How to talk to veterans about the war | Wes Moore
TED Talks Daily
TED
4.1 • 12.1K Ratings
🗓️ 28 May 2018
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Wes Moore joined the US Army to pay for college, but the experience became core to who he is. In this heartfelt talk, the paratrooper and captain—who went on to write "The Other Wes Moore"—explains the shock of returning home from Afghanistan. He shares the single phrase he heard from civilians on repeat, and shows why it's just not sufficient. It's a call for all of us to ask veterans to tell their stories — and listen.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a special archive presentation of TED Talks Audio. |
| 0:05.0 | This talk features author Wes Moore recorded live at TED NYC 2014. |
| 0:11.0 | I'm excited to be here to speak about vets because I didn't join the Army because I wanted to go to war. |
| 0:18.0 | I didn't join the Army because I had a lust or a need to go overseas and fight. |
| 0:25.4 | Frankly, I joined the army because college is really damn expensive, and they were going to help with that. |
| 0:31.3 | And I joined the army because it was what I knew, and it was what I knew that I thought I could do well. |
| 0:38.3 | I didn't come from a military family. |
| 0:40.3 | I'm not a military brat. |
| 0:41.3 | No one in my family ever had joined the military at all. |
| 0:44.3 | And how I first got introduced to the military was when I was 13 years old and I got sent away to military school. |
| 0:51.3 | Because my mother had been threatened me with this idea of military school |
| 0:54.9 | ever since I was eight years old. I had some issues when I was coming up. And my mother would |
| 1:01.1 | always tell me, she's like, you know, if you don't get this together, I'm going to send you to |
| 1:03.8 | military school. And I'd look at her and I'd say, mommy, I'll work harder. And then when I was nine |
| 1:09.1 | years old, she started giving me brochures to show me she wasn't playing around. So I look at the brochures. And I'm like, okay, mommy, I can see you serious. And I'll work harder. And then when I was 10 and 11, my behavior just kept on getting worse. I was on academic and disciplinary probation by the time I, before I even hit single digits or double digits, and I first felt handcuffs my wrists |
| 1:29.5 | when I was 11 years old. And so when I was 13 years old, my mother came up to me and she was like, |
| 1:35.3 | I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm going to send you to military school. And I looked at her and I |
| 1:39.6 | said, Mommy, I can see you're upset. And I'm going to work harder. And she's like, no, you're going next week. |
| 1:45.6 | And that was how I first got introduced to this whole idea of the military because she thought |
| 1:51.1 | this was a good idea. I had to disagree with her wholeheartedly when I first showed up there |
| 1:56.3 | because literally in the first four days I'd already run away five times from this school. They had these big black gates that surrounded the school. |
| 2:02.9 | And every time they would turn their backs, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from TED, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of TED and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.