Unexpected and Unimaginable Astronaut Story
Podcast: The Unimaginable Path of Jonny Kim. SEAL Combat Medic, Doctor, Astronaut
Jonny Kim is a Navy SEAL, a Harvard MD, a physician, a NASA Astronaut. When first hearing his story, I was expecting he might have a more “born-to-be-an-astronaut” childhood: decided to be an astronaut at 3, straight As, privileged family, etc.
From an almost five hours long podcast from Jocko Willink interviewing Jonny Kim, the astronaut talked about his childhood. Surprisingly, his childhood is a nightmare. His father was abusive and an alcoholic. One night his father almost murdered him and his mom and got gunned down.
The episode is the longest podcast I have listened to, but it is so inspiring to just listen to his talking. In the podcast, he also talked about emotional stories of his deployment in Iraq, where he lost teammates in the war, the struggle of his post-deployment emotion, his life in Harvard Medical School where he woke up at 3:30 and already had three kids.
Despite all the crazy accomplishment, he still considers himself average both physically and mentally.