The WBT Podcast

A talk between Adrian Bonenberger of The WBT and Wesley Morgan, author of The Hardest Place: The American Military Adrift in the Pech Valley. The talk covers a lot of topics in Morgan's book, including the cultural feedback loop bringing movies into the military and the military into movies, how that plays out with the Taliban, units that "succeeded" with counter-insurgency or COIN versus those that did not, and many more. A wide-ranging conversation that extends far beyond the book's focus of The Pech Valley itself.

A conversation with Professor of English Connie Ruzich, PhD, and Jennifer Orth-Veillon, PhD, about overlooked voices in WWI poetry, hosted by WBT co-editor Adrian Bonenberger. The poems that were read and discussed are linked here:

John Allan Wyeth's "Transport" "Night Watch" and "Picnic: Harbonnières to Bayonvillers"

Rose Macaulay’s "Picnic, July 1917"

Joseph Seamon Cotter’s "Oh Little David, Play on Your Harp

Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s "I Sit and Sew"

And a link to Professor Ruzich’s recent publication. The anthology’s a vital resource for people and academics interested in reading a more diverse set of voices than are typically explored on university syllabi:

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/international-poetry-of-the-first-world-war-9781350106444/

WBT's Adrian Bonenberger talks with Jim Dao, the New York Times reporter who embedded with 1-87, 1st Brigade, 10th Mountain Division during a deployment to Afghanistan from 2010-11. The two have a frank discussion of journalism, some of the things they saw and did there (including attending a buzkashi match), and what it all meant.

Wrath-Bearing Tree co-editors Adrian Bonenberger, Michael Carson, and David James discuss Kurt Vonnegut's "Mother Night," a deep, subversive, and challenging satirical look at nationalism and "the totalitarian mind" that operates as a companion piece to Slaughterhouse Five.

Peter Molin, Patrick Deer, and Matt Gallagher talk about Elliot Ackerman's short story "Two Grenades," from the fiction anthology "The Road Ahead," and then discuss Gallagher's latest book, "Empire City," and its parallels to the modern day veteran insurrection potentials.

Adrian Bonenberger, Mike Carson, and David James reread Borges' "Deutsches Requiem," a short but extremely powerful confessional where the South American writer broke with his habit to look at a political character, and political characteristics. The conversation wandered outside the short story, unsurprisingly, to talk more broadly about the phenomenon of the Nazis, and conjecture about what Borges may have been thinking or trying to say.

Adrian Bonenberger and Brian Castner talk with Will Mackin about Donald Barthelme, Denis Johnson, and "Bring out the Dog." In the course of the conversation explore ideas like how to portray the regret of serving, the role of postmodernism in describing current wars, and how some of their favorite stories most resemble dreams.

Adrian Bonenberger (@AdrianBonenber1) is joined by Brian Castner (@Brian_Castner) and Wesley Morgan (@wesleysmorgan) to discuss Svetlana Alexievich's "Zinky Boys," a creative non-fiction series of interviews dedicated to the USSR's catastrophic intervention in Afghanistan.

Wrath-Bearing Tree co-editors Adrian Bonenberger and Andria Williams are joined by National Book award winner Phil Klay to talk about his new book, Missionaries, and Anton Chekhov's short fiction story "The Murder."

WBT co-editors Andria Williams and Adrian Bonenberger chat about "The Progress of Love," a short story by Alice Munro. Williams first encountered the story at her MFA program in Minnesota. Bonenberger had never read it before. The two discuss Munro's storytelling techniques, and what they enjoyed about the story.