The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Karma in Effect by Richard Kennon

Episode Date: March 21, 2026

Karma in Effect by Richard Kennon Veteranauthorandspeaker.com https://www.amazon.com/Karma-Effect-Richard-Kennon/dp/B0G6HH7XVQ Karma in Effect takes you on a journey from the decision by the Department of Defense to transition an Army Reserve chemical unit to a civil affairs company (provisional) in order to ease the stress of numerous deployments faced by civil affairs soldiers during the Global War on Terrorism. It begins with the selection of individuals to fill the necessary positions on the unit battle roster. From there, the soldiers must successfully complete the military occupational specialty civil affairs specialist transition course. The newly created 1411th Civil Affairs Company is then ordered to complete pre-deployment training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, prior to deploying to Kuwait. In Kuwait, the soldiers complete additional training while acclimating to the desert climate. The company then begins a twelve-month deployment to Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. This group of highly skilled citizen soldiers conducted civil-military operations in southern Iraq to improve security and stability in the region. The unit performed over three hundred combat missions in one of the most dangerous areas of Iraq without losing a single soldier. The author also explains the process of redeploying the unit from Iraq back to the United States and demobilizing the personnel in record time. The story does not end there; it also shares the difficulties some soldiers faced in transitioning back home after the war. The book tells of the bonds formed among soldiers on the battlefield. The characters’ stories include humor, courage, dedication, tragedy, camaraderie, and accomplishment.

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Chris Foss, one of the TikTok and the hell those crazy places on the internet. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it's not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today, an amazing young man on the show, Richard Kennan joins us. He is the author of the latest book to come out, called Karma in Effect. out November 13th, 2025.

We're going to get into with him, talk about his military service and experience and all that good stuff. Welcome to the show. How are you, sir? I'm doing great. Thank you. Thanks for having me on the show.

Thanks for coming, Richard. We really appreciate it. Give us any dot com's websites, social media, wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs. Yeah, so I am Richard Kennan on Facebook and on Instagram. And I do have a web page that I recently got up online it is veteran author and speaker.com. So give us a 30,000 overview.

What's inside this book? The book, Carmen, in effect, is about the Army Reserve. It was a chemical company that I was the first sergeant of out of Edison, New Jersey. And we were selected, along with six other Army Reserve chemical units, due to the serious need there was with ongoing deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan for the global. war on terrorism, there was an increased need for civil affairs type of units on the battlefield to support those combat commanders over there. It was decided somewhere in the Department of Defense and the Department of the Army that they would pick chemical units and retrain them to be civil affairs units and deploy them to Iraq for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Wow. That's not an uncommon thing. It has happened before in past conflicts and wars. It is very rare that a unit will be completely retrained as a whole for a whole different mission and a whole different occupational specialty. So the book is about our unit, our retraining, our mobilization at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and then deployment for 12 months to Kuwait and then on to Iraq for Operation Iraqi Freedom. It's the story of the soldiers that I served with over there in the job, the mission that they performed and the outstanding success of the mission overall.

It's what the book is overall about. This is the newly created 1411th, 1,400th, 11th, 1,411th. 1,11th. 1411th, Civil Affairs Company, yet. Civil Affairs Company. 1411, Civil Affairs Company, yes. Fort Dix, New Jersey. Boy, that's a long ways to go to Kuwait there in Iraqi, too.

Probably a whole different. Right. You probably have to pump your own gas there in, way. You do pump your own gas in New Jersey, yes. Yeah, I like that. I like that. Is there a law in New Jersey that you're not allowed to pump your own gas?

Is that still a thing over? There is. Yeah, I believe there's another state that has the same oil, too, too, in the U.S. Is there really? Wow, I did not know that. I always, every time somebody mentions Jersey, I'm like, I love to pump my own gas. But, you know, you're over there protecting those oil fuels to pump the gas there. Is this more, is this a memoir or is this just kind of a coverage of that area?

time in your life. The book is a memoir. It does tell a little bit about my military story, but the gist of the stories in the book of the stories of the soldiers that I served with, how they were able to be retrained to do something completely new. They had never done before. Total different type of mission on the battlefield or in the battle space from doing chemical,

biological, radiological, nuclear surveillance and decontamination, those types of things that a chemical company would normally perform. as its mission. Civil Affairs units perform assessments on the battlefield for infrastructure that needs to be rebuilt and do assessments in sewer

water, environmental, agriculture, trash, education, all those type of things. They provide a combat multiplier to those combat commanders over there in the battle space to let them know what type of environment and what type of battle space

they're going to be operating in, performing their combat operations. The book talks a lot about that. It starts with the selection of soldiers to fill the slots in the unit because there were a lot of requirements to be classified to even be selected to be trained to civil affairs. So we had to make sure the soldiers that we selected for that mission met the qualifications and that they were also qualified to get that military occupational, especially after they completed the training. So there were a lot of requirements they had to meet. So The commander and I hand-selected as many soldiers as we could from our chemical company to fill those positions with that civil affairs company.

And then we ended up having to take on augmentees from other units around the country because we were not able to successfully fill the 31 positions that would be in a civil affairs company. So we ended up taking on soldiers from different units and different specialties from around the country that also joined us. So that added a whole different element to the ballgame of soldiers working together, not only doing a new mission and a new specialty, but also with people that they'd never worked with before. So it made it a lot more difficult. It probably was great for team building stuff, wasn't it? It's great for, you know, being reskilled sometimes on different things

is a bit of a challenge because people like, who move my cheese, you know, who's taking my job description? you know and as human beings we're not that susceptible we're not that excited about change sometimes but you guys take it on the chin and do this and where were you going with your story there before when I interrupt you and cut in oh no you're fine I was just saying that so the book covers the training the selection of the soldiers in the training pipeline the officers trained separate than the enlisted people in the school the officers went to fort brag north carolina to the Army Special Warfare Center there

where all the branches of the military train their special operators. So our officers went there for their training. Our enlisted personnel did their training with the first Civil Affairs training brigade at Fort Dix, New Jersey. The same training brigade our officers trained with at Fort Bragg, but we trained separately

at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Now, I know. Good. Oh, from there, we get active duty orders putting all those reserve soldiers on active duty and then mobilizing them to Fort Dix to go through the whole mobilization process before deploying. Do over 300 missions I understand here. Combat missions are the most dangerous areas of Iraq without losing a single soldier. That's quite a feat, isn't it?

What was going on over there? That is a very outstanding accomplishment, yes. And I'm very proud. Probably the thing I'm most proud of of our time over there is that all 31 soldiers we deployed to Iraq. we came home with all 31 alive and doing well. But a few minor injuries. So it was a big accomplishment. That's great.

That's awesome. Now, I know with Iraq, they were doing a lot of civil infrastructure building and rebuilding there. I know at one point they were trying to put air conditioning everyone's home and I think a TV and everyone's home or they get the cable to work or something like that. Was a lot of what you guys were up to? Was that an accurate depiction of what they were trying to do over there? Yes, exactly. A lot of what we were doing, we worked with NGOs over there, non-government organizations on various projects in all the different areas that we were involved in. We also worked with the provincial reconstruction teams,

which are groups of civilians from the State Department, U.S. Army Corps, government organizations and different NGOs that all worked together on these big teams in rebuilding infrastructure in Iraq. We were building schools. We were educating women for jobs, which was something that had not been done in that part of the world, previously training women to go to work. We were also running electricity in villages that didn't have electricity, getting running water to places where they didn't have running potable drinking water and water to take a bath in. So all those type of things. Wow.

Yeah, water to take a bath in. That's always good. I like that. But, yeah, I mean, I think I can't remember if we had a military gentleman on the, the show and I can't remember what they referred to it but basically there was there was some term that he used it basically what they're trying to do in Iraq is you know you're less likely to be out in the streets putting in IEDs if you got air conditioning at home and some TV to watch and it was kind of an attempt to Americanize I guess Iraq and be like let's get them all sitting home watching

I don't know Archie Bunker or the Kardashians or something and I don't think the Kardashians were on back then don't write me but you know what I mean But it would create a bit of a passivity that would get everybody to calm down and, you know, take a breather, man. We don't need to all be blowing each other up. That's basically the point of it. Yeah, it's a big part of what we were doing over there. We like to say we were winning the hearts and minds. Yeah, when in the hearts and minds.

Trying to get that on our side by doing things for them and providing services for them that they needed. We could get information from them about where insurgents were operating at. And we could pass that on to the commanders. They would know what areas were safe and what areas. is we're not so safe when they're operating there. So all I know is that the power goes out in my house in the middle of Las Vegas summer after a day that, you know, I'm thinking about IEDs. No, I'm just kidding.

I'm just kidding. I get up in arms. It's not fun. I've actually had to happen in California, or not California, but Vegas, where the power goes out and it's 115 degrees. And you're like, this is a love. Yeah. This is a level.

I mean, people are like, hey, ever worried about going to hell? And I'm like, I don't know, Vegas. Now, so you wrote the book as kind of also as an homage to your unit in the work that you guys did as well. Is there any stories that you like it? Maybe a favorite story you can tease out a little bit, share with us. Example from the book. Yeah, sure. One of the stories in the book, the book includes stories of courage, obviously, commitment,

dedication, loyalty, all those type of things. But I also will try to, and there's some stories of tragedy in there, but also some humorous stories. I wanted to try to put a little humor into the situation of it, you know, being on the battlefield in Iraq, too. We tried to have fun over there when we could and not be serious all the time. Our company commander, actually, one of the stories in the book, our company commander had a stuffed Kermit the Frog from the Sesame Street, television series, has been all for

ever since I was a kid. She brought that Kermit of the Frog with her overseas with us to Kuwait into Iraq. We had a couple of mischievous young soldiers in the company that decided one evening that they were going to kidnap Kermit. So they snuck into the commander's office where Kermit was at rest and kidnapped him and held him for ransom, held him hostage to try to get a favor from the commander. So that's one of the humorous stories that's telling the book. That doesn't sound like something might end.

I mean, you're taking a commandant. There's stuff there, eh? That sounds, you know, I mean, he's, he's in charge of some of the processes of the militarization of the U.S. Army there. I don't know that I want to be taking that dude on. But, you know, you get bored, so, you know, what the hell? Right. Absolutely. Didn't you guys, what was the, what was the hottest temperature you guys experienced there?

It was pretty hot. It was in the desert, Kuwait and Iraq, in the evenings, especially in the winter. months, it rains a lot and it can get pretty chilly in the winter months, like down in the mid-40s, maybe. It wouldn't be like it would be a New Jersey winter, but you can have temperatures down in the mid-40s in the winter and the rainy season. But when it gets hot, which it's hot most of the year over there in Iraq for a good nine or ten months out of the year, it's hot over there. Normally operating in temperatures above 100 degrees, I think the hottest that we ever saw over there was probably close to 130.

30 to upper 120s. Holy crap. You could hit that several days out of the summer. I might have hit 118 one summer in Vegas. Of course, it's dry desert heat. There's not the humidity. Like, I live in Arkansas. It's very humid down here.

Different kind of heat. Yeah. That's what we always say in Vegas, see it's a dry heat. People are like, I'm so on fire. It's not no matter where you are. Like, I'm on fire. But you're like, but it's a dry here.

You're not wet. It's not a humid fire. You're just going to die by fire. Yeah, it's just too hot no matter what. Oh, yeah. I mean, I don't know if it was that way in Iraq, but we get like these, we get monsoons, I think in September in Vegas, and it'll be like soaring hot, like 110, 115, and you get these rains that come through. And they're literally just, you know, just salting with rain.

And then within about five seconds after the rain stops, the roads dry again. Because it's all, there's just still so much heat in the ground and the sand. Yeah, they did have a rainy season in Iraq. And the rainy season over there made a lot of mud. Oh, wow. And you're troppling around in mud everywhere you go. So that makes a mess out of everything. Another whole different issue to deal with.

Try to keep everything clean in a mud hole, yeah. So now you came back from service, and at what point did you decide to launch your career here as a veteran author and speaker? I retired from the Army in 2014 after 30 years of total service and the Marine Corps and the Army Reserve and active duty in the Army Reserve. I had 30 years of total service and 22 on active duty when I retired in 2014. Right after I retired, I immediately went to work back in the federal government working for the U.S. Postal Service. And I worked for U.S. Postal Service as a letter carrier for almost 10 years. And I had to move my mother in with me. She was ill, had Alzheimer's and dementia and needed a caregiver.

I moved my mother in here with me and my home to care for her. And I ended up having to leave my job at the Postal Service to be a full-time caregiver. And after I did that, I decided that I had some free time on my hands. And I was looking for something else to occupy my time and keep myself busy. And advocating for veterans has always been an important thing for me, even though, even when I was working as a letter carrier for the Postal Service, I was actively involved in writing letters to Congress and then emails to Congress on all veterans issues and doing some speaking engagements when I could get them to to speak to veterans

or speak to young people about military service or speak to military troops. I've always been interested in going out there and talking to other veterans, those that are interested in the military or people that are currently serving. but I'd been thinking about writing this book about our unit for many years after I retired from the Army and then kind of put it on the back burner for a long time because I didn't know if I'd actually be able to one, write a book. Successively, if I had the talent to actually do it and then to find a publisher and get help with getting it published and go through that whole publishing process. So I kept talking myself out of it time and time again. But then here in the last couple years, I decided that I was going to, I was.

going to do it. I talked to a couple other veteran authors. And I got a lot of encouragement from one in particular to particular that told me that, hey, look, man, you've been in the military for 30 years. You've got a lot of experience. You've got a lot of knowledge to share. You've got a lot of stories to share. Write your book. Tell your story. So, once I heard that, I decided to go ahead and jump on it and took me about six or seven months to write it. And then a little while to find a publisher and go through the whole basically year-long publishing process. But now the book is out there and available and the stories being is being told to people, I hope, around the world to hear what these soldiers did. Yeah. It's great to tell the stories. You know, life is a collection

of stories. I mean, I was about 52 or three when I woke up one day and realized that life was a compilation of stories. Exactly. The fabric that binds our lives together. I mean, if you took away all my stories that I've created over what 30 years, 35 years of business and, and, you know, my whole life, really, who am I? People will be like, hey, man, who are you? And I'm like, I don't know. I had some stories once, but, but yeah, these stories are how we learn from each other, how we grow, how we inspire. And the great thing about books is they're so far reaching. You can, you know, we've had, you know, 27, 200, 2,500 episodes with authors. So, you know, we have a lot of CEOs and stuff on the show just for CEOing, just for CEOing.

And the CEO, I'm just creating words on the Chris Fos show. It's poetic license, folks. Let me do what I want. I'll do what I want. Anyway, and telling the stories, regardless of what they are, even whether they're fiction or, you know, something like romance or whether they're factual, nonfiction books, we all learn from these stories and we get different perspectives and share them. And that's why I love doing this on the Chris Foss show.

So when did you first go, how did you get interested in joining the military? Did you grow up in a military family? Or how did that work out? How did you get involved? I had a lot of military in my family. Originally throughout my high school years, when you start trying to figure out what you want to be when you grow up, I was involved in auto mechanics classes at high school and in the auto mechanics cooperative work program.

So my junior and senior year, I was going to school half a day and working half a day in an hollow repair shop, gaining that experience. My father had worked his whole life in a Chrysler assembly plant building car. So I always had that interest as a kid. Also was very good at art as a kid. So art was always a passion. And in high school, I started taking drafting classes. Back when we had to draw everything out by hand before they had computer drafting. So you had to sit down at the table and draw it all out by hand. But I was looking at drafting. I was looking at all the mechanics. I was looking at technical jobs early on in high school. But I had three older brothers out of the four older half brothers. I had three were serving in the military while I was in

high school, one in the Air Force, one in the Army and one in the Navy. And then you were in the Army Reserve. Go ahead. Yes. So I decided my senior year in high school that I would join the Marine Corps because nobody was in the Marine Corps yet. When I decided to enlisting the Marine Corps in a delayed entry, I had myself and throw a brother in the Army, one Navy, one in the Air Force. I went in each branch once I got in. You guys were all covering the bases for all of us, making sure we got plenty of people. And I had a high school auto mechanics teacher with Mr. Klein was his name. He was in the Air Force prior to becoming an educator.

He was a wheeled vehicle mechanic in the Air Force. What really got me thinking about the military was him. When I was in his class in high school, he started telling me stories about his time in the Air Force. He was stationed up in Alaska for most of his time, and he told me his stories about what it was like being stationed on an Air Force base in a remote part of Alaska. So I thought that was pretty exciting. So he got to encourage me. And I don't know why he picked me out of the group of all the students in the class to try to lead toward military service. But for some reason, I guess he felt that might be fitted or suitable for it.

A lot of mentorship from him helped me make that decision initially. after you spend that much time in freezing-ass Alaska, he probably would have loved to have gone to Iraq. I'm sure. You get sick of those extremes either way, you go. Maybe you saw leadership sort of skills in you or a code of ethics or morals that a spouse in our military. Our military is really great, and I never studied it much until I started writing my book Beacon's leadership. And one of my gaming friends was in the Army that I played with almost. daily and and we started talking about I believe the army has the be no be no due

version of leadership training and then the different branches kind of all their own sort of variation of leadership training but we train some of the best people in units and leadership training in the world and I never really got to think about it and then see it in action after studying the leadership traits of our military branches And then when you saw the way the military's built in Russia and how it performs under battle, you really start seeing the galling difference between our military and militaries around the world that can't seem to, I don't know, get out of a paper bag. You know, Russia, you know, was perceived as the second best army in the world. Now they're perceived to the second best army in Ukraine.

Stoll that from the State Department. I love that joke for the State Department. Yeah. But the way their leadership hierarchy is structured is also flawed massively. You know, our units can operate on their own without, if you cut, if you technically cut the head off of a leadership or hierarchy, they can still perform and operate and make decisions on their own because they know the mission. Where a lot of the Russian stuff, if you cut out pieces of their hierarchy, Dolt and people are like, what do we do now? And so, yeah, it's really interesting to study. the leadership principles of our military branches are top-notch, especially when it comes to the human potential and the human element.

So it's pretty well. Yeah. In countries like Russia, there are junior people are not trained or not educated to be able to take over and be in charge and lead their soldiers. Their troops on the battlefield are just not trained and qualified to do that. So like you said, when they take out the senior people, then the whole, you know, just kind of falls apart. Yeah. I mean, they're going through, I don't know what the exact stats is,

but I think at one point they were going through 500 soldiers a day, which was more than, I think, just about anybody's experienced. But yeah, it's like, it's just extraordinary how they operate. And they really don't seem to take their dead back out of the, out of the, off the field. They just leave people, which, I mean, I think that says a lot to, I mean, if I was a soldier in their life, like they're going to leave my body just down here and they're not going to tell my family, you know, what happened to me.

You know, they've tried to keep the down lows, how much the loss is. Yeah, it's really interesting. So you, did you go to basic training through the Marines then and then drift into Army Reserve after your tour? I did, yes. I went to my basic training in the Marine Corps at the Marine Corps at Crew Depot in San Diego, California. I was living in Southern Illinois just outside, just across the river from St. Louis, Missouri as a kid, so where I grew up at.

I enlisted out of East St. Louis and then shipped out of there, they went to San Diego for my basic training. And then spent 10 years in Marine Corps, deployed several times. I was with the Marine amphibious unit on ship for a couple years, deployed in the West Pacific, and then deployed with the first Marine expeditionary force,

Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 1990, 91, what some people call it, the first Gulf War nowadays. I was also a drill instructor in the Marine Corps at Parris Island, South Carolina, at the other boot camp for the Marine Corps. So ended up going to the other basic training to train recruits as a DI. After Desert Storm, the Marine Corps was drawn down. There was a big reduction in forces across all the branches of the military

to dwindle the numbers down from the large buildup they had for Desert Shield and Desert Storm. So myself, along with several other people in the Marine Corps at the time, were asked if we would voluntarily separate to free up space for the military. them to recruit new younger people into the military. So I decided at that time to go ahead and accept their offer and separate. So I got out of the Marine Corps and had a hiatus almost three years trying to figure out what I wanted to do next in life. And I worked in private security most of that time and was barely making enough money

to survive. I missed the military almost instantly after I got out. I missed being. I missed having that camaraderie. Yeah. Serving with those men and women and having those brothers and sisters. sister's always there with you, the relationships that you form and the bond. So I missed that almost instantly. After a couple years of struggling trying to make it in the civilian world,

I decided to try to get back into the military and ended up talking to an Army Reserve, an Army National Guard recruiter, and decided to go Army Reserve. So I joined Army Reserve in 1995. Initially went in as a troop program unit, what they call a TPU, which is a drill and reservists where you do your two days of training a month and two weeks of training on active duty during the years is the minimum requirement, although most of the times you end up doing quite a bit more than that. That is just the minimum that's required to maintain your position and your status on reserve duty in the military. After a few years, there's a drill and reservist that had opportunity to go active duty in the Army Reserve. They have to have a certain number of

active duty personnel within the reserve component to maintain that daily operations of those units when the reserve soldiers are not there. So somebody does the mission throughout the week when the reservists coming on the weekend to do their training or in the summer to do their annual training. So I went active duty in the reserves and ended up spending the next 10 years in the reserves on active duty orders. Wow. And so wonderful service to our country. You know, you talked about the brotherhood. And I remember, you know, we've talked to a lot of military folks on the show over the years. But also, I had this friend, and he'd done, I think it was three tours in Iraq, and he was going back for a fourth.

And I remember being friends with him and went over his house one time. And he was just sitting on the floor, his computer on the floor. And he was playing, you know, a strategy military game. It was kind of like an old world sort of strategy of horses and, you know, the old battle. that they did in those days where they were kind of more like arranged battles. We'll line up on this side, and you line up on that side and we'll go out each other, I guess. And so it was a kind of, it was a game that was based on that. And he loved playing it.

I love strategy games. I have since I was young. And they've really helped me for business. And I imagine they help for the military. But I remember saying to him, I go, you know, is that Iraq, it's pretty dangerous. You've, you know, you've survived three tours of duty. And you're going to go back for a fourth. I mean, you might be pressing your luck there.

You know, four tours. I think back then four tours, three or four tours was, wasn't something that was normal in the military. I believe in Vietnam, they only gave you like two tours unless you were like some kind of special ops dude or something. And so they were really running guys through and people are asking, you know, what effect is this going to have on the soldiers having these multiple tours of duty? But I remember he just looked at me all like and he goes, dude, I can't handle. being back in civilian life. I miss the brotherhood. I miss my, you know, over there I have people to back me up.

I know that people have my back. I know that I have a team. I have a group. Here, he goes, I'm lost. I don't have anybody. You know, he has family a little bit, but they weren't in, I think, close by or in touch much, but he just felt lost. And you wanted to talk about veteran homelessness and veteran suicide and stuff.

Why don't we get into some of that? What are your thoughts? on what's going on there and maybe how we can improve it or we can approve avoiding having people commit suicide or be homeless. Yes, sir. So we do have a large problem in this country with both veteran homelessness and veteran suicide all across the country. Yeah, yeah, we really do.

It's a high number. It's been over the several years. And what do you feel? The last several years has been getting a lot of attention. And there are continuously new bills being put up in front of the Congress to try to get them past. They would provide more benefits for veterans. There's still a lot of work that needs to be done in that arena. There's no reason, in my opinion, that any person that chose to serve in the armed forces,

and especially deployed to a combat zone and fought for their country, should be living on a street, not have a job of some type of employment in a roof. fold their head and food to eat, those people deserve that. It's just said that we have people in this country that did serve their country, many that did go fight overseas, and they're living on the streets. Yeah. There are a lot of organizations out there to help them. They just, a lot of the veterans don't, they're either afraid to ask for help, or don't know where to go for help. And in some cases, there's a lot of problem with addiction, alcohol, alcoholism. So, maybe they're at a point where they don't want to help,

but we need to continue to do everything we can to help those people. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of people don't realize there's a lot of stuff that goes on in war with these folks, especially things like, you know, recently they've started identifying traumatic brain injuries. I know that the recent attacks here in Iran, or the recent attacks from Iran at our bases, there's military folks that have received traumatic brain injury and other injuries. and those are lifelong injuries. They will affect you for your lifetime.

We've had people on the show talk about traumatic brain injury. I've had a personal friend that, you know, we used to go to lunch. We were going to write a book together. At one point, he's written a lot of books, and we were going to write our book together. And, you know, we used to go to lunch, hang out, drink coffee, and sometimes we'd go out to eat and hang out. I think we had a couple other dudes. We'd all just go out and, you know, do the dude thing. and he drank too much vodka one night and fell to his back and woke up with blood coming out of his ear

and had a traumatic brain injury from it and suddenly he couldn't go out anymore he couldn't hang with us if he came out for a coffee he would just you know five minutes or ten minutes ago it'd be overwhelmed and so that's a real deal it says here that approximately this might be two thousand twenty three predate it too, just so that's clarified. 17 to 18 veterans dying by suicide a day in the U.S. population. That is too much. That is far too much. But 17 to 18, that's crazy.

Actually, I believe currently that number is considerably higher than that currently. Yeah, this is the day. A lot of different organizations put out that there's 22 a day, maybe more than 22 a day. Yeah. Every day committing suicide. That's just an unbelievable number. It's probably hard to track maybe. I'm sure it is difficult.

This is 20, 23 data per this thing, but that is double, to give your perception of it, double the non-veteran rate of suicide. So we have a real issue there of why are veterans, you know, people that put their lives on the line and fought for freedom and American democracy. see, why are we throwing these people away or allowing these people to be lost? You know, I, I shoot a lot of photography in downtown. So that's my favorite jam is to go downtown and show old buildings and stuff. And I usually end up buying lunch for one or two homeless people that are usually around there, wherever I'm at. Usually it's kind of a habit I have.

And I usually get them some warm meals, a couple more meals that they can hold on to. And either some, I either get them water. I get them. I try and get them. Moses stuff for your salt and your system and crap. Anyway, stuff. Sorry. Yeah, I get them that.

It's the baby stuff, the PDLite. Yeah. Because that, that, that, you know, a lot, you don't want to give these folks a Coke. Number one, it's a big sugar bomb and, you know, I get jacked up off the Coke. But, you know, it's not healthy for it. It's a hydrate you and they're probably already hydrated. So that PDLite helps, can help get you back on track. And, and, you know, it's just sad, you know, you see some of these folks on the

the streets and you know one of the other things I notice a photographer when I go around the streets is how how a lot of businesses and government has put in these anti-lay-down, anti-sit-down, anti-sleep, you know, these, I forget what they call them, but they're basically like structures, you know, like benches will have these bars that stick weirdly out of them that keep you from falling asleep on these benches and, you know, it's really interesting and I'm like, couldn't we just spend some of this money on getting people into some homes or some shelters or something? It's crazy. Yeah, you would think that we would be doing a lot more to make affordable housing for our homeless population in general in the U.S.,

especially our veterans. And there are some people out there that are investing in projects to build tiny homes, these little tiny home villages that are starting to pop up in different areas around the country. And there's organizations like Tunnel to Towers, another great one that are taking hotels and turning them into apartment complexes for veterans. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The other thing is the veterans suffer from sometimes really bad PTSD.

That's a huge thing. Sometimes it's undiagnosed. I think we had one gentleman who ran for office, the president. He had realized during his run for presidency that he had PTSD. He didn't think he did. but you know, I mean, more is hell. There are things you experience there that are definitely going to have probably an influence on you,

whether it's a conscious or subconscious level. I remember one time I put up a video on my neighborhood in Vegas of me flying a drone up into the fireworks and filming it and stuff. And I had, and I put it on next door, which is a huge sort of local, you know, it's all your people in your neighborhood, basically. They're online on a bulletin board or a social media site.

And so I put up the video up there just to share it with people because they'd, you know, they'd probably see me flying this drone around. And one of the gentlemen wrote me and he goes, hey man, I'm a veteran. And he goes, he goes, are you always flying that drone around? Because someone keeps flying a drone around by my house and it's triggering my PTSD because I think that there's incoming, you know, planes and stuff like that. And I said, no, man, I'm sorry. I just, you know, I ran at that one night for the fireworks and I don't really cruise it around town. And, but, you know, he told me how much he was suffering from, you know, just being triggered by some of the different things in environment from PTSD, from being in war. And I just made me realize how challenging that could be for him, you know.

He's at home and suddenly he hears noises that trigger his fight or flight or, you know, his military training that, hey, something's, you know, about to land on my head. or whatever. And, you know, he's in a civilian situation. PTSD's a really big deal for these folks. And I think a lot of people on the streets maybe, I mean, I don't know this for a fact, folks don't write me. But I think a lot of people maybe on the streets that don't reach out for help to the VA and that disappear. They're lost in the fog of that. I would believe that you were correct. There is a big mental health problem amongst the veteran population. And of course, among the homeless population, the mental health aspect of it is a big piece of it from everything that I've read and listened to over the last several years.

A lot of times these folks out there, they're lost. They don't know where to go for help or they don't ask for help. They don't want help. They get stuck in a place where they feel like they're kind of out of options and they just disappear. And I hate to see veterans disappear after the military service and felt like. there alone and nobody wants to reach out to them to help them or to hear to hear their stories or to care about what's actually personally going on with them and everybody's got their different stuff that they went through overseas but and every veteran has not been deployed

overseas that doesn't make them any with any less than any other veteran. Yeah. That's also. They still serve their country when their country needed them to whether they went overseas or not. So what are some of the things that you're involved with? I know you do speaking. Is there any future books that are going to come up from your experience or your life experience and stuff? What's the future hold for some of the different services you're doing there?

Yes, sure. Actually, one, I just started a website that I decided to launch and to try to connect veterans together, the website, veteran author and speaker.com. And my mission is to connect veterans together, to share information, whether it's about services, anything else that they might need or to tell their stories. The main purpose of putting the website up was to encourage and empower veterans

to share their story through storytelling, whether that's through public speaking, going to be keynote speaker at different events or through writing articles and magazines, newspapers, or writing books. And I want to put information on that website to give them the tools in their toolkit to hopefully help them to do that

if that's something that they're interested in, just from what I learned over the last couple years of writing a book, getting it published and going through the whole process, I've got that experience as a veteran author now to coach and mentor others to do the same. So that was one project that I decided to take on myself, and I'm currently working on that daily to try to improve that. And the other thing is I have started putting some notes together to start work here pretty soon on another book.

I also have been thinking about writing for a long time. And now that I've got one under my belt, I decided I might as well go ahead and start working on the second one. So this book will be about my childhood growing up and why I decided to enlisting the Marine Corps when I did, which we talked a little bit about earlier. And in my service over 10 years in the Marine Corps. So that's what the next book is going to be about. Do you have anticipated a release date for that? looking at about six or seven months to write it. So I'm hoping that I can have that released by the end of the year.

Possible, I'll put information out on that further as it gets a little closer, but got to have a target date to shoot for. So I know I'm shooting for the end of this year. Well, look forward to seeing it. Now, for people that want to hire you to speak and talk about your book and different things, how can they reach out to you and find out more about how to bring you in? Yeah, they can message me through my website. I have a chat room on there.

Also have a what you call a blog? Chat box. I have a blog on the website. So they can ask me through the website to if they're interested in me coming to speak to their group or organization. I'm definitely willing to work that into my schedule. They can also message me on my Facebook page. And I'd be more than happy to come out and do those speaking engagements as often as possible. And I speak on topics such as effective leadership I've done in the past,

applying my leadership experience in my time in the military, whether it's to other military organizations or corporations, youth groups, whoever wants that leadership training, I can provide some of that for them. But I also like to speak telling my military story, talking about patriotism and service what it means to serve. So especially when we're talking about church groups and youth groups and schools, those type of things.

So I'm available to speak to any of those type of organizations on any of those topics. If they're interested in me coming out, they can just send me a message. And I'd be glad to entertain that. Give us your dot-coms one last time as we go out, please. Yeah, so the website is veteran, author, and speaker.com. And I am just Richard Kennan on Facebook and Richard Kennan on Instagram. I can't reach me through any of those. It'll be wonderful to have you do that work and share stuff,

and maybe we can do some things to get the suicide rate down and all that good stuff. We definitely need to help the homeless. And, you know, it's just we claim to be the richest country in the world. And we drop billions of dollars with the bond bombs every day right now in Iran. Iran war is going on if you're watching this five, ten years from now on YouTube. And, you know, kind of a questionable. sort of war, but that money could have, you know, we could have put luxury homes for every veteran or something for what we're going to spend there on Iran at this pace. You know, I would rather

see the money spent for that than. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. It'll be interesting. At this point, how long it's going to continue. So a lot of money is going to be spent over there. Yeah, we're going to get a lot of money and gas. I try to stay out of politics for the most part. Yeah. It's just, you know, You definitely do a better job, I think, domestically here, taking care of our veterans. Yeah, maybe we could skip a bomb or two. And, you know, I mean, one of 16 or 35 or something. I don't know, man, this is something we all got to work out.

The main point is that as Americans, we need to value the people that put their lives on the line for this country a lot more. Whether or not they lost lives, whether they were injured, maybe they didn't see any combat or they didn't see whatever. But they put their lives on the line. They were up on the board that if danger came, they, they, they, they, they were. would stand firm. And to me, that's still putting your life on the line. You know, you're fighting for freedom and standing up for our Constitution. Yeah, I hope things can get better and change and I hope we'll get better as a

people and start voting for that kind of stuff and demanding that our politicians quit effing around. So thank you very much for coming the show. We really appreciate it. And great inspiring message, Richard. Thank you. You're welcome. And thank you for having me on the show.

It was great to be here. It was an honor. It's an honor to have you, sir. I'm just some idiot with a mic. You went and serve this country. Order up his book, folks. Wherever Fine, books are sold. November 13th, 2025,

Karma in effect by Richard Kennan. Thanks to Arnaz for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, fortuneus Christchristchristvost, LinkedIn.com, Fortresschristch, Christfuss, YouTube.com, Fortresschristch, and Facebook. com, Facebook. Be good to each other.

Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time. listening to the most amazing, intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life. Warning, consuming too much of the Chris Walsh Show podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts. Consult a doctor for any resulting brain bleed. All right, Richard, great show.