Julian Torres joined the Marine Corps in 2007 as a machine gunner and was on the fast track, already five ranks up in three years, when he stepped on an IED about four weeks into his 2010 deployment to Afghanistan. At 22, with a four-month-old son at home, he lost both legs, the left below the knee and the right above it. Talking one-on-one with Pete, he traces the resilience that carried him through to an angry childhood after his parents' divorce, years of counseling that taught him to name his feelings, and high school wrestling, which he calls the art of self-reliance.

Julian also keeps bees, a passion that began when one landed on him at the Santa Cruz boardwalk and grew through the Heroes to Hives course for veterans; opening a hive of 60,000 bees taught him that "together we are stronger." He describes the friends who cleaned and wrapped his wounds under fire, why every survivor needs a tribe that expects something of them, and how his kids and a patient professor coaxed him onto the mats, where his wife noticed he smiled for the whole first class. He soon competed as a heavyweight, and says he cannot practice jiu-jitsu with hate in his heart.

In this episode

• 0:00 Welcome
• 1:03 How one bee started a hobby
• 6:28 What 60,000 bees taught him
• 9:40 A Marine machine gunner in Afghanistan
• 11:49 Asking why he survived
• 16:07 Anger, counseling and wrestling as a kid
• 24:41 The friends who cared for him
• 29:57 Why some veterans turn the corner
• 34:10 Find your tribe
• 38:21 His kids bring him to jiu-jitsu
• 41:31 A sponsorship and his first class
• 45:39 Competing as a heavyweight
• 51:00 No hate in your heart
• 54:17 You never know who the killers are

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