Be The Weight Behind The Spear: Inspiration, Service, And Community

Today, I sit down with Dr. Joshua McConkey, a physician and military officer whose career bridges medicine, service, and leadership. Dr. McConkey shares how years of medical practice combined with military duty gave him a unique perspective on trauma, healing, and responsibility. From patient care to leading within the armed forces, he explains how serving both in uniform and in the clinic shaped his outlook on resilience, mentorship, and faith. His story highlights the connection between professional excellence and personal integrity, reminding us that leadership begins with service.

In the second half of our conversation, Dr. McConkey introduces the concept of the “weight behind the spear.” He explains how the frontline—the tip of the spear—relies entirely on the foundation and support that stands behind it. Whether in combat, medicine, or everyday life, that unseen weight represents the families, communities, and leaders who provide strength and stability. We discuss how carrying that weight with humility and faith transforms the way we lead, mentor, and influence others.

https://www.joshmcconkeyforamerica.com/

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*Couple O' Nukes LLC and Mr. Whiskey are not licensed medical entities, nor do they take responsibility for any advice or information put forth by guests. Take all advice at your own risk.

Transcript

 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode. A couple of nukes. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey, and today I am here with Dr. Joshua McConkey. We are here, we're gonna talk about a lot of things. When I was reading through our guest file today, just a whole bunch of stuff that I wasn't gonna repeat, into the introduction.

I'm gonna allow him to take us through all that. But what I wanna focus on today is community building post service and all of those aspects. As we see the digital divide there's a lot of online communities yet so much separation, but at the same time, people who are using podcasts and social media platforms and.

Bringing people together and promoting stuff to have this in-person impact where people are coming together in person and working together to rebuild communities, to help the homeless, to feed the hungry, to do all kinds of amazing things. One could call it the weight behind the spear, which we'll be getting into today.

So Dr. McConkey, could you please tell us a little bit about yourself? Yeah, so I grew up in a really rural, small town out in western Nebraska. We've got more cows than people where I grew up and my entire family it's a lineage of railroaders. So my father, my grandfather, my great grandfather all railroaders, started out in Montana and then my dad got moved out to Nebraska and I was the first McConkey to go to college.

So you kinda have some of that background. Just grew up in a small town and went to Shattered State College, a very small school out in western Nebraska. If you're a football fan, people that have heard of Danny Woodhead, the two time Harlan Hill Trophy winner, that's the Heisman for division two.

So Shattered State. And then if you go way back, Don Bebe was a wide receiver for the bills and then the Packers. So the big football fans will recognize those names. When I went to medical school, found myself in Iraq in 2007, straight outta residency, which was a big life changing event for me.

And since then I've really put myself on a path where I'm trying to make a difference. And that's really the whole purpose of writing the book and everything else I've done since then. So I appreciate you having me on the show, Mr. Whiskey for sure. And I want to get an understanding

I know you were an Air Force Reserve commander, so were you in the reserves while in medical school or was that afterward? So I had A-R-O-T-C scholarship in high school, and I had two competing scholarships. So the first one was ROTC, and the second was RH. So Rural Health Opportunities Program. And essentially this is a program that Nebraska had trying to keep rural kids, get them into medicine and then keep them in rural areas.

So I went, went to chat State College. They did not have an ROTC program, so I was not able to use that scholarship. But when I got to medical school at Nebraska, university of Nebraska, which is in Omaha, I took a direct commission, joined the Army National Guard at that point, and spent the first nine years of my career in the Army Guard.

Obviously the Iraq tour got a lot to do, a lot of crazy things. I threw, I flew medevac, I did one air assault. And, you drop in some cav scouts and soldiers three o'clock in the morning with night vision goggles and Chinook helicopters, and there's tracer fire going everywhere. One helicopter loses an engine in front of you and for about 30 seconds, I thought we were gonna get shot down by some insurgents with some anti-aircraft weapons.

This was back when they were shooting down helicopters in 2007. They shot down eight in a two week span. Wow. Scary stuff. Kind of life changing events and switched over to the Air Force after that. Could you clarify for a lot of people listening who maybe don't understand the role of the National Guard and how you ended up deployed side?

Yeah, absolutely. So the National Guard, when people think of the National Guard you're serving in your community, so these are your friends, these are your neighbors, just right there in Nebraska, they have a lot of specialty teams as well. So I did flight medicine. I was a flight surgeon.

And that's just a fancy term for being a doctor for pilots and aircrew again, to fly a lot of helicopters. So I'm more of an adrenaline junkie, as an emergency doctor. That's right. That's my thing. They serve in their communities. They get called in during riots, during floods.

Nebraska has a fair amount of floods on the East coast on the east side of things, Eastern Nebraska. And then they can also get deployed overseas. So for, probably from World War II onwards, any of the major engagements that we've had as a nation, you've called in National Guard and Reserve troops to support those.

So it was a general support aviation battalion, second of the 135th and the chartered company was a medevac company that was out of Nebraska. So that's who I was with, and that took me to Iraq. I had a pause there 'cause I was like, isn't Nebraska a landlocked state? I assume the flooding, is not yeah.

The Missouri River. Lots of flooding. Yeah. That's why I thought I was like East coast. He doesn't mean the whole ocean over to just, I was like, I had to think for a minute there. I was like, you gotta get the geography out there. Yeah. I was like I'm sure there's a big river to the right of it, yeah. As far as working with pilots and other flight personnel, was that military only or were you doing surgery and medical procedures on civilian pilots as well? So the air crews now flying medevac, right? So if you look back at even the Korean War, and then more famously in Vietnam, you just the men and women on the ground, troops in contact, IEDs, snipers.

Medevac will fly in to take those heroes off the battlefield. And we certainly do some medical care and as much as we can on the helicopter and then get them to one of the surgical facilities as quickly as possible. So the closest one where I was flying into more was in Bilad.

There were some smaller forward operating bases that had casualties and things as well that you would fly in pick up. We worked a lot on foreign nationals as well. The convoys with a lot of IED activity. There were a lot of vehicles, contractors, trucks. Yeah. So a lot of third country nationals, Iraqi police, there was several events there that were.

Just the internal politics in Iraq, the insurgents would basically find out who was in the Iraqi police or the Iraqi army. And then every few months they would just go in and slaughter everybody and murder their families. And so you'd have a rash of civilian injuries as well. Suicide bombers, they just drop off, family members at the gates with a lot of crazy stuff.

War's a very terrible thing, and you see a lot of nasty, terrible stuff. And that's what changes you as a human being. And it taught me a lot. We can go ahead and go into that, but first I want to pause and look at, were you performing Sometimes. Emergency response medical procedures on people while actively flying.

So you're in the back of the helicopter plane and you're like doing surgeries with turbulence while people are shooting at you. That right there, when you say adrenaline junkie, that's gotta be, yeah, that was the most physical things. That was the ultimate adrenaline junkie. So we had some pretty short transport time, so the majority of the time it's just putting in an IO line or an IV line.

You get some fluids just tourniquets, just some really basic, almost just basic life saving skill type things. You can't really do like surgery in the back of a helicopter, but you can certainly put an emergency airway, like a cricothyroid, cricothyrotomy putting a, an airway in, or a chest tube or a chest seal, just some minor surgical procedures.

Okay. You couldn't do real surgery in the back of a helicopter. It's pretty crazy. But you do what you need to keep 'em alive, I do wanna shift to global perspective and kind of some mainstream media stuff in the sense of, you gotta see what not a lot of people see.

There's a lot of ways things are portrayed online in the media by one or the other sides. So how did this kind of affect your perspective on the Middle East on global politics and how does it factor into everything you do nowadays? The first thing that you realize is people are basically the same wherever you go.

So the stuff that you were seeing, gosh, there are several children that you took care of and something that didn't make it. You meet with the families and just rip your heart out. But you realize that like parents and families, they parents want the same thing for their kids, like survival, food, education, just those very basics at a fundamental level, people are the same wherever you go.

Now, foreign governments, that's what really screws everything up. That's the insurgents and just the terrorism and horrific things that I saw. There's a lot of bad people in the world. So when you look at it, we're very sheltered in the United States. We really don't have to wake up in fear every single day and wonder if someone's gonna, if some insurgency's gonna come through and just murder us in our family it just puts things into perspective how blessed and lucky we really are. And then you see the evil of the world. Just the things that people do to one another. Just some of the worst things where you'll put a family in a car and then they would set the car on fire, just hear people screaming, and then anybody that would run out to try to save them 'cause they put kids in the car, just a lot of crazy stuff.

And they would shoot 'em as they'd run out there. Just these mental horrific games that, just, we are really blessed in this country. A good majority of the world has to worry about things like that on a fairly regular basis. So we are very blessed here. And it's nothing new when you really think about it, because I remember.

Reading the Bible, reading ancient history even medieval times, some of the ways that they would torture people and kill people. It's like a lot of people are like, that's crazy and inhumane and how could we do that? But then when you look at what some people are doing, like in, in other places outside the us, it's still going on.

It's just, it's different. It's a little more technological and stuff like that. And it is just a shame. And, I've had the honor of having a lot of veterans on this show, sharing their perspective, sharing events that only a small handful have really gone through, because only a small percent of the military, only a small percent of Americans qualified to join the military.

And then of that percentage, an even smaller percentage are actively combat deployed. And, so it's just, I couldn't imagine, I've heard so many stories and each veteran has had a different story that's similar but different and it's just. It really goes to show how much is happening over there and, so I think, like you said, we're very sheltered here in America.

I've done a lot of episodes talking about just how buried and privileged and ungrateful Americans are for, and I was actually just sharing a military cadence with my neighbor the other day called some say Freedom is free, and it goes, but I tend to disagree and talks about all the sacrifices, the people, the men and women serving this country who are out there and what they do for that. So I think it's definitely something. And you said, I know you went to Iraq and then you, how long were you there before you came back? Yeah, so I was in theater for three months.

They would rotate the physicians in and like these 90 day intervals, it was 120 days total from start to finish. And I always felt like. I was there long enough to, you, you save as many lives as you can. You certainly, you can't save everybody. You were there long enough to get a real understanding of kind of how the world works and not quite there long enough to be completely destroyed mentally with all the PTS issues.

I certainly struggle with some things, but, it was probably a good balance for me. I came home, I changed my entire life actually moved overseas to New Zealand for about two years, just to try to get my head straight and played soccer at Rot United. But I wake up with that perspective every day where I think about those men and women that sacrificed their lives for this country, just with the other men and women that they were serving with, trying to do some good in the world, and those sacrifices mean a lot.

And so that's what motivates me. Every single morning I wake up, I think about them. I look at my family and I feel so incredibly blessed. I've got a wife and three kids, and it's difficult. 'Cause kids are probably the same everywhere. They just don't want to hear a bunch of grouchy old dad war stories.

How do you share some of those experiences with them and let them know that. They, they are very blessed here that the world could be a crazy place without coming off as just like some crotty old war guy, yeah, I get what you're saying. It's, because they haven't experienced that, but they have got to travel overseas a bit.

We've been, we lived in Australia for a little while and we've got to travel some I haven't taken 'em to any of the crazy war torn places. I, my risk tolerance has changed a lot since having a family. Yeah. I try to keep myself out of those situations now. So you slow down. I get that.

And I think you have an even more unique perspective because, civilian side and even people who aren't actively combat deployed, we see the before, the men and women going in and we see the, after them coming out, you get to see the, in between, you get to see the active injuries.

We see maybe the post amputation or. We talk to people and we can see some of the ways PTSD has affected them, but you gotta see them actively bleeding and I think that this gives you an even greater appreciation for their sacrifice and, so you mentioned moving around quite a bit.

So were you no longer in the reserves when you got back from Iraq? Or how much longer were you in for? So I was in the guard until 2009. It was like April of 2009, and had met my wife now Elsa we weren't married yet and we had moved down to New Zealand and obviously wasn't gonna be able to serve in the Guard and just was right in such a different mental place, playing soccer for Rota United.

I was working in the emergency department down there. I had about a almost a two year break in service and really missed the military. And so I had a long talk with Elsa and, we were talking about coming back to the United States and I said we're going back. I'm getting back into service.

That, that's what I do. That's part of who I am. The thing, one of the things professionally I'm most proud of by far, and. Swore back into the Air Force Reserves in Christchurch. So there's an Air Force base down in Christchurch, New Zealand on the south island, and that's where they fly all the resupply missions for Antarctica.

So Operation Deep Freeze. And so it's actually a US military installation I swore in and I was commuting to McCord Air Force Base out in Seattle, Washington. But every other month flying out there to be a critical care air transport, like the mobile ICU doctor. So got into the Air Force Reserves after that.

So you were flying from New Zealand to Washington almost once a month or every other month you said? Yeah, every other month for trial. Wow. Yeah. That's a, what is that, like a 14, 15 hour flight. Oh, so it's Auckland to LA is 12 hours and then a couple hour layover usually, and then a flight up to Seattle.

So I was doing that every other month, but for me. That really was a huge part of who I was. And then we were, in the process of moving back to the States. So I was very proud to do that. Learned a lot, started to do aerospace medicine in the Air Force. So was a flight surgeon and a seacat doctor.

And it's been at boy since 2011 now. So another 14 plus years in the Air Force Reserve. So I, it's been a great career. So were you flying in a roomy, private military, vehicle? Or were you crammed onto a civilian plane? For that long because, 'cause I that long Oh, for the commutes in for drill?

Yeah. Yeah. Oh no, that was all commercial air. Yeah. If you time things up just right. If I could have flown down to Christchurch and caught one of the, it's only during the season, 'cause it's only during the summer months that they're doing the resupply stuff in Antarctica, which is the wintertime here.

'cause it's the opposite hemisphere. It's the southern hemisphere. I think I joined January of 2011 and then it was a couple of months to get some training and things done. So by then I, I couldn't catch those flights. So it was all commercial there. Okay. Yeah, that does not sound enjoyable to me.

I don't like flying at all. I don't like you get to watch a lot of movies. I watched a lot of movies. Yeah. I was gonna say ladies and gentlemen, if you find yourself in that position, make sure you download a bunch of episodes of this show. Couple on Nukes to watch and learn some stuff, but. Yeah. I personally, I just, I don't like airports.

I don't fly. I don't know, it's just boring and cramped and I don't know, people think, 'cause I was working on a submarine for six months. People were like, oh, you should be fine on an airplane. I'm like, I don't know. I'd rather be on a submarine than an airplane.

So what were you doing on a submarine? Just reactor prototype training. So learning reactor safety, doing electrical watches problem in watches, different stuff like that for nuclear operations. No. So were you Navy or were you a contractor Navy? Yes, I was a, I'm a US Navy veteran. Yes. Okay. Fa so you're a vet too, man.

Thanks for your service. I am, I did not, I loved submarines as a kid. I was fascinated with that. So I watched all the World War ii submarine movies, run Silent, run Deep and then obviously, have you seen Hunt for Red October? So having been on a submarine, I have a huge list of every middle age guy who has given me a submarine movie to watch.

And it's that one is on there. Das Boo, all the, all these ones. Oh, yeah. That I just have never gotten into. I've seen a few clips of some submarine movies in Navy movies. See what, it became a thrill for my buddies and I were now watching military movies and calling out inaccuracies. So being like, that guy's rank is wrong, that guy's uniform is wrong.

And it's so stupid. But it was so fun because growing up, even now watching stuff if you don't know, you just, if it just looks military you'll believe it. It. Oh yeah. And so now I actually haven't you just golf for the cameras and for the show, and I just loved submarines and had looked into the Navy on the subs.

It's all Navy corpsmen, so there's no physicians on subs, which was disappointed. It almost was enough to convince me to volunteer for being a submariner.

I didn't mind it inside of a submarine. I thought it was really cool. I was like, this is such a cool experience that not a lot of people have. And, I don't know. At the same time, it was like, aircraft carrier sounds better. You've got fresh air, sunlight. If you bump into people you don't like, you can maybe not have to see them ever again on a submarine.

If you don't like people, you have to see them every day, all day. Oh, you're stuck. Interact with them. Yeah. It's like that community aspect. It can really go one way or the other. Boy and those ballistic missile subs, you can stay submerged and just hiding out for six months at a time.

And not it's the plan was to try and do what every Submariner does it, which is Go Boomer side, go to Guam and have that nice long shore tour rotation and then you had the two crews and stuff like that. So that was the plan. In fact, I don't know if I would've even gotten it if I wanted, because half of the people who like sub vaulted in my class and stuff got told, Hey, we had more submariners than submarine billets, so half of y'all just got surfaced aircraft carriers, which is really disappointing if you volunteered, oh, that's what you really wanted.

Yeah. Yeah. That I guess you could always try again later, but that would be disappointed, there were some people who had been tricked into sub balling and then got that letter and it was the best day of their life because I remember one of the guys next to me in class. His recruiter said, Hey, if you sub vault, you are guaranteed your rate.

And so he said I want to be a ET electronics technician, nuclear side. So he sub vaulted and then they made him an electrician's mate nuclear. So he was like, you gotta be kidding me. Like he hated that he wanted to be an et. His plan was that by the time his contract got done, it would be like the starting at peak, the electric car industry.

So he figured he would get there. Huge job. He would be nuclear electric car guy, and, so that, that didn't happen for him, but he got that letter that they had surfaced him and it was like the best day of his life, wait, so I'm sure the Navy's no different than the Army or Air Force, but just those recruiters, man, you gotta read stuff.

If it isn't guaranteed in riding, boy, they will sell you the, they'll sell you the world, oh, yeah. Listen, when people say, oh, you can just, cross rate at any point or halfway through, not true, okay? You can not just be like, you know what? I want to change my job. Now. The military's gonna say, no, we just spent all this money on your training for X, Y, Z amount of time.

You're gonna do that job. Yeah. Need, my recruiter said, if you ever pull out the, but my recruiter said, you're just gonna get a bunch of chuckles and yeah, my recruiter said something too, yep. My, so my goodness, if a recruiter says. He's gonna make you a Navy seal, but first he's going to, you have to do X, Y, z.

If it's not an actual part of the Navy SEAL program, it's probably just him getting you a certain billet, oh so I watched those horror stories because I joined in 2000, and for me, this is before nine 11, so the big cell and the recruiter was like, look you can travel the world.

We've got all these medical missions in Central and South America. Like the state of Nebraska, the Guard had done something like Guatemala and Belize. They've got the State Partnership for Peace programs. So each national guard, each state is assigned certain countries of the world and there's all this travel and then nine 11 hit, and then it was just war my entire career.

I never did get those trips to Guatemala. I did make it to Belize. It's not a civilian met a mission with medical school, but not for the military. I had someone on my show who was like, I joined the military to pay for college, and one week later, nine 11 happened. Talk about timing, I so it happens.

Yeah. That was the, one of the things that I've been told a lot of people were disappointed about is the, both the Navy and the Air Force, their big pitches. Travel, or you can just travel for fee. So many people were like, oh, the Air Force just flies you out to places or the army. You can just go ride, go see the world, catch a ride.

Catch it right where it, like I, the amount of people who have served and told me like, no, you don't just get free flights to anywhere you are. Oh, on le you know how many times I was told on leave you can just catch a military flight home. Never, not once in my life have I ever. Yeah. The space state travel.

Yeah. They talk about, when you retire. Hopefully, maybe I can take advantage of some of that, but you have to have a very flexible schedule and it never works out like you plan. Yeah. And don't even get me started on, now you got me started on the port calls in the Navy. That's the big sale point.

That's the big sale point you get, travel world do these amazing port calls and when you go into the recruiting office, that's all they're gonna talk about is how much fun they had on the pork call. And multiple times my buddies have called me and been like, Mr. Whiskey, our pork call was canceled because the worst was my buddies, they were waiting to go to Hawaii.

Super excited for that poor call. Oh, aviation failed their flight test because, they went home every day in shipyard and they weren't ready. And so now the whole port call was canceled 'cause we all of us need to get on top of our stuff. Then my other buddies call me, Hey Mr. Whiskey, here's what happened.

We pulled into port pork call three days. Day one, storming weather. The little ships can't come and pick us up. So that day was canceled. Day two, I had duty day and I had to stand and watch the reactor and stare at gauges all day. And day three, the weather decided to get bad again. So we were in port for three days, but I didn't get off the ship once.

Oh, the amount of times I've had those phone calls from sailors being like, torture the weather. Inspections, whatever it was, duty day. It, it really sucks when also it's like you're, they were deployed for nine months, had only maybe a total of 10 days in different form ports scattered across the weeks, and then half of them just didn't land.

So the whole pitch, that just really frustrates me. 'cause the whole like, selling point, the Navy, one of their biggest focal points is poor calls, travel the world, go out and explore. And then, you know what happened when they did get a go? This was the worst phone call. This frustrated me, Mr.

Whiskey, they decided to say we were, disembarking in order of rank from highest to lowest, basically. But here's the catch. If you were less than an E five or whatever, maybe EE four less, you had to return by a curfew or maybe. 2000, 2200, all the higher up were allowed to have overnight stay.

So the people who got off first had no curfew and could stay overnight, and the people who got off at the very end basically had to turn around because of the curfew time because we can't trust a junior enlisted sailors with Airbnbs or hotels because historically they'll just get in trouble. So that phone call I was like, okay, so let's have the people who can stay overnight, get off first instead of the people who had the curfew.

Getting off first and trying to maximize their time. Of course. Just, I don't know if you ever said this while you were serving, but we had a say in most of the places where I served, which was no, that makes too much sense. No. That, oh yeah. No, there, common sense is extremely uncommon.

Yeah. I, I spied on about submarine and Navy stuff. Have, could you give us some examples from your life, maybe any major times you remember, just, especially being an officer, I think it's a much different experience, than being on the enlisted side, especially with garden reserves.

You're not living it every day, it's a weekend a month. I'm trying to think. I don't have any fun examples like that. I just know in, in Iraq. Every, everybody's together, right? So whether you're officer, whether you're enlisted, on that helicopter we're all one team.

And so you'd step off in some crazy places, just hoping not to get hit by sniper fire as you're going to pick up the casualties and, just stick the crew chiefs and the flight medics, just they always assume that the doctor's kind of a bumbling idiot, right?

And so they're, they're taking good care of me. But I grew up in rural western Nebraska, so I could certainly handle a weapon and, only had to draw it one time. And in Baba. You know that yeah. Thankfully never had to discharge the weapon at all, but just a crazy day where there were multiple medevac runs and the insurgents along this canal and back your ball were setting off IEDs, and then there was a suicide bomber blast, and they kept baiting you back in, baiting you back in.

And each time we're varying our procedure on where we're landing in relation to where the point of injury was. It's like Russian roulette because they always set up these secondary bombs as well. Yeah. And so if you guess wrong and you land on a spot with the secondary IED, then they blow that one up and then take that because their goal is to get a medevac helicopter, so they don't really care.

They're taking out onesies, twosies here and there for them. The big targets were the helicopter. So that was. That's some crazy stuff. But, I think on aviation probably a little bit unique. Like everyone is in the same boat. There's certainly the rake structure, but with those types of missions, and certainly in combat I heard the Navy was very different like that.

So in the Navy there's even separate mess halls, right? Like the officers eat in a completely different mess than enlisted, right? Yes. And what it comes included with. So yes, they have a their own mess all and I've toured it and I've seen it. It's smaller. They have fancy table cloths and plates and cushion seats.

And when the rest of the ship doesn't have brownies and cookies and soft serve ice cream, they're fully stocked on that stuff, so they, yes, they have their own separate hall with their. Special round tables that they sit at, not the square ones with the screwed in seats, but these special round ones with this fancy tablecloth just for them, and all the brownies, cookies, and ice cream they want.

Oh geez. That's, so I, that's almost, I try to say that without any bit I know in my voice. I know, I had heard that before. And for me being, prior Army and even in the Air Force I really would try to make sure my enlisted would get something like that. But before I would for sure, especially as a military commander, a commander on the Air Force side I think it's almost like a little bit of an opposite mentality, and I'm sure, I know that the Navy has some great officers as well, but it just was always sounded strange to me having a separate mess hall. And for me personally, I would make sure my list got everything before, before me, for sure. But just different service, huh?

Yeah. Everything went to the officers and then after them was the chief mess hall. Got the goodies after them, and then the enlisted we didn't get so much of the desserts, we had Tabasco sauce, salt and pepper, and, the essentials. Yeah. And chief, that's a big deal in the Navy, right?

It is, it, it's a big deal, but it's also a pretty common rank, in a sense, right? It's more where you've got senior chief, master chief, but chiefs are definitely it is a big deal because it's the only time you really have they have a whole chief selection process where they're carrying around like the suitcase or the briefcase, and they do a lot of fundraisers and events just for chief selection.

Like they host different events and stuff for it. I don't know too much about that culture, but would say it's the biggest deal. I think it's a big milestone because there was a guy, he had a giant ring on his hand. I'm talking about like weighs a couple ounces, like this big giant, like a Super Bowl.

Super Bowl ring. You got an anchor. Yeah, bigger than that. Oh, geez. And it's a big old chief's anchor ring and it was just massive. And we always joke that you're gonna get the chief's ring if you don't act up. But yeah, it was like, it's a, there's a lot of pride around it.

And I think, like I said, they had the whole chief's selection process, which I don't even remember. We asked about what were in the briefcases that they carry, if anything. I think it was just so you knew that they were one of the ones up for selection and stuff like that. So yeah, I don't know too much about that culture.

I just know that we used to joke that the chiefs would all host like a little barbecue in front of the galley. And they would sell polled pork and everyone would call it chief's meat. And they'd be like, Hey, did you have chief's meat? In your mouth yet today? Did you get chief's meat? And, did you yeah, again, I didn't create this culture, I just was, I was, I just, got enlist into it and so that was always a joke.

Did you eat chief's meat yet today? Did you get some of chief's meat? And it was pulled pork. They had a big smoker out there and they had different sauces and stuff and it was maybe, eight, 10 bucks for, to go tray a pulled pork sandwich. And I think it would help raise money for some of the chief selection stuff, or I actually don't know what the money went to or if they just hosted it, to build a community.

It's not like we voted on the chiefs, so I'm not sure how that all works. If the higher ups take a look at what chiefs are. Oh, I'm sure. Do more and stuff, I'm sure. But. It was that, and then sometimes it would sell Krispy Kreme donuts. Which I always thought it was a deal 'cause it was like 10 bucks for a box of nine donuts or maybe like a, the square boxes or a dozen.

But now that I'm a civilian, they have deals all the time. Buy a dozen, get a dozen free and stuff. I was like, for a fraction of the price, I was like, man, chiefs were scamming me now that I think about it. But it was for different fundraisers and stuff like that. Yeah. Making money.

So yes. Chief? No, chief maybe Chief. Yeah. It is a pretty big deal for anyone who's seen the bootcamp video of Yes. Yeah. So I did want to totally got into the Navy over there. So going back to US Air Force Reserves, I was just curious Nebraska to New Zealand culture shock, very different. They both start with, and that's about the only commonality I can think of.

What brought you to New Zealand? What happened where you got outta Iraq, you're like, I gotta go to New Zealand now. What was that mindset? Can you walk me through that? Yeah, so coming back to the US literally two weeks prior I'm flying combat missions in Iraq and you're just seeing guys blown up and, just a couple of 'em that you really just remember and stick with you is, this guy's tore up, he's losing both legs, bleeding out.

He's got tourniquets. We get him into the trauma facility. This guy's near death. He's destroyed and you know what's your pain level? How you doing? Are you still conscious? He's yeah, I'm doing fine. Pain's five or six outta 10 shit, my legs are there. He's got two questions.

He's Hey man, is my dick still there? That, that's a big deal for a dude. Yeah. He wants to know, is my dick still there and is my buddy alive? That's just, that's their perspective. Like dude is my buddy. Okay. They're always thinking about other people. And then two weeks later, I'm in an emergency department, in, in Omaha, Nebraska.

And God, people just have no idea. So they're screaming and they're crying, and my pain is 10 outta 10. And like you have a hangnail man literally. There's a time you have a hangnail, so your pain is 10 outta 10. So one, okay. From one to 10, one is, it hurts.

10 is you took an IED and all of your limbs are gone and you're near death. Okay. So one to 10 oh yeah, it's 12, it really hurts. You're like, oh. So that perspective, just, it's difficult. And then the one that sent me over the edge was I was running a pediatric code and this baby didn't do well and the baby died.

And so it's about now one or two o'clock in the morning. Me and my nursing staff we're, you spend a good hour and a half, and you're not successful. Baby dies. Everyone's crushed. We cry. We walk out into the hallway and just get completely accosted by this raging crazy lady. She comes out of her room, she's yelling at us.

She can clearly see we're crying and she's what's taking so long? And I'm like, listen, we just had a pediatric death and we're gonna need a little bit of time here. And she says, I don't care. We were here first and she had a 14-year-old son who had an ingrown toenail on his foot.

And I absolutely lost it. I told her to. Get the f outta my emergency department. She goes, you can't do that. I'm like, bitch, here's security. Get her ass, throw her outta this emergency department right now. Like I am not gonna do, I'm so angry right now. And the nursing staff, we're just, I think obviously everyone and the, and it was clapping and super happy about that, but you can't really do that.

Administration was supportive and they knew I was dealing with a lot coming home and I had met Elsa, my wife now we were obviously dating and I was like, listen I'm not doing good kinda health wise. I don't think I'm ready to be back. This is clearly not working for me.

And I just, I have not reintegrated back into society very well. And she said you know what? Screw it. Let's go overseas. I was like, really? And Elsa was in art. She her minor, her major was graphic design. She had a minor in like art history and she always loved the South Pacific and always loved that art and the indigenous cultures and the people.

So she had always enjoyed the Maori culture. So the Maori culture in New Zealand were the native population, and they were very successful. So the colonizers when England and the British came down they fought some battles. I believe it was 1847, there was a treaty of Waitangi. So they, the the Maori were successful.

And so they've actually maintained a part, been part of the culture as opposed to some of the Native American population here. There was lots of massacres and we moved them all, just the trail of tears, all that horrible story. Australia, they just massacred tons of Aborigines. New Zealand was really one of the only big countries, colonized that were, their, the indigenous population still has a significant amount of political clout and we're very successful. So we moved to Rotorua, which is really the heart of the Maori culture. And they've got like the boiling mud pits and just so much cool history. Wow.

And so that's what took us to Rotorua and I worked in the emergency department there. I, I. Played on the soccer, I played on the second squad, but for Rot Rule United, only American on the team there was Brazilian, south African, British, q you were able to hold your own Australian?

Yeah I'm athletic, I don't have a lot of skills and I play goalkeeper everyone loves an athletic goalkeeper. But I, I didn't have a lot of ball skills. I grew up in rural Nebraska, but, was, there's the American put him in the goal. Yeah, absolutely. Oh man. So it just had a ton of fun and that's what took us there and that was all else's idea and it really helped me get my head straight and, it just reintegrate back into life.

'cause it was, you just, that's just one story that illustrates it, right? One day these guys are blown up and you got that story and then two weeks later it's just some crazy raging crazy chick that's pissed off. 'cause you weren't seeing her, some with the ingrown toenail while the baby was dying.

It's just, it's hard. I was not ready for that. Yeah. That goes back to the whole buried and privilege conversation. And I think what you just shared is the first, this is the first time I thought of it from that perspective of the medical perspective, because everyone in America is we don't have free healthcare.

We don't have good medical care and stuff. And it's I don't know. I think we have some of the top treatment in America. It's, yeah, not always the most affordable. I agree. There's a lot that can be done, especially seeing how much money we send to places and put into things that don't need money, but you still get some some way better care than other countries.

And I, I think that perspective of like people's pain tolerance, like you said, I think we've just seen America become weaker and weaker in, in insensitive. Both physically and emotionally, and socially and in all aspects. And and you look at like the opioid crisis. Like we've, we were killing over a hundred thousand Americans a year with the opioid epidemic.

It's killed millions of people. And it really was fostered by this whole really climate there was with pharmaceutical companies and then the federal government, they had this whole pain is the fifth vital sign, which is complete bullshit. It is an objective score. I mean it's totally subjective.

So we have all the objective, vital signs, blood pressure, heart rate, temperature. Those are objective, like period. There are literally, if this number says this, you're a statistically higher chance of morbidity, mortality, death, like crystal clear. Now this is just a medical version of facts versus feelings.

Yeah. It's crazy, so then you get everyone hooked on opioids. 'cause everyone that had like a sprained ankle and oh my pain's 10 outta 10. And if you don't address the pain and you're getting dinged on these satisfaction score systems, they've fabricated. And so it really got tons of people, like probably a good 10, 15 years of people hooked on opioids.

And then you start having all these overdose and a lot of communities you get like West Virginia or some rural areas and just, they're absolutely destroyed. And they still are. Yeah. With the over opioid crisis. I've had some of those people on my show, and it was like, in fact, Ryan Penley was just a few episodes ago now, and he was able to get 230 milligrams of opioids for $5, all for, he had a broken leg and they were like, here you go, here you go.

And he actually had pancreatitis, so they would crush it up and inject it into his intestines, which was yeah. When he told me that I'm only considered a doctor in India. When he told me that, I was just mind blown. I was like, look, I'm not a doctor here in America, but that I don't need to be one to know that you should not be injecting opioids since you're intestine.

Yeah. So it's, that's a whole crisis. And that just goes along with that like pain. A life itself is not a pain-free state. Okay. When you sprain that ankle, like it, it hurts. It doesn't mean you need an opioid. It just means don't walk on your ankle and use some crutches because your body's telling you like, don't do that.

It's hurt. You gotta let it heal. You just, we got into this mindset or this good. Culture where you just can't have pain anytime. That's not real life, man. If you have cancer that's totally separate, or if you do break a bone, that's something you can address. I've used it in those circumstances, but just they want, they wanted opioids for everything.

We're coming back to normalcy now. 'cause people realize how dangerous that is. And we've killed over millions of people now. And it's getting back to normalcy. But they actually had a nickname for me in residency. They called me the Naper and Nazi because I just was not a big fan of opioids.

So if you go all the way back to 1999 I started med school in 99 and then the early two thousands started coming out with these drugs and oxycodone. And they just totally lied to people and said that they weren't they weren't addictive and just lie their asses off.

And I knew that was not correct and so I just didn't use them very much. And I just give, we used to give like ibuprofen and napn, which is like Motrin. And so they called me the naper percent Nazi. Interesting. Yeah I just can't relate because like when I got my wisdom teeth removed and they gave me some kind of payments or whatever, I just properly discarded them.

Then definitely did not take them, because I've never been that person where it was like, you just gotta dumb. And I think that's part of the appeal of weed, which again, I haven't done that, but so many people just want to numb everything. Numb everything, ignore everything, instead of just dealing with it.

Like life is difficult and I just can't, listening to all these veterans on my show and spending time with active duty people, it's just my perspective is just I'm in the same boat with you airplanes, so to speak, and I just can't relate to this, and I think even just non-military side, just as a, as a potential patient, hearing your story of.

What you're dealing with, because I've had medical professionals on my show before and they said, Mr. Whiskey, our best days run on your worst days, so to speak. Our day to day is dealing with everyone's worst day. People are coming in, broken bones, ingrown, toenails, cancer, twisted spines, all this stuff because our days run on the worst days.

People's worst days. It's different. Different, huh. And we don't give enough credit to what y'all have to deal with, because I think in your pers like using that example of the woman, so self-centered. My kid has an issue. I've been waiting here. Meanwhile, you're dealing with trying to save the life of a small baby who passes away.

And all she can see is me and I think a lot of Americans have become so self-centered, so demanding and it's i'm paying you, I wouldn't be surprised if she said that at some point my tax pay, yeah. It's just ridiculous. And I think, yeah, I think, and I always say that, our medical people were overworked, understaffed underpaid, so it's, and that, that was long before COVID.

COVID is just, wow. That was the fact that we needed something to that level to to raise the pay. 'cause I, someone was on my show talking about the timeline of. Pay raises in the medical field, and it was like a couple cents an hour after 10 years or something, and then COVID pushed it and people were able to leverage that to get a little more pay.

But it's it shouldn't take a whole national pandemic to be like, oh wow, medical people work hard and do stuff. Y'all have been working since before COVID long, before COVID, those 12 plus hour shifts and doing all that. So I think it's ridiculous. Thanks. Thanks. Appreciate that. It's, yeah.

Now that it, it's been a long time. My sympathy helps you at all. It's just, it's been well over 20 years now. It's hard to think back that far, but yeah, it's been a wild career. Yeah. And your story New Zealand doesn't help us mend this through the theory that behind every successful man is a smart woman.

Because you said it was your wife who was like, we're gonna New Zealand. Oh, did all that. A hundred percent. Yeah. And then you mentioned New Zealand. Yeah. You had, so from New Zealand. Take us through going, you said, and then you said you lived in Australia for a bit. Correct? Was that, yeah. Boy, that's a really crazy story if you want that one.

Yeah, for sure. We came back to the States and moved briefly to western Nebraska where I'm from and my wife is from South Florida, Miami, it was not a good fit for her. Shoveling snow Cubans don't shovel snow, so that, that did not work out well. And from there it would've been in North Carolina.

So North Carolina's been fantastic. It's where we live now in Raleigh. I had an opportunity to move to Texas. This is 20, about 2018. Went to Texas for two years and then it was Australia for a year after that. And the story's pretty wild. So we moved to Texas. It's 2018 and I had part ownership in a freestanding emergency department, which was sweet.

I literally owned my own little hospital, had 10% ownership. Wow. Things were going very well. I had applied for a national Secu top secret security clearance. I'm Fellowship Board in EMS Disaster Medicine. So they had a position on the National Security Council and was really excited about that.

I put an application in and then I go through the top secret security clearance and then they get into all the business and I'm like the business, there was some issue, so I only had 10% ownership and we were minority shareholders, so the majority shareholder. The CEO was embezzling money. I had to, I hired a forensic accountant and there was just all kinds of, just shady things, so there was $90,000 that just disappeared, and we found out it was for a lawsuit for another business that he was a part of that involved some sexual harassment allegations.

And I'm like, oh. And on. So then there was $130,000 that he had overcharged on payroll because he wrote the management company. And so siphoned off 130,000 there. And then towards the end he just stole $650,000 just saying we owed him back management. And so I had filed, we had filed some lawsuits.

He first offered me, 'cause then there were some Medicare medicaid violations. He was doing these self-referral issues and there was some illegal stuff going on. And I called him out. I was like, listen man I'm going for a top secret security clearance. I cannot be part of this. You gotta stop this.

So he went berserk and tried to bankrupt the company. Like just basically started like stealing all the money and everything, just 'cause he had majority shareholder and he can, he controlled the bank account. He could do whatever we wanted until we filed the lawsuit. So we filed a lawsuit to prevent him from bankrupt to the company.

He had first offered me a $3.4 million bribe. It kinda shows you how concerned he was about things. He offered me $3.4 million and he had a non-disclosure agreement. It was some little bullshit statement about how I was stepping away for family, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I was like, listen man I'm a colonel in the United States Air Force, and you can shove that up your ass.

I'm not taking a single penny. Not a freaking penny. And he got extremely upset. So that's when he started bankrupt the company and then COVID hit. So we had filed a lawsuit, but we couldn't get a freaking court date because COVID hit. Yeah. So everything was frozen. I was like, son of a bitch. So COVID saved his ass, and he's been sueded multiple businesses since most of 'em have gone bankrupt.

He's an evil guy. He'll be in jail eventually, but it just completely screwed us. After I shot down the bribe, he sent some goon this Louisiana dude Hey Josh, you better be careful. He knows some pretty scary people. And I'm like, screw you, man. So I was concealed carry.

And I'm a military guy so I don't take very kindly to that. Had a long talk with my wife and, when you start threatening my family I'm not cool with that. And rather than take that into my own ha I contacted the FBI, I had let them know what was going on. They were tied up with COVID.

And even after he threatened the family I had the FBI agent was like listen, he hasn't done anything yet. I'm like, God damn it, you've gotta be kidding me. So we picked up, we moved to Australia for a year to get away from him. And it was kind a, a wild story. But at the end of the day I lost $5 million.

And but I did the right thing and as, as painful as that was, as very difficult. That was, we moved to Australia, we were fined the family was safe. A couple of his other businesses went bankrupt in the meantime. And like I said, he'll eventually be in jail. He is just an evil douche.

But it was still tough to lose that much money, right? Damn near bankrupted us. And then you dial it forward three or four years. And so February of 2024 I won the lottery, thank the North Carolina educational lottery. See everything that goes around, yeah. Yeah. It, it does. So when you, your integrity is important.

Stick to your guns. Don't compromise your integrity for everybody, for anybody. And just losing that much money was really hard. And mentally it was a very tough place, God is always gonna take care of you. And he just reached out there four years later. He was like, yeah, I put you through the ringer.

I was just testing you. I wanted to see if you break. Yeah. And you hung in there and boom. Like we literally won the North Carolina educational lottery. So yeah we're super blessed. But that's a crazy story, huh? Yeah. That, that, that is crazy. This is why I believe never ne, I won't say never partner up with people, but you gotta be careful.

Yeah. You gotta be, you never know. Had I done some more research, there's no way I could have known like what a nasty person he was, but there were some lawsuits at other businesses that he had covered up, through shell companies and he owned the construction company that built them.

So there was like some kind of some money laundering type of stuff going on, and just a nasty guy. And at the end of the day, you can't control what other people do. Yeah. You just control how you react to that. I wasn't gonna let him change me. I'm super stubborn and, I hadn't been a combat veteran and I just don't care about that money anymore.

It's about making a difference and trying to do the right thing. And especially having three kids now, I have to teach 'em that integrity is important. I was never gonna take that bribe, regardless of how much he pushed. Unfortunately, he found the one dude on planet Earth that would turn down $3.4 million.

But he punished me for it. It, it was bad. We lost a ton of money, but, like I said, four years later, it came around. So it's just tragic. Here you are trying to save lives and help people with this, medical establishment and he's just using it to siphon off money.

It's just, yeah. The world is full of nasty people. It is. If it wasn't, you wouldn't, have gone to Iraq to do medical stuff to begin with, yeah. So it's, it is what it is. But I want, let's focus on some good, I mentioned in the very beginning the weight behind the Spear Foundation.

You talked about integrity leading and all that stuff plays into that. Can you tell us a little bit about the weight behind the Spear Foundation and how that came into play in your life? Yeah, thank you. Trying to. You just do good and get out there, and that ethos be the weight behind the spirit.

That's my personal leadership ethos. And working with special operations. I've been medical director for Combat Search and Rescue PJs. These are just some amazing individuals that put themselves in harm's way and rescue men and women from the harshest environments on planet Earth, like behind enemy lines or from frozen snowy mountaintops.

And they all, what you learn from that is they all have someone in their life that gives them the amazing confidence, the weight behind their spear. We can't all be tip of the spear. Tip of the spear. These are the guys jumping outta helicopters, doing crazy rescues, taking out Bin Laden. I, we can't all do that.

Like I'm a doctor. I save lives, I do not take lives. But we can be the weight behind the spear for those heroes. Every one of them had a favorite coach or teacher, mentor or family members that gave them that amazing confidence to do what they do. And so that's being the weight behind the spear in your community.

So I wrote a book that did very well, was nominated for Pulitzer Prize, be the Weight Behind the Spear. And then in September of 2024, we had some horrific flooding. I live in North Carolina and Hurricane Helene in September just decimated Western North Carolina. And I'm sure a lot of your listeners have were familiar with that or maybe had some family and friends in Western North Carolina.

And so I wanted to do something more and I started the weight behind the Spear Foundation. If you go to wait behind the spear.com, W-E-I-G-H-T wait, behind the spear.com/foundation, you can learn more on how you can contribute and they're trying to rebuild and there's still a lot of areas that are pretty torn up out there, but it's done a lot of good.

We've got some recognition and have been partnering with Samaritan's Purse, with Edward Graham and that if people are familiar with Samaritan's Purse, they're a wonderful organization and so we're proud to be a part of that. So the foundation draws from insights from the book. So could you tell us a little bit about what the book is about?

Yeah, so the book, right now, this country is very divided, so politically, generationally. And I think if you try to focus on something we can all agree on, like everybody wants this next generation to be successful. Unfortunately, there were some really bad policy decisions made. When you look at COVID and you take Generation Z and the last half of Generation Z is really that COVID generation.

So this is the generation that was just such. They're their most formative years, and the policies just, you shut 'em outta school, you shut 'em outta church, you shut 'em outta their communities. And so it really fueled a monster mental health crisis as an emergency doctor. That's what I work with every day.

So I see the anxiety, the depression, and I've seen an alarm and alarming rise in the suicide rates. And so this book is my prescription. To address that problem, we have to teach some basics of leadership and resiliency, accountability, ownership. So the book is really set up to address those, and then that's how you can be the weight behind the spear and teach those really important skills.

The second section of the book is. How to not be the weight behind the spear. Just talking about that nasty CEO stealing money, doing terrible things, talks about some of the opioid crisis and those types of things. And then just the weight behind my spear and some great stories in healthcare in the military.

So that's how you can be the weight behind the spear in your community. Volunteer coach, teach, go to the animal shelters, do something. But everyone has something special to give. And that's what this book is about. I think when it comes to the policy making decisions, like we mentioned earlier on, it's very self-centered, right?

A lot of now there, there are some policy makers who are looking at, is this gonna benefit the upcoming generations? Is this gonna benefit a majority of people, but most of them I think, are. Looking out for their own or looking out for certain niches and, target markets and it's not for the best interest.

I think a lot of times they don't think about the long-term impacts too. I think a lot of people, most people are short-term thinkers, especially that includes politicians. Politicians kinda look at stuff in four year cycles, so to speak. Yeah. See and that's the problem because every congressman just cares about two years.

Every senator is every six years. Yeah. Every president's every four years. Nobody actually thinks ahead. And regardless of which side of your, the fence you're on politically, just this generation. Has some really unique challenges because you tie that all with kind of their, they were raised on social media as well, which can be a good thing and a bad thing, but that's, they were just shut off from society and we can't pass blame.

It doesn't make any difference whose fault it is. The fact is there's a huge mental health crisis and they're suffering, and how are we gonna fix that? So that's what this book is about. That's the prescription for the problem. And I, I think that's part of the issue with, Christopher Brewer and I had an amazing episode on, we talked about the issue with the military is that it follows this, four year cycle of kind of, 'cause the president, ultimately what they do is what the military follows, right?

And so you have these four year cycles where you could join. You're enlisting. For example, I enlisted in like an election year, right? So you could have it where your whole contract is it is during a time period where it sucks, where the president is making the military life suck. In my case, that's what happened.

Yeah. Sorry about that. Get out before. Yeah. If I go into detail basically people who know my story know that I worked really hard. 16 hour shifts, four extra hours a day volunteering, doing a lot of stuff. To help people in the nuclear program who were gonna get kicked out.

Mentor Ring had eight letters of recommendation for promotion. And at the last minute, basically they were like, Hey, sorry, give it away for DEI we don't have enough Asian instructors here. That, that was how politics reflected into my personal life, military side, but in general, right?

You have this four year window. So a lot of people we're talking about get out before it gets good again. And that's the issue is constantly oscillating and it shouldn't be that way. Neither should politics or anything like that, yeah. Military is supposed to be apolitical. It really shouldn't have as much an effect that it clearly does.

And fortunately, I've been around for 20, gosh, I'm probably coming to the 24th year now. Like I said, I joined in 2000, but it's coming back and we're back to a military that I think we can really be proud of and sink your teeth into. Focus on what matters like d is as difficult as some people have understanding what the job of the military is, strangely enough it's to deliver the lethality and defend the, and defend this nation.

So that's the mission, period, end of story. And if you're asking them to do anything that's not focused on that, then you're screwing it up. And that's the issue, is you have, you don't have any progression because all you have is, okay, here's four years of undoing everything that was done the last four years.

Then the next person gets in, spends four years undoing everything that was just done the last year. It's never Hey, what can we do to move forward? Because you, you move two steps or one step forward, two steps backward, basically, because it's just a constant compassion of redo, undo, redo, undo and it just.

Makes the military fluctuate, makes the economy fluctuate, all, everything. It's just being thrown back and forth constantly. Like you said, there's such a divide. We try to encourage, he talked about, it's hard to encourage people to be like, Hey, just, tough it up for these next four years and then, reenlist and things get better.

That's not guaranteed. If reuse is a long time, especially when you're 17, going on 18 and you're first joining, and those are the first four years of your Oh, is some of the most formative years of your life. It's of course crazy important. Yeah. So it's ridiculous. But like you said, you gave us weight behind the spear as you show us what to do. But I wanna also mention you, you mentioned a, prize winning book, but you were also a 2025 tell award winner. Tell us about that. Yeah yes, I think you probably see it back there. I've got it in the background. Yeah, if you can see that was I was, had a lot of fun.

So there was a show, Kim, the Kim Carell show and has a wonderful show that, that really kinda highlighted some of my career and what I've done and talked about the book and that was submitted and it was the People's Choice Tell the Award winner for 2025. You just, it's nice to be able to make a difference and.

You put so much of your heart and soul spend at least a year and a half of my life writing a book, and then another year trying to get things published and learn that whole publishing world. I knew nothing about it. And you just hope people care. And so the response that has been received has been overwhelmingly positive.

And, they getting on your show here today, Mr. Whiskey, you're a part of that. And it won a tell award. And I think it, it's making a positive impact. That's all you can ask for. Sure. Ladies and gentlemen, vote this for a tell award as well. This episode right here. Get, we gotta get him two more so we can, threepeat hat trick as a soccer player, I'm sure you doubt you for the hat trick, but I was gonna say,

I'm gonna play a little devil's advocate here and be a hater on you right now. And all hey, go for it. I'm seeing. You have won the lottery award-winning book, tele award, all these big accolades, doctor, smart guy, basically, speaking to me, can you we're seeing all these highlights.

Can you tell us, for those who are just seeing the highlights, like some of the hardships you went through, like in terms of it's not all this was handed to you. Can you oh yeah. Talk about that's the issue with social media, right?

Yeah. Because you look on there and oh, this dude's got everything. He is got a smoking hot wife and three kids. He won the freaking lottery. This is nuts. Hey, it's, yeah, that, that's where I'm at right now, but. Several years ago, and I had some crazy douchebag, trying to kill me and my family steal $5 million serving in Iraq, watching people, dying left and right.

They shot down a helicopter with a flight surgeon, Colonel Ood about two weeks before I got there in theater. The one air assault was scary as hell. Dealing with a lot of demons of watching heroes die, coming back to the us I just didn't fit in. I didn't feel I could be a part of really American society, just struggling every day.

Was just trying to get through with what I had dealt with in Iraq. I literally left the country for two years, went chilled out in New Zealand just to get my head straight and to get myself back into a better place and, got remarried. My wife Elsa is freaking amazing. Blessed with three kids.

So you have to go through those challenging parts of life. You sometimes you gotta watch it all burn to the ground before you can rise from the ashes and make something positive of that. When I put that time into this book, this is coming from a place where I've seen a lot of dark and evil and horrific things.

And so you choose, you can make a choice. Do you wanna focus on the worst of it or do you want to focus on the best part of that and then pay that forward for the next generation? I've seen a lot of crazy evil shit and I've chosen to focus on the good and do something positive to pay that forward.

Just 'cause you see all the positive stuff on social media. Everybody has a breaking point. Everybody goes through their own, private ordeals and challenges. So it's not all sunshine, happy and rainbows. All right. Like real life has craziness too, so Yeah. You have a choice for sure.

And what are you doing nowadays? So we know you got the book. Accolades, you've got, the weight behind the Spear Foundation. What are you doing actively for work? Or are you retired? Yeah, boy, I wish I still work as an emergency physician. I've dialed down a lot on that just 'cause it's really is too stress for after 20 some years, it's a really difficult job.

But I still work in the emergency department. I work here in North Carolina. I fly out to Nebraska almost once a month to work in some a rural hospital in my hometown. I'm actually taking off on Friday for that, just to give back to my community. I came from a rural town and I know how hard it is to get doctors out there, it gives me a chance to see family. And then I'm still in the military, as a colonel in the US Air Force. I now serve as the emergency management, emergency preparedness liaison officer in the National Capital region out in Washington, dc. Did a lot with FEMA emergencies and those types of things.

So I just finished a command tour at Andrews Air Force Base, and then I still got a wife and three kids, so we're running around from soccer to volleyball to, just taking care of three kids. So I, we stay very busy, but I wouldn't have it any other way. And honestly I get bored super easy.

I have to stay busy or I just go crazy for sure. I feel that I'm a workaholic and, when I'm not working, I just, I don't know, it's just I don't really often find myself doom scrolling on social media just ing tv. I just feel sick and gross doing that. I just feel unproductive. I don't understand how people can just sit in bed all day just watching tiktoks and whatever else they do.

I just, I could never do that. I would just feel like physically ill I, I need to be out there and productive. And it's it's driven by a lot of things, it takes a lot to make the world go around. Yeah. And it's I don't know. I think we all need to live and this kind of ties into everything.

We talk to a little more selflessly, like the reason I work, yes, I enjoy podcasting, don't get me wrong, but it's to put out resources for people. Every day I get up and when I'm writing, when I'm podcasting, when I'm speaking, when I'm going to these events, yeah, I have a good time doing it.

Don't get me wrong, but it's to help other people. It's for other people. And then at the end of the day, I don't receive much outside of the connections and the information. All that, financially. It's not like it's a. The amount of money being thrown at me, right? It's all about just getting out there and doing stuff for other people.

At the end of the day I could, if I stopped podcasting, I'd have so much more free time. Trust me, I, it takes up a lot of time and I could just binge TV or hang around and drink soda. I don't even drink soda, but whatever, but it's about getting up and helping people, and it's just, that's what it's about, so I, I really appreciate people like you who are still. Actively working to do that, and putting forward ways to help people do that as well. So that would be my message too, man you're the weight behind the spear. Thank you. I appreciate that. And so that would just be my message.

Think about how can you live a little more selflessly today, whether, like you said, going to an animal shelter, looking for local opportunities, or maybe it's something more global and online, or maybe it's just something within your neighborhood that's just even more small. Maybe just your apartment complex or something you can do to help out.

But that's my final message. Dr. McConkey, what would be your final message to wrap this all up, that you want people to really take away What you do every single day does matter. It has a huge impact. Friends, colleagues, families, all those people around you, every little thing. Everyone has different sets of skills.

And everybody has a breaking point. Thank you for what you do every single day and it really matters. So get out there and make a difference and be the weight behind the spear before for someone or something that matters.