[00:00:00] Scott DeLuzio: Leaving the military can feel like losing the one place where people could read your face before you even said a word. When you come home, you go to work, you maybe sit with your family and still feel miles away from the people who really understand what you’re going through. The better path in your life could be learning how to stop carrying all of that baggage alone.
[00:00:24] How to find trusted people again, and how to build a life where service, family, work, and purpose can fit all together in the same room. Our guest today, Brian Rigg, brings that conversation through World War II history, uh, the Holocaust Marine Corps culture, and the idea of primary groups showing how connection shaped men in combat and why losing it after service can be really difficult to deal with.
[00:00:53] You’re gonna hear about why accountability, check-ins, older veterans therapy and meaningful books can help [00:01:00] a veteran rebuild structure when the old unit is gone. But before we get into this episode, I want to take a moment to raise awareness for something that’s deeply important to our community.
[00:01:09] 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 are impacted by the global war on terrorism. This memorial will be both a tribute to those who served and a way to ensure that their sacrifices are recognized and remembered for generations to come.
[00:01:31] If you’d like to learn more or find out how you can support their mission, visit GWOT memorial foundation.org. Now, let’s get into today’s episode.
[00:01:38]
[00:01:52] Scott DeLuzio: Hey Brian, welcome to the show. Really glad to have you here.
[00:01:55] Bryan Rigg: Thanks, Scott. Thank you so
[00:01:56] much for having me.
[00:01:57] Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, you bet. Before we jump into [00:02:00] the, the episode here, could you maybe start by telling us, telling us a, a little bit about yourself and, and your background just for, you know, maybe the listeners who aren’t familiar with you and, and who you are just to kind of give a little background on, on all of that.
[00:02:13] Bryan Rigg: Sure. Thanks Scott. So I was born in Arlington, Texas raised here. Went off to Yale University, where I got a degree in German studies, English, and history. Got the Henry Fellowship, which is like a Rhode scholarship just for Harvard or Yale to go either to Oxford or Cambridge. And I decided to go to Cambridge and I studied under Jonathan Steinberg there and got a master’s and a PhD in European history, religious history, and the Holocaust. since then I’ve written six books on World War II and the Holocaust. My most recent one is called Japan’s Holocaust, and I’ve written two other books, one on a DHD and dyslexia and one to come out on religion and how unfortunately Christianity throughout the centuries, especially during the Holocaust, supported the [00:03:00] antisemitism that we saw instead of preventing it, which is really sad commentary on the theology, theological development of Christianity up to that date. I did a little stint in the Israeli army. I was a volunteer in the summer of 1998, and then I served in the Marine Corps from 99 to 2001 as an officer was an air contract, but got injured. So they stuck me in a think tank called the War Fighting Lab, which sounds much m...
