True Anon Truth Feed - [PREVIEW] Episode 144: Nico Walker
Aired: 2021-03-15
Duration: 04:58


=== Nico Walker's Cherry (01:25) ===

[00:00:00]  Did you hear that tone?
[00:00:01]  It might sound like I'm leaving you a voicemail, but actually, I'm alerting you to a special episode.
[00:00:08]  My name is Brace.
[00:00:09]  This, of course, is the True and On podcast hosted by myself, Liz Franczak, and Young Chopsky.
[00:00:15]  And today is an interview with Nico Walker, who wrote the book Cherry.
[00:00:21]  And yeah, I think we should just rev up the engines and drive into the garage, shut the door, start the engine once again, and just drift off.
[00:00:48]  Welcome to NPR's The Book Firing Line, where we take one author every week, put them up against the wall, and put a bullet in their fucking brain.
[00:00:55]  With us today, we have Nico Walker.
[00:00:57]  Nico, how you doing?
[00:00:59]  I'm doing well, Brace.
[00:01:00]  Thank you for having me.
[00:01:02]  Of course.
[00:01:05]  Nico, I think for those, so Nico wrote a book called Fucking Cherry.
[00:01:08]  They made a fucking movie out of it, blah, blah, blah.
[00:01:11]  For those who, we did a survey, and 95% of our audience hasn't read not only a book, but even the back of a cereal carton.
[00:01:19]  And so, what's your deal?
[00:01:21]  Where are you from?
[00:01:22]  What are you doing here?
[00:01:23]  Why are you on the show?

=== Why Join the Army? (03:32) ===

[00:01:26]  Okay, yeah.
[00:01:28]  I wrote a book called Cherry.
[00:01:30]  I wrote it in prison.
[00:01:31]  I guess that was kind of the thing that they really sold it on.
[00:01:34]  Yeah.
[00:01:34]  You know what I mean?
[00:01:35]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:01:35]  I was in prison in Kentucky for long, for pretty much all the last decade.
[00:01:43]  It was released, half-release in October of 2019.
[00:01:48]  Got out of the halfway house just in time for the pandemic, the big lockdown.
[00:01:54]  Yeah, no, I was very lucky though.
[00:01:55]  Got the book published with Knopf.
[00:01:59]  Came out in August of 2018.
[00:02:03]  Was picked up for, I guess, the film rights, would you say, were picked up and was turned into a major motion picture is being released right now, I suppose, streaming on Apple TV Plus.
[00:02:20]  You know, shout out to Apple.
[00:02:22]  Thanks for everything.
[00:02:24]  Thanks for the memories.
[00:02:25]  But anyway, yes, it's a trip, though.
[00:02:28]  You know, got Tom Holland, Spider-Man.
[00:02:33]  He's the star.
[00:02:34]  Listen, I don't know.
[00:02:36]  I saw that.
[00:02:37]  I saw the preview.
[00:02:38]  I got to say, doesn't look like I read the book.
[00:02:42]  Doesn't exactly look a lot like the book.
[00:02:45]  Tom Holland looks exactly like you.
[00:02:47]  So they got that part down.
[00:02:49]  But something I found kind of interesting is they had, it's like, it's kind of like painted as like a war movie in some parts.
[00:02:55]  And like you were in, you were in the army, right?
[00:02:57]  You were in the Iraq war.
[00:02:58]  That's awesome.
[00:03:00]  And you were a medic.
[00:03:01]  That's true.
[00:03:02]  Why would you become a medic?
[00:03:04]  Because you don't necessarily, to me, you know, far be it from me to judge a book by its cover.
[00:03:08]  You don't exactly look like a medical man.
[00:03:11]  Is that right?
[00:03:12]  I don't know.
[00:03:15]  It seemed like the best job you could have, I guess.
[00:03:19]  You know, it was like, I'm not good with mechanical things.
[00:03:24]  So I ruled out anything like that.
[00:03:28]  I'm kind of soft.
[00:03:29]  I'm not really, you know, I'm not much of a killer, so I couldn't really do that.
[00:03:34]  And it seemed like an all right thing to do also.
[00:03:36]  It's colorblind.
[00:03:38]  Yeah.
[00:03:38]  I'm colorblind.
[00:03:39]  Yeah, it was the job that you could have if you were colorblind.
[00:03:42]  You could be a healthcare specialist.
[00:03:44]  I signed up as a healthcare specialist in all fairness.
[00:03:47]  You know, people are like, what were you thinking?
[00:03:49]  You're crazy.
[00:03:49]  I mean, I thought, I don't know, I pictured something like a hospital.
[00:03:53]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:03:54]  Walter Reed, you know, maybe someplace in Germany, nine to five.
[00:03:58]  Pharmacist.
[00:03:59]  So, yeah, whatever, you name it.
[00:04:01]  But anyway, ended up going through my medical training, 14 weeks of medical training.
[00:04:09]  So that's plenty of time to learn everything that you would need to know.
[00:04:14]  And I was told to go overseas.
[00:04:16]  You know, I got done with training and got my orders for 4th Infantry Division when I was still in medical, what, medic school in San Antonio.
[00:04:30]  And they were the next division going to Iraq.
[00:04:33]  So I became a medic, got done with training, and then a month and a half later I was deployed to Iraq.
[00:04:43]  So, yeah, I got to the Middle East right after Thanksgiving of 2005.
[00:04:53]  And I enlisted the previous January.
[00:04:57]  So it all happened real fast.