Introducing Sword and Scale Nightmares! True Crime for Bedtime. Your nightmare begins now...The first three episodes will drop on 3.2.23 at 3:23pm EDT. In the meantime, please take a moment to subscribe on your preferred podcast listening platform... SUBSCRIBE NOW: https://link.chtbl.com/sasnightmares Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sword-and-scale-nightmares/id1657802345 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/08GhRV98AIgR0st3oUQRpa iHeartRadio: https://www.iheart.com/podca...
Feb 27, 2023•13 min
Justin Dunning wanted to tell the story of guys he cared about who were lost, as many of the people I’ve interviewed for this show have, because he wants it known.Google “Killed in Iraq” or “Afghanistan” and you’ll find thousands of links to thousands of obituaries and each one of them affected the people who served with them. Sometimes in this series we have named the fallen, other times we haven’t our of respect for the wishes of the people closest to them, but what is critical to remember is ...
Dec 11, 2019•38 min
Control often feels like safety. You have a weapon, some buddies and a mission and feel like the only difference between living and dying is execution, but there’s always also luck, or chance. For Jeffrey Sabins, learning to deal with the lack of control, over both his life and the lives of others was a lesson in humility and patience because even when you’re no longer worried for your own life, you want to live up to your promise to be a protector.Jeffrey Sabins' blog: From Tumor 2 Autism Jeffr...
Nov 27, 2019•46 min
For someone who joined the Army specifically to get into combat dealing with an unseen enemy is more than merely frustrating, it can introduce the insidious notion of pointlessness into your life. When there’s no enemy to fight back against, the best you can do is hold on, be prepared to take care of your buddies and pray you get a chance for some payback.Episode Sponsors Bespoke Post Norton360 with LifeLock
Nov 13, 2019•35 min
There isn’t one factor that makes combat so transformative. Instead it is a combination of reactions. To external peril and internal aggression, to personal empathy in the face of the horrible, to your expectations in light of your experiences. For Nate Didier, a lot of the transformation came from seeing the world as it was and losing something of a sense of what it could be.Episode Sponsors: ZipRecruiter Keeps Norton 360 with LifeLock...
Oct 30, 2019•48 min
We often think of endurance in terms of the physical, how much we can do before we’re out of our depth, but things like psychological and emotional endurance contribute so much to our experiences. David McConnell’s 20-year military career was a test of his physical endurance, but it wasn’t until he retired that he learned about the other kinds.
Oct 16, 2019•38 min
Joining the Marines seemed as unlikely as it seemed natural for Casper Vande Hei. He was a small guy who always had something to prove. The thing is, no matter how much fight you have in you, or how much you think you have to prove, if you don’t find a way to keep your anger in check, eventually you’re going to burn out. Episode sponsors: Zip Recruiter Hello Fresh MyBookie...
Oct 02, 2019•44 min
MonstruoPodcast.com From the collective minds of Jack Luna (Dark Topic), Tyler Bell (The Westside Fairytales) and Mike Boudet (Sword and Scale) comes Monstruo, the most disturbing podcast ever made. Nine stories, carefully crafted, one year in the making. Each two part episode of episode of Monstruo delves into the the most heinous and depraved killers ever to walk this earth. Told from the perspective of the individuals who were unfortunate enough to be there, and using highly-immersive audio-d...
Sep 19, 2019•28 min
Sometimes, we want something so desperately that it colors everything we do. Sometimes we even get it. When you get down to it, getting what we want and keeping it probably drives most of us, makes us endure circumstances we otherwise might not and accept consequences we never could have imagined. In the end, though, we have to reconcile everything we do with its cost and come to terms with that price, whatever it happens to be.
Sep 18, 2019•40 min
Traversing the distance between what we think we want and what it will take to make us happy is a journey we often don’t know we’re on until it’s near its end. Even then, we often find it impossible to accept what truly makes us happy, because we didn’t understand what we truly wanted in the first place. Episode sponsors: Zip Recruiter Bespoke Post enter the promo code WAR for 20% off your first box Mybookie enter the promo code WAR to double your deposit up to $1,000....
Sep 04, 2019•44 min
As a student, Dwight Horn felt called to enter the ministry but as a Navy Chaplain, he volunteered to follow the Marines to whom he was ministering into battle because he felt it was his duty. Just as Marines don’t want to let one another down during the most dangerous physical times, the chaplain couldn’t let his Marines down during the crisis of conscience that comes after fighting house to house in a war zone.
Aug 21, 2019•40 min
We all have a little quit in us, it’s the practical voice of doubt, the one that comes up with perfectly acceptable reasons about why it just makes more sense to give up. Sometimes that voice can’t be argued with or ignored, but there’s a quieter voice, one that whispers things like “try one more time” and “there’s got to be another way.” Hearing that voice isn’t as easy and following its advice can be just as trying but if we’re lucky it can be just as persistent, and when it is, it can be very...
Aug 07, 2019•43 min
Choices open and close doors to our futures, they both can help define who we are and hold us accountable to the person we want to be. Most important, though, they can’t be unmade. Once Andrew Hunt chose to join the National Guard all of his decisions were based on honoring his oath, but what he would come to discover is that living up to your choices means accepting the person who made them.
Jul 24, 2019•37 min
When you’re responsible to make sure the mission gets accomplished, there’s no greater tool than cool-headedness. For Brandon Pettijohn leading Marines in Afghanistan provided the opportunity to coordinate big picture responses to very specific crises. Once he discovered that dispassionate coordination was the key to being effective on the battlefield, applying it when he got back home allowed him to keep serving well past his last day as an active duty Marine.
Jul 10, 2019•39 min
There’s no question that combat changes a person, but the kind of change can be both subtle and far-reaching. You learn to internalize fear, angst and doubt but not necessarily to redirect them, and that’s exactly what can make a person a good soldier.
Jun 26, 2019•39 min
The transition into combat is a difficult one by any standard. No matter how sufficiently trained you are there is no substitute for reality to give you a sense of how you’re going to respond under fire, and how well you can coordinate with the rest of your team. For Daniel Ames, that kind of responsibility put him right where he wanted to be, even when it led to dangerous places.
Jun 12, 2019•46 min
The endurance that the military teaches can be carried over into civilian life, but it’s tricky. In the military you have to endure because it’s life and death. Outside the stakes don’t seem as high on the face of it, but they are. After all, the life and death struggle combat veterans endure is tied pretty directly to a quality of life they’ve come to expect at home.
May 29, 2019•37 min
Combat isn’t about glory, it’s about serving the mission and doing what needs to be done to achieve an objective, but there’s still something particular about the bond combat veterans form forged in circumstances that most people can’t really comprehend.
May 15, 2019•37 min
Ernie Jimenez joined the military because he saw it as the career opportunity of a lifetime. He joined the Marines because he wanted to fight. As an infantry assaultman during the Second Battle of Fallujah, he got a good hard look at what it is like to have no choice but to face down your fear.
May 01, 2019•33 min
Counterintelligence officer Davin Higens talks about his pre- and post-9/11 experience running assets, the difficulties of chasing down bombmakers in the early days of the war, and the complications for interrogators in the wake of Abu Ghraib.
Apr 17, 2019•34 min
Steven Cheek joined that Marines specifically to train and have that training tested. During the eight years and five combat tours he served as an infantryman, he used every inch of that training and more. Because for him, there had to be a life after the war that he could be proud of as well.
Apr 03, 2019•39 min
Curtis Hice was one of the thousands of regular enlistees in 2001, people who were joining the military for the pursuit of personal excellence, social improvement and maybe adventure. Although combat deployments always are on the table, he joined at a time when answering that call didn’t seem as if it were going to happen. When it did, he learned quickly enough that loss is a part of war but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to accept.This show was sponsored in part by Care/Of ....
Mar 20, 2019•40 min
From the rescue of Jessica Lynch through the recovery of Extortion 17, Nicholas Moore’s Ranger career was punctuated by historic episodes of valor and endurance. The author of Run to the Sound of the Guns shares his story on this episode.
Mar 06, 2019•39 min
Long before he enlisted in the army, Samuel Graves developed a work ethic that separated him from his peers. He approached whatever job he was doing with exceeding his own expectations as the only goal. But when I arrived in Iraq, he saw how big a part chance played in war. Show sponsored in part by Care/Of: http://bit.ly/2S9p1bb
Feb 20, 2019•42 min
After his brother was killed in the first battle of Ramadi, Anthony Dang joined the Marines in hope of getting revenge. But, as he found out for himself in the second battle of Ramadi, there is no satisfaction in killing, only in living.
Feb 13, 2019•36 min
From leading soldiers in Afghanistan to kicking down doors as part of the Ranger regiment, Erick Waage’s career was marked by violence and close calls. He had the kinds of tours that can wear on your humanity if you take a moment to stop and think about it. But if you just keep running and fighting you can avoid dealing with it for awhile.
Jan 30, 2019•33 min
It’s possible to kill both without remorse and without malice, but it is impossible to kill without consequence. Even when the consequence is satisfaction or a sense of a wrong righted, killing is something that stays with a person for the rest of their lives.
Jan 16, 2019•39 min
The heart of a man is...
Jan 09, 2019•9 min
Ray McPadden, a newly minted officer, takes command of an infantry platoon for deployment to Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, where he discovers just how deeply your first deployment can influence the rest of your career, what he can endure and, most of all, what it takes to be a leader.
Nov 28, 2018•37 min
Daniel “Doc” Buzard had been a working paramedic long before he deployed in his late 20s, but his first taste of combat medicine opened his eyes to the possibilities and meaning that providing aid has in a war zone.
Nov 14, 2018•42 min
