The following is a conversation with Nils Jorgensen, a New York firefighter for over 21 years who was

there at Ground Zero on September 11, 2001. He was forced to retire because of the leukemia he

contracted from cleaning up Ground Zero. This podcast tells his story and the story of other

great men and women who were there that day. Some of the stories we talk about are part of a new

limited podcast series that Nils hosts called 20 for 20 with 20 episodes for the 20 years since 9

11. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. As a side note,

please allow me to say a few words about the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. I was

in downtown Chicago on that day, lost in the mundane busyness of an early Tuesday morning.

At that time, I was already fascinated by human nature, the best and the worst of it, exploring it

through the study of history and literature. In the years before, as a young boy growing up in

Russia, I saw chaos, uncertainty and desperation in the Soviet Union of the 1990s, wrapping up a

century of war and suffering. But after coming to America for me, there was a sense of hope,

like all of it was behind us, a bad dream to be forgotten as we enter into the new century.

On 9 11, when I saw the news of the second plane hitting the towers,

my sense of hope had changed. I understood that the 21st century, like the century before, would

too have its tragedies, its evil doers, its wars and its suffering. And unlike the history books,

these stories will involve all of us. They will involve me, in however small and insignificant

a role, but one that nevertheless carries the responsibility to help. I became an American

that day, a citizen of the world. I felt the common humanity in all of us. I felt the unity

and the love and the days that followed. And I think most of the world shared in this feeling

that we are all in this together. Evil cannot defeat the human spirit. There were many heroes

sung and unsung on that day and in the years after. Often politicians fail to rightfully honor

the service and sacrifice of these heroes. There is much I could say about that. But I don't want

to waste my words on the failures of weak leaders. Instead, I want to say thank you to the men and

women who rushed to ground zero to help, who put on a uniform to serve, who make me proud to be an

American and a human being and give me hope about the future of our civilization here on a small

spinning rock that despite the long odds keeps kindling the fire of human consciousness and love.

This is the Lex Friedman podcast and here is my conversation with Niels Jorgensen.

Take me through the day of September 11th, 2001. As you experienced it, as you lived it.

September 11th, 2001. It was a bright, beautiful, sunny Tuesday morning. It was a late summer.

There's a lot of folks who go to the beaches in New Jersey called the short summer. Everybody's left

there for Labor Day, but it's still beautiful enough to enjoy the weather. I left my house about

6.30 in the morning and my four and a half year old daughter said to me, daddy, which truck are you

driving today? The fire truck, the oil truck, or the Boer's head truck? Because I had three jobs

at the time. Most New York City firefighters and police officers, EMS, we don't make the most

amount of money. So in order to live in that city, you have to hustle. And my wife stayed at home

raising the children. So my daughter said, oh, she used to be safe because you're on the oil

truck. I told her I was going on an oil truck that day. So she says you should be safe today,

daddy. So I left and worked for this great company on the North Shore, Staten Island,

Quinlan Fuel. Very nice people. It treated me very well. And it was my first day back, actually,

for the winter season. I usually get laid off a couple of months in the summer because things,

you know, too hot to need oil. So I took the truck, started my route that day and

clean hit the tower. So initially, I'm like, oh, it's probably some silly Learjet pilot.

And he veered off track to get a better picture for a client. And he hit the building, probably hit a,

you know, bad turbulence, gust of wind. It's very windy down in that area of Manhattan.

So that was my first thought. Can we pause there for a second? So 6.30 a.m., you wake up,

you leave, and then the plane hits at 8.45, 8.50. 8.45 a.m. Just interesting how you

phrase it. So how did you hear that a plane hit something? I'm a big news radio guy,

news guy, a bit of a buff. I've been that way since I was a kid. And I had the news radio on

the local New York radio station. And as I was driving the truck, I heard, you know,

a emergency report. This just in aircraft is just struck the World Trade Center.

And where Quinlands is located, it's on the north rim of Staten Island, which is right on New York

Harbor. And you could see Statue of Liberty, you know, a mile or two away in your distance,

and then past that is the towers. So I just literally stopped the truck and looked out,

and I saw the smoke. So there was smoke. Oh, it was dark, black smoke. It was just, yeah,

I mean, it was burning fully at that point. And did you have fear of what the hell happened?

I was initially scared for anybody involved. I realized, I said, there's gonna be lots of

fatalities, obviously, depending on the size of the aircraft. And, you know, the business day

there had started probably at 8830. So those buildings should have been packed at that moment.

So that was a thought across my mind. But from our being responder perspective,

if you're off duty, normally you do not go to a scene. They don't want you to because of

accountability and safety. The on duty platoon will handle it. And if it's something very horrific,

then they will have something called a recall, which is any police firefighter or EMS personnel is

obligated to go to their command immediately, check in with, you know, their command to get

their gear and standby and await orders for deployment, or to remain in that command for

your routine duties. How often throughout history have there been recalls?

I believe the one prior to that was like in the 1968 riots, possibly, and then maybe in the 70s,

there was another blackout in riots. And I remember my dad talking about it. And he actually always said,

just remember, if something bad's going down, don't just rush in, you will wait the recall.

Or at the very least, if there isn't a recall, you get to your firehouse. And because if you show up

somewhere, there's a good chance that no one knows you're there. And now you, in your well intended

movements, you get lost or trapped or no one's looking for you. So that's the whole thing with,

you know, checking in. And now you're with a squad or, you know, a group of guys and

everyone knows, you know, hey, there's nails, there's Lex, okay, they're on, you know, this team.

So I said, all right, they're not going to need us. It's probably going to be a fifth alarm. And,

you know, there'll be 250 firefighters there to handle it. It's going to be a bad day for those

guys. But, you know, our guys take on some heavy stuff and they'll be fine. A few minutes later,

the second plane hit and I knew immediately, I'm like, okay, we're under attack. So I just flew

the truck back in. I told my boss, I have to go. He understood. He knew something was way wrong.

And I just was flying. At the time, I actually had a yellow Volkswagen Beetle, kind of a goofy car

to be driving, but I loved it. So for people who are just listening, you're kind of a big guy.

Well, yeah, I could, I definitely need to lose about 50 pounds. No, I don't mean in that way,

your frame, big hands. As my beloved friend, Bobby Adams would say to me,

I was driving around in a clown wagon and he also says I have a waving, waving hairdo, waving bye

bye. So thanks, Bobby. Good luck. But yeah, he's a great friend. Yeah, so I took the Volkswagen

and I flew in and I was heading over to the Verrazano Bridge and hit the Brooklyn Queens Expressway.

And my phone rang and my wife normally doesn't curse or raise a voice and she was yelling at me

and she said, don't go in there, go to your firehouse. Well, first she asked, well, she knew

I was on the way, but she just wanted to know where. And I said, I'm on, I'm on the curve,

which is 65th Street on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway called Dead Man's Curve. We, we

actually used to do a lot of car wrecks up there. And I was hitting that curve pretty fast. And then

right around the curve is the exit to the firehouse. And I had to decide, well, am I driving

right in to the battery tunnel to the city? Or am I going to the firehouse? And then I said,

but I have no gear. I, I'm going to be ineffective. How do I show up with no gear, no protection,

no, you know, so she said, do what your dad would follow the recall, go to the firehouse.

And I said, hung up the phones. I love you. Gotta go. And I did. I went to the firehouse

and I'm glad to listen to her. I had my father ringing in my ears. My dad, beautiful guy,

he's 82, 34 years in New York City Fire Department. He, he came down and end stage

on Hudson's Lymphoma. He's 38 back in going on 39 1978. And this guy, he, he's my hero. He,

he was going to die. They sent him home. They said, you, there's really not much we can do.

Go get your affairs. And he says, the doc, I have three young kids and, and she called him

a couple hours later. She said, I got in touch with Sloan Kettering and they have a new, new drug.

We want you to be a test pilot. And he said, hey doc, I'm a, he's got a heavy Brooklyn accent.

I'm a fireman. I'm a fireman. I'm not a pilot. And so she said, no, no, we want you to try this

drug out. And it's, it's, if it works, we may have some success. But if not, he says, yeah,

I'm going to die. So let's do it. So every, every two weeks for four years, he, he'd go for treatment.

But he was assigned to a desk job after that, after the, the cancer tumor removal and, you know,

the heavy treatments. And he'd get up every morning, four o clock in the morning, and he'd,

he'd walk down to the train station in Staten Island, take the train. And then he'd take the ferry,

of course, to Harbor, and he'd get off looking at the towers. And then he'd take a subway into

Brooklyn. And on every other Thursday, he'd leave at noon and do the same exact reverse route. And

he'd get to the cancer center. And my mom would meet him and he'd get his infusion. And within two

hours, he'd be violently ill for a few days, really badly ill. And I just remember, you know,

he's 10 years, I was 10 years old. And he just had to have the room darkened out. And he,

he'd be so sick. And I just go in and wipe the vomit from his face, just try to give him a

little water, but he couldn't take it down because he'd throw it up. And maybe on Saturday,

he'd start coming around a little bit, drink down a little bit of tea. And on Sunday morning,

he put his robe on and he'd go down. Mom would make him black coffee and toast. He'd sit up,

watch the news, watch the game. And then Monday morning, he'd go back to work. He did that for

four years. And he's 82. And he's still here. You said that your dad's a man of a few words,

but when he talks, they're profound. So what, what words were ringing in your ear when you were

driving? I just always remember him saying, kid, they give the recall, you go to the firehouse.

You don't go where you think you should. You go to the firehouse, you follow your orders.

So do the smart thing, do your job. Yes, sir. And every time we hang up the phone,

it's fireman talk. He'd say, I love you, keep low. My dad couldn't tell me he loved me until

I told him when I first got on a fire department, I was 22. And my dad grew up in a tough household.

My granddad was a good man, but a tormented man. He, he was sent away from home at 12 years old.

He was from Denmark and I'm named after him, grandpa Nels. And I think his demons

took up a large part of his life, his anger, his, whatever it was, his fear. We got the sense that

maybe when he was a child, he was an apprentice baker living with strangers working for them.

And we, we think maybe he was abused and that's why he took it out on my, my dad and my grandma,

my aunts, but they, they made it up to each other at the end of my granddad's life. My granddad turned

out to be the best grandfather ever. He, I think he tried to heal and heal everyone by his change

of behavior. So he's proof that you can change, you can improve if you work on it. But I know

I'm going off track here, but, but you're a man enough in your, you say in your 20s to tell your

dad, yeah, I got on a job. He said, I had a go kid. I was the tour, we called tour duty.

I said, oh, that was great. It was great. I love it. And he goes, we just remember you keep low,

you always keep low and keep low means you stay down below the flames, you know, for room flashes

over and it's, it's burning you. If you stay up high, you're going to get burned badly. But if

you get down on your belly and you crawl, you'll get out. So he'd always say that when you hang

up the phone. And I said, well, I love you pop. And he says, oh, well, thanks kid. I said, well,

you can say it too. And, uh, Oh, nice. He pressured and he did and he said it. And now every time we

talk, he says it. So, you know, um, you know, they talk about masculinity and whatnot. And

my dad is one of those tough, tough guys with a soft edge. And that's, that's how he brought me up.

You know, to be a protector. I hate bullies. I was bullied really badly as a kid. And

I really hated it. And, and now I find myself sometimes throwing myself into situations to

protect people that are being, you know, violated and hurt. And, uh, I just can't walk away from it.

But that's my dad. My dad, uh, was that, you know, just a great guy. But anyway, yeah.

You still listen to, therefore see you, you probably want to rush right to the,

to the towers, but you went. Yeah. So anyway, I got, I did, I listened to him. I listened to

my wife and went to the firehouse. And it was really strange. It was eerie because, um,

um, the computer dispatch system was, was still beeping, um, which meant it, it sent the dispatch

and the truck received it. Later on, 14, my, my truck company received it and they left,

they were gone. So there was this beautiful old building built in the 1880s with a spiral staircase,

just a narrow old brick garage and it was empty. And I just heard the computer chirping

and I looked down on a ticket and I said, a lot of 114 respond, the Vessie and West World Trade

Center aircraft into building. And I said, Oh God, I just hope they're not on a death ride

because this, this now was two towers and, uh, they were burning. They were free burning. And,

and I knew this was really, really bad. And, uh, I got on the phone and I called commands right

away. I called the 40th battalion and I, you know, chief's chief's aide just said, look,

you know, get 12 guys, sign them in to the journal. There's a journal of daily events,

every, everything that takes place in the firehouse 24 seven has to be logged.

And I logged myself as coming in, reporting for, reporting for duty. Um, and as the guys came in,

I logged them in and then, uh, one of our lieutenants took command. We grabbed up a bunch of gear

and they basically told us get 12 guys, get a city bus and get down to the battery,

the battery tunnel. They, they said it would probably be closed. There was threats. It was

going to be blown up to get to the Brooklyn bridge. And, uh, so we did, we got a city bus. We flagged

it down and the bus driver said, I'm sorry, I can't give you the bus. I will drive you. And he took

us and we stopped an engine 201, which is just about a quarter mile down the road from us. Uh,

that's our affiliated engine company and my, uh, my, my childhood best friend here, Johnny,

shard was, he was assigned there and he was on shift and, uh, then they went through the tunnel

and, uh, we picked up those guys, the off duty guys from 201. And then we kept going down

Fort Davion. We picked up two 39s crew and then we hightailed it down the bridge and, um,

there's a lot of traffic. There's a lot of people fleeing coming over the bridge and waves. So it

affected, uh, the inbound. What was the mood like? Um, it was somber because just prior to get on the

bus, the, uh, first tower went down. So we, we, we figured that I heard 114, uh, my lieutenant,

Dennis Oberg, I heard him on the radio and he, uh, he said 114 Manhattan, we're on your frequency.

What's, you know, what do you need us? And they said, uh, Tally Ho, which is our nickname,

Tally Ho responding to Vessie and West to the command post and, uh, receive your orders.

And I heard Dennis Tally Ho 10 four and, uh, Dennis, a little while after that, they were

proceeding to go into, I believe it was, I get this mixed up and I'm sorry, I should know this

right at the back of my hand, but sometimes it's just such a haze, but the second tower hit was

the first one to go down and, um, they were heading over to go in it. And all of a sudden he looked

up and he saw like what he thought to be disintegration and he turned the guys around. He said, run,

just run, don't look back, don't look up, go. They sprinted as fast as they could and, uh,

they dove under a fire truck and the guys that were sprinting behind them 40 feet away were

underneath the pile. That was 10 stories deep. They, they were killed and just further into

that pile was his rookie son who Dennis's rookie son who was working in ladder 105,

which was my first command on the department. I worked for proudly serve for three years

and just to side them was my childhood best friend, John Chard and his, uh, his crew from 201 and, uh,

they, they were all killed. And the strange irony to, um, to that is that Dennis, Dennis's son Dennis

Jr. was working underneath the, uh, under the wing of a senior man, as we say, a senior man,

is a guy with a lot of experience and he'll, uh, watch over you, make sure you don't, you don't

veer off. Like I veer off a lot of talking and, uh, you don't veer off and you get yourself hurt.

In the morning of 1993 bombing, Henry Miller was my senior man.

And I was the young guy under his wing and he protected me and toward the end of the day,

looked around and he said, kid, it's a bad day. He said, they didn't do it right. They blew it

up in the middle. If they did it in a corner, they would have dropped this building half

mile down the canal street, but don't kid yourself. They'll be back and they'll do it and they'll do

it right next time. And it's so strange and so prophetic because he was there with him. He died

with Dennis. He knew it. And like 1994, we had a training manual with a picture of the towers

with a target. And this is not, not a matter of if, but a matter of when be prepared.

And one thing it was like people knew, right? And we didn't stop it. And, uh,

so we got off the bus, but just prior to that coming over, the bridge of the second tower was

gone now. And we're just destroyed because we're like, oh, guys are there. They're all in there.

Now we've feeling like cowards because we got there late. And initially we're thinking there's

500 guys that are gone because there was a 10th, 10th alarm assignment, which means

50, 60 fire trucks, uh, five to six guys per, you know, you're looking at

at least there was even more 10th alarm plus multiple arms on top of it. It was a dispatch

basically equivalent of five to 600 firefighters who figured out they're all, they're all in there,

all gone. All the police officers, port authority police, NYPD police, court officers just up the

street from the courts, transit cops from the train tunnels. Like just, you know, we knew

everybody was going in there and, uh, now they're gone. So you, what you saw, what, what were we

looking at? What did it look like? So you saw rubble and then you knew that many, that 105

and 201, many of those guys are in the, they're dead. Yeah. And we thought 114 was in there too.

We didn't realize at that point, we didn't even realize that they had gotten under that truck.

We thought they were all gone, but yeah, it looked like, like it looked like,

it looked like a movie scene with just end of the earth destruction. It's just massive piles of

intertwined steel, what was left of the steel. And, and you know, there was no cement. It was

all just dust and it was just a burning pile of, of dust and concrete and plastic. And it was just,

everything was just pulverized and it was, it was truly hard to mentally compute that. Like it was

like what? And then there was just fighter jets, a couple of fighter jets just circling and, and

you just heard the flying by over your head. I mean, you literally see the guy banking a turn

around a Brooklyn bridge and just coming back and I'm like, Holy shoot, we're on their attack.

And we, we couldn't really get concrete intel as to what exactly we knew planes. But then we kept

hearing there was multiple devices. There was devices in a battery tunnel and there was devices

on a George Washington bridge and in the subways and it was just, it was just chaos. It was,

I mean, we kept it together obviously, because that's kind of, we try, that's what we do.

But the, the just constant barrage of different reports, it was like, Holy shoot. And then as

we were being deployed, it was a little frustrating, but they were trying to take command and send us

in groups now because they realized we have to start searching this. There's, you could hear the,

the alarms on the, on the Scott air mask, the, the packs we wear to go into the building.

It has emotional alarm. And if you stop moving for 30 seconds, it just sounds like this whining,

you know, this screaming bell, like it just keeps going and going. And you could hear multiple units

of those going off and you're like, wait a minute, there's guys with those, like, where are they?

And it's emanating from underneath the pile. And, you know, it was, it was just surreal and

truly like, like, like a war zone. You know, I mean, I was a soldier in the reserves and I never

saw a combat and I would never claim that I did. But, you know, we trained, we trained for a lot

of situations and we trained in, you know, real life atmospheres and whatnot. And this was just

beyond that by leaps and bounds. It was, it was bizarre. Did you see the towers collapse?

As we were coming over the bridge, I, the first one, we were, as we were deploying from the

firehouse, we had a television on and I started to go down and just, it was just like, and,

and, you know, we were so involved in getting gear together and getting, okay, you know,

teams set up and okay, you're going to be with these two guys. And these,

and I just yelled at the guys and they looked at me. I dropped to my knees and I started praying.

They're like, what, what the hell's wrong? I said, I couldn't even say, it's like,

14, they're in there. And they're like, what? I said, the tower's gone.

And all you saw on the TV was just this pile of dust and I guess because they didn't see it going

down, I probably thought I truly lost it. And then, then the realization came as like, wow,

the tower's down. So now it was like, wow, this is really on. So we just took off and got that boss.

So if you thought many of the guys on 114 were dead,

if you thought that, did you think you're going to die? I mean, if you're rushing into the, towards

the rubble, I, as crazy as it sounds, I never thought that the other tower would go down.

I said, okay, maybe some freak chance that one went down, but no, the other one's not going to

go. Like they're built so strong. You know, I was in those towers so many times and I mean,

I ate dinner up in the top four restaurant windows on the world and I'm saying, no, there's no way.

Like, like how the hell did this one happen? But I was having a hard time mentally processing

that the building was gone. And, and, and believe me, if, if you don't have fear in this industry

and, you know, police fire military, then you're, you're kidding yourself or you're a danger to

everyone. I don't care who it is as tough as they are to send that everybody has a certain level of

fear with doing this. And I don't care how long you do it. There's always that chance of something

going bad. And, and everyone who does it has that certain amount of fear. But at that point,

it was such a feeling of disbelief that fear wasn't even kicking in. It was just like, what the

hell just happened? And I honestly think it was almost like a shock and, and it just stayed that

whole day. So the building is before collapses is burning. It's just burning. I mean, upper floor

is just, you know, up in the 78th, up to the 80s. And then it's, you know, there's the way that the

cut was from the plane. It wasn't just straight across. It was, you know, from the 78th, then,

you know, on up to maybe the 86th. And, you know, then the jet fuel had come down and was burning

down. And there was people on the, on the ground who were doused with jet fuel that was already

burning and they were lit on fire on the ground. It was, it was just insane how vast the destruction

path was. As a firefighter, what are you supposed to do with that scale of fire?

I think the first bosses in the first chiefs, we're just going to do their best to get,

as we, we get hose lines with our whole theory is our tactics is to get water at the fire,

at the base of the fire, and get the truck company, which is the ladder company. They're the guys who

break the doors down, put ladders up this and that to get them to where the life is most expected

and get them out of there. So I think the chief's tactics at that point was, let me get multiple

engine companies. Let me get four, five, six hose lines fighting this fire, this massive fire.

And let me get 15, 20 truck companies up there, just yoking people out of there.

Yeah, but you got to go up the stair. Everything's not working.

Yeah. Guys had to walk up 80, 80, 90 hundred flights of stairs. And there's audio of, of

officers and firefighters speaking to each other on the radio channels. And unfortunately, at that

point in time, we had very, very bad communication system. We've been fighting for years to get

radios that work properly. We couldn't because it was a lot of money. We fought for years to get the

full bunker firefighting suits, which is the pants and the coat. We used to have just coats and these

roll up rubber boots and guys were burning to death. And we had to fight. And unfortunately,

we lost three guys and won vicious, vicious fire in 1994. And then they finally said,

enough's enough. Give these guys the gear. So it's a strange phenomenon in the first responder

world and in the military world. It's really one of the most important things that takes

place in society, the most pertinent organizations, and we can't get the funding we need. It's crazy.

They'll throw money at every nonsensical thing. But when it comes to gear, equipment, protective

equipment, trucks, this couldn't get it. Just all the ways you could take care of people. I saw

in since 9 11, the wars in the Middle East have cost America over $6 trillion. And the amount of

that money that was spent on the soldiers, in this case, the first responders is minimal compared

to it. Yeah. It was nothing. They closed down. I believe it's either seven or eight. In May of

2002, they closed down nine firehouses in New York City for budget reasons. We hadn't even finished

cleaning up the World Trade Center site and they slashed the budget. And still to this day,

have not reopened those firehouses. There's a million more people now living in New York City

than there were in 2001. And the fire protection is way less than it was. And it's a sin. It's

really a sin. Can I ask you a difficult question? So there's this famous photograph of a falling man.

So many people had to decide when they're above the fire or in the fire, whether to jump out of

the building or to burn to death. What do you make of that decision? What do you make of that

situation? Those people who jumped, those were acts of sheer desperation. I've been in fires

and just minor burns, but minor in situation. But I've been trapped or caught somewhat,

ended up in a burn center for nothing serious at all. But for those brief

seconds, half a minute, was, thank God, if I didn't have my fire gear on, I would have been burned

to very, very horrible level. Those people were burning alive. And they had the choice of either

to stay there and burn alive or to launch themselves. And some of them, I don't fault them,

but they had a few folks, they won't show it anymore because they say, I don't know why I

defend some people, but they had a couple of folks that took umbrellas and they took garbage bags

because they thought that it would slow down their acceleration rate to the ground and maybe,

just maybe they wouldn't be killed. And that's, to me, a true sense of desperation for humanity to

say, I'm going to die either way, but let me take my chance. And I don't know the exact number of

those folks who did that, but our first member of the fire department killed firefighter Daniel

Serf, aged 216, was struck by a jumper. And one of my dear friends was ordered to help

take him. And they knew he was passed away because he was hit by a flying missile. I mean,

120 miles an hour body lands on you. Those two bodies are now crushed. And they were ordered

to take that firefighter and bring him across the street to engine 10, ladder 10. It was literally

a firehouse, less than 100 yards from the facade of the trade center, from the trade center complex.

They literally right there. And there was plane parts that went into that firehouse,

landed into the front doors onto the roof, but the building itself was not destroyed.

So it was used as a mini command center for quite a while. So my friend was ordered to take Daniel's

body in respect and bring it over to this firehouse and give it some semblance of dignity and lay it

out on one of the bunk room, the bunks we have in the bunkhouse and just cover it with a sheet

and put a sign, please, firefighter killed, do not disturb. And then we'll get to him later,

because obviously this operation is going to go on for days. And my friend, who's such a great,

great, wonderful guy is so still to this day, filled with guilt because if they weren't taking his

body out with the respect and dignity that they did, it took a while because it's just,

it's a tough situation. His ladder company was coming over the bridge. There's a famous picture

of ladder 118. You see this tractor trailer fire truck. It's the one when the guy in the back also

drives. And it's a zoomed out shot. And you see the Brooklyn bridge and you see only the fire

truck in the middle. And you see the two burning towers in the distance. Well, his engine company

was just ahead of them on the bridge. And the only reason that engine company lived is their

initial duty assignment was to take that firefighter and bring his body over. It's like the military.

We don't leave anyone behind. These are our guys. As we some guys say, it's all about the guy right

next to you and nothing else really matters. When that guy right next to you goes down,

it stops. You get that guy to safety or if he's dead, you get him out. So in that timeframe,

that saved his life. But that's a heavy burden to carry now for the rest of your life. Because

you say, if I wasn't helping my dead friend, I'm dead. Yeah. What did it look like at ground zero?

What did it feel like? What did it smell like? You said there was a sense that it was almost

like a war zone. But can you paint the picture of how much dust is in the air? How hot is it?

How many people are there? And again, how did it feel like? It was just a scene of control chaos,

control because there was a semblance of command and we were just trying to do our jobs.

But it was such a frantic pace because we're now digging frantically, knowing that there's

life underneath this pile. And this is throughout the afternoon of that evening.

Yeah. I mean, this was nonstop, just nonstop really for days. But for my particular crew,

we literally kept going. We initially were dispatched over towards number seven, had just

gone down and we were searching the post office that was there. There was reports of people trapped.

And we painstakingly searched every single inch of that building to make sure no one was left in

there. And then we were deployed to the pile. And the pile is sort of ambiguous because there was

just such a vast, vast pile. I mean, it went for city blocks. And we were assisting in the retrieval

of two Port Authority police officers were lucky enough to survive, but they were trapped. They

were deep down into a crevasse and they had to be physically dug out and extricated. So there

was a couple of hundred, few hundred guys involved in that process of bringing in equipment, jaws

of life, airbags to lift steel, just to cut pieces of steel. It was just a huge operation.

And we were back toward the logistics end of it, shuttling in gear and bring it in stretchers,

bring it in oxygen, whatever was needed. And you were trying to climb over this jagged pile of

debris. It wasn't like you just walked a hundred feet on a street with something. You were trying

to climb over this I beam and then down into this hole and then back up that hole. I mean,

just to run one piece of equipment took a half an hour to get a hundred feet, 200 feet. Mind you,

some of these pieces of equipment are a hundred pounds, generator for a hearse tools, this massive

motor on a frame. Unstable ground. Unstable ground. Just horrible conditions. Fires were still burning

aside you beneath you. And at one point, I kind of veered off to the side and I was with this other

fireman from my father's old latter company, 172. And it was strange because we were down quite a

bit down, like 70 feet down into this ravine of debris. And he says, brother, what are you here?

And at the time it was like dust. It was like sand just falling down a pile. And it was hissing

from gas pipes and water pipes. And I said, I hear the gas lines. I hear the sand. I hear the

concrete. He goes, no, no, what else do you hear? And just the side of us was a lady's pocketbook

and a high heel shoe and someone's sneaker with nobody with it. And I said, I don't know. I don't

hear anything. He says, me neither. He goes, no one's coming out of here. And I said, no, no, no,

there's got to be someone coming out of here. I mean, there's thousands of people in here and

they're coming out. He says, brother, we would hear him calling for help. They're gone. And

I still at that point thought there was a chance. And after about the fourth day,

they just said, this is a recovery now. There's no more. There's no more life. There's no more

chance. And then that first night, we went full tilt till my crew, my specific crew of 12, 15

guys. And four in the morning, we just couldn't breathe anymore. We couldn't see. We were caked

just with, it was like if you took flour and just kept dousing yourself. And the lieutenant just said,

look guys, we're going to go back. We're going to get some medical aid. And then we'll come back

in a few hours. And we took a city bus back through the battery tunnel. And unbeknownst to us,

that morning, this off duty firefighter, Steven Siller from squad company one,

he, he raced down there with his pickup. And he couldn't go any further because the traffic was

stopped up because they had a report of a bomb. So everything was held up. And he grabbed his

fire gear and he put it on stuff weighs about 60 pounds. And he ran through the tunnel,

two and a half miles, got to the end of the tunnel. Fire truck was coming in from the other way.

He hopped on the back, got him up to West street, jumped off, tried to look for his company where

they were. And he was never seen again. He just ran through the tunnel, ran through the tunnel.

And he got there to help his team, right? It's all about the team. It's all about the guy right

next to you. And he's the tunnel to towers foundation, Steven, his, his brother Frank

decided in his name in perpetuity, he's got a fund that, that now builds a home

for every gold star family, for every seriously battle wounded warrior, for every seriously

wounded first responder or killed in a lighting duty first responder. If they had a home,

they paid a mortgage. If they didn't have a home, they give them a home.

And especially if it's, if it's a severely battle wounded, they give them a smart home

because these poor guys come home with no limbs. And so the beauty of, the beauty of Steven and

his selfless act was that he's now helped thousands and thousands of people in the tunnel to towers

is incredible. That's part of our, part of our mission is to bring awareness to these great

people at tunnel to towers, what they do, they've raised $250 million to help,

to help protect the protectors, to rescue the rescuers in, in a what's become unfortunately

a somewhat ungrateful society, but they will not forget these great guys.

So you tell Steven's story, he's one of the 20 people that you talk about in the new

iron labs 20 for 20 podcast series. If you can just linger on his story a little longer,

or what does that tell you about the human spirit that this guy, you know, the tunnel

couldn't, couldn't drive through. So he just puts on that heavy pack and runs. What do you make of that?

That shows the depth of a man's soul. He didn't have to do that. He could have turned around

and went home to his family and nobody would have shamed him. But he's one of those beautiful,

brave people that take a job. It really doesn't pay a lot of money. And you become a cop or a

firefighter or a nurse or an EMT or a medic or soldier or a Marine or airman sailor. When you

take these jobs, you don't do it for fanfare. You definitely don't do it for money. I mean,

those 13 brave souls we lost a week or two ago in Afghanistan, they're brand new soldiers and

Marines, they make $22,000 an hour, but they don't work 40 hours a week. They work 80,

they work 90 hours a week. So they make it about six bucks an hour. And you know what, they sign up

and firefighters and cops and medics and EMTs, nurses, emergency room doctors,

they don't really make a lot of money. I mean, they're starting salary right now for a New York

cop. I was a New York cop for two years first. I made $12.25 an hour back in 1989 to get shot at

during the crack wars. If you made $11 an hour with a family of four, you were entitled to

welfare back then. So I was just above the welfare level, risking my life. And these are the guys

that are getting ripped up now, right? And look, I won't get into any politics, but like,

that says something about a someone's soul that they're willing to take a job like that and get,

now get zero respect. So a guy like Steven, what that shows is the depth of that man's soul,

and courage and determination. It's hard to be selfless in this world anymore,

but I still know a lot of selfless people that just put on equipment every day,

bulletproof vests, fire, bunker gear, stethoscopes, you know, flak jackets, military helmets,

and they go in and they do it smiling. That young Marine that passed last week,

she was photographed and quoted as saying, I have my dream job, but she was holding a little

Afghani baby. And she was dead a few days later. She was so thrilled to be making $7 an hour helping

people, right? Isn't that huge? Like that to me says, that's a true sign of character right there.

And it's important for our society to elevate those people as heroes.

Let me ask you about firefighting. What do you think it means to be a great firefighter,

and a great man, a great human being in a situation like you were in in 9 11?

You know, that's, that's kind of a broad term. Like some, you know, you can go to different

firehouses and they might have a different definition of what they consider a great firefighter.

But I think in the industry as a whole, if you're willing to put

everyone else before you, especially your team, you know, as we say, there ain't no

I in team, right? It's TEAM and there's no I in there. It's all about those guys and girls next to

you. If you can do that, that makes you pretty great. You put everything else second and you

just run in and you run in with that team for strangers. You know, I've had the honor of I

spent almost 25 years of my adult life serving humanity, my country, my former city.

And the people I worked with were giants. And I don't mean that in height. I mean,

but I mean that in spirit and in soul. I saw some of the most heroic selfless acts.

And then I saw some of the behind the scenes that were so impressive. You know, we'd go to a fire

around Christmas and a family would lose everything. And even when I was a cop, same thing, you come

back either to the police precinct or the firehouse or the EMS station. And someone would put

together a collection and say, Hey guys, hey Lex, 50 bucks a man, you know, the Smiths down the

street just lost everything. We're going to go get some presents for the kids and some turkeys.

And not one of those guys questioned that. And they were making 12, 25 an hour and they still

came up with 50 bucks for that family. But see, that's the stuff the press won't show you, right?

They don't want to show that humanity, that soft edge. See, when you're a warrior, you need to have

this rough shield, this rough exterior, because if you don't, you die. But a true great firefighter

or a responder or a cop or a military personnel, they have that rough exterior with that soft on

the belly, that, you know, like that heart, right? And that's to me, the true great ones.

Some of them, they just have a hard time doing that, you know, there's no shame in showing

your soft side, you know? Well, you got your dad to say, I love you back.

No, that was huge. That took me 22 years, Lex.

So you were a firefighter for 21, almost 22 years. Why did you become a firefighter?

Oh, my dad, I mean, I was five years old when I went to his firehouse. And then there was these,

you know, at the time, they look like giants to me with mustaches. And they, you know,

and the trucks, trucks smelled like smoke and the gear smelled like smoke and the tires and,

you know, the diesel fuel. And I was like, this is, this is what I'm going to do. And then,

and then they bring you in the kitchen and they stuff you with ice cream and cake and, you know,

and then I go home to my mom, you know, shaking with a sugarcone and she's mad at my dad. But

yeah, it was just, oh, I was like, I got to do this. It was like, they were like a baseball team

in a garage with a truck and these big tools and big coats and helmets and they were just

laughing and having fun. And I'm like, yeah, man, I'm doing this. And I knew I was obsessed with it.

I mean, I was so pissed that the fireman's test came out when I was 14 and I couldn't take it. You

had to be 18. And it was done, you know, the test was graded and whatever. So my dad, you know,

now there's a copy circulating because it's old now. And he goes, yeah, yeah, this is what you're

in for. And I took it. And I, you know, did it like it was real. And I got a 99 and I was so pissed.

I said, I want to get hired. He goes, you can't, you're 14. Like, but I wanted, I just wanted

to do it so bad. And I just wanted to help people. I just wanted to be like my dad, you know, like

he'd come home smiling as tired as he was. And he fought fires in the 60s and 70s when the city was

burning. And he's still as exhausted as he was. He'd still be smiling. I wanted to smile at work.

And I used to, I got paid to laugh and joke. I got paid to cry sometimes. But man, we laughed

a lot. We really, it was the chop break. And it's just, it's just unending and it's great.

If you don't mind, can you tell me you were really kind enough to give me

one of these shirts with 114? Can you tell me the story of 114 of Tally Ho?

I wear proudly, I served eight years in that command and I didn't finish my career there.

I passed the lieutenants test. And once you do, you have to leave.

The story behind Tally Ho is back in World War II. There was this gentleman named Bad Jack

Carroll. And Jack was an airborne ranger. And my father in law was also on a department and he knew

Jack. And Jack came home, Jack jumped Normandy and stormed up through the Battle of the Bulge

in Bastogna. And he came back, greatest generation as they all did. And they got jobs. They went

right to work. And they were treated better back then, vets, right? And he got on a New York City

Fire Department and he got assigned to Ladder 114. And they first got radios back then. And when

Jack, he would drive the truck, you're up there with the officer, either the lieutenant or captain.

So the boss is off the truck, you operate the radio for them as the driver. So when they call

them and they'd say, Ladder 114, respond in the 52nd Street, 3rd Avenue, structure fire,

you're supposed to get back and say Ladder 114, 10, 4. But he refused to do that. He'd say Ladder

114, Tally Ho. Because that's what they'd yell when they jump out the plane. So all these years

later, it's stuck. And it's a little bit of a bragging right. But out of 350 engine and truck

companies in the whole New York City Fire Department, we're pretty much the only one that's

called by their nickname on the radio, not their number. So it tweaks some guys off and other

places. They may F you, Tally Ho. But it's just, yeah, it's a great, great heritage. And we're

really proud. And the shamrock was, he was Irish and a lot of the guys back then were Irish immigrants

from the area, from the neighborhood. And they would actually take the firetruck to church on

Sunday and park out front. And one guy would stay in it to hear the radio in case they got a call

So, yeah, that's the proud history. And you said that if I wear this around New York, am I getting

a little bit of... You might get a guy from the Bronx. Tally Ho, screw you. It's all that good

rivalry. We like to kid each other back and forth. Guys from Manhattan would say, yeah,

you guys are Brooklyn. Short buildings, tall stories. And they're like, yeah, but you guys

from Manhattan, tall buildings, no stories. It's all that jocular ball break and it's good stuff.

Let me ask a, I guess, a difficult question. If we just step back on the events of 911,

on the side of the people that flew into the towers, what do you take away from that day

about the nature, about human nature, about good and evil? How did that change your view of the world?

I witnessed evil firsthand. I remember later on well into that night when we were

trying to help get those police officers out. I remember looking up at the building, Century 21,

the store runs along the east side of the towers and it was still there. And, you know,

the debris had come down right almost to the edge. Century 21 is this old story department store in

New York City. And the sign was there and it was still lit up. Like some of the neon was broken.

And, but I think some of it was actually still lit up. And I just looked around and I was like,

this is, this is a war zone. Like we're at war. And, you know, we knew we were attacked. We heard

the fighter planes and, you know, back then it wasn't the extensive communication network.

And we had cell phones, but they were the old school flip phones and there was no news on them.

And so plus we didn't have a signal down there anyway. I couldn't reach my family for like 12,

13 hours. And my dad had deployed down to the ferry terminal to retrieve bodies.

He was retired, but he still went and they deployed him to go be basically the morgue

transport guys. They expected to be sending hundreds and thousands of bodies across on the

ferry. And they set up these tractor trailers as a mobile morgue. And that never happened because

there were no bodies to take. They were all buried. So it's so evil firsthand. I don't know how

someone can inflict such revenge or a vengeful act for in the name of anything in the name of

a religion and the name of a cause and the name like what the hell, you know,

were you ever able to make sense of that? Why men are able to commit such

acts of terror in the days and the years after? No, Lex, I haven't, you know,

my mom's from Ireland and I still have a lot of family there. And, you know, my great uncles,

one of them was dragged out and shot. He lived, but just based on a rumor that he was in the IRA.

And I wasn't happy to see what happened to my mom's people because they were victimized and

brutalized by England at that time. But blowing up bombs and killing innocents in the name of that,

it doesn't make it right. I couldn't justify something like that. I can see, you know,

I was a cop, I was a soldier and you never want to take life and in those jobs, but sometimes

you have to. But you don't do it with a vengeance. You don't do it with a thirst. You do it because

it's necessary for survival. When you do it out of a bloodlust, out of a thirst, out of a cause,

that's evil. There's something wrong with you. I have no, I respect life to the highest level.

I mean, I'm very, life is sacred to me. It's precious. It's beyond, it's not a commodity.

It's a gift. But to take life just so randomly, so there's something way wrong with that person

and maybe I'm a conflicted soul, but I would have no problem seeing someone like that put to death

because they do not deserve life. There's many children around this world that are being taught

to hate someone who's different than them just because the person who's allegedly teaching them

says so. I don't understand. Well, that starts with just having a basic respect and appreciation

of other human beings and that starts with empathy. And one of the reasons I love this country

while joking that I'm Russian, maybe you could say the same as you being Irish,

you're actually truly an American and that's why I consider myself very much an American.

And one of the reasons I love this country is it serves as a beacon. I still believe it serves as

a beacon of hope and that empathy and love for the rest of the world that hate is not going to get

you far. That love will get you a lot farther. And I still think sometimes it's easy to

see the press, mainstream media, you could see social networks, because you can make so much

money on division, sometimes because it makes so much money, it's easy to think like we're really

divided. I honestly don't think we are. That's just like the very surface level thing that we see

on Twitter. It's that you're 100% right. There's people out there that are maximizing off this

whole division. They want us divided. They want people angry because it sells. A lot of these

people that are in charge of certain organizations, well, they all seem to have nice cars and nice

houses and nice vacations. And they're constantly trying to convince everybody that we hate each

other. To me, I'll use a fireman analogy. It's like a little campfire. And if you just let the

embers flutter, they'll go out. But if you take a little cup of gasoline with those embers,

it'll blow right up in your face. And that's what a lot of these politicians and a lot of

these media folks are doing, because there's something in it for them. And I think it's

possible to defeat them with great leaders, with great spokespeople, with great human beings having

a voice. One of the powerful things with the internet is more and more people have a voice.

And I ultimately believe, certainly in America, but in the world, the good people outnumber

the assholes. Oh, I agree. There's days when I think the assholes are overrunning us.

But you know what? I think what the downfall of the world is, is ego and arrogance and people

that think they're better than that other guy. My parents raised me to be this way. My mom is

such a sweet, gentle soul. She's an immigrant. She came here at 16 years old. She helps everybody

but herself, right? She's just one of those people. She's sick. She's got Parkinson's.

You'd never know it. And she's still flying around her condo complex helping everybody,

because that's what she does. She loves to help people. But she's been in their shoes. She's been

poor. She's sick. Her husband was sick. She's had all sorts of suffering and loss in her life.

My granddad died when my mom was 10. And she was one of 10 children that survived out of 14.

She knows hard times, but she so appreciates the good times and the goodness of this country.

You know, the fire department and the police department and military, it taught me a lot

about empathy and trying to really feel for someone and put yourself in there.

Their situation, I remember years back, I was a much younger fireman. I probably

five years on a job. And I was sent down to the next firehouse over to fill in. We would get

sent around randomly when they needed an extra guy. And someone came banging on a firehouse door

and in the tenement apartment next door, they said there was an older woman that was unconscious.

So we dispatched ourselves and we ran over with a medical kit. And it was an elderly woman laying

there on the bed. And she was obviously not breathing. She was obviously in cardiac arrest

and an older gentleman that was holding her hand just inconsolably crying. And it turned out

it was her husband and they were married for 65 years. And normally we would just respectfully

ask the family members to just step aside and let us do our work. And I realized that he wouldn't

leave her side. So I kind of gave the crew a wink and they were doing CPR and what they had to.

And I just let him keep holding her hand. And I said, sir, if you could you just come over just

a little bit so we can work. And I held his hand as he held hers. And I said, sir, I said,

do you have faith? And he did. And I said, would you like to pray with me for your wife?

And he said, I would like to. So we said the Lord's prayer and I just asked God to protect

her and bless her. And I think he realized that she didn't have a chance. But we still gave her

that chance and we got her in the ambulance. And maybe it was wrong to try to make it look like

we could save her. But you know, you can't really not try. But the one beautiful moment was he thanked

me and he was almost okay with it at that point. Like he wasn't as upset. He wasn't as distraught

because I tried to just humanize that situation of what we were trying to do. We were trying to

do our best. But we also tried to be compassionate to his sadness. And it just, I walked away just

feeling so good, even though it was a tragic situation and she did pass that he came by to

thank us days later. And it's just heartbreaking. But it just happens many, many times throughout

the country every day. People get that opportunity as a responder to be that last bridge to the

family and the loved one. And you only get that opportunity once sometimes. And you really have

to, to me, it's like your moment to shine. You know, you could just be very, very dismissive

and very rude. Or you could be compassionate and just show, Hey, I have a mom. I have a grandma.

I have, you know, and just in your mind, pretend that that's who you're working on and that's who

you're with. So that moment of compassion, that moment of empathy, even if his brief can be the

thing that saves the person from suffering, make the difference between suffering and overcoming

in the face of tragedy. Yes. Like I felt that even though obviously his loss was still huge,

it just made it a little more bearable and, you know, tried to just take his grief down

to a lower level. And it made me feel just feel really good about doing it.

That's a powerful way to see the job of a first responder. Of course, you have to deal with certain

aspects of the tragedy, but it's to provide somebody with that moment of compassion.

Yeah. And, you know, I made it a little habit because sometimes with faith, it's a little bit

of a tricky subject. So every time I had someone who died, which unfortunately was many, many

times, I would, I would just touch their hand and just say a little quick prayer and just say,

look, you know, I hope you're moving on to a better place. I hope if you did have faith that

it's, it's, it's strong as you depart. And if you didn't have faith, I hope maybe at your last

moment that you found some and you just found some closure. So that was just my little, my little

ritual. I think I just, you know, I felt it was important that, that, that person, even though

they were strangers, just had someone there just sort of hoping for the best for them in their last

moments. You mentioned cancer. You had a rare leukemia due to all the work that you did at

ground zero. Can you maybe talk to the experience of just breathing through those days and what

that was like being unable to breathe, being overwhelmed by all of the dust in the air?

Yes. The first day, especially we, we didn't have equipment. We ran, you know, we didn't have

breathing apparatus and then we were handed little 69 cent hardware store dust mask, you know,

those little thin paint masks that would just get sweated up and, you know, sticking to your face

within 30 seconds. So you would, you just, they were useless. And what, what you wound up feeling

like was that you, you swallowed a box of razor blades because there was glass and it was cement

and it was just so caustic. And I remember that night, you know, when we went back just to get

some medical relief for the few hours, we were walking up the hill to the firehouse because

they dropped us off like a block away down at engine 201s and quarters. And one of the older

firemen as we're walking up the block, we're all struggling. We're all having a hard time breathing

and just, I mean, I felt like I was dying literally. It was pretty bad. And just remember the one

guy going, now we're all dead. And I said, no, no, we made it. We made it. He goes, no, you don't get

a kid. He said, we just breathed in poison after poison for, for hours. And then that went into

days and then went into months. He says, we're all dead men. This is going to take us all.

And I, I thought he was crazy. And then now years later, like starting in 0304,

guys just started coming down with these really rare and advanced cancers. And then

it just, it just stopped being a coincidence with the number of guys. And they were young.

Just one, one of the first guys, John McNamara, he was 33 or 34. And he came down

colon cancer and it took him quickly in 2000. He was in 2005. And I kind of said to, you know,

friends and family, I said, I feel like I'm running through a minefield. And I wonder when

my, I'm going to step on my mind, because everybody's going to get sick. And I wasn't

feeling well from 2008 on, just, I just, I couldn't put a, I couldn't put my finger on it,

but I just wasn't right. And then in 2011, I failed my medical. My bloods, my bloods came back

horrifically wrong. And they pulled me off the truck, but they strung me out for a month. The

doctors in the fire department, one of them said my spleen was engorged because there was

probably drinking myself to death. Like as he said, most of the guys did after 9 11,

which was pretty wrong of him in stereotypical, you know, just, just to stereotype and to

categorize and guy couldn't have cared less. He just, he was so crude and nasty. And then

my one doctor who was my doctor on the outside, she, my blood pressure was 240 over 140. My

spleen was about to rupture. She didn't even show up for my appointment. And I went down,

passed out, the paramedics responded. She got into an argument with a paramedic because

for big ego, and basically telling him there wasn't really anything wrong. And he's looking

at my paperwork going, this guy's got leukemia. And he overwrote her. He raced me out of there

down to Brooklyn Methodist. And the doctor, the charge physician, the ER physician, he says,

you're not leaving. You're in a bad way. And I said, what is it? He said, like, I need for,

you know, because I need, I need a little while to figure it out. He goes, but you probably have

one of a few different types of leukemia. He said, I'll drill into your hip, take your marrow and

find out. And he said, but in the meantime, we'll get the swelling on the spleen down,

like some sort of rapid medicines and whatnot, because my spleen was about to rupture.

And I had no blood platelets left, which is your clotter. So I basically would have bled

to death. And I found out from my team of doctors that I had about 48 hours to live.

And that really set me off. I was infuriated because I was telling them for a long time

that I was sick. And the doctors failed you. The few doctors in the beginning failed you.

I felt very betrayed and other guys had died. And I had it out with that one doctor. I basically

told her she was fired from my case and she's pretty politically in charge person and I didn't

care. I jeopardized my job for it because it was my life. And I got the sense that

she didn't really, it didn't really matter to her. She didn't have any empathy, as you say.

It was exact. So why for her, why for a few others, was there not a special care, a special

compassion for, first of all, all humans, but human beings in your position, especially a

firefighter, a first responder? You know, Alex, I think what it is in the department,

their title is just to get us back to duty as quickly as possible when we are either injured

or sick because what happens then is your replacement is now in overtime. So you're out

being paid on medical leave, but then they need to replace your spot and then that costs more money.

So I think it's just behooves them to get as many personnel back and especially during the

summertime, you know, they look at it like, oh, maybe you want a few extra days off to,

you know, go to the beach. And this one doctor, he tipped his hand back as if like I was drinking

an alcohol beverage. He says, hey, busy summer, because I asked him to look at my spleen, which

was sticking out of my abdomen like a football. And I said, excuse me, sir. I said, how dare you

assume that I'm abusing alcohol because, you know, alcohol abuse sometimes will present itself as

the spleen is engorged in having an issue. So you automatically just assume that that was my

situation. Wouldn't even give me an exam. And I was horrified. I was so angry. I mean, I wanted

to punch this guy out. And I literally was screaming at him and an executive officer came in to

diffuse it and sent me to another doctor. And when I showed her my paperwork, she was horrified.

She was like, what did he say? And she said, oh, okay, go to your regular doctor tomorrow,

who was one of the department doctors. And she just, it was just an indifference. It was like,

I don't know, I was shocked at the lack of compassion. But you know what, that being said,

I'm past it. I did, you know, life moves on. The team of doctors, I ended up with a Methodist

and my subsequent oncologist, Dr. Peter Mansell, world class, just incredible human being. My

Dr. Pete is just, I love him. I just, I love him like a friend, like a big brother, like a father,

like a, my primary oncology care nurse, Mike Nunez, was just incredible human being. And,

and he knew I was frightened because I had to get two and a half years of chemo compressed

into seven days. Or I was dead. These massive bags of chemo that never stopped. And, and

they, they burned the minute, the minute they went into your body, you felt like you were

burning to death from the inside out. And Mike, when Mike came in to hook me up, he said,

look, I have to wear a hazmat suit. This stuff is so caustic that if it, if it drips, it'll burn

whatever it touches. And I was like, but Mike, you're going to put that in my body. How, how the

hell is it not going to kill me? He says, no, no, this is exactly what it's supposed to do. Trust

me. So when he prepped the IV tube to get it flowing, it spilled onto the tube and the tube

started to smoke and burn. And I, I went, I said, no effing way, Mike, you're not putting that in

me. No way, no way. And he goes, listen, let me get another one. Let me start it over. And here

he is wearing a hazmat suit, looking at me and I'm going, this is, this is insane. And he goes,

he looked at me, he took my hand and he says, no, if you don't take it, you're dead. He says,

you got those three kids. I'm sorry. I have no other option. You're dead. And I said, all right,

Mike, okay. And he hooked me up. And you know what, it was, it was like, you know, if you do drink

alcohol and you have like a shot or want, you know, strong, strong type spirit and you start

feeling that burn. Well, the minute he, he hit me in the vein, it just started going up my arm,

burning and then up my shoulder, across my neck, into my head, across the rest of my body,

within a minute down to my feet. And I was writhing in pain for seven days. And I was praying to die.

I was the seventh rescuer in six months to come down with the rarest leukemia there is. There's

only 500 cases in all North America a year. And seven of us came down in six months. Two guys

died during treatment, seven responders, police fire. Two guys died in the first couple of days

of the treatment because it's so vicious. You live or your heart, your kidney, something will fail.

And I was praying and I was praying, but I wanted to die. I was in so much pain.

And I wouldn't take a pain killer because I know people with some issues and I just didn't want to

go there. And finally on the last day I gave in, I said, please, I can't do this anymore.

I was literally like jumping out of my skin and they gave me something,

but it had burned out my mind. It burned out my body. I couldn't hear. I could barely see. It was

vicious, but it worked. And my nurses especially, they just, they were so dedicated and devoted.

And I was not an easy patient because I was in a lot of pain. It was bad. And it was,

drove my friends, my family crazy. It was just, it wasn't good. But on that first night,

I had a quick vision of all these people that I loved that were dead, that died. A lot of them

in the trade center. And I saw Johnny, I saw friends I grew up with. The last one was my

mother in law who had passed six months before and she died of, she was in a coma. She had a stroke.

She had a horrible, horrible last six months of life. And she wasn't fair because

she was so religious. She went to church every day, the Val Catholic woman.

And all of a sudden I see her and she's smiling. And we used to talk a lot. It's the Irish thing,

like the gab, the gift of gab. And she's to call me a boyfriend because we'd sit and talk for

hours and talk about books and about movies and about food. And I love her. She's my friend.

And she'd say, you know, my boyfriend's here. And all of a sudden she's smiling and she says,

hi, my boyfriend. I says, nan, nan, what are you doing? She goes, he's not ready. He doesn't want

you. You got to go back. Got things to do. And I'm like, no, nan, nan, it hurts so much. Please,

please take me. And she laughs. She goes, no, no, not yet. I'll see you. And she just faded away.

And one of my doctors on my team, she was, she had, she had a problem with religion. And that's

okay. I understand that, you know, I'm not a, I'm not a preacher. I have a faith, but I don't

preach it. I don't push it. I just, you know, live and let live. So she sent in this shrink

to see me. And I was messed up from the chemo, but I knew what I was seeing. I knew what I was

saying. And he was, he was a Jewish gentleman. He was a rabbi also in a synagogue. And I actually

had responded in that district. And he knew 114 would run into Burl Park. Oh yeah, I see,

totally. Oh, they come down the street, you know, and he asked me to tell him the story. And I did.

And he started laughing and he scared me now. I said, dock it. Am I really crazy? He said,

no, no. He said, I believe you, my friend. He said, we, we share the same God. He goes, we,

we work in the same corporation, but in different departments. And he says, he says, you, you did

see your mother in law. He says, your faith is that strong. He said, I've had many patients

express the same sentiments. He said, so I want you to listen to her and fight and be strong.

And he said, so what else do you want to talk about? I said, well, I don't know,

doc, am I not messed up? He goes, no, no, he goes, they're paying me for an hour. It only took 20

minutes. So we watched the Yankee game together. But, but it was just again, it showed the human

condition. Here, here's these two men of two totally different faiths. And yet we shared that,

that bond of faith and he had empathy and he had sympathy. And he, he's, he saw me and many other

patients. So he just didn't assume and he, and he gave me a fair shake and I will always be grateful

to him for that. Through any of this, the, the pain you had to go through with the leukemia,

but also the, the days of 9 11 after, did your faith get challenged?

You know, like it was strange. It was times it was so angry, you know, there's that range of

emotions, the anger, the denial, the depression, the this to that. And this is the weirdest thing.

It was, it was mostly, I knew my career was over. And they retired me out of the job. That, that

oct, I got sick in August and that October, they told me I was out. And by the time I was processed

and, you know, used up my, my leaves and whatever you want to say it was, I was, I was officially

retired in January of 02. And it was less than six months. And I'm there walking my dog one day,

my rescued Greyhound, who I miss. She was such a soul. God, she lived to be almost 13, Katie. And

we're walking into snow and I got the call. I was retired and I looked at her and I'm like,

Katie, what am I going to do? And she just looked up and said, we're going to go on a lot more walks,

you know. And I was so sad. And I was so sad. I was so angry because I lost my priesthood.

I loved helping people. I really like, I would have done it for free. I would never tell Mayor

Bloomberg that, right? He's all about the book, right? But like, you know, honestly, I would have,

I would have been a New York City fireman. I would have paid them to do it, you know?

And I wasn't allowed anymore. That's it. You have over 20 years and you have cancer. You know,

back when my dad got sick, they'd let you hang around for 10, 12 years in an office. But not

now. Now it's all about the bottom line. And, but I was more depressed about losing a job than

almost losing my life. Like as crazy as that sounds, you know? And it just...

It was more than a job. I mean, it's a way of life. It's also as your family, your father,

your, your carrying torture, your father's... Oh, my friend. I love my friends. I love,

we work 24 hours shifts together. You cook, you clean, you break each other's jobs relentlessly.

I mean, it was, I love those guys so much. I mean, I hope that my kids and anyone that I know

and care about, I hope they can experience the bond of that brotherhood that I experienced in

my life. It was so... God, I would give anything to have it back. Just, yeah.

Can I ask you about New York? So when I have... Unfortunately, I've never lived in New York.

I visit. I've always wanted to live there for a bit. Obviously, it's a very different experience

to have really lived in New York for many, many years. But there's a few friends of mine that are

from... They got similar accent as yours. Yeah. That are a little bit saddened. Perhaps it's temporary,

but perhaps not. They don't seem to think so of what New York has become, especially with COVID.

It's losing some of the spirit of New York. Do you have that sense? Do you have a hope for

the city that has been so defining to what is America? You know, my heart's broken.

I had moved to New Jersey many years ago, but I still have a close attachment to New York.

My parents are still there. Many, many family members. And I've since now moved to Tennessee.

I needed to go somewhere quiet. I wanted to heal my fractured soul. And I'm in the middle

of a beautiful farming rural area in middle Tennessee. And so they probably called me a

sellout back in New York for leaving, but it's not the same city. And it's sad.

I'll refrain from the politics and the finger pointing, but it's a mess compared to what it was.

And I did Broadway theater security for many years. And I started to see it slide with stuff that

was happening like, you know, public urination and defecation and just like, you know, tourists don't

want to see that, right? And I had an unfortunate incident two years ago. I was jumped by 14

ages coming off the subway. And they were pissed off because I was wearing an American flag hat.

And I don't know. I'm not really sure why, but it left me, I got out of it. Okay.

Okay. But I was taken back. They were literally videoing it. And the kid was just throwing

shadow punches at my face wanting to beat me up. And I finally looked him in the eyes and I was

like, oh boy, I'm a little too old for this. And body's a little broken down for chemo. And I

finally just said, all right, all right, I just had enough. I wanted to go home. Just worked a 17

hour shift as a stagehand. And I was so taken back. I was so insulted. I'm saying, you know,

I spent my life protecting this city. And now I'm getting attacked like for nothing. And I just,

I gave up and maybe I should have given it a little more time. But it's, I don't know,

it's turned into an angry place. It's turned into, I think there's a lot of people that aren't getting

the resources they need. In a sense, there's a lot of mental illness. There's a lot of homelessness.

There's a lot of violent people just roaming around the streets and it's not good. It's not safe. And

tourists are not going to come back. Even just leading up to the COVID, I had some tourists

saying to me, I won't be back. And now I can only imagine that it's just gotten exponentially worse.

But I hope there's a chance it'll swing back because it is. It's the gateway to the world.

To me, my grandfather came, you know, from Denmark. He landed in Ellis Island in the 20s. You know,

American success story, 25 bucks in his pocket, didn't speak the language,

had a sponsor family in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. And he made it. You know, he ended up dying

owning a bakery at one point and then an apartment building. And he did pretty well for himself,

for an immigrant who was poor. And my mom, my Irish mother landed in the same neighborhood,

Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, 16 years old, worked as a cashier 50, 60 hours a week in the supermarket

and finished school at night, married my father to Feynman, and lived the American dream. And it

was all from New York. And my father's mom was from Irish immigrants. And they all landed in

Ellis Island. Well, my mom didn't because it was closed at that point. But there's people

breaking down the doors to come to this country, right? There's no one breaking down the doors to

leave. And this is a problem I have, but people that aren't grateful for being here. And this,

again, it's not political, just straight down the middle fastball. If you don't like it here,

I'll show you the door. I'll get you the plane ticket. I mean, would you want to live back in

Russia compared to here? Would you, you might because of family ties. But I mean, if you had no

ties to Russia, or would you want to go to China right now and possibly end up in a labor camp?

There's people busting down the doors to get to this place. It's not perfect. It's got its flaws.

It's got its blemishes. But it's a damn great place. It's the best country in the world.

Yeah. And some of it, so first of all, I have hope for New York. I think that culture is very

difficult to kill. I think it will persevere. And I think ultimately the same story with New York

as with the rest of the United States. It has to do with leaders. And I'm always hopeful that great

leaders will emerge. I agree. And the kind of leadership we see now and the kind of conversations

we have now, I think has to do with prosperity and comfort. And in the face of hardship, I think

great leaders will emerge. And I just think ultimately in the long arc of history,

well leaders shouldn't become rich. They shouldn't become rich in the process, right?

You shouldn't go into political office as an alleged lunchbox kind of guy and then come out

eating at the best steakhouse in the world. I mean, that's the problem with politics, right?

My Irish grandmother, God rest her, used to say, those politicians, they're all dirty

diapers. They're full of shit and they stink. And it's true. I don't give a crap what party they're

in. Yeah, greed and power. We had to beg these guys, beg them for federal legislation to cover

our medical bills, right? There's a gentleman, John Field from the Field Good Foundation.

This guy is a lion of a man, a general, but with a soft, big, great heart. And John,

John is a former construction worker who came to the 911 site the day after. He was one of those

guys cutting the steel with torches and craning it out of the air. One of those hard hats that just,

that never got the credit and the praise that we did as responders. And I don't mean that as a

knock to responders, right? I mean, we lost 37 poor authority police officers, 23 NYPD officers,

about a dozen emergency medical technicians and paramedics, three court officers from New York

State courts and two federal agents and I hope, and 343 New York City firefighters. We lost a ton

of responders, but the recovery workers thankfully weren't killed in that process, but there's hundreds

of them now who are dead from illnesses because they came down to recover our people and the

civilians and the poor lost souls that were killed at work that day. And John literally almost lost

his foot in a construction accident at the site, an 8,000 pound iBeam tore off half of his foot,

ended up with massive sepsis, six months in the hospital, hundreds of thousand dollars in medical

bills and then no one wanted to pay him. So here's a guy who's going to lose his house,

lose his life, lose everything. And now they never forget it started quick, right?

And he went on a mission, formed his Feel Good Foundation. His last name is Feel,

FEAL, Feel Good Foundation. And this man literally went to Washington DC with his army, as he called

it. And I was honored and blessed to be with him a couple, only a couple of times. I wish I had

dedicated some more time to it. And what it was with John is he set out on a mission to get,

and initially what he did is he got funding to take care of responders who were in that limbo,

who couldn't get their medical bills paid, who couldn't make their mortgages, who couldn't make

their car payments, who couldn't make their childcare payments. And John just took it upon

his own to get donations and take care of you while you were suffering, right? I got a call

when I got out of the hospital. You okay? You need anything? I said, who is this? It's John

Feel. I said, aren't you that construction worker? Yeah, you need anything? I'm pretty good right

now. I said, I appreciate it. Foam ring again a few weeks later. Hey, John Feel, you need anything?

I'm like, this guy's incredible. But there's people who needed stuff and he was getting it done.

And he with his army had to chase these politicians through the halls of Congress

to get funding to cover the medical bills. I was getting sued for $125,000 for my month

stay in the cancer ward. And I couldn't believe it. I said, well, wait a minute, I have insurance.

They're like, oh, no, no, this is terrorism related. We don't cover that. So usually then

workers comp will cover your own duty injury or illness. Oh, no, no, no. Leukemia is not covered

on that. We don't cover that. So then the ping pong game starts and I'm literally have people

showing up taking pictures of my kids in front of the house. And I went and grabbed the guy one

day by the collar. So who the hell are you? So I'm a private investigator. We're putting a lien

on this property due to a nonpayment of a bill. I said, okay, I understand. Do your job. Let me

bring my kids inside, take all the pictures you want. Don't step on my front lawn. And I went in

the house. I closed my room, my door, my door, my room and I cried. I said, I can't believe this.

I spent my entire adult life trying to help people give of myself and I can't even get my

medical bill paid. Well, John Field got my medical bill paid. He finally got these politicians with

his team, firefighter Ray Pfeiffer, who has since died, fought with terminal cancer for nine years

in a wheelchair. Literally at the end came out of hospice to go finalize getting us this coverage.

Detective Luis Alvarez, who testified days before he died in front of Congress.

And a bunch of other guys that were really, really sick and we had to shame these people into signing

on. And luckily we had John Stuart come on and literally just howling these guys and shame them

and embarrass them. And what it all stemmed from was in 2006, the first death that was determined

to be linked to 911. There was others, but the first one that was officially linked was a New

York City police detective who initially, the city said he died of advanced lung disease. His

lungs were protruding out of his body and he was on painkillers and it was so bad at the end that

the doctors said just grind them up, snort them, drink it, whatever you need to do to get instant

relief. So when they found the talcum from the pill lining in his lungs, they said, oh no, this is

opiate abuse. He didn't die of lung disease. So they said, and the mayor was quoted as saying,

he is not a hero. Well, shame on you, Mr. Mayor. He was a hero. And his father, who was a retired

police chief, married up with the Feel Good Foundation and John Stuart and Ray Pfeiffer,

Detective Alvarez. And they got us all covered. But it took so long, like it was so heartbreaking,

these people who were lining up three deep politicians, three deep to catch a picture

with a responder so they can tweet, hashtag never forget and hashtag look at me and hey,

how am I doing? All that bull crap. But they didn't know. They were nowhere to be freaking found.

I literally witnessed them hiding in cloak rooms, running down hallways away from us,

those freaking cowards. That's cowardice. Can I just linger on the John Stuart thing,

the comedian actor, John Stuart, his testimony before Congress over the benefits for 911 first

responders. I mean, there's a lot of important human beings in this story, but he has a big

voice and he spoke from the heart. What do you make of that testimony?

Oh, it was heartfelt. I mean, he spoke, look, I mean, John was a, you know,

a polarizing guy, right? There's certain things like over the years, he was cutting edge and I

might not have agreed with all of his, you know, well, you know, some stuff, some not, right? You

know, like we all, but I'll tell you, I found him as funny. I enjoyed his humor.

I would love the two of you to have a conversation. No, but again, I love a guy where you can have,

you can have a difference in opinions. That's the beautiful thing about the firehouse kitchen.

I mean, it could get raucous and now I don't know, it's a little different situation, but

maybe back in the day, some funny stuff. But yeah, John, John literally just took his talents.

You would think he was speaking from the heart of a fireman or a cop or soldier or a marine or,

you know, someone who was there, but I think he especially got to know Ray so well and Ray had

this stack of mass cards from, you know, the funeral cards they give out. It looks like,

you know, a larger business card that's laminated and Ray had a stack of them he would carry around.

I think it was close to a hundred cards and John saw it and he said, what's that? He says,

these are my cards. He said, for what? He says, for my brother's funerals. He was like, oh my

God, you've been to that many funerals. He goes, yeah, this is just the ones I made. Like, you

know, and John, I think was just stunned. And John actually had that stack of cards after Ray

passed and like said, look, just look at these. There's going to be more of these cards. We have

one guy a week or girl, one responder or recovery worker or someone who actually resided down there.

There's more than one a week dying. It's one a day dying on average. And on average,

two people are diagnosed with a 9.11 cancer or disease. Right now, the worst part is there's

autoimmune diseases flying off the graph and you're not covered under the legislation.

And by the grace of God, my cancer is covered. If my cancer comes back, I mean,

I'm in remission. It's technically incurable, but I've been blessed. I'm staying ahead of

this stuff going on 10 years. But if it comes back with a vengeance tomorrow and takes me,

you know, at least my wife will get my pension and be able to live her life without fear.

But my friends who are suffering from these advanced autoimmunes, their wives get nothing.

Their pension dies with them. And we're hoping that, you know, John and his army can shame these

politicians once again to have the kindness and decency to cover these autoimmunes.

You know, they're throwing a lot of money around that a lot of things lately. And

this is one that they won't. And these are lives in the balance who really need it.

And John had this strong line. They did their jobs, do yours. Talking to the politicians.

Yeah. And it's a strong wake up call that it's not about the Twitter or the social media or

all that kind of stuff. You have a job to do and you have to, it's that compassion

implemented in the form of money of helping people that were there for you when you needed help.

Well, we had a guy, I mean, I might get audited out of this one, but we had a congressman from

out west. I won't say where, but he prided himself on saying he was a retired cop. Yeah.

Busy cop. 22 years. He said no on the legislation. I witnessed a cop who was dying get out of his

wheelchair and said, Hey, brother, I got a half a million dollars in medical bills and I'm a

short timer. I got a few months to live. Who the F is going to pay him? Do the right thing. You

say you're a cop. You show me you're a cop and you sign that paper. And the guy started tearing

up the congressman and he signed it, but he had to be freaking shamed. And you know what he said?

Well, this doesn't really confront me. This is pork as far as my district is concerned. He goes,

Oh yeah. Do you know there's 10 guys from your district who came across the country to help

us that are also dying? He had no idea. He had no idea. And that's the sad part about Alex.

It's a failure in leadership. I mean, I think some people would vote for Mickey Mouse just

because if he ran, I mean, I know offense against Mickey Mouse. I'd like him. He's a good guy,

right? Allegedly. Allegedly, supposedly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But seriously, I look at some of

the leadership sometimes and go, We're in trouble. And also you lose, I think the way government is

structured is people who are senators or people who are in Congress, they start playing a game

between each other and they lose track of the connection to the people, to the basic humanity.

You forget, even when you think of yourself as a cop, you forget what are like the cops

and the other people servicing the community actually experiencing all the troubles they're

going through and how they can actually be helped because you lose touch to that because you're

not actually living. You're not talking to them. You're not living among them. I mean,

that's a natural part of the system. But I think that's why character and great leadership is

important is you say you leave the game of Congress and you go back to the people. I mean,

that's what the country, you know, it's like the George Washington ideal is you're not playing

a game of power. You ultimately see yourself as somebody who's servicing this country's

service in the community and that requires talking to the people in their time of hardship.

Well, you have some people, some people serving in congressional districts don't even live in

that district. I mean, so how are they going to empathize? They're not even driving through there

on a daily basis. And, you know, again, when anything becomes lucrative from a financial

standpoint, it blurries people's vision. You have to take the potential of becoming rich out of

politics. Politics is public service. Police and fire and EMS are public service.

But cops and firemen and medics don't walk out of their career with gazillion dollar contracts

with this company and that company on that board of directors and this board of directors.

They walk out with a pension and that's it. And you have to wonder the intentions of people

getting into politics. Are they truly going into to help the human condition or are they

trying to help their own damn condition with their wallet and their pocketbook? I try to lean

toward the latter lately with what I'm seeing out there. Well, some of them are the good ones

and that's our job as a society is to elevate the good ones. That's it. And that has to do with

the ideals that we elevate. There are a number of conspiracy theories around the events of 9.11.

Do any of these hold true to you or do they just frustrate you, even anger you?

I've been asked this by a few different people in my life. This is my take on it, right? You're

a man of science and a man of education. So you. Allegedly. Allegedly, but yes, but you, you know,

you're a very, very intelligent man. And what I believe took place is this, structural steel

will fail at a sustained temperature of 1500 degrees Fahrenheit. And I don't know exactly how

long that would have to be sustained, but that's the temp, right? Diesel fuel, kerosene fuel,

kerosene based jet fuel, which was the ignition there burns at 2200 degrees Fahrenheit. So that

continued burning of that diesel, that jet fuel, but kerosene based, you know, it's all kind of

similar exceeded the temperature needed for that steel in the structural members of the

Trade Center to fail. In my heart of hearts, I would hate to ever think that somebody

affiliated with our government with some sort of agenda would perpetrate that crime and that

tragic just destruction of humanity and property for some other form of gain.

Those planes were rammed into those buildings 450 miles an hour. They were loaded with thousands

and thousands of gallons of jet fuel. Number seven, Trade Center had the backup for the emergency

management system for the city. And it was an emergency generator in that complex, which had a

25,000 gallon tank of diesel fuel to continually run for weeks to keep the 911 system, the backup

system going in the case of a catastrophic event. Well, that tank in seven heated up

from the fire that was already going on from the aircraft debris coming into the building.

So once that diesel became ignited in seven, now you had enough temperature to fail that

steel in that building. So I would like to truly believe what I've learned from the minimal fire

science knowledge I have from my career, that it was just a matter of it burned too long, it burned

too long, it burned too hot, and it failed. I mean, if you look at the way it came down, it came down

as it was designed to in the God forbid event that it was to collapse, it came down pancaking

upon itself. If it had failed horizontally and just sprayed out side to side, those buildings

would have dropped for a quarter, half a mile up to Canal Street. But you know, Lex, I can't...

And the destruction that could have resulted from that... Yeah, oh my gosh, it could have been so

much worse. I mean, you would have taken out every building from that point all the way up.

But in my heart, I'd like to just believe that it was just a fire that burned too long and too

hot. These planes caused structural damage upon impact in both buildings, and it was just a matter

of time. And then you think about it, you add all the plastics, all the carpeting, all of the stuff

that was burning on those floors, you add that to that fire load. I think it just had enough to

collapse it. And you were in building seven for part of that day? I was just after it came down

as well. We were aside it, and we weren't in it or next to it when it actually did come down.

But moments after we were there. And again, I would like to believe that it was just that

that fuel was going, and it just took its physics, took its course, and it failed.

So physics and science aside, it's both I would like to believe, and it's hard to imagine that

anybody would be so evil as to orchestrate parts of this from within the United States government.

That's very difficult for me to imagine. You know what though, there's people,

and I want to elaborate and won't get into it, any controversial subjects or what have you.

There's some people that don't have any problem at all perpetrating any level of evil.

People like you and I who have hearts and we have depth of soul, we couldn't imagine it,

but there's other people wouldn't even be a second thought. I mean, I've seen some horrific

incidents in my career that I go home shaking my head at night going, human beings are just,

they're not wired, right? You know, I mean, I look at animals, I love animals, I love dogs

especially, right? And I see this dog park when I train to fly airplanes now and something I wanted

to do. And there's a dog park across from the airport, and there's 60 dogs, and there's bones

flying up in the air and chew toys and sticks, and they're running around having the time of their

life, right? And they're all getting along, and they're not hurting each other, they're not violating

each other, they're not canceling each other. And I'm going, we really need to learn from these

dogs, right? And like, I just, yeah, I mean, sometimes it sounds crazy, but I think they're

better, they're better species than people. Unless they're rabid, they don't hurt on purpose,

they don't, you know, they don't cut you off in traffic and throw you the middle finger. And,

you know, just these, they just don't do these acts of humanity that sometimes are so vicious.

Why do you think these conspiracy theories, of which there's a lot, take hold?

Why do you think so many people believe some version of different conspiracy theories around

9 11? Well, you know, like many things in life, it leaves me a little conflicted. I have to say

this, I am at the point now, I don't know who to believe anymore. So I could see that lending a

hand to someone who's already a doubter going, Oh yeah, look, that's exactly that's what they're

doing. Right? I mean, you know, look at this whole virus, like, who do you believe? Like,

where to come from? You know, like, and, and, and, you know, if you plant that seed,

it's like that little campfire we were talking about earlier, right? You just toss a little gas

into those embers. You got to fire now. I also think there's a lot of people with a hell of a

lot of extra time on their hands, right? And it really bored, you know, the two are combined.

Alex, yeah, man, you know, like, look, I was a three job Charlie, right? You know,

one guy used to say to me or anything, but, but home, I go, No, I got deadlines, responsibilities.

You know, like that's, that's what it comes down to is like, I mean, look, we all, we all have our

hobbies and things we like and, you know, little nuances. And that's what makes us special. We're

unique. Every person is unique being, but I also think some people just, just, they want to cling

to something. Like we all want to feel accepted and belong to something. So all of a sudden you,

you group up with these people and you all believe this fervently like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know,

like they did it, they took it down, they took it down. And, and now you start going, yeah. And,

and I think what happens is when you're in company of people and you start telling each other the

same thing often, you freaking believe it. I mean, if you keep telling me, I got a great head of hair,

I'm going to go, you know what I do, but no, I don't. I mean, right? I got that waving bye bye

dude. But like, but you know, I think when you start hearing something often, you start believing

it, but I'm not going to, I'm not going to doubt their intelligence. I'm not going to doubt their

intentions, but I just don't see it as being plausible. I just, I, it would be too, too big

of an operation to, to, to successfully happen. I, you know, I mean, look, there's other things

that, you know, I won't say it on the interview there, but like I have my doubts with certain

things, you know, that, that. I mean, conspiracy theories take hold for a reason because some

of them are true. No, yeah. The hard thing is just to know which ones is the problem.

When you don't have facts, right? You don't know who to trust. Sometimes when you don't have facts,

when you don't have figures and you don't have science, it's hard to take someone's word on it.

You know, I had a conversation with someone a while back, right? And the guy's like,

just dedicated atheist and he thinks I'm an idiot for believing in God. And he's like,

you're one of those jerks who believes in creation. And I said, well, I do. Well,

what about the Big Bang Theory? He's going on this diatribe about the science and the

gases and the chemistry. And I'm going, dude, I barely got through high school chemistry.

Slow down. And he went on a tangent and all of a sudden I stopped. I went,

who, who created the gas and the molecules and the stuff you're talking about and the collisions?

And he was furious and stoned off. And I got him. And again, I had no facts. I had no figure.

He didn't either. But I stumped him. But sometimes when you can't show some, people need to see

something tangible. They need to see it in their hand to believe it. And that's, that's the real

hard thing about faith. I see it in action. People restore my faith. And I say to myself, well,

there can't be that many dummies in this world. If there's so many billions of us believing in

this higher power, this higher, right? And you said earlier, you believe most people are good.

And I do too. The bad outshine the good because the bad get the press. If it bleeds, it leads.

That's just, think about it. How many more damn zombie apocalypse movies can we make?

I didn't even know there was that many zombies. And it just seems like every other show is just

guys bashing each other's heads in with bats with nails in it. And it's like after a while,

it's like, oh, gosh, you got to get a new boogeyman here. You know, right? Like, but seriously, like...

But meanwhile, human civilization is getting better and better. We're just

like making Hollywood movies that just... We're getting better and better, but we're treating

each other worse and worse. You would think with all this technology and all the knowledge and all

the... It's like, what the hell is going on sometimes? I really want to see the good.

And I think maybe, maybe the level of bad that we're seeing was always existent. It's just now

everything is instantaneous news and flashes and tweets and this and this. Like, you know...

Well, with the technology we have, it's also come to the light. So you get to see all these

fights. It almost... I think that's step one of dealing with the problems, revealing it in its

full, beautiful light. Oh, yeah. How much of a bickering species we are. 50 years ago, a guy like

me who loves to talk, how the hell would I have gotten an opportunity to have someone listen to me

and have it, right? I love this. This is amazing. I think it's cool, but you didn't have that arena.

You didn't have all these things. My grandfather Nells, God rest him. He died in 1979. I mean,

that dude didn't even want to have a checking account. He would walk to each store, each the

phone company, the gas company, this company and pay the bill in person. He didn't trust the bank.

And it was like, he now ATMs this that he would be overwhelmed to be just like,

I mean, I love my dad, but to watch him on his iPad is comical, right? He calls my niece's boyfriend,

who's a tech guy, Matt, Matt, if you listen, he's the greatest. He'll have this poor guy in a form

for like hours. Like the second you're walking to see my father, my kids, hey, do me a favor,

he's straight out this bad. And it's comical because I'm looking at my dad. I'm going,

he was born when Hitler started World War II. Yeah. Wow. And I'm going, he's seen all of that.

Oh, my wife's grandmother was born in 1900 in Czechoslovakia and she died in 1998. I'm going,

holy, the stuff she saw in the span of her life, just, it's just incredible. But what troubles

me sometimes is with all of these advances and all these devices, this is what I say to my kids.

Look up from the phone and look up, right? Because we don't talk anymore. I saw a girl

literally, I shouldn't say girl, guy, whatever. I saw a person literally just about walking to an

open manhole covered texting. And I'm going, that's scary because your awareness is gone. And it's,

I've been at restaurants with groups of people and they're texting, they're texting each other to

sit on the other side of the table. I'm like, put the freaking thing down and have a conversation.

And that's the thing. We've lost the art of conversation. You know, like, like, you know,

my wife runs, she has just running jokes because there's a lot going on up there. And I'm like,

yeah, because I really, I'm inquisitive. I'm excited about life. I love to meet people. I love

to learn. And the only way you can do that is to have a conversation. The hilarious thing about

this. So you're obviously very charismatic. You got great stories. You're a great human being.

Thank you. And you're talking to a guy who spent most of his life behind a computer hiding from

people. No, no. But we're like trying to bridge this. Right. But I don't mean that as a rip,

but you, I would never know that. It's real. I would never know that because you're very engaging.

You're very like, I would not know, like you don't have any impediments to your

socially skills. You're personal. And that's, and again, I don't mean it as a knock to you.

Well, no, but this is me trying to look up from a smartphone is having these

conversations, talking to people. I think it's, it's important. I mean, some of it could be,

it's always hard to know. Some of it could be just you and I being old school,

because you grew up before the internet. Maybe there is joy and deep human connection to be

discovered inside the smartphone. We don't know, it doesn't seem that way. Because the smartphone

is so new, maybe we just haven't figured out those, those things, because there's a globalizing

aspect. There's a opportunity for you to connect with people from across the world in ways that

I have cousins in Ireland and England. I love it. I get a face time or what's happened. And

it's like, holy crap that they're, you know, three, 4,000 miles away and I'm having a conversation

now. I used to send my grandma in Ireland a letter. I adored her. She passed when I was,

was 10. And no, I'm sorry, I was 11. And I'd send her a letter, airmail, and, and, and I'd wait,

I'd wait. And about two weeks later, this, this airmail letter would come back and she called

me master Nils William Jordan. I would be so excited to open up that letter. Handwritten.

Yeah. And, and like, like, and then I'd write her another one and I just couldn't wait for letters

from Granny. And now it's like, you know, that's kind of faded away. Yeah. I still write letters,

by the way, handwritten. I do too. The way, the way this all came about was I, I wrote letters

to someone to say thank you for cancer research. I'm blessed to be alive. My cancer, right?

That's a good starting point for any story. I'm blessed to be alive. And my cancer was one

that if I got it 15 years prior to 19, excuse me, 2001, I was a dead man, right? 15, 20 years

before there was no drug to treat. I was gone, going home to see him. So there's this wonderful

gentleman that donated hundreds of millions of dollars to cancer research, Mr. David Koch.

He's since God rest his soul passed away. And he's a controversial guy, big time business titan.

And, and you know, there was, the press was just brutalizing him one day over some,

something to do with his politics. Now I'm a union guy. I'm proudly served in union,

still in a union, you know, and, and he was not, you know, most business guys don't like unions,

right? But you know, most guys like me don't like working for $3 an hour. So we like our unions,

right? And I reached out across the table, so to speak, and I sent him a hammer and letter

to thank him, to say, we may not agree on everything, but I can't thank you enough.

There's this regular dude out there who is now living his life, watching his kids grow.

Thanks to generous people like you who believe enough in cancer research, you've saved my life.

Maybe I can't see his exact dollars, but people like him. And he reached back out

and his secretary said, oh, he'd like to talk to you on the phone. I go, well, he's kind of a

busy guy. He wants to talk to me, the billionaire. And he got on the phone. He was like the greatest

guy in the world, invited me up to Sloan Kettering to dedicate a new cancer wing. It was like I was

hanging out with my dad. And, and the sweetest man, just so kind, so empathy, because he was a cancer

survivor. But now he's got the means to help people who've suffered his fate to a better place.

And he was so real. And it was so beautiful just to get to know, say, hey, you know what,

this guy is a big time guy, but yeah, he's just a regular human like you and I, you know, I'm a

guy who went to night college and I went to the army and I'm a blue collar kind of dude. And

here's this guy who went to MIT like you and he's a wildly successful billionaire, a genius. But

yet he can sit down and mix it up with me and know that I was truly grateful. And that to me was

just like one of the coolest little, you know, relationships I've ever had. It wasn't like we

were hanging out having barbecues together. But like, you know, it was just, I was so touched by

his decency. Well, the basics of the like cancer reveals, you know, it's like fundamental to the

human experience is trauma is tragedy. It's like money, who gives a shit about money, education,

all that is like, weird new inventions. You know, life is short, you suffer with the various

diseases. And that is a reminder that life is short and reminder of the basic human connection.

And that's why you can bridge that gap. Oh, yeah. All sparked by handwritten letter,

which just makes for a helpless story. And you know what, Lex? This is the commonality between

us. A guy with three jobs to a billionaire. We both had that sense of a sledgehammer to the chest.

Boom, you have cancer and you can't breathe for like 30 seconds. And then when your heart's just

about to kick off and you take a breath and you go, I'm sorry, would you say doc? You have cancer.

And it don't matter what kind. One of my, one of my best buddies, Bobby's going through right now,

prostate, and I got way too many of my buddies with cancer, right? My buddy Hugh became a vet

since his first cancer. He was a fireman. He's now veterinarian, right? He diagnosed me actually

over the phone, by the way. When they couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. Well, Dr. Hugh,

he nailed it to the tee. And we talk. And the same thing that the dozen of my close friends that have

cancer, the same thing we say is the fear. So Mr. Koch and I, we shared that same sledgehammer to

the chest and that same fear. And it didn't matter how much money he had and how much I didn't.

And you know, it's just like the morning of the trade center. There was big time brokers

who went to their demise, right? Working in these firms. God rest them. And there was

dishwashers, excuse me, dishwashers up on the windows on the world restaurant on the 107th floor,

making five bucks an hour. And they died together. It didn't matter. It didn't matter if you had an

armored car loaded with bills, you were done that day. And that's, I think, where people need to

humanize each other. Just because you drive around in a nice car and you got your own jet and you

got this and you got that. Don't mean nothing. When you're going, when you're in that vulnerable

spot, you could have more money than the US reserves, Federal Reserve, or you could have

a welfare check. You're going. I learned that in a cancer ward. I had people on my ward that

died on me. I was going around as a little bit of an ambassador because I was trying to, I was

putting on a fake, I was putting on a fake like, I got this. I got this. I was so scared. But when I

got past that, that seven days of torture and the days leading up to it, I'd go around and try to

comfort the other cancer patients. I just went older, an African American gentleman. He couldn't

talk because he had such advanced throat cancer. He was my roommate for a little while, but then

he got worse. They had to put him by himself. And you couldn't understand what he was saying

because his throat was just so radiated from the radiation. But if you put your ear down to him,

you could make out what he was saying. And I'm not faulting the nurses for maybe not wanting

to do that. They're busy. They got a tongue going on. They can't spend. So if he was in need,

I'd put my ear down and I'd find out and I'd go get it for him. So when they moved me down the hall,

they asked me to come down with my IV tower. He needed me. And I knew it was bad because he just,

his look was gone. I said, sir, what do you need? And he whispered, call my sister. I'm going.

He had only one survivor in his whole life. And she was in North Carolina and he wanted her to know

she couldn't get up. She was elderly. And I got the nurse and I got on the phone and I called

his sister and I said, ma'm, I explained who I was. And I said, he can't really verbalize too

well right now, but he wants to say he loves you. And I put the phone down and he told her he loved

her and he said, I'm going home. And that was it. And I hung the phone up and I said, ma'm,

I'm so sorry. I said, you know, they'll notify you and I stayed with him for a while holding his

hand and then, you know, they wanted him to rest and then I left and then I got the tap

an hour later and they said, I'm sorry he's gone. And then there was another girl and she was a

young girl from one of the areas I work, a young African American girl where I used to respond

that I didn't know her, but I knew her neighborhood and she had what I had, but they weren't sure

which one, you know, leukemias. There's an elusive beast. There's 49 of them, right? And each one

of them is like, got their own little nuances, their own specific treatments. So if they don't

know what you have, they don't know what to do for you. And she refused to let them drill into

her hip to take the marrow because it's vicious. It hurts so much. It's like someone's born into

your hip with a wood drill and it's no joke. And they asked me to try to convince her to let

them do that or she was going to die because if they couldn't figure it out, it was advancing

quickly. So I talked to her and she said, I can't, I'm too scared. I said, but are you more

scared to die? And she said, I am. I said, okay, I'll stay with you. I'll hold your hand. You

squeeze it as hard as you want. I said, if you want, they'll give you like a towel or something

to bite on or whatever. I said, but you get that pain out, but you need to do this so you can get

saved. And she said, okay. And they came in and they, this huge thick needle, they just bore it

into you and she's screaming for her life and she's squeezing my fingers so hard and so hard.

And I said, okay, hon, you keep going. You keep going. We got it. It's just 10 more seconds,

10 more seconds. They got it. They figured out her treatment and they got her on to her road

to recovery. And then I spent a long time asking God, why, why do I have cancer? Then I stopped

and I went, wait a minute. I didn't die that day with my friends. Shame on me for asking them

why I have cancer. I had 10 years after 9 11 with such great years. And I got to watch my little

girl being born when John never got to see his son. So it was all gravy after that. And I said,

but now I know why I have my cancer because I can, I can empathize with people who have it.

And I can try to be their voice when they can't talk, be their shield to try to take that pain

because I can understand, I can walk their walk.

And now I thank God for my cancer because it's made me a better human being. It's made me,

I'm not going to lie, it brought a lot of anger for a while and my family suffered it.

But I really tried to go past that and heal and part of living out in the country. It's very,

very healing for the mind and the soul. But I now thank God for the cancer because it humbled me.

I didn't really need humbling. I wasn't, I wasn't an arrogant puffed up type of person at all. But

you know, maybe I was running away at myself a little bit. I'm working on a TV show. I'm fine,

man. 30 at the time. Well, I was 42. I got sick. You know, life was cruising, man. It was great.

And then all of a sudden it was like a blowout on the highway in the middle of the night and

you were just veering off towards the guardrail. Yeah. You remembered, you reminded that you're

mortal and that's ultimately a connection to all the rest of us. Oh yeah. It's a good thing though

when you, you know, because that's a problem. I think there's a lot of people running around

and thinking they're immortal, right? You know, when you look at it, Lex, right? You look at the

heartache in a lot of segments of people. And anytime like someone that's got fame and wealth

and success and they die tragically, a lot of times it's from a substance abuse or just, you

know, just some horrible death. I used to say to myself, how the hell would someone with that

much money and that much fame and his freaking mansion and, you know, I love cars. My son and

I like just big car heads, you know, and I'm like, you know, this guy's got collection of cars and

he overdosed because he was sad. And I'm going, how the friggy you said, but then I stop and I go,

okay, because maybe he doesn't have any idea who loves him. He's got a lot of people clinging

on to him because of his success. And he just, he can't fill that void, you know? And then they

fill the void with something destructive. And I'm not bashing people that have substance abuse

problems or alcohol problems. I don't mean it that way. But what I mean is, it's just said

that their level of despair is so high. On the surface, they look like they just got everything

going on. It's all great, right? There's still humans, still guys dealing with the same. Yep,

exactly. Because they want love, right? They want love. And they can't, they can't really find it.

Well, first of all, that's true for all of us. I think we're deeply lonely and looking for love

when we find it. That's what friendship is. That's what friendship is. Absolutely.

And then that's true for whether you're super rich or super poor. It's all the same journey.

My dad said all the time, kid, you're going to end up working with hundreds of guys and, you know,

you'll love a lot of them. But he says, when it's all said and done and you're old like me,

and if you still got two or three of them that you talk to and you'll love. And I tell you what,

I mean, I have thanked the Lord more than two or three of them. And I have my six. I call it my

six. The six guys that are going to carry my coffin when I'm gone, right? Because I know this

cancer is going to come back. I know it. Like, we get multiples, right? My friend,

Nevet, just got his second. My friend, Mike said five of them. The other Mike is two.

But I wasn't ready to accept it in 2011. It was so much more to do. It was so much,

I was so scared. I'm like, wow, who's going to take care of my kids? And who, you know,

they were little things, you know, nine, 11 and 14, right? It's like, what the hell? I have two

girls and a boy between and they're beautiful kids. They're such good, good children. The adults now,

I mean, but, you know, they, my wife's a drill sergeant. She's tough. She don't mess, you know,

she's this big, but like. So you're the softie in the family. Well, you know,

it's funny because it might, my son said to me, my son's 21 now. He's a good kid, you know.

And he says to me back when he's like 12, he goes, dad, I don't want you to be offended,

but I'm really scared of mom. I'm not really that scared of you. And you know, like, I cracked up

because it's true that she's got to step, she's got to stand on like a milk crate to reach him.

Because, you know, she's tiny and he's tall, but it's true. But, you know, but she was hard

but fair, but loved. That's, see, this is the thing. You take any child, anywhere from any

background, if you love them, you nurture them, you teach them and you guide them,

you have a successful adult. And see, that's the problem in our society. It's not judgmental.

I'm not judging anyone. But we need to try harder as parents, as siblings, as friends.

But especially when we're blessed with a child, it's like, you got to put that child first. It's

like being a military person and a responder. It's not about you anymore. Now it's the team.

So that little child is now the team. And, you know, your wife or your significant other, you know,

you know, like it's not about you anymore. And see, that's the problem is people have a hard time

not making it about them. You know, like now it's really weird. My kids are 1921 and 24 and

they hardly want to hang with me because they're busy in their life. We love each other.

They're probably tired of hearing me go on and, you know, preach and whatever. But like,

but their adults, we did pretty much the crux of what we had to do to put them into adulthood.

And I look back and I go, wow, I wish I didn't work so much. And I wish, but then I say no,

but it was okay. My wife stayed home, good lessons, good, you know, just, just like.

But ultimately, like you said, it's love. It is. It's the common that love is

the most important ingredient on this earth. And that's the problem what's going on right now.

Like take politics out of it, right? Take polarizing each other against each other.

Take all that crap out of it and just airdrop a bunch of love, right? Like,

when I worked on Rescue Me, right? I love those people so much. They were such great,

we had such a great crew and they worked so hard. Your celebrity.

No, no, no, no, not at all. If I was, it didn't really, it didn't really work out so good. I

would went on to be in a stage hand that way. No, I'm not pretty, but they don't want old guys

with waving, waving by, by hairdos. But it was funny. The crew, we became really tight.

We had like shoot like 80, 90 people on a set, right? And, you know, the first few episodes,

everybody's trying to feel each other out because, you know, you work with different crews,

different people. And this is going back starting in 2004. It was a different time.

And I love to hug people because to me, a hug is a true expression of love and caring.

You may not know a person a long time, but you say, I care about you with a hug.

Can I add, can I add just a tiny tangent? This was in the midst of COVID when I was in Boston

and it was, you know, masks, like triple masks. And when I went to see Joe here,

when he was trying to convince me to move to Austin, Joe Rogan. And then the first time I

see him, he's like, ah, you motherfucking big ass hug. Yeah. And it felt so good.

People probably looked horrified. They're hugging. They're hugging.

Or it was just him. Oh, okay. I'm saying, but if you do it in public now, it's like,

it's like you committed a crime. But that expression, because I was so, you forget

how powerful that is. Oh, I got some of my buddies. I give them a huge,

huge hug and a big sloppy kiss on their cheek. And I, because I love them. These are my brothers,

you know? But on this set, I swear to God, it got to the point, and I'm not trying to whatever,

but there was people that would come up to me for the daily hug. Yeah. And I said,

what are you doing? And I said, come on, bring it in. And I give them the hug. And I said,

you don't understand. It just makes me feel so good. It makes me feel like you give a crap about

my side. I really do. I said, but it touched my heart that people were seeking me out to get

that hug to start the day. And I remember there was a guy in Manhattan, he was selling hugs for

like 50 cents. And I think he got arrested, right? It was just before COVID. But like,

I wouldn't sell them if, but now, well, now I got leukemia, I'd be kind of concerned to get into

COVID. I mean, but, but like, I, I really think we need that. We need hugging booths like in each

city or each town. Like, because there's so many people that just want to know if someone gives

a shit about them. And that's the problem. It's like, like, you know, that's what I love about

small little towns like where I am now in Tennessee. And I'm not knocking New York, I'm not knocking

big towns, but I guess it's easier to do in a smaller area because it's just not this massive

humanity. But they'll stop and check on you. Like you're out in the road and, you know, like,

I'm cutting and cleaning or whatever. Occasionally I'll roll a lawn mower or a tractor into a ditch

because I'm, you know, not a farmer too good, but it's easier to drive a fire truck in New York.

But they literally, oh, I was worried I haven't seen you. And I'm like, no, no, I'm okay. But they

literally like check on you. They're worried about you. And I'm going, people hardly know me, but

yet they're so caring. And, and that's the problem. Like this is what I love about my life. I spent

a lot of time as, especially as a young boy and a lot of time in Ireland at my grandma's farm.

And my mom comes from this tiny, tiny little village. She's out in the middle of nowhere.

And the, the child at home, she grew up and still my aunt and uncle live in it still. I just love

it there so much because everyone waves, Tennessee's similar. They wave driving by and they're like,

who the hell's that? I don't know, just wave, you know, but my cousin will point it out. Actually,

third cousin, second removed by, you know, Johnny, like, holy shoot, I'm related to everyone here.

Yeah. Right. But like, everyone stops to say hello and how are you? And I have a problem doing that

because my wife goes, people think you're crazy. Why are you talking to everybody? I said, like,

I'll literally stop someone and say, how's your day going? Like, I mean, I'll randomly on the

sidewalk, then it looks a little nuts. But like, if I'm buying a cup of coffee. Oh, that happens

here in Austin all the time. Yeah. That's why I love it here. Yeah. On the sidewalk randomly.

Yeah, no, it's just so nice. They'll say hi to me. I thought they recognized me or something.

Right. I don't give a shit who you are. They're just being nice.

Nice. I was on the road coming back, driving from my family up north down to Tennessee last week.

I stopped in a bathroom and it was closed. The girl was cleaning it, whatever. She's working

so hard, whatever. She goes, sir, she goes, if you go down the hall, there's a family restroom,

feel free to use it. You know, she didn't have to do that. And I went down and I'm old. You need a

bathroom. You need a bathroom, right? And I walked back out and I said, ma'm, I said, I want to thank

you for being here today. I says, bathroom was immaculate. It was, it was like my army bathroom

in the barracks. It was spotless, right? And I gave her $10. I said, I really like you to buy

lunch with me today. I said, you really didn't have to do me that favor. And she goes, no, sir,

I said, no, no, I said, I want, and she was like, I gave her a million bucks. And I say to my wife

now, I'm been praying to be a billionaire. She goes, that's a sin. I said, no, no, you don't

understand, right? She goes, oh, you're a mister, you know, a mister, you know, guy. I said, no,

no, no, I said, you're getting it wrong. I said, I'm praying to be like a multi gazillionaire

because I want to give it all away. We used to have a sign in ladder 114 until some other rival

truck company stole it, right? Because that's what we do. You know, you get sent to cover your

district when you're out of fire and now your stuff's missing. And the old timers had a sign that

says, I am content because if you got to ladder 114, that was considered such a great place,

such a great assignment, such great guys, you had to be vetted to get there. You couldn't just

randomly go. And it was a little exclusionary, but they wanted good guys. And I said to myself,

that's where I am in life right now. I am content, but I'm restless because I want to really do a

lot more good. It's like this podcast. I want to make sure that it's not forgotten. And I want to

make sure that these charities that are really, really helping people get recognized. But I'd

like to take it a step further, right? A friend of mine runs this foundation for young folks

suffering mental illness and in crisis. It's for someone that we love dearly. And

he's on a mission now to get therapy dogs for really, really mentally wounded warriors, right?

There's a lot of these young soldiers are having a really hard time. And now they could be out a

while. They may have come back in country two, three years ago. Now it's just starting to set in.

And there's a waiting list for thousands of therapy dogs. And he said that they can't get

enough of them quick enough. But he said, when you see the response to the way these

veterans just light up when they get these dogs, it just changes their life radically,

immediately. And I said, that's it. God, I don't know how I'm going to do it. But I want to be a

gazillionaire. And I don't want any picture, photo ops, this, that. I just want to go,

there's a dog, there's a dog, there's a dog, there's a dog. And then I want to build veterans land

for these, these vets who just need a nice clean place to live. So why don't we take these old

army bases and marine bases and Navy bases that have been shut down. They're just sitting there

rotting away. I was in the army in Alabama. My old for McClellan is three quarters vacant. It's

sitting there. They just did a documentary on it. It just looks like zombie land to go back to

zombies. So why don't we take that and renovate it and say to vets who are struggling, Hey guys,

you're going to live here. And they take the old army, you know, the places where they had all the

supplies or, you know, there's massive buildings where you could just retrofit it and make light

manufacturing within two weeks. Give these guys jobs. They live, they work, they'll take care of it.

Military guys, they teach you how to take care of stuff, right? How the hell in this country should

any vet come back home and be homeless? Because now they, now after dedicating their lives for six,

seven, 10, 12 years, five, five, six deployments making 750 an hour. And then, you know, they spend

seven years or they get a whopping 16 an hour, right? You know, they walk out making 35 grand.

And now no one gives them a job. No one gives them a chance. So very quickly they end up homeless

by no fault in their own. And I don't know how that's even possible. The people in this country

who've given the very most and they're struggling, they're hurting. That's not fair. And my whole

thing is, if I can have this dream of succeeding, so to speak, I want to try, I want to try to change

it, you know, and just, just, so that's why I'm praying to be a billionaire.

A billionaire. My Irish mother probably wouldn't agree either because you're not supposed to,

right? Well, I'm the same with you. The more, the more money you have, the more you're able to help

help people. You can put smiles on people's faces. I have to ask you, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan

in October 2001 in response to terror attacks. Now 20 years later, we still had a presence and

abruptly withdrew all troops. What do you think about this war across the world that

was sparked by this tragedy? Whenever you do something quickly without thinking it out,

thinking it through and planning, it doesn't succeed. I understand that we needed to exit.

I mean, how, how long are we going to stay over there? And we've lost over 7,000 of our young

souls over there. For sometimes people, I don't know if they're grateful for it or not, right?

I mean, I don't know. So there's the other element, I'm sorry to interrupt. One is the

financial of $6 trillion. And that money is not just money. It's, it's education. It's everything.

It's money that could have gone towards first of all, the first responders. But all the

servicemen and women of all kinds throughout this country. And then there's the other side,

which is the over 800,000 people who died in direct result of this conflict. So not just the

American side of the troops, but just people who died, those humans. And those humans,

many of them civilians, that's spreading hate, especially if you have leaders on the other

side who frame the death of those civilians in certain ways that just spreads hate throughout

the world. And so you think about this kind of 20 year saga and think, what are the ways that money

could have spent, be spent better? And what was the way that we could have spread more love in the

world versus hate? And you wonder. But then the other side, what is it? I'm not sure who says this

line, but it's something like, we sleep at night because there's a rough men out there ready to

fight for you. There is some sense in which we have to make sure that there's strength

coupled with the love, right? Otherwise, evil men will do evil onto the world. So it's a very

difficult decision. But then you look at the final picture. It's like, what have we gotten for this

six trillion dollars? What have we gotten for this 20 years? The thousands of Americans,

soldiers who died, the hundreds of thousands of civilians who have died.

You know, it's a troubling subject for me. I'm a patriot. I love this country.

I love it when my soul. And I was just about to head over to the first Iraqi war. And we went

out for desert warfare training and then it ended. I was at that time a combat medic assigned to an

armored cavalry unit. So basically tanks driving around an armored personnel carrier. When it gets

hit, then you tend to that guy, try to save his life. I didn't want to go. I may sound like a

coward. I did not want to go to war. I would have went willingly if I was sent to defend my country.

I took my oath. I didn't join the military to kill. But if necessary, I would use the analogy of

cancer. If you have a cancer and you're aware of its presence and you don't annihilate those cells

and take them out quickly, it's going to spread and it's going to kill you.

Those evil bastards that flew those airplanes, one of those airplanes had a little three year old

child in it from Ireland, where my mom's hometown. A friend of mine who since died of a heart attack

from 911 toxins, he found her shoe with human remains in it. And he thought someone was messing

with us because we didn't know there was any kids in the building. He says, boss, there's

a baby shoe and it looks like there's something in it. But there's no kids in the trade center.

I went, the plane, it's a little girl's shoe. I can never get that shoe out of my mind.

The evil bastards who perpetrated that needed to have missiles strike and rain down upon them

and annihilate them like a cancer that they are. What just fascinates me is they'll show videos

of these guys flying around and pick up trucks with 50 cows on the back. It's like, well,

wait a minute, if a camera crew can get this footage, you think all these freaking drones and

planes and radar assisted systems can't just go, good night, you're gone. So kill the cancer,

kill the cells, get rid of it, get rid of it quickly and go into remission.

Like an undeniable show of force that sends a message that gets rid of most of the

obvious centers of terrorism. And that note, that's though, because we offline mentioned

a discussion with Jaco and maybe a romanticized view and mentioning brothers in arms by

diastrates and saying, we're all brothers in arms, even when it's on the opposite side of

fighting, which is more of a vision and growing up in the Soviet Union, you saw about World War

II, that it's all just kids thrown into the kids sent to die in all sides. But then presenting

that to Jaco, who was in Iraq, he did not see as brothers in arms, which is there's his basic

statement is there's evil people and some people don't deserve the compassion. You give them a few

chances, they don't take the chances they have to go because they're spreading evil onto the world.

And so we're not, all of us deserve a chance. But the difference though, and believe me, I

Jaco, I am from a way, way minor league compared to him. I mean, this man was right there in the

firing line, but I can understand his analogy because when you think about it, those young

conscripts back in Germany and Russia and all the countries where they were being drafted,

even our guys were being drafted and thrown into this. They were, they were gallantly and and

bravely defending their country. Now, I'm sure the young Germans felt, well, hey, Hitler must be

right. Right. And young Russians felt, hey, Stalin must be right. And, you know, the young

Americans fear, hey, President Roosevelt must be right. So they were romantically, in a sense,

defending the honor of their country, of their motherland. The difference between those, so

they did have that commonality. If you and I were firing across each other from France to Germany,

or, you know, from Germany to Russia or whatever, which is these two kids who got thrown into this,

we didn't freaking ask for this. Right. But the difference with Jaco's enemy is no one was attacking

their country over there. Right. No one was taking their country over, maybe in their mind,

did they didn't want people trying to build their government this and that. I don't, I don't know,

I don't know enough about the history there to really elaborate. We didn't attack them.

And if a soldier attacks a soldier, that's an understood concept amongst warriors.

But when a soldier attacks a civilian, now you're after a different beast. And you've

written that beast off, if that makes any sense. Yeah. And the enemy, I mean,

as Jaco explains, the enemy in Iraq and just certain parts of the Middle East is essentially

terrorists who are, who don't value the lives of the civilians of their own country. They don't.

And so it becomes like this weird guerrilla warfare slash game of violence that ultimately

allows them to gain more power within their country, but they don't care if they're playing

with civilian lives as pawns. If you have a child who dies on there, on that's a civilian in their

country, that could be seen as a positive for them because they can use that to leverage for

more and more power within that country. So when you're fighting an enemy like that,

that's a vicious, that's an evil enemy. Absolutely. It's like snakes are beautiful,

but if you go pet a rattler, you're getting bit and you're getting dead, right? Yeah.

And that's what terrorists, you've got to cut the head of the snake off. And I feel, no,

don't commit our guys to me there anymore. But what we need to do is go with tech warfare.

If we have intel from drones or planes or whatever it is that so and so and so and so and so and so

are driving down in that pickup or whatever, take it out and do it again tomorrow and tomorrow

and tomorrow. And maybe they'll get, they'll get the message after a while. Oh shit, these guys

aren't messing around. Instead of throwing wave after wave of our brave warriors, brave seals,

brave, you know, special ops guys. And God bless them for what they do. I couldn't do it.

I could not have done it, but they have to be now sitting home going. What the hell?

My friends, my body, myself, like they must feel so betrayed because they passionately went over

there to cure a cancer, the cancer of terrorism. And now the cancer is back. And I hate to say it,

but I think the cancer might start running wild. We need to change our tactics up. This is just

my opinion. I can't see committing all of our guys to a continuous eternal war. But I think

what we need to do is hit surgically and hit hard at that cancer that is over there. We are never

going to rebuild that region. It's just, it's thousands of years of traditions that you're

not going to change. It's just some people are unchangeable because they don't want to.

And we have so many social problems here in our country, I think that we need to fix first.

I heard this spoken in the past by many people. It's like the garden theory. You have your garden

with a fence around it. You tend to your garden. There may be weeds on the outside of the fence,

but as long as they're not inside your garden, your garden will prosper. And I know some people

don't agree to that America first and the whole take care of our own. But it's like,

how are we going to take in more people now? And I have a human feeling for them,

but it's almost like the lifeboat theory. How many people can we take into the lifeboat before

the lifeboat itself sinks as the ship is going now? So if we can't take care of our own homeless vets

and our own homeless people, and it's just going to become worse. And it doesn't make any sense.

It's just like we need to just take a time out and I think switch our tactics a little bit.

And invest into helping people here at home. Absolutely. There's very few

as obvious of cases as the first responders in 9.11. One of the things that I really want to

kind of talk about at least a little bit, we've already talked about the amazing project that

you're doing, the 20 for 20 podcast that you host. We mentioned one story, Stephen Siller.

Is there other stories or maybe you can speak out at a high level? What are you hoping to tell?

And all these different stories that are weaved about that connect the

tragedies and the triumphs, the heroism of that day and the days and the years that followed.

You know, Lex, it seems like the common few themes, the common threads are being selfless,

helping out others even though they might be a stranger.

In acts of kindness, acts of love, and it seems to all be weaved together with faith,

they all seem to have some sort of faith. I mean, we have one gentleman, Mark Hanna,

and he's a Coptic Egyptian priest. And he's an immigrant to the United States. He was a

poor authority building engineer. And with his crew who subsequently passed away,

the crew did. He was effectively rescuing dozens of people on the upper floors. And his boss ordered

him to assist an elderly gentleman who was 89 down 78 flights of stairs to get him out.

And in stopping on the 21st floor, he figured they would just wait there for medics. He came

across Captain Patty Brown of latter company three, who told him, no, sir, you need to evacuate.

And Captain Brown picked his brain a little bit about the structure because he figured,

found out he was an engineer. Captain Patty Brown continued on to

defect rescues, and he and his crew were killed. But father, he's now, Mark was able to effectively

evacuate this gentleman. They were the two known last survivors to come out of the tower.

He now has dedicated his life to becoming a Coptic priest in St. Mary's Church in

East Brunswick, New Jersey. He did this for a total stranger. And he said he was inspired

by his bosses who died and his friends. One of his best friends was an Italian man. The other man

was a retired Navy SEAL Hispanic man. And they were part of this melting pot. And no one looked

at each other that day. What color, what race, what belief are you? They just said, hey, you're a

human in need. Let's go. And we have the story about John Field on his mission to

help the responders. We have a young lady, Mariah, whose birth father was on Flight 93.

She had not even met him. And she had this premonition that somebody in her family was killed

that day. And her adopted mom said, no, everyone's fine. Three years later, when she was legally

able to find out who her dad was, she found out that her dad, Tom, was actually on that plane

as part of the Let's Roll team. And we have a gentleman, Robert Burke, who's an actor,

sweetheart of a man. He's a gentleman. And he's a very, very popular actor in Hollywood. He was

on Rescue Me, Blue Bloods, Gossip Girls. And Bobby, my friend, as I call him, is a volunteer

fireman now. This man doesn't need to get out of bed at two o clock in the morning and help people

with a stroke or a burning garage or a burning house. But he does because he wants to. Because

his best friend was Captain Patty Brown. And his other best friend was Father Michael Judge,

who was our chaplain, who was killed literally blessing victims at the site, had just given

last rights to the firefighter I mentioned earlier, Danny, who was killed. And Father Judge was in the

lobby of the building giving a blessing, praying to God to please stop this. And he was struck by

debris and he was killed. And Bobby goes on to elaborate about Father Judge's story. Father

Judge used to walk the streets of New York City helping AIDS patients just with whatever they

needed. And he was a Franciscan friar. They wear sandals and a rope. They're just, they just live

very humble lives of, and it's just a common denominator is loving each other and helping

each other, regardless if you know the person or not. And really, when you think about it,

that's how America was made. We fought for independence. Stranger fought next to stranger

and fought tyranny because they wanted freedom. They wanted to be able to live, love,

pray, and prosper. And they fought and died alongside of strangers. And it's sort of symbolic

of what happened that day. And then strangers from around this great country just flocked in

and by the thousands to help. They didn't know who was in that pile, but they didn't care. That

was another American. And what I ultimately am trying to do involved in this beautiful project

is spread the message of doing the right thing. Look at these examples, these brave people who

didn't have to, especially the civilians, they weren't paid to run back in there and help person

after person. And they had no obligation. They could have just said, hey, man, I'm out of here

and just bolted, but they didn't. So we're just trying to say to people, let's bring back that

unity and that feeling of 912. As strange as 912 of a day it was, it was so sad because

it was the first dawn of the sun where we realized this wasn't a dream, this was real,

and it's not going away. But the beauty of it was there was thousands of people lined up along

the West Side Highway with signs and American flags. And they were from every country and every

race and every creed. And it didn't matter who they were, but they all shared one bond, love.

And they were hugging and crying and thanking rescuers. And it brought the morale so high

for a group of people that was so beaten down the day before. It just started lifting

the morale and making us realize, you know what, people really do give a crap. They really do love

each other. And now I want to be honest with you, I've been doubting that a little bit lately.

I still have these examples of it, you know, that lady who helped me last night with the phone and

just, you know, I know there's these shining little examples, but sometimes I think,

I don't know, are we running out of them? Well, I got to give you some advice. So there's two

words that were repeated often in the days and the years after 9 and 11, which is never forget.

So it might remind you to never forget about 9 and 12. I mean, those words you talked about that,

you know, there's people, what is it, college freshmen. Yeah, they weren't even born.

They weren't even born. And there's people in the 20s that were too young to remember,

to understand the events of that day. But I think what that day as you're describing means,

it's not about a terrorist attack, it's about the unity that followed.

It was tremendous, Lex. I never felt so proud. I was always proud of this country.

You know, I remember my grandparents used to walk by, I'd see a flag, I'd go here to

Star Spangled Banner and he'd tear up. And I'd say, Grant, why are you crying? He said,

I'm not crying. His tears of joy. I love this country so much. And I just remembered like

feeling that way. I felt that way 9, 10. I felt that way on 9, 11. But then on 9, 12,

I was just so proud of just the people, the way they stepped up. And I just want to try to see

if that can happen again. And I hope it's not necessary for us to have another tragedy to

bring that about. Let's do that without the tragedy. Let's just stop and say, Hey,

you know what? Let me listen to what this guy has to say. And maybe he probably won't convince me,

but maybe I'll go, well, you know, I never thought of it that way. Stop the finger pointing,

the bickering, the tantrums, the fighting. It's just not necessary. You get you nowhere.

Right? It's like, you know, I was two years old and I stomped around because I wanted to

cook you a piece of candy. I still didn't get it, right? You know, turn blue in the face and

whatever got a swat in the rear end, but it didn't get the candy. And that's what we got going on

right now. Everybody's just stomping around being a baby. Stop, just stop. We're really lucky. Look,

the country's not perfect, right? You know, but it's damn good. It gives us all these opportunities.

You know, like I said, no one's rushing out the gates to get out of here. They're freaking,

I got a cousin of mine. I love them dearly, my cousin Tony in Ireland. And he said, he's just

a little older than me. He's in his fifties. He said, man, I should have done it. I should have

went to America. My dad said, go to America. I went to England. And he went back to Ireland.

And you know, he, but he's happy in Ireland. It's just home. But he said, wow, what a place

of opportunity. And I said, it's never too late. He goes, yeah, but you know what, you get tied

down. And I understand that. I thank God my mom came here at 16. I thank God my grandpa got on

that ship. And it's 20, 27, I think, you know, and not a nickel to rub together. I thank God

they did it. Cause I don't know where else I would have ended up. There's no place else I want to be.

And I thank God that there's people like you who rushed towards ground zero to help other human

beings. And I believe that, that, that human spirit is ultimately represents the bestest

country in the best of this world. Thank you for the stories you're telling for your perseverance

in that. And thank you for welcoming me to the crew. You're very welcome. I'm proud. I'll take

you any day. You look like you could do the job just fine. I love lifting heavy things and doing

dangerous things. So I'm proud to be part, part of this country and part of the Ditalio now. Well,

you are, you are definitely an attribute to America. And we're glad you chose to come here.

You know, like it's, it's such a beautiful place. It's a beautiful melting pot. You know,

if we were all the same, it would be kind of a boring place, right? Kind of boring. It really

would, but it just, it's just such a great place. And I just want to say thanks. It's an honor.

It's an honor to have someone to let me sound off and, and it'll be even bigger honor if somebody

will listen to me and just say, Hey, you know, let me just try to do something good today. And

you know, that's, that's the tunnel to towers mantra is let us do good. And I just, you know,

I, I got a really big credit card with God, a big balance, right? I need to pay him back a lot and

I need to pay him forward. And I'm just going to spend the rest of my days trying my best. I don't