Author Brad Meltzer is always an amazing guest to have on the show and quite frankly, we could talk to him about anything. He’s a #1 New York Times Bestselling author and is also celebrating his twenty-fifth anniversary in publishing. The new novel The Lightning Rod is the return of two iconic fiction characters, Zig & Nola.

Over the course of his 25-year career, Meltzer has become known for meticulous research that has taken readers everywhere from the secret tunnels below the White House to the underground city below Disney World. In The Lightning Rod, Meltzer explores something few Americans know anything about: the dozen top-secret warehouses the U.S. government has all across the country to prepare for disasters such as chemical attacks, biological warfare, and pandemics.

Officially, it’s known as the Strategic National Stockpile—the government’s plan for how to deal with the worst large-scale attacks and biological threats like COVID. It consists of a dozen undisclosed warehouses, carefully hidden across the country. Each one is filled with vaccines for smallpox, SARS, Hanta virus, you name it. Had COVID-19 vaccines existed prior to the pandemic, it would have been stored in these facilities and, in fact, many of the early COVID ventilators came from the Stockpile.

Listen to our podcast interview with Brad Meltzer below. The new novel is available wherever books are sold, and you can find the latest details about his book tour and so much more at bradmeltzer.com