. In 1976, I teamed up with, um, the co-founders of the theater are Jeff Perry and Tenny- Terry Kinney. But then they went to s- college with John Malkovich-

Joe Rogan 1:27:04 Wow

Gary Sinise 1:27:04 ... uh, Laurie Metcalf-

Joe Rogan 1:27:06 Wow

Gary Sinise 1:27:07 ... uh, Joan Allen, who was nominated for, like, three Oscars. And my, my, the woman who would become my wife just five years later, sh- uh, Moira, she became, uh, one of the members. We had a- original nine people in the company, and then it just grew and grew and grew. And now so many great actors have come out of Steppenwolf, and it's, it's really doing very, very well. Um, you know, still, still going strong. I- I'm going back in a couple of weeks to do a book, um, book event for my new book there. Uh, but they are running it well, and, and a lot of people are coming. And it's, it, you know, it's, uh, hard, hard to be in the theater business now. After COVID, things got really rough.

Joe Rogan 1:27:50 Sure.

Gary Sinise 1:27:50 But Steppenwolf is, has a great reputation. It's doing real well.

Joe Rogan 1:27:54 So when you were 16, when you first took this theater class, were you interested in it before that? Did you-

Gary Sinise 1:27:59 No, no, no

Joe Rogan 1:27:59 ... were you inspired by movies? Was... No?

Gary Sinise 1:28:01 No, no, no. I w- I was playing in a band. I, I was, I had a rock band. I got a m- I got a guitar, and I was playing in a band. And, um, we, [laughs] I've, I've told this story where I was standing there. I'm probably ditching class or something. I'm standing in this hallway in the high school, Highland Park High School, and I'm with the other band members. And we're all looking pretty scruffy and ragged. And, uh, the drama teacher walked by, and she turned around, she looked at us, and she told us she was directing West Side Story. And you know West Side Story, about the two gangs.

Joe Rogan 1:28:35 Yep.

Gary Sinise 1:28:35 And she said, "You guys look perfect for the gang members. Come and audition."

Joe Rogan 1:28:39 [laughs]

Gary Sinise 1:28:40 So, so I, I, you know, I laughed at her, and she walked off down the hall. But I was curious, and I went to the audition after school. And there were a lot of pretty girls walking into the audition, so I just kind of wandered in there. I didn't know what an audition was or what to do. They gave me a script and said, "Read this part. You're on." And, you know, I got up there, and I, you know, just stumbling through it. I wa- I was really interested in the girls-

Joe Rogan 1:29:07 [laughs]

Gary Sinise 1:29:08 ... and I wasn't interested in the script. But, uh, I didn't take it seriously. I was just goofing off, and I got a lot of laughs. And the- I looked up, the teacher's laughing at me and everything. You, and I don't know if you ever auditioned for a play, but the next day you go to the drama department, and you look at the li- the cast list. You, and every- I come in, and everybody's huddled around the cast list looking to see if their name's on the cast list, if they got cast. And I went down, and there's my name, and I got a little tiny part in West Side Story, and that changed everything. I mean, it was f- it's like destiny or something, you know? Remember the feather in Forrest Gump floating around?

Joe Rogan 1:29:49 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 1:29:49 Forrest Gump talks about destiny and all that. I think I just, God put me in that hallway at the right time, and that teacher walked by, told me to audition for the play, and I ended up making a living at it.

Joe Rogan 1:30:02 That's incredible.

Gary Sinise 1:30:03 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:30:03 What a great story.

Gary Sinise 1:30:05 It's-

Joe Rogan 1:30:06 So what w- so when you did West Side Story, what, what, what did it feel like the first time you performed that in front of an audience?

Gary Sinise 1:30:14 Spectacular. I mean, I didn't, I didn't have a big part again.

Joe Rogan 1:30:17 Right.

Gary Sinise 1:30:17 But I, I became friends with a lot of the kids in the theater department. I, again, I was a kid who was really struggling, going through, you know, do- sh- some kinda crazy stuff as a kid, playing in a rock band, uh, not doing well, uh, academically. I was about to get kicked out of school probab- probably. And I stumbled into the theater department, and I made all these new friends in the theater department. We rehearsed. I just loved it so much. I signed up for all the theater classes. I wanted to take all the theater classes after that. We start performing the play, and you basically, you do, like, when you do a high c- high school play, it's, like, Thursday through Sunday, and you do, like, four shows. And I remember the last show. Uh, I don't know if you remember this, but in West Side Story, Tony, the lead guy, gets shot, and he dies at the end. And the two gangs have been at each other's throats just fighting and everything. And at one point, the American gang, they go, two guys go to pick up the body of Tony and carry him, and he's kinda heavy. And two of the other, the Puerto Rican gang, come in, and they grab him, and the two gangs carry Tony off. The stage. And that's the end of the show. And I was one of the guys that got to pick him up and lift him. And he, he had become my best friend, the guy that was playing Tony. And I pick him up, and I'm carrying him off, and I just burst into tears.

Joe Rogan 1:31:53 Wow.

Gary Sinise 1:31:53 I r- I remember it. I get choked up thinking about it. I just burst into tears. I get off. I, I put my buddy down. He grabs me, he's hugging me. I'm just crying like crazy. The show is over. [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:32:05 Wow.

Gary Sinise 1:32:05 You know, it's very, very dramatic. And then we have to go out for the curtain call. And, you know, I was just a kid who did- you know, who's struggling, and the, the entire cast knew that I- something had happened significantly to me during the course of that whole thing. And I'm standing there crying, you know. And all the lead characters, right, Tony, Bernardo, Maria, Anita, they all go and they stand in front of all the rest of us, and they take their bows. And my buddy who played Bernardo r- after he took his bow, he reached back and he grabbed me and he pulled me up to the front to stand with all the lead characters and take a bow. Nobody in the audience knew what that was about. But everybody on stage knew that the kid crying, who was barely making it through high school, had, had had my life changed in a significant way. And from that point on, I just, I just wanted to do plays. And I became, you know, a, a top theater student and, you know, got a lot of good parts in high school, and then that's where Steppenwolf came from. We teamed up with m- with my pals, and we just, we started a t- theater company after that.

Joe Rogan 1:33:21 So that one moment where that lady came up to you and said you should audition, what a crazy fork in the road.

Gary Sinise 1:33:30 That i- that is. And I-

Joe Rogan 1:33:31 What a crazy fork in the road. Have you ever imagined what would have happened if you had zigged when you should have zagged and you weren't there?

Gary Sinise 1:33:39 Yeah. I... You know, we can all sort of look at those moments.

Joe Rogan 1:33:43 Yeah

Gary Sinise 1:33:43 You know, that there's somebody that stumbles along, just happened to bump into you-

Joe Rogan 1:33:47 Yeah

Gary Sinise 1:33:47 ... and, you know, changes your life in a significant way. She did. And I remember when my first book, Grateful American, came out. She was living in Nashville, and I stayed in touch with her over the years. I mean, without her, I don't think Steppenwolf Theatre would have existed because she fired us all up, and I just wanted to do plays. And then n- now, now you have a giant building on the north side of Chicago.

Joe Rogan 1:34:11 Wow.

Gary Sinise 1:34:11 And it started with high school kids. And I remember my book coming out, Grateful American, and I was on a book tour, like I am now. And, and I sh- I called her up and said, "I'm coming to Nashville. I'm gonna do some, do some press. Let me take you out to dinner." And w- I picked her up. We're out to dinner. I, I think I had just done The Huckabee Show. He had, used to have a TV show there. And we're driving in the car. I get a call from my publicist, and she says, and I'm sitting here with the woman that remembers me as a high school kid who could-- I couldn't even spell or write or anything. I could barely read, but I somehow could rem- memorize lines. And I was really a struggling kid academically, but I had kind of an intuitive... I don't know. I just, I just took to the theater. And I'm sitting here with this woman who, who kind of remembers all that, right? And the call comes in that, uh, Grateful American hit The New York Times Best Seller list at number three. And I'm sitting here with her at the moment that I hear that, and I turn to her and I [laughs] said, "I'm a, I'm a best-selling author." And she, she was just burst into tears. She c- she remembers when I could barely read and write. [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:35:29 [laughs]

Gary Sinise 1:35:30 And here I am sitting with her, telling her at the moment that I hear this-

Joe Rogan 1:35:34 Wow

Gary Sinise 1:35:34 ... this great news. And it was, it was really just a beautiful, a very poignant moment. I mean, it was v- very special.

Joe Rogan 1:35:42 That's making me tear up. Yeah, that's amazing.

Gary Sinise 1:35:44 It, it was something special.

Joe Rogan 1:35:46 There's, um, a lot of people out there that just need a thing. You know, they need a thing where they can, uh, put their energy into that rewards them and shows them that they're valuable, and that they can contribute, and that they can really make something beautiful. And so many people never find that thing.

Gary Sinise 1:36:05 Uh-

Joe Rogan 1:36:05 Or they're never exposed to it.

Gary Sinise 1:36:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:36:07 Or life gets too complicated before they ever get a chance to spread their wings and, and take a chance with something like that.

Gary Sinise 1:36:14 You're very fortunate if y- if you're, uh, if you find something as a young person.

Joe Rogan 1:36:19 Yes.

Gary Sinise 1:36:20 You know, because so many young people, they, you know, th- they're, you know, they search for a long time to figure out what they wanna do. And, uh, you know, and, and, you know, thankfully and hopefully they, they find it. I was fortunate.

Joe Rogan 1:36:34 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 1:36:34 I was 16 when I fell in love with what I ended up being able to do for a living, and that's, that's, you know, that's a rare thing, you know, when you, when you find that.

Joe Rogan 1:36:42 It's a very rare thing. It's a very beautiful thing. But I think, I think it's possible for a lot more people to never f-

Gary Sinise 1:36:50 Yeah

Joe Rogan 1:36:50 ... experience it, and I, I really wish there was more things like that out there and more, uh, just some guidance, some direction, just p- push people in certain directions. Because there's so many people out there that just, they just get stagnant, and they don't know what to do, and then they spend all their time partying and hanging out with their friends, and they never, they never find it.

Gary Sinise 1:37:13 You know what's-

Joe Rogan 1:37:13 They never find it

Gary Sinise 1:37:13 ... you know what's heartening? I've been to all the, um, all the mil- military academies. I, I played concerts for the kids. You know, these students as cadets or, uh, midshipmen, wh- wh- whoever. I've been on all the, all the academies. Uh, and it's, it's, it's very heartening and hopeful when you meet a lot of these youngsters who are going to West Point, who are going to Annapolis, who are going to the Air Force Academy, Merchant Marine Academy, Coast Guard. I've been to all of them, and every time I come away just feeling, "Wow, that, there's an impressive group of young people out there." And I, I'm sure it's not only at the military academies, but that These are, these are folks that knew what they wanted to do coming out of high school, right? They wanted to go into an academy. They wanted to be a part of that service. They know that when they come out of the academies, they owe the country, you know, they owe the country four years. And some of them stay in the service for, make it a career, and go on and become great, great leaders, some of our great leaders. And some of them, you know, just, they get out after, after four years or, or whatever and move on to something else, but they've got such a substantial background by going to the academies, which are very, very impressive. And, uh, that, that, that gives me a lot of hope. It does give me a lot of hope. And at the Gary Sinise Foundation too, we're, we're trying to, um, you know, one of my objectives there is to, is to nourish and nurture a new

Gary Sinise 1:38:43 generation of grateful Americans, and to teach them about service and volunteerism and what that can do for you as a person. You know, gives life great purpose when you reach out and touch somebody and lift them up and help them. That's what I've tried to do at the foundation and, and just in, in many decades of life, just trying to give back to people that I feel, you know, that, that are deserving of that. And so we take, um... One of the, you know, one of, uh, the programs that we had, uh, at the foundation's called Soaring Valor. We've taken hundreds of World War II veterans down to the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. That's where our National World War II Museum is. Very, very impressive. Very special. I- anybody who's going to New Orleans, I always tell them to go to the National World War II Mu- Museum. Well, we've sponsored probably 15, 1600, uh, World War II veterans, along with American Airlines, who provides all the travel for us. We have a great partnership with them. And they really are dedicated to our veterans. We put them on, we did 33 charter airplane trips with World War II veterans. We put them on the airplanes, and then I wanted to add a component where we pair them up with high school kids.

Joe Rogan 1:40:04 Oh.

Gary Sinise 1:40:04 So if you're a 16-year-old kid, you meet Mr. Johnson, and he, he served at Iwo Jima. You're gonna be a travel buddy with Mr. Johnson for the next three days.

Joe Rogan 1:40:15 Wow.

Gary Sinise 1:40:15 We're gonna take you down, and you're, you're gonna spend time with him. That is a life-changing experience for a lot of these kids. And we've sent, you know, like I said, for 10 years, we, we sent World War II veterans and students down to the National World War II Museum. Now we send them, uh, we send them to Ground Zero in, in New York, uh, to the Trade Center. We send them, uh, to the Pentagon to learn about what happened at the Pentagon. We send them to Shanksville, Pennsylvania. We send them to the Medal of Honor Museum in Te- in Texas, in Arlington. Uh, so we want, we want to teach them about service and volunteerism and what it takes to keep us free, so they come a- come away from those places feeling like, "Gosh, why didn't I know really that much about what happened on September 11th?" 'Cause they're not getting, they're not learning about that significant event and how that changed the landscape for so many of us. Because, you know, many of them, I, I mean, they weren't born then. So now it's up to us to kind of educate, and, uh, we wanna be a part of, you know, just nourishing. This is a good country. There's a lot to be thankful for, for living in this country. And we want, we wanna look at that, and we wanna, we wanna tell this younger generation, "This is not a bad place. This is a g- this is a good place. We're lucky." Go, go to some places that aren't, aren't so good, you'll have a different, uh, opinion and a different perspective on it.

Joe Rogan 1:41:41 Yeah, absolutely. Look, it's not perfect. People aren't perfect. It's not possible to have a perfect country.

Gary Sinise 1:41:46 Why w- yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:41:47 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 1:41:47 Why would we expect that? It's-

Joe Rogan 1:41:49 But I think that there's something about the incredibly challenging environment of the military that is an amazing vehicle for developing young people. And it, because I think young people in particular need to be challenged so that they understand their potential. And there's a l- a lot that comes out of that, where these guys, they come out and they can do things that other people can't do, and one of the reasons why is 'cause they learn.

Gary Sinise 1:42:12 I've met, I've met some impressive peop-

Joe Rogan 1:42:13 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 1:42:14 Uh, one quick story. Landing on the Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier in the Per- Persian Gulf, right? I'm on a-

Joe Rogan 1:42:20 Whoa.

Gary Sinise 1:42:20 I'm on one of my tours. I'm going here and going there. I land on this carrier, and I-

Joe Rogan 1:42:24 In a helicopter?

Gary Sinise 1:42:25 Uh, no, it was a COD. It was like a 20-person airplane. Lands on the, lands on the deck. Uh-

Joe Rogan 1:42:31 Wow.

Gary Sinise 1:42:32 Yeah, it lands on the deck. I get out. Uh, this is my first, uh, first Afghanistan trip, 2006. And I go up on the bridge, and they're showing me around, and, uh, I look over, and s- you know, they got the big wheel steering the boat, right? This is the, the 5,000 people on this aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf. And steering the boat, there's this young guy, and I walk up to him and I said, "How old are you?" And he said, "19, sir."

Joe Rogan 1:43:04 Whew.

Gary Sinise 1:43:06 And I said, "You're, you're 19?"

Joe Rogan 1:43:08 And you're driving this thing? [laughs]

Gary Sinise 1:43:09 And you're driving this boat? Are you kid- What are your buddies doing back home right now while you're out in the Persian Gulf driving this boat around? [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:43:18 Driving a 5,000-person boat.

Gary Sinise 1:43:21 Yeah. Gi- There, there's a lot of hardware there. [laughs] You know?

Joe Rogan 1:43:23 Holy shit.

Gary Sinise 1:43:25 And so you, you have to imagine, like, what caliber of person was that, that he impressed the leaders so much on the ship that they would entrust him to take that job and, and do that job. It was, it was impressive. It was very, very impressive. And I've met so many, so many people like that who are very, very impressive. I've been to the war zones, I've been to the hospitals. You know, I've been on military bases all over the world. I've done hundreds of shows, uh, you know, concerts and whatnot, and met some of the most extraordinary people we have serve in our country. And I just feel blessed and fortunate and lucky that we have people like that-

Joe Rogan 1:44:04 Yeah

Gary Sinise 1:44:04 ... you know, that wanna do that kind of work. I, I wonder, I often wonder what happened to that 19-year-old. Did he stay in? Did... You know, what, what happened to him? But for that moment in time, he can always look back and say, "I got to steer the Ronald Reagan around the Persian Gulf," at least for that moment.

Joe Rogan 1:44:21 That's incredible. 'Cause I mean, think of the average 19-year-old today. What the fuck are they doing- [laughs]

Gary Sinise 1:44:26 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:44:26 ... in comparison to that guy? [laughs]

Gary Sinise 1:44:29 [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:44:30 I mean, that is a insanely difficult thing to just, to be responsible for.

Gary Sinise 1:44:36 Yeah. Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:44:37 You're responsible for 5,000 people on a boat-

Gary Sinise 1:44:41 Yeah

Joe Rogan 1:44:41 ... that you can land a plane on.

Gary Sinise 1:44:43 Yeah. You wonder if they said, "Just hold it here and go straight."

Joe Rogan 1:44:46 [laughs]

Gary Sinise 1:44:46 You know, "Don't turn."

Joe Rogan 1:44:48 I mean, how long do you have to train? It's like-

Gary Sinise 1:44:50 Yeah

Joe Rogan 1:44:50 ... that seems crazy, that you could be 19 and have already trained your way to the position where they let you steer that thing. That-

Gary Sinise 1:44:55 Oh, it-

Joe Rogan 1:44:55 That's an extraordinary person

Gary Sinise 1:44:57 ... uh, standing on the deck of a carrier while the airplanes are coming in and going out, going out, is so impressive. The, the operation is awesome. Watching our people in a very dangerous situation on the aircraft carrier.

Joe Rogan 1:45:11 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 1:45:11 You know, uh, just doing their thing, getting the planes ready to take off, to launch, to catapult off, off the deck, or to land. And that's a dangerous job out there, and I got to stand there and watch these, these people work. It was very, very impressive.

Joe Rogan 1:45:26 Incredibly dangerous job, incredible responsibility. And the work ethic that you have to have to be a part of that, that is just, uh, in the culture.

Gary Sinise 1:45:35 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:45:35 It's just like, this is what it is. That makes extraordinary people. And I think-

Gary Sinise 1:45:40 Yeah

Joe Rogan 1:45:40 ... extraordinary people gravitate towards those kind of challenges, but going through those kind of challenges makes extraordinary people.

Gary Sinise 1:45:47 You can develop into that.

Joe Rogan 1:45:48 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 1:45:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:45:48 And I just don't think they, that resource is used enough or gets enough credit. I mean, it's one of the things my friend Evan from Black Rifle Coffee really emphasizes, is that they hire veterans, they use veterans. They, they, they give to veterans. They, they give to a bunch of different veteran causes and organizations, first responders. They-

Gary Sinise 1:46:07 Yep

Joe Rogan 1:46:07 ... they're involved in a lot of different things, just to, like, sort of emphasize that, to let people know that we care and we understand and we, we support you.

Gary Sinise 1:46:17 And there's, are some great programs out there. And transitioning from the military, if you've been in the military for a long time and you're used to that lifestyle and all of that-

Joe Rogan 1:46:26 Right

Gary Sinise 1:46:26 ... transitioning out of the military into the civilian sector and kind of just, uh, you know, figuring that out, that can be challenging for folks.

Joe Rogan 1:46:34 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 1:46:34 And there are some great programs out there that are hel- helping our veterans kind of navigate that transition from, you know, 20, 30 years in the military to something new.

Joe Rogan 1:46:43 Right.

Gary Sinise 1:46:44 Uh, we want them to be okay. You know, we're, we're, we're grateful out there, and we want them, want them to know that we are, and we want them to be okay.

Joe Rogan 1:46:50 Well, I'm really glad that you do what you do, 'cause it, and, and you, that you have this message and you continue to spread this message on all these different interviews that you do, because so many people just kind of don't appreciate it or understand it. And, um, I think it's just, it, it, it, without it, we're fucked. Like, without those people, they're, like, some of the best people that we have, best young people that we have in this country.

Gary Sinise 1:47:14 We need a strong service.

Joe Rogan 1:47:16 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 1:47:16 We, we do. We are, uh, the m- m- where would we be if we, if we didn't have the American military? Where would the world be without that? Think about it, you know. There's a natural disaster or something like that, uh, you know, we send aircraft carriers, we send ships. You know, we, we, we don't just fight wars. Uh-

Joe Rogan 1:47:36 Right, right

Gary Sinise 1:47:36 ... we, we do a lot of things, uh, that the military is very highly qualified and capable of doing.

Joe Rogan 1:47:42 Well, this is also one of the reasons why people get so upset when the military's used in what people consider to be an unjust way, like, like Vietnam. I mean, that's why there was such a giant shift between, you know, 1945 and then the 1960s in, in-

Gary Sinise 1:47:57 Yeah

Joe Rogan 1:47:58 ... Vietnam. It's like 20 years later, you have this complete polar opposite reaction to military.

Gary Sinise 1:48:05 I think, I think we learned some hard lessons from what happened to our veterans when they came home from Vietnam. That's why there's thousands and thousands of nonprofits that have popped up after September 11th and our deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Uh, I think they w- they, like me, they were motivated to ensure that what happened to our current day service members deploying to those war zones would not happen like what happened to our Vietnam veterans when they came home.

Joe Rogan 1:48:36 Um, do you know Marcus Luttrell?

Gary Sinise 1:48:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:48:39 Yeah. Marcus is a friend of mine, and we, we're actually texting today about some stuff and-

Gary Sinise 1:48:43 Oh, give him my best, please

Joe Rogan 1:48:44 ... he, he's involved in this ibogaine initiative that they're pushing through-

Gary Sinise 1:48:48 Yeah

Joe Rogan 1:48:48 ... in, with Rick Perry and Bryan Hubbard, and it's a, a really amazing thing. And, and this is one of the things that I went to the White House to talk to Trump about, about pushing it through, about getting that. And, and there's so many veterans that have had that experience, and it's helped them w- just sort of reenter society, helped them deal with their demons, helped them overcome alcoholism and addiction to pills.

Gary Sinise 1:49:13 I know some, some people that's been very helpful f- for them, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:49:17 Yeah. And, um, it's, uh, it, that I think is, uh, it gives me a lot of hope that that's gonna be available to more people. Just I know so many people that have come back from that and had just nothing helps, nothing worked until they did that.

Gary Sinise 1:49:36 Yeah. And, and you, you have several people that are just dealing with a lot of bad stuff. You know, and then they, you know, we're, there's a very aggressive And it can never be too aggressive, I don't think, um, effort to try to address this terrible suicide pro- problem that we have-

Joe Rogan 1:49:53 Right

Gary Sinise 1:49:54 ... of course, in the services and, and in our veteran community. A lot of people are focused on that. Uh, we, we support a lot of programs at the Gary Sinise Foundation dealing with mental wellness and, uh, you know, i- initiatives. It's very, very difficult problem, though, because you have, you also have a lot of folks that won't ever reveal what's really going on.

Joe Rogan 1:50:16 Right. They think of it as a weakness.

Gary Sinise 1:50:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:50:18 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 1:50:18 They won't ev- they won't ever tell you, and that's why you hear, gosh, you know, somebody took their life, and even the wife, you know, wasn't, didn't know what was really going on.

Joe Rogan 1:50:29 Mm.

Gary Sinise 1:50:29 Or best friends didn't know or whatever. There were no signs whatsoever or something like that. So how do you combat that when somebody's dealing with something that they won't reveal or... I think, I think it's up to, uh, peer-to-peer, um, you know, support. We have to, you know, you have battle buddies in the war that you're close with. When you get home, those battle buddies, and when they're, when they're with you and they're still with you and checking on each other and all of that stuff, that can be lifesaving-

Joe Rogan 1:51:02 Yes

Gary Sinise 1:51:02 ... you know, those battle buddies.

Joe Rogan 1:51:04 Absolutely.

Gary Sinise 1:51:05 And I know a lot of folks that are constantly checking on their buddies to make sure they're okay and getting through those things.

Joe Rogan 1:51:09 That's one of the things Marcus does.

Gary Sinise 1:51:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:51:11 He sent me a text today, just checks in on you.

Gary Sinise 1:51:13 Yeah. How are you doing, okay?

Joe Rogan 1:51:14 Have a good week. Checking in on you. Have a good week.

Gary Sinise 1:51:16 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:51:17 It's beautiful. It's nice, 'cause it's real.

Gary Sinise 1:51:19 I, I-

Joe Rogan 1:51:20 You know? And-

Gary Sinise 1:51:20 I'm always glad when somebody checks on me. [laughs]

Joe Rogan 1:51:22 Yeah. It's nice.

Gary Sinise 1:51:23 That's for sure.

Joe Rogan 1:51:23 It's never bad. It's nice. And, um, I think that, uh, the culture of, uh, for lack of a better term, you know, manhood, that men think that it's better to be stoic and to try to, like, keep it all to yourself and just deal with it and... Seek help. Seek help.

Gary Sinise 1:51:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:51:43 Talk to people. Let people know that you're struggling.

Gary Sinise 1:51:45 Tell your story.

Joe Rogan 1:51:45 Yeah, because we all have had someone who we didn't know was struggling, who took their life.

Gary Sinise 1:51:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:51:51 And it leaves you with this horrible feeling that I coulda done something, and you, you don't know when, when, when do you act? When do you say something? When do you leave it alone? What do you say? You know, how do you, do you fuck it up worse by talking to someone about it? Do you make them think about it more? Is, are you helping them by telling them you love them? And you don't know. You know, like, when someone does take their own life and you feel, that's, is a ter- it's a terrible feeling to feel like you coulda done something.

Gary Sinise 1:52:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:52:21 That if I had to just talk to them, if I had been there, I think I coulda prevented it.

Gary Sinise 1:52:26 Many, yeah, many feel like that and it, but you don't know.

Joe Rogan 1:52:30 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 1:52:30 You don't know if you could have, you know? It's a, it, but if we're proactive, you know, that's, that's the thing, proactive with trying to make sure that somebody knows that there are services out there.

Joe Rogan 1:52:43 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 1:52:43 Uh, we're, we're dealing with people all the th- uh, time at the Gary Sinise Foundation who are going through difficult things, and we have multiple services, uh, that we provide. A- or, and if we don't do it at the Gary Sinise Foundation, we can provide, um, information about other organizations that are very deeply committed, uh, to ensuring that, uh, you know, our service members that might be dealing with something, uh, difficult know that there's a place for them to turn. We don't, we don't want those sad stories.

Joe Rogan 1:53:13 Yeah, of course.

Gary Sinise 1:53:13 And we have to be proactive in, in what we do, you know? And so that's one of the things that I can do. You know, I can talk about things to, and on radio and television and podcasts-

Joe Rogan 1:53:24 Yeah

Gary Sinise 1:53:25 ... and, um, you know, all of that, let people know that there are services out there that, that can be provided. And, uh, I, you know, I, I hope that by doing that, that's a way that I can serve the community just by passing on information and letting people know that they are cared for, they're appreciated, and we don't want them to, to struggle by themselves. We, they're not alone in this whole deal.

Joe Rogan 1:53:48 No, m- no, no question it's a service, and no question it helps people, because just having people know that someone cares is a lot. It means a lot.

Gary Sinise 1:53:58 One of our great programs at the foundation is for, uh, the families of our fallen, and there are thousands of these families, thousands of children who've lost a mom or dad in military service. And we have some great programs at the Gary Sinise Foundation. One of those programs is called Snowball Express, and we will take, we're about to take over 1,000 kids next month, all expense paid, paid to Disney World, and we've been doing this for years. We, and we did it at, in Orland- uh, in Anaheim at Disneyland. Then we moved the event, um, because American Airlines is a big travel sponsor of the event, our presenting sponsor, and we, we moved it to their hub in Dallas. And then in 2018, we brought Snowball into the Gary Sinise Foundation as a program of the foundation. I have a great relationship with Disney World and Disney because of movies and narrations that I do for them. And so all of a sudden we started bringing all these kids to Disney World, and when you bring 1,000 kids together that are all going through the same thing, I lost my dad, I lost my mom, when those kids get together and they engage in that community and they see that there, there's a big community out there of kids that are all going through the same kinda thing, they're, they may cry a little bit, of course, you know, missing their mom and dad, but they're hugging each other and they're bonding with other people that are going through the same thing. It is profoundly impactful for these families, and we do it for families of fallen first responders too, firefighters, police officers that are lost in the line of duty and, and leave children behind. And we bring them to Disney and do the same thing for them. That's one of our, one of our big programs. Uh, of course it's expensive to take these kids to Disney World and get the hotel, and we take over an entire hotel, and we've got hundreds of volunteers. It's a big, it's a big thing. But when you see what happens to these kids, and they can feel forgotten, right? They, I mean- You know, maybe you've got a child whose dad or mom committed suicide, and they're with a bunch of other kids who dad or mom got killed in combat or something like that, and you're the, you're the suicide kid. Well, you're worthy of our attention, uh, because y- your parent served our country and, and they, they had fatigue. Something happened to them, and they were a casualty of war.

Joe Rogan 1:56:29 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 1:56:30 And so we want these kids to know that, uh, that we don't forget about them, and this program has helped a lot of children, a lot of families go through a lot of... who are going through a lot of difficult things. And I show up, and I play. My band plays for, for the kids every year. I've been doing it 20 years now, and it's a, it's a big rewarding thing to be able to take these, these families. And again, we have hundreds of volunteers, corporate sponsors who volunteer and bring their, you know, bring their materials and everything. A lot of big sponsors for this event. It's, it's very, it's, it's very rewarding to see what people can do when they just care, and they just wanna do something to help somebody.

Joe Rogan 1:57:11 That's beautiful. That really is. I, I, I think a lot of people are unaware of the suicide crisis, of how many veterans have taken their own lives. And I, I, I think, what is the statistic about, uh, veterans versus the amount of people that died in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Gary Sinise 1:57:30 It's more.

Joe Rogan 1:57:30 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 1:57:31 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:57:31 It's quite a bit more, I think.

Gary Sinise 1:57:32 I don't know the number, but it's, it, it, it's a lot more.

Joe Rogan 1:57:35 Jamie, I'll put it into Perplexity and find-

Gary Sinise 1:57:37 You can, you can find that

Joe Rogan 1:57:37 ... what the number is, but it's, it i- it is shocking when people hear about it.

Gary Sinise 1:57:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:57:42 It just, obviously something's going on. Obviously, these people aren't getting the help they need, and obviously something's not being addressed, and they have been forced to endure something that most people couldn't even imagine, which is combat duty.

Gary Sinise 1:57:59 It's tough.

Joe Rogan 1:57:59 Yeah. It's unbelievably tough, and very few people can get through that unscathed. And-

Gary Sinise 1:58:04 But, but we can make a difference, you know?

Joe Rogan 1:58:07 Absolutely. So here it is.

Gary Sinise 1:58:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:58:08 US troops and veterans comparison is roughly 4:1.

Gary Sinise 1:58:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:58:12 Wow. So University Costs of War study estimated that 30,177 deaths by suicide among post-9/11 service members and veterans versus 7,057 US military deaths in post-9/11 war operations. 4.3 times as many.

Gary Sinise 1:58:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:58:33 Holy shit.

Gary Sinise 1:58:35 It's tough. They're, they're all casualties of war.

Joe Rogan 1:58:37 100%.

Gary Sinise 1:58:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:58:39 Yeah. Yeah, 100%. And that's, uh, that's the right way to look at it. You know, Gary, you're an awesome guy, man. You really are. Just what-

Gary Sinise 1:58:47 I, I appreciate that. Thank you

Joe Rogan 1:58:48 ... the way you, uh, are able to dedicate your life like that to service is, like, really incredible. Is that the book?

Speaker 1:58:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:58:57 Great.

Gary Sinise 1:58:58 Oh, yeah. Here. Here you go, bud.

Joe Rogan 1:59:02 Great.

Gary Sinise 1:59:03 Thank you.

Joe Rogan 1:59:03 Graceful Warrior, Gary Sinise. Um, it's really inspiring, man. Um, I hope people go out and buy your book 'cause you're awesome.

Gary Sinise 1:59:11 Yeah, that-

Joe Rogan 1:59:11 Really, I just, I-

Gary Sinise 1:59:12 That, that book-

Joe Rogan 1:59:12 You're, you're a real genuinely good person, and that's a, a beautiful thing to experience. Yeah.

Gary Sinise 1:59:18 The book is about my son, and we, you know... I, I, I've been through a lot with families who have lost loved ones and that are going through grief, and I've learned a lot from them, uh, over the years, just seeing how they persevere through great challenge. And we hit, we had our own challenge there with, with our son. He was diagnosed with a very rare cancer called chordoma in 2018. He worked for the Gary Sinise Foundation, was a, just a, a great spirit, a wonderful guy. He was a great musician. There are albums of his music, a Resurrection and Revival series of three records of music that he kinda wrote and tucked away in his files, and I discovered it. We lost Mac on January 5th, uh, 2024 after a five-and-a-half year battle with this devastating rare cancer. And, uh, after he died, I started dis- discover all this music that he wrote, and so we... He had done an album in the final years of his life. Fi- the last year of his life was 2023. He went to work on an album, uh, because he wanted to finish a piece of music he wrote in college and never finished, and he finished it and created an entire album of music. And, uh, then I found, I started going through his laptop and his iPad and, and I started to find all these mu- all these pieces that he wrote, and beautiful, beautiful music. And I, I brought together all his collaborators who worked on the first album with him, and we did a second album, Resurrection and Revival Part 2, and then I found more music in 2025, and we did Resurrection and Revival Part 3. And I tell the story of, of that. You know, going through loss and grief, and the loss of a child is, you know, like, it's the hardest, hardest thing to lose a, a son, and for my daughters to lose their brother like that. And so, uh, but the way he fought and with such grace and courage, uh, was inspiring, and I learned a lot from, from him. After he died, I just started putting pen to paper and writing some things, and then it turned into this book, Graceful Warrior: The True Story of a Son, a Father, and a Family Who Carried Each Other Through. And this is a, it's a family story. As you can imagine, it's a very personal book Um, it's not a book about cancer, fighting cancer, as much as it is about persevering through great challenge. And I, like I said, I've seen hundreds, if not thousands of families go through a lot of different difficult, difficult things in their lives, uh, in military service. Wounded folks that are so banged up that they're never gonna recover in, in, you know, the way they want, and their family is just courageously persevering through each day, getting them through the next day, and the next day after that. And they've inspired me so much over the years that I know that in some ways I was being prepared for what we would face in 2018 when, when we found out our son had this, this orange-sized tumor on his tailbone that was really painful for him. And we didn't know why all, he was experiencing all these, this pain. He was a great drummer, and he was drumming, but he w- he was on tour after college, and he was having all this pain just drumming. He finally, we finally sent him to my wife's spine surgeon. She had had multiple spine surgeries. And I asked her, uh, her spine surgeon to look at Mac. He put him in the CT scanner and saw this giant tumor on his tailbone. And that was tough. That, uh, that was in August of 2018. By September of 2018, he was having that tumor taken out. And in May of 2019, we found out the cancer came back, and it started to spread. And that, you know, this is an incurable, rare cancer. Maybe only 90 people per year are diagnosed with metastatic chordoma. You've never heard of it.

Joe Rogan 2:03:59 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 2:03:59 I, I'm sure you haven't heard of it. Most people haven't. It's very, very rare. Maybe 300 cases per year in the US. And that began our journey of chemo, and radiation, and multiple surgeries, and Mac going through the most challenging time of his life. He was disabled by cancer, couldn't write music anymore, or couldn't play music anymore. But what was miraculous about it is what he did in the final years of his, uh, final year, 2023, of his life, where he created this album of beautiful music called Resurrection and Revival. And he wanted to make some vinyls. And he said, "Dad, I wanna give these vinyls to people, and if we ever sold any, I want the proceeds to go to the Gary Sinise Foundation to help our mission." He loved the foundation, loved the mission. And, uh, we continue to sell those vinyls at garysinisefoundation.org. And now the book comes out, uh, November 10th. Uh, it, it's, uh... It was two years writing this book, and as you can imagine, it was a, it was a, it was a hard one to write, but, but a good healing one to write for me to be able to focus on it, while at the same time I was putting the music together and producing the record. So the past two years have been spent on that. Um, it, we're almost, we're almost to the third anni- anniversary of losing him. It was tough. But-

Joe Rogan 2:05:32 Yeah

Gary Sinise 2:05:32 ... I, I want people to know it's not a book about cancer in, in as much as it's a pers- about, uh, uh, about hope and courage. And Graceful Warrior comes from an interview I did with somebody who was asking me about him, and that's how I described him. He never gave, gave up the fight. He wanted to keep going. Uh, you know, his sisters, the family rallied around him. We pulled each other through the most difficult thing. And he was, he fought it with such grace and courage, you know, just like I describe it. Remember the movie N- 1917?

Joe Rogan 2:06:07 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 2:06:08 The World War I movie.

Joe Rogan 2:06:09 Yeah.

Gary Sinise 2:06:09 Remember? At the, the, at the end, they, the two guys go on a mission. They've got to warn the, the battalion not to attack the Germans because it's a trap. And they go, they, one of them gets killed, and the other one gets to the trenches where the battalion is just about to come out and attack the Germans, and the trenches are so clogged up with people that he can't get through the trench to go down here and warn everybody. So what does he do? He jumps out of the trench, and the bombs are raining down, and he's running through the bombs, and he's getting knocked down by the bombs, and he keeps getting up, and he won't quit until he gets there. And I describe Mac as, as that guy running through the bombs, getting knocked down and getting back up. He just kept getting back up as much as he could. Even though he was paralyzed from the chest down, his spirit was soaring, and it was beautiful to witness. And I, I feel so privileged as a... I mean, you've got kids. Just imagine. I, I feel so privileged to, to have had Mac in my life for 33 years. We all do at our, uh, we all do in our house. And, and November 10th, the day the book comes out, would, would have been Mac's 36th birthday. So it's a... I'm, I'm just talking about this book right now and, and, you know, trying to raise awareness. I think, uh, you know, I got a lot of, I wrote a story six month- uh, six weeks after he died and posted it on the Gary Sinise Foundation website, and I got so many wonderful messages from people, fathers, who may have lost a child themselves and have, like our service members, kept that stuff in. And I remember reading some of these messages from fathers who read the story and said, "You know, reading this story is making me want to share what's going on inside me that I haven't talked about. I thought I would just push this grief away and keep it, keep it away and try to move on." And so I was encouraged by that, and I think that's one of the reasons, not only for writing it for Mac and writing it for the family, but for any family out there who may be going through something tough, who wants, you know, maybe some encouragement, maybe some, you know, some, just some, to find some strength and courage, you know, as they go through their own challenges, in how we faced it and persevered through it. The grief will never go away, right? The h- the hole is always there. But you can learn to manage it, manage it a little better as time goes on. And certainly, if you feel like sharing your story is gonna help somebody else, and that's something I, I'm always talking to our veterans about, right? Share your story. Tell your story. Get that stuff out. Talk about it. It's gonna be healing to not only you, but to somebody else who might hear something you said and find some inspiration and courage in that. Uh, if sharing this story can do that for somebody, I know that Mac is, is gonna be smiling about that. And, uh, go, go for it, Dad. Do that.

Joe Rogan 2:09:25 I'm sure it certainly will help, let everybody know. Graceful Warrior, this is a, is there an audio version of it?

Gary Sinise 2:09:32 Yeah, yeah. It comes out same day.

Joe Rogan 2:09:34 Did you read it?

Gary Sinise 2:09:35 I did the reading, yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:09:36 Yeah, I figured. Obviously, yeah.

Gary Sinise 2:09:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:09:38 Thank you very much, man. It was a pleasure to meet you.

Gary Sinise 2:09:40 Thanks.

Joe Rogan 2:09:40 I really, I really enjoyed this, and good luck with this book.

Gary Sinise 2:09:42 Thank you, Joe.

Joe Rogan 2:09:43 And everything else.

Gary Sinise 2:09:44 Thanks for having me.

Joe Rogan 2:09:45 Bye. [upbeat music]