Vietnam Veteran
Beautiful Stories From Anonymous People
Chris Gethard
4.8 • 9K Ratings
🗓️ 5 August 2025
⏱️ 95 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, Gethard talks to a Vietnam veteran with a lifetime of stories. He’s never listened to the podcast, but his granddaughter has, and she encouraged him to call in as a way to share and preserve the experiences he’s carried for decades. He recounts some harrowing moments from his childhood before walking us through the catastrophic day in Vietnam that changed the course of his life. It’s a conversation about trauma, memory, survival, and what it means to have your story heard.
Content Warning: This episode contains discussions of childhood trauma, animal death, graphic descriptions of violent injury, death, and experiences of war. Please listen with care.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello to everybody who's ready to be inspired to get up off your ass and figure out something to do. |
| 0:11.1 | It's beautiful anonymous. One hour, one phone call, no names, no holds barred. |
| 0:18.5 | I'd rather go one-on-one. I think it'll be more fun, and I'll get to know you, and you'll get to know me. |
| 0:28.3 | Hi everybody, Chris Getherd here. |
| 0:30.4 | If you don't like an intro, I get it, you're going to want to skip about 13 minutes ahead. |
| 0:35.7 | Thanks so much. |
| 0:36.8 | Enjoy the call. |
| 0:41.3 | Hi, everybody, Chris Getherd here, and I'm very, very happy to be bringing you this episode |
| 0:47.8 | of Beautiful Anonymous. This week's episode is an episode unlike any other we've done in the history of the show |
| 0:56.3 | in a few different ways. |
| 0:58.7 | As I've liked to say lately, this is the show where we look at the human condition, one |
| 1:04.8 | anonymous phone call at a time. |
| 1:07.9 | And today, even more than most days, I feel really lucky to host this show. I will tell you, |
| 1:14.8 | we recorded the call yesterday, and I did an intro, and the intro was 16 minutes long. |
| 1:22.7 | I'm going to try to keep this one a lot tighter. The reason it was 16 minutes long was because we recorded it right after we did the phone |
| 1:32.9 | call and I was really emotional. |
| 1:34.8 | And then I realized it's a little bit unfair because the call brought me to that place of |
| 1:41.2 | emotion. |
| 1:43.6 | And I think it actually was maybe going to do it a disservice for you to hear that emotion |
| 1:48.1 | before you heard the call. |
| 1:50.0 | Whereas if you listen to this call, I wonder if some other people might go on a real |
| 1:54.4 | emotional trek of their own. |
... |
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