About this episode
Send us Fan MailA draft notice rerouted Andrew Glenn from German beer halls to a rain-soaked tarmac at Fort Campbell, where a drill sergeant’s bark split his life into before and after. What followed reads like a map drawn in pencil and sweat: infantry training, a near-miss with OCS, boredom punctured by juggling rocks, and an arrival in Korea under red alert that replaced comfort with diesel stoves and steel seats in eighteen-below cold. On a base with little to do, he found a doorway: a Korean lieutenant with mirrored shades inviting him into Mudokwan Taekwondo. Dawn runs, barefoot streets, cigarettes pressed into palms, and a black belt test that measured presence, not violence, turned fear into discipline and discipline into identity.We follow Andrew from hilltop outposts, where he read by the strobe of a dripping fuel stove and completed coursework between patrols, to the hard exit of service and the harder return home. The applause he craved wasn’t there; protests were. He threw his voice into student strikes, then into dance studios, mime stages, and finally opera halls. Seattle’s gentle winters helped him heal; Philadelphia’s grit sharpened him. Along the way, he co-built a coffeehouse before coffeehouses were everywhere, a convivial room where cantors, violinists, and neighbors met, and helped produce a film spotlighting “design outlaws” who treated ecology as invention rather than doom.The story refuses straight lines. There are vans crossing mountains at 55, Juilliard sessions won on perseverance, retirement communities where stoic faces hold back floods, and small miracles—a Nigerian traveler who buys him time with a hundred-dollar bill; a teacher who says seven years, not seven weeks; a black belt awarded after two shadows vanish through opposite doors. Through it all, one principle holds: risk is a compass. Andrew argues that most regret grows where risk dies, that shooting higher than your fear—into languages, arts, and disciplines you haven’t earned yet—is how identity expands.Come for the soldier-to-black-belt arc; stay for the reinvention that follows: dance, poetry, activism, coffeehouse culture, and song stitched by grit. If you’ve ever wondered whether it’s too late to pivot, or whether discipline can coexist with rebellion, this conversation offers both a blueprint and a dare. Listen, share with someone wrestling a crossroads, and if it moved you, subscribe and leave a review so more people find these stories. Which risk is calling you next? Support the showwww.veteransarchives.org
