The Mel Robbins Podcast
Episode's summary
Noah Galloway was a sergeant with the 101st Airborne, driving the lead Humvee through the Triangle of Death on the night of December 19, 2005. Two weeks earlier his colonel had offered him a slot at Special Forces selection. He said no. He was not leaving his guys for a school. He never saw the tripwire. The blast threw a 9,000 pound armored Humvee into a canal and he sat in chest deep water bleeding until they got him out. He woke up at Walter Reed on Christmas night and his mom told him. Left arm gone above the elbow. Left leg gone above the knee. Jaw wired shut. His wife left while he was still in the hospital. What came next was not the comeback story. He walked out of Walter Reed after seven months, bought a house in Alabama without telling his chain of command, and spent two years drinking with his platoon every weekend. A second marriage fell apart. Then he joined a 24 hour gym and taught himself to work out again. That turned into Tough Mudders, a 58 hour Death Race, the cover of Men’s Health, Ellen,…
Noah Galloway was a sergeant with the 101st Airborne, driving the lead Humvee through the Triangle of Death on the night of December 19, 2005. Two weeks earlier his colonel had offered him a slot at Special Forces selection. He said no. He was not leaving his guys for a school. He never saw the tripwire. The blast threw a 9,000 pound armored Humvee into a canal and he sat in chest deep water bleeding until they got him out. He woke up at Walter Reed on Christmas night and his mom told him. Left arm gone above the elbow. Left leg gone above the knee. Jaw wired shut. His wife left while he was still in the hospital. What came next was not the comeback story. He walked out of Walter Reed after seven months, bought a house in Alabama without telling his chain of command, and spent two years drinking with his platoon every weekend. A second marriage fell apart. Then he joined a 24 hour gym and taught himself to work out again. That turned into Tough Mudders, a 58 hour Death Race, the cover of Men’s Health, Ellen,…
Episodes
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Lost an Arm and a Leg at 24. Men’s Health Cover at 33. | Noah Galloway
ListenedNoah Galloway was a sergeant with the 101st Airborne, driving the lead Humvee through the Triangle of Death on the night of December 19, 2005. Two weeks earlier his colonel had offered him a slot at Special Forces selection. He said no. He was not leaving his guys for a school. He never saw the tripwire. The blast threw a 9,000 pound armored Humvee into a canal and he sat in chest deep water bleeding until they got him out. He woke up at Walter Reed on Christmas night and his mom told him. Left arm gone above the elbow. Left leg gone above the knee. Jaw wired shut. His wife left while he was still in the hospital. What came next was not the comeback story. He walked out of Walter Reed after seven months, bought a house in Alabama without telling his chain of command, and spent two years drinking with his platoon every weekend. A second marriage fell apart. Then he joined a 24 hour gym and taught himself to work out again. That turned into Tough Mudders, a 58 hour Death Race, the cover of Men’s Health, Ellen,…
88-
Olympic Gold, Dancing With the Stars and a Prescription to Stay Small | Shawn Johnson East
ListenedShawn Johnson was the all around world champion at 15 and an Olympic champion at 16. Gold on the balance beam in Beijing and three silvers, a nationwide tour, and a Dancing With the Stars trophy before she finished high school. She did all of it while trying to hide at school that she was a gymnast. She got there from a gym in West Des Moines where her coach, Liang Chow, took the team to Dairy Queen after practice and had one rule, no skiing. Her parents picked him because it saved gas money, then vetted him for being a good human rather than a good coach. When the national team doctor was Larry Nassar, Chow never let her be treated without him in the room. She calls herself one of the lucky ones. Then everything changed. On her 18th birthday she broke Chow’s one rule, tore her knee apart on the last run of the day at Beaver Creek, skied down the mountain and carried the Olympic torch in Vancouver before she saw a doctor. She came back for 2012 and the obsession that made her a champion had nowhere to go.…
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From College Dropout to CEO of AG1 | Kat Cole
ListenedKat Cole grew up in Jacksonville in a family where the men drank, the money was tight and almost nobody kept a job. When she was nine her mom left her father, worked multiple jobs and fed three girls on a $10 a week food budget for three years. Kat’s answer when her mom said they were leaving: what took you so long. She was selling jeans in a mall at 15 to help the family, started at Hooters as a hostess in high school, and by 20 the company had moved her into the corporate office to run training and openings around the world. Vice president at 26. At 32 Roark Capital handed her Cinnabon, 400 stores and $300 million in revenue, getting beaten up by the recession. She spent her first 60 days rolling cinnamon rolls, asked every employee the same three questions, launched a smaller roll, put the brand in grocery stores and tripled it to a billion dollars. COO of the parent company at 36, nine presidents and $3 billion in revenue reporting to her. Today she runs AG1. This week I sat down with Kat to talk about…
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His Own Platoon Accused Him of Murder | Eddie Gallagher
ListenedEddie Gallagher was the number one platoon chief at SEAL Team 7, on his ninth deployment, pushing through the west side of Mosul against ISIS. A year after he got home, NCIS arrested him at a brain treatment clinic, raided his house and pulled his kids into the street at gunpoint. The charge was premeditated murder. The accusers were guys from his own platoon. He spent eight and a half months locked up before trial, in a brig where the guards were told to make him snap, with plea offers that started at 60 years. His wife Andrea ran the Free Eddie campaign while raising three kids. His brother Sean knocked on doors in DC until two congressmen listened. Then Trump tweeted. Then the prosecution got caught spying on his lawyers. Then a medic from his platoon, testifying with full immunity, said he was the one who killed the ISIS fighter. This week I sat down with Eddie, a Navy corpsman who became a Marine scout sniper and then a SEAL chief. We get into the 3 a.m. Navy commercial that got a high school burnout…
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Her First Mountain Was Everest. The Real Danger Wasn't the Climb. | Cesalina Gracie
ListenedCesalina Gracie had never climbed a mountain. She gave herself six and a half weeks to train, flew to Kathmandu and summited Everest on her first attempt, in the deadliest season in the mountain’s history. Three Sherpas were killed in the Khumbu Icefall while the route was still being set up. But the climb wasn’t the hardest part. Waiting at base camp for the summit window, the man running her expedition sat down next to her in her tent, put his hand on her thigh and whispered something she still refuses to repeat. She pushed his hand off and told him never to talk to her like that again. When the window opened he took the other groups up the mountain and left her at base camp. Then he canceled her Sherpa, ordered her down by radio from a hotel in Kathmandu, and assigned her a 20-year-old who had never climbed Everest. She prayed in her tent for a sign. A Sherpa with a speed record on the mountain walked in, heard her out and said, I’ll go with you. They were told not to call for rescue. They summited…
