We're enjoying the holiday this week so we thought we'd bring one back from the vault. This week Dr. Craig Bruce Smith and Dr. Robert Greene II and I talk about Mel Gibson's The Patriot, the role of constructed memory in national identity, and the ethics of making historical dramas.

It’s pretty frustrating. 

This week military historian Dr. Jonathan Carroll drops in to talk about Black Hawk Down and his new book Beyond Black Hawk Down: Intervention, Nation-Building, and Insurgency in Somalia, 1992-1995.

About our guest:

Jonathan Carroll is a former officer in the Irish Defence Forces who earned a PhD from Texas A&M University. He is an associate professor of military history at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst.

Talking about my weekend trip with Comanche youths, along with some of my experiences with the Seminole Tribe of Florida, the Southern Ute Indian Tribe, the Kiowa Tribe, and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes.

This week John Wyatt Greenlee returns as guest host and he’s looking for a six fingered man. 

This week, our friend Dr Lou Moore drops in to talk about Diggstown and his work tracing black boxing from the end of the Civil War into the 20th century.

This week Dr. Paul Thomas Chamberlin drops in to talk about the history behind Operation Overlord and Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan.

About our guest:

Paul Chamberlin specializes in twentieth century international history with a focus on U.S. foreign relations and the Middle East. His first book, The Global Offensive: The United States, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Making of the Post-Cold War Order (Oxford, 2012), is an international history of the Palestinian liberation struggle. His next book, The Cold War's Killing Fields: Rethinking the Long Peace (HarperCollins, 2018), is a global history of the bloodiest encounters of the Cold War.

Today neuroscientist and psychiatrist Dr. Kieran Fox joins in to talk about the spiritual journey of Albert Einstein.

About our guest:

Dr. Kieran Fox is a neuroscientist (PhD 2016) and doctor (MD 2023), currently training to be a psychiatrist in the Research Resident Training Program at the University of California San Francisco. His research over the next few years will focus on the neural mechanisms and clinical potential of psychedelic medicines. During medical school, he used intracranial electrical stimulation (neuromodulation) of the human brain to research cognition and emotion in epilepsy patients.

This week Justin Rawlins and Craig Bruce Smith drop in to talk about Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning and their thoughts on the MI franchise. 

Writer and filmmaker Kevin Smokler returns to the pod to talk about his discussions with 25 different women filmmakers.

About our guest:

Kevin Smokler is a writer, documentary filmmaker and event host focused on our relationship as human beings with pop culture. His most recent book BREAK THE FRAME: CONVERSATIONS WITH WOMEN FILMMAKERS  contains 24 career-retrospective conversations with directors behind box office phenomenon like Captain Marvel, Oscar winners like Free Solo and the filmmakers who launched actors such as America Ferrera, Paul Rudd, Ryan Gosling and Jennifer Lawrence. His previous books, BRAT PACK AMERICA is a love letter to teen movies of the 1980s. His 2013 essay collection PRACTICAL CLASSICS is a 50 book attempt to reread one’s high school reading list as an adult.

His feature length documentary film VINYL NATION on the American renaissance of the vinyl record, won ten awards and screened at 50 film festivals worldwide. His new documentary MIDDLE GROUNDS, about coffee shops and civic dialogue will be released this year.