Dr. Mary Walker's True North
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A woman walked down a street in Lower Manhattan. A group of boys and men followed her. It was early June, 1866. The crowd was rowdy, jeering, pushing, trying to get a clearer view of this person who had been called a thing, a monstrosity. The woman was small, barely five feet. She had dark hair and a round face, porcelain skin. Her shoulders were back, her eyes unafraid. She kept walking.

The crowd of hecklers grew bigger. They hurled insults and threatened to throw worse. Finally, a policeman was called to disperse the mob. Instead, he arrested the woman. He grabbed her roughly by the arm and marched her to the station house. Her crime was a crime against the community. She was wearing pants. And that, in 1866, was enough to cause a riot of outrage and horror in New York City, of all places.

But there was something else she was wearing too. Pinned to her chest, just above her heart, was the Medal of Honor. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and this is Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States, awarded for gallantry and bravery in combat at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty.

Each candidate must be approved all the way up the chain of command, from the supervisory officer in the field to the White House. This show is about those heroes, what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice.

Today you're going to meet Dr. Mary Walker, the first and so far the only woman to have been awarded the Medal of Honor. She worked as a surgeon during the Civil War, saving the lives of Union soldiers. She was there at the famous battles of Fredericksburg, Chickamauga, and Gettysburg. She crossed into dangerous enemy territory to take care of civilians in need. She was a prisoner of war.

And all her life, Mary fought for equal rights, not just for women, for everyone. She saw the potential for extraordinary social reform at a time when everyone else was just pointing and laughing at her pants.

Mary Walker's story is about the power of a moral compass. We all have one, of course, but some people have a compass that holds a little faster. They follow it more faithfully, even when it sets them on a path that's rocky and lonely and filled with hazards. Mary Walker was one of those.

Mary was born in 1832 in Oswego, New York, the fifth daughter of two free-thinking farmers. Back then, that part of upstate New York was a hotbed of progressive ideas. It was the center of the abolitionist movement. The first women's rights convention was held in nearby Seneca Falls when Mary was 16.

All of the avant-garde trends of the 19th century were right there. Utopian socialism, the temperance movement, spiritualism and seances, vegetarianism. If it was radical, it was in the air, and Mary was breathing it in. Belief inequality was table stakes in the Walker house. People fleeing slavery would come to the Walker family's white-framed farmhouse in the middle of the night.

It was a stop on the Underground Railroad, the network used by enslaved people running to freedom in the northern states and Canada. Early on, her parents taught her how important it was to fight for justice. Mary and her sisters were educated well into their teens. Very rare in those days. And when young Mary announced that she was going to be a doctor, her parents were all for it, even though there were no women doctors at the time.

The first woman doctor in the U.S. wouldn't graduate from medical school until years later, 1849. Just a year earlier, a prominent doctor, the leading expert at the time in women's medicine and obstetrics, and a man, of course, had announced that a woman, quote, has a head almost too small for the intellect, but just large enough for love.

But Mary found a new medical college that was co-ed. She started when she was 21. There, she met a man who was also studying to become a doctor. They fell in love and got married. You don't really need to know about her husband, truth be told. He's the least interesting part of Mary's story. But you do need to know about the wedding. It was remarkable for three reasons. First, Mary insisted on striking obey from the vows. Common now, but unheard of then.

Second, she didn't take her husband's name. And third, and take note of this one because it's going to be a theme, she wore pants instead of a wedding gown. Pants. You're going to hear about one of the truly extraordinary women of the late 19th century whose feats of bravery were remarkable. But it's all going to keep coming back to the pants issue.

Mary didn't believe in the corsets and heavy layered skirts that ladies were expected to wear. They weren't just uncomfortable, she said. They were unhealthy. She was an unwavering supporter of something called the reform dress, an uncorseted calf-length dress worn over a sensible pair of trousers. Mary saw the reform dress as practical. The rest of the world saw it as completely ridiculous.

I'm going to have my co-conspirator on this podcast, Meredith Rollins, read Mary's words. It's not just because she wrote this episode. It's because she's kind of Mary-obsessed. My studies in anatomy taught me the heinousness of the crime against nature committed by the women who wore the barbarous corseted dress. But the fools of men are repulsed by the reformed dress because they think its wearer must be a strong-minded woman.

Strong-minded is an understatement when it comes to Mary. She didn't just wear pants. She shouted their benefits from the rooftops. She wrote articles and went on lecture tours. When Mary believed in something, she went in hard. It was just who she was. I was naturally timid as a girl, but had to overcome this through strong convictions of duty. I have felt that I must do what I believed was right, regardless of consequences.

I do not deserve credit for standing up to my principles, for I could not do otherwise. Mary and her husband opened a medical practice together, but patients didn't seem to be interested in a trouser-clad woman doctor. Her husband, it turns out, wasn't interested either. They got divorced. No marriage, no patients. So in 1861, at the age of 28, Mary lit out for Washington, D.C.,

She was a die-hard abolitionist and a patriot. The Civil War had just begun and wounded soldiers poured into the capital. Mary wanted to help. She made up her mind that she would join the Federal Army as a surgeon. It didn't matter that the Army had no interest in hiring a woman doctor. Why would that small detail matter to Mary? When she got to DC, Mary appealed directly to the Secretary of War and asked for a military commission.

When he refused, she offered her services for free at a local hospital. Then she wrote home to her family. I suppose you all expected me to go to war, and I thought it would be too cruel to disappoint you. Mary did not disappoint. We'll be right back. These powerful stories of those who helped protect our country are brought to you by LifeLock, the pioneer and leader in identity theft protection.

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So start protecting your identity today. Save up to 40% off your first year of LifeLock identity theft protection. Go to LifeLock.com slash metal to save 40% off. Terms apply. The most innovative companies are going further with T-Mobile for Business.

Tractor Supply trusts 5G solutions from T-Mobile. Together, we're connecting over 2,200 stores with 5G business internet, powering AI so team members can match shoppers with the products they need faster. Together with Delta, T-Mobile for Business is putting 5G into the hands of ground staff so they can better assist on-the-go travelers with real-time information.

By leveraging the nation's largest 5G network, Delta aims to improve operations across nearly every part of the journey, from check-in and boarding to departure, arrival, baggage handling, and beyond. Tractor Supply, Delta, and T-Mobile for Business are all passionate about connecting people and places while delivering exceptional customer experiences along the way. These partnerships are paving the way for unprecedented innovation.

Learn more about taking your business further by visiting T-Mobile.com slash now. This is Malcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History. Hey, have you heard the news? Sauron has returned in season two of Lord of the Rings, the Rings of Power.

If you didn't see season one, you need to check it out. It's epic. And season two looks to build on that. If last season was all about the heroes, then this season is all about the villains. And I mean, who doesn't want to see the greatest villain of all time in action? So like I mentioned, Sauron is back. He's forging the rings of power. You get to see how powerful they really are. Nobody in Middle-earth is safe.

Okay, so I know a bunch of you have been counting down until this comes out, but really, this is a show anybody will love. If you love action, fantasy, or drama, you'll love Rings of Power. It's got it all, seriously. So don't miss any of the elf, wizard, or Harfoot fun. Season 2 of Lord of the Rings, The Rings of Power, premieres on August 29th, only on Prime Video.

It was December of 1862. More than 200,000 soldiers were fighting over Fredericksburg, Virginia, a sleepy river town located midway between D.C. and Richmond. The Confederate forces were holding an impenetrable line with rifle and artillery fire. As the Union soldiers advanced, wave after wave of them just got shot down.

By the end, 12,500 men from the Union Army of the Potomac were dead or dying on the battlefield. Those who could be saved were brought to Lacey House, a plantation owner's mansion turned makeshift hospital. And there was Mary, right in the middle of it, working by lamplight to save the wounded. She tended teenage soldiers as they underwent brutal and often lethal amputations.

Doctors of the time believed it was better and more expedient to saw off a damaged limb instead of trying to save it. Mary disagreed, but she wasn't in charge. She didn't have her military commission. She was still a volunteer. The poet Walt Whitman was at Fredericksburg searching for his younger brother George. He described the carnage this way.

A heap of feet, legs, arms, and human fragments, cut, bloody, black and blue, swelled and sickening. He wrote about the dead bodies lined up in the garden, each covered with its own woolen blanket.

The nurse, Clara Barton, who had later found the American Red Cross, was there too. While Mary was, naturally, wearing pants, Clara, like all the other women, wore long skirts. She wrote later, "I wrung the blood from the bottom of my clothing before I could step for the weight about my feet." Mary darted from one patient to another, trying desperately to stave off infection and disease.

This was before antiseptics were widely used, and surgeons would wipe their bloody instruments on their aprons and move on to the next man. The New York Tribune described her this way. Dressed in male habiliments, she carries herself amid the camp with a jaunty air of dignity, well calculated to receive the sincere respect of the soldiers. She can amputate a limb with the skill of an old surgeon and administer medicine equally as well.

Strange to say that, although she has frequently applied for a permanent position in the medical corps, she has never been formally assigned to any particular duty. It would take another three years for that to change. In February of 1864, Mary made her way to Georgia.

She was going to join the 52nd Ohio Volunteers in Gordon's Mills on the muddy banks of the Chickamauga River. Her title? Contract Civilian Assistant Surgeon. It still wasn't an official military commission, but it was the best rank she could get, and she was finally getting paid like any other soldier. Also, for the first time, she was allowed to wear the uniform of a military surgeon.

Mary was the only woman doctor on either side of the conflict, so her outfit was appropriately unique. A long dress-like jacket with the official surgeon's green sash and pants. By now, she had grown her hair as long as she could so that everybody would know she was a woman. The men in charge saw the fact that she was a woman as a bad thing. Mary saw it as the complete opposite. A fantastic bonus.

My education has cost me as much as that of my learned brothers has cost them. I have had far greater difficulties to overcome, and if any difference is to be made, it ought to be in favor of the female physician. Mary was always her own biggest cheerleader, and just as she'd learned back home in Oswego, she was always keenly attuned to suffering and injustice around her.

The 52nd Ohio Volunteers were stationed very close to Confederate-held territory, so skirmishes with the enemy were common. But as Mary rode out from camp each day to tend to the troops, she couldn't ignore the fact that Union soldiers weren't the only ones suffering. Southern civilians had been ravaged by the war, too, and they had no medical care. Their doctors had been drafted into the war long ago.

Despite her disgust for the rebel ideological cause, Mary asked her commanding officer for permission to help the local settlements. Both armies had been upon the ground, but the Confederate army had been all through there, pressing every man into service, even those that were too young. And it left the women, as they said, to root hog or die. I cannot tell you how sincerely I pitied those people.

She spent whatever spare time she had helping children and widows, treating typhoid and pulling teeth and delivering babies. Because she was often traveling alone, she kept two revolvers hidden in her saddlebags. But Mary was Mary, so she had to add an extra layer of complication to whatever she was doing. She wasn't just helping the civilians. She was working as a spy.

General William Tecumseh Sherman was preparing to march on Atlanta, and while Mary was out doctoring, she was gathering information, listening to gossip, watching for movements in the communities she was serving.

Later, the judge advocate general would write that Mary, quote, "gained information that led General Sherman to so modify his strategic operations as to save himself from a serious reverse and obtain success where defeat before seemed to be inevitable." This is the other way that being a woman doctor was uniquely useful to Mary. She was in the perfect disguise. A woman doctor? It was simply too insane to take seriously.

But soon enough, her luck ran out. She was captured and arrested outside of Union lines in April 1864. The Confederates sent her to prison in Richmond, Virginia. It was called, and I love this, Castle Thunder. A captain witnessed Mary's arrival in Richmond and wrote, We were all amused and disgusted, too, at the sight of a thing that nothing but the debased and depraved Yankee nation could produce, a female doctor.

Castle Thunder was situated in a former tobacco warehouse, a hulking three-story brick building with bars on the windows. It was a notorious place, overcrowded and filthy. Disease was rampant. Mary, like all of the inmates, quickly became malnourished, slowly starving to death because, true to form, she was giving her food away to people who needed it more.

The theme of this whole story has been how indomitable Mary was. But this is the part that nearly broke her.

The prison guards kept gas lamps burning day and night, which let off toxic smoke, and Mary's eyes got infected. She tried to keep her spirits up, writing jolly letters home, promising her parents that she would soon be exchanged for a Confederate prisoner and return to safety. She was, as ever, optimistic. But that prisoner exchange took longer than Mary had hoped.

Her release was delayed over and over again. She slowly grew weaker. Her eyesight got worse. It might have occurred to a less confident person that the army that never really wanted her wouldn't be fighting very hard to get her back. But Mary never saw herself that way. Her compass held. Even when things were at their worst, she believed she had so much to offer the world that she would never be forgotten or ignored.

As she put it, I will always be a somebody. More on Mary after a quick break. These powerful stories of those who helped protect our country are brought to you by LifeLock, the pioneer and leader in identity theft protection.

Now you may think, I'm smart, I'm careful with my data, I don't need to worry. But the truth is, a lot of your personal information is in the control of others, like your doctor's office, your bank, your insurance provider. All it takes is one breach of any organization that has your info and you could become a victim of identity theft.

LifeLock is a leader in identity theft protection and empowers you to take control of your identity, alerting you to more uses of your personal information and fixing identity theft if it happens. Guaranteed. All your money back. LifeLock offers extensive, proactive protection, and all plans include the LifeLock Million Dollar Protection Package.

So start protecting your identity today. Save up to 40% off your first year of LifeLock identity theft protection. Go to LifeLock.com slash metal to save 40% off. Terms apply. The most innovative companies are going further with T-Mobile for Business.

Tractor Supply trusts 5G solutions from T-Mobile. Together, we're connecting over 2,200 stores with 5G business internet, powering AI so team members can match shoppers with the products they need faster. Together with Delta, T-Mobile for Business is putting 5G into the hands of ground staff so they can better assist on-the-go travelers with real-time information.

By leveraging the nation's largest 5G network, Delta aims to improve operations across nearly every part of the journey, from check-in and boarding to departure, arrival, baggage handling, and beyond. Tractor Supply, Delta, and T-Mobile for Business are all passionate about connecting people and places while delivering exceptional customer experiences along the way. These partnerships are paving the way for unprecedented innovation.

Learn more about taking your business further by visiting t-mobile.com slash now. This is Malcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History. Hey, have you heard the news? Sauron has returned in season two of Lord of the Rings, the Rings of Power.

If you didn't see season one, you need to check it out. It's epic. And season two looks to build on that. If last season was all about the heroes, then this season is all about the villains. And I mean, who doesn't want to see the greatest villain of all time in action? So like I mentioned, Sauron is back. He's forging the rings of power. You get to see how powerful they really are. Nobody in Middle-earth is safe.

Okay, so I know a bunch of you have been counting down until this comes out, but really, this is a show anybody will love. If you love action, fantasy, or drama, you'll love Rings of Power. It's got it all, seriously. So don't miss any of the elf, wizard, or Harfoot fun. Season 2 of Lord of the Rings, The Rings of Power, premieres on August 29th, only on Prime Video. Seven months into his presidency...

Andrew Johnson was facing a truly annoying problem. There was this woman. She had spent years in Washington, D.C., and the Capitol in those years operated like a small town. This lady knew everyone. The late President Lincoln and the future President Grant, Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony. She was like a pint-sized zealot in pants. We're talking about Mary, but you figured that out already.

It was November of 1865. The war was over and Mary was determined to get the government to acknowledge the work that she'd done. By God, she wanted her commission. She started a letter-writing campaign. She showed up at people's offices. She was no longer working as a surgeon. After about five months at Castle Thunder, the Confederate prison, her eyesight was permanently damaged. So she had plenty of time for her other great passion, pestering the government.

She believed that women, not just herself, but all women, deserve credit and payment for their war efforts. Not until this cruel war has ceased and peace shall again be ours and a dozen histories be written containing all the facts and events. Not, I say, until then shall the world know how much women have done.

President Johnson must have been desperate for Mary to leave him alone. He convened a group of officials to figure out what to do about her, and they came up with an answer, the Medal of Honor. Let me give this a little context.

The Medal of Honor had only been created four years earlier as a way for the federal military to incentivize new troops to sign up. In this early incarnation, the medal wasn't just awarded to the most extraordinary heroes, as it is today. It was the only military award at the time, so it went to pretty much everyone who did something special.

1,522 people got the Medal of Honor for their service in the Civil War. To put that into perspective, that's almost half of the medals ever awarded to this day. What Mary really wanted was that retroactive military commission, because it would have meant a pension. Plus, she saw commission as a useful wedge. It might open the door so that other women could join the military.

But while Mary saw commission as a useful wedge to the military brass, it was a slippery slope straight to chaos. Imagine thousands of Marys just telling you what they think, wearing pants. Terrifying! So instead, they gave her the Medal of Honor.

The judge advocate general wrote to President Johnson saying, this really was the way to go. And there was no danger of a slippery slope because Mary's, quote, sacrifices, her fearless energy under circumstances of peril, her endurance of hardship and imprisonment at the hands of the enemy, and especially her active patriotism and eminent loyalty, end of quote, were so singular that giving her the Medal of Honor wouldn't set a precedent.

He believed it was simply impossible for it to ever happen again. That certainly proved to be prescient. She is still the only woman to have been awarded the Medal of Honor. Mary was delighted by the medal. The men in charge believed she would now go away.

But we know Mary. She wasn't going to go away. Instead, she used the medal to give herself an even bigger platform, a way to keep talking about the things that mattered to her and that she believed should matter to everyone. It is literally impossible for one with any force of character and humanity to remain in the background when convinced by knowledge and reason that their mission is one that will result in great good.

Here's the thing. She wasn't just working as a surgeon during the war. She had all these charitable side hustles. She had worked as an advocate for the disabled and for soldiers who'd been unfairly accused of deserting. She had founded the Women's Relief Organization, which gave housing to wives and mothers of wounded Union Army men. She was constantly advocating for social change.

And now, with the Medal of Honor pinned to her chest, Mary took her advocacy on tour. As usual, the topics she picked were decades ahead of her time. She lectured on universal suffrage, prison reform, indigenous people's rights, the health risks of tobacco. She was the first woman to give an address from the Speaker of the House's desk. Uninvited, of course. She ran for office even when she couldn't vote.

Then, in January of 1872, all of her fighting scored an actual victory. On Mary's behalf, United States Congressman Benjamin Butler, a former Union general, introduced a bill to the House that would benefit, quote, "...all the women who labored for the sick and wounded during the late war." It passed.

The women would be granted $20 monthly pensions, roughly $466 today, only slightly lower than the pension paid to male soldiers who had been wounded in the war. It was Mary's biggest triumph. And yet, all the newspapers wanted to talk about was her pants. They reported breathlessly when she was met with those jeering crowds and police in New York. The exact same thing happened in New Orleans.

Once, she was robbed at gunpoint, and one columnist noted, "If she will persist in dressing like a man, she must expect to be mistaken for a man, and sometimes enjoy the inalienable right of being robbed like any other man." Mary, and this must have gotten tedious for her, corrected them over and over. "I do not wear men's clothes. I wear my own clothes."

But it took its toll. Every jeer has cut me to the quick. Many times have I gone to my room and wept after being publicly derided. No one knows, or will ever know, what it has cost me to live up to my principles, to be consistent with my convictions. But I have done it, and I am not sorry for it.

Which brings us back to our theme, Mary's Moral Compass. And how does a compass work? North is north, east is east, west is west, south is south. It doesn't have a gauge for what, say, the weather's like, or tell you if there's been a landslide and you can't actually go due north anymore because of a giant rock pile. Mary's Moral Compass was a little like that. It didn't really check for ground conditions. Let me give you an example.

In 1873, Mary decided she wanted a job in the U.S. Treasury. She'd heard they were hiring women. So she marched herself into the executive mansion, the precursor of the White House, where President Ulysses S. Grant lived. I mean, can you imagine this today? It's bananas. She set up camp in the East Room and vowed to stay until she got a position at the Treasury.

Grant capitulated with two conditions. One, that she never occupy the executive mansion again. And the other, that she wear traditional women's clothing to work. Maybe Mary said she would do that. It seems unlikely. But she took the job. And she showed up for her first day at the Treasury wearing pants. They didn't let her in the building. She came back the following day, still in pants. They turned her away again. This went on for more than a year.

And that's what you don't get for standing by your unshakable moral convictions. The chance to be one of the first history-making women in the Treasury Department. The pants got in the way. Mary spent the following decades advocating for the causes that were dear to her heart.

She traveled the country and the world on the lecture circuit, but upstate New York always called her home. She bought her parents' farmhouse and settled near her siblings, none of whom, it's worth noting, had ever caught the activism bug in the way that Mary did. In her family, as in the rest of her life, she stood out.

Over the years, Mary's reformed dress evolved into a dapper suit coat, trousers, and a silk top hat. She was arrested for wearing pants one final time in 1913 when she was 80 and walking with a cane. And then, around the time the United States entered World War I, Mary, then 84, received a letter in the mail.

It informed her that she was one of 911 Medal of Honor recipients whose medal was being revoked. They called it the Great Purge of 1917. Congress had imposed a new standard for military decorations and applied it retroactively. The Medal of Honor would be the highest in a pyramid of awards, requiring gallantry beyond the call of duty and at the risk of life and limb.

It would only be given to an officer or enlisted person, which at that point meant it was only for men. A special board made up of five retired army generals was assigned to review each of the Medals of Honor that had been awarded up to that point. Mary's medal didn't make the cut. It was, supposedly, because she was never a commissioned officer. But other male civilian doctors didn't have their medals taken away. It wasn't about Mary's lack of commission.

It was because of her sex. Mary was ordered to return her medal to the War Department. To wear it or publicly display it would be a misdemeanor. That was a decree she had no intention of following. She never sent her medal back. She never took it off. She wore it until 1919, when she died where she was born, in a place where she learned to care so deeply about humanity, Oswego, New York.

After Mary's death, her good friend and fellow doctor, Bertha Van Houten, wrote this, Dr. Mary's life should remind us that when people do not think as we do, do not dress as we do, and do not live as we do, that they are more likely to be a half century ahead of their time, and that we should have for them not ridicule, but reverence.

We talk a lot about originals, risk-takers, independent thinkers, visionaries. In America, we celebrate those people, particularly if they're successful. Dr. Mary Walker was incontrovertibly an original. But there's a downside to being on the vanguard. You have to have a high tolerance for discomfort.

All people are not heroes in all things. Women, as well as men, who can endure to be misunderstood for a great length of time, are few indeed. Eventually, Mary got her medal back in 1977. She had predicted it. She was uncannily on the right side of history on most issues, including herself. I have got to die before people will know who I am and what I've done.

It is a great shame that people who lead reforms in this world are not appreciated until after they're dead. Then the world pays its tribute by piling rocks over the grave of the reformer. I would be thankful if people would treat me decently now, instead of erecting great piles of stone over me after I'm dead. But then, that's human nature.

An unshakable moral compass comes with a price. It did for Mary. And I'm not talking about the eggs thrown at her on the street, the heckling mobs. I'm not even really talking about the lack of recognition. I'm talking about her instinctive decision to stick to her compass no matter where it led her, even when it actively worked against her best interests. She just couldn't help herself. She had to do what was right.

In essence, she had to wear those pants. Here's what I think: those five generals during the great purge of 1917 missed something crucial about the Medal of Honor. It isn't the risk of life and limb that sets Medal of Honor recipients apart. It's knowing what's right and then doing it, no matter the cost. By that measure, Dr. Mary Walker is as deserving as it gets.

Original music by Eric Phillips.

And if you want to learn more about our Medal of Honor recipients, follow us on Instagram and Twitter. We'll be sharing photos and videos of the heroes featured on this show. We'd also love to hear from you. DM us with a story about a courageous veteran in your life. If you don't know a veteran, we would love to hear a story of how courage was contagious in your own life. You can find us at Pushkin Pods.

I'm your host, Malcolm Gladwell.

I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and I'd like to take a moment to talk about an amazing new podcast I'm hosting called Medal of Honor. It's a moving podcast series celebrating the untold stories of those who protect our country. And it's brought to you by LifeLock, the leader in identity theft protection. Your personal info is in a lot of places that can accidentally expose you to identity theft.

and not everyone who handles your personal info is as careful as you. LifeLock makes it easy to take control of your identity and will work to fix identity theft if it happens. Join the millions of Americans who trust LifeLock. Visit LifeLock.com slash metal today to save up to 40% off your first year.

This is Malcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History. Hey there, you've got to check out season two of Lord of the Rings, The Rings of Power. It's going to be epic.

To catch you up, Sauron has returned and nobody in Middle-earth is safe. Season two is all about the greatest villain of all time. And if you're like, I'm not into that stuff, think again. If you love action, fantasy, or drama, you'll love Rings of Power. Season two of The Lord of the Rings, The Rings of Power, premieres on August 29th, only on Prime Video.

At the heart of every mission, there's an unshakable force that stands ready day and night. That's you, the one who rises before dawn to meet every challenge head on. At American Military University, we understand the demands of military life and the challenges you face. Our programs provide the flexibility you need to succeed.

both in service and in life. And when times get challenging, AMU is here for you with 24-7 mental health support. Always prepared. That's you. Learn more at amu.apus.edu.