Gen. Stanley McChrystal | On Character: Choices That Define a Life

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Talk to your doctor and visit xtandi.com. How long does it take to say, yes, I will dismantle my nuclear program? Well, General Stanley McChrystal is a perfect person to talk about all this. Oh, last thing just came across, 830. When it comes to the consumer price index, it rose just 2.3%. They expected 2.4%.

So the market should not be upset by this, because it's inflation is a little less than predicted. General, welcome back. Always great to see you. It's a pleasure to be here, Brian.

Thanks for having me. What a time for news. It's unbelievable. There's like six major stories going on.

There are. Do you follow it as much as you used to when you were in uniform? Probably not as much as I used to. But on the other hand, I'm a little broader than I used to be, because I tend to be, when I was in uniform, I tended to focus on the things that were in my lane. Staying, yeah, keeping yourself alive and your troops alive. Exactly.

Right. And how different has it been since? Well, it's been fun because I get to I never thought about business before, except in very general terms. I pay attention to that a number of things. So it's a lot of fun when you were general, you have said, especially someone with you, who's got such knowledge of the globe and leaders. That's a sought after skill, those contacts. I know General Petraeus and others have is have you used that to some of your contacts and knowledge of them, especially the Middle East? I think a bit. I think more I've used the leadership part of what I learned and dealing with people and how organizations works, because that's what really interests me.

Because you like people you like to you're commanding people. I do. Just real quick on Saudi Arabia, that country has changed a lot since 9-11, don't you think? I think it has. And I think it's changing dramatically.

And I tend think we tend to have a view of what it was a few years ago, because it's hard to catch up. So I think it's moving in the right direction. That's my view. I think it's moving in the right direction. I think it's moving in the right direction. I think it's moving in the right direction.

I think it's moving in my opinion and we'll see where it ends up. Right. Do you understand when people want to invest there, would you be hesitant, do you think, for America to strengthen relations there business wise? I think we need to strengthen relations almost everywhere.

There are some limitations. I think Saudi Arabia is a good one. We traditionally had a great relationship with them.

Then we let it get rocky. I think making it strong again is in our interest in theirs. What about the rest of the region? When you see the Gulf States seem to come together, there seems to be one nation that's in the right place. It's giving most people the problems.

And it's Iran. It's the same problem since 1979, right? You were probably in high school at the time. No, I was a young special forces first lieutenant when they actually took the embassy. And it was like a gut punch because I was in Thailand serving in special forces when the failed rescue attempt in April of 1980 occurred. And I remember a Thai officer came to me and he said, how can you let this happen? And I said, well, you know, military operations are tough and they fail. He goes, you're the United States.

They're just Iran. And it was one of those moments where you sort of step back and take an out of body look at yourself and our nation. And you thought then we have to actually focus on building up our military. And that became the focus of the country because we're still in that Vietnam mindset, right? I call it the Vietnam handover.

Yeah. So do you remember when the draft stopped? I think it was 1973 or 1974. I was at West Point. And so when I got into active service in 76 as a lieutenant, we still had some draftees, but most of the army was already transitioning to all volunteer. And from when I entered West Point in 72, then as a commission officer in 76, the army got better every year. But what you really noticed was about 1980. You know, it took a while for the Vietnam hangover. The army made some good decisions about managing leaders differently and some new equipment and focus.

Then about 1980, I went in early 81 to Korea for a year and I spent a year on the DMZ, came back in the early spring of 82. It was like the army was a different place. It was like I'd left.

Why? Like how? What do you think happened? Well, a number of things occurred. One was that army recruiting suddenly got a lot better. Now, part of that was because the Vietnam period was over. But part of it was the economy was in a tough period and that helped.

There were a number of decisions. But suddenly, instead of having to fight to get every soldier to reenlist, we had boards where they had to compete to reenlist. So the quality of the force just started rising. And from about 1982, literally through the first Gulf War, you could watch the U.S. Army get better every year. Was there some doubt when you went to a volunteer force that you wouldn't have a good force? Was there a school of thought that people were worried about that? I didn't pay much attention to it.

I was a young guy and I thought it was great. And of course, the soldiers that I got to work with were extraordinary throughout my career. So I can't talk badly about the volunteer force except that I think what it did is it caused part of America to serve and it didn't cause the rest of America to serve. And I think that's a challenge. So would you still say, you talk about service, there should be some type of service, whatever it is. Civilian or military. I think everybody should do something.

And I think once you start putting it into the system, people just get used to it. Hey, are you going to start in college yet? No, I'm going to wait here. I'm going to do my service this year and the next year.

And then other people say, I'm continuing to do that. General Stanley Crystal is here. His new book is out this week. It's on character, the choices that define a life. Just a quick thing about what's happening in Israel. I've not talked to you since October 7th, but as I talk to Douglas Murray and write his book and read his book, he says one of the biggest shocks of his life was on October 7th and October 8th, the protests against Israel and what has happened on college campuses across the country.

And I can't get my head around it. If you remember 9-11, you're in the military at that time. There was no pro-Islamic extremist attitude in our country.

And if not, it would be rounded up and isolated. What's happened? I went over to Israel a couple of months after October 7th and I went down to Kibbutz Bay area, went on the edge of Gaza. No, I went with some friends, but I got to see many of the old military because I had a lot of military and intelligence friends in the Israeli services.

So I got to talk to all of them. And the shock that was in Israel could not be overstated. It was like going back to 9-11. People don't understand what a traumatic event psychologically that was for the United States. As we get further away from it, I'm afraid younger generations don't always appreciate it.

The same thing with after October 7th. And so the frustration that I felt among the Israelis and I got to spend time with the Golani Brigade, who had just come out of their first month in combat in Gaza. Having said that, I will tell you my view is also there's two sides to every story. And if you look at the state of Gaza for decades, really since Hamas took over 2005-2006, if you and I were young men in Gaza, there's every likelihood that we would have joined Hamas because you're in a situation where you don't have political or other opportunity. So I think it's really important we understand the horrific acts and not support what happened on October 7th. But we appreciate things happen for a reason.

And we can't ignore that. See, I feel differently is that the money that flowed into there, the opportunities that they had and Hamas that they elected when Condoleezza Rice said, let's go have elections. They overwhelmingly won. They assassinated the Fatah in the streets, the other government. They just annihilated other Palestinians and then took over and treated everybody like thugs. And these guys have that terrorist mindset that you personally fought against for the longest time.

I don't know. Unless I was indoctrinated, I can't see that the other side to that, especially if I had a chance to walk to work in Israel. A lot of them worked in Israel. They had a chance to see walk around and see they were treated in many respects with respect. They had a job. They had a living. When people are digging tunnels instead of building roads, I would say I got a little problem with where the money's going. Wouldn't you say that?

I think it's complicated. And to be honest, if again, if we were young men in Gaza, I think our view might be different. They have no foreign policy. They essentially had no economic opportunity. There was foreign aid coming in. There were a lot of limitations. They had an unfortunate election and they had and they elected Hamas.

Every country has unfortunate elections and elect that 70 percent of the vote, I think. Yeah, exactly. But you have to understand the dynamics. It's if you and I lived in the south before the Civil War, we probably would have joined the Confederate Army.

You follow the life journey that you experience and the people around you. And we can't ignore that factor. And so for years, the dynamic of Gaza had created a dynamic that had a pretty predictable outcome. Yeah. When you're giving Gaza and then you use the money to send rockets into Israel and you wonder why Israel says we got to make sure to reinforce that border. I don't.

Yeah, I don't. I personally don't see it, especially because there's so many they have so many Palestinians and so many allies in the region. Yeah, they don't want to take them in, but they have the support. Correct?

Yeah. You and I could argue either side of this case really effectively and emotionally. And I could make a pretty good case for either side. And that's what makes this so hard, because it's not two evil sides trying to destroy the other. And in fact, both of them have a point to make and they both want the same land. They they both want as much opportunity for their people as they can have.

And it's just really that the latest part is not true. Do you think that Hamas wants the best opportunity for their people? I don't think they care at all about the Palestinian people.

Do you? There are leaders and there are groups in every population that are problematic. Hamas, in my view, is completely problematic. But when you have this very jihad, when you have a very extreme group, Al Qaeda was even the Taliban are in Afghanistan. But if you take the entire population, it doesn't mean that there isn't a reason that extremist groups get traction. There often is.

Because I guess they're not happy also that when you use religion as a as a reason to kill people and you rejoice over the killing. I just thought there's a right and wrong there. I think there should be. Do you feel as though we we back the right side? Do you think we should be backing Hamas?

I don't think there's a clean one on this. My time was spent in Israel, obviously. My emotion has been with the Israeli forces. And so they're more on the surface like me.

So I'm sort of reflexively postured to support them. But because I think this is such a complicated issue, I'm a believer in a two state solution. I think that that's the only real issue. But you should tell the Palestinians that I'd be happy to. But but I mean, they have no interest in the two state solution.

They Hamas doesn't want one. Yeah. I mean, they got so close. We were all optimistic two decades ago.

And reality now, it seems very far away. But that's what makes it so tragic. I think you've got two groups that aren't evil that are trying to wrestle over something that's impossible to divide.

You can't cut the baby in half. I just don't. I mean, you fight him for you fought him for 30 years. But the Islamic extremist attitude is evil.

You don't think that you don't think you know that? Well, let me put it this way. And I've described this to people before the best forces that I led when I had the counterterrorism forces, SEALs, Delta Force Rangers and whatnot, and the best al Qaeda operatives were very similar personalities. They were very patriotic people. They were faced on one want to be a part of a team. They're willing to sacrifice. They were courageous.

They were remarkably the same, except that they had a different life journey and they got a different jersey and joined it. You get indoctrinated. We indoctrinate ourselves. We indoctrinate our military and people. We think we indoctrinate them in the right things. We think that the Islamic extremists indoctrinate their people in the wrong things. Those are views.

And obviously, you know where where I believe, but I respect the fact that just because I believe something doesn't make them wrong. Right. OK, we're going to come back. I want to talk more about your book. We have the hour. General Crystal's here. His new book is on character choices that define a life. He was just on The Daily Show last night where he just captured the audience, walked right in, took it over like you were Robin Williams in his prime.

Unbelievable. Back in a moment. I'm Janice Dean. Join me every Sunday as I focus on stories of hope and people who are truly rays of sunshine in their community and across the world.

Listen and follow now at Fox News podcast dot com. Hey, welcome back, everybody. With me right now is General Stanley McChrystal, his book on character choices that define a life. So, General, I know you're about leadership. Why did you think this is the right time to write about character?

Well, Brian, call me Stan, please, because we've known each other a long time. I think at any time, of course, is a good time to write about character. I hit a point in my life where I had been educated in it. I had been trained to think about it, but I hadn't thought enough about it.

In the last 15 years since I left uniform, I focused a lot more on those questions that really almost philosophical in nature. And I found out that as I tried to refine my thinking, they all intersected on character because character is central. It's sort of the beginning and the end. It's the essence of who we are. I also think that it's a moment when our nation doesn't prioritize character like we could. And I think like we did in the past. Now, granted, there's always been periods in American history where character was missing and there's always been people who didn't display it. But I think there was a general belief that character mattered a lot. I think we've normalized now people can violate norms or ignore traditional character and we accept it.

Politicians will look into a camera and lie to us and we will accept it and we'll say, well, they're just politicians. That's not a good dynamic. I think that we are often thoughtlessly selfish. I describe to people when you get your baggage after a flight, you go up to the carousel and people crowd the carousel. Nobody else can see what's coming out.

Nobody can get up there. And nobody is doing that intentionally to be a jerk. They're just not thinking.

They're just almost unconscious. Yeah, exactly. And we've got that so accepted in our society now that we've all become almost cynical about it. I think we need to step back. We need to think about character, each of us individually. We need to talk about it in the nation.

We need it like on programs like this. We need to demand it. Demand it from the people who we buy products from, the people who we give celebrity to, the people we vote for, the people we follow. We need to demand it and of ourselves. And we have the ability to do that. It's entirely within our power. And you think individuals can be collective after a while. Exactly. You write, a character is your choice.

Right? So that's everyone has a choice. But first you have to define what the right thing to do is. And that a lot of times comes from family, right? And mentors.

So a lot of people say, you know, I thought I was acting a good character, but I made it, you know, obviously in retrospect, maybe I wasn't. Yeah, I think you do need to think about it. I think some education and study, but you're right.

Most of it comes from our parents or our peers or people that are good examples in our society. But then we have to really focus on those and pressure test those ideas. Gotcha. Listen, go out and pick up the General's book. He's going to be here a while longer, but it's called On Character, Choices That Define a Life.

We'll talk about more about that in a moment. All right, we are back. General McChrystal is with us now, General Stanley McChrystal author of a brand new book on character choices that define a life. So General, I find most intriguing about you is that you leave a military. The way you left is ridiculous.

I took it worse than you did and you're over it. But you go to study. You would think that you should write a book on leadership. You actually wrote a book, but you studied it first. You go into character, you study character. You believe that life is nonstop learning, correct?

I do. So when people say, well, I'm a leader, I've had this success, you could still be learning. I've still got a lot left to learn, unfortunately.

What did you get in researching this book on character? Well, I started looking more toward philosophy. You know, we all studied some philosophy in high school and college, but I didn't pay much attention.

I actually went back to the ancient philosophers and they were pretty smart guys. And what it did was it made me think about sort of why I do what I do. If you go to Marcus Aurelius and he basically says, do the right thing. Not because it advantages you, not even because it will give you respect from others.

Just do it because it's the right thing. And if I look at historical figures who've shown great strength in very difficult times, they seem to follow a north star that is pretty basic. And that's my argument for character now.

So can you give me some examples? Give us Marcus Aurelius. Who else followed their north star? I think if we go to Abraham Lincoln, he followed his north star. He said when he came into the presidency, my goal is to save the union. My priority is to save the union. And he had to do some very difficult things, fight the biggest war in American history to date. He actually suspended habeas corpus for a period. And of course, now we're going through that question again. He was prepared to make a deal to let the south keep slavery if it would keep them in the union.

Those are all really difficult compromises. You could argue they're wrong. Because the right thing to do is of course not have slaves, to release the slaves. But he had to time it in order to be successful.

That's exactly right. I mean, you could argue that they're wrong, particularly in the sweep of history, because he was an abolitionist in his heart. But he thought that the most important thing was to save the union, first and foremost. I would argue that the most important thing in leadership today is character. It's not what your policies are, your politics, or any of your celebrity.

Because those things are all transitory. In the critical moment, what we need is people with real strength, real maturity. Think of brand new President Kennedy at the Bay of Pigs. He accepts responsibility for a problem he really didn't cause.

He inherited. Then he gets to the Cuban Missile Crisis and we see the character arise. Not a perfect solution, but a pretty darn good solution. You know, it's so interesting that you bring up Lincoln, because that is not the easy example to make. Because if you say to yourself everything, what's the right thing to do? You know Frederick Douglass is out there and there are these fine people waiting for you to free the slaves.

And you go, well I'm just going to do the right thing. And then all hell would have broken loose. The North would have fractured. Because the North wasn't ready to accept that they were fighting to free the slaves. They weren't ready to accept blacks fighting amongst them and alongside them. So that's a tough example that you brought up.

It's very tough. Think of Franklin Roosevelt. He knew that we would have to enter the war against the Axis Powers. And he started actions in the Middle East, but he couldn't get the American people on board until after Pearl Harbor. So he was mature. He was wise and waiting and maneuvering. But that's a difficult decision.

How about this? If you play into some of the conspiracy theories that he knew Pearl Harbor was coming in some way shape or form, he knew to save the world and to stop Hitler, America would have to get involved, but America wasn't there yet. If he allowed that to happen, is that the same thing in a way that Lincoln had to do? Maybe do the wrong thing in order to do the right?

Yeah, it's always tricky. And I don't think that that was true. You probably have that nonstop at war, right? You do. And you do have to have moral boundaries, things you will and will not do. Because your force will start a slide down a slippery slope. But there are times you deal with warlords. There are times you make compromises on things that you wouldn't want to do because the larger outcome is more important than the near term. And sometimes it costs you people. Sometimes it costs you friends.

It costs you respect. But you have to make those really tough calls. You know what's interesting, too, is because people say, oh, always be honest, always be right. Well, sometimes you can't be honest, like in order to achieve your objective. If you say, someone walks up to you and they go, General, are we outnumbered?

Now, if you're really being honest, the answer is yes. But if you want to destroy the morale of your unit, you're out of bullets. You're outnumbered.

Do you say, we're fine. You know, those guys aren't going to do anything. So, I mean, those are the tougher questions that you probably pick up at West Point. I remember when I had to testify in front of Congress when I got very senior. You actually sign a paper that says, I'll always tell you exactly what I think, not what the administration thinks before you become a three star. So, you go to testify and they ask you, can you win in Afghanistan? And if I looked them in the eye and I said, well, truth be known, yeah, 50-50, maybe, maybe not.

Which was what I had felt internally and told them. But if I had said that, every soldier out there fighting in Afghanistan would have gone, what in the world is he saying? They have to believe.

And to a degree, even the leaders have got to believe, even sometimes when the odds are much worse than you want to tell people publicly. I want you to hear, well, first off, on this whole plane. So, you have Qatar offering President Trump a plane. Says Air Force One is going to be ready in 2035, the new one. So, here's a plane. Here's what Rand Paul said about the Constitution and accepting that plane, cut 30.

It's a little bit different than a gimme putt. And the Constitution in Article Two talks about the President can't take emoluments or gifts from foreign leaders. And so, there is a provision in the Constitution that says you can't do this. And so, the question is, can you do it if it's only for official purposes? If it came to someone in Congress, they can vote and the Ethics Committee can look at it.

With his, there will have to be some kind of adjudication. This has never been done and it's not like a ride on the plane. We're talking about the entire $400 million plane. I think it's not worth the appearance of impropriety, whether it's improper or not. I don't think it's worth it. What should we do?

Obviously not take it. We're the United States of America. We don't need a plane from Qatar. Right.

It's so ridiculous. Right. Yeah, I don't think we should be taking that plane to begin with. But I do find it disturbing that it takes Boeing an extra 15 years. Did you know, Boeing supplies a lot of military equipment, don't they?

They do. Did you notice a problem in the supply chain when you were serving? I never noticed directly from Boeing, but I've read a lot of articles about it, particularly about the procurement of the new Air Force One replacement airplanes.

And they've had a real tough road on that one. A lot of it internal Boeing challenges. So, are you concerned about our military industrial base? Yeah, I'm very concerned about it because, one, if we've underinvested in it, we can't build enough volume of weapons, artillery rounds, missiles, particularly the more advanced weapons, which take a lot of really detailed work.

We can't produce those in the kind of numbers we'll need. Right now, if we do the math against a potential foe like China, we've got a real challenge, particularly in advanced weapons. You know, you would tell me before the break that we weren't using as much weapons. Even though we were at war for 20 years, we weren't using as much weapons. So, we consolidated, I think the story won in the 90s.

Bill Clinton urged everyone to consolidate. McDonnell Douglas and others to come into one. So, you wouldn't be bidding against each other. In theory, the prices would be less that you charge in the Pentagon.

But now that that doesn't work, even if the objective was pure and the hope was right, it didn't work. How long would it take from what you know to build up at a level in which we can supply our allies with what they need, for profit, you know, friends and family's discount, sure. Then we get the maintenance contract on top of that. This would be a win-win. How long would it take? Do you have an idea? Well, I think it would take years.

You know, think five or six years to build back up again. And the other thing to understand is the free market doesn't completely work in this regard because weapons producers don't want to create expensive assembly lines if they're not going to sell enough. And if our military doesn't need enough to require that, they won't invest.

That's why I like the idea of providing weapons around the world to our allies because it helps build our capacity. But even so, I think the government has got to do investment in giving us production capacity that maybe never gets used. And okay, that's an investment that we never actually... You mean government would own this instead of going to a private contract, the government would actually own this weapons plant? They could or they could invest. They could provide money to the producers, but require them to have the warm capability to produce weapons at a certain speed. I mean, same way they did SpaceX. It's private, but it was supplemented and using aerospace.

When I look at Russia, Ukraine, I felt frustrated. You're the military expert because no Highmars will give you Highmars. No F-16s will give you F-16s.

We'll give you Javelins, but we're not going to give you Attackums. And they end up with all of them. But they slow-walked it. It's almost like a... It's the most unthinking form of war fighting ever. You know the...

It is as if no one... The incrementalism was maddening and how many people died because of it, especially when you see how the Ukrainians fight. Yeah, I mean we've always looked for an ally who wanted to fight like the Ukrainians do. Now we've got one... And who are they fighting? One of America's premier enemies.

Our primary enemy in reality. And so I think we should have now... Hindsight's 20-20.

Okay, let's fix it. But my belief is we should have armed the Ukrainians with everything they needed as early as we could. We should have essentially given them a blank check and communicated that to Vladimir Putin, saying we are going to stay committed to this level so that this particular aggression just doesn't work. But his use of threatening nuclear attack seems to have rattled the previous administration.

I think it rattled a lot of people. The nuclear part plus natural gas... You think it was real? You know, you can't be sure with a 70-plus-year-old dictator. I don't think... I didn't think it was, but it's hard to predict. If he had failed completely in Ukraine, it probably meant regime change for him.

So we may have gotten a different logic in his part. We just accepted it, but is it unbelievable that you got about 500 Chinese, you have thousands of North Koreans, you have Yemeni fighters and Iranian drones all bailing out this so-called superpower of Russia because they're running out of people and weapons? Russia's not a superpower anymore. They have managed to portray themselves as one. They are not demographically strong for the long term. They're not economically strong, but in the short term.

In the short term matters, they can be a huge problem. I know you're not a big fan of the president when it comes to character. I think you made that clear and I respect that. Who does have the character on the main stage that you think is an example of somebody that you would like to highlight? If you were to write a character today book.

Yeah, I'm not sure I would. I'm looking for character. I'm sure that there are a lot of people out there, but I have not seen a lot of people that have risen to really world stage level that I'm prepared to say that, but that's what we all should be looking for. We shouldn't look for just a person's policies or just a person's politics or anything like that. One of our major criteria for supporting somebody should be character.

We have a couple of minutes at the end, but I just want to say this. Your generation, even though you led them, but the 20-year-olds that fought under you, I think that they're as great as any generation, the way they fought, the way they adapted, the way they had to go into the most difficult ways possible over the course of years, 20 years, multiple deployments. When people go to war college and study what you guys did and the people you led, are you getting the proper respect among military experts when they analyze what you've done? Well, personally, I get more respect than I deserve, so almost embarrassing, but the young people that you described were amazing. And if we try to paint a generation as ineffective, that's not my experience at all.

It kills me to hear people describe that. And yet they seem almost like a quiet generation. Our generation, the Boomers, sort of got the headlines, and now the youngest generation that's just coming up is getting a focus. There's all these heroes who carried our nation and did some great things, and I'm not sure that they get either the credit or I don't see as many of them in positions of responsibility as I would like. And then the special operations that I will never know about in Africa and in Southeast Asia that took place under the command and guys and what you've been able to do and the people you've been able to train around the world to fight for themselves and for their government?

Just extraordinary. And the wives. I remember when I'd just taken over JSOC, it was Christmas, it was the day before Christmas and I was having to deploy some people on Christmas Eve to Pakistan on no notice. And my wife goes to the little shopping center on the military base Fort Bragg and she runs into one of the wives. And Annie was a little bit nervous because I was a new commander there and here her husband's being sent on Christmas Eve and she thought the wife was not going to be happy. So Annie went up and talked to her and said, kind of apologized, and the lady goes, hey, this is what we do. This is who we are. Don't worry.

It's good. And there's millions of stories of that and that's what I think we need to reinforce sometimes. I remember Colonel Wesley who I was, I went to Kuwait before the Iraq War and I stayed in touch with Colonel Wesley and General Perkins now. He was Lieutenant Colonel Perkins then. And when I went to visit him on a base in Kansas, his wife was busy.

Why? Because somebody just got killed in battle. She had to go over and deliver a basket.

Then afterwards somebody just had a baby. She had to go to the base. I go, wow, that's your responsibility? He goes, yeah, well, my husband's in command.

That's what we do. So when you're in command, so your family's in command. And then to see the kids, the way they walk up to people and say, hello, how you doing?

Look in your eye. And they go, well, these kids have been on six different bases in the last four years. They had to go meet the person next door right away. So those kids grow up right away. So it's pretty amazing what happens.

I mean, it really forces you to raise your kids directly and they see real values in real time. It's almost like sports where in 90 minutes you get character in a minute because I have a few more minutes with General Stanley McChrystal. His book's out today. What a great Father's Day gift this would be on character, choices that define a life. Hey, we are back.

A few more minutes with General Stanley McChrystal. General, when you wrote the book on character, what did you discover? Is this one of those things where you loved researching it?

I did. And I would start with things that I had an opinion on. And I would say, this is my opinion on X. And then I would try to write an essay, 800 to 1,000 words. And I would find that as I wrote it, it was harder to articulate what I thought. And I actually found out in many cases what I thought was much more nuanced, more complex. And I found myself evolving my thinking as I was forced to do that. So I think we sometimes take our character as too superficial. And if we really delve into it, we'll start to explore questions.

This book has no answers. Just questions. Well, you know, it's interesting.

I saw you say last you did great on The Daily Show. You said character is your fate. So if you are showing character through your life, it'll really define more than you know what kind of life you have.

Because all through your life, you'll be making a consistent decision in very different situations. And what do you want people to say about you at your memorial service? You know, if you're big and famous and rich and all that's one thing, but if they go, you know, but Brian was a real jerk. Instead, if they go, no, Brian was somebody we could count on.

I didn't agree with everything that he thought or did, but he was somebody I trusted. Understood. You said this. Reputation is what man thinks of us. Character is what angels know of us.

That really says the reason you wrote the book, right? Exactly. Right.

Because there's someone keeping score. Right. And so you might as well show some character.

And it's all in his book on character choices that define a life. General Stanley McChrystal, I always love when you write a book. It's great to see you. Great to see you, Brian. All right. Keep it here, Brian. Kill me, Joe. membership or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.