An Army of Normal Folks - Richard Casper: The Secret Weapons of Music and Art (Pt 2)

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

Richard is a Marine veteran who was subject to 4 IED explosions and concussions in Iraq, his best friend being killed next to him, a traumatic brain injury, and post traumatic stress. He came home dealing with a lot and the arts ultimately saved his life. Richard felt called to bring this secret weapon of healing to his fellow veterans and this year alone his nonprofit CreatiVets will serve over 800 veterans!Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, it's Bill Courtney with An Army of Normal Folks and we continue now with part two of our conversation with Richard Casper right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. Every family has skeletons in their closet. Mine certainly does. Ones that go back a hundred years and reach thousands of miles back to our hometown in Sicily. Ever since I can remember, my relatives told the story of my great-great-grandmother who was killed by the mafia. I'm Jo Piazza, and in my new podcast, I'm taking on a generational vendetta, visiting the scene of the crime, confronting mafia experts,

tracking down Italian officials, and even consulting mediums to set the record straight on my great-great-grandmother's mysterious disappearance. And in between the fact-finding missions, I'll be drinking a lot of wine and eating all of the pasta. Come to Italy with me to solve this hundred-year-old murder mystery. Listen to The Sicilian Inheritance on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The big take from Bloomberg News brings you what's shaping the world's economies with

the smartest and best informed business reporters around the world. Western nations like the U.S. and Europe. Mexico will likely have its first female president. And then you have China. And help you understand what's happening, what it means, and why it matters. He'll get his yo-yos to Europe in time. But the longer this drags on, the more worried he's getting. They knew that they needed to do this as fast as they possibly could

to get a drug on the market as fast as they could. I'm David Dura. I'm Sarah Holder. I'm Saleh Amosin. We cover the stories behind what's moving money in markets. Basically everyone was expecting, if not a calamity, certainly a recession. But the problem is that that paperwork, as our reporting showed, is fake. As someone who's covering the market, I'm often very worried about an imminent collapse.

I'm thinking about it quite often. Listen to the big take on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Solea Mosin, and I've covered economic policy for years and reported on how it impacts people across the United States. In 2016, I saw how voters were leaning towards Trump and how so many Americans felt misunderstood by Washington. So I started The Big Take DC. We dig into how money, politics, and power shape government and the consequences for voters. It's an election year, so there's a lot of focus on the voters that TikTok is reaching.

The initial reaction is like, oh, things are looking so resilient. I don't want to be too pessimistic, but I just don't see the political will down in Washington right now to change their tune. I think the American electorate has been signaling that it expects a rematch of the 2020 election. These are unprecedented times. With new episodes every Thursday, you can listen to The Big Take DC on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

podcasts or whatever you get your podcasts. Let's return to Richard on his service in a mounted infantry unit in Iraq. First I went to two seven Marines which was an infantry unit and I get there and I start working up, I pause because I had this whole story with the Harley too. I rode my Harley cross country. That's a pretty awesome story. I have an old soul, you know? I was like 19 with a Harley, all my friend had a crotch ride.

But I took that to California with me. There's a hilarious story in that me and my buddies driving across, I did 23 hours straight on that thing. I wasn't supposed to. But anyways, so I get there. Did you show up with crotch ride? No, I did 23 hours straight on that thing. I wasn't supposed to, but anyways, uh, so I get there. Did you show up with crotch ride? No, I was, I was good. 23 hours on a Harley and you weren't galled?

Nope. I was still young and you have still thighs. Yeah. And, uh, so I get to the basis. So this is a strip infantry unit. Like they, they just went to Afghanistan. Uh, they just got back and they're starting to do their train up. And so they look at my EAS date, like the day I'm supposed to get on the Marine

Corps and they approached me after about two or three months training up with them. They say, Hey, there's an issue. You're not going to be able to go to Iraq with us because we don't leave for Iraq until like January or February of 2007. And it looks like you get out in June of 2007. You'd be getting out when we're over there, so you can't come with us. And I was like, okay, well, can I transfer somewhere?

Like, can I go to another unit that's deploying soon? And so they ended up sending me the first tanks because they had a tow unit, which is pretty much I went from ground infantry to mountain infantry. So tows are just in Humvees, like scouting ahead. And like they have tows and scouts. And we have a shot of toe, I don't think in Iraq since the initial invasion.

So they're mounted with Mark 19s and 50 cows and used to become mounted infantry. And so I went over there with about. Mounted infantry, meaning riding around in Humvees with machine guns mounted on top and that kind of thing. And so we still get out, we do missions. Yeah, you roll up, you get out, you do neighborhood clears. Yeah, and a lot of it was like EOD clearance where we'd either help do security for some people,

mainly our whole job was to secure the supply lines. So MSR Mobile was like the biggest highway that ran through Iraq with all these trucks coming on it. So we would constantly, every single day, just drive up and down to make sure nobody's putting in IEDs, clearing IEDs. If we find them, we call an EOD. We do these side missions. EOD. EOD, like explosive device people that take a part of the bombs. Oh, that's a crap job.

Oh yeah. Yeah, Hurt Locker, that movie was about EOD. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so my buddy- The guys that have those big gloves and hoods on and they literally go and how many of those guys get blown up? Well, that's the thing on Valentine's Day, you know, my coming up, one of my best friend, well, not my best friend, but he was one of those good, good people, didn't drink, has a twin brother, phenomenal guy named Dan Hansen.

After inventory went EOD and then ended up dying 2008 during, on Valentine's Day, I got the call saying he died because he was disarming a bomb and it went off on him. So a lot, enough, but it is a crap job to like, but it's such a heroic job too to be like, I'm going to put on the suit that most likely will never protect me and I'm going to go in there and try to disarm this bomb. So nobody else gets hurt. And so you're out there in these finding these things. Yep. And I found four for sure.

What does that mean? I was blown up four times. So, I mean, being blown up is a crazy experience, but I will stop. Yeah. And being blown up is a crazy experience. Okay, well stop. So this is a part that I think is really important for people to grasp before we go to the rest of your life. After literally 25 years of Afghanistan, the first Iraq, second Iraq. I really unfortunately think the public

is desensitized to all of it. I mean, you can only see on CNN or Fox or the umpteen movies that have been made about it, American servicemen, service people on patrol and bombs going off and see pictures of destroyed humvees that hit a roadside, it's called an IUD, right? IAD. Before you start saying, well, that's just what happens. And you forget that that's a 21, 20, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23 year old kid inside that thing. And I think we get a sensitize to what quote getting blown up is. Can you walk me through your whole first experience and let our listeners understand what that really is? Yeah.

And so for me, because I talk about it now for a living. And so it's easy. And I remember like dealing with my own traumas, like going over it and being like, how, how do you explain it in a short form and be okay with it? By the, by the time it was just like, I was blown up four times. Like how much do you want to know about it? Um, I want, I want people to know because I want them to understand trauma is an overused word. Oh yeah.

I mean, we've got people that, uh, get talked to bad in the breadline of all two and Kroger and they're traumatized. Yep. That's not trauma that may piss you off. That may trigger some things that make you feel, but that's not trauma. Yeah. Getting blown up. That's gotta be traumatic.

Oh yeah. So just tell me about the day the first explosion went off when you're in a Humvee. So the first time I got hit, it was November 17th through 18th. I know because I had the medical records. How old are you? I'm 39 now, but I was at the time. No, no. How old were you then? Oh, because I did the Camp David thing. I was probably 21.

How many people in the Humvee? Four of us. And there's a driver? Well, because I did the Camp David thing, I was probably 21. How many people in the Humvee? Four of us. So. And there's a driver. Yep. So there was a driver, actually was that the fifth one too? Yeah.

There's a driver and then what they call a vehicle commander, which is the, in the passenger seat of the vehicle. And then there's a gunner who's like poking his head out of the Humvee. With the machine gun on top, which is what, 50 caliber? It depends where you're at. So ours was a 50 cal, but then some are Mark 19s the grenades and then some I mean these are heavy-duty guns Yeah, some are saws which are light light machine guns and I was the dismount at the time So I was in the back left passenger seat right behind the driver

What happens to the back right passenger seat? Oh, it's it that's where the gunner hands sit down if he needs no They're still like there's a little thing in the- So you don't put five guys in these things, you put four? Nope, usually always four fifth if there's a squad leader or a corpsman. So the squad leader always got a corpsman with them. So that would be the only one running around with five. If there was in ours, it was like, that's where you put your packs, your MREs, everything else, you get stuff back there. So there's four of you in this Humvee. There's four of you in this Humvee. Yep.

Another question I got, and I really want this to be, I want a visual picture. Yeah. I remember reading early on that the American Humvees were not doing a good job protecting service members on these things and you guys were actually plating them up yourself on base. Was that going on? The first, yeah, the first part of the war they were. By the time it got to us, they still weren't super effective. We still had to put like sandbags and stuff on the floor to protect the bottom because

the bottom wasn't protected at all. But we still had like the first, I think it was the first generation armor where the doors still had like bulletproof glass and a little outfitting, but it was only the doors. So it wasn't the V-shaped bottoms, but yeah, the, the ones that came into Iraq, a lot of them didn't have doors on them. So they were just like, no doors, just Humvee riding around, just getting vehicles out there as quick as possible. And then slowly they started building that up.

When they got here, those things turned into tin cans. Oh yeah. Now they have like the V bottom ones that are like six feet off the ground and like to shape the blast. They actually did the research and were like, let's build equipment that would handle these. So you're in the first generation kind of protective of up armoring.

Yeah, we're still- And you're putting sandbags on the floorboard. Yeah, well by that time we could- What's it like for a six foot five guy? Well I had to put a vest and stuff under mine because I couldn't, I already had to break my seat because when I became vehicle commander a few months or like a month after this incident, I didn't fit with my helmet on and my NVGs on top of that. So I had to break the passenger seat

thing and I shoved like a rod back there. So I was like leaning back and then I had to be like, like just to put my NVGs on, like I had to ride low in that thing. And so, yeah, it was hard for me. It's not built for. All right. So these things are not especially well built. They're packed full of four guys with some rations in the empty seat. Probably got sandbags in the floor or bulletproof vests on the floor. You guys are trying to protect yourself and you're out there trying to find bombs.

So your supply lines can get through unfettered. Yep. All right? This day, that's the picture of going down the road. Yeah, so since I was a dismount in this one, I don't remember as much as when I was vehicle commander because I was up front watching the other three blasts, but this time we got hit.

And the only thing I really remember about this one, because I didn't pass out on this hit, but when the bomb goes up, you don't hear the bomb. You just see a flash of light and you kind of like come to. It's a really weird moment because I think the explosion is so loud that you kind of like don't register it. That was like the first one.

But then there was so much debris inside. It almost felt like the vehicle was on fire because all that dust and smoke, because as you imagine, it blows up. the vehicle was on fire because all that dust and smoke, because as you imagine, it blows up. There's like a vacuum that's created. And I ended up tearing cartilage in my chest just because my mouth was open. So the overpressure of in the cabin of the vehicle, because you know, where the gunner's at, there's a hole.

So air rushes in there and I guess it rushed down my lungs and expanded my lungs to a point that tore cartilage in my chest. like that's how bad the blast was. But when we get out of it, and this is another misconception, it's like, where you see people like me and you're like, you don't have a brain injury, you don't look injured. And it's like, it takes a toll. Those things protected the shrapnel from coming in,

but it didn't protect the concussion from coming in and all this other stuff that happened. And so everyone on that team was, there was a few concussions. They didn't actually give me a concussion on that one. They just had a torque cartilage and all that. But you're just going to this little, uh, on base medical like corpsman and saying like, Hey, here's what happened to me. And they either sign off on it or they don't sign off on it.

But that one, I don't remember near as much. What happened to the other three guys? The other one. So they were just concussed. It wasn't, we, We get back in the vehicle the next day and just go to work. What? Did you run over it or was it near you and they remotely exploded? That one I can't remember what it was because the other three I remember, again, since I could have been asleep. I might have been sleeping on that one. But the other three being a vehicle commander or I didn't remember because the blast was so hard.

You tore cartilage from the concussion going down your throat. Yeah. Cause I didn't know, I got out almost like I was fine. Cause after a blast, you get out and you look around the truck as if it feels safe. You get out, usually a vehicle pulls up next to you. So in this case, snipers come. And so like you go assess your damage, what you can do after you pull up a little bit. And so I remember pulling up and kind of like

walking back and forth and just being like, why's my chest hurts so bad? Like out of all my body, like why does my chest hurt? And I just kept on like, kind of like breathing in and just being like, what is wrong? And I just kind of, everyone's like, hey, is everyone good in the trucks? While they came over, I was like, yeah, my chest

hurts a bit, but that's it. And we just go back on patrol like normal. Are your ears ringing? A little bit, but not much. It was mainly my chest that I was, I was really suffering with and everything, everyone's ears were ringing, but that's it. And we just go back on patrol like normal. Are your ears ringing? A little bit, but not much. It was mainly my chest that I was, I was really suffering with and everything, everyone's ears were ringing, but because we were able to change out the tire, it blew out the tires, but it didn't,

the, it didn't go through the block. So the Humvee was still functioning. And so we just put the new tires on there and just kept rolling, but about 30 minutes in they said, Hey, we're going to go back to base just to check the whole chest thing. And they checked on it. And that's when they said it was, I don't know what the

name someone out there does, Castrolfenchitis or something like that, where I tore cartilage in my chest. But the second blast, it was, there was a Marine that was a vehicle commander of the first vehicle. And so we run around with four Humvees with the squad leader, like roughly in the third Humvee. The lead vehicle commander controls our route. Like we're going up MSR mobile and he chooses where we turn around points.

Cause you imagine if you turn around the same spot, that's where they're going to plant an ID on your turnaround. And so you have to like choose where you're going, no other direction. He'd been in two seven. He was what two seven Marine two that came over. He's lost so many people and been in so many battles that he was like chewing through his leather gloves and anxiety was getting so bad as being the lead vehicle commander.

So I took over for him and that's when I got hit three more times. And that's where like, I could, I remember a lot more because I was in the front seat, but that first blast that happened was, it was, they call them like, if you hear the term one 30 or one five five, it's the size of the shell, like a shell that would be in a tank that you shoot out like 155 African was like the big shell. 130s were still pretty big and if you google like 130 shell, military shell, you'll see how big these things are but they'll stack these and wrap them up and put a detonator on instead of blowing up like two of these on

your vehicle and they either like... A 155 shell is about the size of like a, it's similar, it's not as fat, but it's about same in volume as a propane gas tank for your grill. A 130 is more like a, I think a propane. The 150 is a little bit even larger. It is thinner. So imagine a bomb that big and then they wrapped three or four of them together. Yeah, but the 130 is more like the propane tank

because it's like a lot bulkier too. And so they did two of those wrapped up with each other. And when I say we were blown up, this one, there's only one that was directly underneath us. The other two were just to the side of us. So this one was only a car length away from us when it blew up on our vehicle. And that one, that one hurt.

And that one was where they talked about my brain injury was like your body moves, but your brain stays in the same spot when there's a concussion that big. And so the brain knocking against the wall is what causes a lot of that damage. But that was the same way where it's like, it blows up and you're just like, where am I and you just taste burnt dirt.

It's weird that you just taste burnt dirt in your mouth and it's just, you're just yelling if everybody's okay and you're trying to figure out what's happening and you need to move up and you hear the radio and it's just all chaos. So it's so hard to remember those impacts. But the second one was where I got out of the truck after we assessed the situation and I remember walking around and I just kept checking my leg

because I felt like I'd shrapneled it. It was one of those things where you know your keys you like check your pocket and then magically they're gonna appear five minutes later so you check your pocket again. I was like do I have shrapnel? I'm like looking is there any blood coming out of my leg? I was like no and my legs got hurt like they just hurt so bad such a sharp pain in them And I was like what is this and I kept checking kept checking it kind of like dissolved But the endorphins of like because it was the blast that made them hurt so bad But coming out of it was like coming out of anything else where it released a bunch of endorsing you kind of like I have a high

After being blown up. It's a really weird thing that happens, but none of my other body parts hurt but that's like a testament to like our Chest gear that we had and everything else like my body hurt a little bit, but nothing like my legs did That's like one distinct thing. I kept remembering. It's like a big bro all that concussion just going against your legs Yeah, and so just it was and it was my right one Which was the side that it was on and so it was it's crazy because again everyone's like Were you knocked out people who were knocked out usually know

because it's a very long time, but I think there's a lot of those where you see it in real time in boxing where someone gets hit and they kind of go down, but they come right back to it. They were knocked out, but they hit the ground and come back up. And everyone's like, were you knocked out? I was like, honestly, I don't know.

It's just, you instantly react when you are conscious again. When you're blown up, you're just not in a good space, obviously. And one of these things ends up with a guy right next to you being killed. We'll be right back. The big take from Bloomberg News brings you What's Shaping the World's Economies with the Smartest and Best Informed informed business reporters around the world. Western nations like the U.S. and Europe.

Mexico will likely have its first female president. And then you have China. And help you understand what's happening, what it means, and why it matters. He'll get his yo-yos to Europe in time. But the longer this drags on, the more worried he's getting. They knew that they needed to do this as fast as they possibly could to get a drug on the market as fast as they could. I'm David Duret. I'm Sarah Holder.

I'm Saleh Amosin. We cover the stories behind what's moving money in markets. Basically everyone was expecting, if not a calamity, certainly a recession. But the problem is that that paperwork, as our reporting showed, is fake. As someone who's covering the market, I'm often very worried about an imminent collapse. I'm thinking about it quite often. Listen to the big take on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every family has skeletons in their closet.

Mine certainly does. Ones that go back a hundred years and reach thousands of miles back to our hometown in Sicily. Ever since I can remember, my relatives told the story of my great-great-grandmother who was killed by the mafia. I'm Joe Piazza and in my new podcast, I'm taking on a generational vendetta, visiting the scene of the crime, confronting mafia experts, tracking down Italian officials, and even consulting mediums to set the record straight on my great-great-grandmother's mysterious disappearance. And in between the fact-finding missions, I'll be drinking a lot of wine and eating all of the pasta. Come to Italy with me to solve

this hundred-year-old murder mystery. Listen to The Sicilian Inheritance on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Solea Mosin, and I've covered economic policy for years and reported on how it impacts people across the United States. In 2016, I saw how voters were leaning towards Trump and how so many Americans felt misunderstood by Washington. So I started The Big Take DC. We dig into how money, politics, and power shape government and the consequences for

voters. It's an election year, so there's a lot of focus on the voters that TikTok is reaching. The initial reaction is like, oh, things are looking so resilient. I don't want to be too pessimistic, but I just don't see the political will down in Washington right now to change their tune. I think the American electorate has been signaling that it expects a rematch of the 2020 election. These are unprecedented times. With new episodes every Thursday, you can listen to The Big Take DC on the iHeartRadio

app, Apple podcasts, or whatever you get your podcasts. November I was blown up the first time and talk about these are the old Humvees where the gunner sits, the metal only comes up to about like, you know, belly button high and you're sitting in there. This is a time where Army had like automated 50 cal. Like you could be sitting inside the Humvee and have like almost like a video game 50 cal. So you're not exposed. The Marine Corps with the hand-me-downs, we still had like the metal in no way. So your legionary just popped out of there. You're literally on top, your torso is above the- Yeah, whole thing is visible. And so

anytime we come up to something we think is an IED, we coordinate it off. So we're on this like ginormous highway, three lanes this way, three lanes this way with like medium in the middle. And so we see it as we're driving up first vehicle, we drive up, we're like, Hey, IED in the road and we go off to left, go through the dirt, go get a better view of it. And I still have video footage of me like filming it just to make sure like, and like the 32X zoom on my little JVC camera that I had with 20 gigabytes of data in there or hard drive and I'd zoom in and I was like,

okay, that looks too fake. So typically if it was a very fake, it meant like someone was checking out how we operate, like how do we set up, like how's this unit specifically set up? Usually for a future attack. So like testing it out. So honestly, I didn't think, I didn't have a high sense of like something bad's going to happen. I was like, okay, this is them testing what we're doing. And so I go cordon off on the left side. So I'm facing now traffic and this is a very trafficked road of just trucks and trucks and they hate obviously

being backed up. And so now we have a Humvee, I'm facing the traffic that's coming at me. The Humvee on the other side is just still pointed away in case someone wants to come across, but they're protecting anybody from coming that way. Then the other two Humvees cordon the other side of the road. So I'll make sure nobody comes. We have this little area secured and that's when we call EOD to come in with a little like, we have a robot too, a very small one that we can first drive up to it to test out, see how fake this thing is.

And if we have any thought that it's real, we have to call it EOD. We usually do it anyways, just call them. So while we were waiting for them to come out, and I'm like videoing this thing, and I even like get out of my truck, because we're far enough away from it, but I get out of my, I had to pee. Most people were like, where do you go bathroom? Like we just pee on the tire. And so I get out and for some reason, and I typically never did this, I was like,

I'm going to make myself a hard target. And I'm like peeing, but I'm swaying. Just like, cause the idea is if there's a sniper, why are they going to take the shot on the guy who's swaying back and forth kind of thing, just be a hard target. And then there was a time too, where I got my camera and I was getting back in the truck and I was like, Oh, I'm going to get back in the truck just in case the sniper's out there. And I closed my door in the truck and I was like, oh, I'm gonna get back in the truck Just case the snipers out there and I closed my door Set it down now

There's a tattoo on my arm that you could see That has like angel wings and across and it was only at the time It was these angel wings and across with no and there was a little thing here But no name in here and so my gunner at the time Luke Epson before we even went to war I got this tattoo right before we left. He's like, why do you have that sash open with no name on it? I was like, I don't know, I designed this tattoo and I wasn't sure, like I'm probably gonna honor one of my family members who dies or something like that, someone close to me, but I just, I love the design of this and just

wanted to show my faith and everything. And he's like, would you put me on my arm if I die? I was like, no, you're a boot. So it was like that big brother, little brother thing where I always gave him crap. And he ended up being my gunner throughout the time that we were there. Built an awesome relationship. He was a, back home, his dad's a deacon now, but they were largely Catholic Christian faith. And he kind of lost his faith before that. But I used to listen to, even though you weren't supposed to listen to music, I'd have Christian music and country music always playing.

And so one cool thing before he passed, he said that he was like, he's like, I'm actually glad you're playing that because it brings me back to my roots and back home and all that stuff. And I feel like I found faith again kind of thing. And so, but go back to that time where we're sitting there and I shut the door and then some cars start creeping up. So every, this is the problem with the military and the media, the whole thing.

Starting in Vietnam, it was good that people went over there to, for one, unjust things. The military, they're like, hey, stop this, we're watching. But then it got so oversaturated, and like you said, it not only desensitizes people, it puts rules into place that probably shouldn't be there when you have your best intentions. So the actual

rules like the ROE's or whatever you call it, Rules of Engagement, for if a vehicle starts approaching, the first step he has these little flags, he waves the flags. So if the vehicle keeps coming, he's supposed to now pop a flare because we had little flares in there. If the vehicle keeps coming, he's supposed to shoot in the air. If the vehicle keeps coming, he's supposed to shoot in the air. If the vehicle keeps coming, he's supposed to shoot at the ground in front of them. If the vehicle keeps coming, he's supposed to shoot into like the top left windshield. And then if they keep coming, try the engine block. And then finally they keep coming, you shoot them.

You're supposed to do all that in about four seconds. Yeah. And that's the issue with it, but it was because if someone died and the media just portrayed it as like, oh, this innocent person was killed, it was like, well, they were going, we had to react to it because they were coming at us. And sometimes it was a mistake, but the

other times it wasn't. So he keeps, and all I see is his feet next to me, because legitimately, imagine like you're in a truck with like the center council, imagine someone just putting their feet right there next to you. And like every time you try to put your elbow up, you hit his leg and you're like, Oh, hey, cause they're just sitting there in that little swing they're sitting in.

And so I could see based off of where his feet are, how high or how low he's in the gun. If he like sits all the way back, he has to actually like duck into the vehicle to not be seen by people. And so I was like, Luke, you might as well get down while we're here. Cause just in case snipers, like I still didn't think there was a big threat, but I was like, just in case. And so I see his feet like scoop, scoot a little further into the truck. But then I see his feet go backwards.

I'm like, Luke, I was like, you want to end up on my arm, don't you? He's like, it'd be an honor to be on your arm, corporal Casper. But he just kept getting back up to like, he just wanted it. He didn't want to do the escalation. He just kept on waving the flag. I was like, they're going to keep kind of pushing. It was like, there's nobody running just. And then 10 minutes later you shot and killed right beside me.

And so he fell down into that and, um, we tried to work on him. Yeah, it was a sniper. Not, not the cars, but no. So it was the whole idea to put this thing in the ground so they could stop you and get shots at you. Yep. And so that means that they had eyes on me, just knowing that I was sitting there being a hard target that time. And then even I had my door open when I was filming,

because where the shot came from as I was filming the propane tank, that had to be within view of where the sniper was. So he might have been just locked in on me for a little bit being like- So do you have guilt that he got it and you didn't? Not, I mean, I'm more of guilt because I could have actually made him get down. But again, he's a good Marine doing his job and it's not like we're both at fought for it. But if I was just like, I could have been one of those leaders who's like, no, get in and get in.

Like if I would have had hard details that there was a sniper in the area, I would have had it locked in there. And so that's where that guilt comes from. If our listeners were here, they would see that Luke is now on that tattoo. Yep. And so I went to Texas where he's from, Kingwood, and closest tattoo shop was Humble, Humble, Texas. And I got his name as close as I could to his hometown.

See that's not what getting blowed up sounds like to a desensitized public. That's personal. Did you know he's dead immediately? No. And here's the good thing that going out was he didn't even know he was shot. And so that's the one comfort I brought to his family was Because when he shot he just I just said Luke are you hit and he said I don't know and he fell into the truck So that was the only comfort I could bring to his family that he didn't know and that's a comfort that brings to me too, they didn't suffer suffer and so When they pulled him out, I still had the bullet because it went When they pulled him out, I still had the bullet because it went through his armpit and through both of his lungs and embedded into his arm.

I had it in my pocket for a while because we had to put it in a little plastic bag for investigation. I had the bullet that took his life. He got on the chopper. We didn't know he was dead still because they were working on him. They had two corpsmen on him at the time. Another Army unit heard that someone was shot and they came. Two people working on him. They got him on the chopper. We went off to try to find the dude,

couldn't find anybody and then they called us back to base and that's when they told us that he passed away. What happens when you hear that? Oh my gosh, it's just for a split second, everyone just breaks down, but then you realize that there's no days off anymore. And we just, I just had to put someone else in the gun the next day and go out there and act like we didn't hate everybody and just go to work. So his best friend who was there too that was with him when he died, now he's in the gun where his buddy just died. And I'm going to control everyone and be like, okay, let's go on patrol tomorrow morning. It's going to sound like a horrible question, but I can't, I can't not ask it. Who cleans the truck up?

We do. We clean the truck up. We do. You're cleaning your buddy's blood out of that truck? Yeah. I didn't have to as a vehicle commander, and that's probably selfish of me, but I was just clean the vehicles. What happens when people lose limbs and stuff?

Same game? Yeah. There's actually an incident, the sugar factory for two seven, where the guys that I served with, this is a deployment I didn't go on, but when they came back from where there's an ID set off at a door that instantly killed. 10 Marines. And they had all the guys get up and they had three different black bags, one with green tape, one blue tape, one with red tape.

So if you found a body part, you put it in the red tape. Blue blue was gear and green was gun. And so you're picking up your friend's body parts. Yep. And we were written songs about that. It's, it's crazy to think that they're, this is what they're mentally holding onto that people don't see. It's like, nobody else does it.

There's no cleaning crews. There's no like investigative crew to come in and like clean swab and do all that stuff and then have a profane or a trained professional come in and sweep everything is the people who, who run it. So the kid that's sitting in that gun the next day, when you're going out, he knows that Luke died in that spot the day before. Yeah. He was with them when it happened.

How do you approach that knowing you are literally any moment from being dead. You don't, you go through it and this is the one, this is the greatest part of the military and the worst part of the military at the same time is they train you how to not be vulnerable and to like lose all emotion kind of thing while you're going through the process of war, but they don't give it back to you when you're done.

So when I was over there, the only thing that saved us on a lot of trips was because this immediate reaction to requests. We were driving one night and so we don't have, we don't run headlights at night. So we have night vision goggles, which don't work very well. You only see like maybe 20 feet in front of you. You have these little bitty IR lights on the front of your Humvee and my driver's driving, I'm sitting there in the passenger seat, just like trying to stay awake, like looking at the road and instantly, and this is crazy too because you just go

up, you just make loops, but all of a sudden right there in the middle of the road was a bomb and I just yell, left as loud as I can and the driver just goes left. And then he's like, what? He didn't see it. I was like, there was an IED, But it was that instant obedience to order that saved our life right there because that was like homemade C4, like Russian style C4 packed into this little, what do they call, speed bumps? Because it's like a metal with a little bitty loop, like speed bumps.

And they put what they, sorry audience, they call them anal beads. They're these little bitty, like, what do you call it? Saw blades that are just separated by two little pieces of cardboard, and then they wrap them up. So the moment that if you drive over them, the two metal pieces connect and it completes a circuit. So they usually, when they put this speed bump on the road,

they throw them out this way. So even if you swerve, you hit those, it still blows up, not directly under. For some reason, when they put this one on, they put them out this way. So even if you swerve, you hit those, it still blows up, not directly under. For some reason, when they put this one on, they put them over the top of it. And so luckily we swerve left. But it's that like, when they strip away the Marine Corps, that vulnerability and teach you like just to go and go and go and not think about it, that's why we succeed when we do go to war, but that's also why we're killing ourselves when we

come home from war, because they don't then say, well, here's how to remap back to the normal. Maybe because they don't know how to remap. Yeah. Okay. So that's the reality of driving a Humvee around Iraq and Afghanistan and fighting in these wars. And remember, we're still talking about 21, 22, 23, 24 year old kids. And your brain's getting rattled, your body's getting beat up.

And I'm glad you said, talked about how head trauma works because that's the same thing in football actually. If you get slobber knocked in football, your head moves, but your brain stays still. So what's happening is your brain's bats around on the inside of your skull and getting bruised and traumatized. And it's why there's now in football, concussion protocol.

And until your concussions are over, you can't go back and play football because your brain has to recover. But you're zitting. Yeah. Military guys aren't because they go, oh yeah, your bell is rung, get back in the Humvee. If you get four explosions, your brain's irreversibly affected. They did have rules. At least even when I was there, I think rules probably have changed now for the better.

Even the rule back then was if you had a concussion, first concussion, it was like you had 24 hours off. That is about two and a half weeks short. Yeah. Then if you get your second concussion, that's when you get to do, I think, a week, and then third or two weeks. And then third concussion means you're out, like you're unfit for duty because it's too many times. You hit four. Well, the first one, yeah, they didn't say I had a concussion. There's no way if you tore cartilage in your chest that you were not concussed.

Yeah, but they didn't say it, so I was on the road with Z-Road that time. And then January, it was like January 2nd was the first time I was hit with a concussion. And I still remember this because I was sitting there thinking, it was only 16 hours off and they put me back on the normal shift because they're they're like it's close enough to 24 hours so I didn't really get any time off but I remember being like man if I get blown up right now he's gonna get a lot of trouble for putting me on here the next day so that that 24 hour went through and I didn't get blown up but the second day this is like people always say I'm lucky I'm like you don't even know why I'm so lucky the second day of that as I was supposed to be recovering and I'm on

patrol, first vehicle, we're rolling down and a ploof of smoke just comes up beside us and I didn't see, but the gunner saw, he's like, Hey, Colby Casper, I think someone just shot at us or something. I saw this ploof of smoke come up. And so I go, we're outlaw. I was like, Hey, outlaw two, can you check the, the berm over here? My, my gunner says there was a ploof of smoke. And so he looks, he's like, dude, that's a bomb.

And he's like, okay. So we cordoned it off, call EOD. It was two, one five five stacked with white phosphorus. So this is like napalm. This is, if that would have, we would have been dead, completely dead. The only thing that saved us was whoever connected it. The blasting cap was the only thing that went off because they didn't make the circuit, right? So they pushed the button when you were about it.

It just was on our truck and nothing, it was just a ploof and so that was amazing for us, but it was something that I didn't even reflect on until really later on where people are like, man, it's lucky that you didn't get more hurt. And I'm like, you know what was really lucky that time that little ploof of smoke went off. Cause I didn't, we didn't even realize, we weren't

just like in the moment in the military, you're not like, oh, I could have died. I could have done this. You're just like, oh my God, that was insane. We almost got blown up. That's how we process it. So now it's time to start working your way out of the Marines. And you're told you have a brain injury. I actually wasn't told I had a brain injury. Okay. Well, tell me how that worked. So before, this is the funny thing too. I had to extend, I don't think I've said this, I had to extend to go to war. I didn't actually meet, when they first sent me to first tank

battalion with first tows, they said I didn't make their deployment either. So I asked if I could extend in the Marine Corps just even a few months and they're like didn't make their deployment either. So I asked if I could extend in the Marine Corps, just even a few months. And they're like, yeah, you can extend. If you just want to do a month, extend a month. I was like, I did not know that, or I would have done that with two seven, but thanks for telling me now. And so I extended one month in the Marine Corps just to go to war. So that was a whole nother hurdle.

But then because I did that and they knew I was getting out the moment I touched down, I had to do my separation. They call it like moment I touched down. I had to do my separation. They call it like seps and taps. I had to do that before I even left for Iraq. So, which is stupid anyways, because you're supposed to touch down. You're supposed to have this time to like, you know, learn how to do resumes and stuff. And I did that before I even went to work because they're just trying to, you know, cut costs and be like, just do it now so we can get you over there.

So the whole time I was considered unfit for duty. So within four months of me being in Iraq, I couldn't work my normal job anymore, but I still was in Iraq. I was like, see what you- Why were you unfit for duty? Just because of the rule, three concussions, your out rule.

I got it. And so, and I didn't know that my brain injury was that bad. There was signs of it, but I didn't know the signs. I just figured they're the smart ones. So if they kept saying, we're probably gonna send you to Bala to get a CAT scan. That's where they'll find out if you have any brain damage nothing they never sent me I just kept going throughout my days like

normal they just kept never sending me so I was like okay I must be good but they'd put me on I'd be on this COC like the command center that was on Camp Felucia just as like a runner and they'd be like hey go get Corporal Johnson from Hut 202 but the moment he said 202 I forgot the corporal's name and then he'd say I'd be like hey go get corporal Johnson from Hut 202, but the moment he said 202 I forgot the corporals name, and then he'd say I beg what was that Gunny and he'd say it again I forget again. I was like what was the number and he said number and I forget the name I was like what was his name, and then he'd say that he just he'd get so pissed at me I thought I was gonna get in trouble

So I started only learning the number because then I'd run there there'd be two guys names on there But hey Gunny wants one of you up there. And then let him decide once you go up there. So I should have probably known, but I also thought I was just blowing up a bunch of times. It's going to take a minute for me to be unrattled. So for the rest of the three months goes by and I fly back to the States and I get home in Twentynine Palms, California and I start checking out of the Marine Corps. Within the first like three days of me being home from war, I'm checking out, going...

I went to medical and just said, like, hey, will you sign off on this? And they're like, do you need to be seen by us? I was like, I don't think so, because nobody ever saw me then. And so I just had them sign off and I left the Marine Corps. So I didn't know I should have been medically retired. I still haven't been. But I just left and took six months off of just trying to find out what the next step was. I knew it was college, but then after like six months is when I decided to go to the VA and that's when I ended up getting diagnosed with it.

We'll be right back. I never thought I'd take my three young kids to Sicily to solve a century-old mystery, but that's what I'm doing in my new podcast, The Sicilian Inheritance. Join us as we travel thousands of miles on the beautiful and crazy island of Sicily, as I trace my roots back through a mystery for the ages and untangle clues within my family's origin story, which is morphed like a game of telephone through the generations. Was our family matriarch killed in a land deal gone wrong? Or was it by the Sicilian mafia? A lover's quarrel? Or was she, as my father believed, a witch? Listen to The Sicilian Inheritance on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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We cover the stories behind what's moving money in markets. Basically everyone was expecting, if not a calamity, certainly a recession. But the problem is that that paperwork, as our reporting showed, is fake. As someone who's covering the market, I'm often very worried about an imminent collapse. I'm thinking about it quite often. Listen to the big take on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When you get back, do you have survivor's guilt?

No, I didn't feel anything. It was not in a bad way. I didn't feel like numb. I didn't learn until afterwards that PTSD doesn't even kick in until like 190 days or plus out because it's like the thing, the whole reality shift. So I was just so happy to be home in like next phase of my life. What do I do? And kind of I felt pretty normal even coming home even because you reflect on it

And you feel like you're a bad person because you don't feel anything You don't you don't feel anything that your friend you feel it obviously you can't it's hard to bring up You can't talk to people But you don't feel it feel it like you think you would in that first initial stages of getting back And I think that's because excitement's outweighed everything else your excitement levels are so high that it's kind of depressing everything else So you're like I I'm back home. My mom came to see me. My girlfriend at the time came to see me like, oh, I'm going to do this.

We're going to travel across country. I'm going to eat Taco Bell. It's been like seven months since I ate Taco Bell. And you start getting so excited that I think you're suppressing them until it all just hits you at once. And that's kind of what happened. I don't know the numbers, but I think during that time, how many servicemen a day were committing suicide?

So it's the numbers now, they say it's roughly, there's roughly 20 suicides a day and that's military and veterans, mainly veterans is like 17 points something of that. The other ones are active and reservists, but that's just to say- Active. That's including active. I didn't realize yeah It's like three three number three for active or something, but that's only the VA study So there's that some called American warrior partnership out of Atlanta that did another study a deeper dive where they partnered with University You think of Alabama and they went down to the coronary report?

Because what happens is if you don't have a suicide letter, they don't count it as a suicide of a veteran. So if you get in a car accident or overdose or anything else, it's not suicide, it's an overdose. They're very black and white on that. But the coroner report went down to like, they actually went, they searched every veteran who died, they went down the path of being like, is this most likely a death? So what they found was in their study that it is minimum of 23 suicides a day in the veteran military space, but it's

most likely up to 43 because the people who didn't have notes still had all the indications that they've – and I've seen this through the work we do at Creative Vets where someone was like, hey, before this program I was going to have a rock climbing accident. I wasn't going to leave a note. I didn't want my kids to know I killed myself. I was just going to say, hey, your mom fell off a rock. And so I know that they don't leave notes all the time. And so they did this big study that shows that most likely it's anywhere

between the 23 and the 44 number a day. Currently. That's, um, between two and 2,500 service people annually. Yeah. We were safer in war than we were. I was just about safe. Six thousand people died in that 20-year war. Right.

And now we're losing. So you're losing five times as many service people at home than you did in theater. So the war continues to kill service folks. But that's the thing too, it's not even the war. Suicide as a whole is up. And a lot of that goes back like childhood suicide and all that. And so I think these later stage suicides, we're seeing a lot of non-combat people who are killing themselves. A lot of active duty people who've never seen anything that are killing themselves.

And so it's so hard to pinpoint it now where it's at. Back then it was pretty high because people didn't know how to deal with it. But now the numbers only keep growing. I think it's because a whole social Like I can I like the the when I fat iPhone came out as a part of the I was honored enough to be invited to the Prevent's task force before it was inside the the government and so If you don't know one of the things that Trump put in place was like this thing called Prevent's task force and it's supposed to be Outside of the VA government. It's supposed to be outside of the VA government. It's supposed to be a bunch of entities so that nonprofits get together and

other people and solve veteran suicide through a bunch of like, however it is, just trying to solve it. I was the only arts nonprofit at the table at the time, which I thought was awesome. I went to DC, met with all these people. It's like, this is going to be great. So we started doing this like workup and then now it's been pulled into the administration after the next administration came in they're like hey let's pull this back in to the government

and I've been excluded from it but when I was there the first time they said what we're really tackling is not veteran suicide we are gonna tackle that but we're gonna figure out why it's happening and we're gonna sprinkle that into everybody else and they showed us statistics where like the highest rate of suicide in third or highest rate of death in like Arizona somewhere from 13 to 16 year olds is suicide. It was a crazy number and they showed us the correlation between like 2008 up and suicides in every single population. So what we're ultimately trying to solve wasn't just venerable suicide, it was everybody's

suicide. So I think that's where sometimes I do want to preface preface this, not war always, but it is, there is an issue and it's a military, military is the biggest part of the issue. Even if it's 22. No, I know. You can cut that number to 1,500. 100%. No, a lot of it is from war. A lot of the vendors that we deal with is from war specifically. So, you've got a brain injury, you're trying to figure out life, and you want to go to college, and now enough time has passed that you're suffering from PTSD. Did you ever consider suicide? Oh yeah, I mean, but my faith in God was the one thing that kept me above water. If zero was killing myself and a hundred was me before war

I was at a nine when I first went well It was during college when I was in my deepest darkest place But I was like in a nine and I was hovering there But again, it was just my personal faith that I was just like I'm never gonna do this But I thought about it a lot of times, but I just was like I'm not gonna do this. That's dark. Oh, yeah It was a lot though. I mean I was hurt and I was everything. Like I didn't know. I went from again, not that it's a big deal

on the kid 22 person class, but I was prom king, I was class clown. I went and guarded the president of the United States. I went to war and now I'm a 22 year old. Like what other 22 has a life, like that kind of life experience of what I went through? And now I'm bouncing in a bar with a brain injury and I can't learn new technical skills and I have debilitating anxieties that I can't leave the

house for some reason. I didn't know why. What was anxiety about? And I didn't know for the longest time. So I went to college at first like normal. I went to study business. Business school, right? Business entrepreneurship at this community college because again, we didn't have money. So I knew I'm going to community college route, then I'll probably do a four year college with the GI Bill. So I start going and I failed my very first business class. And that was the first sign that there was a bigger issue than I knew about, because I didn't have to use my brain for six months.

It was like, I took my heart rate to surges, I just rode around, I didn't have to really fully function with my brain, it was just a normal day to day. And so now I'm in school and I sign up for this hybrid class which is online. You're in class every Monday but you do online stuff. And I could not get, there was a process where I was like, I never remembered where to go like online, even once I figured out

how to go online to get it, I didn't know where in there. And I just ended up failing that class so miserably that that's when I went to the VA hospital. I was like, I think there's something else wrong with me. And I go through the whole process and they ended up diagnosing me with tramic brain injury and back then when they didn't know how to talk about it, they're just pretty much like, oh yeah, so if in two years you don't see anything better, you're probably going to be like this for the rest of your life.

Like that was their thing. Oh great. Yeah. Thanks. I have a timer, two years and we're good. And so, but they're like, hey, you're probably not gonna learn new technical skills, your left brain's injured. So your short-term memory is like jacked up, you're all this stuff, my speech at the time,

I did a lot of um, my Rolodex was broken in my head, I couldn't find words, and all these issues. And so now I'm thinking, like wow, I can't do a lot of, even though I look like I'm you know working out a lot very fit I still my body doesn't function that way I'm still very much injured and so I was like well I can't get like a heavily physical job even though I look like I can and then I can't learn new technical skills like I'm a piece of crap like what can I do and so even in Illinois they make you do speech classes and this is when I found out I had anxieties really bad.

I'm supposed to do speeches in front of these 18, 19 year old kids. No, they don't have any kind of, you know, life and like they haven't done anything. They were in high school four months earlier. Pretty much high school. This is their first writing class, speech class. And I'm back here, this veteran, served four years, got the president. And all we have to do is write a little report and then go up in front of class and read that report. Seems easy, right?

Well, I got debilitating anxiety to the point where I had to do one-on-one speeches with my speech teacher. I had to go tell her that I had, like, there's a kid who had autism, like, on, like, on a, like, I don't want to be around people style that still would get up in front of class and do something. And then there was me, who, when you look at me, every part of me should have been able to go up there,

but I couldn't, and I couldn't get over that. And that's part of the reason why, like, even contemplate suicide, because I was like, what am I gonna do? Like, if I keep, like, if I'm broken physically and I'm broken mentally, just what is there in the world for me? And so-

And who's gonna wanna be around me? Yeah, and so I just- Did that cause anxiety? It was an anticipation anxiety. I didn't even know what it was. It was the idea that I was gonna be in front of class speaking in front of people, and I think it ultimately comes back from being blown up

by not knowing who was blowing me up. And so I'd be just driving every day like normal, then boom, and then I was just sitting in my truck with my gunner, it was boom, killed. And so I think it was anticipation anxiety that I was in the front of the class, or if I was the first in my truck with my gunner and it was boom, killed. And so I think it was anticipation anxiety that if I was in the front of the class or if I was the first person walking in or something, like something could happen to me.

So I never knew what it was though and that's where a lot of suicide comes from is because we never ask why, why am I getting anxiety? I never even thought about that. What about just driving around? Did you drive around and have flashbacks? And so it's not flashbacks. Would you drive past a thing on the sidewalk and freak?

So I didn't know that was happening, but it was happening. So you're subconscious. You don't even know. So yours, and this is the important thing that I get to tell veterans is like your subconscious, like so they talk, there's this really cool article that described it the best and they broke it down Barney style. So they said- Barney style. Yeah. They broke it down Barney style. They said- Did they sing it? You had your forefront.

With a little purple. Very simple. Very simple. Your forefront of your brain and the back end of your brain. And one's like your, how did they say it? I think it was just like forefront and back end of your brain. And so your forefront of your brain is like what we're doing right now, we're talking, we're doing all this stuff.

But if anything happens, someone came in here, a shooter came in, we'd all go into our fight or flight brain, which is actually separate. It has no emotion It doesn't attach motion It's just if you're trained well enough you go and fight if you don't you come back And so in that brain is where like if you killed someone Overseas in a fight firefight and then you come back out of it and you're like I didn't I Didn't care that I killed that person in the moment like I didn't feel anything So you your brain starts talking to each other little brain big brain starts me like big brains like why didn't care that I killed that person in the moment. Like I didn't feel anything. So your brain starts talking to each other.

The little brain and big brain starts to be like, big brain's like, why didn't you feel compassion? Why'd you kill that person and not feel anything? Then your warrior brain's just like, I don't know. Like I don't know why I did. So you're having this internal discussion. Our subconscious, like our subconscious picks up on everything.

That's why we have anxiety before we think of like, why am I about to get anxiety? So that was the anxiety is. So the subconscious was telling me when I was driving to school, that I was gonna be blown up. But the forefront of my brain is just like, do do do do do, I'm going to school.

So my body's reacting to my subconscious and my mind's reacting to like what I'm doing that day. Which is so interesting. That's how you don't understand it, but you can't get your body to do what you want it to do. Yeah. That's what leads to suicide is that whole why. Why is this happening and never trying to discover it? And that's where my next choice in life is what saved my life and saved a lot of other vendors' life since then was I decided to do art. I decided to...

So, okay. So hold it. Yeah. So, So, okay, so hold it. Yeah. So, first of all, that is so freaking. Gosh, I don't want to say it's interesting because it's horrific, but it is interesting. It's horrifically interesting, I guess, that so many of our young men and women who served us come back to the United States with that very thing going on in their brains. And somehow they're trying to at the same time fighting all these internal struggles, they're trying to reenter a normal civilized society. And they're having a hard time finding their place in it. And who do they talk to? Because unless they're sitting there with a buddy who's been through it, nobody can really, I can hear you. And I, for God's sakes, I empathize with that. But there's no way you

can tell that story to someone who doesn't experience it and think that we actually get it. So now you're also isolated. So you got anxiety, you've got things going on, you've got suicidal tendencies, you have to feel isolated. And you can understand why people would say, I'm hanging it up. Yeah. And I, it was so bad. I got anxiety about getting anxiety one time. And I still remember it because I'd make this same sandwich.

I legitimately wouldn't leave my house unless there was absolute need. I ran out of all food supplies. I was trying to get job interviews. It's still like in that moment where you're like, you knew you had some issues, but you had to be successful, try to as hard as you could. So I was going to go to a job interview and I was making a sandwich for the day, just like bologna and cheese sandwich. I probably threw ketchup on there because I was that type person. I like ketchup. That's disgusting. I know right. Ketchup on baloney is nasty dude. That was my jam. I will not feel bad for, I will empathize with everything you've said except for that disgusting tidbit of information. So I'll be eating this

awesome sandwich. There's nothing awesome about Bologna and ketchup. About before I was going to this job interview, which I was getting anxieties because of the job interview, right? But I was eating this sandwich when I was getting anxiety. You sure it wasn't about the impending diarrhea you were going to have from the Bologna barbecue? I was well-trained. This was at least my thousandth sandwich. So the next day when I had nothing to do besides probably game with my buddies Was make a sandwich. I started making the sandwich and my anxiety came why again because my body remembered

You know the body keeps the score my body remembered getting anxiety the previous day making the sandwich I was getting anxiety because I was getting anxiety It was like and that's where I think people get caught up. That's enough to make you literally crazy. Because they think like what, and so that's honestly where I was like, something really has to change. And that's again, when I went to, I was still in college, even though I was failing my classes, and I was sitting there taking, again, optimism goes a very long way. And I was sitting looking back saying, okay, I guarded the president of the United States and had a really high clearance.

So now that I am going to college, what I did learn in the separation program was you don't really need the degree you're going for unless it's very specific. Like obviously if you're going to be doctoring, you need a degree. But if you wanted to even go law enforcement, you didn't actually need like a law enforcement degree. If you wanted to be executive director of a nonprofit, you don't have to a non-profit management school. You just need a degree because it shows people that you're willing to go. Get something and you can commit and finish. And so I was thinking, okay, I have the background, which is what most people don't have, like top security clearance, experience guarding the president. Now I just need a degree and

I could be a FBI agent, CIA agent, one of the three letter agencies and just be, and I thought that might bring me normalcy again, as being in a place where maybe combat, something like that. And so I was like, but what can I do to get a degree now that I have a brain injury and I can't really do so? And I have anxiety, so where can I go be with people who I don't wanna talk to, they don't wanna talk to me? Maybe I'll be an artist.

I was like, that'll be cool. Are you kidding me? I was like, I'll sign up for some art classes, so I don't have to talk to these kids who don't wanna talk to me. I don't have to talk to these kids who don't want to talk to me. I don't have to like worry about that. Dude, a six foot five veteran rolling in with a bunch of 18 year olds. And I had a Harley.

I had a Harley, more cutoffs than I did shirts with sleeves on. And I was like 30 pounds heavier in this working out all the time. That well, but the artist crowd can be a little eclectic and all that. So but I just got to believe one thing did not look like. No. When people see me walk in this room, just like, what is that? Yeah. But but it was good because again, they didn't want to really talk to me. I didn't want to talk to them. There's no like I didn't have to use my brain that much.

So I thought, you know, I was like, OK, I'll just paint some things, eat some crayons like Marines do. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh.

Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh.

Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh.

Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh. Jo Piazza Every family has skeletons in their closet. Mine certainly does. Ones that go back a hundred years and reach thousands of miles back to our hometown in Sicily. Ever since I can remember, my relatives told the story of my great-great-grandmother who was killed by the mafia. I'm Jo Piazza, and in my new podcast, I'm taking on a generational vendetta, visiting

the scene of the crime, confronting mafia experts, tracking down Italian officials, and even consulting mediums to set the record straight on my great-great-grandmother's mysterious disappearance. And in between the fact-finding missions, I'll be drinking a lot of wine and eating all of the pasta. Come to Italy with me to solve this 100-year-old murder mystery. Listen to the Sicilian Inheritance on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Salaya Mosin, and I've covered economic policy for years and reported on how it impacts people across the United States.

In 2016, I saw how voters were leaning towards Trump and how so many Americans felt misunderstood by Washington. So I started The Big Take DC. We dig into how money, politics, and power shape government and the consequences for voters. It's an election year, so there's a lot of focus on the voters that TikTok is reaching. The initial reaction is like, oh, things are looking so resilient. I don't want to be too pessimistic, but I just don't see the political will down

in Washington right now to change their tune. I think the American electorate has been signaling that it expects a rematch of the 2020 election. These are unprecedented times. With new episodes every Thursday, you can listen to The Big Take DC on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or whatever you get your podcasts. The Big Take from Bloomberg News brings you what's shaping the world's economies with the smartest and best informed business reporters around the world. Western nations like the U.S. and Europe.

Mexico will likely have its first female president. And then you have China. And help you understand what's happening, what it means, and why it matters. He'll get his yo-yos to Europe in time. But the longer this drags on, the more worried he's getting. They knew that they needed to do this as fast as they possibly could to get a drug on the market as fast as they could. I'm David Guret.

I'm Sarah Holder. I'm Saleh Emosen. We cover the stories behind what's moving money in markets. Basically, everyone was expecting, if not a calamity, certainly a recession. But the problem is that that paperwork, as our reporting showed, is fake. Someone who's covering the market, I'm often very worried about an imminent collapse. I'm thinking about it quite often.

Listen to the big take on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So the only one that knew I had disabilities was the teacher because I had to report like hey if I get anxiety and want to leave the room or not show up to class it's probably because something's happened, a PTSD flare up kind of thing. And so I'm learning drawing and painting and it's going well. I go to my gunner's grave every single year. I go to Houston to visit his family.

I didn't know his family before he was killed. Honestly, I was afraid to call his family. It's back when they still had some, you know, you flip through the books and find some people and calling them up and just, you know, I left a voice message saying, hey, you don't know me, but I serve with your son and I'm coming to his grave on the day they died.

And so just want to know I was being in town and they called me and they said, you need to stop by your house if you're coming. So I went there and I have, I've never not gone. I haven't missed a year going to his grave in December. Spent, I stayed at his family's house, spent time with him. Um, do you have a lump in your throat walking up to this kid's family? Oh my God.

The first few times, the first, the very first time, because I was legit, I was in charge of him when he died. So I could have got a slap in the face. They could have been wanting me to come there for retribution or it was gonna be something different. And I'm so glad they are who they are because I remember getting out of that truck and my uncle- You'd be shaking.

I would be so freaking nervous. I was. Talk about anxiety. That was the most nervousness I've ever had. I had one phone conversation with them just saying I was coming to town. They said, we're having a wake, like a celebration of life for Luke, so please, we're going to be at our neighbor's house across the street. Just come over when you arrive.

And pulled in and she was like, are you rich? I was like, yeah. She gave me like the biggest mom hug ever. And at that moment, I knew everything was going to be all right. alright And so did they want to know everything? No, they didn't like they they kind of what she did specifically only because there She heard it was a few years after that like the first year. I just wanted to be like I served with him Nope, nothing else Second year I came third year came and I think it was the third year where

I just had to tell her, that was the lump of the throat. I need to tell her that her son didn't suffer. Like, I don't know how much detail I get in, but I need her to know that he didn't suffer. Like, that was the main thing. And then come to find out that, you know, the other Marines that served with him, he was engaged at the time, they decided when they came home

to tell his fiance that like, he said your name when he died, like try to bring her comfort by... Which is all crap. But that got back to the mom. And so imagine you're the mother of him thinking that another lady was like coming out of his mouth when he died, not his own mom. And so it's like this idea that like, so I'd never wanted her to feel that, so I had to tell her. So I ended up telling her the whole thing,

and she's like, I knew it. I knew that if it was any woman's name coming out of her mouth at the end, it was gonna be his mom's name. And so that was the thing that I just felt so good that I got that off my chest, because now she knows that he just didn't know. Once again, these are not conversations that people are supposed to have telling parents

about how their children died. No. And reliving it. All right, so you're an art class. So I'm an art class. I have this photo of me in his grave that my uncle took when I was sitting there and I just loved it. It was like my hand on his grave.

It was the tattoo with his name on it and it was me just kneeling there. And so in this class, you're not supposed to do, you don't need to do conceptual things or just you could copy photos, you could do whatever kind of you want, you're just learning at this point. It was like, I think by that time, it was drawing two or painting two. And I'm doing chalk pastel,

and I have this photo of me in my Gunner's grave that I'm just doing by myself in the corner, again, don't want anybody to see. And I'm coloring in everything skin tone, this way it's supposed to be, the cami shorts, the black shirt, his headstone. Everything is an exact replica of the portrait or the photo that I have next to it.

And my teacher comes up behind me and he said, hey, I know you're probably gonna do the background green because it's grass, I see it here, but I just wanna challenge you to do, paint it a color that wouldn't, grass would never be, like it'd never be this color. Because if you do something like that, you gotta imagine that your art's gonna live

where you're not. So if it's sitting up in a room somewhere and you're not there to explain it, if you want that person viewing it to know that you're a part of this piece, you need to have a conversation with them. So, and I didn't understand any of that, and I still barely understand it.

I'm like, that sounds stupid. Like, I don't wanna mess up this drawing because it's really good. It's like the best I've done yet. It was my first time doing Chalk Pastel. Every part of me was saying don't do it because I'm going to ruin this piece. And I ended up getting the red and just I did everything red behind it. Just some good marine follow rules, did everything red, not knowing why. And then it comes to critique time.

And I was so art dumb. I didn't know what critiques were really. I put up my piece, the other kids put up their piece and then he's like, Richard, do you want to talk about your piece? I was like, no, thank you very much. I'm not going to talk about it. Richard, do you want to talk about anything? Nope. That's why this is my piece. That's why I'm here. I'm here not to speak. Yeah. And then they say, students who had no idea about my life, like, what do you think about Richard's piece? What do you think he's saying? And then each one, one by one is like,

I think you put Red in there because you're so angry, your buddy died. And I didn't put his name on there or anything. I actually put on the thing, John 15, 13, which is, No Greater Love Has a Man Than to Lay down his life for a friend. And so I didn't put any names on there, like it was someone I just put that piece up there. They said, another person said, I think you put red in there because you love this person. And another person said- Oh, that representing love. Which- I'm sitting here being gory as thing, thinking it represents blood. But that was the third person. The third student said, I think you put Red in there because you saw his blood.

You were with this person when he died. And I'm sitting here thinking, holy crap, these 18-nitro kids, they know nothing about me. I felt like I was connected to for a split second. I felt like they were a battle buddy because I didn't say anything and they heard everything. And so now I found a way to talk about my issues without actually talking about them, which is my biggest issue. And you were speaking through your art.

And I was speaking through my art. So I was like, what is this voodoo witchcraft that just happened? Like, how did you know? And I talked to my teacher more about it. He's like, that's what conceptual modern art is supposed to be. You're supposed to be able to hide symbols,

use color that evoke emotion, that has different meaning, and tell a story without actually telling a story. And that's what really good artists accomplish by doing it. They don't tape bananas to walls. They do other things that really evoke emotion. Because there's a whole thing, never go too hard. You don't go all the way to that side of it.

You have to stick in this middle ground where everyone can understand it. And that's where I was going. I was like, imagine I used one color to tell that story. Imagine if I understood every color and every pattern and everything, like what stories could I tell and get off my chest? And so I just dove deep into this idea of like art and how I tell my story. And I started everything from that point on, I was taking creative writing classes. I was doing every kind of art form to really try to dive into it.

So here I am this community college, cause I have no money and it's like, GI bills paying for it. Okay. But then someone from the school of the art Institute of Chicago, not the art institutes, like the global chain, like the school of the art Institute of Chicago where Georgia O'Keeffe went, Walt Disney went there. I was about to say it's Disney, right? Yeah.

Walt Disney went there. Hugh Hefner, if you're that type of fan, he went there too. So a lot of- He's dabbing for better or worse, he's an artist. A lot of big alumni went there. And so they were like, this is like the Harvard of art schools, art institutions. And they came down and talked about what their school was.

And I was like, oh, this is in my backyard. I was like, I'm gonna apply there. And I tell my teacher that and he's like, whoa. He's like- This is Harvard. He's like, you either just have a lot of money and you can get in there probably, or you study art your whole life. Like it's those two demographics that typically get even in Harvard.

Like you have a lot of money, know people or you're super, super, super smart. And so he's like, so I just don't want to break your heart. Like I wouldn't go up there. So me, optimist, I was like, that's the only school I'm gonna apply for after this. So I applied for the school. I go up there with my portfolio review, which every other student up there has 30 pieces of art. Like that was like the maximum, it was like 16 to 30.

I pull up with like 12 and eight of them are still lives. Like where you just take a piece of fruit and color it in. Like that was, cause I didn't have any concept material cause I just discovered art. So I go up there with my portfolio review on review day and they give it like a, they have grading and that one was fully just being graded on crap, like draftsmanship.

And so like he's good enough to at least apply for the program based off of his skillset. And so then it was the whole like interview, go up there with my portfolio again to talk to administrators. This is almost shades of being special in the Marines. No, seriously. No, it was the same kind of process. And so I go up there and I don't remember what her name, but I remember as a female I was talking to her in the administration office and I was showing her and she was looking

at my pitiful placement of all the things. And I was like, Linda, Linda, Linda, listen. No. all the things and I was like, Linda, Linda, Linda, listen. No, I was just like. She was like, you are obviously good at drawing, painting, all this stuff, but what we really are heavy on are the next big artists, concept, ideas, modern art, all this stuff, which this is just lacking. You have two pieces that really touch on that. And I had to be like, listen, I am either, I was just discovered art for the first time

ever and it's completely changed the state of my life, but here's what I want to create with your school. I want you to know what it feels like to be blown up, but without being blown up. I want you to know what loss of innocence and war looks like when you have to save a life, take a life, be blown up. I was like, and I only think I could do that through your school. I was like, I could show people what this is. And so she called in someone else, and that guy came in and listened to my spiel again,

and they're like, okay, let's give them a shot. And they let me into that school. The issue was I had the old Montgomery GI bill, which doesn't pay for private tuition. And so I knew at that moment, it was another crossroad. Like, God put so many different crossroads in my life where I just kept taking that hard path because it was, okay, the state of Illinois actually has this veteran grant and the GI Bill paid me. So I was actually getting paid to go to school because I was double dipping and that's what most people do. It wasn't illegal, but I was doing it, both of them. But

knowing that I was going to go to the school meant I forfeited both those. The Illinois grant didn't cover and the GI Bill didn't cover. So I knew at that moment, and I was in a relationship for five years. And so I knew that if I moved to Chicago and went to the school, that that would be off and that I would go in extreme debt. But I knew that it's kind of like you put the mask on yourself before you help someone else. There was no way I could help anybody in my life without helping myself first. So I was like, I'm going to go.

And I went there and that happened. I went extreme into debt. And then even my mom who didn't have much money pulled money like 9,000 or 401k just to support the stuff that I couldn't support outside of the government grants that I got. She's just a saint for doing that because she didn't have any money. She pulled it out of her house. And so I got in that school and I just pushed at it and it was just, it was one of the hardest times of my life, but I knew it was

something I had to do. How long? So I was there for two and a half years. Is that what you're saying? Like how long did I sit? Yeah, two and a half years. And that was truly, you imagine when I said, like, I went to an art school, like everything

you imagine, like the skinny jeans, skinny cigarettes, blue hair, like that's the school. I had actually, it was like reverse William. I was like in an elevator and someone was like, why are you here? Like they were picking on me for being there. And I was like, I'm just trying to make art like you. Did you say, hey blue hair, I'm bigger than you?

No, I was just like. Stay to your side of the elevator, don't speak to me. I'm just here to do art, just like you are. Because I was still very recluse and just didn't want to speak to people and do stuff because I still had such bad anxiety. But being there completely changed me. It's what I call the warrior brain to arts brain transition, where I learned to tap into my subconscious.

Like what you mentioned earlier, driving to school, did I feel like I was blown up? No, none of us do. But when I found out as an artist that that's why I had anxiety, so I'd do art around it. I could take photos of everything I saw on the way to school and put it up on the board, and now you knew as a civilian what I saw when I came into class, just a bunch of bombs. At some point you did ceramics.

That was at the school, I didn't know what ceramics were. Again, I was so art dumb. I did, you drank coffee out of it. That's what I said, my roommate was like, I'm in the ceramics department, I was like, what are you? You just pound plates and glasses, cups together? What do you do? He's like, no, it's clay. I was like, oh, that's what happens?

You get clay and you get to play with it? Because even my high school didn't have clay. And no doubt your parents weren't buying play dough. Yeah. And so he was like, it's all free, so you can come down here with me when I'm in this class. So my first semester, I had my drawing, collage, all these classes, and I go down there with him, and I start just playing with clay, and it brought me back to childhood where everything you made looked like something different. And so you just kept building, destroying, building, destroying.

And I was like, for three hours, I didn't think about war. That's weird, because I always think about war or something. And I felt good. Again, what is this voodoo witchcraft? Like, what just happened to me? And so that's all I signed up for. I didn't know what I was gonna create. I wasn't good at it.

I just said that was the cool thing about that school was no matter what you went in on, you could do whatever you wanted. You can come in on painting and end up being a performance artist. And they're still dealing with anxiety and PTSD and all of it. And so that now was my safe zone.

That was like that physical therapy, though, like just being able to mend and mold and not think about anything. So everything else, I put as many ceramics classes as I could on there. So that's what I made. Were you talking about being blown up with ceramics? Not at first. It was just like, you know what's crazy too is you dive in your soap. The reason we do the things we do in our daily life is because of everything in our path, but most of it is so subconscious we don't even know it. A perfect example of this is in my studio, I have all these pieces I'm building. I start

from scratch. I'll create something, I'll coil it up and build what I see and create some sort of military, something about me I'll find it while I'm building and this one time I had this piece and it had like four little loops I started I built this thing real big and I put it up on this table and My instructor comes in and I have this like coffee cup at my hand that I go I turn I set it I set it on the the my art piece and he's like, why'd you do that? And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, why'd you do that? And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, why'd you set that coffee cup up there?

Is that a table? He's like, no, that's my art piece that I'm making. He's like, yeah, but is it a table? I was like, no, it's one of my art pieces. He's like, then why'd you set your coffee cup up there? He's like, your body's gonna react before your mind does. He's like, your body and your mind are telling you this. And I looked at it and I was like,

holy crap, this is like a legit pedestal coffee table. I was just creating designs and building it up, but it was legitimately something to put other art pieces on. And there was that moment where I was like, we do this in our daily lives. Anxiety and everything else is that way. If, how I explain, and I always say like,

find your why, whether it's a fake why or not, because imagine we're in a room of 100 people and I come up to you and I'm like, hey, this person is gonna, or I'm like, hey, one of these people is gonna try to kill you. That's anxiety. That's when you're like, no matter how well you're trained, you're gonna process like 100 different people,

what am I gonna do, where are the exits, how do I do this? Like that's your body. But if I gave you the same scenario and I said, that person in the back of the room is the one that's your body. But if I gave you the same scenario and I said, that person in the back of the room is the one that's going to try to kill you. You have a whole different reaction. You're like, oh, that person, the door's over here. You start, you're more calm in that process

because you know what's going to be doing that. So when I was driving to school, it was the chaotic why. It was like, why is my body reacting to this? I didn't see anything. I was just, why am I getting sick? Why am I doing this stuff? I became an artist. It was all sudden I identified it. Once I identified it, I did photos, a photo art piece around it, which then got rid of it.

So because I knew the why, I was able to attack the why. It's interesting to say that your body and your subconscious speaks to you before your brain does. That's the big brain, little brain thing. I have a business version of that. But it translates to everybody metaphorically, which is, have you ever had something bad happen? And your immediate first reaction is, I knew I shouldn't have done that. Yeah. Well, that is a reminder that when you made the decision that worked out poorly, your subconscious was telling you not to do it.

Yep. But your ego overrode your psyche's ability to tell you not to do it, but you did it anyway, which is why when something goes bad and you think to yourself it but you did it anyway which is why when something goes bad and you think to yourself I knew I should have done that your ego was a overriding your subconscious. Yep and you probably never actually heard yourself say it. You never heard yourself say it but you just remember mmm you know and when you when you say that I mean that makes a really lot of sense. The difference is, I'm talking about making a decision about selling a load of lumber for a price versus another price.

You're talking about the decision about 22-year-olds that have come home with horrific experiences, wondering or not if they should try to continue on with life or not. Yeah. We'll be right back. I'm Salaya Mohsin, and I've covered economic policy for years and reported on how it impacts people across the United States. In 2016, I saw how voters were leaning towards Trump and how so many Americans felt misunderstood by Washington. So I started The Big Take DC.

We dig into how money, politics, and power shape government and the consequences for voters. It's an election year, so there's a lot of focus on the voters that TikTok is reaching. The initial reaction is like, oh, things are looking so resilient. I don't want to be too pessimistic, but I just don't see the political will down in Washington right now to change their tune. I think the American electorate has been signaling that it expects a rematch of the 2020 election.

These are unprecedented times. With new episodes every Thursday, you can listen to The Big Take DC on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Big Take from Bloomberg News brings you what's shaping the world's economies with the smartest and best informed business reporters around the world. Western nations like the US.S. and Europe. Mexico will likely have its first female president. And then you have China.

And help you understand what's happening, what it means, and why it matters. He'll get his yo-yos to Europe in time. But the longer this drags on, the more worried he's getting. They knew that they needed to do this as fast as they possibly could to get a drug on the market as fast as they could. I'm David Duret. I'm Sarah Holder. I'm Saleh Emosin. We cover the stories behind what's moving money in markets. Basically everyone was expecting, if not a calamity, certainly a recession. But the problem is that that paperwork, as our reporting showed, is fake. As someone who's covering the market, I'm often very worried about an imminent collapse.

I'm thinking about it quite often. Listen to the big take on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every family has skeletons in their closet. Mine certainly does. Ones that go back 100 years and reach thousands of miles back to our hometown in Sicily. Ever since I can remember, my relatives told the story of my great-great-grandmother who was killed by the mafia. I'm Jo Piazza, and in my new podcast, I'm taking on a generational

vendetta, visiting the scene of the crime, confronting mafia experts, tracking down Italian officials, and even consulting mediums to set the record straight on my great-great-grandmother's mysterious disappearance. And in between the fact-finding missions, I'll be drinking a lot of wine and eating all of the pasta. Come to Italy with me to solve this 100-year-old murder mystery. Listen to The Sicilian Inheritance on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, you transition out of art and you're graduating and I've read you said, I'm 85% which means you're recovering and art's helping you recover. And then you think, well if it helps me.

Yeah, so when I talked about that nine, being a nine, and to me it's like, after our school and learning how to tell my story, and I did four years of being able to do that through music, I started teaching myself guitar because I was like, well if I want to, if I could write down my buddy's story, why can't I just give it to you and walk away so that now you can hear his story, I don't have to cry in front of you, you can just hear it that he lived and I'll walk away. And so I did four years of this where I was writing his story, trying to make music, making art about my brain injury and everything else I was going through.

So when I graduated and I was at like an 85% back to normal Richard and I was able to go out and do things and not be a stra- I still had anxieties and some other stuff, but I was back to livable, like 100% livable Richard, but 85% truly me. And I looked back and I said, well, it was just the education around, like the process I'm telling you, like finding your why and like baby stepping into your story and saying everything without saying anything. That was the process of education, not art therapy, music therapy, it was art education, music education, and just utilizing it in the right ways.

And so I go through this whole process and now I'm like, okay, now I'm going to do it. I'm going to join the FBI, join the CIA. I even went to like a government hiring thing. And I really looked back and I was like, how selfish of me to think that I just discovered something that doesn't really exist the way that it should exist and I wouldn't pursue this to help other people who are not going to see this as an option. I didn't see it as an option. I would have told you day one. I'm never gonna do that

It's because I fell into it So now I was like well How do I make people fall into this and can I even create a program in just a few days or a few weeks? That is as impactful as my four years of figuring this out and so through the process I was sitting here thinking, well, I only told, was able to tell my story through song because I met a guy at a bar who's doing a writer's round and he has nine number one hits, I think. He wrote Alan Jackson's first number one here in the free world. And he wrote like Sangria and Highway Don't Care, Tim McGraw, Taylor Swift,

all these epic songs. And I just approached him one day at the bar I worked at, and I was off that time, and he was doing his round up in Chicago, and I said, hey, I've been trying to tell my story through song for a year, and I just can't write, I can't put Luke on a pedestal he needs to be on. If I come to you in Nashville, just drive down there, will you sit with me and help me tell my story?

Because there's gotta be an easier way to do this than me trying on my own, you obviously doing this for a living. And he said, yeah, to me and nobody from Chicago, just like, okay, and I didn't know how big of a deal that actually was. Two months later, I come down there and we write a song and a half in like three hours.

So the first hour and a half, we had a song and I'm sitting here, I've been trying this for a whole year and you took my words and put in a song an hour and a half we had a song and I'm sitting here, I've been trying this for a whole year. And you took my words and put in a song an hour and a half. This is insane. So now that experience on top of me graduating and being like, I'm almost back to normal, was like, how do I now just bring veterans to Nashville to tell their story? Because it absolutely saved my life. And so that was the process that my brain was going through when I decided that I

was like, I wanted to start a nonprofit that helped veterans heal through the arts and music, which is phenomenal. So now after we got the extensive background and unbelievable story, Richard Casper founded creative vets, but the first, it was really just six or seven or eight guys, right? Yeah. And I technically co-founded it. There's a lovely lady named Linda Tarson, who's in Chicago, who's a philanthropist, who I didn't know how to start a nonprofit, and I was just having lunch with her one day. That's a whole another long story,

how we got to lunch. But just having lunch one day after I wrote with a veteran saying like, oh, I wish I could just turn this into something where I could save more veterans. She's like, okay, let's do it. And so she helped me understand. Sounds good. So she had five board members come on. I had a few of my friends and veterans come on, and then we started CreativeVets in 2013. So I always like to make a note that she helped me co-found CreativeVets because we never truly do these things on our own. So tell me about how it went that first year with just the first few guys.

So it was only nine, I think nine total veterans through the songwriting program. Because that's all we had money for and I would just like, as veterans came in, I would find them, I would be like, okay, we're now going to go to Nashville together because I didn't live in Nashville. And each time we went to Nashville, I would recruit more songwriters while I was with the veteran. So I'd have One group the first group that officially wrote with us outside of mark writing with me

Was the band called blackjack Billy and and two or three of them were number one songwriters like in their own, right? They wrote songs, but also did music so I met them in Florida when they're performing just said hey I want to bring a veteran to Nashville. You write with them. They said yes So like are you telling veterans look man, I know I've been there. You can't tell your story too much anxiety, too much everything, but you can tell your story without having to speak up to the public by putting it down and having a song about it. So what I do, or some of them looking at you going, dude, you're nuts.

Well, no, at first it was like my, I knew who was suffering from my friend group and I would just be like, hey, do you want to go to Nashville and write with the number one songwriter? So you reach out to guys that you're close with. At first, because it was like the referral, like we always know who's suffering with our friends and so the first person ever to go through it was more of like a, he knows he was like a tester.

But he is- He was what? Like a tester to see if his program actually would work. But he also, he lost his leg overseas, has 60% burns over his body or his face. And he did not like telling his story. So he is the perfect person for me to approach to see if he'd even do something like this. Was he ashamed?

I don't know. I mean, he's, he would probably never stay ashamed. He's just hard working. He just doesn't want to. Why did he want to tell it? He's one of those guys who just doesn't talk. Like, no, that doesn't affect me. Like he's like.

He still had it internalized. Yeah, Yeah. And honestly, it doesn't like his physical, he doesn't want you to be like, treat them different because he's left, lost his leg. He still climbs towers. Like with his leg like that, I love this guy. He, yeah, he is salted or just doesn't want you to treat him differently. Not that he hasn't processed a lot of stuff more like he's, but still he's carrying that story inside. Yeah. And so it's probably creating anxiety and PTSD, right? And you see that. And so I go to him and I'm like, dude, you want to come to Nashville with me?

We're going to write a song with a number one songwriter and tell your story through it. He's like, and he trusted me because he knows my story and I know his story. And I was like, don't worry, I'm going to be through the whole process. I'm going to be with you when you're writing and everything. But he's like, I've never heard a yes from him so fast because his love for music was so great. Awesome. So when I talk about what we do and anybody, if you wanna serve anybody, if you could outweigh their anxieties

and depression with excitement, you can get them to do almost anything. And so when I'm like, you wanna come to Nashville and write on Music Row with a number one songwriter? It's so hard, that's like a bucket list thing that nobody gets to do. So yeah, I'll do that. But also we're gonna tell her your story, but don't worry, I'm going to be with you

the whole time. So I work with him on an idea and everything. We're like building up. I'm like, this is what we're going to say. We got it keyed in. Don't worry. I'm going to speak for you when we get in there. I'm just going to ask you to tell her about the song. And that's another psychological thing you do. You don't say, hey, tell your story. You say, hey, tell them what the song is going to be about, which is their story, but they see it as a song. Kind of like, hey Richard, you don't have to talk about your art, but we'll tell you what you're saying.

Yeah, same thing. Like love, blood, all the red background. Or if you poured my, when I poured my heart into that art, it's like, oh, well this art is saying everything for me. Or I could talk about my art piece. If you're all looking at me- Oh, because now you're not talking about you, you're talking about the art. Yep. So I can be like- Which is a degree of separation.

It is. You're projecting it onto there, which makes it a lot safer because there's no communication to you directly. So that's what's happening with these songs. That's what's happening with the song because it's like, oh, I'm talking about my song, not the time my friend died. But you're talking about the time your friend died, but it's the song idea. And oddly, it's like, oh, I'm talking about my song, not the time my friend died, but you're talking about the time your friend died, but it's the song idea. And oddly, it's healing. Yeah, and so he was talking about how it doesn't,

it's called Until It Feels Like Home because he walked through hell for so long, it felt comfortable to him. And so when he came back home, he's like, this is comfortable to me. I know it's weird to say, but I was trained for this, and this is what I do, so now I feel uncomfortable being home because hell felt so much more comfortable.

So it kind of reverse roles, which is weird to think about. And he wrote this song and he loved it so much, he sent it to all those people he couldn't talk to. And I had his sister-in-law- So like friends and family that he couldn't talk to, he just sent the song and said- Sent the song to like listen- If you want to understand, just listen to the song. No, he didn't even do that because I call it tricking them into healing because he didn't talk to, he just sent the song. He sent the song to you, like listen to it. If you wanna understand, just listen to the song. No, he didn't even do that because I call it tricking them into healing

because he didn't know he was, he was so excited he just had a song he wrote in Nashville. He was sending it to everyone, like, I just wrote this song in Nashville, it's pretty bad, it's like check it out. So he didn't even know he was telling a story. No, he kinda, it's the subconscious thing, like he knew he needed to get this out,

but the forefinger brain's just like, I need to share share this with everyone like I wrote a song in Nashville with the way So I'm seeing this are you sitting there bobbing your head up and down going? I'll be damned this work Oh, yeah, like within knowing and he was the first person to say that three-hour ride session helped me more than eight years I've been at the VA hospital and like stuff like that where I'm just like there's magic here like for him to him to just even come down here Be willing to come down here I was like I think I just found something that's gonna help a lot of veterans who aren't seeking help because if you go back To the suicide numbers even if you based off the 20 suicides a day 14 of those 20 don't seek help so 14 of those 20 don't even go to the VA or go to nonprofits

So you're talking about a group of people who don't want to be helped and are not searching to be helped. So you can have a program that's 100% effective and 80% of your people aren't coming to it. So how do you build it so that you make them come to it? And that's what this was. So after that first year of helping eight or nine? And after the first three, it was people I never knew before and that was really cool, the first veteran to apply. After the first three guys. So that first year, even that the remainder of those nine. They were all just people who heard through the great fighter were like, Jesse was like, my cousin is really suffering. He was in Afghanistan and he lost a buddy. And I call that dude and that dude would be like, Hey, my buddy I served with is suffering.

And then organically, people just started applying out of the woodwork, just being like, Hey, I did this in my last option. I don't have any other resort, but I just want to come to Nashville and write a song. What's the process? And then the moment I picked up the phone, I'd say, hey, I'm Richard. I was blown up four times. I watched my friend get shot and killed beside me. What'd you go through? So instantly breaks that ice and they feel comfortable enough to tell me what they

said or what they went through. And they tell me things, probably 60% of the time, they tell me things they never told anybody, not even their family or the Marines they served with, like whatever it was, because I was a stranger who understood them. Kind of like when you call it, if you call it a suicide hotline, you're more open to talk to a stranger than someone who knows you because you feel like you're not going to be like judged for it. And so when they told me that I'll be like, you know, what a really cool

song idea would be about? And then we'd go into it and I'd get them so excited about their own story. Be like, Oh dude, that would be a good story. That would be a good song. I'm like, you know who I paired you up with? This guy has six number ones and they're like, Oh my gosh, what? I'm like, yeah, we're paying for your flights, your food, your housing, and I'm going to spend the whole time with you.

It was like your new battle buddy. So it was just, it was awesome. So now you're doing the song thing, but what got you out of it really was art. And so now you say, well, cause we didn't have enough money to do anything outside of like a few minutes at a time. Yeah, because these guys aren't paying for it. You're raising money to pay for them to get there and all of that. From the get go, because there's friction points for receiving help. Some of the frictions, money, some of the friction's like, again, your anxiety's too bad,

so you need excitement to outweigh your anxiety. In order to get over, some of us need battle buddies. We need to know what it's like to have someone to go through something we did, so I had to have a battle buddy, and financially, everything had to be paid for. So that was day one, a no-nonstarter for me. If we didn't have a nonprofit that didn't do that,

then why even start one? And within the first nine veterans, we helped one Native American Marine from the Foothill Tribes of Montana. Cost over two grand just for his flight, which is unheard of for what we were spending. We only raised like 18,000 cash that first year. And so to think, but I was like, he doesn't have access to this. So of course I'm gonna put him on this list and fly him out here and put him up and write his song. So it was that but I knew I needed the art program and I didn't know what that looked like yet. I just knew I needed to build something and so

I went back to that school and I did your school to the school of the Arnshu Chicago and I was like I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't have a game plan really. I just knew we needed a program. I didn't even know that program looked like which is the worst pitch ever. Just going there, like, you wanna do something with me? I have an art program, but it's not a program yet. We can make it a program. It's like the worst pitch ever. And so I get a meeting with a vice provost,

and his name's Paul Coffey, and I'm just like, you know, this school absolutely saved my life, and I think that I could probably build a program that saves other veterans, but what I need you guys do is like eliminate the whole art background part of it. I want to help non-artist veterans come through your program and I don't know if it's just pairing up with a teacher or something like that and teach them. He's like you know what we do you could be the teacher. I'm like what? He's like yeah he's like let's do this let's do this

you just you get veterans they apply through this program. And I'm like blown away how quickly he said yes to me, being like, let's just build something on a whim and I can be the instructor. So talk about kind of like posture syndrome. You know, already guarding the president was kind of crazy. Just being like, I'm guarding, the idea of me guarding the president from Washburn.

Now the idea of me not being an artist, now teaching at the best art school in the country, whether it's for my program or anything, it was just like, what? What is my life? Like, how is this even an opportunity? But it's because I asked for it. I asked to be a part of this and I just didn't care. Because at the end of the day, it's like a life is saved if I go ask.

And so that's why I was willing to go up there and ask for it. And then when he said I was a teacher, I just figured I was going to be like an assistant, like just be there and help guide him. But he's like, we'll have you teach it and we'll just run it and we do three week programming so we could fit it in there. Does that work for you? I was like, I guess that works for me. So then it was on me to build the syllabus and get the program and get the veterans recruited and find the money. And so that's what we did our second year. We ended up running an art program with I think six veterans and it was a soul Vietnam vet who applied.

And that was the thing about me too. If you do songwriting, I'm not going to let you do songwriting. I want you to do art. I want to teach you a new skill set to save your life. Like if you're doing songwriting, it doesn't work. It's not going to work. I don't care how much you love it. You need to do something different.

I think that's where we get in our wheelhouse. We think like, you know, a hammer's not going to fix every problem we have in a house. So why is songwriting going to help every veteran? It's not. And so this old Vietnam vet applied for a songwriting program. I said, problem that we have in a house, so why is songwriting gonna help every veteran? It's not. And so, this old Vietnam vet applied for our songwriting program. I said, hey, we have this art program in Chicago. He's from LA.

I was like, that I'd really love you to go through because I wanna teach you a new skill set. And so he's like, I actually grew up in Chicago. It was a dream of mine to go to that school just to go to it. No way. And so he applied for this program, went through it, and I tell you what, after three weeks,

he dived into ceramics. He called me two months later, be like, Richard, you don't understand what you lit inside of me. He's like, now I'm a part of a ceramic collective. I'm going to college for ceramic. He's still to this day, that was 2015, he's still to this day doing ceramics and it's phenomenal out in LA. His name's Walt, phenomenal.

Like completely changed the safetest life, all because we gave him access and changed his direction on what he thought he needed to what he actually needed. And a way for these guys to express themselves without having to talk about their trauma. Yep, yep. But they're talking about their trauma. They are, and that one is, I set it up differently too, because when I look back, I'm like, I can't do this.

Like when I look back at how I started Creative Eds, I was like, I can't do that, like nowadays. Because, so these were pretty much, there's only one person I actually served with Looking back at how I started creative events, I was like, I can't do that like nowadays because So these were pretty much there's only one person actually served with that was in that group like six They're actually seven. I had to kick someone out for threatening to kill someone but that was a whole nother story I'm gonna go to Sramas class and I'm gonna make this knife and then I'm gonna switch your throat with it But so they live in the we're paying for their dorms their housing their food their, everything, even food for three weeks we're paying for. And I live, I teach the class, but I also live in the dorms with them and I'm their RA. So like for a whole three weeks straight, I'm like from finding the veterans, calling them all, telling them my story, hearing their story,

buying their plane tickets, flying them out there, being there before to prep all the rooms for them. They're living in dorms. I'm like getting them situated. By the way, I'm your teacher. So 9 a.m. meet me out front. We're going to class Monday through Friday, 9 to 4. I'll be your teacher. But afterwards, if you want to go out, like I'll take you, show you Chicago,

whatever. On the weekends, we buy like the City Pass so they can go to like architecture tour. Like feel like actual students, not like people going through a program. But on that first day, I do one-on-ones with every one of them. Because it'll be a challenge if you don't understand art or want to

understand art, how to explain Picasso to you. Because I could say, hey he changed the figure 26 times and he did these colors because of this reason and you're still gonna be like, looks like my kid could do that. But if you told me about your friend being shot in a cornfield medevaced out of a pomegranate field and I showed you what that looked like in Picasso style, you would instantly connect with Picasso. And so that was my whole job, was they would come in this room just one-on-ones, and I would sit there, like back-to-back vendors would come in, they'd tell me their story, and I'd show them what their story looked like as an art piece, like a modern art piece. Because once they had that, they said, oh, I don't have to paint or

sculpt. I could legitimately have to paint or sculpt. I could legitimately go to a thrift store and buy this piece and then go over here and get some clay and then go downstairs, the wood shop, and they'll help me design this coffin. And like, they now had access to it, and I just let them run with it for three weeks thinking like an artist, like thinking how to tell

their story in different ways. Because there's this one Marine whose trigger was a pomegranate, because his buddy died in a pomegranate field. So every time he saw one when we went out to like target or something that's when he'd freak out and have an episode and have to be like pushed away because he was he reacted so negatively towards it because he wasn't expecting it. So when he's telling me the story about his friend being shot in his cornfield and it took 30 minutes for the chopper to get off the ground. That's why he ended up dying in this palm-granite field where there's more open space where they moved him to. I was like, this is as

simple as like you going to buy a piece of corn and you writing his dying words where I love my life, I don't want to die. I was like, you can write it. His dying words where I love my life, I don't want to die. Because he was shot bleeding out. And this guy was stuck with hearing that. Geno was holding him, I love my life, I don't want to die, I love my life, I don't want to die. Because he was shot bleeding out. And this guy was stuck with hearing that. Geno was holding him, I love my life, I don't want to die, I love my life, I don't want to die. And he's holding him, 30 minutes straight.

I was just this, till he passed away. And so that's stuck in his head, obviously. And I'm like, you can do this piece of corn and you can write his dying words and put a pomegranate there. That's as simple as this huge story can be. Shot here, dying words up to the moment he died. So use a pomegranate to show death.

That's all I give them. And then they have to go out and expand on that. They can't use my exact art piece. But from that moment on, they're looking at life so differently now. Every class they go to, whether it's 3D printing or ceramics or wood shop, they're thinking every moment now, like, Oh, I could use a wood piece. I could like make a little frame house for this thing. Oh, I could do this.

So what Gino did at the end of this, and this is a beautiful part, because he called me three weeks later, like when we were setting up, because we have an art show. We have to show your art at the end of the three weeks. And he's like, Richard, I went to Jewel? I went to Osco?

I can't find a Pomegranate anywhere. So already in that three weeks we healed the first step. He went through being triggered by him to go into look form. Because he repurposed the memory of what that pomegranate was. Now it's an art piece. Now it's his death, so I gotta show it in a way.

And so he ended up doing this plaster mold of his hand. He did this like wood board where he wrote for 30 minutes, because it took 30 minutes for the child to get there, he did a timer for 30 minutes and wrote, I love my life, I love my life in red paint on this wood board, I love my, and when that 30 minute timer went off, he just smeared his hand across it and stopped.

And then he installed his hand that he had, and he had pomegranate seeds that fell to the floor to a real pomegranate on the floor. And that was his art piece. That's like one of the most, no matter what, you don't even know a story, you look at it and you're like, wow, when you see that piece. And this comes from a guy who's never done art

a day in his life, but you just give him the tools of understanding like what art can do and how to hide yourself in art. What'd it do for him? For him, it was that way to talk about it without talking about it. And so he now, he was one of my first, he was in that same initial class with Walt.

He was my very first art veteran ever. He was just in our office in Nashville recreating his pomegranate. He had 3D printed it and redoing stuff. He now carries an iPad with him where he does procreate all over. It's like a drawing thing. He's like every step of the way, I just, when I feel anxiety, depression or war, I just go to my, I just create art about it. And so giving them the tools to attack it

from here on out. What year was this first year? 2015 was technically the first year we had art program. It was our second year, but our fiscal year ends in July, or June 30th. Nine years ago. Yep. Veterans from 50 states served,

1,600, is that right? A lot more now. We served 800 by ourselves just last year. So what's your total veterans serve? So it's probably up to 3,000 or more, but we have 15 million streams of our music, which we've already done a study on. 15 million streams.

Yep, and we have studies that show that our music actually heals people. We had just recently a Vietnam vet hit up our Facebook saying I just a server creative that's because we have our music streaming. He's like I he's like I served in Vietnam serve 18 years. Your music has helped my PTSD so much because I relate to every song. And he's like 18 years four months Vietnam and so we have no idea what the true impact number is. We'll be right back.

Every family has skeletons in their closet. Mine certainly does. Ones that go back 100 years and reach thousands of miles back to our hometown in Sicily. Ever since I can remember, my relatives told the story of my great, great grandmother who was killed by the mafia. I'm Jo Piazza, and in my new podcast, I'm taking on a generational vendetta, visiting the scene of the crime, confronting mafia experts, tracking down Italian officials, and even consulting mediums to set the record straight on my great-great-grandmother's mysterious disappearance. And in between the fact-finding missions, I'll be drinking a lot of wine and eating

all of the pasta. Come to Italy with me to solve this 100-year-old murder mystery. Listen to The Sicilian Inheritance on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Solea Mosin, and I've covered economic policy for years and reported on how it impacts people across the United States. In 2016, I saw how voters were leaning towards Trump and how so many Americans felt misunderstood by Washington. So I started the Big Take DC. We dig into how money, politics and power shape government and the consequences for

voters. It's an election year, so there's a lot of focus on the voters that TikTok is reaching. The initial reaction is like, oh, things are looking so resilient. that TikTok is reaching. The initial reaction is like, oh, things are looking so resilient. I don't want to be too pessimistic, but I just don't see the political will down in Washington right now to change their tune. I think the American electorate has been signaling that it expects a rematch of the 2020 election. These are unprecedented times. With new episodes every Thursday, you can listen to The Big Take DC on the iHeart Radio

app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Big Take from Bloomberg News brings you what's shaping the world's economies with the smartest and best informed business reporters around the world. Western nations like the US and Europe. Mexico will likely have its first female president. And then you have China. And help you understand what's happening, what it means, and why it matters. He'll get his yo-yos to Europe in time, but the longer this drags on, the more worried he's getting. They knew that they needed to do this as fast as they possibly

could to get a drug on the market as fast as they could. I'm David Dura. I'm Sarah Holder. I'm Saleh Emosin. We cover the stories behind what's moving money in markets. Basically everyone was expecting, if not a calamity, certainly a recession. But the problem is that that paperwork, as our reporting showed, is fake. Someone who's covering the market, I'm often very worried about an imminent collapse.

I'm thinking about it quite often. Listen to the big take on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm going to read this. Oftentimes I've been asked if I'm okay or what it's like to be deployed or what it's like being wounded in action is difficult to explain. Art gives us the ability to express what is hard to put into words. It helps us let our emotions go without the uncomfortable feeling of someone staring you in the face waiting for response,

but instead they stare at the piece you created and they come up with their own conclusions. It's therapeutic to be vulnerable, and it hopefully helps individuals get a better understanding of service members. Creative Vets helps bridge that gap. What else can you say? It's powerful. Art's an option, and that's what most people don't know. They're not searching for it like I wasn't. They don't fully believe it's going to work.

There's another guy who's now our veteran coordinator who, to this day, every time he says it, it makes me want to cry because he's like, we run this program now at not just the school there in Chicago, but at Glassdale School of Art in Houston, Virginia Commonwealth University, Belmont University, and University of Southern California. And that class is where he went. And he only went there because his friend went. And he said, oh, I'm just going to go with my buddy and then I'm going to go eat a bullet when I go home.

That was my one last hurrah with my buddy. He's like, Art's not going. Are you buddy. He's like, Art's not gonna work. Are you kidding? He's like, Art's not gonna work. This guy was literally gonna go with his buddy to this thing and then he was going to kill himself. Yeah. He was like, this is a good opportunity just to spend my last days with my friend I served

with for free. Like, paid me to go to USC and go to school. Cool. And he's still to this day says he was gonna eat the bullet when he went home. And he's like, I discovered something completely new. And he's now part of an organization. He's our veteran outreach. He's our veteran coordinator. So every veteran applies, he calls them and tells them a story and then gets them involved.

But that's not the only story that we've heard from that. So many people talking about writing the suicide letter on the day that we called them or other stuff. It's insane and more stuff like this needs to happen because art truly is an option and music is an option. And I hate that I treated it the way I did when I first got out and I'm hoping that we create a movement that kind of helps everyone understand that they can get into it and it could save their life. Even though my friends and family do not understand what it was like in Iraq, I believe my song gives them a better understanding of what I went through while deployed.

Man, I tear up when I read that. That is a person who loves his friends and family who cannot communicate with them. He's unable. And he's walking around every day trying to live life with this brokenness. And he has to feel relieved of that burden by writing a song because he says, my song gives them a better understanding of me and what I went through while deployed. I mean, that's how you get over PTSD. Yep. It's how you get, it's just, we feel like we have to keep it in for multiple reasons

because we serve so you don't have to. Like the idea of most people serve so you don't have to see the evil exists. And so when we come home and we're injured because of that evil, if we tell you, why'd we even go and serve for you if we tell you? So that's one part of it. The other part is if I tell you, you're not gonna understand.

And so there's so many reasons why we don't tell you, but the only way we survive is if we tell you. So there has to be a creative way to do that. And that's what this music does. You have these songwriters who can write a song that makes you feel like, even if you're not a female, it could make you feel like a 12-year-old girl when you listen to them, because you're just like, the impact of the music attached with the lyrics just make you feel something.

Like even if you never went through a breakup and you listened to Adele, you'd be like, oh my God, I know what it feels like to be broken up with. And so music has an impact, and we're working with the best songwriters in the world that don't have to even truly understand the situation to write it in a way that your family and friends

are gonna understand, but other combat vets are going to understand too that they're not alone. And that's why we had to be in Nashville with these number one singer songwriters. And that's why even people like Justin Moore and Granger Smith and Randy Rogers and Craig Campbell, Craig Morgan, Jimmy Allen, all have sat down with veterans for free just to help them tell their stories because they know the impact that it has them as an artist and other songwriters to actually help them decipher what they went through. When you were going through your height of anxiety and your PTSD and your brain damage and all the stuff that people come back with before your art healing in your own self

for your art healing in your own self. And I found out you served our country and we're passing each other in a airport. And I look at you and I say, you don't know me and you'll never see you again. I say, hey man, just wanna let you know, really appreciate your service. Is that a good thing or a bad thing to say? Well, it used to be, I think it's the, it's, it's the new hello to veterans.

It's like, it used to mean something because you didn't hear it a lot. You didn't truly know who it was. And then there's this rise of where that's just your normal response to people is like, Oh, thanks for your service. Thanks for, I even catch myself like, Oh, your veteran, thanks for your service. Like instantly. And so there's a song actually we wrote with a Vietnam veteran where in the lyric it says your thank yous don't seem to work no more

Because now it's just it's just like if you say I love you too much It's like at some point it kind of like do you because you see Delta? Yeah, the loading goes this way People who need extra time and assistance which are old people and Assholes who want to put their luggage in front of everybody? That don't need any extra help, but use that as an excuse to board the plane so they have a place for their carry on. That's number one. And that's one of my biggest pet peeves. So I'm glad I got to say that. And if you're one of those people, screw you. And then number three, active or military service.

And then it goes to like platinum members and first class and then they board. That's the boarding thing. So pregnant women and women with a bunch of children and people in wheelchairs first and then veterans and or active military. And I can't tell you how many times I've been standing in line as those guys pass through to get on the plane before me and sometimes they're stopped or they'll turn and talk or whatever. And I've always said, you know, Hey man, thanks for your service. And I genuinely mean it. I have a an enormous appreciation for people like you who gave what you gave and struggled with you struggled with to serve me and my family. But I am hearing it often and I am starting to wonder if it's, if it's now almost not received well and that's why I asked.

No, I mean, we usually could tell though, like who's authentic and who's not. It's hard sometimes, but most of the time how you do it, you can just tell. You know, you tell when someone's faking something, like, hey, yeah, happy to see you here. You know, it's like, are you happy to be here? It's really good to be here. So usually it was like, hey, quick, but it's like when they stop and they're like,

hey, by the way, like, thank you for your service. Like, I never thank you for your service. Or like when you initiate it in a certain way where it's not just a meeting. If it's a meeting and then you hear it and you say thank you, sometimes it's hit or miss, but when you go out of your way to go thank them, it's a lot different.

And nowadays, that kind of patriotism died down. Like it was from like too much to now, like you hardly ever hear it from people because it's so distant, like that war is so distant now. Good that I'm gonna continue to thank people for those things because I genuinely do mean it. And people would know like that you're being genuine about it.

But you know what's funny? There's a veteran I brought to town. This is the first time I ever heard it. And I legit thought this was a pickup line because these two ladies came up and thanked him for his service. He just looked, this is how he did it. He shook their head. He's like, you know, you were worth it.

And I was like, did you do it? And I was like, this is the best pick up line ever. You were worth it. And then he's like, then he felt weird that I was thinking that way because he was like, no, I just feel awkward. Like, what do you say? And I was like, Hey, you know, they're worth it. So you're worth it.

But he totally had like Rico Suave like, almost like even a week you were worth it. But I was like, that's genius. Marine, you know, whatever. That's hilarious. If someone wants to support Creative Arts, if someone wants to become involved as a songwriter or art teacher for Creative Arts, or if there's someone out there listening to us who served this country and is struggling and needs creative vets. How do they find Richard? Well, the first step for all those categories is just listening to our music. Because for one, by listening to music actually does create royalties for the organization.

Where do we listen to the music? You can listen to it on any stream platform, Spotify, Amazon, YouTube, and you just search Creativets as the artists. That is spelled C-R-E-A-T-I, capital V-E-T-S, Creativets. Yep. So just creative with a T-S on the end of it, not a double V, which some people try to do. But we released this through Big Machine Records, and we actually have artists singing our songs. So the artists will say, creative, it's featuring Justin Moore. Creative, it's featuring Aaron Lewis, Vince Gill.

That is so cool. We had Vince Gill do backups on a song with Aaron Lewis and Dan Taminski. And so the idea of that too is a veteran hearing those voices and be like, what's this? Then Google us and find out we'll pay for their flights here. So like go in their home, pull them out. Have you ever done rap? We have had one R&B song and one kind of rap song, one heavy metal song, but we're in Nashville.

So a lot of people don't know we do everything, but we do everything. We'd find the writers who do everything. But that's the first step, because for one, that music really does heal everyone, whether you know a veteran or you've been with a veteran, you're gonna understand them more. If you are a veteran, you listen to their music,

you're gonna felt understand and felt like you're not alone anymore. And then as a donor, you're've been with a veteran, you're going to understand them more. If you are a veteran, you listen to our music, you're going to felt understand and felt like you're not alone anymore. And then as a donor, you're just listening to our music, it's helping build strength. It's not a ton, but it's still streams over time that create revenue. And then obviously anybody who wants to donate on our website, creativevets.org, could donate there and learn more. Same thing with veterans for applications on there. And our newsletter is an easy way to keep up with all the stuff that we're doing. And social media, Instagram and everything. 800 people, social media is at Creative Vets, I guess? Yep, at Creative Vets.

And 800 vets this year? Yeah, and that was through all of our programs. We do programs down 20 different states with a bunch of partners like the National Ability Center and Travis Mills Foundation. We bring out songwriters to locations. We probably served 14 different states last year and are gonna help more this year. So we're on the- You need to have a creative vets like concert, like old farm aid used to do. Remember that? We're building to that. We've had some in Nashville with some people, but we're building to like actually do a little tour or somewhere we go around the country and write with people

and sing songs. And we've done it like Coast Guard base and Key West. We've done a show down there for the active duty and stuff, but we're getting there. Dude, a washed out high school student last in his class from Washburn, Illinois with siblings who had issues from Nowhereville to just wanted to go to the Marines and kick in doors to ended up guarding the president to come in home

with anxiety and PTSD and a brain injury who found art who found art to save himself and then decided he was going to save a bunch of others through the same love of music and art and serving. I mean, of these 800 vets, Richard the, the, the math says that a third of them would be dead. So it's literally saving the lives of the very people who gave of themselves to serve us. I cannot, I can't, I just can't think of a more noble cause. How's it make you feel to know what you're doing? Well, that's good.

That gets me to my 95% me. So that 85 to 95 is all this. It's like- Where's the other 5%? It'll never come back, but I don't need it to come back. Like we don't all need to be 100% all the time. We, you know, as we get older, like we're not 100% ourselves that we were back date. So being a 95 is like more than enough.

Like I could easily survive at 85, but giving back to these veterans and hearing these stories each time. That's why after like over 10 years I still talk about it and cry and get enthusiastic and speak really fast about all the stuff we're doing because it just drives me with every single veteran who is like, and I wish I could even get into more stories with you, they'd just be, you'd just be like yes because it feels so good. I got one more question I played chess in high school that's my version your version being the six foot guy walking in with all the blue-eyed art people well I lettered in six sports but also played chess so imagine me in the national championship with the chess kids yeah yeah I worked out too I was I wasn't always

old and fat dude so get over what you're seeing right now. But anyway, one of the things actual research says that playing chess makes kids smarter. It's not that smart kids play chess. It's that kids play chess and get smarter because your brain exercises. It literally, it's just like if you do three arm days a week, your muscles build because you're using them. Your brain does the same thing. Chess, the strategy, the thinking, the long two hours of sitting and making yourself be able to concentrate for two hours actually makes you a better test taker. It makes you, chess makes you smarter over the, over a period of time. As I listened to you in the same vein, I kind of wonder if having to think about writing a song for an extended period of time and express yourself in art, if that doesn't help in some

weird way repair a damaged brain. Well, the repetition of words do because like the Rolodex that was broken, now I'm recalling like I forget what the number of words the average human uses in a day, but a songwriter uses 10x that because every time we're writing a song, we're trying to think what words go where, we're trying to find new words go where we're trying to find New words were legitimately going to rhyming dictionaries online rhyme zone comm and trying to find rhymes and hear rhymes Whatever works with the song that we're doing. So that's actually what healed most of my speech Like I went to a speech pathologist stuff, but it was the songwriting portion

So I think there's definitely different parts in there and I know piano playing at an early age is the same thing where IQ goes Up when you're playing piano as a young age So I think there's definitely different parts in there. And I know piano playing at an early age is the same thing where IQ goes up when you're playing piano as a young age. So I think it's the combination of the music, how the music affects you, like emotionally and resets and all that stuff. But you can also remap your brain and remap or repurpose emotions. If you come out of the same dark emotion and happy, which is a song, like the same guy who was like, my friend died and all this stuff, he's crying.

But then an hour later, he's like, I got a song. Every time he thinks about his friend, he's going to think about the last time he brought up that emotion. So he's remapping his emotions. Yeah. Retraining. Repurposing. Repurposing his memories as a good one rather than a bad one because now every time he thinks about his friend's death, he'll think about the last time he brought it up,

which was in the songwriting session, which was a good memory. Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon, Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon, and he did the first successful surgery where he took away two co-joined twins that were joined at the head and they lived. And I read one time when he said that the three most unexplored realms in humanity right now are the depths of the deepest oceans, the cosmos and the human brain, that we understand so little about it, but he says it can repair itself. It does have a way to remap around broken areas and he's just seen it too much. And, you know, hearing you talk and hearing the story, I can't help but think

this is not only good for one psyche, but physically it's actually good for the brain. Yeah. My left brain is jammed, so my right brain took over. That's my creative side. That's everyone's creative side. And so that was another thing going from non-artist to the best art school in the country. They said, yeah, one part was damaged, so another part took over. talk about the cope if they remain optimistic and they find something that can help them, which is exactly what CreativeVets does. It is. Richard, what a phenomenal story. Do you find it all ironic that you came to Memphis and we're talking about the strength of music and you look around you and you're sitting in Memphis Listening Labs, which is nothing but a 3000 square foot area of

music. This is awesome. When I walked in and they told me, I was like, this is a perfect spot for what we're doing. They didn't even know what we're getting into. And I was like, yeah, it's all music. Like we do music. And now to be in here with all music, I mean, no better, especially with the effects that music has on people to be able to come and listen. Oh my gosh. And this is a lab. It's just a cool vibe.

Yeah, it's a cool vibe. And it's a place that is a testament to the power of the very things you're doing with that. So welcome to the Memphis Listening Lab in Crosstown Concourse. And I'm glad we did this here because it couldn't be more appropriate in my opinion. It feels perfect. Richard, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you for sharing your story. Thank you for your candor. Thank you for the depths of explaining all of it to us and most importantly, thank you for creating creative thoughts and saving the very lives of the people who've been on the wall so that we can have our freedoms And I mean it with all sincerity when I look you dead in the eyes I say not only thank you for your service when you're overseas, but thank you for your service now I appreciate that you make our country a better place, bro. Thank you You were worth it

What you were worth it. What? You were worth it. Ha ha ha! You're a jackass. Ha ha ha! And thank you for joining us this week. If Richard Casper or another guest has inspired you in general, or better yet, inspired you to take action by volunteering with creative vets, by donating to them,

by starting something like it in your own community or something else entirely, please let me know. I'd love to hear about it. You can write me anytime at Bill at normalfolks.us and we will respond. And if you enjoyed this episode, share it with friends and on social. Subscribe to the podcast, rate and review it. Become a premium member at NormalFolks.us.

All of these things that will help us grow. An army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. I'll see you next week. My whole life I've been told this one story about my family, about how my great great grandmother was killed by the mafia back in Sicily. I was never sure if it was true, so I decided to find out. And even though my uncle Jimmy told me I'd only be making the vendetta worse, I'm going to Sicily anyway. Come to Italy with me to solve this hundred-year-old murder mystery. Listen to The Sicilian Inheritance on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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