The United States’ military is an all volunteer force and has been since 1973. The people who fought both Gulf Wars and the war in Afghanistan asked to join up. They had as many reasons as there are troops, but not one was compelled by the government. Today, we’re talking to Beth Bailey, Distinguished Professor at Kansas University and the author of AMERICA'S ARMY: Making the All-Volunteer Force. We’re going to talk about the history of the draft and what came after. Recorded 1/19/21 Suppo...
Feb 12, 2021•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast After surviving a poisoning attempt, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny returned to his home country and was arrested. Now he’s been sentenced to serve a 3 and a ½ year prison sentence. After Navalny’s arrest in mid-January, people took to the streets of Russia’s cities to protest. We’ve seen this before, but there is a sense that this time is different. Is it? Here to help us answer that question is Mark Galleotti. Galeotti is a frequent guest on the show, a Russia expert, and is cu...
Feb 05, 2021•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Here's a look at what we've been working on in the premium feed. Sign up at angryplanetpod.com or angryplanet.substack.com. Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict. https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribe You can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes , Stitcher , Google Play or follow our RSS directly . Our website is angryplanetpod.com . You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://w...
Feb 04, 2021•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast State Houses across the country are filled with monuments to losers, traitors, and terrorists. General Robert E Lee and Benjamin Tillman are lauded alongside figures like George Washington. The reasons why are complicated, but they’re bound up in something called The Myth of the Lost Cause. If you’ve never heard of this or don’t understand why it’s so critical to understanding American history well, honey, you probably ain’t from the South. Here to help us understand what’s going on is Dr. Rober...
Jan 29, 2021•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast Please blame Jason Fields for that headline. Human trafficking and modern slavery are at the top of the news in the United States in the form of the QAnon conspiracy theory. It links together Democrats, child sex trafficking and a pizza place about a mile from my house. The pizza at Comet Ping Pong is just OK, but don’t ask to see the basement. There isn’t one. QAnon is one of the more whacko things going on in this country. Today we’re going to talk about the reality of human trafficking and ho...
Jan 22, 2021•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast It finally happened. Twitter finally suspended Trump’s account. After the capitol riots on January 6, tech companies such as Google, Apple, and Twitter took the unprecedented step of invoking their first amendment rights and removing several users from their various platforms. I just want to remind everyone that the 1958 Supreme Court Decision in NAACP v. Alabama outlined an implied part of the first amendment—that of Freedom of Association. Is this big tech censorship? Are private compani...
Jan 13, 2021•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sometimes referred to as Europe’s last dictator, Aleksandr Lukashenko has ruled Belarus since shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Lukashenko, formerly in charge of a collective farm, has kept a tight grip on power and on the past. Belarus has kept Soviet symbols and economic policies long after they’ve gone out of favor elsewhere. Elections have been held regularly in the country, but have been neither free nor fair. The latest, in August 2020, is considered to be the least fair of a...
Jan 09, 2021•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ghost guns. Untraceable weapons manufactured in the home. They’ve been with us forever, but they’ve taken on a new menace in the age of 3D printers and digital distribution. Here to walk us through the new phenomenon is Mark A Tallman. Tallman is an Assistant Professor of Homeland Security & Emergency Management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy. He’s also the author of Ghost Guns . Ghost Guns is an in depth, data driven, and dare I say nerdy deep dive into homemade weapons in the post...
Dec 24, 2020•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict. https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribe You can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes , Stitcher , Google Play or follow our RSS directly . Our website is angryplanetpod.com . You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/ ; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod . Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcoll...
Dec 16, 2020•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you’ve ever heard the phrase one-man wrecking crew, they might well have been talking about Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s Shadow Commander. Soleimani’s first fight was against Iraq in the war that started right after Iran’s revolution and lasted until 1988. He went on to great success fighting bandits and drug lords, eventually taking over Iran’s Quds Force - Iran’s tool for diplomacy by other means. For more than 20 years, Soleimani helped Ayatollah Khamanei project power around the region-becomi...
Dec 10, 2020•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast What’s a fascist anyway? It’s a word we heard a lot over the past few years. If you’re on one side of the political debate you probably used this word earnestly. If you’re on the other side, you probably think people use it because they’re too embarrassed to call their political opponent Hitler. But it’s an important word with several very real definitions. Musolini is not Hitler is not, dare I say it, Tr0ump. But, from a certain point of view, all these men are fascists. Worth noting at the top...
Dec 03, 2020•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast PULP EPIC. MALE. MAN’S ILLUSTRATED. MAN’S ADVENTURE. BRIGADE. VALOR. You’ve seen these magazines before. You either grew up with them or you’ve seen their bizarre covers online. There’s always a man with rippling muscles, sometimes he’s fighting a pack of weasels, other times he’s eying a scantily clad dame. Sometime’s there’s a Nazi, sometime’s there’s a woman in an SS uniform with a few buttons missing. The Pulp magazines of the Cold War shaped the culture and thinking of an entire generation ...
Nov 19, 2020•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast The phrase climate change was originally created to soft-pedal global warming. A hotter planet doesn’t sound good, but, hey, climates change all the time - from winter to summer and back again. But it turned out to be an accurate description for what’s really going on. Deserts are drying, wet places are getting wetter. Crops are dying, and so is livestock and in some places it’s increasingly unsafe to go out during the day? So, how is this affecting human conflict? The assumption is that climate...
Nov 05, 2020•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Law and order, it’s one of the catchphrases of this election. Crime rates, in some cities in America, are on the rise but crime, in general, is down. But 2020 has been a chaotic year and our news feeds are filled with violent images of militant groups, protestors, riots, burning buildings, and everything in between. The sad fact is that not all crime in America is reported on in the same way, that the protest movement is overwhelmingly peaceful, but not always, and that police militarization has...
Oct 29, 2020•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribe to listen Armenia and Azerbaijan are at war. Why? It’s complicated. What’s the nature of the conflict? That’s also very complicated. It’s so complicated, in fact, that Russia, Syria, and Turkey are all involved. And it threatens to pull in their allies, all over a war that’s been “frozen” since 1988. Here to help us untangle all of this is Aram Shabanian, a graduate student of Non-Proliferation and Terrorism Studies at the Middlebury Institute of Intern...
Oct 27, 2020•5 min•Transcript available on Metacast Remember back when the Berlin Wall fell and history ended? Back when we won the Cold War and America was embraced by allies old and new, becoming the world’s only superpower. The Gulf War was fought and seemingly won. Actually, maybe you don’t. It was the end of the 1980s, after all. George Bush - no, not that one - stood at the center of events, and inside that center stood James A. Baker III. To tell us about the man who ran Washington, and why he remains important, we welcome Peter Baker of t...
Oct 21, 2020•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Things feel surreal all the time now. We’re told that some of our favorite online personalities may just be sock puppet accounts for foreing governments. Russia, in particular, is supposedly a master at the new soft power internet based information warfare. Some people still believe that Trump is a Russian agent, the end result of a longcon forged years ago by the KGB and ushered into power by Russian trolls. Qanon, anti-vaxers, ant-maskers, shitposts, and doing it for the lulz. It can be exhaus...
Oct 15, 2020•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nations rise and nations fall, as do their governments. Today, some people say the United States and its treasured republican virtues stand at a crossroads. But how can you tell? Are we dealing with the mere panic of the moment, or something worth panicking about? To help us get a grip on what’s going on, we’re going to reach into the past, today, to see if history is repeating or just rhyming. Joining us to help us get a grip—and we could probably all use to get grip right about now—is Patrick ...
Oct 13, 2020•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast What’s the difference between a Proud Boy and a Boogaloo Boi? Are Patriot Prayer and Patriot Front the same thing? If I wear a Hawaiian shirt while eating a bowl of Lucky Charms, does that make me a member of a far right group? How many of these tacticool bearded weirdos are there, really, and are they dangerous? If it feels like the world today is weirder, wilder, and grosser than the one in the past … I feel you. 2020 has seen an explosion of Far Right groups and if you find it hard to keep tr...
Oct 07, 2020•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast America is perhaps more conservative today than it’s ever been. For some on the right, Obama, Biden and Clinton look like socialists. For people on the left, they look like moderate republicans. There’s a reason for both of those views that’s steeped in America’s recent past. U.S. culture was shaped by a suave and smooth talking President who promised we could be a beacon of hope for the world and a shining city on a hill. Here to talk about what happened is Rick Perlstein. Perlstein is a return...
Oct 03, 2020•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast The Military needs gamers. Over the past few months, the U.S. Army and Navy have spent a considerable amount of time playing video games. The Pentagon is streaming on Twitch, showing up at video game tournaments, and sponsoring esports events. And it’s all in a bid to reach a younger crowd and fill out the ranks. The military is trying to meet young people where they live and, increasingly, they live online playing video games. Is the military’s use of video games as a recruitment tool crossing ...
Sep 30, 2020•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast Civil wars, proxy wars, cold wars, hot wars. Economic collapse, the collapse of civil societies and governments. Hunger, torture, disease. Many parts of the world seem to be falling apart in 2020, but even then, the Middle East is its own special case. To talk about the state of one of the world’s most turbulent regions, Steven Cook joins us. Cook is the Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He recently wrote an overview for Forei...
Sep 24, 2020•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Fort Hood. One of America’s largest military bases is off the long stretch of highway between Dallas and Austin. Its Commander was set to transfer out and take over command of a division at Fort Bliss, but the Army announced on Sept. 1 that wouldn’t be happening. To anyone who’s been following the news, the reasons are pretty clear. At last count, 26 soldiers have died at Fort Hood in 2020. That’s more than have died fighting in Afghanistan this year. Some have been accidents, others suicides. F...
Sep 17, 2020•1 hr 15 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ghost guns. Untraceable weapons manufactured in the home. They’ve been with us forever, but they’ve taken on a new menace in the age of 3D printers and digital distribution. Here to walk us through the new phenomenon is Mark A Tallman. Tallman is an Assistant Professor of Homeland Security & Emergency Management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy. He’s also the author of Ghost Guns . Ghost Guns is an in depth, data driven, and dare I say nerdy deep dive into homemade weapons in the post...
Sep 11, 2020•5 min•Transcript available on Metacast On August 4, an explosion levelled a port in the Lebanese city of Beirut. Aging ammonium nitrate was the direct cause, but that the explosive fertilizer had been left for almost a decade in a storage warehouse speaks to the broader problems in Lebanon. A corrupt government, a financial crisis, a protest movement, and suffering citizens. Here to walk us through what’s going on is Blu Fiefer. Fiefer is a Lebanese performance artist who lives in Beirut who believes in signing truth to power. As the...
Sep 09, 2020•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast Hello and welcome to the final episode of War College. Don’t worry, we’re not going anywhere. We’re just becoming Angry Planet. From time to time we record things that, for whatever reason, don’t quite work. Sometimes the audio is bad. Sometimes the news cycle destroys the story. Sometimes the the very famous, big name podcast host you have on as a guest is clearly drunk and loses his end of the audio. Sometimes you find out the guest is a CIA agent who never set foot in the country he’s talking...
Aug 28, 2020•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Great powers don’t always go great together, often viewing each other as rivals, if not enemies. After the Cold War, the United States was viewed as the last superpower standing. But not only has Russia and its nuclear arsenal stubbornly refused to go away, China has kept on rising. Now, people at the highest levels of government are trying to figure out whether China and the United States can play nice together, but whether the 21st will be the Chinese Century. Joining us to help understand the...
Aug 26, 2020•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Many people may not realize, but Turkey is a relatively new country--just shy of 100 years old. It was created as a republic out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, largely by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who stuck around as president until 1938. Since then there have been elected governments, military coups and now a -- well, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has reshaped the country in his own likeness - or at least how he likes. To help us make sense of it all, we’ve invited Andrew Finkel onto...
Aug 20, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, the CHAZ, the CHOP. It had many names, but from about June 8 to July 1, protesters occupied a portion of the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Seattle Washington. A utopia to some, a nightmare to others, the CHAZ became a symbol to the left and the right. The reality on the ground, as is always the case, is far more complicated. With us today to talk about that messy reality is Nikki West. West is a freelance journalist and former Congressional staffer who lives...
Aug 13, 2020•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast A few weeks ago, two nuclear-armed neighbors got into a fistfight. Actually, there were some clubs and other handheld weapons, too. It was bizarre and people died, more than 20 on the Indian side. The Chinese have been more coy about their numbers. To get a grip on what happened and what it means for the future, we have Maria Abi-Habib of the New York Times on the show. Abi-Habib is a South Asia correspondent who is based in India’s capital of Delhi. Recorded 7/22/20 India’s army focus How the b...
Aug 05, 2020•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
