The Vanguard Wall Podcast

Ten years on the busiest ambulance in the City of Dallas. A downtown building that came down behind him with a mayday on the radio, and the smoke that dropped him to his knees. A New Year's Eve call in a barbershop where the crowd turned on the medics. A full cardiac code run on the floor of an airplane at 35,000 feet — the night he flew home from winning the Arnold Classic Brazil. Steve Kucl...

Ten years on the busiest ambulance in the City of Dallas. A downtown building that came down behind him with a mayday on the radio, and the smoke that dropped him to his knees. A New Year's Eve call in a barbershop where the crowd turned on the medics. A full cardiac code run on the floor of an airplane at 35,000 feet — the night he flew home from winning the Arnold Classic Brazil. Steve Kuclo is...

Eleven days from going home. Fourteen months in eastern Afghanistan already behind them, bags half packed — and the order came down to build a brand-new combat outpost on the valley floor, in the low ground, in the middle of fighting season, surrounded by high ground they were forbidden to occupy. Three days later, at dawn on 13 July 2008, roughly 160 fighters hit Combat Outpost Kahler from every...

Eleven days from going home. Fourteen months in eastern Afghanistan already behind them, bags half packed — and the order came down to build a brand-new combat outpost on the valley floor, in the low ground, in the middle of fighting season, surrounded by high ground they were forbidden to occupy. Three days later, at dawn on 13 July 2008, roughly 160 fighters hit Combat Outpost Kahler from every...

If you’ve read the news in the last three years, you’ve been handed two stories about AI — and they can’t both be true. Story one: the machines are coming for your job, your kid’s job, your retirement, your privacy. Story two: it’s all hype, a bubble about to pop and take your 401(k) with it. Shawn Ennis — 25 years in technology, an Auburn-trained engineer with a dozen patents, who built three com...

If you’ve read the news in the last three years, you’ve been handed two stories about AI — and they can’t both be true. Story one: the machines are coming for your job, your kid’s job, your retirement, your privacy. Story two: it’s all hype, a bubble about to pop and take your 401(k) with it. Shawn Ennis — 25 years in technology, an Auburn-trained engineer with a dozen patents, who built three com...

Colonel (r) Max Krupp will be the first to tell you he doesn’t tell war stories — you have to pull them out of him. Over 28 years he became the first Texas Army National Guardsman in history to earn the Green Beret, wore a Bronze Star with Valor for a single day in Kandahar Province that by rights should have killed him and the Afghan company he was advising, and was on the Army’s fast track to ge...

Colonel (r) Max Krupp will be the first to tell you he doesn’t tell war stories — you have to pull them out of him. Over 28 years he became the first Texas Army National Guardsman in history to earn the Green Beret, wore a Bronze Star with Valor for a single day in Kandahar Province that by rights should have killed him and the Afghan company he was advising, and was on the Army’s fast track to ge...

The Marine Corps turned him down at eighteen. Twenty-four years later, CSM (Ret.) Donald "Mac" McAlister retired at the very top of the enlisted ranks — a Legion of Merit, two Bronze Stars, and a Purple Heart, with five combat tours behind him: two in Iraq, three in Afghanistan. This is one of the most honest conversations we've ever recorded. Mac takes us from a self-described &quo...

The Marine Corps turned him down at eighteen. Twenty-four years later, CSM (Ret.) Donald "Mac" McAlister retired at the very top of the enlisted ranks — a Legion of Merit, two Bronze Stars, and a Purple Heart, with five combat tours behind him: two in Iraq, three in Afghanistan. This is one of the most honest conversations we've ever recorded. Mac takes us from a self-described &quot...

Chris McCoy served in the 75th Ranger Regiment alongside Pat Tillman and speaks plainly to the cover-up of how Tillman died. He recovered bodies inside the Pentagon after 9/11, fought through the high mountains of Afghanistan, then walked off the battlefield and onto a Bering Sea crab boat — one of the deadliest jobs on Earth. He returns to The Vanguard Wall for Part 2: the war stories he’s never...

Chris McCoy served in the 75th Ranger Regiment alongside Pat Tillman and speaks plainly to the cover-up of how Tillman died. He recovered bodies inside the Pentagon after 9/11, fought through the high mountains of Afghanistan, then walked off the battlefield and onto a Bering Sea crab boat — one of the deadliest jobs on Earth. He returns to The Vanguard Wall for Part 2: the war stories he’s never...

Send us Fan Mail Director William Kaufman brings Man of War to The Vanguard Wall — a grounded military action thriller set on the opening morning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, starring LaMonica Garrett and out now on digital via Well Go USA. LaMonica Garrett (1883, The Lioness, The Terminal List) plays Connor, a burned-out ex-operator at the lowest point of his life when a girl he's spe...

Director William Kaufman brings Man of War to The Vanguard Wall — a grounded military action thriller set on the opening morning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, starring LaMonica Garrett and out now on digital via Well Go USA. LaMonica Garrett (1883, The Lioness, The Terminal List) plays Connor, a burned-out ex-operator at the lowest point of his life when a girl he's spent years protectin...

Seb Lavoie is the most decorated operator most people have never heard of. Over 20 years he went from a French-Canadian kid with no childhood memories to a soldier, a covert air marshal, an ERT tactical operator and team leader, a court-recognized tactical expert, and the Divisional Sergeant Major over 8,200 people — then pride cost him his leg, and faith rebuilt him. Hostage rescues, the Surrey S...

Send us Fan Mail Seb Lavoie is the most decorated operator most people have never heard of. Over 20 years he went from a French-Canadian kid with no childhood memories to a soldier, a covert air marshal, an ERT tactical operator and team leader, a court-recognized tactical expert, and the Divisional Sergeant Major over 8,200 people — then pride cost him his leg, and faith rebuilt him. Hostage resc...

Hugh Mills flew the OH-6 “Loach” as a low-level aeroscout in Vietnam — statistically the most dangerous flying job of the war. Shot down 16 times, three Silver Stars, four Distinguished Flying Crosses, three Purple Hearts. Author of the classic memoir Low Level Hell. 📖 Low Level Hell: https://a.co/d/0glrcnww CHAPTERS 00:00:00 Introduction — how Greg Coker connected them + “Low Level Hell” 00:02:5...

Send us Fan Mail Hugh Mills flew the OH-6 “Loach” as a low-level aeroscout in Vietnam — statistically the most dangerous flying job of the war. Shot down 16 times, three Silver Stars, four Distinguished Flying Crosses, three Purple Hearts. Author of the classic memoir Low Level Hell . 📖 Low Level Hell: https://a.co/d/0glrcnww CHAPTERS 00:00:00 Introduction — how Greg Coker connected them + “Low L...

Send us Fan Mail At Tora Bora in December 2001, Gary Harrington sat on one of the closest American observation posts to Osama bin Laden — close enough, he says, to watch the bombs he was calling in streak past the ridge sideways. Then the war handed him to the CIA, and he spent the next decade hunting the same enemy from the inside. Harrington is the rare operator who wore the uniform six differen...

Send us Fan Mail Senior Master Sergeant Aaron Love — Air Force Pararescueman, 22 years, five combat deployments — is the first PJ ever on The Vanguard Wall. Fewer than 500 people have earned the maroon beret. The pipeline carries a 91% attrition rate — the longest special operations selection pipeline in the DoD. In 2002, Aaron quit on a pool deck at Indoc. He'd made it through Hell Night. He...

Send us Fan Mail Marine vet Johnny Raushi joined the Corps at 17 for a free skateboard sticker. Four years later he came home broke, picked up change in a gas station parking lot, and sold his plasma twice a week to fund the first batches of a pomade he was perfecting on his stovetop. That pomade became Johnny Slicks — an 8-figure American manufacturing company employing 30+ people out of a North...

Send us Fan Mail The last C-17 lifted off Kabul's runway at 11:59 PM on August 30, 2021. The man who gave the order — and made the radio call "Math Safe" that officially ended America's longest war — tells the full story for the first time. Colonel Alex Pelbath (USAF, Ret.) commanded SOUL-2, the only C-17 Special Operations unit in the world, and served as Air Mission Commander...

Send us Fan Mail Thinking about buying a home or refinancing? Nuwave built a dedicated page specifically for Vanguard Wall listeners so you can connect directly with the team assigned to our audience: https://nuwaveanchor.com/i/thevanguardwall If this episode brought you value, drop a comment below — we'd love to know what you're implementing. What does it take to fuel the most elite lig...

Send us Fan Mail Thinking about buying a home or refinancing? Nuwave built a dedicated page specifically for Vanguard Wall listeners so you can connect directly with the team assigned to our audience: https://nuwaveanchor.com/i/thevanguardwall In August of 1968, Travis W. Mills was shot five times in a single engagement at FOB 4 — the deadliest night in the history of U.S. Army Special Forces. He...

Send us Fan Mail Thinking about buying a home or refinancing? Nuwave built a dedicated page specifically for Vanguard Wall listeners so you can connect directly with the team assigned to our audience: https://nuwaveanchor.com/i/thevanguardwall CW2 Kyle Steiner — 173rd Airborne, Korengal Valley combat veteran, and 7th Special Forces Group operator — joins The Vanguard Wall for a full-length documen...