Podcast #182: Continuing the Mission of Service and Brotherhood

It seems a day doesn’t go by where we don’t hear about some of the difficult issues facing our veterans of the recent wars in the Middle East — PTSD, suicide, drug abuse, problems at the VA. The list goes on. While it’s important to highlight these problems so that we can remedy them, an unintended consequence of all this focus on the negative is that we ignore the stories of veterans who continue to dedicate their lives to affecting positive change and serving their country as civilians.

In Charlie Mike, Time magazine columnist Joe Klein tells the dramatic and inspiring stories of two such veterans and the organizations they’ve founded: Team Rubicon — which organizes and deploys teams of vets to perform natural disaster relief around the world, and The Mission Continues — which funds domestic volunteer work done by former members of the military.

Today on the podcast, Joe and I discuss the men behind these groups, the work they do, and how giving veterans a chance to continue the service they began in the military has helped them revive their sense of purpose, overcome the demons of war, and restore some of the camaraderie they greatly miss.

This podcast is definitely not just for veterans; civilians will also find a lot of takeaways about the importance of service and having a mission.