What Comes After Surviving the Unthinkable | Kyle Carpenter

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. There's a Emily Dickinson poem where she's talking about the 300 Spartans and she s talks about how you're almost ashamed to be alive when you hear about things people have done like that.

That's sort of how I felt when I was in the room with Kyle Carpenter. Here's Obama talking about Kyle. The man you see before you today, Corporal William Kyle Carpenter, should not be alive today. Hand grenades are one of the most awful weapons of war. They only weigh about a pound, but they're packed with TNT.

If one lands nearby, you have mere seconds to seek cover. When it detonates, its fragments shoot out in every direction, and even at a distance, that spray of shrapnel can inflict devastating injuries on the human body. Up close it's almost certain death. But we are here because this man, this United States Marine, face down that terrible explosive power, that unforgiving force, with his own body, willingly and deliberately, to protect a fellow Marine.

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