Revisionist History - Medal of Honor: Journeys of Courage with J.R. Martinez

Episode Date: June 5, 2025

Medal of Honor, Pushkin's podcast about those who have received the United States’ top military decoration, returns for Season 2. Malcolm, who hosted Season 1, sits down with the new host J.R. Martinez, a U.S. Army veteran whose life was profoundly changed by a roadside bomb in Iraq in 2003, to hear his journey of finding purpose through storytelling and learn what compelling stories of heroism are to come. Hear more stories about those who have done the improbable and unexpected, sacrificing something in the name of something much bigger than themselves on Medal of Honor: Stories of Courage, available wherever you get podcasts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin. This is an iHeart Podcast. Two days ago, we celebrated Memorial Day to honor and remember the US military personnel who died in service to the country. It's time to reflect on their courage and sacrifices, which is something we've been doing in this new season of Medal of Honor. The reason we make this show at Pushkin is simple. Courage is contagious.

These are stories we think everyone benefits from hearing. And we've got new stories for you coming up in the next few weeks. From Robert Blake, the first black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor

above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. But before we get to our new stories, I wanted to kick off Season 2 by introducing you to our new host, JR Martinez. JR is a U.S. Army veteran whose life changed forever when a roadside bomb exploded under his vehicle in Iraq in

2003. After over 34 surgeries for his severe burns, JR discovered a profound purpose. Helping others by sharing his own story. I can't imagine anyone better suited to guide us through these powerful stories of valor and sacrifice. Hi JR, nice to meet you. Hello Malcolm, nice to meet you as well. Welcome. We are so happy to have you taking over as host of Medal of Honor and you are such a step up for me, it's unbelievable. You're actually a veteran as opposed to just someone who was pretending to know about the army.

Well, thank you, Malcolm. But, you know, when you mentioned like, well, you're actual veteran versus someone who's pretend, I think that's the beauty of what you've created and the team has put together in season one and now leading into season two. I think if we can have more people that have never worn the uniform, that have maybe no real connection to the military, to come and learn, and then hopefully at the accumulation of each episode in the season, people are feeling that much more connected and attached to the stories. I think it goes both ways.

I think it's nice to have, yes, somebody that has served in the military, and it maybe feels like there's some credibility, but man, as someone who's served and as someone who's been around the military, and it maybe feels like there's some credibility. But man, as someone who's served and as someone who's been around the military for a long time, season one, when I listened to it, I learned so much, so many things that I had no clue about. So I think we're all in this boat together, quite frankly, just going on this journey

of really discovering what the human spirit is truly capable of. You know, the moment that season one hit home for me was, I was giving a talk in Orlando and somebody, it was the Q and A and someone asked me about Medal of Honor and I was saying, I want to do the show because I felt there were all these incredible stories that needed to be told and that this was something going into 2026, which is the 250th anniversary of this country's founding, I thought

it was really important to tell stories that united us all. And then one by one throughout the audience, people started standing up and saying, I served in Marine Corps for some, I was in the Navy, and I listened to that show and I felt like I was finally being heard. Yeah. But what we did, what I was a part of was fine. I just, it was incredibly moving. Really made me think that there's something really important and lovely about Medal of Honor, this storytelling journey that we're on. I have always felt this level of

uncomfort with imposter syndrome, right? I was 19 when I was injured and I found myself sort of thrust into these different circles and there's a lot of these conversations that are happening that I have no idea what people are talking about or truly understand them. But the more that I've traveled all over the world and have met such incredible people who have served in the military or have not, I guess it made me a little uncomfortable when people would say, JR, look at what you've done. They would elevate me. And I just felt uncomfortable with that because I'm like, you have no idea. There are so many people out there that are walking amongst you in your community.

When I get introduced and I always ask for those that have served in the military or family members to please remain standing. And I challenge the audience. I say, look around at the people standing amongst you. Look at them. Do they look like me? Do they look like what most of us think of when we think of veterans? My scars and what my body's been through and a lot of my friends who are missing limbs or have traumatic brain injuries or just have something physically

that you can immediately identify and say that person's been through something. But I can't tell you the amount of times, Malcolm Malcolm I've stood next to my friends who have served just as long as me that have done a hell of a lot more than I did, have done multiple tours and people come right up to me and they say thank you and they do it in the most sincere place from their heart and I appreciate that but it's about reframing that. And I think when you talk about how many people stand up and say, we feel seen and we feel heard.

And I think that's, that's part of what this series has done and is hopefully going to continue to do is allow people to tell these stories that need to be told. And this is a perfect opportunity where you and the team have created something that it just allows me to completely geek out on these badass human beings. And they are badass. They are badass, man. And let me tell you something like if we all just cared a little bit more, if we all just eliminated all the other things and just operated from this place of just pure humanity, what

are the possibilities, man? They're endless. Yeah. What did your family think about it when you signing up? My mother's from Central America, El Salvador. My father's from Mexico. My mother came here as an undocumented immigrant and met my father here. And about a year and a half later, I was born in Louisiana.

And so I'm a Southern boy and I grew up in Louisiana. I lived there for the first nine years, then moved to Arkansas. And then right before my senior year of high school moved to Georgia. And listen, man, I was a kid that was, I was struggling. There was a lot of things that I was having to navigate. Nine years old, I'm getting myself up for school by myself,

getting myself to school. My mom worked a graveyard shift. So it was a lot of responsibility. And, um, my father wasn't in my life. My mother was involved in some pretty abusive relationships when I was younger. Demographically, I was one of the first Hispanic kids in Arkansas. And I struggled with that and I would get into trouble a lot. And academically, like I didn't really excel because I would be suspended from school three, five, seven days at a time.

My defense mechanism was always to be like, well, this is dumb anyways, just be the funny guy. You don't really quite understand how those things are going to play into your life until later. And so I moved to Georgia, my senior high school and things got better because I felt like the community was different. And I started thinking about when I'm listening to Molly as a counselor talk about the way she leans into her students.

The counselor calls me to his office and he says, hey, you're a senior. I'm looking at your transcript. You're not going to graduate on time. You don't have enough credits. You don't have the grades. What's going on? I vividly remember that interaction with him and I was taken back by that question because that's a simple question, but no one had ever asked me that question.

And he says, do you want to graduate on time? I said, I do. And he says, okay, well, let's put a plan together. And I start on this journey to graduate from high school. I had this vision, man, this really naive perspective that I was going to go to college and play football because that's what I see on Sundays and on ESPN. I went to the school and they told me that I could come to school there, but I would not be eligible to play sports at the college level for two years because of academics. So I was like,

I'm not going to college then if I can't go to play football because that's how we are. And as cliche as it may sound, I mean, there's a reason they have them because to some degree it works. I was home one day watching TV and a commercial popped up about the military. And it wasn't a brand new concept. Listen to the town that I graduated from high school. I mean, recruiters had a presence at the school as they do in most, right? But this was probably an area you're really going to try to get some kids that have no alternatives. And then one of my football

coaches that serves, I was like, you know what, let me go down and talk to this recruiter and see what this is about. But I didn't tell my mother. So I go down to this recruiter, I go to all the branches, kind of skipped over the Navy. I was like, I don't think I see myself being on the ship. And then I went to the Marine Corps and they said, four years, we want you four years, the minimum. And I was like trying to negotiate with the recruiter. And I was like, what about three? No, four years. I don't think you negotiate with the Marine Corps.

And so then I was like, let me go next door. And I went to the army and the army was like, we'll take it. Whatever you want to commit to, we'll take it. And he gave me all this information. He put it in the folder and I rushed home and I felt elated. I felt like I had found a solution for my life at this point. And I remember going into the house and saying to my mom, I figured it out. I know exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to join the army.

And my mom said, absolutely not. Now to give people context why she said no so quickly was in the early eighties in El Salvador, there was a civil war that was happening. So my mother understands what war does to people. My mother has experienced that. When I was three years old, one of my sisters passed away from an illness that she was born with. So my mother has lost a child. I graduated high school

in 2002 and we already had troops in Afghanistan. We as a country were at war already. So my mother understanding that understood that if I joined the military during this time of war, there's a good chance of her losing another child, her only son. Listen, as a parent, that fear kicks in and you're like, absolutely not. And here's one of the most incredible gifts my mother gave me that I don't think she intended. I think it was just how she was trying to show up for me. My mother, in the midst of her listening to her son talk about joining the military during a time of war, she pulled up a chair and sat down right in front of me and said, okay, tell me why you believe this is the best thing for you.

At the end of this two-hour conversation, my mother said, if you believe this is the best thing for you. At the end of this two hour conversation, my mother said, if you want to join the military, if you believe that's what's best for you, I'll support you. And I just think about the courage. We talk about courage a lot, right? With Medal of Honor recipients. And you think about the courage it takes as a parent

who has already experienced the worst thing that a parent can experience. And yet to put that aside and say, I'm there for you. And so off I go, man, off I go to the army. I joined as 11 Bravo. So I'm an infantryman. I go to basic training, Fort Benning, Georgia. I get assigned to my unit four months later, which was the 101st out of Fort Campbell,

Kentucky, which is just outside of Nashville. 19 years old, you know, young kid in this unit. I was one of the youngest. It was me and two other people that were the youngest. I was definitely treated less. Here's this young guy. A lot of these guys had a lot of training and experience and 19 years old, you put him in a unit during a time of conflict. And for the most part, he's going to feel like incredibly naive, like

nothing's going to happen. And even though I raised my right hand and knew that war was a possibility, I never thought it would be my reality. And sure enough, one of my sergeants one day came and pulled me aside and said that I needed to be prepared because we would be deploying sometime soon. And my response to this man, my platoon sergeant, who clearly outranks me by a decade and a half, my response to this man at the time was, sergeant, I just got out of basic, I just got here, relax. Imagine telling your superior to just chill, bro. That's essentially what I did.

Having met you now for half an hour, I can imagine you saying that. Thank you. That's a compliment. And so, and so of course, after I was done doing pushups and sit-ups for telling my superior to just relax, you know, it really set in that, hey, he was trying to tell me that physically I was fine, mentally I was not ready. And sure enough, a few weeks later, I found myself on a plane heading over to war at the age of 19, going to Iraq. Yeah, it all happened fast. Where were you stationed in Iraq?

In Kuwait, like there was these little bases set up and there were Camp New York and Camp Pennsylvania, and I think it was Camp something else. And then once the conflict started, which was in March of 2003, we crossed over into Iraq. But we were one of those units, at least my company was, we were just in this holding pattern. Just a lot of our gear was not even there because they were on ships still coming over.

And our job early on was to escort different jobs in the military from point A to point B. So we were part of these big convoys of helping people in the medical field or supplies or you name it, just get from here to there. And I just kind of going through the motions, not quite sure I understood my purpose, my role, the agenda, just going through it to be honest. And until one of my commanders one day introduced this concept of service. And after that, I started to buy in and look around and say, I have a role. I might not be the biggest member of this team and the most

experienced, but I'm part of this team. I started to then plot, man, I'm not going to do this for three years that I originally thought I'm going to do this for 20 years. I could vividly remember nights where I'm sitting in a Humvee in the middle of the desert and looking up at this big, beautiful, bright sky. And I'm sitting there just thinking about when I come back to the States, I'm going to go to pathfinder. I'm going to go to Ranger.

I'm going to like, I'm 19. And then of course life decides, we're going to kind of take you on a little bit of a journey here, my friend, and we're going to change all that. And it did, it changed a lot. When did you have your accident? You were how long into the army? It was seven months. Seven months. And seven months. I want to make sure the enlisted of this and I have to hit like the back button,

15 seconds to 30 seconds to be like, wait, did he say seven months he was in country? No, I enlisted in September, September to December of 2002 was a basic. And then January of 03, I arrived. March of 03, I deployed. April of 03, I was injured. So just a few days shy of me being in country a full month, I sustained my

injury, which I was driving a Humvee through a city called Carbala when the front left tire of the Humvee that I was driving ran over a roadside bomb. And, uh, I was trapped inside and there were three other guys in a Humvee with me, but they were thrown out of the vehicle and they all walked away with minor physical injuries. And it's important for me to emphasize that because although physically they were okay, emotionally and mentally they were not. I was trapped inside and this Humvee caught on fire and five minutes trapped inside of this Humvee man fighting for your life. And you realize everything that you had been exposed to for 19 years of your life has prepared you for that very moment to survive and to fight. And I kept telling myself while I was in that Humvee, there was no reason to believe that

someone's going to come and pull you out because you talk to any individual, military or not, that has had a near-death experience will tell you that whatever timeframe it was, that they were experiencing it, it feels like it's amplified by 10, right? So even though it was five minutes, it felt like 50 minutes, right? It just feels like no one's coming to your aid until they finally do. But throughout that five minutes, I would almost trick my brain. I would talk to myself and trick my brain to believing that someone was coming. They were coming.

Eventually, two of my sergeants pulled me out, started the medevac process, and I ended up in San Antonio, Texas. And I was in a medical induced coma for three weeks. Oh, wow. And woke up in Texas and the doctor's and I was in a medical induced coma for three weeks. Oh, wow. And woke up in Texas and the doctor's like, do you know where you are? I was like, this doesn't look like the last place

I was in. Yeah. He says, you're in Texas, and that's the burn center for the military. How much of your body was burned? About 34%. Yeah. It's, if you looked at my body or any burn survivor, it's almost like looking at a map, right? Like it's just kind of the path and the structure and the patches. But the biggest thing

at the time that was threatening whether I was going to survive or not was not so much the burns to my body was the inhalation damage, the smoke that I inhaled. Oh, yeah. For the five minutes I was trapped inside, I was inhaling all this smoke from the fire. So they weren't sure if I was gonna make it. This is 2003, they were like, we don't know if he's gonna make it. And they told my mother, if he makes it, that was a lot of the language they were using with her. Your mother's worth nightmares, the very thing she feared.

The very thing she feared. You know what's interesting, Malcolm, is I live my life. And some people, my wife would tell you, you're probably one of the most fearless people that I know. And she's used the words at times, maybe reckless. You just think nothing's going to happen. I was like, that's debatable and subjective about reckless, you know, but the reason why,

to some degree, I'm operating from this place of like just fearlessness, if you will, I'm deathly terrified of snakes. I'm scared of snakes. I don't like snakes. I don't know what it is. Never had a bad encounter with one. No one close to me has ever had one, but I just deathly terrified of snakes. And I remember when I came out of my medical induced coma and talking to my mother about a lot of these dreams, and a lot of it was the drugs as well, right? And a lot of these dreams that I had, hallucinations, whatever.

And I remember vividly telling her, I remember this dream that her and I were at some party. There were a lot of people there. And I'm sitting on the couch, and all of a sudden there's this snake that's slithering through the room coming right at me. And the snake just lunges right at me and goes right into my mouth. And I fall on the ground and I'm trying to pull this snake out. And everyone that was in the room rushes over and instead of trying to pull the

snake out, they're pushing the snake in. And I'm looking at my mom and my mom's standing over these people looking down on me and she's just terrified and I'm terrified. And I was like, that makes absolutely no sense. And then the more I started talking about my experiences and things, then I started remembering throughout my entire training, when I found out that I was going to deploy the one thing I was terrified of, I wasn't terrified, believe it or not, that I would, I could get shot, that I could get stabbed, that I would die.

The thing that I was terrified the most was a landmine. I was terrified of those. In our training, you have to learn how to spot them and then essentially diffuse them. And what was the thing that got me? A landmine, the thing I feared the most. My mother had this fear, and what was the thing that happened? Your snake.

Right? Yeah. What I later put together was that snake, what really was happening was that was when I was being intubated in country because I met some people later that were part of a medical unit that treated me in country and they said that I was fighting them off, that I was telling them I was okay. And clearly my body's going through shock and they're saying they were trying to intubate me and I was fighting them. And so they had to get a team of people to come and help intubate me,

to hold me down so they can intubate me. But my body presented that as the thing that I'm terrified the most is a snake. And so when I think about those things, it starts to make me say, I can't operate from this place of fear because the thing that I fear the most ends up catching up to me and getting me at the end. So I have to find a way to lean into this somehow. And it's a lesson, a hard lesson I had to learn and what I had to go through. But I'm grateful that I learned it at the age of 19, 20 years old. I turned 20 in the hospital, 21 in the hospital, 22 in the hospital.

You were in the hospital for how long? Almost three years. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Why you were there, you met a nurse who made quite an impact on you. Yeah. She is not the same one you talked about in season one. Her name is Mary Walker.

You're Mary Walker from season one who wore pants, right? And wanted to wear pants all the time, but her name was Mary Walker and she's a nurse. Listen, when you're in a hospital setting for as long as I was, or even whatever amount of time you're in, that staff, they're not your doctors, your nurses, your respiratory therapist. They kind of become your family, especially the experience that I had. There was such incredible human beings. I think as much as you could say it takes a special person to join the military, be a first responder, be a teacher.

I think equally anybody to be in the medical field, it takes a special individual, especially in the burn ward. I'm not in the business of comparison, but I will tell you that I've talked to a lot of my friends who have sustained a variety of injuries and it seems like burns recovering from that probably hands down takes it. Just the amount of pain and discomfort you're put through.

And we take for granted what the skin does for us until we don't have it. And so six months after I was injured, I'm just killing time between appointments, hanging out at the nurse's desk. And Ms. Walker says to me, JR, why don't you go and visit that patient who just arrived and is struggling. And I said, and say what? And she says, just go and talk to him. And I was like, absolutely not. She said, why not? And I said, I'm 20 years old.

What am I going to say? I'm not a therapist. I'm not like, I'm not a counselor. What am I going to say? I have nothing to say to this individual. And she just kept insisting. And so because we were on that dynamic of, we were more like family and she was older. So it was almost like my mom telling me to go clean your room.

And I responded to her as any child would to a parent for the most part, where I was like, oh, fine, I'll do it. And I remember opening the door to this patient's room and every room in the hospital has these huge windows that is Texas. So it's a lot of light, a lot of sunlight. So let's a lot of natural sunlight come in, But it was completely pitch black dark in the room in the middle of the day. And I'm standing in the doorway and I just feel something in my stomach, man. And I just like, Oh, I'm so uncomfortable. I don't want to walk into this room. And everything in me was telling me to just leave.

And I had a moment where I had to pause and I had to say to myself, that's a human being. What message is that sending to that individual if I just storm out of here? And so I just had to remind myself when I was in that position and all I wanted was someone to come and visit me. And so I just approached his bed, asked him a couple of questions, basic stuff. What's your name? Where are you from? What unit you're in? What happened? And then it turned into a 45 minute conversation to the point when I said, hey man, I'm going to come back tomorrow. And I said, hey, you want me to bring you anything tomorrow? He said, no, man, all I need is a visit.

Oh, wow. And I was, hey, you want me to bring you anything tomorrow? He said, no, man, all I needed is a visit. Oh, wow. And I was like, okay. I started to walk out of the room and before I could exit, something caught my attention. He had turned the light above his bed on, but he was starting to get out of his bed as well. And he was opening the curtain to the window. That was one of the early moments that I started to really pay attention. And what I paid attention to on that particular day was I shed some light. There was something that I was able to provide that I changed sort of the path to a degree. And I exited

the room and approached the head doctor of the Burren Ward and said, can I visit patients every day? And he said, absolutely. And I started visiting patients every single day. Love that, JR. We'll continue with JR's story right after this quick break. When you talk about courage, this is probably of all the things that I'm most proud of that I've done.

One thing that I was reminded of is I kept listening to, especially when you talk about like Henry Johnson story of season one and from Albany and now he's paraded in New York City and he's promised all these incredible things and he's invited to St. Louis to speak in front of 5,000 people and this man did this incredible heroic thing as a black man and he gets on stage and he tells the truth about how he's treated about how other black service members are treated he he talks about the challenges he experienced and people didn't like that and it it takes courage to do that, but to know that essentially everybody turned their back on him. Fast forward about a year after I'm injured, I'm now involved in a nonprofit. And it's a nonprofit to help service members, their families, and

one of the biggest gaps that I kept witnessing was when I would go into these rooms and talk to these patients, all the care was taken care of. Their families' lodging was taken care of. Their meals were taken care of. But what was not taken care of, if you came from a two income household, or even if your parents are the ones that are having to relocate to be by your side, well guess what? The bills are still accumulating at home. Who's paying those bills? So I would be in these rooms visiting these patients and their families were there. And I would be privy to these conversations of talking about how are we going to pay this?

How are we going to pay that? And I just thought that was such an injustice. And I thought that was such a horrible thing that they have to navigate. They can't even heal because they're too busy trying to figure out finances. And so in this nonprofit, I started going on TV and talking about the nonprofit and what people could do and donate. And people started donating. The nonprofit would give me a check of $2,500, $5,000. And I would go into these patients room and I would say, here's a check to pay for whatever it is.

So you don't have to worry about that at least. And then all of a sudden I get a call from my commander in San Antonio. I'm part of the wounded brigade, right? All the wounded troops are part of this battalion. And so I go into his office and it's him and a couple of sergeant majors and a first sergeant standing there. And they're like, the general wants to speak to you.

They drive me up to the general's office and they're marching me in. And the general's like, you can't do that. And I said, do what? He said, you can't as an active duty service member, you can't endorse a private organization. And I was like, oh, I didn't know that. And I was like, but sir, what about, there's gaps. And lack of better words, he just listened,

that's not your problem, you can't do that. And I said, well, what happens if I continue to do it? He says, you can be article 15. You can be kicked out. And I said to him, I said, if that's the consequence to do what I feel is right, then kick me out. Kick me out, sir. He didn't like that, of course. I was injured as a private and I woke up as a

specialist corporal. Like I just instantly got promoted. But he didn't like that there was this younger ranking telling a one-star general, do it then, challenging him. But I felt it was right, man. And sure enough, I got called into the office again and I pretty much stood my ground and felt like it was the right thing. And I said, unless the military steps up and is able to meet those families'

needs in that capacity, you know, that's what, when I hear at least season one, and you hear about these stories and read about them, you're like, man, the courage it took for a lot of these individuals. And just like them, you know, I've had people come up to me over the years that said, man, it's what you did. And I'm like, I don't feel any different. I don't feel I should be elevated any more than anybody else. I'd like to believe that we would all do this, right?

I mean, that's my hope at least. Tell me a little bit about clearly spend an enormous amount of time talking to people who have been through something consequential, for lack of a better word. And that's what this show is about, is getting people to talk about something really, really, really big and important and hard. How do you get people to talk about something this hard? I think a lot of people just simply need to feel like you're listening. I always talk about this distinction between listening and hearing.

Like I'm actively listening to you, Malcolm, so I could actually repeat back to you the question you just asked me. Almost verbatim. If I'm hearing, I'm sorry, what'd you say? Right? You start to get into that. If I start looking at my watch, if I start looking at a clock you say? Right? You start to get into that. If I start looking at my watch, if I start looking at a clock, if I start, there's all these other things. People start to lose this interest.

And I think when you think of Molly's story from season one, and she talked about listening, she talked about the importance of being present and listening, but then equally, not just listening in the traditional sense, but for her as a teacher, ELA listening, but then equally, not just listening in the traditional sense, but for her as a teacher, ELA teacher, she's like listening to the writings, paying attention to what kids are putting down on paper, right? When they're allowed that freedom to go and express and write about whatever. What I've discovered, when I find myself in the presence of an individual who may feel a little bit more open to talking, I need to make sure that I'm equally open to listening. And in order for me to get to that point in my life, I had to do a tremendous amount of

work on myself first and foremost, because earlier on when people would share things, I would realize some things triggered me. Whether it was related to the injury, whether it was a military story or if it was just something they experienced outside of the military, things would trigger me. And I had to ensure that if I was going to be able to show up for people, I needed to do the work on myself so I could be fully present. But what did it for me, I could tell you that the physical recovery obviously was challenging, there's no secret there.

But the emotional and mental recovery that came after I left the hospital when I was 22, 23, 24 was really challenging. I was not a pleasant kid to be around for the most part. I was drinking, I was angry, I was resentful. I would take it out on people, little things would trigger me and my friend would say, man, you go in and you bite and you latch on and you don't let go. And it's just because I was carrying so much and not just from my military experience, but from prior. And this person that told me that was also a veteran

and we worked together at this nonprofit. We were around each other a lot. And one day we were on a trip with some other veterans at a fundraiser. And after dinner, we're driving back to the hotel and somebody says something and I just, again, I'm in a bad place and I make a snarky remark and this individual is driving and he tells me to chill out. somebody says something and I just again I'm in a bad place and I make a snarky remark and my this

Individual is driving and he tells me to chill out simple. Hey man chill out, but I didn't like that So I snap back at him mouthing and I told him pull the car over. Let's fight because that was the only tools I had and he pulls over and I'm getting out of the car and these other two vets are trying to hold me back from getting out of the backseat of the car and you get some dark humor when you go through something like this. So one of the guys is a double amputee and you know, legs below the knee and he's holding onto me around my waist and I'm just pulling the sled with weights and all of a sudden you hear, and his prosthetics pop out. So I'm carrying half of a body. He eventually lets go and then he low crawls back over to his legs, pops them back in and I'm coming around and trying to fight the driver and the driver wants no part of it.

So he tells me to get back in the car. I get back in the car and I'm just, I'm just, oh. And we get back to the hotel, man. And we're all getting out and the driver, his name is Dan puts the window down. He says, Jr, get back in the car. And I sit in the passenger seat and he tells me to cry. And I was like, what do you mean? He says, man, you need to cry. And I was like, no, I don't.

And he said it again, and before he knew it, I just started crying. And all of a sudden, I just started, like, sharing a lot of things and the power of that. Ten minutes ago, I was trying to severely injure this man. I was just so angry and mad. The irony of that is I'm five nine, but 200 pounds. He's six foot four, 285 pounds. So luckily he didn't engage because had he done that, it wouldn't

have worked out so well for me. But instead he chose love. He chose to show up as a human being. And every time we would end the conversation prior to this interaction over the phone or in person, he would always say, I love you. He would always tell me that. I thought that was weird. Like I was just like, okay. And I would always respond.

All right, bro. Because my dad wasn't in my life. I never had a male figure in my life. So I wasn't comfortable with that. I didn't know how to receive that. And that night in that car and that parking lot of the hotel at two, three o'clock in the morning, I looked at him and I said, thank you. I love you.

And to tell you that my life instantly like that, it just changed. My willingness to be vulnerable, but in the right space with the right person. Not everyone's ready. Not everyone's equipped to be that listener, right? But Dan had done so much work on himself because of things he experienced in his life that he was able to show up for me in that way, in that moment. Now I've passed that on. I've come in contact with a few of my friends that I served with in the military that reached

out years later and we start talking every single day because they're not in the great place and I end the conversation by telling them I love them. And they don't say it back initially and that's okay. I'm still going to say it because I do. And I talked to my friend the other day. We both met when we joined the military in basic training, both young, 18, 19 year old kids, naive, no clue in the world, the journey we were going to go on. Before I hang up, I say, I love you, man. And he says, I love you too.

And we hang up. And to normalize that, to normalize the ability to talk and to share without judgment, I think is what we need. We need more people to feel that it's okay to share those things. It's okay to talk about those things, that there's a tremendous amount of power and strength that comes from sharing those things. That's beautiful, yeah. Tell me what's coming up that's exciting. What are you excited about? Which of the listeners out there expect?

Just a continuation of season one in regards to learning about some incredible individuals and learning about their very simple lives prior to the military and the things that they were exposed to prepared them to be these incredible individuals that went on to do such incredible things. From learning about somebody that would go catch chickens in the middle of the night, who knew that that was like actually a job. And to say that individual was like, I felt prepared for the military, not because I played

sports, but because I would go catch chickens. Yeah. Like your professional chicken chaser from that to Alvin York, who did some incredible things in the military. We're going to talk about an astronaut. We're going to pivot a little bit and talk about something completely different that is not sort of the traditional. I mean, you did that in season one with Molly, right?

And then we're bringing that in with a female astronaut. And, and I'm just excited as someone who's in awe of these individuals and what they've done. And so I hope that people that have listened to season one continue to stay and not only that, but bring more of their friends and family along for the journey. I actually have had from season one, the subjects that you guys covered, I brought a lot of those stories to our dinner table, to my wife, to my 13 year old daughter. I can tell you that when I'm sitting there talking about these individuals, my daughter is sitting there. That's a critical age where they're like, okay, can I go do something else?

Okay, I don't want to hear that. And she's engaged. And I think these are beautiful stories that I think the entire family needs to hear, buddies sitting around together need to hear more of. You created something great, Malcolm. And I just want to make sure that I'm doing not only you, but the team and these stories justice, you know. No question about that.

It's incredible what this show is all about, man. And I hope that we can all see a little bit of ourselves in each one of these individuals because there's a little bit of us in every single one of them or a little bit of them in every single one of us. We just got to be willing to discover it. Yeah. Thank you, JR. This has been wonderful. Thank you. This episode of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage was produced by Jess Shane.

Our editor is Ben Nadaph Haferi. Sound design and additional music by Jake Gorski. Our executive producer is Constanza Gallardo. Fact-checking by Arthur Gompertz. Original music by Eric Phillips. We also want to hear from you. Send us your personal story of courage or highlight someone else's bravery. Email us at medalofhonor at pushkin.fm. You might hear your stories on future episodes of Medal of Honor or see them on our social channels at Pushkin Pods. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus to get early episodes of Medal of Honor ad free starting May 28th. Subscribers also get bonus episodes, full audiobooks, and early ad-free

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