Scott Sigler

00:03Hello my friends. We're off and running again. This episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast is brought to you by audible.com. If you go to audible.com/joe, you can save yourself some money by getting a free audio book. And you can also, on top of that, as if that wasn't cool enough, you also get three 30 rather 30 days free Audible service. Audible is a really a fantastic um service of a fantastic thing to have if you're a commuter, if you're stuck on a plane, if you're on the bicycle just staring at a stupid life cycle thing telling you you're not going fast enough. Books on tape are an amazing way to to pass time. And Scott Sigler's with us today. We're going to get into that a little bit later cuz my man has made a big mark doing exactly that, releasing his own books on tape, you audible.com/go. Joe, what? What's my name? My name is Go. His books on here are awesome. Yeah. And

01:08it's Nocturnal's on there. Yeah. Right there. Bam. Are all your books on there? Uh no, no, they're not all on there. Just Nocturnal? Uh Infected's on there, Contagious is on there. Um And I sense a trend. Blood is red. Yeah. Infectious, Contagious. We got audible.com/joe. Go there, get a free audio book. There's more than 100,000 titles to choose from. It's an awesome service. And if you have Whisper Sync, Whisper Sync is an app that is amazing. What it does is you can listen to the the audio book, then you can read it. You can read the book. Like it works with the Amazon Kindle Fire HD. You read it and when you when you shut it off, when you shut it down, it picks up in your car or in your on your smartphone exactly where you left off the book reading it. It's amazing. The audio accompaniment syncs up to what you're reading. So it's a really, really cool service. audible.com/joe.

02:09We're also brought to you by Hover. Hover is a domain name company that's owned by the same people that own Ting, our good friends who provide the ethical cell phone service. And Hover takes that same approach to domain name registration. If you go to hover.com/rogan, you can get 10% off your domain name registrations. It's a very cool company. The service is very fair. They have free who is privacy, which usually have to pay for on on other on other services. Very, very intuitive. I've registered websites there myself. It's it's an excellent place to register your websites. And they're a sponsor of the show. They support the show. So we love them. hover.com/rogan. Go there and get yourself 10% off your domain name registrations. This Thursday night there is a show at the American Comedy Company in San Diego, California. If you're in that area, it's going to be fun. It's going

03:09to be Brian Redban, little buddy Brian. Tony Hinchcliffe is there, of course. Hilarious Tony Hinchcliffe, one of the best up and coming guys today. Really good writer, very funny kid. Jason Tibbs, who's awesome, of course. You've heard him on our podcast. He's been on many of the Ice House Chronicles, very funny guy, real veteran of comedy. Billy Bonnell, another very funny He's so funny, man. That dude's going to blow up. That guy in 5 years, huge. And Yoshi, who's awesome as well. So that's this Thursday night at the American Comedy Company. There's still a few tickets left, so jump on that Tonight tomorrow night, Wednesday night, I'm at the Ice House with Ari Shaffir and Ian Edwards. I was going to do one of those crazy shows where I bring a lot of people on, but I'm trying to work out all all this new so we're both we're all three of us going to do longer

03:54sets. Ian Edwards, if you've never seen him, really, really funny guy. And Ari, of course, is awesome. So that's Wednesday night at the Ice House. We're also brought to you by Onnit, onnit.com, which is you know what the it is. Go there and buy some weapons. Yeah. People say we're we're selling weapons. We're not. We're selling fitness equipment. Some of the best way to get functional strength is with something called a steel mace. And yes, if you wanted to box someone in the head with it, it would be a good thing to box someone in the head with, but that's not what it's for. What it's for, you is functional strength. What we concentrate on on Onnit is things that improve your performance, whether it's your mental performance with nootropics or your mood through New Mood or your your ability to perform at high levels of energy for longer periods of time with Shroom Tech. What we're

04:45just trying to do is improve the way your body functions, improve your fitness, your your health and your fitness. And that's what these mace bells are about. They're these gigantic What a mace ball looks like, it looks like something that you would see in like a Gladiator movie. Or a video game as your first weapon. Yeah, it's like it's a it's a a cannonball on the end of a long steel pipe. And you you swing it around and do all these different exercises with it. And in controlling something like that, it's surprisingly hard, especially when you grip it like really low on the end of the pole cuz you have all this leverage working against you. And what it does is it gives you real functional strength. We have 10 lb ones and that seems like, "Oh my god, what? 10 lb? That's nothing." Trust me, try it. It's it's such a weird workout. Club bells the same way. We

05:34have these steel clubs. I use a 15 lb one and a 25 lb one and they're hard. It's hard to do with like a really light amount of weight. It's all functional like like kettle bells, like battle ropes. Go to onnit.com, check out all our and if you use the code name Rogan, you will save 10% off any and all supplements. All right, freaks. We got Scott Sigler in the house. We're going to get jiggy with it. We got a lot of to talk about. We're going to talk about some scary too. I'm scared. Joe Rogan all night check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, JOE ROGAN PODCAST BY NIGHT. ALL DAY. Powerful author Scott Sigler. You know you're a bad when you look at the back of your book and it says a worthy successor to Michael Crichton. It's pretty sweet. That's some powerful praise right there. even say that myself. I know, isn't it awesome when someone else says something

06:29super cool about it? You're like, "Ooh, look at that." Yeah. Yeah, that's that's pretty badass, dude. And you said Nocturnal's being turned into a TV show right now. Yeah, you're in the process of creating They're working on it right now, yeah. How much control do you have as a writer when that happens? I've been shocked by it. Normally you have very little or no control at all. And at a couple points in my career I've been very lucky to work with people who are like, "Let's get this as close to the vision you want as possible." And this is the guy who produced Hellboy and Hellboy 2 and The Watchmen's, named Lloyd Levin. And Lloyd has been they've kept me involved at all phases of this. Right now they're finishing up the pilot script for it. So I don't write the pilot script, but the the guys who who are writing it kind of send me the plot steps. Here's

07:16what we want the episode to be like. Does that sort of match what you're looking at? And then cuz I'm writing the Bible for it. So we're going to look at the 12 episode arc of the first season and make sure everything fits in so we don't have any crazy ending that doesn't make any sense. And then I get to give them feedback, "Well, you could try these things." And it's very collaborative, so That's amazing. That's a beautiful thing to hear. I love when you hear that. It's one of the most frustrating things to listen to when you hear someone who had a vision and they they tried to express his vision to these other people that had the money and the people with the money are like, "No, no, no, no, no, we got this. We're going to figure We need a girl. You you need a this. You need a We need add a black guy." That's the way it usually works though. I mean, the guys who can

07:54raise $20 get to kind of call the shots Yeah, I've seen it. It's it's a it's a weird thing to say. I I've told this story before. There was a there was a guy named Dave. I don't I don't remember his last name. I apologize, but he was a really funny guy. And he's a really funny actor. He's been in a bunch of movies. Like a real over the top hilarious guy. Well, he got his first starring role in a movie and I had a very small part in this movie. And I watched all these people in suits. This man had cufflinks on, like beautiful like expensive cufflinks. A perfectly tailored expensive suit, pinstriped, a fat Rolex with diamonds on it. I mean, this guy was loaded, right? And he's doing like see he's like he's giving this guy like line reads, telling him how to how he should do it like, "I want you to COME IN LIKE, WHOA, WHOA." LIKE THE THE GUY THINKS he's funny. Like he's actually he's got so

08:52much power and so much money that he's he literally is telling the comedian how to be funny. And it was it was a horrific thing to watch. It was the the the movie was called Frank McClusky CI or something like that. It was about a terrible terrible and they gutted it. They they had two ideas. They had one that was going to be a PG 13 and one was going to be PG or one was going to be R. When they went whatever they went less, it went it was it was all toilet jokes. Like you you cut them out, you have nothing. It was all it was ridiculous. you stop the people who are good at what they what they do from doing what they do and you hired them for that purpose in the first place. It's kind of counterintuitive. Well, you got to think a guy who is such a bad that he did The Watchmen. If he produced The Watchmen, that guy knows what he's doing. he's he's brilliant. I mean, it's been

09:38great. And I love that movie. It was it was an excellent movie and great source material to start with, but I mean, I'm a huge fan of Hellboy. When this when this popped up, I mean, I watched Hellboy and I'm like cuz I my stuff's super hard science based. We try to make all the bad things plausible. So when you get to the nasty bits and the blood's flying, you're fully bought in. You're like, I know how I I know how this works. I learned about this in science class. Like that. And you go watch Hellboy, which is a little bit more supernatural, but the creature effects and the way everything was shot and it was just one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen to look up on the screen. And now that guy is interested in turning this. It's like, it could not wish for anything closer more closely matched. That's got to be an amazing feeling. What a what a what a perfect

10:18combination. Yeah. The universe is probably about to send an asteroid our way. Things are going too well. fault. Things are going too well. You're all going TO DIE AND IT'S MY FAULT. SORRY. YEAH, that that must be very comforting to know that you got a a guy that's willing to listen to you. Well, I had the first book Infected. That was a whirlwind cuz I started out giving all my books away as free audiobooks, recorded myself, chopped them up as podcasts, give them away as podcasts for free to build up an audience cuz I couldn't get anybody in New York to pay attention. Cuz my they don't Well, we don't know if you're horror, we don't know if you're sci-fi, we don't know if you're thriller, we don't know if you're military. All these different ass-kicking genres coming together, so I couldn't get a book deal, start giving the books away for free, build up an audience,

10:57landed a print deal with Random House for Infected. And part of that deal was immediately optioned by Rogue Pictures for a movie. And that's the last I heard of it for like 2 years. I got to go down and have a couple of meetings with with some people, but script writer, never got to meet him, never got to see the script. It immediately just kind of went off into the weeds and nothing ever came out of it. So, this is pretty exciting so far to to see things progressing. Well, that's amazing, man. That's I really like I said, that's an awesome thing to hear when things are just falling into place in the proper order. Yeah. Now, when you write a book and then you're you're going to have your book turned into a television series and you're sort of giving up, you know, your ideas to other people. What How does that feel? Is that a strange feeling? Like what is what is that like?

11:44Well, this is the second time around for me for doing this and it is it's a little bit strange, but largely it's very exciting. Because what they do, I can't do. I'm not the guy with the Rolex who's trying to control things. The the people who can pace this out for a 1-hour television show and can kind of visualize the 12-episode arc and then get someone to pay for it and get it shot correctly and get it up on the screen. That's a skill set I don't have at all. So, it's really I'm giving up a little bit, but largely it's exciting. Like, I want to see the in this book on TV. I want to see it on the screen. So, it's it's really not that nerve-racking at all. You have no idea how it's going to turn out, but at this point in my career, I concede that. I realize that the end end product, I'm going to have a tiny amount of control on it and you're just kind of hoping for the best. You hope

12:29these guys got the You hope they've got the right vibe and they're going to want to put something as kick-ass on the screen as as is in the book. Wow, that's got to be a very, very interesting process. I wish you luck with that. That's it's going to be a fascinating journey. And tell us what is the what's the plot of the the book in a summary? Nocturnal is it it's a kind of a throwback to '80s buddy cop movies. And yeah, I grew up on you know, the the whole Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, 48 Hours, all that. Turner Yeah, Turner and Hooch. Turner and Hooch. And just just love that genre. So, this starts out as sort of a buddy cop procedural where there are Brian Klauser and Pookie Chang, two San Francisco homicide inspectors. And Brian's having these really nasty, nasty dreams about killing people. And early on in the book, they go to a site and the murder scene matches his dream

13:21exactly. And suspicion falls on him immediately that he's doing these borderline superhuman things to go shred people and body parts all over the place. And then it turns into the procedural from there. They kind of have to follow the rabbit trail. And it gets it's hard to it's hard to summarize it without giving spoiling it. But it it gets kind of paranormal, not really the supernatural. There's a rational explanation for everything, but they uncover this massive conspiracy within the police department. There's been a cover-up that's been going on for for 200 years to stop this to let this particular group of people who are sacrificing innocents, let them continue to sacrifice. Brian and Pookie got to figure out how to shut that down and stay alive. Wow. Yeah. That's some deep conspiratorial man. 200 years of people keeping their mouths shut? Yeah. Well, it's it

14:12plays off of the the police department. And one of as I was researching this, one of the phrases that came up like the the biggest gang in New York is the cops. And that goes back to when they first put in the police department and they started to get a lot of power. The organized crime and the gangs were you could get away with a lot of a lot of stuff, but at some point, if you crossed the cops, whether they be good cops or corrupt cops, you were screwed cuz you just they had a level of power you couldn't match. So, yeah, that they're the ones who've been keeping this thing quiet because there are a pattern of serial killers in San Francisco. And this other organization has a way of getting rid of the serial killers when the cops can't even find them. So, the cops are actually trying to keep keep this quiet and protect it cuz the end result is more people live

14:56and less people die, but it's completely illegal as hell. When you write a book like this, how much when you're looking at human corruption and and cop corruption, how much did you investigate? Did you go and look at actual cases to find out what's plausible or do you just go completely on your instincts and what you know just by general information? There's a significant amount of research and it but it's broad. It's not It's not deep. It's broad research. Let's look into what kind of corruption there has been and how was organized crime set up in San Francisco and learning a lot of things that way cuz fortunately at this point in the writing career, I've learned to try and stay away from diving down the rabbit hole cuz you can learn all this incredible, amazing stuff and then 1% of it actually makes it into the book. And all the time you've invested

15:41in researching that for these kind of thriller style books is time that you did you know, you get nothing out of that. Right. So, a lot of a lot of the superficial stuff, learning how you know, the mafia was run out of San Francisco and replaced by the tongs and the Russians and and a lot of other groups. All that stuff is super cool and a ton of that goes in there. And the police department was pretty helpful in in research for this. There's not a it it it's not your typical these are dirty cops and they're going to shake you down. They actually are trying to do something that benefits the greater good, but they have to totally ignore the law they're sworn to protect in order to get the end result. So, it's a bit of more fun corruption if you can imagine that. Wow, that's that's a fascinating subject and I've always been fascinated by like the idea of secret societies that have been

16:29around for 200 years doing horrible things and they've been pulling it off. And usually, you you you know, even in in jest, no one takes those things serious. If you you know, discuss Skull and Bones or something like that. Right. No, please. It's a fraternity. They goof off there. It's no big deal. all that good stuff, yeah. But the idea of it is it's a constantly fascinating source for people because every now and then you find one that's real. Every now and then you find like a Jerry Sandusky case where no one really did tell the cops over for 20 years of child molesting. It really did happen. And you're like, "Whoa, like these things can happen." Or the Miami Did you ever see Billy Corben's documentary Cocaine Cowboys? Cocaine Cowboys 1 and Cocaine Cowboys 2 are two of my favorite documentaries ever. They're amazing. And this guy Billy Corben who directed it, one of the

17:21things he pulled out was that there was 1 year where the Miami Police Department's graduating class from the police academy, half of them all of them either wound up in jail or murdered. Whoa. Yeah, for like half of them were murdered and half of them went to jail. Like the whole the whole thing was like a crazy criminal organization. Like the entire police force was massively corrupt in the cocaine era. That's when I mean, if you go to Miami, have you ever been? No, never been to Miami. It's it's avoidable. It's not It's not totally necessary. But the amount of money involved back then was just astronomical and you know, somebody's going to bite on that sooner or later. The amount of banks there is insane. The banks per capita there are much higher than anywhere else. It's because they were all laundering cocaine money. I mean, for real. I mean, that's really the root of it all. I mean,

18:15the actual impact that cocaine had on the economy of Miami is undeniable. But this guy wrote about how crazy the police corruption was back then or rather did this documentary or showed it. I mean, it's it's possible. You know, people can go off the rails. That was just a couple of decades ago, you know? Well, you've got you've got the money and you've got the power and they're isolated from a lot of the self-examination. You know, if you the Corruption at the upper or top levels of the police department can make a lot of go away, you know? That's that's the place it seems most likely to That's realistic. They're they're they have their hands on the drugs, their hands on the criminals, their hands on the money. If somebody's going to go bad, that's a good place to go. Yeah, it's fascinating when you find out that it's true though. It's like, "Wow, a corrupt cop. A bunch

19:00of corrupt cops." Like they they tried it. You almost wonder why it doesn't happen more often. It probably does. Well, probably they they're probably pretty good at like you said, it's the biggest gang around. Why would you want to piss off the gang? You know, there's probably plenty of little subtle corruption, little bit of this, little bit of that. shoot you and it's legal, I think everybody knows at the end of the day you really got to be careful around those guys cuz they can kill you and it's okay. The license to kill. And they can just say you attacked them. You know, I mean, how many I've how many times have we seen a cell phone camera of someone videotaping a cop and you know, the cop beats the out of the kid. And then you know, you hear from the the arrest papers that the police officer lied that the kid attacked him or lied that the kid spit on him or said

19:46something. There was there was a guy on Alex Jones recently, same thing. These cops just they have ultimate power. And when any of that's a bad thing. Whenever any human beings got ultimate power over over other people. And there's the the I the thing people I tend think tend to forget is there's millions of cops across the country. And and with that many people a sample set that big and those opportunities, some of those individuals a very small percentage of those individuals are going to take that opportunity. And some of them are going to be nuts like this. only hear about those guys. You don't hear about the 999,000 that are just, you know, doing their job and willing to take a bullet for you every day. But yeah, it's it happens. Yeah, and when a like a Christopher Dorner case happens, you know, and then people are going "Jesus Christ, this is this could be a cop too, that

20:30guy? How did that guy get through?" You know, or what happened to him in overseas that turned him into that guy? You know, who who knows, but how much of that plays a part of your writing? It's just sort of in a broad educational sense, like you just pay attention to all that stuff cuz there It's largely to to weave that tapestry of reality. I mean, people are there's a certain amount of things people are expecting from a fictional novel, things that feel familiar. Well, there's got to be some level of corruption. One cop's got to be a total badass. Somebody's going to rough some guys up just cuz you're familiar with it. You've seen that. So, a lot of those things go into a lot of them are invisible in the book. I tend both with the science and with culture is to put in a lot of things you're already familiar with so that you you're like, "Okay, yeah. Okay, yeah."

21:14And if you say yeah 20 or 30 times, like I know that. I know that. Then when it starts to go up to the next level or the crazy starts to happen, we've already got this rapport. I've already got a rapport with you and you're you've allowed yourself to buy in completely. So, having those elements like, you know, realistic police things, actually using the real history of the mafia in San Francisco, anything like that allows you to to fall further into the story. So, it's very important to use real stuff and and kind of create that illusion. That's awesome, man. I I've always wanted to to be a writer in some sense. I've never had the time, but I've always thought it'd be an awesome thing to like I wrote a terrible script once. You know what we can do? As I was on the way up here, we were talking about starting a a new show called "Getting My Shorts" where I talk

21:57to people who like say exactly what you said. We sit down for 10 minutes. I interview you about the the fiction stuff you like, the movie stuff you like, etc. Tell me you think this is a stupid idea. We were talking about this. And then at the end I'm like, "Okay, well, let's throw out some ideas for a story and I'll help bounce stories together." And then when we get done, you get up and walk away and then like a week later I've got like a five 10-page short story. And then that's the kind of thing that the When you take off your clothes. Yeah. That joke got naked. Uh uh that sounds like it would be a fun idea. That doesn't sound that bad. write a you get to write a story without the actual grunt work of getting down and writing. You come up with the big idea and then you turn it over to somebody who does it on a regular basis. It's like it's exactly like taking

22:37lessons for something. Like, "Here's what I want to do. I want to have this and then this guy and then this chick should get naked because obviously that's very important to a story. And then this sort of thing should happen here." And be like, "All right, let's go see what we can do. We'll go back and hook that up." so many facets Excuse me. There's so many fascinating occupations out there. There's just not enough time in the world, but writing has always been a particularly romantic one. You know, it's the idea of putting together something that, you know, you're crafting a story entirely in your head, slapping it down on paper and then it exists entirely in the heads of the people that are reading it. It's a The romance of it is so utterly overblown. It's it's not I've been lucky enough to do this full-time for five years now. It's my That's all I

23:14do. It's my job. And it's similar to, you know, MMA when you see the guys come in the ring and you're like, "Oh, look at all this pageantry and all this wonderful stuff and the spotlight's on them." And you know, except for the ultimate fighter show, you don't see you don't see the years that go in of just getting crushed and working all the time and all the sacrifice and all the things you got to do. And then you get that moment, "Oh, the book's in the store and I'm on tour." And that lasts two weeks. And then you go right back into the dungeon and do it some more. It's a great effing job. I don't want to do anything else. I'm so happy to be doing it, but yeah, those moments of romance are like little tiny things that pop up every now and then. Yeah, well, to everybody outside of it that doesn't have to do the work. That's where it's romantic. Yeah. The work can be a The work can be

23:55grueling. Sitting there smoking a cigarette in front of your typewriter like you're Hunter Thompson. Crap. Who are your favorite writers when you were coming up? Uh definitely Stephen King was the single biggest influence on me. Watching his ability to tell a story and and characterize and like a para He The thing that always mesmerized me about him is he could take a secondary character, give you one paragraph of description. Like here's a vocal twitch, here's a physical twitch and here's a this thing they believe. And then you've got you know that guy's name 20 years later. He's the master of that. Um and then Anne McCaffrey was a huge sci-fi writer, the the Dragonriders of Pern that series. So, that was kind of the more of the science fiction area of of things. And Tom Clancy was another big one, too. Tom Clancy's ability to take thousands of different things, research

24:41them in detail and kind of put them all together where they they come together at the end for a super over-the-top ending. Those are probably the the biggest three. And Jack London's another gigantic one, too. When I was a kid, I read something somewhere where they were criticizing Stephen King's books. And it was in some I I grew up in Boston and in Newton, one of the suburbs of Boston. And there was a lot of snobby people. There was a lot of people that were like, "Stephen King, like what base writing?" And I remember like thinking that. Like, why would you ever criticize a guy who's, first of all, so prolific? I mean, and it's really fun stuff. Like, how stuffy do you have to be to not appreciate a good Stephen King book? I you know, it's he's on a completely different level than say the Twilight writer. But you still run into that today. In 50 Shades

25:31of Grey and Twilight and these books come out and and they blow up because that resonates with the end reader. And all of this all this pompous arrogant about I'm writing art. And you know what? Unless your book has sold uh 200, 300,000 copies, no one's going to remember your name in 50 years. You're going to be gone unless you get your book dusted off somewhere. So, the guys who are actually making stuff that resonates with people that makes millions of people extremely happy to read it again and again and then go see the movies, they get they get on all the time. All the time. And Stephen King now is getting an enormous amount of He's getting his props now from the industry, I think. But yeah, 25, 30 years ago, everybody was all pissed that this dirty butt kid from Maine came out of nowhere and has eaten all their lunches cuz he writes great stories that

26:17people love. They were they were pissed. They wanted those books. So, what about him? Yeah, they're crazy. If you you read The Shining and tell me it's not an amazing book. The The movie's great, but the the TV show I didn't really dig that much, but the the movie was the Jack Nicholson movie, although very different from the from the book, but the book's an exceptional one. favorite book of his is Misery. Yes. You go through Misery and and you know, he doesn't he didn't just play with a story there. He actually played with the typography on the page. So, if you actually read the page, uh Paul, the main character, has to write this story for Annie. And then they switch font, bring in the margin so it looks like regular typewriter page. And then as the story's progressing, letters start to fall off of the typewriter. And the farther it goes, first it's the end then

27:02the E then the L. And as you get towards the end of the book where not only is Paul's real life story happening, but the fictional story is coming to a conclusion, too. There's all these scrawled pencil marks in there. And it just looking at the page starts to stress you the out. And it was wasn't till like the third time I read it, I'm like, cuz I read it once, I'm like, "Okay, that was killer. That was killer." And read it again. And then I'm like, I'm reading it a third time, I'm like, "Why am why am I so angry? What is going on?" And I stop and look at it, I'm like, it's just So, he even understands the art form of what visual how visually things look on a page. You know why? Why is that? on all sorts of drugs when he wrote that He was back in the day. He was on some heavy-duty He said that I think it was Christine, he didn't even remember writing it.

27:44It was one of them. Yeah. Didn't it like did it didn't remember writing it. The guy's alive, man. I think he was just up, man. He was first of all, he did a lot of cocaine and smoked a lot of It was fascinating that he said that cigarettes were one of the things that he really missed when it came to the the creative process. You were talking about that with David Lee Roth the other day that nicotine's such a huge part of the process. Well, it's a I don't smoke. I don't partake in it, but it there seems to be undeniable proof that it's some sort of a mental stimulant. And it does something to accelerate thinking or does something to the mind. Cuz too many people but like intelligent people like Bertrand Russell like wouldn't wouldn't get on a plane if he couldn't smoke in the like if they didn't have a room in the smoking section, he wouldn't get on a plane. poor guy was just addicted to

28:33this tit this tobacco tit. Try some nicotine, Joe. See if it does anything. No, thanks, fella. It's just nicotine. I don't want it. See if it comes in Get out of here. Go yourself. You're not going to get me on that crazy horse. Yeah. Um but yeah, so many writers have have been smokers, you know. But the the thing about Stephen King, he quit. And so, he still puts out great stuff, but he I think he struggles more. Do you hear what he does, though? Supposedly, I mean, cuz this is a bit of Teebs that he allows himself to have one cigarette every time he finishes a novel. No wonder he writes so many novels. Yeah, and that's Teebs joke is like, "I wrote 32 novels today." Yeah, that's funny. That's that's interesting that he allows himself one cigarette a year or so. I don't know what he's doing about I guess he's probably kicking out about a novel a year if if not more. He just

29:21He's got a different different style of writing, too. When you can when you can effortlessly bring in the supernatural the way he does, there's not an enormous amount of research that's necessary. I know when he wrote The Green Mile, he researched a lot of things about the prison system and actual history. But if it's a modern-day ghost story, you don't have to research anything. You just sit down and do your thing. And then that allows him to allows him to write a little bit faster than a lot of people. Did you ever read The Tommyknockers? Oh, yeah. Oh, I love that one, man. Yeah, he's got the the best uh in my opinion the best supernatural uh scenarios. He he comes up with so many different Maximum Maximum Overdrive. Did you guys like that movie as well? I I I love I love that movie. Um and and it's interesting now I'm coming to my fifth and final book with

30:06Random House and I write these hard science techno thrillers with a ton of monsters in them and and super and you know science fiction stuff. So they always start out normally you're like oh I've seen this before this is a CIA CSI episode then things go absolutely haywire and you're in for the ride but I'd been kind of jonesing to get back to the the Stephen King that inspired me when I was a kid which is you know you can spend so much more time on character and plot and developing things if you don't have these large structural organizations like the cops were trying to get like the one I'm writing now is pandemic it's the final book in the infected trilogy and I'm trying to get help on what it's actually like in the situation room. And the series has taken itself to that level but I I don't follow politics for I have no idea what I'm talking about situation room.

30:51the situation room the president? Yeah the White House. Not what the like the CNN show with Wolf Blitzer. Right yeah. But the first book Infected is anybody who reads and has read Stephen King will see the influence is plain as day because it's largely it's one University of Michigan linebacker who blew out his knee in the Rose Bowl so never not to go never got to go pro was would have been a number one draft pick hands down but now he works in computer support because he didn't finish his degree and he can't play ball anymore. So there's this giant super dangerous guy with a lot of rage issues who works really hard to control his rage and then he gets infected by this this alien vector this other thing going on and it turn and and he spends a lot large part of the book trying to not kill people but most of that takes place in his apartment and in the town of Ann Arbor

31:34and that's the Stephen Kinging which is we're going to take a small town we can develop this out I can do whatever I want and I don't have to justify why isn't the SWAT team kicking in the door and all these other things. So now that I'm writing this complicated crap situation room like I think that's kind of run its course I want to get back to the the smaller cast and the smaller towns I grew up in small town Michigan and I think that's why a lot of stuff resonated with me it's the same thing just a different accent and I want to for the future I'm going to probably try and get back more into that that kind of thing. I thought it was amazing that Stephen King wrote so many books about a writer from Maine. Yeah. It's like after a while you're like come on man really? What the are you doing? You got another book about a writer from Maine? Like Jesus. He's rolling on it. I know

32:14you want to write a book a year but come on you can't be a baseball player or a fireman or some Yeah. It's got to be a goddamn writer from Maine? That's that's why he got into The Green Mile which is about as different than anything else he's written that amazing. Christine is another one of my favorites. Have you read any of his son's work? Uh Joe Joe Hill yeah I've read Horns and have read the first couple collections of the Lock and Key comic book which is what he's becoming most well known for I think. Yeah yeah he's the Lock and Key key comic book? Lock and Key is I forget where the family originates but they wind up moving to a mansion they inherit in Rhode Island so it's very similar to forgive me Lock and Key fans if I have this wrong it's very similar to old school Stephen King small town family goes and moves into this haunted house it's kind of

33:03Shining-esque and there's a lot of different keys that will open up different rooms in the house and the rooms in the house are all these crazy paranormal portal type things. But he he the artist I believe is Gabriel Rodriguez and they both won Eisner Awards which is the Academy Award of comic books for this so he's really although obviously he's had an enormous amount of press coverage from being Stephen King's son and writing horror you know a ton he's also developed this comic book thing with IDW as the publisher and it's an enormous enormous success. I read the one I think it's called little yellow box or something like that. What is it? The I don't want to even give away what the plot is but it was great stuff. It's um I'll pull it up in a second. that Dark Tower series is that King? The Dark Tower series. Yeah I read the first one when it first came out but all my

33:55friends are so addicted to that series. Have you read have you followed that at all? I I followed up I think through book six and then um I don't think it's a spoiler at this point it's 20 years old there's a point in the series where Stephen King actually writes himself into the series. Oh really? So the characters are actually talking to Stephen King who's going like wait a minute I wrote you guys and I was like okay that's just too meta for me I I'm out I'm out. But the I think the first three Dark Tower books are the single best trilogy of of any kind anywhere. Those three books are just effing mad if he'd have stopped right there they're still a masterpiece. The series went on I think the first three books are there's never been anything better written in my opinion it's it's perfect. Yeah he was a bad and still is. Yep Heart-Shaped Box is something

34:39That's it Heart-Shaped Box yeah. Yeah that was I read that one. It's about a haunted haunted suit. Really? Really good stuff man he looks a lot like his dad too it's kind of creepy. He's got shades of his dad. Yeah. I don't know but he's got a his style is unique I mean it's it's very much his it's sort of influence you can tell but very much his. Well it's everybody writes horror is influenced by Stephen King you know that's like I don't know how to you know can't not be. Yeah there's there's no way to not be a lot of a lot of people get into it specifically because you read those books or you read Peter Straub or any of the other you know the the heavyweights back in King's day John Saul etc. and you read those and those call to you and you want to make like that and then when you start making your own well of course it's going to have a little bit of that little bit

35:24of that in there and King King really admits he's influenced by a ton of people and he's like if you read my stuff closely enough you see their stuff in the book it's just the way it goes. Yeah he was actually a big proponent of reading other guys stuff to help your writing. Mhm. Yeah I read Stephen King on writing? Oh yeah great book. That's a that's a bible for me because it's specifically because it gets rid of a lot of the pomp and circumstance and the you know the nose up in the air he's it's it's so blue collar and you know for a small town guy like me you read that it's like you can read On Writing by Stephen King and see stop falling in love with yourself stop sucking your own dick pardon the phrase you're not that important you're not that great just tell the story. Stop putting in words that are going to make everybody realize how important you are

36:09and just tell your tell your story and that's like the main gist of it is how to how to streamline everything and not be a pompous windbag but still tell your great story so it it really resonated with me. Being a pompous windbag is a problem in pretty much everything isn't it? Oh it everybody everybody yeah. Actually I when I on my podcast cuz I give away all my books as free audiobooks I play up the pompous windbag that's like the joke within a joke. I come on and talk about how awesome the story is going to be and all this other stuff and the fans they they eat it up it's it's funny that's my stick. I can't do stand up but I can do that thing. And because you're you get used to that for a while you know when people get very successful at something and then they start to they start to believe their own and that's when you start to get that crazy self-importance

36:51coming on and what's the sad thing about that is when you start to see people like that the majority of their fans are like oh god he was so awesome back in the day but now look at him you know. It happens to a lot of people the pressure or something the pressure of success and I think it's yeah the success though I mean if you're surrounded by yes men all the time and nobody's there criticizing your ideas and you're not objective and you don't you don't sort of self-analyze. A lot of people don't like to self-analyze it gets them confused but we've all seen the the real life pompous windbag that's a shocking thing. It's so gross too. One of the reasons why it's so gross is cuz you hope and pray that you could never be that guy you know you hope and pray that if the situation was reversed and you were in his shoes that you it wouldn't be possible it couldn't be possible.

37:36I feel like there's a lot of getting your ass kicked early in life and just failure after failure there's an enormous amount to be said for trying things and failing Yeah. as opposed to people who like the first thing they try out of the gate huge success and then you know then you haven't developed that that humble nature of I tried 28 things and 27 of them failed miserably so this one thing I'm not going to get too crazy with this you know I mean we're having success. Um you tend to see that in Hollywood and in writing some people come out of the gate get that big novel it blows up then after that they don't have much success and they can't figure out what's going on cuz they think they're very important. Isn't that amazing they they change their own frequency that they're putting out because of their success and that sabotages them. That's and that that's

38:18the sad thing that's what that's what hamstrings them. Uh It happens to so many though. Yeah. To so many different art forms too music musicians it happens to you know you know the guys that are the lead singers of these big bands and then they go loony tunes the band falls apart and well what was it was it partying drugs adulation adulation's a serious possibility. Adulation's a big drug yeah. It's a scary one. You can get delusional on that you know. It's uh it's it's a a fascinating one for character development though isn't it? It is you can you can play off them. Anytime you've got a story where you've got someone in a position of power it's almost impossible to write them from here's a normal humble person in this position of power. Like you're writing about you know the mayor of San Francisco is in the story or the police chief of San Francisco it's almost

39:06impossible for them to get to that position if they're a nice regular humble person cuz at some point in any political construct you have to become cutthroat and you have to look at other people as an as an obstacle to be removed and there can't be humanity involved like everybody at the top politics right now those are some cutthroat cutthroat people. Even Barack Obama didn't get where he was by playing nice you know. And so when you're writing a character about someone in that higher position of power you have to channel some of that in there there has to be that level of uh self-assuredness all the way up to arrogance and that dismissive nature as well you know if you're in my way I'm going to tell you, probably shouldn't be in my way cuz it's not going to go well for you. And then that full-on confidence and then they just you just get rid of them. If you crush

39:46them, then too bad. I told you. When you start to write a story, do you do you have like a full idea in your head before you sit down in front of a computer? Or do you have like I want to write a vampire cop drama? Like you mean what what is it that that do you have a bunch of different ways that it gives birth in your mind? It it it tends to come from several different places. I watch and I watch as much science TV as I can and I read up as much as I can. And in the in the natural world, there's always something like oh my look at that look this creature can do that thing. The water bear can survive in space. You know, holy crap. And that'll stick. And then at some other point, you will watch something about you know, here's asexual reproduction if they're in this particular chemical environment. Then that'll stick. And then a couple things stick and then at some point I'll just

40:29be working on something else and four or five things will come together. And then that's the center point of the idea. I'm like well, what if we had creatures that did this and then this happened and then they took over the world kind of a thing. From there, you have to go and hammer out an outline. I try and hammer out an outline with the tiny bit of science knowledge that I have. And then I'm really fortunate because again cuz of the podcast, I started getting people scientists emailing me going wow, I love what you're doing. You're really trying to get the science right. You this up. So if you get into neurochemistry again, here I'm a PhD give me a call. And like these I started getting all this in. And now Now I've got this battery of people. I'll do the outline and then I will send them all the outline and say all right, tear it up and then they they shred it.

41:12They shred it. They'll come back well, you can't do that but here's some other we just found out about this. You can do this. Oh, that is so cool. What an awesome resource. And they they they have a blast with it. And then I restructure my outline, do a detailed first draft and then we repeat. For people that are listening right now that are going well, what's his podcast? What's what's the name of your podcast? podcast is Scott Sigler's audiobooks and you can if you go to iTunes and search for Scott Sigler s c o t t s i g l e r, you'll find that. And or scottsigler.com, we have them there. We've been going on 7 years now. Is that right? That's awesome. Every Sunday for 7 years we put out an episode. I wanted you to pull a picture up of those water bears. I think they're also called tardigrades. Tardigrades, that's it. Yeah. They they can survive in space. It's it's so weird

41:55when nature is is crazy as anything you could ever think of in fiction. And it's just undeniable. There it is. Here's a photograph of it. This is a real thing. That's why the science is you know Look at this thing. super tiny but you know, of course my brain immediately looks at this goes okay, what if that was 8-ft long? Let's make that thing 8-ft long. Jesus. And let's make that hide, you know, pretty much bulletproof. Let's do those two things to it. For the folks listening and not watching, this thing looks like it looks like a giant rhino with like a circular diamond drill for a mouth. Fleshlight. It is the it looks yeah, like a super diamond alien fleshlight. And the thing it looks like a Star Wars creature. Yeah. But it also looks like it has a kind of like a cotton cape on or something like that. Like it doesn't look like it's Dude, that thing survives in space. Well,

42:47it it can survive in space. And the membranes get a little different when you get down that that small. But you you I mean that's the kind of thing where maybe a graphic artist who does a lot of acid could come up with that. You know, maybe. And then it shows up and you're like that's that's the picture right there. look at its mouth. Yeah. Yeah. Jesus Christ. For the folks at home, it's literally got a giant shark mouth. Uh Wow, that's ridiculous. I you know, see this is it. Listen to this. I just realized this. I'm finishing up a book called Pandemic which it goes infected then contagious then pandemic. And and there's a creature in Pandemic uh and the mouth is similar to that and I just realized that that's where I got it from. That thing has been floating in the back of my head forever and it's actually popped out in this book. Oh, look at that photo. That is insane.

43:35Yeah. That is insane. Folks, it's you can find them they're called either water bears, people call them that or tardigrades I think is the scientific name for it. And they are the creepiest looking How small are those things? They're they're uh Microscopic? They're microscopic, yeah. Yeah, they're incredibly couple of microns I think if I have that right. It's spooky little creatures. But then you get in that gives you so many storytelling possibilities. You've got a creature that seems insignificant. You can't even see it and yet if you know, if if we suddenly lost our atmosphere for whatever reason or the chemi the the environment changed significantly and all the humans died, this thing could still be around. And then this thing could start evolving and come up with its own thing. the universe really doesn't have a sense of time and just sets up these little

44:23extra seeds laying around genetic material like tardigrades just in case you hit that button and nuke the whole planet sideways, these little can grow into something that can survive in a vacuum. It would start over real quick. If we got wiped out, it would it would start over again pretty fast. I wonder. I wonder what it would be next. Would it be dolphins? Would it be some sort of sea sea creature? this is the I think about all the time for the books. And odds are you're not going to get any sea creature for a couple reasons. Number one, no hands. There's no tool use. And number two, no fire. Yeah. biggest factors that go in are tool use and fire. True. And then I think you also are not going to get This drives me crazy when I watch sci-fi shows about this man-lion. Lions don't need to evolve. They're an apex predator. There's no need for them to change anything for the most part.

45:10It's the it's the little things that have to run from everything else. And especially with humanity I think is we evolved up with the biggest things was losing the hair and having to invent some way to stay warm and you start to use tools to make clothes and tools to hunt. And as soon as something has to use a tool and figures that out, that's that's the flashpoint. From there it goes it goes crazy. Why did we lose the hair? I'm not entirely sure. I don't know. But there wasn't a large need for it in a greatly temperate environment like Savannah, Africa. So in the human body all evolution, if there's something that you just don't need anymore and you're burning calories to keep that thing going and it's taking energy to support that, if you have successive mutations where that thing gets smaller and smaller, there's no penalty. There's no penalty oh well, his hands are this big

45:55and he can't use a spear, you're not going to survive that long. But if your earlobes shrink and you can hear just fine, there's no penalty. So those the evolution kind of gets rid of the stuff that you don't need. It is a fascinating what you say though about the intelligent sea creatures never be able to get like their physical environment to change. Right. Right. Yeah, that's that's an interesting point. I never really thought about the no fire thing. But yeah, how could they create something? if you can't make fire and refine metal, then you are cut off at the knees as far as what you can do from there. And James Cameron played with that in the abyss with having his intelligent water-based species. But it it would be very it's very difficult to conceive any way you could get that to go. And so it's you know, land-based. It's got to have hands or appendages that are ready to become

46:41hands. Couple of basic things. So it it could easily start out with some kind of primate or some kind of small mammal right off the bat. But there's also some pretty kickass reptiles out there and birds. Did you hear about the Ukrainian army has been training dolphins to use like knives and and they've been attaching knives and pistols to their head and they've trained them to use them so they can now use these knives to do things. Pistols? Yeah, so now that right now this was on the news today that they lost the dolphins that had the pistols or the guns on them. Yeah. And they're on the loose right now. So there's these rogue dolphins that have guns on them that are just terrorizing the sea with Come on. to god, it's true. Dolphins apparently swam away to get laid. They were out they were out looking for some and they haven't come back. That's what Why would they come back?

47:23They got guns, man. Guns and Yeah, they got guns and they're trying to get some. Dolphins are one of the few creatures that they murder. They'd kill for no other reason than just to kill. And also dolphins rape which is messed up. So now you've got these things swimming around and they're trained to kill divers is the problem. They're specifically trained to kill divers. So I'm going to rape a dolphin Saturday at SeaWorld in San Diego. are trained to kill divers? Yeah, they're military. They're trained to kill. That's the program. It's the aquatic mammal program. Specific divers or any divers? Enemy divers. The Ukra- I'm sure the Ukrainian controllers this is inherited from the Russian program and they would have specific parameters to train them to go out and kill a certain shape or certain color or have I How up is that? They trained dolphins to go out and be assassins. Yeah.

48:05What a douchy move. Well, they Dolphins are cool. Dolphins are very creepy though. They're uh they kill babies. They kill the baby of when a female gives birth, I think she won't mate with a male for several years. So if a male comes along and it's not his babies, he just kills them get her to mate again. Dolphins aren't Dolphins are gang- they're the gangsters of the sea. They are not messing around. Except for killer whales. Killer whales eat them. Nobody screws with a killer whale. Yeah. They're they're the apex of the apex next to humans. I'm other than humans, they've got no they've got no predator. There's nothing that hunts a killer whale. I thought Happy Feet was a kind of a fascinating monster movie in sort of a way, a monster alien movie because it dealt with the whole idea of living in this you know, semi-aquatic world and all of a sudden these aliens

48:54from the other part of the world from the surface come and and everything up and kidnap people and take photographs and It's it's really kind of interesting when you think about how much life must suck if you live in the ocean and these crazy that live out above the ocean with these giant metal machines that they've created to scoop literally scoop life in nets Take you right out. and just they don't give a what they get. Dolphins whoops, sorry. Sometimes they get dolphins on purpose. Imagine what it was like for whales which are pretty effin intelligent and have language and communication. And for what? I think a hundred million years something like that. There's nobody screws with a whale cuz you can't cuz they're gigantic and they just ignore you. Then all of a sudden here come these ships and here come these harpoons and they're screwed. There's nothing they can do. There's

49:39nothing they can do. Who was the first guy to try to harpoon a whale? That guy was a bad mother You got to think about that. That's a gangster move. I'm going to eat a whale. You know, I mean that guy is not playing games. I don't know. I What I've heard about that's probably, you know, it's kind of a nice age thing or place where there's ice so the whales have to break the ice to come up to breathe and a whale breaking through the ice so it's a blowhole can get out there. You just stab that son of a and I don't know how I don't know how they did it but somebody figured out that's a lot of good eating. Wow. That's harsh life. Yeah. Harsh life when you got to eat a whale. Uh the dolphin thing uh reminds me of I've got uh some of my fans were tweeting today cuz that basically the same thing happens in my book the GFL. So I've got um Title Fight which is what I

50:27emailed you on to start with which is an MMA sci-fi story and then we have the Galactic Football League which is a young adult series but it's an American pro football league 800 years in the future with aliens playing the different positions based on their physiology. So you got like 1500 lb linemen. You got receivers and D-backs who can jump 20 ft in the air and this is crazy hodgepodge of stuff but uh intelligent dolphins are part of that that whole thing too. So it's uh that with the the Galactic Football League series which is the rookie, the starter, the all-pro and the MVP and then uh the Title Fight. I think I'm one of the few guys who's merging sports and science fiction cuz a lot of time the jock is anathemic to science fiction guys. They like don't like the jocks very much. Yeah, what is uh what is that story about? Uh Title Fight is uh it's

51:14kind of a classic Rocky-esque type story but there is a heavyweight champ of the of the galaxy named Korak the Cutter and this is octag- full-on octagon. It's straight out I'm a huge MMA fan. champion of the Heavyweight champ of the galaxy. So in this in this in this universe I've created the Siglerverse, if you're going to be a combat fighter you can't have any body modifications. It has to be all natural. So there's no hydra- no you know no hydraulics or no cybernetics or anything like that and he is of a race called the Quith which have three castes. There's a leader, there's a warrior and there's a worker kind of an insectile type approach and the warriors are these giant badass things with uh extra set of arms and they're very mean and very tough and they are perennially the champions. And then along comes this nasty ass human fighter named Kyle North uh who comes

52:00out of a place called the Purist Nation which is in my universe this is the backwater human only world where they hate all the alien races and won't get along with anybody. But they're mean and they're nasty and this guy's name is Kyle North and he was created by author named Matt Wallace who co-wrote this with me and Matt's a ex-pro wrestler so he's a he's a bad MF and that it's following their arcs. The human who will do anything to be the champion, sacrifice his own body, kill whoever he's got to kill, make any deal and the highly you know almost ronin-like uh the honor honorable existing champion and the two different two different uh mentalities clash for that final championship ring. Like the second half of the book is nothing but the fight. It's just a brutal fight. How big is the human? Uh in this this is trying to I'm trying to track out the growth of humans in just the last 50

52:47years in the NFL in particular. 50 years ago the average NFL lineman weighed 253 lbs. At 253 lbs you can't even play college ball. Now these guys like the the starting offensive line for the Dallas Cowboys 50 years ago could not get a job anywhere in football, probably couldn't even get a scholarship. They're just not big enough. So we've seen uh the average weight go from 253 somewhere like 310, 315 somewhere in that ballpark and that's not evolution, that's just better nutrition and these guys getting the opportunity and cultivating the bigger guys cuz 50 years isn't enough time for evolution to kick in. But eight centuries from now you can kind of see that progressing out. So the main character in the Galactic Football League's named Quinton Barnes. He is a quarterback and he's uh 7 ft tall, 380 lbs. And he's and they're like, "Wow, he's kind of small. He could play tight end.

53:30He'd be a small tight end." And then all everybody's exponentially larger based on quarterback lineman. So Kyle North I think is in the book he's he's 6'8", 380 and that's that's the heavyweight champ of the world. Jesus Christ. you know and just just cut too cuz this is this is our cover with him. So you know just That looks like gay porn, son. It does. And that's that's what I got. That's what I got. Why is he flexing so hard? We got We grabbed an image and we searched for MMA fighter in all the image sites and that we got a lot of gay porn. That's how we got it. That's how we got it. Yeah. I'm like, you know Unfortunately and unfortunately depending on your sexual preference. I was hoping to find just some gigantic like Dan Severn type dude and none of that was available for us. Well Fedor Emelianenko, one of the greatest fighters of all time, he didn't

54:15have a body anything like that. Yeah. His that's looks like James Irvin. More but even bigger than James Irvin. Maybe James Irvin when he was a heavyweight. He was a very muscular MMA fighter but most guys aren't built like that cuz it's uh either you have to have extreme genetics to be built like that or you got to spend too much time lifting weights. You get that at more of the light I mean you get some really cut physiques at the middleweights and light heavyweights. Those guys are put together. Not as much. You know the best guys uh are longer and leaner. Right. You know the the really heavily muscled guys, it's just too much fuel Right. that those bodies require. You see um like a guy Like Spider Spider Scott, you know, he's not that cut. Yeah, Anderson Silva is a perfect example of what I think is like the the ultimate fighter body but occasionally you'll see a guy who's like

55:03really thickly muscled at 185 and you want to tell him, man, listen, you need to just get rid of all that muscle. Just do aerobic exercises only from now on. You got your plenty of muscle. Just wrestle and kickbox and and run like a lot and drop some weight, man. You're you're hindering yourself by having this crazy beach body, you know. Do you Do you think that affects their fighting performance to be overly muscled? Certainly. Absolutely. It's just not effective. It's It's It's like having too much horsepower in a car where your uh your brakes can't can uh they you know you're rather your uh your wheels can't get any traction cuz you're just spinning your wheels and then you run out of gas quick. That's that's what happens if you have too much horsepower in a car and that's what how it happens in a person too. If you have an overly muscular body, the

55:48resources that requires are substantial. You got to pump blood through all these extra tissues. That's that's serious It's a lot of work for your heart. So you should be as you know you should be strong but as lean as you can be. Close to natural weight. Close to natural weight is great. If you can If you can If you can compete against the larger guys who cut weight. Mhm. You know that's that that's one of been really cool to watch with WEC coming in the the MMA actually getting more weight classes. Yeah. Cuz I used to you know I wrestled at 126 in college and there was no way when you watching MMA there's nowhere to see guys of that size at least until WEC came along and they started to get more of the flyweight in there. And uh is the UFC going to continue to expand all to all the weight classes? Yeah, they're thinking about going to 115 as well. We went to 125

56:35Yes. Those guys are like get some Yeah. Um some people don't like it uh because they say those fights aren't as exciting but I think they're the most technical fights. Like Mighty Mouse Johnson is one of my favorite fighters, Demetrious Johnson. He's the uh flyweight champion. And I feel like the people who are saying that are the same people like back in UFC 1, 2 and 3 when they're like you know Gracie and and would be all tied up and somebody like, "Well this isn't exciting." I'm like, "It's cuz you have no idea what you're looking at." This is mesmerizing Dan Severn fighting like Gracie is mesmerizing to watch. I think for some people bigger is better especially Americans. We're such knuckleheads. We want to see the biggest guy and we'll see the biggest guy in the house. It's like John L. Sullivan, you know, "I can lick any man in this room." You know it's like that was the they

57:20used to say back then, "Lick." I don't know why. I don't know why it was lick. You can't say You can't really say that now. I can lick any man in this room and everybody like, "Hey, what the you trying to say, man?" I think I was six and I got in trouble at my grandma's house and the grandma's a German immigrant and uh she's like, "I'll give you such a licking." I'm like, I had no idea what the hell she was talking about. I'm like, "I don't know what's going on, Grandma, but I'm just going to behave from now on cuz I don't want to cross you." That's a terrifying threat. I'm like, "What are you talking about, old woman? I don't know what you mean by that." me down and lick me. Get the out of here. Yeah, um but uh for um for fighters uh the the the the correct weight class and and going in and and fighting at at to your your optimum weight class can be the difference

58:06between being a successful fighter with a championship career and being a guy who never quite rises to the top. Like you see in MMA there's a few guys that are like sort of what I call tweeners. Like they're not really a 155er. They're really too big for that but they're really too small for 170. There's there's a few guys like that that are just like somewhere in the middle there. They should be like a maybe a 165. Like B.J. Penn fighting crazy giving up a lot of weight. Yeah, B.J. Penn just that's his choice, you know. He just chooses to fight the bigger guys. He's not afraid to fight bigger guys and when he was younger he was able to pull it off pretty well. But you know the game is moving in a forward and progressing direction constantly. You're never going to slow down the progress of these young guys that are up and coming. They're better. They're going to be better. They're

58:51going to be better. They're going to be more technical. I mean you It doesn't mean that the older guys can't still win occasionally but those guys have to evolve as well. You see like in boxing like Bernard Hopkins this week won a world title. It's crazy. I watched it and it's a beautiful performance because he just did everything correctly. He's like such a craftsman in there. And he's you know he's got these old school sort of moves and just knows how to cover up, knows where the punches are going before you even think about throwing them, knows what you're going to do, finds your patterns and then knows how to step around you, knows how to keep you moving. It was beautiful to watch. Well in MMA there's not a whole lot of those guys that are like these old-school, like perfect fighters. You know, like Anderson, you know, Anderson's one of them, and then you've got Jon Jones,

59:42who's just this phenom, who's although he has all this great success, really he's kind of so much to learn still, too, which is the most scary thing about him. He hasn't even tapped into his potential. Right. Right. You know, and then the the the really good guys in the 170-lb division is like six or seven of them, you know? Like this weekend, there's six different killers that are fighting in Montreal. You got Diaz is fighting Georges St-Pierre. You got Carlos Condit is fighting Johny Hendricks. And Jake Ellenberger is fighting Jake Shields. I mean, oh, no, no, no. Jake Ellenberger is fighting God dammit. I got to Uh Nate Marquardt. That's who it is. Oh, Nate, yeah, okay. Yeah. Uh that's Nate Nate Ellenberger and or Jake Ellenberger and Nate Marquardt is a sick fight. That's uh Is that all on the same card? Yeah, that's on the same card. Yeah, that's

60:37live from Montreal. That's exciting. How long have you been an MMA fan? Uh for like UFC 1. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Was a big big MMA fan, and it was it was crazy this crazy spectacle cuz that's the thing like, "Wow, what a ninja beat up a karate master?" And like and then somebody said, "Well, let's find out." And put everybody together. And I remember watching early ones and you know, this guy's a fifth-degree ninjitsu black belt and comes out and just gets his ass handed to him. And a lot of the guy And I was excited cuz I was a wrestler, and you were watching this early on and I'd never heard of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I had no idea what these guys were doing. But when the wrestlers would come in and just mop the floor with these dudes, and it was exciting for me. It was justifying. You're like, "Great. Yeah, I took taekwondo and like there's all these forms and I fully appreciate what

61:18you what it is you guys do, but these forms, I don't get it. It's going to go fight's going to go to the ground anyways." And you'd watch that in MMA and the fight would go to the ground, the guys who would do things in the ground were the guys who would win. And so really got into it then. And then when Dan Severn came out, he's a Michigan boy, and watching his fights with it and he was just, you know, awesome awesome to watch. Watching him watch fight a kickboxer and do full-on suplexes on guys who had no idea what a suplex was. Yeah. F'ing It was beautiful. So me and all my wrestling buddies would get together and watch those and just go ape We were just like we couldn't even get through one of those without beating the crap out of each other. It was it was awesome. And then to watch it come up and and what's happened since Dana has taken over has just been it's just been one of the

61:58coolest things I've ever seen. You know. It's yeah, it's a very strange as you were talking about the size of football players changing over period of 50 years. Like look at how much better the MMA fighters has gotten in the 20 years it has existed. It's really shocking. It's shocking to see now. Like like Diaz and Georges St-Pierre, both of these guys, there were there was nobody like them 10 years ago. They didn't exist. Nobody was that good. These guys are on a complete This is the highest level we've ever experienced. And every time St-Pierre improves, like he, you know, just beat Carlos Condit, had a long time off and re- recouping from his knee surgery. He recovers from that and has the Condit fight, a good solid long tough fight. Now, just a couple months later, he's going in there against Diaz. I love that because I think, you know, since it's

62:48only like 4 months later or whatever it is, he's got time to recover, time to rest up a boom a little bit, and then boom, get right back into it. So he'll be more used to the experience, probably put on a better performance, won't feel the ring rust as much, just experienced it recently. Is that is that enough time for him to to analyze the other fighter's style and work it in? Cuz I know I I know what the person that trains got to be he's going to do this. Here's his tendencies. When he puts his right foot forward, this is what's going to happen. And you think 4 months is enough time for him to cuz that guy's a f'ing killer, man. He's Both guys are killers, but I think first of all, St-Pierre has been eyeing Diaz for a long time cuz they were supposed to fight before. Mhm. Um Diaz tested positive in a marijuana thing and, you know, he it took him, you know, all this

63:33time before he was able to get a a fight again after the Condit fight. And so, you know, he's he's had some, you know, a bunch of a bunch of weird issues like outside of the cage. And that one that one being a big one that they suspended him for a long time for for marijuana, which is just really ridiculous. That really drives me bananas. But he's been wanting this fight forever. Diaz has been calling out for this fight forever. And Georges St-Pierre has been cage-side for his fights and talking about fighting him. And so these guys have been sizing each other up for a long time. It's not just 4 months to get ready. This is a long time coming. We played this yesterday. There's a video of Nick Diaz hitting the speed bag for 23 minutes in a row. It's one of the craziest things I've ever seen. 23 minutes. That is so long. Most folks have no idea how difficult that is.

64:32up for 23 minutes, let alone hit the bag. And he's hammering at it. I mean, it's it's these guys are both in amazing amazing shape. So I'm I'm so excited about it, not just because it's a championship fight, because I think it represents these guys who are two all-time great to my opinion. And it represents them in their perfect primes. You know, they're both in the best situation they could possibly be. Nick Diaz comes off the the B.J. Penn fight where, you know, fantastic performance. The Carlos Condit fight where questionable decision. And, you know, a a close fight. But Carlos Condit used a very good strategy of moving and keeping away from Nick. Mhm. And Nick, you know, has that aggressive in-your-face style. He wants to commit to a fight. And George, George does not dance around. dance around. And with his wrestling style as well, this is going to be a

65:22really interesting fight. Cuz first of all, Nick Diaz has a nasty guard. He's got very good sweeps. He's got a very good submissions off of his back. And he gets real comfortable there. He knows how to tie you up. You know, it's it's it's not an amateur that you have on his back. And he's dangerous off his back. You have to mind your p's and q's. Mhm. And then, you know, is is he going to be able to stop the takedown? If he does stop the takedown, you know, what does the stand-up look like? Does George kick him from the outside? Does Nick pressure him into a stand-up slugfest? You know, what what does it what does it become? It's going to be fascinating. I can't wait. I'm excited for that fight. Yeah, I'm I'm very very excited for it as well. Um you were like one of the first guys that I ever heard of that took his books and put it on the internet as an audio podcast. What what

66:06led you to decide to do that? I couldn't get a book deal. To frankly, going back I guess jeez, I guess 15, 16 years I I was trying to get published for about 11 or 12 years, writing writing a book every 2 years, working a full-time job, all the regular stuff. And then back in the day, you know, actually writing the submission letter and sending it to publishers, sending it to agents, going to conventions, trying to meet make the right connections to get just to get somebody to look at the book. Then I got an agent and I wound up with a deal with AOL Time Warner when my book Earthcore was supposed to be in every store in May of 2002. And two. Um and then the 9/11 recession hit before it went to press. And the economy dropped and Time Warner scrapped everything that wasn't profitable. So I I'd gotten to that point where I had a book deal, then the publisher folded. It happens.

66:55And it took me 3 years to get the rights back to my book. So now when I get the rights back in 2005, I have this professionally edited book. The editor's name was Paul Witcover, was a great guy. It was a really I thought it was a really solid piece of work. And we can't get another book deal for it. Then I hear learn about podcasting. See what Dave Winer and Adam Curry are doing with podcasting. And I'm like, "Oh, that's really cool. Serialized stuff." So I went to look for audiobooks to listen to. Cuz the first thing that happened in my head being a writer was somebody's putting out serialized books just like the radio dramas of the '40s and '50s. I start Googling it and after 2 days of trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong to Google it and I can't find any, I then realized nobody has done this yet. And at that point, I'm like, "I've got a professionally edited book.

67:40And it was ready for mass-market production. Here's this new technology that if somebody hears an episode, they can immediately instant message it to a friend, email it to a friend, chat room it. And anybody who clicks on that is going to start hearing the story right away. I've got speed-of-light marketing with this. And word of speed-of-light word of mouth." And then I'm like, "Shit." And I like figured out how to record, how to make an RSS feed, how to make a website, and got it all done just so I could get it out there and then put some marketing to work like the first guy to ever do a podcast-only novel. And hope it would get picked up by some blogs and different sites. And it did, and I started to get a followership. And when I got to the end of Earthcore, I had three other books done, and I just started podcasting them. And I've been going going at it ever since. So I was

68:21of the mind that if the publishers are the gatekeepers and they won't let me in cuz it's not a western, it's not a horror story, it's not a vampire story. They want very specific things they can sell. If you've got a lot of different genres, they don't like you very much. I was like, "If I can get to the end user, if I can go to the end listener and show them how kickass my stuff really is, I'm betting money that my is so good, I can give it to you for free and then they'll still pay for it anyways." That was the thought process. And I thought I would get a lot of followers and a lot of followers would turn into a book deal. Initially, that didn't happen cuz I was going to publishers like, "I have 10,000 people listening to me every Sunday. How can you not put this out?" And the and their question is, "Well, what's a podcast?" They had no idea what it was.

69:01I'm like, "Here's verifiable stats." They didn't they didn't know what the internet was. They had no idea. They didn't know what the internet was? They I swear to God, they didn't know what the f'ing internet was. And it was missed I I thought I had this awesome plan that everything's going to work out great. And I get to the point where I'm supposed to get the contract and get the book deal, and they didn't care about the podcast at all. So then I just kept on doing it, and eventually things kind of caught up. Finally, the the end of the story is we put out the novel Ancestor as a print book. The one you've got is the one that's been rewritten for Random House, but this was just a little little trade paperback put out by a small Canadian imprint, one lady working out of her garage. We put that out on April 1st, 2007, and it was the number one horror,

69:37number one sci-fi book on Amazon. And it was the number two fiction book on Amazon behind one of the Harry Potter Potter novels. Wow. And New York crapped in April. And they it was it was awesome cuz I had a new agent at that point who had the book Infected on their desk and people are like, "Oh, this is it. We like this. This is good." Then all of a sudden this guy that they've never heard of anywhere is number one in horror, number one sci-fi. And then that got us into auction for Infected, and then I've been rolling ever since. Wow, that's amazing. What an awesome story. Yeah. So, you're sort of self-created. Very very much self-created. There's a I love stories like that. A lot of it a lot of it is my my audience though. A lot of they know like when I was all right, we're going to go sell this book on this day, spread the word, and they went out and spread the word.

70:20And this is the audience that you created with this blog, this this podcast of your your novels. Did you profit off of it? How did you have it set up? Did you have to pay for it to download it? Like No, it's always been free from square one. The whole book is free. The whole book is free. That the model we have now is if you just want it for free or you can't afford it and you like the story cuz everybody gets in a pickles here and there, you can listen to every episode every week and you can get the whole thing for free. If you download a book I've done before you're going to hear 30 episodes with an ad inserted before every episode just like what you do. So, it's going to be ad supported free content and you can listen to it. If you don't want to hear me talk before the episode and you don't want to hear the ads then you can go spend money and buy the audiobook. So, I

71:00totally leave it up to the audience. If you want to buy the print or buy the ebook, you can do that. You want to buy the audiobook? Absolutely, that's why we're in business. If you don't want to do that or you can't afford it, you can go get all my books every word of it for free, everything unabridged. The way it's been from square one. That's a beautiful way to do it, man. Yeah. So, that way you pay for the bandwidth costs and all that stuff through the advertising. Yeah, yeah, everything we've covered everything with the advertising and advertising's become a a solid solid thing for us after 7 years. We're doing pretty good with it. Um but largely it's just the the the general attitude behind this whole thing has been I don't think anyone out there minds spending money for that they like. The problem is when you buy that record or you buy that audiobook and you heard

71:40the sample and you're like, "Well, that was great." Then you get to the end of it and you're like "This guy got lazy. This This story ends crappy. I have wasted my time. I've wasted my money." You're pissed off. Right. You're angry that you spent money on something that you didn't like. So, I flipped that. Like, "I'm going to give it to you and you're going to listen to it." And when you get to the end you are going to miss work and you are going to go all night long and not not be able to sleep cuz I'm in your skull taking over. And then when they get done like that, "I like that book. I like the way that ended. This is my author." Then they go buy everything that I've ever And if people get to the end and they didn't like it it's no sweat off anybody's balls. Like, "Well, I didn't spend anything on it. It's not really for me." And and it creates this sense

72:16of uh this crazy sense of goodwill that even people who don't really like your stuff as soon as they hear somebody else going, "Oh, you know, I really like uh hard science monster stories." Like, "Oh, you got to check out the Sigler guy." And like everybody loves the fact that you get Leave it up to the customer. Yeah. Just leave it up to the It's up to them. It's their money. You decide if you want to spend it or not. It's not up to me to trick you. That's an awesome ethic. I love that. And that's sort of the same thing we do with this podcast. We know there's some people have like they have where you sign up and you can pay X amount of money and access the old podcasts and some of them have it set up where if you want to watch on Ustream, you got to pay for a monthly thing, but I've always felt like what this thing does is so amazing is the word of mouth.

72:57Yeah. And the best way to do that is to make it as accessible as as possible. Mhm. To put it out there as quickly and as easy and as to make to make it as downloadable as possible. I mean, if going back to Stephen King, if Stephen King was to start doing a weekly uh podcast of his fiction and actually read his fiction he's he could charge for that and would make a significant amount of money for that. He'd make more advertising. Yeah. Stephen King's the worst guy ever to read his books. His books are awesome, but when he's reading them, I'm like, "Oh, this can't read books." Not his thing. He's not an He's not He doesn't command it enough. I don't know. Maybe you have a strong voice. Stephen King has sort of a like almost like a mumbly voice while he's reading his amazing book. Ari's more mumbly. Ari would never be able to pull it off. Well, the performance of the book I've had 7 years

73:47to polish that up. When I started out the first one Earthcore, it's like used all the voices I used to used to make my buddies laugh in high school. I'm like I have no idea what I'm doing. Just throw it in there and we'll make it as entertaining as possible. And I've always tried to be as make every book as over the top as it can be. So, there's a loud rock intro loud rock outros. I'm you know, peaking the meters when I'm talking and just trying to make it exciting and energetic and fun. Cuz not just money, it's people's time. Right. going to take an hour of somebody's time, you better have some good cuz they can't get that hour back ever. Dude, you're saying all the like the right I love you. That's how you should think, man. Yeah. I think it would be awesome if everybody thought that way. But the free is the biggest thing is the free cuz there's now there's so many

74:24entertainment options. You know, when Stephen King in the '70s there was movies, books, and TV, and that was all there was. Right. And now I got to compete against Xbox and PlayStation and downloaded content and podcasts and vidcasts and YouTube. I got to compete against all that just to try and get somebody to get Yeah, I'm going to go and ask for 10 hours of your time to read this this book that doesn't really mean anything. That's a tough sell today. That's a super tough sell. Especially with with younger kids video games are amazing entertainment experiences. You know, if for you to get them to put that down and pick this book up for a while you've really got you got to bring good stuff. How many hours you think it would take to read one of these books? You think you could read one of these in 10 hours? I think somebody could read it 10 10 to 20 hours. Yeah. 10 to 20 depending on

75:05stuff reads a little fa It's it's looks thicker than it is cuz there's an enormous amount of dialogue. There's a lot of regular guy dialogue and that means like two three words line, two three words line, pa pa pa pa pa. Right. So, people are surprised at how fast they read it. Like this giant honking thing they're like, "I can't believe I finished it so fast." I'm like, "Well, that's there's an enormous amount of just dialogue in there." And this other book that I have here is Ancestor. What what's this one about? Ancestor is um an effort by a biotech company to create a herd animal with transplantable human organs. Every year hundreds of thousands of people die because there's just not enough organs to go around. And if you got a bad liver, for you to live, somebody else has to die. It's a zero-sum game. So, they try and come up with a chimera. It's a it's an animal

75:48with genes from multiple species. So, basically something along the lines of a sheep or a cow but with transplantable lungs, liver, kidneys everything a growing body could need. If they can pull this off and put this thing out to pasture it's just like raising cows. You just harvest them when you need them and you make trillions of dollars. This is old school horror movie sci-fi. So, something goes horribly wrong. And instead of winding up with a 200-lb herd animal with the perfectly transplantable organs and is goes out and eats grass they wind up with a 650-lb pack predator and this of course happens on a remote island in Lake Superior. So, we wind up with all of our all of our characters stuck on an island with with 100 of these 650-lb pack predators that just go through you like they go through you like a knife through butter. What do these things look like? They

76:36they're not all that dissimilar from the American Werewolf in London. They got out out there. But the the biggest thing I did with them I kind of combined um a little bit of a bar a bear and a gorilla. But the defining thing they have and fans draw tons of pictures of this. If you Google Sigler an Sigler Ancestor, you'll probably see this. They have this giant sail fin. So, they've got a variation on the Dimetrodon sail fin because it's based the the genome is based on the ancestor of all mammals. The thought is if they re dial back the genetic clock. Let's get back to the base set of code. Then we will have exactly what we want and there won't be any endogenous retroviruses. There won't be any any crazy stuff. We can then from there customize the animal we want, right? And they but they don't get it all the way right. This thing has a Yeah. That That's one of the things. This says

77:22That's Whoa. That's for the predator. Scroll back over to the lads. That's uh one of my fans did a full 4-ft tall mock-up of the thing. That's the monster right there. And they have the sail fin that they keep back and you and you start to find out they start to use it for communication. So, they signal each other when they're closing in on you. So, if you see that fin pop up somewhere, they're kind of like a land shark, you're effing screwed. Whoa. They're pretty they're they're fully uh they're fully CGI'd in the trailer. If you want to get the trailer on there, that's Yeah, someone CGI'd this? Yeah. My buddy Kevin Cappiello, who's amazingly talented. Look for uh go to YouTube and search for Sigler Nocturnal trailer. And so you're doing a a movie of Nocturnal but Ancestor Ancestor trailer, excuse me. Yeah. Ancestor or this is it going to be a TV series? Yeah. What what is going on with

78:05Ancestor? Nothing right now. There've been a couple people who've been like, But there's a trailer? Yeah, I do trailers for the books. Again, I trying to compete against YouTube you got to be on YouTube. The thing with a book trailer is if you make a really kickass book trailer and it's the kind of thing that people will share the money you spend on that is money that will continue to to work for you. People will keep watching that for years. Every 4 minutes someone dies while waiting for a heart a liver a kidney. Imagine a technology that could provide those organs for a fee. And imagine what a company would do to monopolize that technology. The biotech firm Genata tried to solve this problem by creating the Ancestor. A creature with transplantable human organs. But they didn't get the docile herd animal. They invented instead their work awakened something big something evil

79:02something very very hungry. You want a monopoly. A monopoly on human life. Nothing sells like life itself. When we succeed we be the only vendor and be able to charge whatever the market will bear. For the millions of people not quite READY FOR DEATH, THE MARKET will bear quite a lot. That's my favorite part. I don't know what that is, but that sure as AIN'T NO COW. SO, YOU CREATED THAT YOURSELF? Uh no, we we had people do it. The Aaron Proctor uh shot the thing, but we went out and found a guy to do it and he got all his actor friends and put it together in the CGI and we got uh we got permission from Century Media to use In This Moment's music for it. We shot it like we're shooting a 5-minute movie. We went out in the mountains in the snow and had a effing blast doing it, but that kind of thing, people still watch that, you know, we're from 30, 40, 50 times a day.

80:47My trailer for Infected is at a quarter of a million views and it just keeps getting views. So, somebody's going to watch that and that's exactly the kind of book they want, then they go buy the book. It's the only form of marketing in the publishing industry that will continue to sell books for you year after year. So, we go out and spend I spend a ton of money on my trailers. Well, that's really interesting. Is this a common thing? Am I just It's getting more It's getting more common, yeah. And a lot of book trailers are they're awful. It's a floating book cover with music and words floating in, but there's people who go out and just shoot that I mean, they do full-on three, four-minute movies to try and sell the book. seen one of these, Brian? Mhm. Have you ever seen one, Jamie? Not for this not this style, but I've seen something like it. Yeah. Wow, I've never heard of it. That's

81:29fascinating. We did the first one in 2008 and it was relatively unheard of now, but it's more common now. Now, as a professional writer and a man, I need you to explain to me 50 Shades of Grey. What the is going What the is going on? It's the naughty factor, I think. It's the It's a I think and I'm guessing here, so I'm trying to figure out primarily that's a female readership. Trying to figure out the female mind, which is not something I'm that gifted at. But pri- Or gay dudes pretending to be straight, they might read that. I I don't know, but I think number one, it's it's it's not your usual sex scene. This is some stuff you read and you be like, "Oh my goodness, like can you put that in a book?" And then at some point it tipped and enough people had read it that it became okay. You've got the hive mentality. Well, god, a million people have read this, so it's not that bad.

82:15And then the other factor that I think everybody just ignores is I haven't read it, but I it's probably a great book. It does not sell that many copies unless that writing specifically appeals to the people who are buying it and they love the reading experience. I think one of the reasons why women don't trust porn stars or strippers or or prostitutes or, you know, other women that, you know, will do things along those lines for money is cuz secretly, I think there's a fear in the female community that all would have to happen would be just a few hundred girls start doing terrible things, then they would all start doing it as sort of a mass movement. And when a a book like 50 Shades of Grey comes along and it's ball gags and, you know, all the the crazy that they're doing in that in that book. to that terrible part. What's I'm sure what's terrible about uh 200 girls going

83:10out and having a grand old time? Uh nothing terrible. I mean, terrible from their point of view of their yeah. Yeah, their own social norms of, you know, not wanting to be a and not wanting to be be promiscuous and in you know, uh book like 50 Shades of Grey can literally change culture. You know, I'm sure you got it. Sex and the City. Sex and the City, same thing. I bet that I bet the sales of bondage instruments have gone up significantly since that book has come out. Well, you think about women in like the '90s, like before Sex and the City came along, it was like sort of like there was no MILF world. There was no, you know, there was no people weren't like really turned on by really hot 50-year-olds. Like that that didn't exist. Mhm. of that. And then all of a sudden it became okay and then all these women that were like over 40 was like, "Fuck it, I'm getting divorced. I'm going to

83:56go out and get some dick. Yeah. Hang out with my friends. I don't like hanging out with men either. Jesus Christ, like somewhere along the line they realized their marriage is a big charade. Yeah, it it's I think we're we're seeing more especially a lot of the porn stars being more open about what they do and going on their own podcast and talking about it like, "Yeah, this is my job. I do this. It's super fun." People are accepting it more and more and and a book like 50 Shades of Grey hopefully the norms of our parents are are going away and you know, if somebody wants to go get laid and the other person's into it, what's the problem? Nobody's getting hurt. Yeah, unless your ball gag's on real tight. You get hurt. you know, sooner You get like a lip strain. to kick in. Somebody's going to Somebody's strangle, get choked to death and that's sad. Whenever anybody dies

84:39from autoerotic asphyxiation, I always smell foul play. I always like, "Look, if you were going to figure out a way to discredit a guy like there was a preacher that died and he died he had a wet suit on. He had a black dildo up his ass and he was doing autoerotic asphyxiation Yeah. and he died. Um and that guy, I was figuring, well, you know what? That guy's a priest. Who knows what kind of creepy he did, you know? not a stupid priest, you know? I mean, come on. He could be very well stupid. That's a good way to whack someone, absolutely. Yeah, but it's a good way. I mean, it's like as embarrassing as possible. Yeah. The only The only difference is like you could make it a little worse by leaving like pornography around, like gay porn or kitty porn or something like that. cross me, I'm going to leave kitty porn all around you. You're going to die of auto asphyxiation. I ain't seen mafia

85:24threatening that. That'll make somebody straighten up. Well, they said that's what happened with David Carradine. There's some the uh That that I heard I thought the same thought when that happened. I'm like, I don't give a what anybody does in their own private time, but I'm not buying that. He crossed someone. He had to have crossed someone or owed somebody money or something cuz that was just nuts. Well, the rumor was that there was some organized crime involvement in his death. That was the the rumor. But the rumor, somebody easily could have just made that up. I mean, this There's so many goddamn rumors. It's It just seems so implausible that that you do that and but I don't you know, I've never I've never tried. Maybe it's the greatest thing ever. I'm never going to find out. awesome, but it's not my cup of tea. Yeah, so skydiving's supposed to be

86:02great, too. I'm not going to do that either. Brian's dad was trying to get talked into skydiving. Tell that story. Yeah, his friend uh was always like, "Hey, you got to go skydiving with me. Got to go skydiving skydiving with me." And then one day uh she her her her uh parachute got tangled up with her emergency parachute Oh, and she died. And this was like a week before he was going to go skydiving with her. Yeah. So, yeah. That shit's Not for me. No. Did he find out by just going to work and she wasn't there? Yeah. Whoops. Not not for me. More power to the people who want to do it, but not not for me. I avoid the crazy life-threatening stuff. Yeah, that's a that's a funny one. The skydiving one's a really funny one. It's like you want that big adrenaline rush. Wait till they come up with virtual skydiving. That sounds like it's going to be pretty badass.

86:51little fan things sound pretty fun. Have you ever done one of those where you're like over that big fan and you're just kind of like floating Eddie Bravo did that. He said it's amazing. Yeah, it seems amazing. Yeah, they have one at Universal. We should do it one day. Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah, you fly. Yeah. There's just like a technique to it, too, apparently. Cuz if you do it a certain way, you can't fall. Does that give you the same drastic fight or flight response though as looking out, you know, jumping out of a plane and you're like, "If anything goes wrong, I'm going to die." Like that's the thrill. I got to think for these people. Yeah, absolutely. That's that's a big part of it. Yeah, it's it's the part that people don't want to they don't want to sort of admit it. That it's a thrill. What's the thrill part? Well, the thrill is that you're almost dying.

87:29Yeah, you're going to you're going to And bungee jumping is the same thing. Your body is reacting like it's going to die and you're tricking that. Yeah. But not really. Like you're pretty sure it's not going to, so it's not a full-on I'm going to Well, you only make that mistake once, then it's you're you're all set. Yeah, we're weird with our manipulation of our fight or flight responses. Mhm. The things we do, like wing suits and like that. you know, organized fighting's the same thing. You are you are channeling that base primitive instinct to establish dominance over another member of your species. It's just the all of the things that used to go with that in primitive times are gone and it's just down to that one instinct. You are going in there to test your metal against another person and and see if you can beat them, if you can establish dominance on them.

88:16That's that's all that stuff is and the guys who are the best at establishing dominance are the guys who rise to the prominence in their in their sport. We're starting to see younger and younger guys retire as well. That's good. It's being an issue now. Well, is it they're retiring cuz they've already got damage or they're retiring ahead of damage? Well, everybody's got a certain amount of damage. That's the reality. Mhm. The reality is if you've done some hard sparring, you've got damage. I mean, there's just no It doesn't seem like there's any getting around that. I mean, how much of it recovers after, you know, a couple months? How much is a couple weeks? How much is never? Mhm. Depends. I've seen fights where guys got beat up and they were never the same guy again. They just weren't. They were missing something. They were at if they were at 10 before, they were at eight now. Right.

88:58You know, and that was where they were now and they could have a fairly successful career at eight, but they would never be 10 again. Now, that's something the NFL is facing cuz they've got, you know, a hundred years of of results to look at. But for something like the UFC, which is new, you wonder at what point does it come in where they start to go do we need to increase size of the gloves or or outlaw some of the various match is less safe. That's what the word The bigger gloves is cuz they hit harder? No, the bigger gloves is two issues with them. One is that you don't break your hands as much, so you can you can pretty much punch a guy anywhere. Okay. Um not always. Some guys have fragile hands even with the big gloves like Floyd Mayweather. He's he's had several operations on his hands because he kept kept breaking them. Whereas the MMA gloves are smaller and you can't

89:44take as many shots with them. The bigger gloves you can take more punches and in fact it's not really necessarily the concussive blows that do a lot of brain damage. It's the just the constant subconcussive trauma that is the it's the real issue. So there's a guy named Nick Denis who is a MMA fighter who just retired. I believe he was a pre-med student I think but very very smart guy and I don't know what his educational background was but that was his concern was the sub subconcussive trauma. So you start thinking like why can't I remember where I put my car keys? Like is that normal absent-mindedness or am I missing a gear now? And that's that's a And it's a real concern. It's still safer than boxing. I mean by far, right? You supposedly yes because boxing has less options. For for one you don't you can't clinch in a boxing match you're not supposed to. You

90:37know you can't take a guy to the ground if you're stuck in a situation. You have more options. You have more options. I mean how you training how you training is what's really important cuz a lot of boxers who are very smart they don't train that hard or as far as sparring. They don't spar hard. They spar like they'll they'll get good sparring partners and they'll you know box it like a 50-60% ratio. You know they don't they don't try to murder each other. Whereas there's a lot of MMA gyms where guys are trying to murder each other. And that not to say that doesn't take place in boxing cuz there's some camps where it certainly does but for the most part if you're watching a high-end boxing camp where there's a lot of money on the line they're having good hard sparring but they're they're also working. They're working on you know a guy imitating a certain guy's style or

91:24you know putting a certain amount of pressure on a fighter or whatever you know in in a high-end camp if you're dealing with you know Floyd Mayweather camp or somewhere along you know anywhere in that line you're dealing with it. They have a strategy to it. In MMA you have a bunch of gyms like that but then you also have a massive amount of gyms where people are sort of making it up as they go along and they think the harder you go the better it is. So let's go hard. We're we're badasses. We're going hard every day. And they'll go hard even to the head. Like we had Bas Rutten on yesterday and he was talking about a Holland style of sparring. They would go full blast to the body and to the legs but to the head they would pull punches because they realize you know you're damaging each other. In a lot of the less experienced MMA gyms or the less well-structured MMA

92:06gyms they don't realize that and so they they're punching each other full blast in the face in training and they're each other up. Wow. Yeah. It doesn't add up. It adds up. There's no way it doesn't add up. Um it's like you'll get a guy like Alistair Overeem he's been stopped something like nine times maybe even 10. I think this might be the 10th time he's been stopped in his career in that Bigfoot fight. That's a lot of times man. It's a lot of times of the fight being stopped from you getting punched too many times where you're just gone. You know that's uh You're not supposed to get nine of those in your life, right? I don't think you're not supposed to get one actually. Get up to nine that's an awful lot. Yeah. And you watch and you watch it affect after a few of those you watch it start to affect their ability to fight. They're not they're not the same guy out

92:52there. Oh it certainly does and especially if they're not involved in any testosterone replacement therapy cuz one of the things about the all that trauma is there's been a lot of studies that show that it starts to shut down your testosterone. Like multiple concussions that it it shuts down it does it does a lot of damage to your pituitary. The apparently the pituitary is quite sensitive to concussive blows and when you get blasted a bunch of times they've shown that it starts to lower your testosterone and it starts to make guys depressed. You know it's one of the things that makes you depressed. You know but scary thing especially for guy like you I'm sure who's you make your living with your mind. Yeah. Well I'm I'm just going to get back into some like MMA boot camp and stuff and I did a little Krav Maga in San Francisco had an MMA course and I was having a ball doing

93:46that but I was not not going to get hit in the head. Like that's got that's my this is my business and then when I actually did spar I got hit about three times and never saw a punch. I'm like I don't process that. Whatever you just did I didn't see anything. Let's go back to grappling. Grappling I can do all goddamn day long but I I don't see punches so I'm out. Yeah. Well the key is you got to do only with people who you really totally trust. You got to do it it's it's hard if you do it with strangers or if you do it with a guy who's got a chip on his shoulder. Some some guys you just tag them lightly and all of a sudden you're in a war. Oh right. That can happen and you know what do you do? Do you stop the sparring partner instead? Most of the time guys don't. Most time they just engage in a war with a sparring partner. You don't stop them and say hey what are we doing here?

94:31We're not cuz you don't trust him now cuz now he's swinging at you full blast. It happens all the time, you know. That was that's I think that was one of the biggest problems in MMA in the early days of you know mixed martial arts camps was guys getting beat up too much in the gym before they ever even got to the cage. Right. But I yeah I don't It makes you wonder what that and that's one of those things that I get into that a lot in that that Galactic Football League series I I told you about is size, speed and strength continue to increase. Now we're seeing things in the NFL where it's just it's basic physics and you can put all the padding you want around a guy unless they do something drastic to improve that helmet. When you get more the more force that is on bigger, faster, stronger bodies are going to produce more force that brain bounces around inside the head. And when you

95:23project football players out to the four and 500 lb size and fighters up to the 400 lb size it's something try and try and get into that in the fiction itself too. It's like what what is the average career like when you're getting hit on a regular basis by something that can bench press 1500 lb and can run 30 mph. You know your career's like two three seasons tops and then you're just a vegetable. There's nothing you can Unless you get in the head and create some kind of additional structure between the brain and the skull there's only so much that they can do other than change the rules to stop so much damage. Did you in your fiction ever create some other sort of protective wear that people would wear or did you issue it all together which is what a lot of people think would be the solution to stop a lot of the head butting each other and smashing heads would be get rid of the helmets.

96:10That the first time I heard that I'm like that's the dumbest thing I ever heard of and then then I started to think about it a little bit and like you know rugby does not have the same it's not the same kind of contact. Rugby do not get a 15 yd head start and take someone out of the picture. Right. But you know maybe rough and very physical and yet they don't take the impact that American football players do. I do some some of the magic hand waving with that. I'm like well this new helmet technology protects against this much and then you just don't you don't explain it cuz if we could explain it we would be doing it right now. So there it it is taken into account but the main character Quentin Barnes it's a seven book series we've got four books done and by book five he's already starting to feel the effects of you know I stand in the pocket and if I do my job right

96:51sometimes I'm getting rid of the ball and standing there when something that weighs 800 lb is hitting me as hard as it can. That's what you get paid to do and it's it's going to start impacting him. So I'm excited about that. The last three books start to get into the character analysis what happens when when a the ultimate professional athlete at the top of his game things don't aren't processing as fast anymore and he can't make the decisions as quick as he could. His reads aren't quite as good as they were before and his body's starting to hurt. So follow him all the way from a 19-year-old rookie through this league to the point where he's like at some point he's going to have to make a decision. Do I continue to play and do what I love and die doing what I love which is admirable and going to die anyway so why not or do you look to the future and be like what are the next 40

97:32years of my life going to be like? So it's going to be it's a huge influence in the book as to what's going to happen. When you just stop and think about what an actual football player today a 310 lb man who can run like like a literally like a track star of the 1930s. You know when you stop and think about the kind of damage they can do and you sort of look towards the future and extrapolate a thousand years from now 2000 years from Especially when this drastic change has happened just the last 50-60 years. It's un When you look at where the guys are a third larger than they used to be in just 50 years. Yeah. So you extrapolate that out and of course there's genetic and physical limitations but as genetic as as nutrition improves and science improves and and genetic engineering proves you're going to wind up in the future pro sports couple centuries from now pro sports you're not

98:21I mean they're not even going to look human. They're going to look like a different species. That's how I came up with the idea for the book is um I used to be able to I used to do a little stuff for ESPN when I was in college like manage the teams coming off the field or hold the dish and that kind of a thing and I had you know I was 126 lb and Michigan-Michigan State's a giant football game every year. It's huge. ESPN is there and my producer Al Killion I'm on the headset with him and he's got me bringing the teams out of the out of their dressing room and then he starts screwing with me cuz I'm 19 I don't know any better. And he's in my ear he's going listen if they don't come out at the right time ESPN is going to lose $5 million of advertising and that's going to be on you. And I'm like he was with me cuz he could cuz I didn't know any better. And I'm like so stressed out and then

99:02let Michigan State out of the out of the locker room at the appointed time and all these giant human beings are coming out and then as they're coming out they're running walking by the the to the Michigan locker room. Michigan door locker room door opens up and standing in the door is Greg Skrepenak. Ever heard of him? No. He was 6'8" 360. It was He was It was a giant giant man. Plus he's got all the gear on. And I'm on the And I'm like And I'm I'm little tiny thing. I'm freaking out. I'm like, "Oh, hell. Michigan's going to come out." He's like, "You don't let them come out of that locker room. I don't care what you have to do." And so I He's giant. He's 6'8". I'm 5'8". I'm 125 lb. And I And he He goes to step out and I just put my hand right right on his sternum. I just stiff-armed him. And went, "STOP RIGHT THERE. YOU GUYS CAN'T COME OUT OF THAT LOCKER room yet." And just And he just

99:50He looked confused. He was like, "Who is this little person?" And he managed to wait and all the guys were behind him and he managed to wait just long enough for Michigan State to come out then I got out of the way and they came out. But I had I wrote the whole concept of the book in that one moment. The whole GFL series. I had my hand on this guy's hair. My nose came up to his sternum and I remember thinking my head, "It's like He's a completely different species than me." And that was And after that I went home and started writing that book. Like what if we have different species playing football and the whole thing blew up from there. Wow. That's awesome. Yeah, I'm lucky I'm alive. They really are like completely different species. If you're dealing with those super athlete pro football players, I mean we're we're we're getting some really enormous enormous human beings

100:31now. In the combine I read I may have read this incorrectly. They had three guys three offensive linemen 310 lb who ran 4 6 40s. That's a gazelle. If I stand still and they run at me and hit me like that, I am dead on impact. That's how much force is involved. I'm just I'm just dead. There's nothing you can do. It's crazy. I wonder how many of these up-and-coming players are more aware of the risks now because of the past few years all the different stories that have been coming out about players depression post post career suicides. I I think the veterans probably are. But you know, when you are 22 years old and someone's paying you hundreds of thousands dollars to play football and that's been your dream your whole life, you're still 22 and you're bulletproof. I think that the rules have to come in to adjust behavior. It has to be run from the top

101:18down cuz these these you know, you were 22 and then there's if I was playing in the NFL there's nobody could tell me anything. I'm going to go hit that as hard as I possibly can. That's how I make my That's how I make my money. That's how people know me cuz I'm the guy who brings the heat. It's not It's It's never going to stop from the players themselves. Yeah, and you start to think if I get hurt I'll get out. But I won't get hurt too bad. I'll be smart. They also you know, try and remember back to that age. There is this rationalization of maybe I'll get hurt and won't be quite as smart. I'm willing to pay that price in order to have this moment right now. I'm willing to give up years down the road. And at 22 23 24 that is a perfectly rational logical decision. You're like, "This This makes sense to me." It's not till you get 20 years down the road you're

102:01like, "Boy, I'm glad I didn't get any brain damage. That would suck right now." Yeah, it's also a thing when you're 22 and you love playing football. That's another thing. It's a very exciting thing to do. As it As is MMA fighting as is you know, a lot of certain motocross riding. There's a lot of crazy dangerous things that people really enjoy doing and ultimately that's really our choice. We should We should have that across the board. We're hardwired to go out and seek that kind of danger. Evolutionarily speaking, we're hardwired to go out like we have to go get into life and death situations to hunt to defend to fight off other tribes and the people who have those instincts are the people who wound up living and reproducing and passing that on. So as a you know, 18 to 27-year-old male, you are hardwired for war. That is what And a lot of guys aren't. That's

102:46cool. But a lot of guys have that That's what they inherited is like, "Let's go out and kill some shit." Like that's in you. I had that in me. I wasn't very good at it cuz I was so small. Wrestling was a good outlet. But you know, you know what that feeling is like. And And these kind of activities provide a safe rational outlet for those things. But it's in there and it's going to come out one way or another. Yeah, for a lot of men. So I mean And then again like as you said, some don't have it in them. But for a lot of men, yeah. It's a It's a real issue because it's sort of just you have a whole reward system set up in your DNA that you have no control over and you have all these things that you enjoy and you know, there's a very little outlet for it when you're working in a cubicle and it's hard It's hard to make your body free of the influence of all these instincts.

103:30things that can't be rationalized. There's just things you cannot explain away. Like When I When I used to wrestle and finally got to compete against people my own size cuz I played football too and played as hard as I could and did everything I could. But I got my ass kicked away at 120 125 lb. When I wrestled going up against guys my own weight, I was able to you know, dominate people and and just things like a crossface or And it's you know, it's kind of mean to say I guess but one of the greatest feelings in my whole life is I suplexed a kid and broke his collarbone. And when I when I brought him up put him back, he landed his collarbone and broke and he just stuck there and it was utterly primitive. It was just you know, why would you be happy just hurting another human being? He was a good guy. I knew him. He's a nice guy. But when I that that for that brief

104:15moment all all the chemistry inside everything else is like, "Ah, that's how you do it." Does that help you in your writing when you're writing something like Ancestor when you're writing about this crazy gigantic pack predator? I get into it I get into it a ton especially in the new book Pandemic. The thought process is we are modified by society. We have a set of rules that we live by. A certain camaraderie helping out our fellow man helping out our fellow women. You know, in in our growing culture the growing equality of women and and there's no need to be a douchebag. By and large you don't need to be a douchebag. You can get along just fine being a good guy. And then take these people who are aspiring to become these better people who are genuinely good people and then put them in the pressure cooker. When you start to get into it and it's like

105:02you and me Joe we're both in this room. But if I get out that door, I'm going to live and you're going to die. And if we both here stay here together, we might both die. And there's a tiny chance we might That's what I play with a lot is what what does a person do when their life is actually on the line and they're situation they have absolutely no control over? Do we regress to that lizard brain? Do we start looking out for number one? And I I don't get into it too much like I don't You protect your kids. You protect your family. There's a guy you've known for 20 years. You two are going to you know, you're going down together. But it's it's largely when the strangers are brought together, get a small amount of time to gel to get to know each other so it's not completely alien. It's It's self. It's It's one of my group. Then bring in the 650 lb pack predators. What happens?

105:46What do these characters do? That sounds awesome, man. I'm going to read this. I can't wait to read it. Sounds like a great idea. I love your whole philosophy. I love what you did. I I love the way you became sort of self-actualized by going out and putting it online yourself and reading your own books and putting it out in audiobook form and making it free. I think it's brilliant. It's beautiful. I love the fact that it worked. I love your whole philosophy and giving it to people they can't afford it and you just put a little ad in there. It's great. It's beautiful. It's all perfect. Thank you very much for coming on, man. I really really appreciate it. Thank you for having me on the show. I've been a fan since the broadcast news days you know, so It's really It's a big thrill. Thanks, man. I really appreciate it. And for folks who are interested in checking out

106:28more of Scott's book, the last name Sigler S I G L E R. I've got Nocturnal in front of me and Ancestor and your website is scottsigler.com. And it's just Scott Sigler on Twitter, right? Yeah, Scott Sigler on Twitter facebook.com/scottsigler. We We get out to all the interwebs everywhere we can get to them. Well dude, thank you very much. And folks go go support. Go get one of these books. I'm I'm reading I'm going to start this one tonight. Sweet. Thank you very much, brother. I really really appreciate it. Really fun time, man. I really enjoyed it. much. Thank you. Thank you, too. Thank you to Hover one of our sponsors for this episode. If you go to hover.com/rogan you will get 10% off your domain name registrations. Thanks also to audible.com. If you go to audible.com/joe audiobook and you will also get 30 days of free service at audible.com. An awesome

107:23service where you can even get Scott Sigler book Nocturnal, right? That's the only one that's up there, right? Infected, Contagious and Ancestor are up on Audible. They're all there. They're all there, you freaks. So go there. Go there. Get it. Check it out. Go to onnit.com. That's O N N I T. Use the code name Rogan and save 10% off any and all supplements. Thursday night San Diego, California the American Comedy Company Brian Redban, Tony Hinchcliffe, Yoshi, Billy Bonnell, Jason Tibo. It's going to be a hell of a show, ladies and gentlemen. Go down there and check it out. And if you're around Pasadena on Wednesday night at the Ice House Comedy Club. It's me, Ari Shaffir and Ian Edwards. All right, folks. That's the end of this episode. We'll be back in about 10 minutes with Justin Wren. We're doing a double podcast day. My man's out there saving pygmies. This shit's going

108:10to be crazy. Thank you, Scott Sigler. I really enjoyed that. Thank you very much.