The Real Reason America Feels So Broken - Brad Meltzer

0:19Today, cruelty and venom and harshly judging those we disagree with, it's become sport in our culture. But cruelty and venom aren't signs of strength. They're signs of weakness and petty insecurity. To me, what takes strength is actually using your voice and standing up for someone and being kind and showing decency, showing empathy. We get caught up as Americans in the fight. We love the fight. I mean, that's part of being American is love in the fight. We're a country founded on a fight. That's one side of us, but we can't forget that other side of us, you know, that's written on that Statue of Liberty, that's written in all of our hearts.

0:50Now what we're seeing is this real assault on decency, an assault on empathy. When you have a problem with history, you can always say, well, here's the real history. You can fight back by looking at it. But you can't make America legislate empathy. You can't make them legislate kindness. And I think what you're seeing on both sides are fed up with the fight. They're fed up with how we talk to each other. They're fed up with how we're just going at each other's throats. And I think that we have this great side of us that tells us when we're supposed to fight in America. We can't forget that we have a side of us that shows us when we're supposed to be kind to each other.

1:25And if we lose that, to me, we lose one of the most important parts of being in America. That's what makes us the greatest country on earth. Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. In a return performance, an encore performance, we have the legendary Brad Meltzer, award-winning author, bestseller, and so many different. I mean, this genre of stuff that you're writing and the bandwidth of the way you write is truly incredible. But this new book, which I love, the title of the book is called The Viper. It's a Zig and Nolan novel. First of all, it's great to have you back on the show.

2:00I just want to remind people, we spoke last year about the book, The JFK Conspiracy, which I tell people to go out and read. It was a phenomenal book there. But now we've got something different. This is the third book of the acclaimed Zig and Nola series. So who are Zig and Nola? And why should our viewers and listeners be interested in them and go out and buy your book? Yeah. So let's talk about just the setup of the book. And we can talk about Zig and Nola. And basically, a guy walks into a funeral home and he's carrying a blue suit. It's the suit he's going to be buried in. And that's what happens when people are going to die and they have no family.

2:38They pick out what they're going to wear. Now, if you open up a bank account, paperwork gets filed, government wants to track it, they'll eventually confine it. If you open up, go in the UPS store and open up a PO box, paperwork gets filed, you can track that too. There's cookie jars now that have Wi-Fi on them. You can find out who stole the last chocolate chip. But if you go into a funeral home and you take the suit you're going to be buried in and you sew something into a secret compartment in the lining of the suit, you have an untraceable hiding spot. And that's what this guy does. He hands over the suit to this mortician who locks it in a closet, puts it where everything's stored, goes back to his hotel room, and there's a guy with a gun who says, show me where it is.

3:16I want it. And he says, I don't know what you're talking about. Shoots him dead. And what's hiding in that suit, of course, drives the plot forward. It's the greatest secret ever. I just ruined chapter one of the Viper. But you didn't ruin it because it creates a page. It creates a page turner. No, and I appreciate that. But to answer your question, it's Zig who finds out what's going on. And Zig is my main character. He works at Dover Air Force Base. He's a mortician there. And Anthony, I do a lot of work with the USO. I've traveled the world with the USO. That's where I learned about Dover. And Dover is where all those flag-covered coffins, when military members, when they die, their bodies come to Dover.

3:57It's where our astronauts, when the space shuttle exploded, their bodies went to Dover, too. it's where the pentagon victims on 9-11 their bodies went to dover and all of our 007 so everyone in the cia who does a mission somewhere abroad when they die on their mission their bodies go to dover which means dover is a place that's filled with secrets and i love secrets and the morticians there will literally smooth someone's jaw and rebuild it and smooth it over with clay for 12 hours because the family says they want to see their son one last time in their coffin Now rebuild someone's hand because a mother pleads and says, I want to hold my son's hand one last time.

4:34These are the best of the best of us working on the best of the best of us. And I became obsessed with this place called Dover Air Force Base. It's America's most secretive funeral home. And that's obviously what drives the plot of the book. When you talk to morticians and, you know, we've all, unfortunately, and so our life that we have, we have our challenges and we have to talk to morticians and funeral directors. What do they say to you about the mystery between life and death? It is interesting. They have some of the guys I speak to are matter of fact and just believe, you know, this is where we are and then we're there.

5:12And depending on their religion, of course, their answers differ. But here's what I find fascinating is the people that work at Dover, the morticians there, they believe that that last moment when a military family gets to see their son or daughter one last time, that that moment, that being able to give them that sense of closure, which some people will say never exists. When I buried my parents, I can tell you this, I spent a long time trying to figure out what am I gonna get over it? How am I gonna get over the death of my mom? How am I gonna get over the death of my dad? I wrote all these books about death, trying to figure it out.

5:45And I finally realized, my friend, I'm never gonna get over it, never. And you're not supposed to get over it. And no matter what any mortician does to fix your body up or anything else, you'll never get over it. What you do, and anyone who's lost someone deep in their soul knows, is you never get over it. What you do is you transform. You become someone different. And I think the morticians that I speak to, they find solace in that they know they can't get anyone over it, but they can at least give a lasting good memory. But in terms of the spiritual side of that, I think it just depends person to person.

6:21I think most of them have seen death so much that they're more matter of fact about it than any of us are. And you know what they all are? And this is the important part. They're not afraid of it. Know it's coming. That's how the story ends for all of us. We don't want to think about it. We do everything we can to avoid it. But morticians just know it's coming. That's a natural part of life. And it can be a beautiful moment. It's an interesting thing that you're saying because that's ultimately my realization when the loved ones that I have lost, it's a natural part of this whole thing. And so, you know, I want to be here in 21, 25, Brad.

6:58I want to be here in 22, 25. I want to see this beautiful experiment unfold and see all the wonderful technology and the hope for mankind and womankind. But I know that my time is limited like everybody else. And maybe it makes life more sacred that it's limited. But you write about these very interesting characters. This is the most fascinating part of your personality that I've observed. you've got all of these interesting characters in your brain and you seem to understand human nature better than most so let's go to nola okay nola in particular she's fearless she's volatile she's intuitive who's nola and how did you shape her and how did you create her yeah i was um i was on a military base in virginia and i was in they were giving me a tour and it was this giant warehouse.

7:48And in this warehouse, it's filled with art of all things. It looks like the end of Indiana Jones, right? But it's got all this art. And I'm like, they got Adolf Hitler's paintings. They have paintings by all these military, from privates up to generals. I'm like, why is the army got all this art? And they explained to me, and this is true, that since World War I, the army has had an actual painter on staff who paints disasters as they happen. So whether it's storming the beaches of Normandy, whether it's Vietnam, whether it's 9-11, they've got a painter. And I'm like, you're telling me that everyone else is racing in with guns blazing and you've got someone who's racing in with nothing but paintbrushes in their pockets.

8:28I'm like, that guy sounds crazy. I got to meet him. I want to meet him. And they said, you mean her. You want to meet her. And it was a woman, a woman named Amy Brown and became a dear friend of mine. I named Nola Brown after her, my main character, the other main character. And here's the thing is Zig, Zig, the male hero of the book, he believes if you want to make the world a better place, you got to be a good person. If you're a good person, a kind person in the world would be a better place. It's a beautiful idea. It's a naive idea, but it's an idea worth fighting for. Would you believe it?

8:58Noel is different though. She believes if you want to make the world a better place, you grab it by the throat. Do you believe what Zig is saying? That you make the world a better place by being a good person? Well, here's what I believe. I 100 % believe that. But I also believe that NOLA is right, that when you see injustice, sometimes you got to grab the world by the throat and force it to make sense, especially when you're fighting for someone who's being bullied and who's being picked on. And I think this is me now. I spoke in many books, right? We know each other a long time now. I spent a long time thinking, oh, you know, who's NOLA, who's Zig?

9:33How does it relate to me? And I realized I'm both of them. All I've been trying to do, it took me 2 ,000 pages to figure it out, but all I've been trying to do in all these books is just figure out which side of me is actually right, the kind side or that war fight side. And the answer is, of course, both of them. We all are made of love and war. We all have things we need to be gentle with. We all have things we need to fight for like nobody's business. And I used to fight against that, and I think I've now realized, you know what, that's not something that's a contradiction, but it's something that's beautiful.

10:05you know it's fascinating that you you you bring this up because uh you know i i don't know if you read damien by herman hesse that they forced you to read that when you were in college no but i'm a huge i'm he used to live in my old neighborhood so i used to be obsessed with his books so but in damien he writes about this abraxis that there's a good and an evil side of all of our personalities our mutual friend robert green and the 48 laws of power i've interviewed him on this show writes about this as well you imply it in your writings um but i get i guess the real question for me about all this is i this is really a question about aspiration okay because you're trying to be the best person you can be i'm trying to be the best person i can be but your characters are a mixed bag brad there's a lot of ambivalence there.

11:02So explain that to me. Yeah. I mean, listen, this genre that you and I love so much, thrillers, right? It's fun when you have the great guy who knows what he's doing and he got the lantern jaw and he saves the girl and kisses her and the sun sets. I mean, that's great. You can do great stories like that. I have no interest in those stories. I'm much more interested in reality and the reality of our soldiers, the reality of what's really happening on the front lines. Reality of all this is we're all amazing and we're terrible and we're wonderful and we're kind and we're selfish. All of us, sometimes within the same hour, of course, and within the same day.

11:37And again, that's not a terrible thing. I spent a long time, you know, I'm going to tell you a very personal story that I don't get to tell, but my father, I used to be really pissed at my father for a long time. And he rest in peace, but we just had a complicated relationship. And my dad kind of screwed a lot of things up financially in our lives. And he messed up. Like when I went to college, when he stopped paying, I got kicked out of college. And they were like, oh, I got to turn into loans, which is fine. I didn't mind doing it. Of course, I was thrilled to be there. When I graduated, he opened up$40 ,000 of credit cards in my name.

12:11That's how he was paying for me to get through college. And I spent a long time really pissed that he would do all these dumb things. But here's the part of the story, Anthony, that I missed. When my dad died, I told this at his funeral, is my dad used to get beat up by his dad. My grandfather was a boxer in the military, served in World War II. And he used to punch my dad. And my dad used to jump in front of his younger brother, my uncle, to make sure he didn't get hit. I know my dad used to jump in front of my grandmother so she didn't get hit. And the part of the story that I forgot is that my dad, while doing all these dumb things for me, he was jumping in front of punches for me so I could be the first one in my family to get out.

12:53And I didn't tell that part of the story because I was so busy being pissed. I was so mad that he screwed my life up. I mean, when he opened$40 ,000 of credit cards to pay for my college, it was a terrible plan. It's not like it was a good plan, but he was trying to make sure that I didn't have any loans by doing it that way. He's going to take a 22 % credit card interest rate rather than a 1 % loan for me to have. He didn't even want me to have the 1 % loan. So yeah, it was dumb, but he was trying to take the punch for me. And all of that That is to say, all of us do amazing things and selfish things and stupid things.

13:27And that doesn't make us bad people or good people. It makes us human beings. And I think the more we can embrace that and accept ourselves, man, the more power you unlock within yourself. And that's what all my books are about, is just trying to show you the power of that ordinary person who can just be so incredible and so selfish, but also do amazingly great things. So not to make it even more personal, but I'm curious because I've had my own tribulations with my own dad. Were you able to forgive him before he passed? I was. You know, the one thing I was good at, I'm not good at many things, but I made peace with my dad before he passed.

14:02I told him on his death, but I told him a couple of things. But one of them was I said, you're a great dad. His biggest fear was that he was going to be like his father and be a terrible father. So we made peace. And I knew it intellectually, but I think I carried around the anger of that for many years. My dad's been gone for a decade now. And I think for many of those years, I was still, I made peace with him, but I was still mad. I was mad about that relationship I didn't have. And I think some of my books, what you see, look at every, there was someone who read one of my thrillers, a bunch of them and said to me, hey, Brad, I've read like three or four of your thrillers now.

14:34What's the deal with you and your dad? This was the start of my career. So this has been kind of illuminating everything I've written forever. but all of us that relationship we have with our fathers and our moms too but those parents are the most complicated relationship we'll have in our lives and I love the fact, did you get to make peace with your dad? No actually I see your body language on it right now Yeah, if I'm going to be honest No, I appreciate that honesty It's one of my regrets I think in listening to your story I think we sometimes forget that our parents have their origin story and the struggle that they're coming out of.

15:16And what we know about human psychology is sometimes we replicate the story of our ancestry. You know, there's a little bit of that sort of ancestral DNA, that trauma, if you will, that passes from one generation to the next. And maybe your dad was a little bit more successful than my dad at breaking certain cycles. And maybe you were a little bit smarter than me than noticing that. I think it's one of my regrets, frankly. I should have been. I've forgiven him now for whatever that's worth, Brad. But probably needed to have forgiven him a little bit earlier than this very moment. But I think it's an important part of your story.

15:56I'm very happy that you're sharing it because it's a sign of your complexity and your realism, which is affecting your ability to write such great books. One of the reasons why I started this podcast is I feel that authors took you several months perhaps to write this book. You've got your insights into human nature. You've got your insights into the way the world works. And look at the gift that I have. I can read it in three or four or five hours, something that took you months to write and something that took you lots of time to prepare. And so I always tell people, you don't have enough life to not read.

16:38The more you read, the more you're going to learn and the more you're going to experience the earth. You just don't have enough life in you from your own life experience. You're just going to be too narrow of approach to life, which is why I so greatly enjoy our friendship. You know, Harlan Colbin said something about Nola. Not since the girl with the dragon tattoo has he read a character like this. What did he mean? Tell us about Nola. Yeah, I mean, you know, Nola for me, she is the character that everyone kind of gravitates to. Because she's just so badass and she doesn't... Here's the thing, and this is where she's far better than I am.

17:20She has no compromise in her. And sometimes, as we all know, that could be a terrible thing, but she has a real sense of right and wrong. And for me, Nola was thrown away like garbage when she was little, was thrown out of her house, had no parents, eventually found this guy who adopted her. basically to, you need someone to clean his house. And Nola, like whether it's the girl with the dragon tattoo or even Batman or whatever it is, has that sense of right and wrong of like, I was harmed and will spend the rest of her life punching people, hurting people, fighting and wrangling around to not have the conversation you and I just have been having, which is to actually take a hard look at ourselves.

18:05That's the hardest fight any of us can have, right? And when we thrash around and get violent and get angry, all of that is a mask to what really hurts us. And Nola will never, ever love Zig, work with Zig, team up with Zig, like Zig even. But Zig has lost his daughter and will never have a daughter. And Nola never had a father and will never have a father. And that is the true north of all these books, is that neither of them will ever get what they want. And for me, that's what life is. Like the fact what you said about your dad, man, I'm going to carry that with me all day. Like don't beat yourself up because of that.

18:45Right. Like the fact the fact the fact you've been able to like accept and forgive him now after that's the answer. That's the I think I think ultimately that is the answer. And like I think that what people forget about forgiveness is it's important for yourself. You know, forgiveness is I don't give yourself a hundred percent. I don't think the Buddhists ever said this, but it's a great line. You know, the anger is a poison you're drinking, hoping it affects the person you're angry at. But, you know, if anything, all it's doing is hurting you. It is hurting your ability for your transformation.

19:19You know, if you want to break generational trauma and cycles, start with forgiveness. And the first person, Brad, you have to forgive always is yourself. I mean, what are you going to do? You're just, you're doing it. You're doing it the best of your capability. and we're all shooting in the dark, which is why I love reading your books because they're so revealing about the nature of our personalities. There's also something about your books. All of your books are like this, by the way. There's a tinge of patriotism in your books, I feel, and a love of country. I mean, I don't know if I ever told you this story.

19:50You know, the way I got involved with the USO is an incredible story. It was after 9-11 and the sailor on a submarine writes me a letter and he says, hey, listen, we don't have a big library on, I can't tell you where we are. in a secret location. He says, but we don't have a big library, but we got one of your thrillers here. And I just want to thank you, Brad, because it really brought me peace at this time when I needed it. I thought that was the nicest thank you I've ever gotten. I got to do something nice for that sailor. So I call my publisher and I say, hey, can I get 10 ,000 books donated to the USO?

20:19And she says, yeah. I'm like, that was easy. Call another publisher. Can I get 10 ,000 books? Another, another. We got 40 ,000 books donated to the USO. I get involved with USO. I start going over. They bring thriller writers. but six thriller writers as the war was winding down every year to go entertain the troops. And I get there into Kuwait the first night and this soldier stands up and he says, hey, Brad, I want to thank you for all those years ago donating books through the USO. And I said, how do you even know that? Almost nobody knows that. And he said, when I was serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, I'd always see stacks of your books and they'd say courtesy USO.

20:54So I know you had to have donated them. And I'm like, yeah, man, but you're getting it all wrong. I'm here to thank you. You screwed it all up. He got it all backwards. But I realized the person who I need to thank is that original sailor. So when I get back from Kuwait, I track him down. I find him. It's been almost a decade. And I call him up and I say, hey, listen, I don't know if you remember, but 10 years ago, you wrote me a letter saying I got 40 ,000 books, don't I? You said all this stuff in motion, all this good came out of your thank you. I want to thank you now, brother. And you know when you're on the phone, Anthony, with someone, you know something's wrong?

21:28He's dead silent. And I say, are you okay? And he says, no. And I said, what's wrong? And he said, you know, my mother just died from breast cancer. And what he has no idea of is right before that, my mother had died from breast cancer. And I'm not one of those new agey people, you know, feels like, you know, there's rainbows and new coins. But I say right in that moment, I say to him, listen, man, I think I'm here to deliver a message to you. And he says, what's the message? I said, when my mom died, everyone gave me useless advice. and but one person said something that actually was meaningful to me i think i'm here to tell it to you and he says what's the message and he said i said our mothers never leave us ever and he starts crying and because he's crying i'm getting emotional again sometimes we think we're alone in this universe and other times we realize we're profoundly connected and that that love that that that i have for that man right like that love that i have for my country that's why i got involved with you so i've always that's always built into my stuff so yes you will read my books and always find that love of patriotism no question the other the other thing about these books first of all there's another amazing story um but there's also it's idealism in your books you know and and there's idealism about america but also i feel like you understand that some of the greatest ideals about America also present its greatest vulnerabilities.

22:55Am I wrong? No. Listen, today, cruelty and venom and harshly judging those we disagree with, it's become sport in our culture. But cruelty and venom aren't signs of strength. They're signs of weakness and petty insecurity. To me, what takes strength is actually using your voice and standing up for someone and being kind and showing decency, showing empathy. And I think for me, sometimes we get caught up as Americans in the fight. We love the fight. I mean, that's part of being American is love in the fight. We're a country founded on a fight, but we can't forget that that beautiful, that's one side of us, but we can't forget that other side of us that's written on that Statue of Liberty, that's written in all of our hearts.

23:41When we see, I'm someone who's part of the National Archives, I was asked to be part of America 250. I do a lot of work with the culture and the country. And I think right now what we're seeing is this real assault on decency, an assault on empathy. You know, when you see the, even when the White House got plowed down and the East Wing got taken down, right? When you have a problem with history, you can always say, well, here's the real history. You can fight back by looking at it. But you can't make America legislate empathy. You can't make them legislate kindness. And I think what you're seeing on both sides, I believe we're seeing it right now, is you're seeing both sides are fed up with the fight.

24:26They're fed up with how we talk to each other. They're fed up with how we're just going at each other's throats. And I think that for me, we have this great side of us that tells us when we're supposed to fight in America. but we can't forget that we have a side of us that shows us when we're supposed to be kind to each other. And if we lose that, to me, we lose one of the most important parts of being American. That's what makes us the greatest country on earth. Well, listen, and not only am I with you, I think America does go through these periods of self-doubt and then reflection and then redemption and renewal.

24:59And so I think we're going to go through that phase again here. I want to bring it back to the book. You've said that the thrillers often glamorize heroism, but there's a cost here. There's a reckoning in this book, right? Tell us a little bit about that. What responsibility do you think popular fiction writers have about telling us these hard truths? Yeah, one of the things I found when I was, you know, I always go to, when I go to Dover Air Force Base, I'm always like, what's going on now? Where are we? And I've been there when the war was on And all the bodies that were coming through there were fallen soldiers and service members who had died, whether it's IEDs or they died in attacks or they were shot.

25:39And those are the bodies that they were working on. But the wars aren't going that way anymore. So when I went to Dover for this book to research it, I was like, what's going on? And they're like, well, the thing that's always going on. I said, what is it? They said, suicide, military suicides. You know that since 9-11, military suicides are four times higher than the deaths in combat. For over 30 ,000 soldiers, there's nowhere left to run and there's no war on. And when I talk to people about it, I'm like, well, what can I do? How do I fight back against that? They said to me, one simple thing, talk about it.