Selected Wisdom

In the fall of 2021, I finally got to leave my house and speak to a live audience at the Pebble Beach Authors and Ideas Festival in Monterey, California. After over a year of the pandemic, everyone was a little rusty with in-person interactions, except for one presenter—Dr. Mark Moffett. 

Mark’s presentation, his animated style, and fun demeanor captured the crowd that weekend in a way that no one else could. His description of the Southern California ant wars captivated the crowd, and put everyone, including me, who had been trapped in their houses for more than a year completely at ease.

Informally known as “Dr. Bugs” and “the Indiana Jones of entomology,” Mark Moffett is biologist, writer, and globetrotter who has examined species’ life and death from the forest floor to canopies. His research has brought him all over the world from Sri Lanka to Costa Rica to Easter Island.

Dr. Mark Moffett is currently studying the stability of societies across animal species and humans up to the present day through a grant with the Templeton Foundation.

“Dr. Bugs” joined Clint to discuss his global expeditions, winding career path, and how we aren’t so different from ants after all.

Colin Woodard is an award-winning historian and a New York Times bestselling author. 

Author of the bestseller American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of America, Woodard has written six books, including The Republic of Pirates, a New York Times bestselling history of Blackbeard’s pirate gang that was made into a primetime NBC series, and Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood, which tells the harrowing story of the creation of the American myth in the 19th century, a story that reverberates in the news cycle today.

He is the recipient of the 2012 George Polk Award for journalism and was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting. Colin is also a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Affairs at Salve Regina University where he is launching Nationhood Lab, a project to devise and disseminate a new civic national story for the U.S.

A native of Maine, Colin has reported from more than 50 countries from all seven continents. He lived in Eastern Europe for more than four years, where he witnessed firsthand the collapse of the Soviet empire and the transition that ensued. 

Colin spoke with Clint about what he’s learned writing his book, living in the Balkans, and how American Nations applies to the cultural fracturing of the United States today. 

Dr. Nahid Bhadelia is one of the of the amazing doctors explaining COVID-19 to Americans, serving on the frontlines of the pandemic, and helping counter the false information that has accompanied the virus’s spread among populations.

Dr. Bhadelia is the founding director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy and Research at Boston University (CEID), an associate director of the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL), and an Associate Professor at the Boston University School of Medicine. 

She designed and served as the medical director of the Special Pathogens Unit (SPU), a medical unit designed to care for patients with highly communicable diseases, and was dispatched to West and East Africa during the 2013-2016 Ebola virus epidemic, where she worked directly with patients and community stakeholders to treat and manage the disease. 

Along with her medical work, Dr. Bhadelia holds a Masters in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts, where she specialized in health security with a focus on pandemic response. 

Dr. Bhadelia joined Clint to talk about COVID-19 from an infectious disease doctor's perspective, her journey to medicine, and working through the Ebola epidemic.

Lawrence Wright is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, which provides a sweeping narrative of events that lead up to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He’s an author, screenwriter, playwright, and staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. 

Along with The Looming Tower, Wright has written 10 other nonfiction books including Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood,and the Prison of Belief and several plays, many of which he has performed in. Lawrence is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Society of American Historians, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and serves as the keyboard player for an Austin-based blues band.

Lawrence joined Clint to share some selected wisdom on life in Texas, his writing process, and his journey to becoming an award-winning author.

If you’ve listened to NPR in the past twenty years, you’ve likely heard the voice of Deborah Amos. Deb serves as an international correspondent for NPR for over 20 years where she’s mostly covered conflict in the Middle East. Throughout her tenure she’s reported on global conflict from the Gulf War to Syrian Civil War and geopolitics across Eurasia and Northern Africa. 

Deb is the recipient of the Edward Weintal Prize for Diplomatic Reporting from Georgetown University and the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award by Washington State University. She is currently based in Berlin, where she is focusing her reporting on the trials of Syrian intelligence officials accused of torture.

Deb joined Clint for this interview where she gave selected wisdom from her long and illustrious reporting career and advice to future journalists.

Matt Eversmann enlisted in the Army as an infantryman in December 1987. Matt spent time with the 10th Mountain Division and eight-and-a-half years with the Ranger Regiment, serving as a squad leader, a weapons squad leader, the battalion air operations sergeant, the battalion liaison sergeant, and a platoon sergeant. Matt was also the officer in charge of the 75th Ranger Regiment’s Pre-Ranger Course, training future leaders to pass the grueling Army Ranger School.

In August of 1993, Matt and his company deployed to Mogadishu, Somalia, in support of Operation Gothic Serpent. The deployment was made famous by the 2001 Ridley Scott film Black Hawk Down, in which Matt is portrayed by Josh Harnett. For his service in Somalia, he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with Valor device and the Combat Infantryman’s Badge. 

Matt’s last military assignment was as an Infantry Company First Sergeant in the 10th Mountain Division. He and his soldiers spent 15 months in Iraq during “the Surge” fighting Al-Qaeda and implementing the counter insurgency strategy. 

He is an Emmy-award-winning documentarian and has co-authored two New York Times Best Seller list books—Walk in my Combat Boots and E.R. Nurses—with James Patterson. They are currently working on their third project.

Matt joined Clint to discuss his time in the Army and the experience of being portrayed on the silver screen.

In 2010, after stints in the U.S. Army, FBI, and academia, Clint Watts started Selected Wisdom, a blog with the goal of gathering and illuminating insights and analysis from experts with diverse backgrounds.  

The blog covered a range of topics from social media’s impact on the Arab Spring to Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The Selected Wisdom podcast seeks to bring the concept of the blog to the next level. Clint is joined with experts from various fields, where they will share their unique perspectives and selected wisdom from their lives and careers.