Reaching for Gold with Brad Snyder

I'm Rob Real, actor, comedian, and former Marine raw In this special series Honoring Veterans Day, I'll be speaking with four incredible veterans as they detail challenges they've faced and how their experiences in military service served them in their everyday civilian lives. In this episode, I'm speaking with Brad Snyder. Brad served as an explosive ordinance disposal officer in the

United States Navy. That means disarming bombs people. The way that most people have seen our community is like through the movie The hurt Locker, where you've got someone with either a robot or a bomb suit and they have the ability to get down on top of that device and then do something to it to put it in a safer spot. And that was largely my deployment to Iraq.

On his second deployment in Afghanistan, Brad stepped on an improvised explosive device, which detonated and left him permanently blinded. In the process of his rehabilitation and recovery, he was encouraged to try out for the Paralympics due to his background and competitive swimming. Today, Brad is a five time gold medalist competing in swimming and para triathlon for Team USA. Through his experiences, he strives to inspire future generations to

embrace a life of leadership and civic duty. Brad, Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for being here, Thank you so much for having me. And before we get going, I think we'd be remiss if I didn't thank you for your service as well. Well you're very kind to say that. But today is about you, Brad, and we want to hear a story because I think it's one of the most fascinating stories, truly, one of overcoming so much and there's so many great lessons and takeaways to

your story that I want people to hear. I want them to truly understand it, and I want them to feel what it takes and what the mindset is to do what you've done. So well, let's just dive in. If you don't mind, I want to pick your brain on so many things. Let's start with how did you come to the military. It's a great question and something I thought a lot about because I never made a decision to join the Navy. I think I just grew

up always knowing that I would. Three out of four of my grandparents we're all in the Navy in various capacities, all in and around World War Two. My mom's dad, my grandfather served in the Battle of Midway. He dropped torpedoes out at Japanese subs and ships. So I just sort of always knew from an age of like three onward that I wanted to be like my grandfather and following his footsteps and join the Navy. Brad had a choice to make. He had made up his mind to

join the military. But there are three paths one can take to receive a commission as a naval officer, an r OTC scholarship at a civilian university, a degree, and then officer candidate school, or the Naval Academy. I got to visit the Naval Academy my sophomore year high school.

My uncle was also in the Navy. He was an O six jag at the time working at the Pentagon and we went and visited them in Virginia, and kind of on a whim, he said, you want to go visit the Naval Academy, And I thought, you know, why not, and just instantly fell in love with the place. I've shared this story a handful of times. What I thought was so cool. Do you watched this brigade of midshipman they go out for new information. It's just this big mob of black and white and they all start yelling

stuff that you don't understand at the time. They're doing accountability or whatever, and they're yelling, and I remember watching walked by and each of them had their names stitched on their shirt. And I remember being in high school thinking, man, how cool is it that they're so important that they have their name stitched in their shirt? Like nobody knows my name, my name is meaningless, but here like your name is really important. And that was really cool to me.

So I first and foremost wanted to go to the Naval Academy, and I pursued that with quite a lot of vigor. But my backup plans were go to our OTC somewhere. Anyway, That's how I kind of dialed in on the Naval Academy. Brand had just begun his senior year in high school when the attacks of September eleven occurred, but that didn't deter him from his call to service. On September eleven, two and one, I remember I was in English class and someone ran into the room to say,

turn on the TV. And it was just in time to see the towers still there but smoking. And then while we were all watching, the towers came down. So, you know, I had already wanted to join the Navy. I felt like I was fulfilling sort of like a familial duty or a legacy kind of thing. But then all of a sudden, with the towers coming down, you know, it's our generation's fight, you know, that's what we were

all signing up to do. It gave my service such a galvanized purpose, I suppose was the right way of saying it. Yes, it did crystallize things. Crystallize, that's a better word. People saw a need and they were ready to jump in, And I think that's really outstanding. I think there weren't a whole lot of people who straight away from you know, stepping up and joining when there was a time and a need. I think you're right too. I remember I was in New York on n eleven

and my reserve, you and it. I just left active duty and my reserving it was activated. I was a captain at the time, but I remember that the vibe, if you will, of everybody around, everybody in the city and the country for that matter. Everybody wanted to do something, anything, And I remember people were bringing down boxes of clothes and you know, they just didn't know what to do.

They're bringing blankets, they were bringing things that didn't necessarily need we needed, nobody needed down there, but they were compelled to do something. They were compelled to take part or feel like they could help in some way. And I felt actually blessed that I was in the service. So I volunteered to go back on an active duty and I was able to scratch that itch, so to speak. I was able to serve because I was in a

position to. But I do remember that feeling across the country and especially in New York, there was a desire to serve, to get involved. So I was, I guess happy, and it felt good from patriotic sense to know that when the country was in crisis, you know, it was nice to see people respond for sure, and and you were obviously one of those people, So thank you for

staying the course. According to the US, over two hundred and fifty thousand people swore an oath to serve in the active duty and reserve military forces following the attacks of not eleven, many of them vowing to make sure something so horrible never was repeated. Brad continued to follow his dream and entered the Naval Academy the year following nine eleven. From day one, life at the Naval Academy

was full speed ahead. Brad had a stacked course load of engineering classes at seven indoctrination to military culture and knowledge, and on top of that, he was part of the academy's competitive swim team. It was an exhaustive schedule, but Brad balanced at all and never lost sight of the lessons he learned. It was tough, but it really did force me to grow up quickly. I learned how to manage time. I learned how to organize myself. I learned

how to learn quickly. I think that's a real important skill, especially in the military. And I learned, you know, with the right amount of those sub skills, you can survive and you can thrive in an environment like that, and I think the Navy was definitely a lot like that. I was always keeping a lot of balls in the air, and honestly that hasn't stopped. Even transitioning out of the military. I'm still in exactly that same boat, just trying to keep everything up in the air. They push you beyond

your perceived limits. We all have limits, we think. We all think, oh, man, I couldn't do this, or you know, I could never run a marathon, or I could never do X, Y or Z. But then when you get in the military and you start doing things and they hold you to a very high standard, you realize that what you thought were your limits are not okay. So you are working your way through the academy and you decide to choose an MS. And for those who don't know,

MS means Military occupational specialty. Your job, your j ob is basically what an m OS is. So why don't we just say that just just our job. I know, because the military we make it. We make it so hard, we have to make everything so unique. You decide to become an explosive ordinance disposal officer, probably the most dangerous

job in the world. How does that come about? Not linearly, I'll say that when I got to the Naval Academy, they started barking in my face and said, what do you want to do after you go to the navalcadey, what kind of service do you want to do? What's your job? And I kind of just looked at him, like my jobs to be in the Navy, Like I don't know, what do you want me to say? You want me to pick? I don't know. You tell me. I thought the military would order you around. They call

it orders, right, so what are my orders? Just give me orders? They said, no, you have to pick. So I spent a lot of time soul searching going around, and the Naval Academy and the summer programs do a good job of socializing you across the different arenas of both the Navy and the Marine Corps. And what I loved most was actually scuba diving. I got to go to Navy scuba school and I went back to the Naval Academy. I said, I found it. I want to be a scuba diver and they were like, that's not

a thing. Now there is a Navy Diving Corps, but that's only enlisted, and no Naval Academy officers go into the Navy diving community specifically or at least directly, but it is a prerequisite skill for Navy seals and e O D officers. And then around the my junior year, I went out on e O D summer camp out to San Diego, and on day one of e O D Summer Camp, I went out with our Dolphinsay, so not a lot of people know this, but we have a marine mammal program where the Navy utilizes dolphins and

sea lions to do certain things for us. Yeah, it's real, and it's really cool. As far as I'm concerned. It feels so double O seven, it feels so James Bond. Having dolphins work with us to take on the bad guys. It really is amazing. It's just really tough giving them a high five because they only have fins, you know.

But to belabor the story, I go out to Point Loman, San Diego, and the day one of this camp, I go out onto this twenty one ft Boston whaler and this dolphin trainer like blows a whistle and the dolphins jumps out to the water into the boat and then we drive out, you know, a couple of miles from shore where we have a training area which is basically three feet of sea water above a couple of mine shapes, like their fake minds, and we trained the dolphins on

how to find mine shapes at three feet. Now, we can't really dive sustainably at that depth, not looking for stuff anyway, so we can use these dolphins to help us find potential minds that have been buried or who have lost their way or found at three feet below the surface of the ocean. That was day one of e O D summer camp. The summer camp sold me and I went back to the Naval Academy and said,

I'm I want to be an EYO D officer. And I was really worried I wouldn't have the grades to do it, but I got in by the hair on my chinny chinchin, and I'm just really grateful. Wow, they did quite a job on selling e O D, because, um, you know, explosive Ordinance Disposal. It's just the sound of it. It's terrifying. I got to see the e O D you guys work, and I actually saw him work in real life scenarios and I was always impressed and they

had confidence. Oh my gosh. You know, everybody gets a little skittish around the things that go boom, and these guys, well, they instilled confidence and everybody around him. I always felt like when they showed up, everybody could relax. Truly amazing.

Now you get the job of explosive ordinance disposal and you deploy, and now you find yourself in tricky situations because you're actually having to deal with unexploded ordinance or roadside bombs improvised explosive devices i e D S. So did you feel like the training you received prepared you for being in a combat zone? I mean, did you feel like you were ready when you got there? Yeah, for sure, but not always directly. What I think is great about the e D community and the way that

we approached training. We were given frameworks, We were taught how to think more or less, not necessarily like when you see this, this is what you do. That kind of procedural mindset doesn't really work in our community because you're never going to really they see exactly the same

scenario twice. So what the e D community teaches you is all the sort of background knowledge you might need on all kinds of explosives, fusings, different ways of deploying weapons, but then also how to manage the scenario on the ground. And again I felt very prepared in how to think through those scenarios. What became challenging is bringing to bear the tools that you might want to mitigate those hazards.

And the way that most people have seen our community is like through the movie The hurt Locker, where you've got someone with either a robot or a bomb suit and they have the ability to get down on top of that device and then do something to it to put it in a safer spot. And that was largely my deployment to Iraq. We had a big, giant em RAB truck with all kinds of gear, a bomb suit, two robots, all sorts of stuff, water bottle charges, you

name it. I've got all these tools to bring to bear, but our mission set doesn't always allow for a giant vehicle in a bomb suit and two robots and water bottle charges. And that was my deployment to Afghanistan, where everything that I'm going to bring to my job as an UNI officer I have to carry with me, so I really only have a pocket knife and some five or in Afghanistan. I think you just described what every

military person who has ever served has experienced. You get wonderful training, we have wonderful equipment, You have all these wonderful things, but when you're deployed, when you're out on the street, that stuff just isn't always there. And then you have to improvise, adapt and overcome, as they say, and you have to be able to make judgment calls, and you have to be able to decide what the best course of action is. And it's not always at

your leisure. You know, you're moving in a very dynamic environment, very hostile environment. Potentially maybe you only have the information you need, but you still got to act. So there's so many X factors that are brought to bear against what you're doing. Veterans you should know will return after the break. On Brad's second tour overseas, he was on a morning patrol, just like the many mornings before, but this day was different. This day Brad's life changed in

an instant. We were on what I would categorize as a routine foot patrol from one place to another in a area of Afghanistan called the Panjwai Valley in two thousand eleven, and at this particular time, we were not routinely engaging the Taliban in typical firefights. They were in very small numbers. They were hiding a lot, and we were very actively trying to find them. But what they were doing a lot was the i e ED and improvised explosive device. They were burying tens of them everywhere.

Every square mile probably had a hand full or so of these i e d S. It made our job very difficult. There weren't a lot of places where you could get to with a vehicle and where we were working, and the tactical decision we made was for our foot patrols to always walk like ducks in a row, like you're always just following the footsteps of the guy in or gall in front of you, and out in front of our patrol would always be an EOD tech like myself or my partner atom clearing with a metal detector.

And at about seven thirty in the morning, I was halfway back in our patrol, just following along like everybody else, and up at the front of our patrol there was a big blast plume that shot up into the air and we train everybody. When a blast like that goes off, don't move because where there's one bomb, there's likely many. You know, it's a very common tactic for there to be multiple I e d S around each other. We call them secondaries. When one blast goes off, don't move.

Let the EOD tech myself use my metal detector to clear some space for a medic to get down to the casualty. So I pulled out my metal detector, ran up to the run and Uh. I was really gratified though, because I looked over and saw my buddy Adam was just fine. He looked at me about as confused as I was. But what we learned was two Afghan commandos had stepped off of the cleared path and landed on a forty pound I E D, effectively mortally wounding the

two of them. But we didn't know that at the time. So Adam and I job at that point, it's too clear space, get the medics down to the casualties, and then clear a spot for a helicopter to come in and take those casualties to the hospital. It was really

difficult in doing that, and it was pretty chaotic. We also knew that there were insurgents in the area who may now know where we are, so we felt like the sense of urgency to get off the X. As we say, we were able to move the first casualty back about a hundred feet where we were intending to bring in a helicopter, and then on my way back to Adam in the second casualty, I made a judgment call in that moment where to get to Adam. I was running across grass and I remember thinking, what are

the chances? And I e d spend here so long that grass is grown on top of it, And that's exactly what happened. There was a pressure plate buried underneath where grass had grown over, and that's the one I stepped on. I was really lucky in a number of ways. The pressure plate was separated from the actual blast itself,

and that's what saved my life. It blew up in front of me, not underneath me, and because of that, it came out of the ground and really just smacked me in the face, as opposed to blowing up underneath me, which surely would have taken off my legs, if not my arms as well. The important part of this story is immediately following the blast. I knew that I had

been blown up. I knew that it was likely a forty pound charge, which is a pretty big explosion, and I had known of other victims of similar sized explosions who were really in not good shape afterward. And the fact that I actually could still see I think a little bit. I looked down and I saw my hand ends in my feet. There was no obvious damage. I could still see that I had my feet, I still had my arms, and that, in my mind, meant that surely I had died. There was no way that I

was intact. After that, for me, I felt like time stopped and I remember thinking, for sure, I'm dead, and uh, that's you know, that's sad. But I I thought about my whole life, and I thought, I'm proud of the life that I've lived. I died, you know, serving my country, and I think that's honorable. And I'm sad that I won't be able to see my family, but I think that they'll understand, you know, they'll appreciate what I did. And then I actually felt like, for sure, my grandfather's

coming to grab me. Like my grandfather who died when I was eleven, my hero, he's gonna come take me whatever happens after you die. But then I didn't die. I came back. That's just amazing. It's amazing to me that those thoughts were in your mind, that you are actually walking through those thoughts, that whole process after just being blown up, in that slowed down, in that shock state probably you were in, you still had the ability to process, and these were the things that occurred to

you in that moment. It's unbelievable. Please continue. Yeah, and to your point, what's wild about it. It's been a decade now, it's been a long time, and I've been able to piece little things together, and I've talked to Adam, who wasn't far away. All of that occurred in a matter of seconds. So Adam starts yelling at me. He knew that I had been in the blast. He yells, his voice starts coming through the fog to me. I

remember yelling back at him. And what's crazy about it is, you know, a moment ago, I was okay with dying and now I'll come back to life. But now I'm really afraid because I knew I had taken the blast, I had taken it to my face and all of a sudden, I was aware that my face isn't right, something's wrong with it. I'm bleeding, it doesn't feel right, and I remember kind of starting to panic, like I don't want to be here. I don't want to be

in this moment. I'm afraid of what is happening. And Adam got to me, and I remember grabbing him by his kit and I said, how bad is it? And he said, I'm not gonna lie to you. Your face is pretty left up, but the rest of you looks fine.

Do you think you can stand up? And at that moment, I felt this really strong urge like disappointment, frustration, anger, all at once, where I committed like the ultimate sin as far as a team member, I made our life worse out there by stepping on that, I e d. I was kind of letting my team down to some extent. I'm in the way now, like we're already in a bad situation. Everybody's life is on the line, and now

I'm holding us up. As soon as his partner could clear landing zone from MEDEVAC helicopter, Brad was airlifted from the blast zone. He went to sleep in Afghanistan and woke up and Walter Read National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, one of the premier military hospitals in the country. With the extent of his injuries, Brad was on heavy pain killers, which, on top of the trauma he endured, made for a

foggy first few months back state side. It's really hard to make sense of it all, and it takes a little while. Like when I first was hurt, I'm like super confused, but I'm picking up little details. I'm obviously back from the battle space. I'm alive. Something's wrong, though, so I have to keep going into surgery. I don't know what's wrong, but the surgery is making me better, so that sounds fine. And really you're just so tired.

I just want to go to sleep, but I couldn't sleep because of all the drugs, and so I'm kind of like in this constant state of almost like Fight Club, I guess, like the movie, like you're kind of constantly confused and maybe living this multiple life thing. But through those three weeks I was able to sort of gather I'm blind, but it didn't make sense because I could

see everything in my head. But then finally the surgeons were able to make clear they were saying, basically, there's one last surgery you're going to have to do, and we're gonna hopefully save your vision. Remember asking the surgeon what are the chances, and he said, you have less than one percent chance of being able to perceive light and dark with your right eye. We have to remove

your lefts you'll see nothing on the left side. And I was, like, less than one percent to perceive light and dark like man, that is not an encouraging prognosis. So I knew that. To me, and I'm blind and a spoiler alert, that surgery was not a success. I have no light perception whatsoever. But I want to blow past that because for me, the acceptance of the blind

thing was certainly not welcome news. But in comparison to the I thought I died a week ago thing, I was just really happy to be alive, and I was sort of relieved to not be on the battlefield anymore, to know that I wasn't going to have to go back out on emissions. I wasn't taking my life into my own hands. I'm essentially safe. Now I'm gonna have to figure out this blindness thing. But to the point you made earlier about the military forcing you outside of

your comfort zone nearly constantly. I felt very confident, like I've figured out a lot of stuff. I figured out how to jump out of aircraft. I've figured out how to scuba dive. I figured out how to make things blow up. I figured out how to not make things blow up. I'm gonna be able to figure out this blindness thing. I wanted to get out of the hospital as quickly as possible and start crushing something so that my family and my friends could understand I'm gonna be fine. Now. Well,

this is a powerful mindset you're describing. I mean, it really is, and you shouldn't be taken for granted. I mean to be in your situation and to have that mindset of Okay, I've overcome so many things. I know I'm behapable of overcoming things. Now it's my new reality, so that mindset of okay, well, let's figure it out. Let's get to work. I love that. I absolutely love that, because I don't want anybody to take that for granted.

I mean, you just lost your sight in a violent fashion, and now you are out there saying, okay, this is my new reality. I accepted. I'm going to push forward, and by the way, you found some amazing ways to do that, to transition and find purpose. Can you describe to me some of those things as you move forward in your journey, as you leave the hospital and leave

the military. I got really lucky. Two thousand eleven was a while ago, but sadly we had still been at war for some time, and we had a lot of injured folks going through. Walter Read and somebody a while ago had the great idea that sports is an awesome way for vets to help figure stuff out again after an injury like this and get those competitive juices going and find purpose and go through that adaption loop you just described, Like, let's start figuring it out. Let's start

at the basics again. I kind of gravitated towards anybody was like, let's get going. So I was doing some of my rehab in Florida, where I'm from. I was actually at the v A in Tampa, Florida, and on my first trip out of the hospital, a bunch of my old friends were getting together. We had this thing

called like First Friday. We're downtown, they like lock off a block and everybody drinks and it's a fun time, and my swim coach was there, and he's this gruff, older fella, and he just kind of in his own way of not wanting to dwell on the negative part of this instance, he was like, so, well, I see you at practice tomorrow. And I thought, yeah, it captures what I want to do exactly. I want to just go back to normal as quickly as possible. I'll go

to practice. So I showed up literally that next morning, and he just blew past anything that had already happened. And I don't want to talk about Aghanistan, I don't want to talk about bombs or anything. I've got it all hooked up for you. I've got this scuba mask that will go over your eyes because my eyes were still tender and kind of messed up at the time. I got these pool noodles that I can attach to the sides of the pool, so you don't bang your head now, just hop in this lane and go ahead

and get going. It was exactly what I wanted. It was a sense of freedom for me. I think my family was able to see, like, yeah, he looks like a dufus in that scuba mask, but everything's fine. This is Brad it's the Brad we know, and I can see that nothing's going to hold him back sort of thing. I can imagine. The sense of independence is back, the sense of individualism is back, and striving and working and exerting, it all comes back. I bet when you're in that lane. Yep, exactly.

So now you're you find the water, you find your way back to swimming, which you were obviously a competitive swimmer, and you keep going. Like Forrest Gump, you just kept running, you know, you just kept going and you kept climbing. Tell us about that, because you made it to the Paralympics and you did quite well. I'm talking to a

multi time gold medalist. I'm fascinated about this part of your journey, and and also not just the physical accomplishments in the water, but the psychological journey as well that goes along with that. If you don't mind sharing, no, I don't mind it all. And it's a crazy story, and I just wanted to show folks that I'd be all right, and that was kind of where it started.

Someone along the way, though, it was pretty quick to say, you know, have you thought about going to the Paralympics, And something to the effect of do you realize how lucky you are to be injured in a Paralympic year, And I thought, well, that's a crazy way of looking at this whole thing. Yeah, that's okay, sure, okay. And that actually kind of baked in this idea that there was a sense of urgency to get into the Paralympics,

because you know, I was injured in September. You sort of needed to have certain things done by that February. And I actually hadn't left the hospital yet. I was still in what they called blind rehab. I was in a v A in Augusta, Georgia, and they were teaching me the various skills of how to be blind, and uh, they were allowing me to leave the hospital again every so often to go swim. I actually went to a swim meet and I got in the Paralympics. We call

it get classified. It's not the way we think of it in the military. Classified in the Paralympic sense means a doctor looks at you and assesses what disability category you are by virtue of the fact that I'm completely blind on what's called an S E leven in swimming, That means I compete against other people who are completely blind. Once I was classified, I went to a meet. I swim what I assessed to be a really crappy race.

I got out and everyone was super excited because they're like, that was the fifth fastest blind swim of the world this year. Dang right out of the gate. Yeah exactly. I was like, well, I could do better than that. I know I can do better than that. That kind of got me hooked, and I thought, well, let me get back into my old thing and let me start training at this and one thing led to another, and before I really realized what was going on, I was

in London. The craziness of this whole thing is that on September seven, two thousand eleven, is the day I lost my vision in Afghanistan. Going into the Paralympics in London on September seven, two and twelve, I was going to be swimming for Team USA in the four freestyle, and uh, I want a gold medal for Team USA.

And it was just a really crazy way to bring everything full circle and really in the best most extreme way possible, I was able to prove what I wanted to show folks is that this blindness thing is not going to be something that confines me or keeps me from being who I want to be, from being successful, or from being a valuable part of society, or something

along those lines. And that's what I've come to love about the Paralympic movement just in general, is that it really gives athletes of all kinds the ability to inspire that in our society. And it's been so cool. It's been such a cool journey to be on since two

and twelve. Since in the leap and the months following his injury, Brad has continued to push towards excellence, training for the Paralympics, competing in multiple games and bringing home multiple gold medals to show the world there's nothing he can't do. From London to Rio, I felt like if I were a sports fan, of which I am, and I looked at that narrative, that story I read the Brad Snyder story and on ESPN dot com or whatever, I'd look at that and be like, well, it's clearly

a fluke, Like it was an accident. Maybe the competition wasn't that good that year, or maybe you know, by virtue of the fact that it was only one year of being blind, maybe he had an advantage. So I wanted to go back to Rio and prove and like earn it, you know, dedicate myself to the craft of swimming blind for four years and go back to the Paralympics and crush it. And I was able to do that. I won three golds in Rio and broke a world

record that had been there for a long time. But to your point about like if you're not growing, you're dying kind of thing, I finished that experience and thought, I want to keep going, but I need to redefine the challenge. For me. It's not about winning. I'm not doing this to win. I'm doing this to you know, make myself better and hopefully inspire other people to be better and all of those things. So I wanted to

redefine the challenge. I got into triathlon to start back at the bottom and work my way up, just like I had learned to do in the military. Day one of triathlon, I know nothing about triathlon. By year five of triathlon, I want a master triathlon, and I certainly don't claim to be a master. But we were able to win a race in Tokyo under high stakes, and

that was an incredibly cool experience. Brad is currently pursuing a PhD in public policy at Princeton University with the goal of returning to the Naval Academy as a professor and coach, eager to share his story and lessons learned

with the next generation of America's leaders. Throughout this whole conversation that we've just been having, I think you've been really good at pulling out these little moments from my background where I have learned really important lessons on how to not only push myself, but navigate challenges, navigate adversity. And I happen to think that, you know, our future generations of military officers and military personnel really need that

sort of stuff to navigate the challenges of tomorrow. And that's my new goal as I want to go back to the Academy and coach and teach midshipman so that when they face those challenges, when they face the same kind of stuff that I faced in Afghanistan, they have the ability the nuts and bolts of what they need to navigate that and thrive despite it. Brad, your your

journey is inspiring you. You've put a lump in my throat many times during this conversation because I'm just so in awe of you and your ability to be so positive, your mindset, to have this wonderful growth mindset. I just wish there were more people like you out there. One question, I guess a final question, is there or any other lesson that has struck you something that is critically important. It's kind of a two part thought, but they revolve

around each other. The thing that I think is the most important that I do remind myself from time to time is I want to start everything from a sense of gratitude. Having a near death experience, I recognize how

precious every day is. Every day I wake up is a day I might not have woken up, And I owe it's all those who have made the ultimate sacrifice and everybody who's served, and clearly my grandparents and all that I owe it to them to make the most of this moment, because the moment that I have to live in this country and be free is because of all those sacrifices, and I'm grateful. So that's like my point of orientation. And then in sharing that, I know

that it's tough. Sometimes you're going to encounter some barriers, some obstacles, and you really need to have something that helps you reignite that passion. And over the years, I've had a lot of different things that have helped me kind of keep going and keep moving forward. And something that I was me thinking about while I was raising in Tokyo for me as my baby daughter who's not born yet, I want to be the best dad I can.

I want to be the best human possible to be a role model for my daughter, but also like show her the way on you know, how to take charge and how to navigate adversity and how to own your life in a way that's positive for you. And I call that an anchor thought. You know, everyone's got to have an anchor thought. You said it exactly, used the right words. We all need something that's gonna light that fire in our heart and keep us going because let's

face it, like we're all gonna face challenges. We're all going to run up against these barriers, and none of us want to let that defeat us. So we've got to find a way to break through those things. And all of us need a reason to kind of reorient ourselves towards gratitude and making the most of every moment and I'm really excited that I get to share that with my daughter in March. That's fantastic. Gratitude is a

cornerstone to any happy life. It's absolutely mandatory. It's the foundation, and it's a good reminder for everyone to have that gratitude. There's always something, no matter how bad it is for you, there's something to be grateful for. Wow, brat I have enjoyed talking to you today. You have enlightened me on so many things. Your journey is so powerful, such a great story of triumph, of overcoming in such a major way. I'm talking to a gold medalist right now. I respect

that so much. I'm so proud of you. I'm so happy for you and your family. Thank you for spending time with me today and our listeners and being very open and very honest about your journey, the pain and the triumph. So thank you, God bless you, and keep going. I can't wait to hear what the next chapter is going to be. Thank you so much, Rob, It's been my pleasure, and you two as well. Keep charging. Thanks again to Brad Snyder for his service and for joining

us on this podcast. And congratulations to you and your wife on expecting your first child. I have no doubt you will make your daughter in predibly proud. Thanks for listening to Veterans you Should Know. To hear more inspiring stories of perseverance and camaraderie. Check out all our episodes, including those from season one, featuring veterans who have overcome incredible obstacles and found renewed purpose in their civilian lives.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review the podcast. We would love to hear from you. You can listen to the show on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. Veterans you Should Know as a special four parts series from I Heart Radio and hosted by me Rob Wriggle. Our show is written and produced by Molly Soccho, Nikia Swinton, and

Jackie Perez, with assistance from Quincy Fuller. The show is edited, sound designed, and mixed by James Foster and Matt Stillo. Tw