Scott DeLuzio: [00:00:00] Do you ever feel like you’re constantly paying the tab for the decisions that your younger self made? Imagine someone taking all of these moments, the hilarious, the painful, the eye-opening and turning them into a brutally honest, no punches pulled book. Andy Dietrich, our guest today did just that. Uh, he went from being a German kid who was dropped.

Into Alaska of all places to becoming a Marine. And, uh, he talks about some of the difficulties, uh, that he encountered, including learning some of the American slang the hard way. Um, and talking about his book writing. Uh, uh, play stupid games, win stupid prizes, and um, Andy’s stories. They’re just raw, funny, and.

Unexpectedly powerful. So this episode takes you inside those moments, uh, both the, the laughs, the gut checks, and it talks about the mindset behind owning your [00:01:00] story no matter how ridiculous it gets. I. But before we get into this episode, I do wanna take a quick moment here to raise awareness for something deeply important to our community.

The Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation. This organization is working to build a permanent national memorial in Washington DC to honor the service members, families, and civilians who were impacted by the global war on terrorism. This memorial serves as both a tribute to those who served and a way to ensure that their sacrifices are recognized and remembered for generations to come.

So if you want to learn more or find out how to support the mission, visit GWOT memorial foundation.org. Now, let’s get into today’s episode.

Scott DeLuzio: Andy, welcome to the show. I’m really glad to [00:02:00] have you here.

Andy Dietrich: Thanks for having me.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, absolutely. to get a little bit into your story and your background. You know, and, and, you’ve wr written a book. It’s called Play Stupid Prizes. I wanna get into that in, in just a minute. Could you bit about your, you and, your background, kind of your, uh, your, your military history, that

Andy Dietrich: Sure.

Scott DeLuzio: of thing, then we can jump into

Andy Dietrich: I’ll give you my paragraph version

of how I started and how I ended up here.

So, uh,

I was born in Berlin, Germany lived there for a good part of my adolescence. Um, and then at 14 my mother and I moved to Alaska of all places. There’s a little side story that goes why that happened and, and, you know, the experiences that one gets living up there. Then at 19, uh, I decided to join up. Uh, I enlisted in the Marine Corps. Uh, spent four years, uh, stationed in Camp Pendleton. There was some interesting stories, maybe some unsavory

moments. I can share from that time as well a little bit later on.

Um, and then in I decided to move to Vegas and I’ve been here for about 20 plus

years now.

And yeah, I don’t see myself leaving anytime

soon. And, um, yeah, that’s me in a nutshell.

Scott DeLuzio: [00:03:00] Excellent, excellent. So,

Yeah, definitely not the place I would’ve thought. You know, most Europeans would, would think of as like the first stop for a...