Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: I felt like I was invincible. There was nothing I
Speaker 2: couldn't conquer. That idea is nurtured when you jump out
Speaker 2: of an aircraft or you get all these advanced capabilities.
Speaker 2: There's this feeling that I alone can do anything.
Speaker 1: Brad Snyder was part of the US Navy's most elite
Speaker 1: bomb squad. In his role, Brad was rewarded for his
Speaker 1: intense independence, but then a bomb blast left him blind.
Speaker 2: This idea of surrender is just like not in my DNA.
Speaker 2: So to kind of wrap my head around giving up
Speaker 2: pieces of this fierce dedication to lone wolfness, my previous
Speaker 2: life was not easy.
Speaker 1: On today's episode, when change forces us to surrender our independence,
Speaker 1: I'm Maya Shunker and this is a slight change of plans,
Speaker 1: a show about who we are and who he become
Speaker 1: in the face of a big change. Brad grew up
Speaker 1: near the beach in Saint Petersburg, Florida. He loved bodysurfing
Speaker 1: and swimming in the ocean. When he was eleven, he
Speaker 1: was the slowest kid on his first competitive swim team,
Speaker 1: but he kept at it. He swam in high school
Speaker 1: and then became captain of the Naval Academy's swim team.
Speaker 1: I started my conversation with Brad by asking why he
Speaker 1: decided to join the Navy.
Speaker 2: I don't remember a moment where I didn't think that
Speaker 2: that was probably the direction I was going, And the
Speaker 2: reason was my earliest memories all revolved around my grandfather,
Speaker 2: and most of them were just kind of looking up
Speaker 2: to this figure and just knowing to my core that
Speaker 2: I wanted to be like him. He was the model
Speaker 2: of who I wanted to be when I grew up.
Speaker 2: I think the thing that was clear to me was
Speaker 2: this notion of respect. Like my grandfather commanded a lot
Speaker 2: of respect. My grandfather was a veteran of World War Two,
Speaker 2: he had served in the Pacific. That's my lineage, So
Speaker 2: I grew up kind of understanding that, you know, my
Speaker 2: job was to be a kind of new version of
Speaker 2: the Greatest Generation.
Speaker 1: What kind of training did you end up doing in
Speaker 1: the Navy?
Speaker 2: When I was at the Naval Academy, they asked me
Speaker 2: early on what do you want to do in the Navy,
Speaker 2: And my answer to that was, well, I'm really good
Speaker 2: in the water. I've been swimming my whole life. What
Speaker 2: job in the Navy needs you to be a great swimmer.
Speaker 2: And the answer I got back from the powers that
Speaker 2: be was Navy seals and EOD officers. EOD is explosive
Speaker 2: Ordnance disposal, which is a misleading and nondescriptive acronym for
Speaker 2: the bomb squad of the Navy. The job of the
Speaker 2: EOD community is to mitigate render safe any explosive hazard
Speaker 2: you might imagine from a bomb that was supposed to
Speaker 2: go off that didn't go off, or it improvised explosive
Speaker 2: device in places like Iraq or Afghanistan. And I just thought, Oh,
Speaker 2: this is incredible, Like this is a day in, day out,
Speaker 2: day in the life of an EOD technician. Sign me up.
Speaker 2: I felt like I was invincible. There was nothing I
Speaker 2: couldn't I couldn't conquer, and I can do everything. That
Speaker 2: idea is nurtured when you go to jump school and
Speaker 2: you learn how to jump out of an aircraft or
Speaker 2: you get all these advanced capabilities. There's this feeling that
Speaker 2: I alone can do anything.
Speaker 1: I'd love to fast forward Brad to twenty eleven when
Speaker 1: you were deployed to Afghanistan and you embedded with a
Speaker 1: Navy seal team. Can you tell me more about your
Speaker 1: job there.
Speaker 2: We were embedded with a seal team doing assault missions.
Speaker 2: It's very stressful and the stakes of your job are
Speaker 2: very high. And oh, by the way, at this point,
Speaker 2: this was in twenty eleven in Afghanistan, the ied threat
Speaker 2: improvised explosive device threat in Afghanistan was very, very high.
Speaker 2: And the culture you must imagine in this environment is
Speaker 2: very sort of macho. It's very type A, very aggressive.
Speaker 2: The tolerance for failure is very low. You know, it
Speaker 2: was really scary to go out into these missions and
Speaker 2: know that basically anywhere, buried in the earth or on
Speaker 2: a rooftop or on a pathway, there might be an
Speaker 2: ied lurking beneath the surface that might have the ability
Speaker 2: to kill or mame one on my team.
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you mind bringing us back to September seventh,
Speaker 1: twenty eleven. This was about six months into your deployment.
Speaker 1: You were out with your patrol, which was half American
Speaker 1: and half Afghan So.
Speaker 2: The way that most missions would work in Afghanistan, we
Speaker 2: would walk out in front of the patrol with a
Speaker 2: metal detector to make sure that we were taking the
Speaker 2: highest level of precaution possible against any potential improvised land mines,
Speaker 2: a rock paper scissor with my buddy Adam to see
Speaker 2: who would have to lead our patrol from point A
Speaker 2: to point B. He lost I one, so I watched
Speaker 2: him navigate this really difficult terrain in this valley of Afghanistan,
Speaker 2: and then he disappeared behind a wall. And then shortly
Speaker 2: thereafter I saw a giant blast plume shoot up into
Speaker 2: the air. We saw that one of the Afghans in
Speaker 2: our patrol had stepped off of the path that Adam
Speaker 2: had cleared, and he had stepped on a forty pound ied.
Speaker 2: This is a very big explosion by virtue of comparison,
Speaker 2: A hand grenade is about a quarter pound of explosives,
Speaker 2: so a forty pound blast, you can imagine, is a
Speaker 2: pretty big ied that really badly hurt the fellow who
Speaker 2: stepped on it, and really badly hurt the guy standing
Speaker 2: behind him. So Adam and I were able to figure out, oh,
Speaker 2: we have two casualties. We need to quickly get these
Speaker 2: guys out of here, so we need to move really quickly.
Speaker 2: I was running back up to the front of the
Speaker 2: patrol when I stepped on another ied that was located
Speaker 2: about a meter away from the first blast sight. So
Speaker 2: I committed the cardinal sin. I made our problem two
Speaker 2: times worse by missing an ied. And there was a
Speaker 2: brief pause, like a skip in the tape. And then
Speaker 2: I'm laying there in the fetal position on the ground.
Speaker 2: There's no sound, there's nothing, and I remember I could
Speaker 2: just barely see out of my left eye, and I
Speaker 2: looked down and I saw my hands, and behind it,
Speaker 2: I saw my boots. And what I didn't see was
Speaker 2: any blood or any damage or anything apparently wrong. And
Speaker 2: that didn't make any sense to me, because I knew
Speaker 2: that I had just stepped on this big bomb, But
Speaker 2: how can I not be hurt? And the only way
Speaker 2: I was able to make sense of that was that
Speaker 2: I must be dead. I must be dead, and I'm
Speaker 2: now in between. I'm in between life and death, and
Speaker 2: I'm waiting here for whatever happens afterward. And I had
Speaker 2: this really remarkable opportunity to sort of think everything through
Speaker 2: and reflect, to just sit and think about my whole
Speaker 2: life up to that point, twenty seven years on this planet.
Speaker 2: A lot of good things, a handful of bad things,
Speaker 2: some regrets, but some things I'm really proud of. I
Speaker 2: was really sad that I wouldn't be able to say
Speaker 2: goodbye to my mom and my family, but I thought
Speaker 2: that they would be proud of the life that I
Speaker 2: had lived, too, And I remember feeling like kind of excited,
Speaker 2: like I've read a lot of books and have perused
Speaker 2: all the different philosophies and religions and been searching for
Speaker 2: truth my whole life about what happens after you die.
Speaker 2: And here I am right on the precipice. I'm about
Speaker 2: to find out. But then I didn't. I came back,
Speaker 2: I came back to the consciousness. I could hear my
Speaker 2: buddy Adam calling to me, Brad, Brad, that sound is
Speaker 2: what brought me back to reality. And two things hit
Speaker 2: me at once. One panic, and so I grabbed at
Speaker 2: him and I said, how bad is it? And he said, Brad,
Speaker 2: your face is pretty messed up, but the rest of
Speaker 2: you looks fine. Do you think you can stand up?
Speaker 2: The other reality to hit me really fast, was I
Speaker 2: have screwed up. I have essentially failed at my job.
Speaker 2: My job was to protect these guys. I'm supposed to
Speaker 2: be the one who can find these IEDs. I've got
Speaker 2: the metal detector. I'm the one walking out in front
Speaker 2: of the patrol and here I missed.
Speaker 1: One m so I know that you were transported back
Speaker 1: to Walter Reed, a medical center that takes care of
Speaker 1: military service members in Maryland. How did those next few
Speaker 1: days and weeks unfold?
Speaker 2: I woke up in Maryland, you know, half a world
Speaker 2: away from where I went to sleep in Afghanistan, and
Speaker 2: I was on a heavy drip of painkilling medication, sleep medication,
Speaker 2: very strong drugs, and it caused me to hallucinate really badly,
Speaker 2: and so I was very confused the whole time. About
Speaker 2: a week into being at Walter Reed, the surgeons were
Speaker 2: in my room describing to me the last surgery that
Speaker 2: I was going to have to go through, and they
Speaker 2: kept using this phrase, hopefully we'll get some of your
Speaker 2: vision back, And I remember being very perplexed by that,
Speaker 2: what do you mean get some of my vision back?
Speaker 2: And so I think at the end of the presentation,
Speaker 2: I asked, essentially that what do you mean get some
Speaker 2: of my vision back? And the surgeon said, Lieutenant Snyder,
Speaker 2: you have a less than one percent chance of being
Speaker 2: able to perceive light and dark with your right eye.
Speaker 2: We're going to have to remove your left entirely due
Speaker 2: to our risk of infection. And I realized what that
Speaker 2: doctor's saying, like, that's very complex talk for your blind
Speaker 2: and you will likely be blind for the rest of
Speaker 2: your life.
Speaker 1: How did you react to this news spread so we.
Speaker 2: I did try that surgery and the result was not favorable.
Speaker 2: I ended up completely blind in both eyes. Do you
Speaker 2: start to think about all the things that you'll never
Speaker 2: be able to see or do? Or how am I
Speaker 2: going to be able to be a bomb tech? Where
Speaker 2: the trope is do you cut the red wire or
Speaker 2: the green wire? Well, I can't do that job anymore
Speaker 2: because I can't tell what the red wire or the
Speaker 2: greenwire is.
Speaker 1: I was really struck by the fears you had in
Speaker 1: seeing your little sister in particular, and it seems like
Speaker 1: you had to reckon with a new type of psychological
Speaker 1: challenge in that moment. Can you tell me more about that.
Speaker 2: I remember my mom or somebody telling me my sister
Speaker 2: and Lisa's going to be here, and I remember feeling like, no,
Speaker 2: don't let her in here. I don't want her to
Speaker 2: see me this way. I don't want this image I
Speaker 2: think she has of me to be broken. I'm eight
Speaker 2: years older than my sister, and so for our entire
Speaker 2: life I was her brother, but there was sort of
Speaker 2: like a paternal edge to my brother relationship with her.
Speaker 2: I was always looking after her or taking care of her.
Speaker 2: She's going to come into the hospital room and I'm
Speaker 2: not going to be this hero version of myself wearing
Speaker 2: the white uniform and the gold buttons and the metals
Speaker 2: on my chest. I'm going to be laid up in
Speaker 2: a hospital room with stitches all over myself and tubes
Speaker 2: coming out, and I can't even get up to go
Speaker 2: to the bathroom by myself. How am I going to
Speaker 2: live up to this hero notion of myself when she
Speaker 2: has to see me like this?
Speaker 1: What was it like when she finally came into your
Speaker 1: hospital room.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she came in and I was expecting for her
Speaker 2: to be sad or devastated or upset, and she wasn't.
Speaker 2: She was none of those things. She was loving and
Speaker 2: she held my hand. She said, it was so great
Speaker 2: to see you, and I'm just so glad I have
Speaker 2: the opportunity to be here with you, and I'm so
Speaker 2: happy you're alive. And the way she embraced me in
Speaker 2: that moment was really you know, kind of a paradigm
Speaker 2: changing for me, realizing that this brother sister relationship wasn't
Speaker 2: exactly what I thought it was. It wasn't that I'm
Speaker 2: this hero, role model, kind of perternal figure for her.
Speaker 2: How's her brother? And that's like unconditional love. She's going
Speaker 2: to love me no matter what. She loves me when
Speaker 2: I'm a hero, and she loves me when I can't
Speaker 2: get out of bed, and I remember feeling unburdened. I
Speaker 2: guess like to feel like she's not going to be
Speaker 2: disappointed and I haven't let her down. In fact, I
Speaker 2: think we're closer now as a result.
Speaker 1: So, Brad, about three weeks after you first arrived at
Speaker 1: Walter Reed, you were then discharged and sent to a
Speaker 1: hospital in Florida, which is where you grew up and
Speaker 1: it was also where your mom still lived. Can you
Speaker 1: tell me a bit more about this transition?
Speaker 2: So, I think at the tactical level, blindness is sort
Speaker 2: of about like how do you do these normal things,
Speaker 2: like you know, on a day to day basis. I
Speaker 2: have to get up, I have to get dressed, I
Speaker 2: have to feed myself, I have to brush my teeth,
Speaker 2: I have to look presentable and I go out into
Speaker 2: the world and I do a variety of things, and
Speaker 2: that's very challenging. But all the while there's sort of
Speaker 2: a bigger, more internal struggle about well, who am I?
Speaker 2: Who am I? What is my identity? And much of
Speaker 2: our identity revolves around what value do you bring to society?
Speaker 2: And I felt like, up until that point in my life,
Speaker 2: my value was this really elite capability as a bomb
Speaker 2: disposal technician. There was a lot of prestige associated with
Speaker 2: wearing the naval uniform, and I kind of ostensibly a badass, right,
Speaker 2: So when I first started to wrap my head around
Speaker 2: being hurt, I didn't want blindness to hold me back.
Speaker 2: I wanted to burst out of that box as quickly
Speaker 2: as possible. I don't want to be in the hospital.
Speaker 2: I want to be moving as fast as possible. Where
Speaker 2: am I going? I don't know, but I just want
Speaker 2: to be moving. And so being discharged from wal to
Speaker 2: Reed felt like progress, And in fact, there was a
Speaker 2: lot of ups to being in Florida. The upside was
Speaker 2: I was near my mom's house. So once I was
Speaker 2: sufficiently healed, they started saying, you can go on essentially
Speaker 2: like weekend pass, you know, you're an impatient during the week,
Speaker 2: but when the weekend rolls around, none of the therapists
Speaker 2: are here anyway, so you might as well go home
Speaker 2: with your mom. And I thought, that's great, That's exactly
Speaker 2: what I want to do. And the first Friday that
Speaker 2: I was let out coincided with this recurring event in
Speaker 2: downtown Saint Petersburg, where it's essentially a block party in
Speaker 2: the kind of active area of the downtown. And somebody
Speaker 2: had whispered to so and so to whisper to so
Speaker 2: and so that this was going to be my opportunity
Speaker 2: to get out of the hospital, and someone had arranged
Speaker 2: it that the benefit of all the beers or whatever
Speaker 2: sold would be a benefit to us my family in
Speaker 2: my rehab. And everyone was there to celebrate me. It
Speaker 2: was awesome, but there was It was an interesting sort
Speaker 2: of dichotomy to what was going on.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: On one hand, everyone was really excited that I was
Speaker 2: alive and they were there to celebrate me and be
Speaker 2: there for my family, but there was a very palpable
Speaker 2: sadness to many of the people who are hugging me,
Speaker 2: like I'm so happy you're alive, But boy, oh boy,
Speaker 2: what is this blindness thing going to be like and
Speaker 2: that I don't know that that was spoken, but it
Speaker 2: was definitely felt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I read that there was someone at that event
Speaker 1: who ended up changing your life from that point on.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me more about this person?
Speaker 2: Yeah, interstage left my swim coach, Fred, who was a
Speaker 2: very stoic, sort of gruff guy, had really pushed us
Speaker 2: hard when we were young, and so it would have
Speaker 2: been weird for him to come over and you know,
Speaker 2: be huggy and cryy or whatever. And all he said was,
Speaker 2: you know, Brad, it's great to see you. Hey, we
Speaker 2: have practice tomorrow. Do you want to come to our practice?
Speaker 2: And I felt like it was it was his way
Speaker 2: of kind of trying to wrap his heads around the
Speaker 2: uncertainty of the future. And his way was, you battle it,
Speaker 2: just come come to practice and we're going to start
Speaker 2: figuring this out. And I said, Yeah, this is my opportunity.
Speaker 2: This is how I'm going to prove to myself, to you,
Speaker 2: to my family, to all these people that everything is fine,
Speaker 2: everything is the way it was. I just can't see it.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment with a slight change
Speaker 1: of plans. The day after the block party, Brad's mom
Speaker 1: drove him to swim practice, something she'd done countless times
Speaker 1: when he was a kid. His old swim coach, Fred
Speaker 1: was waiting for him at the pool.
Speaker 2: He set up a pool noodle on the edge of
Speaker 2: every lane so that when I'd get close to the wall,
Speaker 2: I'd bump the pool noodle with my head so that
Speaker 2: I wouldn't hit the wall. And when I'd bump the
Speaker 2: pool noodle, I'd reach out with my arm and the
Speaker 2: wall would be right there. And I was like this,
Speaker 2: this is perfect. And getting into the pool was the
Speaker 2: first time I felt like I could wrap my arms
Speaker 2: around normal. This was me. I was free, and I
Speaker 2: felt there's a future here and I'm going to find
Speaker 2: my way. And I feel like for my mom and
Speaker 2: other folks, they could see that what.
Speaker 1: Made you feel free in a way that you hadn't before.
Speaker 2: There's something about swimming. You know, it's a very sensory experience,
Speaker 2: and it's a sensory experience that is not necessarily visual.
Speaker 2: I mean, in fact, you know, growing up in Florida,
Speaker 2: you know, the fashionable goggles at the time were these
Speaker 2: little pieces of plastic you jam in your eye sockets
Speaker 2: and the sun's always very shiny, and you actually can't
Speaker 2: see that well anyway, And when you can see, all
Speaker 2: you're staring at is a black line on the bottom
Speaker 2: of the pool. Like, the visual component of swimming laps
Speaker 2: is not its primary component. It's the feeling of water
Speaker 2: going across your body and rotating across and pulling and
Speaker 2: feeling powerful as you stroke over stroke over stroke. So
Speaker 2: I jumped in and I felt graceful, I felt strong.
Speaker 2: I felt like I had before, you know, I'd swam
Speaker 2: so many laps in that exact pool. It felt like home.
Speaker 2: It felt like me, and it didn't feel like a
Speaker 2: constrained or compromised version of me. It felt like the
Speaker 2: full expression of me. And to be able to have that,
Speaker 2: even just for a moment stroking across that lane, it
Speaker 2: gave me the confidence to say, yes, I'm going through
Speaker 2: an epic transition, but it's gonna work. It's gonna be fine.
Speaker 2: I am still me and I just got to keep
Speaker 2: moving down this lane.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of a big leap to go from
Speaker 1: that initial swim to competing in the Paralympics. So tell me, Brad,
Speaker 1: how did that all come to be?
Speaker 2: So I get a call from Rich Cardillo, a retired
Speaker 2: Army colonel who worked at the Association of Blind Athletes,
Speaker 2: whose job was to deliver resources to wounded vets suffering
Speaker 2: from blindness to get into sports as a function of
Speaker 2: the rehab. This idea of rehabbing vets through sports is
Speaker 2: not a new one. In fact, just quick aside, the
Speaker 2: genesis of the modern Paralympics came from a hospital in
Speaker 2: the UK after World War Two, four wounded vets. They
Speaker 2: actually created a set of small competitions as a function
Speaker 2: of rehab, and the modern Paralympics grew out of that
Speaker 2: after math of World War Two. And I remember Rich
Speaker 2: called me. I was still in the hospital and he said, hey,
Speaker 2: you were a good swimmer in college, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: I swam at the Naval Academy. I was captain of
Speaker 3: the swim team. You were captain of the swim team
Speaker 3: at the Naval Academy. Yeah, you know, you might be
Speaker 3: pretty good at this Blind Paralympics thing. And oh, by
Speaker 3: the way, we need to do this basically now, because
Speaker 3: the last opportunity to qualify would be at the end
Speaker 3: of February. So my Paralympic journey began, you know, before
Speaker 3: i'd even really discharge from the hospital, because there was
Speaker 3: a sense of urgency that if I wanted to compete
Speaker 3: at all, I needed to start it right away.
Speaker 1: What did that training look like for you, Brad, I mean, like,
Speaker 1: that's an extremely intense process to throw yourself in so
Speaker 1: soon after such a massive physical and psychologically brutal injury.
Speaker 2: So I got really lucky. By twenty eleven, there were
Speaker 2: a lot of resources available for wounded vets, specifically as
Speaker 2: it pertains to sports, and I really benefited from the
Speaker 2: specific efforts of the Commit Foundation that helped me find
Speaker 2: my way to Brian Leffler at Loyola University, who had
Speaker 2: this rare, nuanced expertise in how to coach a blind
Speaker 2: swimming athlete in the Paralympics. He helped me learn a
Speaker 2: variety of things, changing some of my stroke from the
Speaker 2: way I used to swim to looking for the lane
Speaker 2: line on either side with my arm strokes so that
Speaker 2: instead of catastrophically crashing in and rumble stripping on my
Speaker 2: shoulders and my side, I could delicately find the lane
Speaker 2: line and just guide myself in the lane very gracefully
Speaker 2: and fast without losing speed. That's in essence, like the
Speaker 2: most frustrating thing about blind swimming. Accepting help was something
Speaker 2: that was very uncharacteristic of me. I would not in
Speaker 2: my previous life have done that. I would have said no, no, no,
Speaker 2: I'll figure it out and I'm going to go do X,
Speaker 2: Y and Z. I think there was sort of this
Speaker 2: urgeoning acknowledgement that I do need help and I need
Speaker 2: to be open to new opportunities and the council advice
Speaker 2: and guidance of other folks, and I think in so
Speaker 2: being open is what really allowed me to find that
Speaker 2: new pathway. I think if I had been my previous
Speaker 2: self and wasn't open to growth, I don't think I
Speaker 2: would have gone anywhere.
Speaker 1: It's so important for us to talk about all those
Speaker 1: moments in which you were forced to surrender some of
Speaker 1: that autonomy and that independence in order to stay safe
Speaker 1: and be healthy and survive. And so do you mind
Speaker 1: talking a bit more about what that experience was like
Speaker 1: of kind of owning the fact that you are now
Speaker 1: on a team of sorts in your life generally and
Speaker 1: then also within the pool.
Speaker 2: I think this sort of surrender, which I think is
Speaker 2: a great word for it. I wouldn't have jumped to
Speaker 2: that word because that's like a kind of trigger word
Speaker 2: for a guy like me who's brought up in the
Speaker 2: military and we're like, you know, the especially at the
Speaker 2: Naval Academy with the don't give up the ship flag
Speaker 2: being a big part of our historical legacy. This idea
Speaker 2: of surrender is just like not in my DNA. So
Speaker 2: to kind of wrap my head around giving up pieces,
Speaker 2: surrendering pieces of this, what I would categorize is like
Speaker 2: my fierce dedication to lone wolfness in my previous life
Speaker 2: was not easy, and I recall a particular moment with
Speaker 2: my mom. You know, the most challenging aspect of adapting
Speaker 2: to blindness is the ability to get from point A
Speaker 2: to point B. And the primary way that a blind
Speaker 2: person does that it was with a blind cane. And
Speaker 2: the way you use a blind cane as you tap
Speaker 2: about two feet in front of you the place that
Speaker 2: your foot is about to go. So I tap where
Speaker 2: my left foot's going to go. Then I tap where
Speaker 2: my right foot's going to go. And the idea is
Speaker 2: if I encounter an obstacle or a curb or a
Speaker 2: change in terrain, I'm going to hit it with my
Speaker 2: cane and I can adjust, but as you might imagine,
Speaker 2: like that's terrifying when you first start. And as I'm
Speaker 2: navigating this learning how to find my way with the
Speaker 2: blind cane, I had the benefit of my family participating
Speaker 2: and being there for a lot of that. And at
Speaker 2: one point where in the hospital, my mom is following
Speaker 2: closely behind and she is at least as scared or
Speaker 2: as nervous as I am in navigating this difficulty, standing
Speaker 2: behind me, watching me trying to figure out where I'm
Speaker 2: going and how to navigate and avoid all these obstacles,
Speaker 2: and she just can't help herself from telling me, there's
Speaker 2: a chair there, bred lookout, there's a column, You're coming
Speaker 2: up on a left hand turn. And I was trying
Speaker 2: to be patient with that and saying, you know what.
Speaker 2: And she's doing this along with me. She needs to
Speaker 2: learn as I do, and so I'm trying to do it.
Speaker 2: But as I'm navigating this difficult situation, I'm getting a
Speaker 2: little angsty to and at one point I remember growling.
Speaker 2: I turned around. I said, Mom, you have to stop that.
Speaker 2: You have to stop that, like I have to do this.
Speaker 2: You can't follow me around for the rest of my life,
Speaker 2: telling me what's in front of me. I have to
Speaker 2: do this. This is me that I have to be
Speaker 2: able to figure this out. And yeah, we're in this nice,
Speaker 2: gentle hospital environment, but I'm not always going to be here.
Speaker 2: What if I'm outside, What if I'm at the bus
Speaker 2: stop and I'm trying figure out where the bus is.
Speaker 2: You can't be there. I've got to figure this out.
Speaker 2: And my tone was very like that, like growling at her,
Speaker 2: and she was like okay, and she tried to settle
Speaker 2: down and just be quiet, and I promptly turned around
Speaker 2: and smacked my face into a big column.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: The hospital had these big round columns. And I got
Speaker 2: a hematoma and it burst open, bleeding on my forehead,
Speaker 2: and I crumpled down on the ground and my mom
Speaker 2: like comes hugs me and she's crying. She's like, I
Speaker 2: can't watch you do that.
Speaker 1: I can't watch you do that.
Speaker 2: It's too hard.
Speaker 1: But also like an amazing told Yose moment for your mom.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's exactly what the moment was. It was
Speaker 2: a very humbling for me. I mean, I don't think
Speaker 2: I don't feel unjustified in that feeling, you know, there
Speaker 2: is a tension like, yeah, she has to give me
Speaker 2: the space, but at the same time that space is
Speaker 2: hard for her to give. You know, she let me
Speaker 2: go once and I went out to war and I
Speaker 2: came back all blown up, like, of course she's going
Speaker 2: to be nervous to let me go again, and so
Speaker 2: I you know, the lesson learned there, I think for
Speaker 2: me was maybe I could do it before, Maybe I
Speaker 2: could do the lone wolf military tough guy thing. I
Speaker 2: can't anymore. I can't do that now. And for me
Speaker 2: to succeed as a blind person, I'm gonna need to
Speaker 2: let her in and she needs to be a part
Speaker 2: of this journey. Yeah, I'm going to reclaim independence where
Speaker 2: I can, but I need her help. I need her
Speaker 2: here with me. That opens something up for me. That surrender,
Speaker 2: letting her in, accepting the help allowed me to move
Speaker 2: through the rest of that journey. You know, as a
Speaker 2: blind swimmer, I don't do it by myself. My coach
Speaker 2: is on the end and as I approached the wall,
Speaker 2: he reaches out with a stick and a tennis ball
Speaker 2: and taps me in the back to let me know
Speaker 2: that my turn is right there. And at first I
Speaker 2: wanted to figure it out by myself, but I can't
Speaker 2: be the best blind summer I can be without help
Speaker 2: from my coach.
Speaker 1: I'm so curious, Brad. You know, you talked about how
Speaker 1: how your blindness essentially forced you to surrender to people
Speaker 1: for their physical help and support, and I wonder whether
Speaker 1: that had spillovers into your emotional life. So were you
Speaker 1: more willing to lean on them for emotional support?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think my physical limitation makes me physically reliant and
Speaker 2: dependent on other people for a variety of things. But
Speaker 2: that opens up a new conduit or a channel for
Speaker 2: that emotional support in a way that was probably inhibited
Speaker 2: before by my own hubris. There is kind of a
Speaker 2: it's like a new muscle, I guess in that sort
Speaker 2: of emotional aspect of my life that was probably precipitated
Speaker 2: by first the physical reliance on everybody else.
Speaker 1: So, Brad, you ended up making it to the twenty
Speaker 1: twelve Paralympic Games, where you'd be representing the United States,
Speaker 1: and the date is pretty special.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I thought, oh, this will be a
Speaker 2: great thing to just go do, but I really wasn't
Speaker 2: building up too much in my mind. But as we
Speaker 2: got closer and closer to the games, getting ready for
Speaker 2: the race on September seventh, twenty twelve, there was kind
Speaker 2: of a feeling of this is actually manifesting to be
Speaker 2: very extraordinary. I'm having the opportunity to swim in the
Speaker 2: Paralympics for Team USA on the exact year anniversary of
Speaker 2: the day I lost my vision. But along with that,
Speaker 2: while that was kind of exciting, it was also pretty scary. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there was a feeling of, well, what if I screw
Speaker 2: this up, what if I false start, what if I crash,
Speaker 2: what if I start going down? All these millions of
Speaker 2: things that could happen. So it started to feel, you know,
Speaker 2: the tension of the moment started to escalate, especially as
Speaker 2: we got right up to the beginning of the race.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so tell me about that race. Tell me about
Speaker 1: that moment.
Speaker 2: For me, when the gun goes off, my mind goes away.
Speaker 2: There's no ego, you just do. And that's how that
Speaker 2: race unfolded. I just did. I just dove off and
Speaker 2: just swam. In blind sports, It's very unique because I
Speaker 2: touched the wall, but I don't immediately know what happened,
Speaker 2: so I had to wait for a while. It was
Speaker 2: a little bit of a delay. I have to wait,
Speaker 2: and there's the moment. It's exciting that the crowd is
Speaker 2: cheering and there's adrenaline it and it feels incredible. But
Speaker 2: you don't know, is this moment excitement because of me?
Speaker 2: I don't know. Is it because someone else did something
Speaker 2: else happened? Did the race actually happen? Is you have
Speaker 2: to wait for a while and then finally the referee
Speaker 2: blows the whistle and that means the race is over.
Speaker 2: And at that point they want to stick it out.
Speaker 2: And according to the rules of international competition in the Paralympics,
Speaker 2: at that point my coach can legally talk to me.
Speaker 2: And at that point he leaned over and he said
Speaker 2: two words I'll never forget. He said, you won. I
Speaker 2: won a gold medal in the Paralympics on the year
Speaker 2: anniversary of the day I lost my vision in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2: And now I know in that arena all that like
Speaker 2: amazing excitement and energy and glitz and glam, it's because
Speaker 2: of me. I won. And I'm up on this. It's cool, it.
Speaker 1: Is really cool. I'm so gratified that you had that
Speaker 1: kind of moment. It's just it's amazing to even hear about.
Speaker 1: Can you take me back to the podium after your
Speaker 1: gold metal win? What was going through your mind in
Speaker 1: that moment.
Speaker 2: So that energy and that venue and that crowd is
Speaker 2: like the coolest thing in the world because they're all
Speaker 2: cheering for you. They watched you swim, and they're all
Speaker 2: moved by you, and that that energy is really incredible.
Speaker 2: And I remember waving and they cheered because I waved
Speaker 2: and I got so excited, and then I'd wave again
Speaker 2: and they'd cheer.
Speaker 3: It was just the same.
Speaker 2: It's almost indescribable thing. There's no words in my mind
Speaker 2: other than just joy, like this is just this is
Speaker 2: I'm just tickled, like it's really a golden moment. And
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, before you really processed what's going on,
Speaker 2: they announce, you know, winning the gold medal for the
Speaker 2: United States, Brad Schnyder, and you're just kind of like
Speaker 2: pushed up there and just smiling and cheering, and there's
Speaker 2: this big, loud music and before you know it, there's
Speaker 2: someone telling you to bend over so they can put
Speaker 2: the metal around your neck and the bouquet of flowers.
Speaker 2: And it's an incredible thing because it's just kind of
Speaker 2: like you're at the center of the universe. But what
Speaker 2: was equally is incredible is that moment goes away like that,
Speaker 2: because all of a sudden, the room gets quiet, and
Speaker 2: everyone stands up, and they start playing our anthem, and
Speaker 2: they raise our flag higher than all the other flags
Speaker 2: in the arena, and all the eyes go from the
Speaker 2: podium to the flag.
Speaker 3: It's just this.
Speaker 2: Really dramatic transition of focus. And that's exactly what happened
Speaker 2: to me. I went from being the center of the
Speaker 2: universe to now thinking about all the people who are
Speaker 2: a part of my journey, from Adam and Kyle, the
Speaker 2: guys on the battlefield who dusted me off and got
Speaker 2: me to a helicopter where the pilot put their aircraft
Speaker 2: and their flight crew at risk to land in an
Speaker 2: ied laden zone, to take me to the hospital where
Speaker 2: a surgeon spent twelve hours putting my face back together.
Speaker 2: To my mom, who got the call at five point
Speaker 2: thirty in the morning saying her son had been blown up.
Speaker 2: He has a traumatic brain injury. Potentially we won't be
Speaker 2: able to speak to him for a few days. We
Speaker 2: needed to get to Maryland as quickly as possible, to
Speaker 2: my siblings who wrapped their arms around my mom and
Speaker 2: got her through those trying circumstances. To Brian Leffler, who
Speaker 2: helped me figure out how to swim straight, to my
Speaker 2: friends and colleagues who got to watch that race from
Speaker 2: places like a rack in Afghanistan. There was this incredible
Speaker 2: feeling of connection to all of these people, and I
Speaker 2: recognized that, you know, while I'm the one who gets
Speaker 2: to have the medal around my neck, none of it
Speaker 2: was possible if it weren't for all of those touches.
Speaker 2: So all the uses of the puzzle were so integral
Speaker 2: in that success, and feeling that, acknowledging that and being
Speaker 2: at the center of that is what truly made the
Speaker 2: podium moment special.
Speaker 1: Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this
Speaker 1: conversation with Brad, make sure to check out the other
Speaker 1: episodes in our Olympic series, including my conversation with swimmer
Speaker 1: Missy Franklin, and next week we'll finish the series with
Speaker 1: user Mardini. Usura fled civil war in Syria as a teenager,
Speaker 1: and after a harrowing journey to safety, competed on the
Speaker 1: first Olympic Refugee Team. If you enjoyed this conversation, we
Speaker 1: on the Slight Change team would be so grateful if
Speaker 1: you could share the episode with someone you know. It
Speaker 1: helps us get the word out so we can keep
Speaker 1: making more episodes for you. Thanks so much and see
Speaker 1: you next week. A Slight Change of Plans is created, written,
Speaker 1: and executive produced by me Maya Shunker. The Slight Change
Speaker 1: family includes our showrunner Tyler Green, our senior editor Kate
Speaker 1: Parkinson Morgan, our senior producer Trisha Bobida, and our engineer
Speaker 1: Eric o'kwang. Luis Scara wrote our delightful theme song, and
Speaker 1: Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of
Speaker 1: Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries, so a big
Speaker 1: thanks to everyone there, and of course a very special
Speaker 1: thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow A Slight Change
Speaker 1: of Plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Shunker. See you
Speaker 1: next week.
Speaker 2: The the