It's All About Healing

From War Zones To Meaning, with John Graham: Episode 364

• Robin Black

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A life lived at full tilt can look heroic from the outside—until the adrenaline wears off. John Graham takes us from a freighter at 17 to Denali’s lethal north wall, from hitchhiking through revolutions to a siege in Hue where everything changed. What began as a chase for danger becomes a candid reckoning with purpose, PTSD, and the hard pivot from thrills to service.

We trade summit photos for substance as John explains how he rebuilt meaning at the United Nations, pushed for peace and justice across Africa, and helped end apartheid. Then we dig into the Giraffe Heroes Project, a storytelling platform he helped shape with Anne Medlock that spotlights unsung people who “stick their necks out” to fix real problems—whistleblowers, community organizers, teenagers cleaning up polluted streams. John shows why stories move people faster than lectures, and how hearing from someone who looks like you can nudge you from complaint to action.

The conversation turns practical and personal: what trust-building actually looks like when your relatives disagree on fundamental issues, how small talk about grandkids opens space for joint work, and where to find common ground on local environmental fights. We also touch on his “Badass Granddad” short videos, where hair-raising scenes become three-minute lessons on courage, patience, and community. If you’ve felt the tug to do more than scroll, this is a roadmap—clear, humane, and born of hard-earned experience.

Subscribe for more human stories, share this with someone who needs a nudge toward action, and leave a review to help others find it. Then visit giraffe.org to meet an unsung hero and johngraham.org to dive deeper.

Be sure to visit my youtube channel, like and subscribe: It's All About Healing Podcast - YouTube

Website: https://www.itsallabouthealingpodcast.com 

If you're ready to talk, we're ready to listen! 

©2022 Soul Healer17:77, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Any copying of this poetry and audio in whole or part is prohibited. *I do not own the rights to the royalty free music*

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome back, listeners. I'm Robin Black, and this is It's All About Healing Podcast. Today we have a special guest with us, Mr. John Graham. He's going to speak to us a little bit about his risk-taking adventures and how he's been in wars and revolutions around the world, around the globe. So please, John, tell us a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, well, Robin, a little bit about myself. My bumper sticker, Robin, is that I'm lucky to be alive.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm 83 years old, but for the first half of my life, it was nothing but one wild ass adventure after the other. And each one more dangerous than the one before. And you're right, some of them were in mountain climbing, you know, avalanches, rocks, crevasses, all that. But a good many of them were in the U.S. Foreign Service, where I wasn't in embassies in Europe, but I was in jungles and deserts, either starting or stopping wars and revolutions, bullets whistling by my ear, car bombs, all of that. So, you know, long story short, by the time I was 40, I figured I'd almost, I mean, almost died a violent death a dozen times. And then I finally pulled out of that because I realized that living a life just on the adrenaline rush was an incomplete life. I needed to do better. I'll stop there. But you know, that's the that's where it started. And it all began when I was 17 years old, uh uh working as a seaman on a freighter going to the Far East. And then one adventure followed right after the other, and here I am.

SPEAKER_00:

So tell us a little bit about the mountains. Like, so I am really very interested in hearing about the dangerous mountains that you've been climbing.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, climbing mountains is inherently dangerous because you can fall, you can get hit on the head with rocks, you can get buried in avalanches, you can fall in deep holes called crevasses, uh, you can freeze to death, you can die of lack of oxygen. There are all kinds of ways to die on a mountain. And I was with a group of six other guys, and we decided that we would try to do something no one else had ever done, and that was to be the first to climb up the north wall of Mount McKinley, okay, the highest peak in North America. It hadn't been climbed before. This is in 1963, a long time ago. It hadn't been climbed before. It was difficult, yes, but it was also incredibly dangerous. And no one had even thought of climbing it before because avalanches swept down this face. Now, this face is bigger top to bottom than anything on Mount Everest. I mean, we're talking big and steep. It took us over a month to get up it. And all that time we were subject to avalanches trying to wipe us off the face. And of course, we'd be killed if one of them hit us. But we decided to do that because we were young and dumb. I was 21 years old. The others, the others were about my age. And you know, when you're 21 years old, you're indestructible. So we didn't we didn't really understand how dangerous it was until we finished. And it it was dangerous. We had one near miss after the other. I was in a I was in a rockfall once at the base of a of a of a high cliff, and a whole bunch of rocks the size of basketballs came straight at me. And I just stood there and they all but parted my hair, but they all missed. And that's the story of that climb. Everything missed. There are lots of close calls, but they all missed. We did become the first people ever to climb this fearsome face, and it's become one of the most iconic climbs in North American mountaineering. And yeah, I'd done other climbs as well in South America or wherever, but this is probably the most famous, and uh, you'll see my picture in uh some climbing history books because it's a famous climb. But it was incredibly dangerous, and it really convinced me that I was indestructible, which is, you know, a lot of young people feel that, but I, for me, it was like a religion. I mean, I I became utterly convinced that I was indestructible, which meant that I would go into, you know, one thing after the other, more dangerous. I mean, after I finished college, for example, I hitchhiked around the world. I mean, that that wasn't easy or safe. And in in the middle of my college years, I I hitchhiked through the revolution in Algeria and hoping that nobody would shoot me, but nobody did. And my my heroes, Robin, in those days were people like John Wayne and other real tough guys, you know, guys with muscles and guys that lived with violence. And I wanted to be like them because I'd been bullied as a little kid, and I hated being bullied. So when I grew big enough and had enough muscles, I became like a John Wayne type myself, and nothing else mattered. And that's how it started.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and you so you said, so how old were you when you were being bullied?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, the typical age, you know, starts from middle school, 13, 14 years old. And I was I grew so I grew so rapidly that that I I was I had no coordination whatsoever. I mean, I would fall down going upstairs. And so other uh boys, uh bigger, tougher, uh, would shove me around, and I hated it, but I there wasn't much I could do. I was looking for role models, and I I loved my dad, but he was a very soft guy. He was constantly bullied by people at his work in the local newspaper, and they would shove him around, he'd get passed over for promotions. And I was desperately looking for somebody who could tell me what being a man was all about, and I couldn't find it, my father. And I didn't find it until, like I said, I at 17 I went to sea on this freighter. And those days, freighters weren't container ships, they were just big boats with with a run by 50 or 60 really tough guys. Um, and uh, and these tough guys took one look at me and they decided that, man, this kid, he he needs some life lessons. He's grown up in this really soft little city of Tacoma, Washington. He's never done anything interesting or exciting in his life. So we got to teach him what life is all about because he's not gonna learn it in school. And they didn't disappoint. Man, I went in the Far East that summer. I mean, I I did a whole lot of things for the first time. This being a family station, I'm not gonna be too explicit. Uh but uh, you know, bar room brawls, whatever. I all of a sudden I realized that real men fought and they were violent and they cussed and all that stuff. Well, sure, it was pretty immature, but I was 17 years old. And the role, so the role models I picked up, and one guy in particular, he became my protector. He was an enormous black guy named Roy. He worked in the engine room, and Roy became my protector the very first night out on that ship when another one of the crewmen made some you know sexual advances on me. And Roy grabbed this guy around the throat and shoved him up against the bulkhead and beat the shit out of him and cussed at him and threw him down on the deck. Oh man, I my dad could never have done that. No one I knew could ever have done that. So I wanted to be a man like Roy was a man, and so he became my model. And then I kept looking for more models like that. I mean, I said a hitchhik through the revolution in and uh the colonial war in Algeria. Well, my next role models were members of the French Foreign Legion, who were also big tough guys with muscles and tattoos, and and and they didn't, and they seemed utterly fearless. So these were the models that I chose for my early life, and I took an enormous amount of risks, but I I kept walking away from it all. So, like I said, every risk I took was more difficult and dangerous than the ones before. And finally, and it happened in a battle in Vietnam, I finally realized that this is a pretty shallow life. I wanted to do better.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, wow. So after, so you said you were you were fighting in Vietnam?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, I was in the war in Vietnam.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh my goodness. So so once that was over, what was that like coming trying to come back to civilian life after that war?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, it was a real tough experience for me because it wasn't so much the I was stationed in in Hui, which was a small city just 50 miles south of the line that then separated North Vietnam from South. So it was an incredibly dangerous place to be. And I wasn't in uniform, I was a civilian, so I some of you may know that there were some civilians also in the war effort, and we did a lot of stuff that we weren't supposed to talk about. And that's what I was doing. I was a political officer and an agent in in South Vietnam, so it was really dangerous. But I happened to be stuck in in Huei in 1972, and the North Vietnamese tried to take over all of Vietnam in 1972. It turned out they failed that year, came back three years later, as you and your listeners know, and took over Vietnam in 1975. But they tried the first time in 1972, and they all but surrounded the little city, Hui, where I was. Uh, at that point, we were withdrawing our troops from South Vietnam because of a peace agreement. So there was no one there to protect me. There was no 101st Airborne, no, no army troops. Um, so there were just a couple of us civilians left in Hui, and then we were all but surrounded by the North Vietnamese. Uh, they were within six miles of the city gates, and it was an incredible battle. I mean, there's guns going off, and and and and it was it was incredible, and I knew that my life was at stake because if the city fell, the North Vietnamese, at a minimum, would capture me or it probably would shoot me. Um, so I was watching this battle, realizing that I that my life was, you know, that this is real. And then it occurred to me that that, you know, I was sitting there in Vietnam in this war. It was a war that I knew from the very beginning was stupid and wrong, unwinnable, but I didn't care. And I didn't almost care who won because I was only there for the adrenaline rush. It was yet another adventure. Um, and so there I was. My own house, my own home was 8,000 miles away. I was in this stupid, unwinnable war. I was about to get captured or shot by the North Vietnamese, and what the hell was I doing there?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And I finally began to realize, and now I wasn't a kid anymore, I was in my late 20s at this point. I finally began to realize that my life, I had allowed my life to become incredibly shallow, where the only thing that mattered was that adrenaline rush. The only thing that mattered was the next adventure. I didn't give a shit about other people, I didn't give a shit about the world or the suffering or the pain or the violence. I didn't care. And then all of a sudden, I did care in the middle of this battle. It was the lowest point in my life. Turned out the next morning that the skies cleared, and American fighter bombers from U.S. carriers off the coast blasted the North Vietnamese armies that were at the city's gates, and the battle tide of the battle turned. And obviously, I got out of there. I got out of there alive. So, you know, but it it was a it was a long, slow road up then, Robin, because I I was determined to change my life. I was determined to find a way where I can make the world a better place rather than a worse place. And and I finally did, but it took a long, long time. It was a difficult re-entry into the real world of compassion and caring and community. Luckily, the State Department sent me to the United Nations. I was in charge of American policies toward Africa, and indeed for much of the third world. And so I fought hard for peace and justice issues, because by then my life had completely changed from what it had been in Vietnam. And I fought hard for the right things, and and I'm proud to say that I played a key role in the ending of apartheid in South Africa, the system of institutionalized racism. In case some of your viewers are too young to know about it. Apartheid was a terrible condition in South Africa, and I helped put a stop to it. Okay. So yeah, and so you know, my life by then it turned around. It was at that point that I met Anne Medlock, who started the Giraffe Heroes Project, and the rest, they say, is history.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. And would you say that you yourself probably suffers from PTSD, just from some of the things that you've experienced?

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, yes, indeed. I was in the State Department sent me after I got out of Vietnam in one piece, they sent me to Stanford in California as a reward, a sabbatical for not getting killed in Vietnam. And I would walk on the shadow sides of the street in Palo Also, California, to avoid sniper fire. In an American city. I mean, I was really messed up. Bad bad nightmares, you name it. Only it wasn't called PTSD then, but it was that's what it was. And I finally got help through what were then called in California in those days, encounter groups, which is where you got together with eight or ten or fifteen other people and sort of spilled your guts and tried to learn from other people's experience and explore your own soul and climb out of your own holes and lead a better life. And this turned out to be very, very important to me because I realized that I wasn't John Wayne. Well, I was John Wayne, but living in I I was also a very compassionate, loving person. It's just that it had all been buried, Robin. It had been buried. It's like I'd I'd hammered as a kid, I'd hammered a big thick piece of plywood over my heart, beginning as a teenager.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And I had that plywood covered my heart, and I and I wasn't in touch with my emotions. And and so I became that John Wayne, and finally I ripped that plywood off when I got to the United Nations and started doing the right thing, and then joined Anne with the Giraffe Heroes Project, which is all about getting people to stick their necks out, hence the metaphor, giraffe. All about helping people stick their necks out to make their world a better place. We've been doing it now for 43 years. So my life turned around, 180. Uh, but yeah, in the beginning, there was a lot of what we would then now call PTSD. I was a mess.

SPEAKER_00:

And so you said in the giraffe heroes project is about sticking your neck out. Can you can you elaborate a little bit more on that? And and everyone who's in this group.

SPEAKER_02:

Sure, of course. We call it the giraffe project because it's all about taking risks.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

Giraffes have a long neck, hence, that's why we use that's why AN used that metaphor. And we're asking people to to we were we were asking people to tell us about heroes that they knew. We call them giraffe heroes, people who are doing good in the world, helping solve tough public problems, but were taking risks to do that. Uh, they could be whistleblowers, for example, who saw something rotten and corrupt going on in their government agency or in their companies. They could be in a tribal situation in Africa where women's rights and women's bodies were being assaulted. They could be people dealing with a polluted stream in their hometown, could be almost any kind of public problem you can think of. We would find people who were sticking their necks out to do something about it, and we would tell their stories. And we so we were storytellers. And why was storytelling important? Well, because from the beginning of recorded time, cultures have discovered that if you want someone to be heroic, you don't just preach at them, you give them models, you give them examples, you tell stories. And so that's what we began doing in the early 1980s. We would find these giraffe heroes, people helping solve these tough public problems. And of course, they were men and they were women, they were every color in the rainbow, every walk of life. And we would tell their stories in the beginning, talking 1980s now, it was fax machines and and and vinyl discs. I'm sure some of your viewers don't even know what a vinyl disc is. Polar record goes round and round on a turntable, sound comes out. Yeah, and we would send these discs to radio stations with the stories of giraffe heroes, uh and they would play them and and it it and it caught on. People began to really love these stories. They were short, three, four, five-minute stories. And we would get then movie star, people like, oh, in those days, people like John Denver, Candisberg, and other stars then of the age, and they would do voiceovers, and we would get these stories told. Other people would hear the stories, and they would say to themselves, well, what am I sitting on my couch for? All I'm doing is complaining about this problem in my town, this corrupt practice in my company, uh, global warming, Gaza, Ukraine. All I'm doing is complaining. I should be actually doing something to solve these problems. And so I'm gonna listen to this giraffe hero. And they did. And so our stories inspire people to get off their butts and to start making a difference in their own world. Could be some huge issue, but some of our giraffes are like teenagers, and maybe what they're doing is helping clean up a polluted lake in their town, or maybe they're they're helping solve a problem of bullying or drugs in their in their middle school or whatever. And we're helping them do that. And so for 43 years, we have been telling the stories of giraffe heroes. Now we've told the stories of over 2,000 of them. And and your view, I urge your your viewers to go to it's real simple, giraffe.org, g I R A F F E dot O R G, and dial up, and you'll see you can get access to these 2,000 stories. And you can be inspired by what we're doing and by these stories. I would take up way too much time on this broadcast, but man, you start reading these stories and you begin to realize that there are human beings out there, Robin, who are doing the most outlandish things. And they're brave and they're compassionate. And no one's heard about them because they don't they don't put their hand up and say, hey, I'm a hero. No. We look for unsung heroes. We look for people that no one's heard of.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, it's fine to have Abraham Lincoln or whatever, or or or Harriet Tubman, or someone like that as a hero. That's great. Uh, but everyone's heard of them. We we look for people that no one's heard of uh because they they make the best role models.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. I I agree with that 100%. So I can only imagine some of the things that you've that you've been through with all your years, right? All your weird years of wisdom. But what are some of the most outrageous stories that that you have, or at least one of them?

SPEAKER_02:

That I have in my personal life. Oh, I don't know. There are so so many of them. I I I think the year I spent hitchhiking around the world was one of the most outrageous things. I mean, I just I didn't hitchhike across the oceans, of course, but I hitchhiked right through Afghanistan, Iraq, and and I I was smart enough to put an American flag on my chest. I would pin it to my shirt so that people would then recognize that I was an American. And this is before the Vietnam War really got going, and Americans were loved around the world, not so much today. Yeah. And so and so I was in a way protected. But yeah, I mean, I was held up at gunpoint a number of times, and I was in the middle of skirmishes. I had a a contract with the Boston Globe newspaper to report wars that I went through on the way around the world. So I looked for every war I could find, and I reported, I went to Cyprus during the war there in Cyprus, then I went to Laos, and then the beginning of the war in Vietnam. And I kept walking, I just kept walking through all these violent, dangerous places and writing my stories. And and it it was, it was, it was a real these were real adventures, and I I I I like them a lot because I'm a great storyteller, and I love taking. And by the way, I if I may put in a plug here, that my latest effort are short-form videos, which I do three minutes on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, and you you dial them up by putting in the search box badass grandad. Badass, yeah, badass, all one word, and granddad with two D's in the middle, and you put that in the search box in TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube, and you'll come up with my episodes. And if you want to have some fun, they're only three minutes long, and and they're a great answer to your question because in each one, I start by telling the stories of one of my my hairy ass adventures, but then about two-thirds of the way through, I start drawing some kind of life lesson that's key to that adventure. And the life lesson might be about how to find the courage when you're scared, how to be patient when you're dealing with some real a-hole that won't listen to you, how to how to find community when when when somebody hates your guts. I mean I I offer these tips from 83 years of living, and I tack them onto the adventure story, and it really works. I mean, I've been doing this for only a year. I already, Robin, have about 80,000 followers.

SPEAKER_01:

Awesome.

SPEAKER_02:

Which makes me this is really fun. I love this. It makes me an influencer, yeah. Just like those young women that are influencers by doing videos on painting their nails or whatever.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_02:

So I'm an I'm an influencer, and it's great fun. I mean, it's it I mean, I mean, you know, I'm kind of famous. I I walked into a restaurant in Seattle the other day, for example, and two guys in the in the kitchen took a look and said, Hey, it's badass granddad. I didn't know that from Adam. Yeah, who I was. Uh yeah. So I I I urge your I urge your viewers, they want something to do for three minutes. Look into badass grandad. And also for the full story, Robin, we haven't got time for the full story here, but I actually wrote a memoir. The name of the memoir is Quest, Q U E S T, Risk, Adventure, and the Search for Meaning. Of course, you can get it on Amazon or you can order it from your local bookstore. It's also an audible audit, it's also an audio book as well, in case you want to listen to it on your way to work. So, all that is a way of answering your question. I'm just gonna put to to give you these links so people can can look for themselves.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, yeah, I'll I'll put those in the show in the show notes as well. But one quick question, John, is when you said when everyone hates your guts, how to find a community? What is the answer to that?

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, the answer is tough. The answer is to develop trust and to to try to find the compassion to understand where that person is coming from. Yeah, and you know, my case is not alone. A lot of these people I'm talking about are my own relatives. Yeah, you know, Jesus Christ, Harry, Uncle Harry, I mean, you know, or or cousin Bess, I mean I kind of know where you're coming from, but you know, can you talk here? You know, and and there are difficult questions. There are members of my family where my views on, for example, right to life are very different from theirs, or my views on what to do in Gaza are very different. Um whatever. And so it's mostly establishing some degree of trust. And I say that in I've written four books now, five books actually, uh, about solving problems in answer to your question. And in the like the first couple chapters, I keep harping on the same thing. You've got to find a way to get trust. And usually that means by starting something really small.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

I find, for example, talking to old folks that disagree with me, if I can get them talking about their grandchildren or my grandchildren, oh yeah, you know, that my grandkid, man, he peed all over the living room rug, and it's like, oh you know, oh, mine did too, or whatever, you know.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Or I was coaching Little League, and I simply could not get this kid to hit the hit the ball with a bat because he he kept closing his eyes when the pitcher threw the ball. Yeah. Yeah, or when you sit down, you know, you you take the kid, and here's what I did, for example, uh when I was coaching Little League or whatever, you start with small stuff, and then when you establish some trust, you can start talking about things that are more important. For example, we all know that the stream running through our town has been polluted, and it's been polluted because we've allowed paper mill or a whatever, a sheet metal factory to throw their crap into the river, and the city council and the mayor have not done a damn thing about it. Well, we all care about that. I don't care whether you're a mega Republican or or whether you're a fam, uh a fan of AOC or some left-wing politician. We all care about that polluted stream because we live in this town. So maybe we can sit together and establish some trust. And maybe we can go down together to the city council and and and raise our hands and say, hey, city council, hey mayor, we got to do something. This person here is from the right, I'm from the left or whatever, and we're agreed that we should do something. So you look for stuff and you start building trust. What you don't do is you don't say, hey, you're full of crap, man. I don't how could you possibly believe that? That's stupid. We all know that doesn't work, right? It doesn't work around the Thanksgiving table, it doesn't work on social media, and it doesn't work in real life. You have to start building trust, and that means having enough compassion to understand that the other person's got a life too, and that other person came to their views through a series of incidents you know nothing about. Right. Something happened to that person. Maybe they had a difficult experience, maybe they lost their parents when they were young, or something happened. Um, and and and they went down uh the wrong rabbit hole. And so you got to understand that. Am I saying this always works? Oh no, I'm not naive. Some people are irretrievable. I mean, some people just will never get it. And whether they're on the far left or the far right, they're never gonna get it. Um, but what I'm saying is that I don't know, four times out of five, let's say. Okay, three times out of four, you can make some progress. And certainly on environmental concerns, like that hypothetical case of a polluted river in your town, uh, on or not cutting down the last of the redwoods in your county or whatever. You can find some common ground on environmental issues, because we all want to drink safe water and we all we all want to breathe clean air, whether you're a lefty or a righty. And so you can find some common ground there. But yeah, but you're also gonna be smart about it. You gotta realize that's in some cases, you know, forget it. You're not, we're we're just gonna agree to disagree and you move on.

SPEAKER_00:

And John, do you still would you say that you still struggle with some of the PTSD that you've established over the years or that draft heroes projects help helps you kind of maintain that? Or what what would you say there?

SPEAKER_02:

That's a very good question, you know, because obviously I'm not a perfect person. I get mad a lot, for example. And with the question you just raised is I wonder if some of the anger, a lot of the anger I feel is on inanimate objects. God damn computer, what's Facebook thinking of? What are you doing? Why did you cut me off? You know, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bing, bang. Yeah, maybe some of that is because of my uh some of the anger I felt at at some of the things I was doing as a young man in wars and in Vietnam and stuff. I don't know. Or maybe it's it's just my personality. I don't know. I think I think um I think that that I really managed to conquer PTSD at the United Nations, where where I did a lot of good stuff and peace and justice issues, mostly in African countries, not just with ending apartheid, but in issues involving poverty or disease, or in many cases, crimes against women. I'm sure you realize, Robin, that there are some countries in Africa where the role of women is is is really low. Uh they have no rights whatsoever. And not only that, some horrible physical things are done to young women. I won't be explicit. And so, you know, a lot of things need to be corrected. A lot of the giraffes that we honor, not a lot, but a number of them are Africans, for example. We have a whole separate section called Giraffe Heroes International, yeah, where we we look for people, like in particular Africans and African women, who are sticking their necks out to talk back to tribal chiefs, for example, all this top-down patriarchy crap, and fighting for the rights of women and new constitutions, new laws, and and and they're making progress, and we honor them for their courage.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, yeah, I like that. I like that a lot. So, and John, can you tell us again the name of your two websites? Because I you have several listed. I and like I said, I'm gonna put those in the show not show notes.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, sure. Well, again, uh again, the giraffe website, which is the really important one with the stories, that's giraffe.org. And then my own website where you want to learn more about my checkered fast, uh, it's simple. It's my name, John Graham, all one word. Johngraham.org. John Graham.org. Dial that up. I've already told you how to get on to badass granddad. Go to one of those three channels and use the search box. Uh and then go out and buy my book. I mean, good quest. You can find it on Amazon or you can order it from your local bookstore. And that's, you know, put that in the chat notes or the the clear the notes you you will attach to this broadcast. Uh and uh yeah, but that's all I want to say about me. I mean, this is not a self-promotion thing. I'm not transactional in the least. I don't need the money. I'm not selling anything. Uh I'm just trying to get a message across. But what's important in life is to find the true meaning of your life. I thought I had found the true meaning of my life, Robin, in adventure. I thought I had found the true meaning by being John Wayne. That was what really mattered to me. That was the purpose of my life. And then comes that battle in Vietnam, and I realized that that's not where meaning was, not for me, anybody else. Real meaning comes from some kind of giving back, some kind of service. I agree. For many of us, it comes from looking hard at some public problem. Maybe it's routing your town, or maybe it's global warming, or it's something, and getting off your rear end and doing something about it. That's where meaning comes from. It comes from service. Uh and like I was saying earlier, you can't just preach at people. Oh, go out there and be good. Oh, people hate that. People hate that. You just don't tell people to go out there and do good, you give them examples. You know, here's someone just like you. There's someone who looks just like Robin, and and she's sitting there saying, What the hell can I do? Well, what's troubling you? Well, there's something problem going on with in my kids' school, and there's a bullying problem, and the administration of the school won't do a damn thing about it. Well, why don't you do something about it yourself?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, well, you know, here's here's a story of someone doing something about bullying in their school. So yeah. And we ever 2,000, we've got people that look just like me, that look just like Robin Black, that look just like, you know, yeah. 2,000 people with plenty of role models to choose from.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. Absolutely, John. And what would so and with the giraffe heroes project project, is that only online, or do you offer in-person services as well?

SPEAKER_02:

We used to. Now we don't have to. We reach a lot more people now online. We used to reach all of our people. We we created a schools program, for example, called the Giraffe Heroes Program. And uh it was helping kids build lives as courageous and compassionate citizens. And in the beginning in the 90s, it was a paper curriculum, you know, paper, uh with uh with video discs. And then we realized that we could do it faster and better uh using social media. So now we are entirely online. We have these websites, and we are the giraffe project is on all kinds of social media, and we tell the stories on Facebook, we tell them on our own easy, we any any way that we can. And we reach a lot more people now with a smaller staff than we ever did, because we've gotten pretty good at using social media. We were some of the early adapters to it back even in the 90s, late 90s, early aughts of using social media. So we have a much smaller staff. We operate it mostly with contractors working out of their houses using social media. Yeah, so we've gotten pretty modern, which is cool because, like I say, I'm 83 years old. Maybe you don't expect someone 83 years old to even know what social media does, but I do, and so does my wife Ann, who's even older than I am, and so so we we do that, and uh almost all of our staff are contractors, or way younger than we are, so it's not like we're a bunch of old farts. Yeah, we actually have people your age working for us as contractors, yeah, or even younger. I'm not saying how old you are, but you know, yeah, yeah, uh we have people younger than us.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's okay. It's okay. I'm 39, so 39, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02:

It's like Jack Benny. Oh, yeah, 39. Oh, you don't know who Jack Benny is, do you? No, you don't know, you don't know, oh my god, she doesn't know who Jack Benny was. Okay, well, your mother does, or your grandmother does if she's still with us. Yeah, Jack Benny. Ask your grandmother if she's still around, if she remembers Jack Benny.

SPEAKER_00:

Jack Benny. Okay, I have to be.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, he was a comedian in the 50s and the 60s.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, okay. Well, John, thank you so much. I'm sure you're a wealth of knowledge, and I could just listen to you all day, but I definitely am gonna put your information down in the show notes and have the listeners reach out. Is there anything else that you would like to add?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's my own bumper sticker, Robin. Nothing is more important than to find the true meaning and purpose of your life. And if you look hard and long enough, you'll find it in some kind of service. So look for it.

SPEAKER_00:

All right. Well, thank you so much again, John. And again, I'm Robin Black. This is It's All About Healing Podcast. Everyone, stay blessed.