An Army of Normal Folks - The Generosity of Scars: How Your Hardest Moments Can Help Others Heal (Pt 1)

Episode Date: June 9, 2026

After nearly taking his own life during a difficult transition from the military, retired Green Beret Scott Mann discovered an unexpected path to healing: telling the stories he most wanted to hide. In this conversation, Scott shares lessons from combat, leading Operation Pineapple Express (rescued 1,000 Afghanis from the Taliban), and his new book, The Generosity of Scars, showing us how our hardest moments can help others feel less alone—and why the stories we're most afraid to tell may be the ones the world most needs to hear.Buy The Generosity of Scars hereSupport the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/#joinSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This guy comes up to me after I said just a couple words about the play, and he is bawling crying. This is a big guy, too. He said, you don't know me. I was in Delta most of my life. He guess we've never met. But when your play, last out came to Tampa last time, I was at the end of my rope, man. Like everything was gone for me. I had everything planned.

I was going to execute. I was going to do it. I was going to take my own life. And he goes, I came to see your play reluctantly, watch the play, and then went out in the parking lot of the Straz on the phone with the suicide hotline for three hours. Wow. And he's like, your play saved my life. I just wanted you to know that.

Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband. I'm a father. I'm an entrepreneur. And I'm a football coach in inner city Memphis. And the last part somehow led to an Oscar for the film about one of my teams.

That movie's called Undefeated. I believe our country's problems are never going to be solved. by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits using big words that nobody ever uses on CNN and Fox, but rather by an army of normal folks. That's us. Just you and me saying, you know what? Maybe I can help. That's what retired Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann, the voice you just heard is done.

Scott is one of the very few repeat guests on the podcast, and he deserves it, and I love the dude. Today, we're diving into his brand new book, The Generosity of Scars, How Your Stories of Struggle Can Change Lives, Especially Your Own. And Scott is going to help all of us do just that right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. For nights at Residents in downtown Montreal, flights from Porter Airlines, two weekend gold tickets, and $1,000 cash. Lord, Zara Larson, Tena Gray, Somer, 21 pilots, and more. Download IHeart Radio, listen to IHeart new music for 10 minutes, and enter to win. Osiaga, 2026. Every day you listen is another chance to win.

Keith Giamanka seemed like a mild-mannered suburban dad, but secretly, he became someone else, a master of disguise who went on a crime spree. At the time, did it seem like a crazy idea? It seemed very crazy. But I felt so desperate that I felt it was the quickest, easiest way out. Did you allow yourself to think about how it could go wrong and what that might look like? No.

I didn't want to manifest that. I was trying to manifest success. Every family has its secrets. But what happens when you discover that your dad has been living a double life. That is not the look of an innocent man. This is going to change my life and my family dynamic forever because everything that had existed prior in my reality

is now untrue. Listen to Deep Cover the Family Man on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I love the sounds, the buzzing from the stadium, the chanting from the fans, the announcers calling the place, Soccer, football, it's home.

Why do I watch the World Cup? That's like asking me, why do I breed? I inherited that fandom from my mom. It's a connecting force. From Futuro Studios, I'm Fernanda Chavari, and this is American Football, a show about soccer culture in the U.S. and its underdog roots. We go beyond the game to the people and the stories that make it great.

A soccer game is a festival. It's not just a game. It's your culture. I took an elbow to my head, which cracked my skull. It is an American game. The Brazilians don't like hearing that, though. Are they the only ones that don't like that? Nobody likes that.

As we get ready for the Men's World Cup this summer, listen to American Football as part of the MyCultura podcast network, available on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Alec Baldwin. season on my podcast, here's the thing I'm speaking with more artists, policymakers, and performers like composer Mark Shaman. Once you've established that you have the talent, it's about the hang.

It's the pleasure of hanging out with the people that you're with. You know, Rob and I was always a great hang. We would sit in kibbets for hours and then eventually get around to the music. That's what I mostly think of when I think of him, the time together laughing. Lawyer, Robbie Kaplan. The great gift of being a lawyer is he. ability to actually change things in our society in a way that very few people can. You can really make a difference to causes in the United States if you bring the right case at the right time.

Marriage equality. Yeah, Windsor's the perfect example. Director Morgan Neville. Film School teaches you all the wrong things about making documentary. What do you want to say? Documentary is all by your ear. What do you hear? I feel like my job is listening really, really hard. Listen to Here's the Thing on the IHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Scott Mann from Tampa, Florida is back on the podcast. You're one of our few two-time interviews. That's not lost on me.

Thank you. You're kind of special. I'm honored. But this time you brought somebody with you, who's that over there? That's my bride, Monty. 30 years this past Veterans Day. Unbelievable. You got married on Veterans Day?

Of course you would. You know what? we didn't realize it at the time. I think we were still pretty hungover. But yeah, I really don't think we weren't conscious about it until a little bit later in our life. Yeah. That's crazy. Monty, hey, welcome to Memphis. Thank you. All right, everybody. If you didn't hear Scott's first interview, I'll give you just quick background, which I'm sure the narration of the opening of this thing gives you some, but Scott's retired, Lieutenant Colonel Green Beret. And the first time I met Scott, I really thought Green Beret was what John Rambo was.

And you straightened me out and taught me that the Green Berets were all about relationship building and going into places that maybe the United States doesn't have necessarily a footprint in and understanding communities and culture and building relationships. And I think that work is fascinating. You want to talk just briefly about that and catch our audience up with kind of what your life was professionally? Yeah, I mean, it was fascinating to me, too, when I first learned about it. I grew up in a little log in town in Arkansas and met a Green Beret when I was 14, and he told me the story about what he did. And that, for me, as a run of a kid, it just, it was really intriguing to me that these little group of guys would go to these places around the world with like 12 dudes and then build these relationships that were so strong that they'd ride out with like 12,000.

And I thought, man, that is really awesome. Lawrence of Arabia stuff. It really is very Laurentian, you know. And it turned out that it is. It is exactly that. And, you know, I got to tell my boys, I had three boys when I retired in 2013. I looked at all three of them and I said, you know, your dad got to do what he dreamed to do as a 14-year-old kid and it was actually better than I thought it would be.

Which is something crazy. I mean, people get to say that, man. If anybody wants to hear that story, look up the first Scott Man interview because we're not here to rehash what we've already talked about, but I think it's important for a perspective that as a 14-year-old, you figured out what you want to do, and you went and did it, and you did it all over the world in Afghanistan and everywhere.

Yeah. And built relationships. I love the story. He also started Operation Pineapple Express, which is really a nonprofit to help serve veterans. Is that not correct? It is. It was all based around the, if you remember, in 2021, when Afghanistan collapsed, there were a group of us, like a lot of veterans, that could not stand with the decision that

was made to leave our allies behind. And so we basically mobilized a group of veterans and used cell phones and those same relationships that we had built over 20 years. As Grand Prix. Yep. To basically surreptitiously move about 1,000 Afghans and their families out of the country that were in deep threat. And so that just became a... nonprofit after that. Yeah. And so this story, I urge you to go listen to it again, is really topical because we still have a bunch of Afghans that fought alongside our people in Afghanistan that are displaced. And the government still hasn't figured out what to do with a few thousand

of them. And I think I read recently, I thought of you the minute I read it, that they were actually talking about sending some of them to maybe the Sudan or Congo or something. It's like that's worse than Afghanistan. It's like one of the worst. Yeah. I know it's frustrating and I know we're not here to talk about it. But guys, you need to go back and listen to Scott's first interview about it to fully understand that these people fought and died and served alongside our military.

And Scott worked to get many, many of them to safety and the issue even in 2026. has not fully finished itself. No. There's still work to be done. It's not a good look for us as a country. It's not. It's certainly not. And not for a man who spent his entire life

in the military trying to build relationships. When you build relationships and make promises, and then the government doesn't back those promises, it undermines the Green Bray's ability just to do their jobs. Yeah. Yeah. And we're seeing a spike in suicide rate

with veterans as a result of that, a spike in mental health issues, depression. You know, that's the other side of it that you don't hear, is that this has had a tremendous impact on the veterans themselves. They call it a moral injury, you know, the violation of one's code. And they're saying that there's evidence right now that that moral injury could be even more damning for suicide and mental health than PTSD. Which is interesting.

It's a good segue. Everybody, Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann is a gentleman who gave the better part of his professional life to serve our country as a Green Bray, building relationships and promoting the culture and the idea of the United States across the world. And he did involve himself with or start Operation Pineapple Express to help those who served along us. But he's also kind of a Renaissance guy. He's also an artist. He's a playwright and an author. And Moni, I don't want to overdo it because I know you live with a guy who probably can't remember to put the toilet

seat down, but you're married to a dude who's got a lot of talents. And we're here to discuss some of those talents. One of the things, before we get into it, is he has an award-winning play, Last Out, Elegie of a Green Beret. I want you to just talk about that just a little bit before we really get into the meat of what we're talking about today. Yeah. So I had a really bad transition from the military in 2013.

a lot of stuff that I didn't deal with that I should have dealt with, including Survivor's guilt and things that you bring home from, you know, places like Afghanistan. And as a result of that, I really had a tough time coming home.

And, you know, almost took my own life as a result of it and found storytelling as a modality to heal myself as a way to reconnect and help make sense of things. It was a storytelling workshop that I went to. And it really helped me a lot, you know, and I fell in love with the whole.

I grew up in Appalachia and in Arkansas, so I understood and appreciated storytelling, but never to the depth of actually using it to make sense of things like buddies not coming home or decisions that you made that buddies didn't come home. And I found that storytelling was really helpful for that. And so I just went nuts with it. I did a TED talk, then another TED talk,

then another one, started coaching TED speakers, keynotes, and really just anything that scared me about storytelling, I wanted to do it, because I found it was like the ultimate. way to bridge, Bill. And at some point, my coach, my storytelling coach talked me into writing a little one-man play about the war, and I did. And eventually it became this play, last out, L.A.L.D. of the Green Beret. I've never acted in my life. So to complete my midlife crisis, I learned how to act at age 50. And we toured the country with a group of veterans. This was in 2019.

We put 6,000 miles on a U-Haul van. We traveled with our own counselor. We did 250. PTS interventions in the lobbies. We performed in Brandon, Mississippi. We performed in Santa Barbara, New York. Anywhere we could get into the room and perform the show, we would do it. And then we would do a talk back after. We performed for over, I think over 100 Gold Star families. And at some point, when Pineapple was happening, Gary Seneas found out about the show

and ended up come alongside us and sponsored us for a year. And that's when things just took off. I mean, and who better than Gary Seney? He's a great actor and all that, but he is incredibly supportive of armed forces. Yeah, and if you want to feel the butterflies in your stomach in full force, you know, look out there as an actor that's been maybe walking the boards for like three months and look and see Gary Seney's sitting in the audience. But he was, and it really, it was very special. Did you ever have the feeling he's going to think I suck? You know, no, because that's not how, you know how he's genuine you've met him.

He won't let you think that. In fact, as soon as the show was over, he came upside me and hug me. And he would text me before every show. He would talk to the cast. What you see him is exactly who he is. Yeah, he's a very, very real dude. When I met him, I may have told you this last time. I was actually at a St. Louis Cardinals baseball game.

And he had a former Marine who had been very, very badly injured. Yeah. He and that Marine were telling their stories. And he was, he tended to that Marine like it was, like he was his one goal in life to make sure that that Marine had a good experience. And I was like, wow, this dude, Seneas is real about serving and good dude. And now a few messages from our generous sponsors. But first, Alex finally, after a year of people begging, has gotten off his rear end. and we now have our merchandise store is alive.

All you got to do is you go to normalfolks. Dot us and click merch. And you'll see all kinds of cool stuff. Shirts, hoodies, hats, magnets, bags, banners, and all of this for each of our six local service clubs too. So you can get a generic one that just says an Army and Normal Folks, or you can get one that says an Army and Normal Folks Memphis, an Army and Normal Folks, Wichita.

So you can get it for your service club. We can get it just for less than, you know, wearing your normal stuff. The other thing we've done is we really did want people to wear it. So we've priced every item at the cost to make them $0 in profit for us. So we figured the more folks that can afford this stuff and the more items they can buy, it's just helping spread an army and normal folks across the country. So we're trying to make it as inexpensive as possible for all of you. So get yours at normalfolks.

us today, help us grow the Army and your community, and look cool representing the Army and normal folks brand. We'll see you wearing that stuff when you send us pictures, and we get to post it on our social media. We'll be right back. Pride is like love. You feel it in your heart. IAR Radio, Canada's number one streaming app for radio and podcasts, including IHart

Pride Canada, your favorite hits and must-have party bangers, plus personalized and curated Playlists like back in the day pride. Come together, celebrate love. Take pride with you anytime, anywhere. Just ask your smart speaker to play IHartPride, Canada. Stream us on your phone, or listen now at iHartRadio.ca. Keith Giamanka seemed like a mild-mannered

suburban dad, but secretly, he became someone else, a master of disguise who went on a crime spree. At the time, did it seem like a crazy idea? It seemed very crazy, but I felt so desperate that I felt it was the quickest, easiest way out. Did you allow yourself to think about how it could go wrong on what that might look like? No, I didn't want to manifest that. I was trying to manifest success. Every family has its secrets. But what happens when you discover that your dad has been living a double life? That is not the look of an innocent man.

This is going to change my life and my family dynamic forever because everything that had existed prior in my reality is now untrue. Listen to Deep Cover the Family Man on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I love the sounds, the buzzing from the stadium, the chanting from the fans, the announcers calling the place soccer, football at home. Why do I watch the World Cup?

That's like asking me, why do I breed? I inherited that fandom from my mom. I like watching it with my dad. It's a connecting force. From Futuro Studios, I'm Fernanda Chavari, and this is American Football, a show about soccer culture in the U.S. and its underdog roots.

We go beyond the game to the people and the stories that make it great. A soccer game is a festival. It's not just a game. It's your culture. I took an elbow to my head, which cracked my skull. It is an American game. The Brazilians don't like hearing that, though.

Are they the only ones that don't like that? Nobody likes that. As we get ready for the Men's World Cup this summer, listen to American Football as part of the MyCultura podcast network, available on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Alec Baldwin. season on my podcast, here's the thing I'm speaking with more artists, policymakers, and performers

like composer Mark Shaman. Once you've established that you have the talent, it's about the hang. It's the pleasure of hanging out with the people that you're with. You know, Rob and I was always a great hang. We would sit in kibbets for hours and then eventually get around to the music. That's what I mostly think of when I think of him, the time together laughing. Lawyer of Robbie Kaplan. The great gift of being a lawyer is he,

ability to actually change things in our society in a way that very few people can. You can really make a difference to causes in the United States if you bring the right case at the right time. Marriage equality. Yeah, Windsor's the perfect example. Director Morgan Neville. Film school teaches you all the wrong things about making documentary. What do you want to say? Documentary is all about your ear. What do you hear? I feel like my job is listening really, really hard. Listen to Here's the Thing on the IHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so that catches us up. So here we are. Green Bray got married on a hangover

on Veterans Day 30 years ago. Moni is his ultimate reward for that decision. He's helped get former Afghan operators out of country that we left behind. He's the author of his first book. Nobody has coming to save you, which is a leadership field guide. He wrote Last Out, Elegie of a Green Bray, and performed the thing all over the country.

I mean, dude, it's a full life. So now I guess your writing is going to be a trilogy, and you've written number two of three. Are you already working on number three? Yeah, we were talking off camera before the show started. I was really close to my dad, you know, and we lost him this past summer. And he was very involved in all this stuff. And so leaving tracks is the third book. and it's all about legacy and purpose.

And that was his saying. You know, he would always tell my brother and me, whatever you do in your life, make sure you leave tracks. And so I had the chance to really... I love that. That's a great way to say at leap tracks. I know.

Yeah, I loved it too. And so it always, especially now that he's gone, you know, like it really resonates deeply with me. And so, yeah, we've already worked it out with the publisher. That'll be the third book. And honestly, it's pretty much written itself. It's just talking about my dad. I love that.

Clearly, he left tracks. Oh, and I know you'll appreciate this. He was real big on the restoration of the American chestnut. I love him already. So he was a career wildland firefighter. Grew up so poor that his dad had to, his dad was a Baptist preacher, and his dad had to sell a hog so he could go to NC State. That was, I mean, poor.

Yeah. He was phenomenal. But he was the dude that would, he would be sleeping underneath a cardboard box somewhere on the fire line with the boys. Like he would not be, even though he was running the fire. You know, he was just, he was that guy.

But when he retired, he loved the woods and he loved the American Chestnut Tree. And he got involved with the American Chestnut Foundation and became really kind of their patriarch. For those who aren't listening, I'm a lumberman. I'm in the Hardwood Lumber Business. And for those who are listening,

the chestnut at one time was actually the most prolific species in the hardwood stands of the United States. If you'll think about chestnuts roasting on the open fire back before the 40s, pretty much every home had chestnut stair treads, chestnut moldings, chestnut furniture, and a blight, which is actually a worm, destroyed. Yep, introduced from Asia. Yeah. And it wiped out billions of chestnut trees in a very short period of time. And so my dad, when he recovered, and I talk about him in this book a lot.

And when he recovered from his first bout with cancer, he really was wanting to get involved more with the American chestnut tree. And so he did a TED talk at 73 years old. I got to coach him. That's so cool. And I'll send it to you. It's phenomenal. And probably one of the best TED talks I've ever seen. And I know I'm biased, but it was about restoring the tree.

and then he was just off to the racers from that point on. And he really, I think they're going to do it. I think that tree's coming back. Yeah, they're working on it. And they have had some success with some that are the blight-resistant species that's coming back. Yeah. And a lot of storytelling around that because like the more we can, because think about it, you know, that tree was used for everything from cradles to coffins, right? It was so important in the indigenous community. But we're losing other species too.

You know, we're losing the ash. The sudden oak death out on the West Coast is terrifying. But if we don't start telling the stories of our native species and what they mean to this country and to our way of life, we're going to lose more. That's true. It's absolutely true. Okay.

That rounds everything out. How we got there, I don't know. That catches us up to the generosity of scars, the second in the trilogy that is written and it is out. and we've had you on the podcast for that we talked about but this book the generosity of scars how your stories of struggle can save lives especially your own man when i just read the title i thought about my own scars bro and how long it took me to be able to articulate how i really felt about my own scars and almost how liberating it was for me once I could actually speak

intelligently and in a way that people could understand what my scars were. And so when I read the title, I'm like, wow. And then I thought, oh, yeah, it's Scott Mann. That makes sense. The first time you were here, you were generous with your worst scars and how they may have saved a man's life. why did you finally share them with James? Because I felt like, you know, at that time, I had already come very close to taking my own life. I'd got about as dark as you can. Let's tell her by James. Sorry.

So James is another special operator. Not his real name. Right. But I had already come close to take in my life. No one in my family knew it. No one knew it. I was the only one that knew it. I did know.

Nope. That I had stood in the closet with a pistol and my son, Cooper came home. early from school. You know, and that's the reason I'm here. And I had not, at that point, I'd not talk to anybody about that. I was still going through it myself very badly. And was at a transition conference for veterans in New York City with a group of folks,

and one of them was this guy James, and we had known each other a lot of years. He was iconic in special ops community. And we stepped out because I could tell something was going on, and we were out there just like outside traffic going by everywhere, people walking, and he starts to tell me that he's going to check out, you know, and that he, and as he's talking, like, he's a million miles away as he's talking. And I was, I mean, it's scared to crap about him because I'm not sure what to say. I'm not sure what to do. And the only thing that came to me was just tell him that, man. So I just said, James, I got to tell you something. And I told him about standing in that

closet, not that long ago. And all of a sudden I could feel his eyes back on me again. Like, he didn't have that distant. He was looking. He wasn't alone. No, he was looking right at me, just locked in. And when I turned to him, he's like, you serious? I said, yeah, yeah, I'm serious. And he was like, holy God, I didn't know. And so we just, the conversation just changed. He located himself in my story. And we ended up going to get something to eat.

He ended up getting some help. And in fact, works non-profit stuff today on veteran suicide. But for me, that was such a profound moment, Bill, because it was clear to me that that scar, that embarrassing, humiliating moment that I, as of yet, had not spoken to anybody was the very thing. that James connected to when he needed it the most, you know, the thing that I didn't want to tell myself. And that changed and shifted everything for me in my transition at that moment. I was like, whatever it is, whatever it is that just happened, because I had already done some storytelling

for myself at this point and was working it, but I thought, man, like, there's something to this. And so I started just diving into not just the art of storytelling, but I wanted to know why is that happening? What allowed that to happen? What enabled that? And so I started diving into the science of storytelling as well. And it turns out that we've been doing that stuff for a long time. You know, we've been using stories to bridge and to heal and to connect and that our grandparents knew this to be true. But what we do have now that we didn't have before is the science that tells us why it actually works. Before we go to that, I got a whole bunch of questions that I have to ask.

I think it's really important that our listeners, the vast majority, already have not served in their armed forces, including yours truly. I think I told you last time. It's one of my biggest regrets. I wish I had served. And I almost did. I didn't. And I do. I wish I could say I served my country. I have so much regard for you, not because of the books or anything else. Not because you were as a tenant colonel. You could have been a private for 30 years. It wouldn't have bothered me. You served our country. And I just have so much regard for anybody who has served in the name of our freedoms in our Constitution. So I really do. I can't, I can empathize on a human level, but I don't fully understand

why so many of you guys come home with so much stuff. And you just not long ago used the term survivor's guilt, which I think is people have heard, but I don't know that they feel it or understand it fully. I don't know that they would understand why you, with a beautiful wife and a family and a great career, would even get in a closet with a gun. I don't think they understand why James, who is not a fictitious human, and it's just a fictitious name to protect his identity, would be standing on the side of a sidewalk, staring off into space,

wanting to check out. Before we go any further, try your best to Ned and the first reader level. Explain to me and our listeners that aren't served. Why? Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, first of all, to your point, and then I'll go to the question,

but, you know, scars or struggles, in this case, it's just a metaphor for struggles, is not unique to any of us. We all have them. I think there are a very unique set of scars that come with combat service, you know. And I think particularly in modern war, you know, when you're just turning and burning all the time,

going back and forth over there, I know for me the biggest thing that I dealt with was survivors' guilt in a lot of ways. There were friends of mine that left this world because of things that I directed them to do, you know. And as a colonel, as an officer, yeah, at different points in my career. So you make an order. You make a decision, you give a directive, and they execute.

And you know, the thing was, like, you know, every one of those guys did it with a smile on their face. Like, that's what they loved doing. It wasn't like they were drafted or being forced to do it. I mean, these were men that were at the top of their game, and they loved what they did. And that's what the stuff that Monty and others would tell me, you know. But when you come home and, you know, I can remember, like, there was one time we came back and we were at Baskin-Robbins, and my youngest son was getting ice cream, you know,

and he was trying to decide. He wanted to get sphinkels, sprinkles on his ice cream, you know. And so I'm sitting there watching him try to decide which kind of sprinkles he wanted, you know. And it just hit me. I'm like, you know, Allen's kids are not going to be able to talk to their dad about what sprinkles they want. They don't get to have that conversation, you know, because of a decision I made. And you just don't, you don't get over that.

Like, I don't, you know, it just stays with you forever. You know, those decisions are forever. And you do the best you can with them. But I think the fact that at the time I wasn't talking to anybody about it, you just pushing it down and pushing it down so you can stay in the fight. That was the whole thing. This was a 20-year war, you know. was fought by less than 1% of the American population. And, like, there's only 6,500 Green Berets out of 1.4 million in the military.

So, like, you're either, the way my colonel described it when we first started was you're either in Afghanistan or you're getting ready to go back. Those are the two phases of your life. You know, and for our adult life, for our married life, for our kids, that was all we knew. And then all of a sudden, it's off. You're back home. You're retired. You know, you're walking around your house.

What, supposed to go get a job? I don't know, you know, as a contractor. and it's just, it's like changing planets. It's like changing planets. And, you know, all of the snakes in your head that you've managed to keep at bay, they just, they come alive. Because the purpose, the identity, everything you knew about who you were is gone. And that's not unique to veterans. I mean, first responders, I think a lot of people deal with this.

I just think that with veterans, it is underpinned by the trauma, the corrosive nature of combat. the fact that most of that is not resolved when you come home. You've just buried it. So when you come home and you go through that change period that we all go through and it feels awful, it's exacerbated by a whole bunch of stuff you haven't dealt with and you feel isolated alone and ill-equipped to deal with it. We'll be right back. Pride is like love. You feel it in your heart. IR. Radio. Canada's number one streaming app for radio and podcasts, including IHart Pride, Canada, your favorite hits and must have party bangers plus personalized and curated playlists

like back in the day pride come together celebrate love take pride with you anytime anywhere just ask your smart speaker to play iHeart Pride Canada stream us on your phone or listen now at iHeartRadio.ca Keith Giamanka seemed like a mild-mannered suburban dad but secretly he became someone else a master of disguise who went on a crime spree.

At the time, did it seem like a crazy idea? It seemed very crazy, but I felt so desperate that I felt it was the quickest, easiest way out. Did you allow yourself to think about how it could go wrong and what that might look like? No, I didn't want to manifest that. I was trying to manifest success. Every family has its secrets. But what happens when you discover that your dad has been living a double life? That is not the look of an innocent man.

This is going to change my life and my family dynamic forever because everything that had existed prior in my reality is now untrue. Listen to Deep Cover the Family Man on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I love the sounds, the buzzing from the stadium, chanting from the fans, the announcers calling the place soccer, football at home. Why do I watch the World Cup? That's like asking me, why do I breed? I inherited that fandom from my mom. I like watching it with my dad. It's a connecting force.

From Futuro Studios, I'm Fernanda Chavari, and this is American Football, a show about soccer culture in the U.S. and its underdog roots. We go beyond the game to the people and the stories that make it great. A soccer game is a festival. It's not just a game. It's your culture. I took an elbow to my head, which cracked my skull. It is an American game. The Brazilians don't like hearing that, though. Are they the only ones that don't like that? Nobody likes that.

As we get ready for the Men's World Cup this summer, listen to American football as part of the My Coutura Podcast Network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Alec Baldwin. This season on my podcast, here's the thing I'm speaking with more artists, policymakers, and performers like composer Mark Schaman. Once you've established that you have the talent, it's about the hang. It's the pleasure of hanging out with the people that you're with. You know, Rob and I was always a great hang. We would sit in kibbits for hours and then eventually get around to the music.

That's what I mostly think of when I think of him, the time together laughing. Lawyer of Robbie Kaplan. The great gift of being a lawyer is the ability to actually change things in our society in a way that very few people can. You can really make a difference to causes in the United States if you bring the right case at the right time. Marriage equality. Yeah, Windsor's the perfect example. Director Morgan Neville. Film School teaches you all the wrong things about making documentary.

What do you want to say? Documentary is all by your ear. What do you hear? I feel like my job is listening really, really hard. Listen to Here's the Thing on the IHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you deal with this may seem like a really stupid question? Because I think it's an obvious yes. So I'm not going to ask it that way.

I'm going to say it this way. Assuming you had nightmares and dreams. No, yeah, for sure. All of that. What were those dreams? Were they of lost friends? Were they of glory scenes? Were they, what haunted you?

The things that haunted me were decisions that I made, you know, more than anything else. Is that the same for others? No, I think for others, a lot of, like my peers that were, that saw far more in a personal combat, it was, you know, was, you know, was, more of that. You know, I saw my share of that, too, but it was more for me, it was decisions that I made and consequences and trying to unwind those decisions in my dreams, you know, and pull them back. I know for some friends of mine, it was literally holding a friend in their hands, you know, that they couldn't save. For others, it was just, you know, the gore and the trauma of the combat. I mean, it varied, but the nightmares, the terrors were very real and

pronounced for a whole lot of people. And very vivid. Do you think the military can do a better job preparing you for it, or is it just a human experience? You're not supposed to, no human beings really supposed to experience those things. And no matter how hard the military tries to prepare you, you know, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, I think we've gotten a lot better.

I mean, I think, you know, I'm not saying it's anywhere near perfect. There's a ton of problems. But I do think if you look at like since World War II, you know, we've certainly. Yeah, shell shock. Yeah, right. Shell shock. and, you know, patting the dude across the helmet with the glove, putting him back on the front. You know, like, I think we've come a long way in that regard.

I think we've, you know, look at what we did to our Vietnam generation. You know, those guys went over there, fought, came home, treated terribly, and were just. And they were drafted. And they were drafted. They were, you know. They were just doing what they were legally told to do. Yep. And then left to live with that.

But you know what? Those guys, when we, when the war first started and we came through Bangor Main, returning home, they were the first guys in the airport greeting us were those Vietnam veterans. When the war ended and I was... Really? Yep, 100%. Yep, because they did not... When you came home. When we came... Because they did not want us to go through what they went through. They wanted to make sure that

there were somebody there. When the war ended, when Kabul fell, the first guys to call my phone were Vietnam veterans who said, this is going to hurt bad. We went through this with Saigon, you're going to be all right. First guys to call. You know, and of all people who had a reason not to,

like it was them. But, But it just, again, it's kind of that universal singular of what comes with combat, the ugly scars that come with it. They're rough. But there's a lot of modalities out there now that are helping us move through it in ways that we couldn't before. So I do think we're getting better. I do think as institutions, the DOD and the VA are trying. But I think there's also a lot to be said about these nonprofits and peer-to-peer movements that are out there right now. they are taken off in terms of their effectiveness.

And that's probably going to be where it really makes a difference is in the peer-to-peer grassroots stuff. That's where we're going to address this problem. It's not going to be solved institutionally. It just breaks my heart that genuinely, I mean, I'm sitting here and I have tears of my eyes. Again, I can't walk in your shoes, but I can empathize that the best of the best of us, those that choose to volunteer to stand up, to raise their hand and say, I'll stand on the wall for the freedoms for the rest of you,

come home at the end of that assignment and are so traumatized by the experience that a large percentage of them are willing to put a gun in their mouth. Well, 100%. It makes me hurt. Yeah. And then you take the fact that look at the way the Afghanistan war ended. Look at the way that Iraq has wrapped up. But just take Afghanistan, for example, one of the captains that I mentored, his name was Will.

He lives down in Texas, a D-1 baseball player, amazing team leader in special forces, lost both of his legs above the knee, right? The interpreter who was right on top of him when that happened that helped save his life, years later, is now on the run from the Taliban being hunted. And Will's walking around on prosthetics on his phone trying to save him. Now, how does that, how do we even begin? again to put a wounded combat veteran in that position. Why would he be the one trying to save that interpreter?

And what's it going to do to him if he doesn't? Now, we got him, right? But there were a whole lot of other veterans who now have the moral injury of wholesale abandonment. And the thing is, Bill, nobody talks about it. You know, I've got a second playout now called 11 days. That's what we're doing it is because we're at the 25th anniversary of 9-11 in September, the fifth anniversary of the Afghanistan withdrawal. and no one even knows it happened.

It's like a surf bro commercial, man, you know? And that's where I'm trying to really reach people with storytelling and to realize that, like, in the last couple of weeks, just guys from my old unit, they've been Baker acted, which means they take their guns away and put them into, you know, like overwatched by medical authorities. They've been treated for depression. I mean, I'm seeing a rash of mental health issues right now.

And I testified to Congress about this right after I've got to, Afghanistan collapsed. I testified to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. I said, you can watch it. I said, we're on the front end of a mental health tsunami because of how we ended this war. You know, like, you asked these guys to go do this for 20 years and build these relationships, and then you literally, literally abandoned them all in 24 hours. What do you

think is going to happen? You know, it's, that's the part to me that's just like, I can't even... The answer is, I don't think they thought about what would have. No, they didn't. It was a political football. It was. And listen, I'm very a-pilful. about this. I have been underwhelmed by every administration from the start of that war to the end of that war. I get it. You know what I mean? Like, it's not that. It's, it's, what are we doing about it now? Like, what are we doing about it now? Because we got guys right now that are really hurting from this. I was just on an intervention call yesterday with one of my former teammates. This is not going away.

All of this to explain that scars are real. Scars are real. And they're not unique to veterans. They're not. They're not. They're not. They're You said it yourself, like the first thing you said was getting to a point where I could put my scars into the world. And that's really what this book is about is it in the times that we live in right now. We are so divide. I call it the churn. We are so divided and just disengaged and distracted. And I think the one antibody to that that really is kind of our last best hope is storytelling.

And it's interesting. You take these negative things and you turn them into a positive, the generosity of scars. scars can forge trust. They can have greater impact than worldly accomplishments ever can. What do you mean by that? Well, first of all, if you think about, and this is where the cool part is, you know, permit me to geek out for two minutes here. Go.

Okay. In fact, I think you're cutest when you geek. All right. So does Moni. She's giggling. I don't know about that. Yes, she is. She's giggling.

I can see it. But one of the things that we've been able to study the brain now with these neuroscience studies with EEG machines. We can actually see the brain light up at different parts using storytelling. And it's amazing. The brain has a mandate

to make sense of the world. Kendall Haven calls it the make sense mandate. Our brains are always trying to make sense of things. Storytelling is a sense-making tool. And we've had it for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. Yeah.

Campfires. That's right. Storytelling is as old as a campfire. That's right. And I say in the book, like 10,000 years ago, if I walk into the campfire and I'm all bloodied up,

you know, and I staggered it. I'm like, let me tell you all why saber two tigers make crappy pets. You know? Like every... Gonna tell that story. Everybody's going to listen like their life depends on it. Why?

Because it does. Because in that moment, like I'm telling that story, you literally get transported into the story. You felt it in your life. When someone's telling a story and you're transported in, maybe it's a sensory detail of what something smelled like or felt like. And it's called narrative transportation. And we locate ourselves in the story now.

Then the crazy thing that starts to happen. is what's called autobiographical listening, and it starts with struggle. When someone tells their story of struggle, we autobiographically listen. In other words, my story about standing in that closet, James is now autobiographically processing his own lived experience, and he's like, whoa, wait a minute.

And he's starting to make sense of something that doesn't make sense in the safety of my story. Do you know I was shot at when I was a kid by my fourth daddy? I remember you telling me this. telling me this. Autobiographical sensory right now, one of the weirdest things is, I don't

really remember the fear. The two things I remember the most is the bullet, the sound of a bullet when it passed you. You think you would hear a loud crack, but what I heard, zzz. Well, I guess you would know, but most people don't, but

it's like, it's like the thing, something flipping really fast is what it feels. and the smell. Yeah. The gun powder. Cordyte. I remember that.

And the reason I'm saying this is when you were talking about standing in the closet with a gun, those were the two things I thought of first was the sound of the bullet. And that's because that's my reality of what a gun inside a home, autobiographically. So when you're talking about this, it's so weird. I'm identifying big time with what you just said. It makes so much sense.

That's called auto. And I bet my brain was lighten up if they had an EKG. 100%. And you've located yourself in the story. And what's cool about that is like once you locate yourself in the story, and it's always in struggle, this is the irony of all of it. We locate ourselves in the struggle part of the story. That means, and when that happens, you choose the person telling the story, not the story. You choose them.

Now we have an accelerated trust that's happening here. Now because what happens is like, okay, he's been through it. And so now I can actually let the armor down and actually you're processing that moment from your childhood. I have no idea that you're doing that as I'm telling this story. I am simply sharing with you in the service of you a moment in my life that scuffed me up so that you might find meaning or something in it that you need. I don't know what you're going to find, but it doesn't matter. I'm sharing it for you. It's not about me.

I'm sharing this struggle for you. And when you do that, you locate yourself in that story, and you start to process that moment. That's what I mean by generosity. I think it's the most generous thing we can do as parents, as leaders, as teachers, is when we can repurpose our scars in the service of other people through the stories that we tell. Because guaranteed, somebody's going to find something that they need right there in that moment, somebody that's really needing it. And you never know what it's, most time, you're not even going to know.

You're not even going to know what it was. But, you know, if you think about, like, what you went through, with that. There are so many universals there with you and guys that have been shot at and have been to combat. You don't have to be a veteran to have that specific connection. And that's the beauty of it. I think that's why you connected with your guys so much as a coach, because they located themselves in the stories that you would tell them. And they saw what was possible for their lives. And that concludes part one of our conversation with Scott Mayan. You don't want to miss part two. It's now available to listen to. Together, guys, we can change this.

country. But it starts with you. I'll see in part two. It's that time to put on your jersey and wave your flag, whoever you root for. Why do I watch the walk up? That's like asking me, why do I breed? And it's beautiful. The guys are young and cute and fit. It's not just a game. It's your culture. I like watching it with my dad. It's a connecting force. From Futuro Studios, I'm Fernanda Chavari, and this is a American Football, a show about soccer culture in the U.S. and its underdog roots. Listen to American Football on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For years, the unhoused have been presented as a monolith in mainstream media. Weedian House is a podcast that's changing the narrative.

I'm Theo Henderson, and I created the show why I was unhoused on the streets of Los Angeles. We've grown into a two-time Webby Award-winning podcast. the only podcast that shares unhoused stories and news from the unhoused perspective. Listen to Wey and House on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Here's something that should not be as complicated as it is, getting a racist statue removed. And here's something that should be a whole lot easier than it is, getting a new one put up in its place. I'm Akila Hughes, and Rebel Spirit Season 2 is about both of those things. As I was watching these statues come down, I was thinking about what it meant that I grew up in a majority black city in which there were more homages to enslavers than there were to enslave people.

Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every family has its secrets. But what happens when you discover that your dad has been living a double life? That is not the look of an innocent man. Is everyone lying to me about who they are? I felt such desperation. I felt it was what I had to do. Listen to deep cover the family man on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.