Podcast Ep189 Brad Snyder
Didrik Johnck: Before we get into this episode, just a quick announcement. Our host Erik Weihenmayer invites you, yeah you, to join him for the What's Your Everest event. What is it? once a year people gather and hike up a mountain. What's the big deal, you ask? this is for everyone, regardless of ability or background.
Some might call it an adaptive hike. Ever see a wheelchair climb a mountain? At What's Your Everest, you will. You'll join a team with a common purpose. Inspire people to turn their challenges into changes, tackle obstacles head on, and work together to get to the top. This year the hike starts at the foot of the Flatirons outside of Boulder, Colorado on September 7th. Learn more at NoBarriersPodcast. com and click on events. Now, onto the show.
Explosive Ordnance Disposal, also known as EOD. In 2008, the film Hurt Locker won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture for its story about a bomb disposal team working in the heat of combat in Iraq. In fact, despite the obvious danger inherent in this job, there are thousands of EOD officers across the military.
Today, you'll meet one, Brad Snyder. He takes us on a journey through his extraordinary career in the Navy, his gripping encounters as an EOD officer, and his unbelievable transition from a life altering injury to becoming a Paralympic gold medalist. Brad tells us about navigating new paths, the importance of continuous learning, strong support systems, and the power of perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds.
All right, time to join our host Erik Weihenmayer for another dive into stories of inspiration, resilience, and overcoming life's greatest challenges. I'm producer Didrik Johnck, and this is the No Barriers podcast.
Erik Weihenmayer: It's easy to talk about the successes, but what doesn't get talked about enough is the struggle. My name is Erik Weihenmayer. I've gotten the chance to ascend Mount Everest, to climb the tallest mountain in every continent, to kayak the Grand Canyon, and I happen to be blind. It's been a struggle to live what I call a no barriers life, to define it, to push the parameters of what it means.
And part of the equation is diving into the learning process and trying to illuminate the universal elements that exist along the way. And that unexplored terrain between those dark places we find ourselves in and the summit exists a map, that map, that way forward. What we call no barriers.
Hey everyone, this is Erik Weihenmayer and welcome to no barriers. we got an awesome guest today. I'm so excited. he's pretty famous guy, Brad. It's so awesome to meet you this morning. hopefully we'll get to meet in person someday, but for now, we'll meet virtually.
Brad Synder: Well, thank you so much, Erik. It's funny to hear you say that I'm famous because I think, I told my wife I was excited about this podcast because out of blind people, I think you are by far the most famous blind person that I know of other than Stevie Wonder, so I hope you don't mind me saying that.
Erik Weihenmayer: Call me Erik Wonder.
Brad Synder: Yeah. Yeah. Erik Wonder.
Erik Weihenmayer: Erik and Brad Wonder. Yeah,
Brad Synder: That's right. I like that.
Erik Weihenmayer: And we have a mutual friend, Kyle Coon, who we were just talking about off air. He's a Paralympic, triathlete. he's blind as well. And, and we were just teasing and joking around saying that you guys are friends of course, but you know, it's a friendly competition.
So he's never used the word nemesis, but that's what I get out of it. that you're the nemesis that beats you, that you beat him. Excuse me.
Brad Synder: I did his podcast not that long ago. I think he introduced me as nemesis, which was funny to hear, but yeah, it's been a really friendly rivalry for many years now and promises to continue for at least another four, I think, as we look our look to Paris and LA. Kyle's going to Paris and
Erik Weihenmayer: You're taking a little break cause you got a few things happening in your life that we'll talk about. We'll Yes, exactly. And then the other thing is you were born in or grew up in St. Petersburg, right? That's correct. And then, and so my, I have a lot of family down there. Like my brother lives in Pensacola.
He owns a couple of world gyms down there and my dad, was a marine aviator. he, he went to Princeton as well. I know you're in Princeton now getting your PhD. He was the captain of the football team there. And then he, he signed up for the Marines and became a Marine aviator and trained at the Naval base in Pensacola.
And he had 119 missions over Vietnam and his A-4 Skyhawk. So my dad's kind of my hero. So bragging about him, he passed away a couple of years ago, but my gosh, he was just such a mentor and always my biggest cheerleader. So that's a really nice connection. I love that part of the country.
Brad Synder: Yeah. I'm sorry for your loss, but I'm, I feel, glad that you had such a great positive influence in your life. I similarly have family in the military who had sort of a similar impact on me and, I love Florida. I think, I came up north to go to college and I never wound back, but I hope to get back to Florida eventually once our career winds down.
Erik Weihenmayer: I want to start with a really dumb question because you started, your officer career as an ensign. Right, but is that like a rank? Is that a rank in the Navy? It is. so that's the starting rank for a naval officer.
Brad Synder: Correct. Yeah, it's a funny term, and I'm not sure where it comes from, and it sounds a lot like
Erik Weihenmayer: E N. I had to look it up, because I was like, I've heard that word a million times, and I've never really thought about it.
Brad Synder: And it sounds like you're enlisted, or you're in signing, or something like that, but whatever it is, it's the first rank as an officer, in the Navy. So every graduate of the Naval Academy or a person who comes out of an ROTC scholarship at another school, goes into the Navy as an ensign. In the Marine Corps and the Army and all those other, services that have the different ranks, they come out as a second lieutenant.
So the Navy's the only one, the Navy and the Coast Guard's the only one where you come out as an ensign.
Erik Weihenmayer: Cool. Yeah. And so you studied architecture at the Naval Academy and you were looking at all these different options as an officer and you chose to be an Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit Officer, which I really have to ask, like, why would you choose that one?
You know what I mean? That seems like you chose the most dangerous thing you could do. I know you don't think of it that way, But, if, I don't know if you look at statistics, you would think that would be one of the riskier jobs that you could sign up for.
Brad Synder: Yeah, for sure. I think at this age, at 40, I certainly look at it as what you just described, as a much more risky job. I think when I was, 18 and 19, I looked at it as, well, it's the most thrilling. It's the most exciting. You get to do the coolest stuff. You know, it's funny when I got to the Naval Academy at the beginning, when they're doing all the yelling at you, one of the first questions they ask is, what do you want to service select?
I didn't know, what do you, sir? What do you mean service select? What do you want to do when you join the Navy? And I was flabbergasted cause I thought, look, I was joined in the Navy. I thought the Navy would just tell me what they wanted me to do. I didn't know I had a whole lot of agency in the choice, but,
yeah. Everyone coming out of the academy chooses, whether they go onto a submarine or a ship or become a Marine or fly or like your dad or, and, I didn't know, I had never really thought about that. What I thought the first kind of point of that discussion was, what am I good at that other people aren't?
Yeah. And, the only answer I had, I was not a great student. I wasn't, uh, the, the best, at really anything in particular, except for swimming. I was much better in the water than anyone else. That was my strength. Yeah. So I kind of said,what jobs are you in the water? And my original conclusion was I want to be a Navy diver.
Right. And they told me, we, we don't commission Navy diver officers anymore. that community is shrinking. The only two communities that you can go into out of the Academy that, that spend a lot of time in the water are Navy SEALs and EOD officers. Back then, and even still now, the EOD community is lesser known.
People don't really know what that is. It's not super sexy. There's not a ton of movies about it. There's not a discovery channel show. Well, there actually is now, but there wasn't back then. So I didn't know anything about EOD and I knew a ton about SEALs. There's, Navy SEALs stuff is everywhere.
There's all kinds of movies, all kinds of documentaries. And so I spent three years thinking I wanted to be a Navy SEAL. but then, uh, kind of changed my mind. My junior year of college, I got to go out and do for a lack of a better term, a summer camp with the EOD community out in San Diego.
And I was blown away. It was just so cool on day one of, my EOD summer camp. I got to go with our dolphin program. So not a lot of people know, but the Navy. uses dolphins live flipper style dolphins to go out and help us find mine shapes on the bottom of the ocean, Dolphins can easily dive to 300 feet and it takes us quite a bit of technology and safety and all this sort of stuff to dive that deep. Dolphins can do it easily.
So we use dolphins. So I got to go out on a boat with a dolphin and practice looking for mine shapes in the ocean. And then I got to go to a jump zone where people were doing free fall jumping the next day. And then I got to go to an explosive range and see how people put together these explosive charges that break apart iEDs, improvised explosive devices. And I just, I was tickled. I was like, this is for me. My job is not an offensive job. It's a defensive job. My job is to mitigate explosive hazards wherever you might find one. I need to know about chemistry. I need to know about electronics. I need to be creative. I need to problem solve.
I need to be able to go anywhere in the world. I need to be able to jump out of aircraft, scuba dive. Like you guys did up on Everest, that kind of thing. We're trained to do all that stuff. Maybe not climb that high, but you know, operate in the mountain environment and get wherever the hazard is. I was enthralled.
It was such a cool job for me. And I'm happy to say in hindsight, it played out that way. It was an incredible job. I think the risks and the scariness of it didn't really hit me in so much later. And, and I'm, maybe I'm glad that I, chose to get into it before I had fully figured out how scary it was, but I really am glad that I chose that career path.
Erik Weihenmayer: Well, you had two deployments, one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. so you really didn't, it doesn't sound like you got a chance to do a lot of the underwater stuff, right? Like it was more land, EOD work, right?
Brad Synder: Yeah. It's kind of almost a joke sometimes when I introduced myself as a naval officer who spent all this time in Iraq and Afghanistan. People said, well, what is the Navy doing in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Um, but yeah, I spent no time on a ship, very little time. A lot of training in the water, a lot of scuba diving training, and a lot of mine countermeasures training, but nothing in the real practical world. Um, you know, but, you know, I got to do some really cool stuff in Iraq and Afghanistan as well.
Erik Weihenmayer: I heard your, talk last night on the,commencement talk that you gave in Virginia, I believe. And, and you were talking about the daily life. in Afghanistan, maybe you could tell us like, what that daily life looked like. what, what was a typical day?
Brad Synder: Yeah, I'd love to. And I will say what's a lot of veterans and especially my generation, I think reflect relatively fondly about their time on deployment for a strange reason.
I think. Thank you. In our today's society, we're so tuned in to our email and our phones and the constant ding donging of all of our alerts and notifications and all this sort of stuff. One thing I really liked about being on deployment is we really didn't have kind of, You didn't have the ding donging all day.
You didn't have your email in your face. You didn't have a cell phone that worked, no smartphones. You had, your, for lack of a better term, your camp and you have your birthing. And then you have the tactical operations center where you plan your missions. And then you had the weight room and the cafeteria and that was your world for, six months, eight months, sometimes 15 months, depending on the length of the deployment.
And so while it was really, intensive at times, there was a sort of peace and a Zen up to being on deployment that I really enjoyed. You get into a really regimented routine that said, uh, especially in Afghanistan, your, our job was to plan these, assault missions to various areas around Kandahar, Afghanistan with the goal of mitigating the Taliban's ability to operate and dominate the space. I'd get up in the morning, I'd work out, I'd go into the tactical operation center, get ready for our missions. Our missions would be typically two big Chinook helicopters. we would load up with both Americans and Afghan commandos.
We would fly out somewhere in Afghanistan, anywhere from four kilometers to seven kilometers away from our target village. We would land in the middle of the night. on night vision, we would hike from where we landed to the target village. right before the sun came up the next morning, we would run through the village and try to find any bad guys who might be there, navigate any potential explosive hazards or weapons caches that, that might be in that village.
Then we would camp there for the entire day, try to speak with the villagers, gain any insights we could from them about what's going on in that particular area of Afghanistan. And then when the sun went down, we would sneak back into the desert, land on the, or get up on those helicopters and go back to our base and then rinse and repeat that sort of profile every couple days for what was supposed to be 15 months, but I only ended up being there for six months.
Erik Weihenmayer: What I learned in that talk was that you, it started out pretty quiet and you're like, Oh, it's quiet around here. And then you realize that it was a winter, they're the Taliban hang out in the desert and then they come back for war season. Right? So then it heated up in front of you.
Brad Synder: We make the joke that, in Afghanistan, there's not four seasons, there's two seasons, there's fighting season and non fighting season and actually both my deployments played out that way where, the beginning of the deployment was very, um, sort of pacified. There wasn't a ton going on and it was a flip of the mind when you're doing all the training, you're always training to the worst case scenario.
You're training that bombs are going off everywhere and you're getting shot at constantly and there's just massive amounts of chaos and all that. and then when I got on deployment, actually in quote unquote combat, it didn't feel like combat at all. It felt like we were on vacation, more or less, in, in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Iraq ended up staying that way for the most of the time I was there. Afghanistan changed dramatically after being there for a few months.
Erik Weihenmayer: I always, I know this is a little bit of a technical thing, but like, you know, working with some of our vets at No Barriers, the stories they tell me about being in Afghanistan, you're in full armor and then you have like massive pack on and it's like a hundred degrees.
Like are people passing out? Like I know the SEALs, you were with a SEAL unit, so like maybe those guys are the toughest of the tough, but like a regular guy like me, like I'd fall over and pass out.
Brad Synder: Yeah. Um, it's funny. Working with SEALs. The seals are definitely, you know, elite and they're there's a capability that they bring to bear that really is impressive. And especially when anything ever happened, if we ever got shot at or whatever else, the ability to rapidly respond and maneuver was incredible. I'm working with that unit. Like you just said, like everybody's a human being. Everybody needs water. Everybody needs food. Everybody needs to go to the bathroom and everybody gets super cranky when they're super hot and there's all this weight on your shoulders and all that.
But I think one thing that's really unique about the seals is that they all feel this massive impetus to be tough, right? So even though some you can like I remember being in patrol looking back at someone knowing that they're probably about to pass out and I would say are you okay? And they would say i'm funny kind of thing like yeah And you're like, I think you're I think you need to take a break There were definitely moments.
I definitely know that I can recall maybe two or three instances where I definitely hit my, I don't know that I'm going to be able to keep going kind of moment. And those moments were never what you would think of from a movie of combat. It's not the, there's people shooting and there's craziness going around.
Those moments always are your adrenaline's through the roof and you're like a superhuman for, five minutes. And it's never that moment. that's the, an exciting moment. That is, you know, weirdly weird to say, easy to navigate. It's the, we've been hiking for the last four hours.
I'm nearing my last water bottle. It's 110 degrees. My pack, which I've tried to keep as small as possible is now just digging into my shoulders. My helmet is heavy. Oh my God. Is this ever going to end? I remember there was a, you know, my job on these patrols is to keep everyone safe from IEDs, improvised explosive devices.
And we train everyone on the patrol to look out for particular things. You know, if you see. a wire sticking out of the ground, or if you see like it looks like a hole was recently dug, you know, call my attention to that and I'll evaluate the hazard. And,when you're fresh and especially at the beginning of the deployment, literally everything looks like an IED and everyone's calling me, Hey, come look at this, come look at that, come look at this, come look at that.
And I'm in earnest, in all earnestness, I'd rather them be wrong a hundred times and not be, and call my attention to it and me evaluate it rather than someone step on it. And now we have someone hurt or killed. Um, so I'm running around like a crazy person at the beginning of the patrol and the beginning of the deployment, looking at every rock and every whatever.
But there was definitely at the end of this one, really long patrol and some stuff had happened that morning and I was leading our way and we were, you know, you could see the base that we were getting to, and that's the base was, more water, take a break, take your boots off, all that stuff.
Yeah. And someone calls over the radio. I think we have an IED back here. And I, in my mind, I was like, just leave it. Likejust, we just need to get a hundred more yards. And I had to coach myself. Like, that's the wrong response. I got to go back and look at it. But your brain definitely starts to play tricks on you when you're that tired and you're that hot and you just want to say, you know, screw it.
Let's just get to the base. But no, you gotta stay by your safety protocols no matter what at every moment in time. So yeah, it's, it's definitely a struggle and just those human factors like heat and nutrition and water play a big role in, just navigating combat, but one testament to the group I was with, we really did a good job of navigating that, that adversity, no matter what everyone sort of hit their moments.
But that's one part of that's great about being a team. And I'm sure your experience on Everest was like this. Everyone hits their moment, but thankfully no one hits their moment at the same time as everybody else. So when you're hitting your, I'm down moment, you look to the guy next to you and he's ready to say. Hey, you know what? let's pick it up. Let's go. Here's my extra water bottle. we can navigate this.
Erik Weihenmayer: We have, we have a funny saying in the mountains. I think it's funny at least. And cause you're roped together on a glacier usually. And And so if you're having a bad day, they call it hauling tuna.
So you're literally like somebody's in front of you hauling you up the mountain, like leaning in, pulling you up the mountain. And I have hauled tuna and I've been the tuna many times. Yeah. So
Brad Synder: I think probably in that environment, you just have to give everyone permission to be like, listen, you know, at any point you could be hauling tuna or you could be the tuna.
That's okay.
Erik Weihenmayer: So the Taliban and the,and Al Qaeda, they had it like an ingenious idea, which was like, they can't compete with you guys. So they put these IEDs everywhere and so you can be like the smartest, most skilled expert and you're still, It's just dealing in this environment that's just absolutely uncertain, like you could be great, you could be A+ and, you got straight A's in the Academy, and you still are in this environment that's like, seems like mission Impossible a little bit.
Yeah.
Brad Synder: Well, to be clear, I didn't get straight A's at the Academy, though I wish people would think that. Yeah, I agree. It's, I liken it to You know the story about Jaws,Steven Spielberg's first movie, the reason that he created that, that really, ominous cello music is that the robot shark wasn't ready for most of the filming of the film.
So you actually don't see the shark for 99 percent of the Jaws movie, but yet, you're terrified the whole time just because every time they show that fin or they play that music you're just like, Oh my God, there's a shark in there. And every time you look at the whole ocean, you're like, Oh my God, there's, there could be a shark there.
I just don't know. I can't see. It's the uncertainty that's terrifying about jaws. It's the same thing with IEDs. You can look at literally anywhere in Afghanistan and the, one of the biggest tragedies, and you could definitely appreciate this being in the world where you've been, Afghanistan is beautiful.
It is one of the most beautiful places on earth. These just, incredible mountains and these big sprawling deserts and these fertile valleys underneath with these, babbling crooks, creeks going through and the poppy fields are really pretty. These sort of, nicely evenly growing pink flowers and it's just really beautiful country.
But as an EOD officer, when I look at the photos or like go back to my mind of the villages of Afghanistan, all I see is potential IED emplacements everywhere. it's just like the Jaws music and you look at these picturesque, yeah, exactly. I, I mean, I, I would say I feel like I was successful and there were definitely moments where I just looked and was just in awe of what a, what an incredible place this is.
But you are living like literally every step. Everywhere I went in Afghanistan, I was using a metal detector to clear my footsteps, like literally every footstep, I thought there might be something buried underneath and these IEDs are buried under the ground. Even if you are looking, staring at the ground, it might be underneath you in a way that you can't see.
And I firmly believe like when I stepped on one, I remember this in my mind. I was running to, I needed to get somewhere. I was running across the ground, and I looked down and it was grass. And I was like, what are the chances that an IED's been buried here so long that grass has grown on top of it?
And that was the case. Grass had grown over where this IED emplacement was. So I stepped on the grass. I was like, you're right. You could be on your best game that day. And I feel like I, you know, I was doing my best to bring my A game. I messed up. I missed it. But it's just tough. It'll get you. If it's your day, it's your day. If you're, you know, maybe it was my day to be the tuna, unfortunately.
Erik Weihenmayer: And the point of this podcast isn't really to focus on that moment, but one of the things that kind of did blow my mind was when you were blown up, it seemed like you were okay except for your eyes. Like how is that possible when other guys are getting their legs blown off and stuff?
I mean it's kind of like when I read the article, I was like, is that kind of like a miracle?
Brad Synder: Well, I like to think I'm just way tougher than everybody else. Just kidding.it's all, I think I, I really believe it was about the dynamics of the explosion. And, uh, if I could give you a much more draw it up on a chalkboard of why it was set up the way that it was, but the kind of CliffsNotes on it was that the initiation of the explosion was not in the same place as the blast itself. And there was an offset because there's a tactic that they were using to try to hit more than one person. But thankfully I was the only one who hit the, so the, I stepped on the pressure plate. but it actually exploded in front of me.
So what you'll see with many of the guys who, end up missing limbs or, whatever else the blast was probably underneath them, like a traditional land mine, for me, it blew up in front of me. So it just came out of the ground and smacked me in the face. The primary impact was to my face, not to my body, which, you know, saved my lifeand it's, it is kind of a miracle in a sense that, I walked away from that, but. One thing I came away from that experience really understanding, and I know you understand this, thathuman eyes are incredible mechanisms. The way that a doctor explains that your eye works is brilliant.
it's mind blowing and it's striking to me to think, why are there not more blind people? With as fragile as our eyes are, you'd think there would be way more blind people. So it's a miracle that we are as anomalous as we are.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah. We're shrinking. The younger blind people were shrinking in the world, right? Because of all this preventative medicine and so forth. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So you talk a lot about second chances, kind of second chapters of life. Like you're given a chance to live again. That's really important. that must have been just this hammering message, right? To you, Oh my God, I lived through this. And,and like, how do you wrap your head around that? You know what I mean?
Brad Synder: Yeah, I think it's a great question. And probably one of the most important. If I was to pull a nugget out of my narrative, or what I try to say to audiences or to anybody, what I'm trying really hard to capture for them is this experience that I had of dying and coming back Because it really did change my life. And I do think it's kind ofit's an inversion of what people think my experience was I think when people read some kind of tagline of my story, it's like Brad overcame blindness, but it's not what the story is at all.
For me, it was like, I came back to life. I came back to life different and I came back to life without my vision, but that wasn't the featured part of it. The featured part of it was. Like, I'm so grateful to still be here because I felt like I died. I blew up. I knew I blew up. I laid there on the ground thinking I was dead and I thought about being dead and I accepted it.
And in fact, part of me was sort of excited to find out what happens after you die and to see people I've lost along the way. the, the relationship that you have with your dad. I had with my grandfather and then my grandfather died when I was 11 and I felt like my grandfather was there and I felt like I was going to see my grandfather again.
And so to come back to life, it was, it really was like being reborn. Everything is new now.the cup of coffee I thought I'd never be able to have again. Here it is. And it's amazing. And the hug that I got to give my mom that I thought I would never get to give her. It's amazing. And to be married and to have a child and to continue to race and to continue to do the things I'm doing each one of these little things is something I thought back in 2011 that I'd never have again.
So they're rich. They're rich in a way that's really incredible. And if you look back on it, like what's the difference, why are all these moments after my injury so different? It's because I know that they're precious and I cherish them. You know, if I think about the difference between the way I was living my life pre injury and the way I was living my life after injury, it's that I uniquely know, now having gone through this experience of feeling like I was dead, that each of these moments, everything in my life, from, being a part of a family, to being a dad to my daughter, to my racing, to whatever else, it's all just these precious moments that I actively cherish.
And in my, speaking to people or doing the public figure thing, I guess, influencing people, my, what I hope that they'll take away from my journey is not, this is a great story and Brad overcame blindness, but rather this meditation on how, You can improve the value of your life by realizing that everything in it is so precious. Every moment is really magical every conversation you have with your family or your friends, every plane ride, every race every engagement with somebody is precious and there will come a time where all of that will go away and I hope that when everyone gets to that moment they can say.they're very happy with the way that they lived their life and that they made the most of all of those moments. And that's actively what I'm trying to do now, in, in forward as opposed to hindsight. Does that make sense?
Erik Weihenmayer: Makes total sense. And I wonder if you would say, you know, and you don't have to be blown up to do this.
Cause right. Yeah, exactly. At least that's my hope. Dramatic thing that kicks you into that, It can be just like a realization that life is a gift and I need to appreciate and have gratitude.
Brad Synder: Exactly. I feel very lucky that I had the very unique and rare experience to be blown up, but I know that not everyone has access to that same opportunity.
So I'm trying to provide you the nuts and the bolts, right?
Stick
Erik Weihenmayer: their finger in a light socket or something like that. Yeah, exactly. No, you also had some wild vivid dreams. That was pretty interesting like you woke up, and you didn't realize you were blindyeah, you were just in this dreamy world probably had a lot of medicine and oh yeah, and and andand when did you realize that you were actually blind?
Brad Synder: You, you're right. and it's funny. It's like non consensual drug use in the hospital. I, you know, I went to sleep on the battlefield and I woke up in the hospital and I was already on a hot, a heavy IV drip of all kinds of stuff. And of, of which I'm not super knowledgeable on, but it's pain killing medication, opiate type of stuff.
And it was creating just massive amounts of hallucinations in my mind, all kinds of wacky stuff and not good stuff either. Like a lot of my dreams were very scary. I was, on, I had this recurring dream that I was stuck in a mall food court, which is really bizarre. And I had these dreams that I was in a tent in the middle of the desert. And then I also had this recurring dream that I was in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory and all of the people walking around me were Oompa Loompas. And it was bizarre because, all the, if you were to look at my reality from the outside, you would see that it's a normal hospital room with all these hospital workers and nurses and stuff coming in and speaking to me.
But in my mind, it was this really bizarre, fantastical interpretation of what was going on around me. And, I think at the beginning, I just thought I was in fantasy land. And then, as I started to understand what's going on, I started to understand that I was hallucinating, and I was trying to make sense of things, but I was still very confused.
It took me realistically about a week to really figure out what was going on that I had gone through,I had been in combat, I had been hurt, and I had this lasting, significant injury to my eyes. Um, it didn't, I didn't realize I was blind until the sixth day surgeons were in the room saying, hopefully if this surgery is a success, we'll get some of your vision back.
And I remember being very perplexed about what do you mean get some of my vision back? Because the experience of hallucinating was very much like I'm seeing. I just didn't really connect the dots that I wasn't seeing with my eyes, I was seeing with my mind. And, that, that surgery was not a success. I woke up now for the first time knowing that it's dark, and it's dark for a particular reason, and the darkness isn't gonna go away.
Erik Weihenmayer: But like me, do you use, maybe you still see in your mind? I at least have a visual image of what I used to see. I went blind at 14, so I didn't have as much time to see, but I still remember what those images were like back then inside my brain all the time.
Brad Synder: For sure. Yeah, and it's one of those things I've still having been blind for 13 years, I still can't wrap my head around what a congenitally blind person, what their world looks like, because I make a visual world in my head.
I, I know what everything looks like. I, I build the textures and the colors. And what's funny, I don't know if you do this, but yeah. I, if someone doesn't tell me what something looks like, for instance, what color it is, my brain just associates an arbitrary color to it. And I'm very convincing to myself.
And I'll walk around telling my wife, like, Hey, where's that blue thing that I need? And she's that thing's not blue, it's beige. And I'm like, Oh, interesting. I just, Oh, I've lived this whole time thinking that thing was blue.
Erik Weihenmayer: It had to be blue.
Brad Synder: It had to be blue, why is it blue? I actually have no idea why I think that, it's just my brain made it blue.
Erik Weihenmayer: Now I know you're a really positive person and you had this idea of second chances and like to have gratitude, but there must have been, I mean every human being has these dark bitter moments, like what was the hardest part that you found,maybe in the beginning stages of being blind?
Brad Synder: The hardest parts are sort of the, you know, for lack of a better term, the dumbest parts, and I don't know what your transition was like, but it's not this kind of magnanimous, epic movie style climax.
It's really dumb things like washing dishes, or I definitely remember the worst part of it to me, probably one of the lowest points was, I lived in a, I lived in downtown Baltimore when I was first blind and I got a service dog for the first time. And I had an awesome service dog. Her name was Gizzy and Gizzy.
I would walk Gizzy to this, fenced in dog park. That was a couple of blocks from my house. And I would go early in the morning cause there weren't other people there. There weren't other dogs. It was easier for me to navigate. So I walked over there one morning and it was just me and Gizzy. And I let Gizzy go in the dog park.
And she started running around, just super happy to be in the dog park. But eventually, like after an hour or so, I was like, alright, it's time to go. Like, we have to go and move on with our day. And I whistled for her to come back, and she doesn't come back. She thinks it's a game, she's running away from me in this dog park.
And I whistled again, she didn't come back. Gizzy, come here. And I started to get really frustrated, like, like, come here, it's time to go. We've got to go on. I'm stuck in this dog park. I'm dependent on this dog who thinks this is a game and continues to run away from me. And I felt like I'm stuck. I'm stuck.
I'm whatever I am 30 years old and I'm stuck in this stupid dog park. Is this dog won't come back to me? I can't get anywhere. And I just felt very helpless. and it felt silly. And I think that was one of those realities. I think also to it, when I was first blind, I think there's a trap where we put a lot on, like, once I get a guide dog, everything's going to be normal.
Like I can basically do everything I used to be able to do. And that was a stupid thought. And that's definitely something I thought, and here I am thinking dog's going to solve everything. And now it's, it's not all solved. I'm still stuck. I'm helpless. This is so frustrating. And it took a little bit of space.
And the other dumb moment is like washing dishes. I don't know if
Erik Weihenmayer: I washed dishes with syrup one time.
Brad Synder: Why won't this dish get clingy? And for me, it was like trying to stack the stuff on the dry rack. And every once in a while I'd stack it improperly. And all of a sudden wine glasses would explode. And it's just gosh, I just. I can't do the things I used to be able to do. Yeah. And I had to learn, I still have to work through this loop of, it's like an expectation management issue.
It's a lot of the frustration comes from,Hey, this didn't used to be a problem and now it is. And gosh, that's so frustrating. Or this is a problem for me and it's not a problem for other. men of my similar age group or a cohort or whatever else, like other people don't struggle with this.
Why do I have to struggle with it? And I think you just have to navigate that delta of exp expectations to some extent, remanage your initial expectations. And then give your permission to say, Hey, I am unique and I face unique challenges and unique circumstances. And I have to develop unique solutions to navigate some of these otherwise mundane and stupid problems, but that doesn't make it, any different.
And there's a lot of strengths I have that other people don't have. And I just have to do my best to maximize those strengths and mitigate my weaknesses of which vision is one of my weaknesses, you know?
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah. You have to keep exhibiting that perspective I think, two comments about, the dog park.
One, you need hot, you need to keep hot dogs in your pocket. that'll get your dog to you every time. And then secondly, I've heard you use the word agency. And I think that's a really cool and important word, and I don't think people realize, even to this day, I've been blind 30 something years, and, I'll get off the plane with my guide dog in an unfamiliar airport.
Now, I could bumble my way to the baggage claim, but it's so much easier to have someone escort you. So I'll have an escort. And, sometimes they don't show up and you're just standing there. You stand there for like 20 minutes and people go, Oh, it's 20 minutes. Big deal. Just suck it up. Be patient. But you're like, yeah, my agency is taken away here.
I have to wait for this human being. I'm dependent on this human being showing up. And then if not, I just sit here and I don't think people realize That's a hard thing to wrap your mind around when you've lost that.
Brad Synder: Yeah.it's both simultaneously very humbling, but also very frustrating and you must travel just as much as I do.
And I, every day, I think that's one of the things that makes travel so stressful is that when I, when we get off of the airplane, you never know, is it going to be two minutes? Is it going to be 45 minutes waiting for someone to walk you through the airport? And I, you know, sometimes I have someone waiting for me in baggage claim.
All I have to do is walk 200 feet to where baggage claim is, but I can't get over there unless this person shows up. And it's very frustrating, but yeah, I think if anything, if I've learned anything through those experiences is the importance we should put on respecting everybody else's autonomy. Like when you are late for something, it's not just that you're late.
It's that you're stripping agency and autonomy from other people who are waiting for you to give them what they need or to deliver your, your keynote address or whatever else. So it's as frustrated as I am to have my agency taken from me, I want to make sure that I don't contribute to that being that happening to someone else.
Does that make sense?
Erik Weihenmayer: A hundred percent. The other thing I noticed that was seemed really important was you had great support systems and I know you value community. Uh, your mom was like really special. she really helped you in those beginning days. Yeah. So just talk about the support system that you had maybe as a vet, you were maybe lucky to have support systems that maybe somebody else might not have.
Brad Synder: Yeah. I, Um, for sure on the both on both fronts, I'm very lucky to have a very close relationship with my immediate family and then definitely like a broad network of people who are very, were very invested in me right from the beginning, you know, right? There was never a day when I was in, Walter Reed or then in my rehab process afterward that there wasn't someone either calling me or visiting me.
Um, in the hospital, my family, right from the get go, my mom, I never was in the hospital without my mom, not until much later I woke up and she was there. And during that whole hallucination part that having my mom nearby, it was like, Hey, once I realized I was hallucinating, I don't know what to trust. I don't know if I should trust this Oompa Loompa doctor or whatever else, you know?
Uh, but I know my mom's voice. I know my mom's here. I know I can trust my mom. every time someone was saying, Hey, this is this surgery, or this is this thing we're going to need to do, I'd really rely on my mom to say, does this check out for you? And she would say, yes. Okay, cool. If I, if my mom says it's cool, I'm fine with it.
It's like literally a sort of like a spiritual power of returning. That was critical in that process, but then it wasn't it matriculated from my mom's my siblings too. My siblings all dropped whatever they were doing to be around me as much as possible to go through all the wickets, whether it was intensive care or then, my sister was in blind rehab with me for a period of time and she actually learned braille with me and it was really...
it was really cool to go through that process, A, not alone, but B, like we're learning this journey together. It's not just my burden to bear. We're all going through it together and that was Um, something that made the process not only more bearable, but even enjoyable at times. My brother, Russell,he's been really instrumental in my sports journey.
He's guided me through, some running marathons and some just training and that sort of thing. So we've really done it as a unit together. And then now my wife, this whole, the whole journey to Tokyo really had a lot and navigating COVID that was my wife and I were a partnership through all of that.
So I've benefited greatly from my close relationships with my family. And the, maybe I take away there though, is with those relationships with your family and your friends, you get what you put out. if you are invested in compassionate and your relationships with your family.
You know, when these things happen, they're there for you. And it's a reciprocal kind of thing. I'm there for my family if they need anything and they know that. And they, I know now that when I need them, they're all going to come out for me as well. So you don't want to wait till tragedy strikes to invest yourself in your family and your friends.
And I think that's a, something that needs nurturing day in, day out. And then I think you're right on the veteran side. I got really lucky. I got hurt in 2011 and we had been unfortunately, rehabbing wounded vets for quite a while at that point. And so this idea of getting vets into sports was not a new idea.
And there was already a whole bunch of resources and nonprofits set up to set me up. I remember a call from this guy at the association of blind athletes who said, do you realize how lucky you are to be injured in a Paralympic year? And he hooked it up. He bought my plane ticket to fly to Colorado Springs and swim in a swim meet.
And get qualified and classified to compete in the Paralympics and you know I don't know. I don't know that I would have had that idea on my own So I got really lucky that there were people there to make those suggestions provide me those resources give me those kind of, Those plane tickets and all that stuff and give me the tools and things I needed to end up succeeding
Erik Weihenmayer: Was that were you just gung ho when you got that call and said?
Yeah, i'll come and swim or was there a little reservation? In terms of how it would work Or whether you would be interested in swimming anymore.
Brad Synder: I think it's more the latter. I'm just gung ho, generally. Like, if I get, if I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do it all the way. One of my, legacy lessons from my grandfather and my father is if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right.
So I do try to do that. But I will say, I think you're hinting at something exactly right. I was reticent to get into Paralympics, at least at the first couple phone calls, because I was more fixated on this idea of like, you know, my ability to earn for myself is now gone. I'm really wrestling with this idea of I have a disability now.
I can't do my job in the Navy. They're not going to let me, you know, the trope of my community is do you cut the red wire or the green wire? And obviously I can't figure out what wire to cut if I can't figure out what color it is. So I'm going to have to get out of this job. I need a new job. What am I going to do?
I need to figure out how to use Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint and I need to get a corporate job and I need to maybe get an MBA. What am I going to do? What am I going to do? That sort of panic was, you know, in me somewhere. So when someone's Hey, do you want to go swim in the Paralympics?
I'm like, I don't have time for that. I got to get a job, you know, yeah. So I, my first couple of phone calls were, yeah, that sounds fun. And I think what really tipped the scales for me, it was like, Hey, listen, if you're interested in this at all, you need to do it now because there are real deadlines as to when you can get classified, when you can qualify, when you can do X, Y, and Z.
So I was like, all right, I'll give this a try. But it went so well from the beginning that I was like, all right, let me just suspend my angst over getting a job for one year. Let me jump into this Paralympic thing and make the most of it. And it completely changed my life. Like I've been on that same wave now for 13 years and I haven't gotten off.
Erik Weihenmayer: I'm still up on the board. You know what I mean? Love it. Yeah. Oh, I love it. Yeah. And I've tried to quit. I've tried, I Tokyo was going to be the last and then it stayed on for another year and now we're only a couple of years away from LA. So like. Uh, I gotta stick in it. It's an addiction, Tell me about it. I'm 55 and I'm like, I can still, I got some more years ahead of me. That's right, exactly. Even though my knees and elbows are starting to hurt,
Brad Synder: Just find the sport where the peak is 55 as opposed to
Erik Weihenmayer: 25, you know what I mean?
So I like to swim in the pool, just total amateur, but I'm always actually a little bit scared.
I'm going to slam my head into the, to the end of the pool. And so I think I saw some kind of adaptation where they put like a tent, like a kind of like a barrier that's like five feet before the end of the pool. So my head will hit like a bunch of kind of like, Yeah, tennis balls kind of thing that are floating up.
What's the what is that adaptation that you had to learn? Curious.
Brad Synder: At the very beginning when I was just... I was really lucky. I got to do the first part of my rehab down in Florida, where I'm from in St. Petersburg, actually, my VA was in Tampa and they allowed me to leave and go to St. Pete. So when I first started swimming, I did it at my home club with my old coach when I was an age grouper.
And the way that he figured out how to adapt it for me was to take a pool noodle, like one of those long sort of tubular foam pieces. Yeah. And he strung it about an arm's length away from the wall. So when I would swim down the lane, I would hit my forehead on the pool noodle and I would know the wall was right behind it.
So I could just reach out, touch the wall and make my turn.
Erik Weihenmayer: And you didn't have any mean friends that moved the pool noodle ever on you?
Brad Synder: No, it's so funny you say that. I get people say that a lot and they're like, aren't you afraid to jump into the pool? And I'm like, What well meaning individual would watch a blind person get up on the block, say, take your mark and let them dive into an empty pool.
Like I have, you know, I have that much faith in humanity. You know what I mean? Nobody's going to let me do that. Yeah, exactly. So I know there's water in the pool at least. And yeah, so I'm not so afraid of that. And, um, yeah, people have been pretty good. That said the next iteration of adaption, we don't train, we don't compete in the Paralympics with a pool noodle in the water.
What we do is. A teammate or a coach will stand on the side with a, essentially it's a blind cane, a five foot, six foot long pole with a tennis ball on the end and as I approached the wall at a distance, we practice, they tapped me in the back to let me know, Hey, the turn is approaching.
And my coach and I's approach is he taps me when I should flip. So I'm counting my strokes to anticipate about when that tap's going to come. When I feel that tap, I lean over and flip immediately. And, typically
Erik Weihenmayer: that is a lot of, it's a lot of trust. That is cool.
Brad Synder: So you talk about the, any, uh, you know, ill intentioned friends move the mark for you.
If someone's not paying attention on the tap. It can come late and that has happened where the tap comes late and I either and I haven't full blown crashed, but I've definitely come in and tumbled, quicker than I wanted to and either bang my heels or hit my back or whatever else. And unfortunately, like, that's just kind of the name of the game.
if you want to be fast and you want to be aggressive, you're going to have to deal with crashing here and there. But when it works, it works really cool.
Erik Weihenmayer: Your story, just, serving the country and,your rehabilitation and the things that you learned along the way, I mean, that's Honestly, that's story enough for incredible insights to people.
But then you had this, total part two of swimming and a year after your injury, winning a gold medal. I mean, that's like, that's like a movie, A storybook. Stuff. Yeah. so that must have felt incredible. what was that day like when you win the gold in the 400 meter a year exactly to the day right of your injury. Yeah. I mean, come on. Very, you can't make this up.
Brad Synder: That's, that's right. That's how I do it in the i, my keynote. I say, isn't that a great sports story? Yeah. Yeah, I think, for me, the experience was very surreal. uh,in the military, especially in the special operations world back then, we would get all these pretty routine briefings on, Hey, don't be on social media and don't be on Facebook.
The enemy is watching and anything that you put online. could compromise you or your teammates. And so like, be very mindful of your digital footprint and all that stuff. And I remember leading up to the Paralympics. Yeah. I think even before I went, someone called me and said, did you know that you have a Wikipedia page now?
And I was like, terrified. No, no, no. I'm not supposed to have a Wikipedia page. I'm supposed to be mindful of my digital footprint. And I don't want people to know who I am and all that stuff. But as the lead up started to happen, I started to kind of understand. And. Yeah, there's this story happening that seems to be somewhat independent of me.
There's this fella named Brad Snyder, he's this injured guy and he's gonna win, he's gonna swim this race and maybe win a gold medal on the year anniversary. I was like, holy cow, that's not me. Like that sort of thing does not happen to me. Me, Brad Snyder, that happens to that guy, Brad Snyder. That's crazy.
So there was like this sort of, separation that felt there's me and then there's this story and are these two things going to like match up and even as it was all happening, I was almost like out of body watching myself do it all and it was incredible and I just couldn't, I couldn't really give myself permission to believe that it was true.
I just felt like at some point I'm going to wake up and that's going to be this, oh, wasn't that a great, you know, Netflix show or wasn't that a great dream or whatever else. But it wasn't it was true. It was real and I think still even to this day all of that journey i'm still absorbing it. i've lived with this imposter syndrome I think the whole time. Like I don't feel like That was supposed to happen to me But it did and i'm very grateful and I think maybe that imposter syndrome keeps me hungry to keep it going just so I can like keep convincing myself that it was all real. It doesn't make sense.
Erik Weihenmayer: A hundred percent.
And I think a lot of people have that, this alter ego kind of thing where you're like, was that me that did that? That seems like a guy that like, I don't even, I don't know if that's truly me. It's, yeah, it's like a, it's a coping mechanism of the brain or something. It's amazing.
Brad Synder: Yeah, exactly.
Erik Weihenmayer: Um, you met disabled people there. Maybe you hadn't met that many disabled people in your life, but you saw all walks of life, you know, folks in chairs and amputees and blind people. Was that pretty cool? Cause I had an experience like where I met blind people for the first time at a summer camp for the blind.
I had this kind of I have to say I had this low expectation of like other blind people like, a bunch of blind dorks, you know, but I was like 15, so what was that like when you're now surrounded by like every disability under the sun?
Brad Synder: Yeah, I think a similar experience and I think it's healthy to admit that.
I was a snob. Well, yeah. I just think you and I have encountered this at countless times I'm sure. That just generally society's expectation of anyone with a disability is very low. And so whenever I actually think it makes me a little bit leery of anybody who's congratulating me because I think, are you congratulating me because your expectation was so low?
Or are you congratulating me because I legitimately merit your,congratulations. Does it make sense? I'm constantly in doubt of, are is, should I value the congratulations you're giving me? Because are you giving me congratulations for the right reason? But yeah, I felt similar. And I think my first, foray into the Paralympics, I thought it was going to be a little bit like disability summer camp.
Like we're all going to high five each other and tell each other that we're all great. And this is all going to work out fine and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. and it wasn't that at all. And I definitely had to get over some of my sort of preconceived notions. And I think what I was blown away with most was, how severe some people's challenges are and how nonchalant they were about them and how I was just really blown away.
I felt like I had gone through this major life transformation. But I jump into this space where people had been doing it for so long and it was so normal for them, and in fact, almost so easy. And in fact, the thing that they were all more concerned about was their training and their nutrition and their start, and their turn and their stroke and, but I'm like, but you have no legs kind of thing.
What does that, doesn't that, does that not bother you? No, I haven't had legs my whole life. Wow. That just absolutely changed my mindset on a lot of things. And I'm happy to say now, this, at this length of time involved in the Paralympics, I don't think twice about that sort of stuff, but I do understand that transformation. But it's one of the reasons I really am so passionate about Paralympics more broadly is that I do think society would benefit from maybe elevating their expectation of the disabled and not feeling so inclined to pity them, but instead look at the Paralympics as a source of inspiration. the people in the Paralympics do absolutely incredible things like Jess Long all site. I have trained with the best swimmers in the world and Jess Long is better than most of them. She trains like an absolute animal and she's, she's notable because she's an incredible athlete and she's a, a good looking gal and all that stuff.
But I'll tell you just from a training partner perspective, no one trains harder or better than she does. And it's been so cool to see. Hey, you've got no legs. No problem. I'm going to out train you. I'm going to wear these paddles and I'm going to crush you. Just seeing that mentality between Jess and all the other members of that team has been really a source of inspiration for me. And one of the reasons I'm so passionate about Paralympics.
Erik Weihenmayer: Amazing. So then you go on to get. Get a three more gold medals and maybe, and even a world record, if I understand, but it didn't say what the world record was in specifically.
Brad Synder: Yeah. Going back to what you had said about...
Erik Weihenmayer: Tell him to put that back. Tell him to put that detail in the articles.
Brad Synder: I will. It's one of those things like you, I'm sure you see stuff published about yourself and you're like, Oh man, if they knew the nuance or, you know, especially as a, as an athlete, you want to know the events and the timing and whatever else, but they often leave those things off.
Yeah. Yeah. Triathlon's worse sometimes. There's so many articles about triathlon where they're like, the person, this person won. And you're like, sure. That's like a small part of the story. But what place was this person in? What was the time gap? And what was the lead coming out of the swim? And what was the, you know, what were their watts on the bike?
And like, all this stuff is so much more entertaining and thrilling than the, Well, this person came across the finish line first. Yeah, that's part of the story. maybe it's too inside baseball,
Erik Weihenmayer: but yeah. What was it? the swimming record in,
Brad Synder: uh, a hundred meter freestyle and amazing.
I'm happy to tell you that since Rio that has been removed from the Paralympic program. So literally no one can break my record for a while, I think, which is,
Erik Weihenmayer: That's awesome. . Wait, they took that comp out. They took that specific event away.
Brad Synder: Yeah. So, I mean, this is also inside baseball, but I think they've been trying really hard to add some more relays to the Paralympic program.
And it's a little bit like zero sum. Like if they're going to add an event, they have to take an event somewhere else. So I, uh, the, the S 1100 meter freestyle is one of the events they've pulled from the program. It doesn't mean they won't add it back in, but just like currently it wasn't on in Tokyo that I know of.
Erik Weihenmayer: I don't think it's in Paris. Maybe it'll be back for LA. I'm not sure, but so far nobody's broken that record. So I've got now. at least,eight years under the belt. So I'm happy about that.We could do a whole podcast on your triathlon. So you go and you switch gears and you're like, let me try triathlon. Yeah. And then you win a gold there too. we could talk for hours about that. because that's absolutely amazing. all that brand new learning. Obviously the swimming part wasn't new for you, but so many things you gotta learn to be efficient. Right.
Brad Synder: You know what the funny thing about it is?
I thought what you just said, I thought, okay, triathlon, I've at least got the swimming part down, so I just gotta figure out biking and running. But that turned out not to be true. Much of the advantage I have in the pool did not translate directly to the water. I certainly, I'm no slouch, but I wasn't dominating the water.
You know, much of my advantage is mitigated by things like wetsuits and tether swimming and waves and choppy conditions and the way you navigate an open water course and all that stuff. So. There was a ton of learning in swimming. There was a ton of learning in cycling. There's a ton of learning in running.
I felt like an absolute doofus when I was starting, but I actually do like that loop. I like kind of starting from the bottom and figuring it all out. I'll tell this funny anecdote in the first camp that I did as a blind triathlete I was really trying hard to live up to this Brad Snyder's a gold medalist, he should really crush this triathlon thing. We were doing this brick workout, which is like biking, running, biking, running, biking, running. And you're practicing the transition coming off the bike into the run. And I was trying to do my bike to run transition really fast. And I flipped on my shoes and I'm running and I'm like, man, my shoes are not particularly comfortable. It must just be the fatigue or whatever. I finished the loop and someone said, you know, you have your shoes on the wrong feet.
Erik Weihenmayer: That's amazing. That's amazing. Oh my God. That's amazing. And I'll just comment on the fact of I think that is really cool. And I think it's courageous that, you know, you're already top of the world in swimming and then you put yourself in this vulnerable situation to become a learner again.
And I think that's really important for people not to be scared, of, starting over because life is this constant circle where you're always starting over. And I think that's really cool. But let's move on to your, what do you think? to the stuff you're doing now, which is,you're also a leadership teacher at, at the academy, right?
That's correct. Yeah. At the Stockdale, Center for Leadership. That's right. so what's that day look like? And, yeah, tell us what that day looks like. And then I have another couple questions.
Brad Synder: Sure. I just want to echo what you said about the transition to triathlon. And I do feel like I do talk a lot about that loop that you're referring to.
Like we are constantly learning. We're constantly starting from the beginning. I think there is some kind of, schema or trope out there that where we're supposed to, set it and forget it. there's this moment where we all make it and all of a sudden we're not learners anymore and we're experts and we're leaders and all that sort of stuff.
But in my experience, and I've met some people, I've met, four star generals in the military. I've met statesmen, I've met, people who are very advanced in their careers and they'll all confide. I don't know what I'm doing. It's we never make it. We never get to that point where it's set it and forget it.
We're all always constantly learning. So I always talk about always taking on those new challenges, always being humble, starting from the beginning and working your way up. And I thought after Rio, you know, I should take a dose of my own medicine and, start from the beginning. And I do, once I feel like I've figured something out, I definitely feel like I want to move on to something else.
I want to keep learning. I want to keep starting over. There's so much out there. From music to sports to arts to climbing to being outside to, um, you know, just, so many books and so many avenues of academia. I always want to keep starting from the beginning where I don't know anything about something and I want to keep working towards some level of mastery across all the dimensions of the human experience. Um, and part of that is now getting into academia. I had the opportunity when I was sort of in a career crisis after Rio, trying to figure out what I would do once sports was done. I had the opportunity to go back to the Naval Academy, my alma mater.
And do some teaching and I loved it. It's definitely a vocation that suits me. I talk a lot standing in front of a group of people talking is exactly what I want to do, trying to influence people,to do everything that we've been talking about on this podcast, to be grateful, to have perspective, to invest themselves in the people around them, to influence people towards, the, being positive and, taking on new challenges. That's what I want to do. And being a leadership and ethics instructor at the Naval Academy or wherever else gives me the opportunity to do that. That said, I started that journey in 2016 and I did not have the appropriate qualifications to do that.
So I needed to go get a PhD to earn my spot as a legitimate collegiate professor. And I'm nearing the tail end of that. I'm in my fourth year of five towards the Ph. D. I have done all the coursework. I've done all the requirements. I've got a dissertation outlined. I've got a survey experiment created. I'm on the process of getting all that done and hopefully I'll defend that dissertation. And I'll earn that, piece of paper that says I'm a doctor. So thanks. Yeah.
Erik Weihenmayer: Congratulations. That's awesome. And soa lot of the stuff we're talking about today, you know, in terms of the things that you learned along the way seem like the perfect leadership examples. How much do you bring yourself and your experiences into the things that you teach into this sort of vague category of leadership, right? and then, and how much do you ever say, like, when you read something like, I don't agree, I think it's different.
Brad Synder: I think I've just started the phase of my life where I have sufficient knowledge and experience where I can read something that somebody says.
And I am just now developing the ability to sort of interrogate it to say, yeah, I think this part of it has merit. I think this part of it doesn't, this doesn't jive with my approach or, a lot of, not to digress into my dissertation, but a lot of my dissertation has to do with not calling anything right or wrong, but understanding where it comes from.
Um, and my whole approach to it is, you know, nothing, I'm trying not to discount anything. I'm trying to say, this is what's of value. This is what's not of value, but here I understand why. Why this person said X, Y, or Z. yeah, I try as much as possible. My approach to teaching is a three step process.
One, the first principles like go back to the basics of a particular concept, whether, in, in philosophy, that's often like the ancient Greeks. Let's go back to what Plato said, or what Aristotle said, or what the Romans said. Or whatever else, or if it's a like, say, it's like a psychological thing.
Let's go to the actual study that was done to tease out this particular concept. Step 2 is, interrogating that, trying to say, you know,what was the methods used here? What's the potential counter argument? How can we, either buttress this argument or, Or counter argue it or whatever else and then the third phase is all right Where do we see this in real life?
Like how does this play out in uh in our day to day lives or in our experiences? I think that's where my education comes in. That phd. The ability to kind of know all of where does that come out of the literature. The phase two is also enabled by phd being able to pick apart various studies or perspectives And then the third phase is where my experience comes in I can look into you My experience is in combat and talk about, you know, hardships or, techniques, tactics, that sort of stuff.
I can look into sports with the sort of like, how do you push yourself? How do you influence people? What's the impact of being on a team, the hauling, the tuna or the tuna? how do you be a good tuna hauler? Do you prevent from being too heavy a tuna, that kind of thing. All of that experience helps me illustrate those examples for, any students of mine, and then I'll, you know, encourage them to find those experiences for themselves, either in what they've already experienced or what they anticipate experiencing.
Does that make sense?
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah, it's beautiful, dude. It's so great. It's so rewarding, I bet, for you to It's awesome. You kind of start figuring out how to merge your life and your experiences into this academic field. Yes. I think it's going to be amazing. I can't wait to see what you do in the next 10 years.
And I also mentioned you got an amazing book, Fire In My Eyes. Is that what it's called? That's right. Yep. Fire In My Eyes. Yeah. is that on Audible or is that, is that?
Brad Synder: Not on Audible. Hard can get so available wherever you can get eBooks. So it's just the, like a,the PDF or anybody who's blind can read it on an e reader.
Erik Weihenmayer: Okay, cool. I encourage everyone to go out and read that. And, I'll just end with, it sounds like you have an amazing. partner with Sarah and you have a, a one or a one year old, baby now
Brad Synder: She's two. So she's definitely two now. Yeah. Very actively shedding her baby. In fact, she'll tell you I'm a big girl now.
So she's spectacular. She's such a joy, to, to watch grow. And, you know, I think just a quick comment on parenting. I don't know what your experience has been, but mine has been. When I, we were getting ready to have her, I was thinking about here's how all the things I need to do to be a great dad and, uh, you know, equip her for the future and all that.
But I've really found that she's really on her own path. I don't need to do anything other than stay out of the way and make sure she doesn't hurt her. She's just seasoned today. She's so impressive and inspiring to me.
Erik Weihenmayer: Oh, that's beautiful. Yeah, and there's so many, board games that you can, play that are visual, and also, you'll have them in braille and stuff,and also, uh, my recommendation as a dad of, of a girl who's now, twenty She just is going to turn 24, is, squeaky shoes.
Yes, those squeaky shoes. Then you can hear her running around.
Brad Synder: Yes.
Erik Weihenmayer: Those little fart shoes.
Brad Synder: Yep. I need some squeaky shoes. That's for sure. I definitely
Erik Weihenmayer: Brad, thank you. Oh, sorry. Go ahead.
Brad Synder: Oh, I feel so lucky. Well, I'm really aggressive at running everywhere because I can tell when she's running. It's when she's like sitting down.
Thankfully when she's quiet, I know she's going to the bathroom. So that's at least that indication. Awesome.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah.
Brad Synder: do you mind if I finish on an
Erik Weihenmayer: adventure? Yeah, go for it.
Brad Synder: I just want to finish on what I said at the beginning. I don't think we were recording, but, I want to thank you and Dee for your example, y you, your legacy radiates quite a bit outward and you were one of the first stories shared with me when I was in that hospital in that kind of crazy hallucinating period, where someone was saying, you know, this, this fella climbed Everest without being able to see. So if he can do that, there's nothing that you can't do. That inspiration carries out. I'm a practical example of your impact on the world. And I want to thank you both for that example. And then you're continuing effort to continue to, you know, instill in people a no barriers mindset.
Erik Weihenmayer: Wow. Thanks, Brad. That's really wonderful. Yeah. I'm glad I could be there for you. And, and I can't wait for us to be able to meet in person at some point. It will happen at some point. I'll come to one a year. Yeah, maybe I'll come to London. Yeah, no, no LA, where you're going to compete again.
Brad Synder: Yeah, exactly.
Erik Weihenmayer: I'll be cheering you on.
Brad Synder: All right, great very much.
Erik Weihenmayer: All right, Brad. Thank you. It's a wonderful hour together. Yeah, and thank you d no barriers to everyone Thanks to Didrik our amazing producer. Yes, don't forget him
Didrik Johnck: The production team behind this podcast includes producer Didrik Johnck, that's me. And audio engineer Tyler Kottman. Special thanks to the Dan Ryan Band for our intro song Guidance. And thanks to all of you for listening. If you enjoyed this show, please subscribe share it and hey We'd be thrilled for a review. Show notes can be found at NoBarriersPodcast. com. There's also a link there to shoot me an email with any suggestions or guest ideas for the show. Thanks so much. And have a great day.
