Radio War Nerd

Recorded: October 12, 2022 The Nerd & Ames discuss tactical nukes — such as they are a thing — from the Cold War, through Putin's maybe/maybe not-bluffing. Total time: 1:42:48 Direct link to this episode's mp3 here

Guests: Brendan James & Noah Kulwin, co-hosts Blowback Recorded: August 2, 2022 We talk about the Korean War with the cohosts of the excellent Blowback podcast, who just put out a 10-part series recovering the "forgotten war" history. Subscribe here to the Blowback podcast and get all 3 seasons: Ira

Recorded: July 21, 2022 "If two fish are fighting in the water, an Englishman was there" In part 2 of our series on Turkey's 1974 invasion of Cyprus (part 1: EP #337), we start with the sham independence constitution forced on Cyprus by the departing Brits ensuring sectarian strife and British bases

Guest: Leonid Ragozin, journalist Recorded: November 29, 2021 There's been a lot of noise lately about a large-scale Russian military buildup on its border with Ukraine, with Serious People in DC claiming Putin is planning to invade by February. Riga-based journalist Leonid Ragozin joins the Nerd &

Guest: Carl Zha, podcaster Recorded: November 19, 2021 In part 3 of our RWN series on the first US-China Cold War, guest Carl Zha of the Silk & Steel podcast recovers the lost history of the US-backed KMT units forced over the border from southern China into northern Burma, where they set up what wo

Guest: Carl Zha, podcaster Recorded: October 28, 2021 In part 2 of our series on the First China-US Cold War, we look at a handful of significant — and bloody — battles in the weeks and months after Mao's Communists took control of mainland China: The Battle of Kinmen, off the coast of China's south

Guest: Carl Zha, podcaster Recorded: October 26, 2021 The War Nerd welcomes back RWN legend Carl Zha for a new series on the First China-US Cold War, because we're all in the sequel whether we like it or not. In this introductory episode, Carl looks at US-China relations going way back to the Boston

Recorded: October 12, 2021 The Nobel Prize for Lit just went to a Zanzibar-born writer, Abdulrazak Gurnah. Not exactly Africa's most exciting writer, but the occasion called for an episode on the 1964 Zanzibar Revolution, which for a few months that year created a Cold War freakout in Washington and

Guest: Steve Davis, historian Recorded: July 23, 2021 Nelson Mandela became a living legend after his release from prison in 1990, when he led South Africa from apartheid to black majority rule. Mandela's image transformed as well, from leftist African guerrilla leader, to avuncular racial strife he

Guest: Annibale Recorded: June 27, 2021 RWN guest Annibale returns for part 2 of our series on the XB-70 Valkyrie (listen to part 1: RWN #284). In this episode, pick up from JFK's decision to cancel the Valkyrie... discuss the CIA's SR-71 spy plane...and the fallout from the cancelation of the Valky

Guest: Annibale Recorded: June 18, 2021 RWN's highly decorated guest Annibale joins us for a two-part mondo hardware series on the American XB-70 supersonic bomber, an astonishing feat of mid-century aerospace engineering that was scrapped. In part one, we discuss the background of the XB-70 and pre

Guest: The Fakir Recorded: June 2, 2021 In part II in our 2-part series on the 1971 Bangladesh genocide & wars, RWN guest The Fakir takes us from the first months of the genocide in Operation Searchlight in spring 1971, up through the war between India and Pakistan in December 1971 that led to the c

Recorded: March 25, 2021 Seems like every few weeks on this show, something nefarious in the world traces its funding back to the bland-sounding "National Endowment for Democracy" — the notorious regime-change "NGO" that happens to be fully funded by the GO part of NGO, i.e., the US government. So w

Recorded: February 23, 2021 We look at the latest developments in the New Cold Wars fronts: the Russian Front, where Amnesty International de-listed jailed opposition activist Alexey Navalny from its hallowed "prisoner of conscience" pantheon; and the China Front, where an Evangelical loon named Dr.

Guest: Annibale Recorded: January 22, 2021 In the second part of our 2-part series on Italy's 1970 Borghese Coup plot (RWN #264), our Years Of Lead expert Annibale describes the political conditions in Italy at the time of the coup, the events, who benefited, the likely goal of the coup plotters, an

Guests: TheseLongWars + Aditya Recorded: June 19, 2020 First, we talk to RWN Pakistan bureau chief TheseLongWars about the history of China-Pakistan relations—a subject that has received very little attention in the Anglo-American world. At 1:33:20 - we're joined again by our South Asia investigatio

Guest: Piero Gleijeses, author & professor Recorded: May 29, 2020 Thanks to our RWN subscribers, we discovered Piero Gleijeses and his must-read book, "Visions Of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991" . Prof. Gleijeses joins us to discuss the wars in

Guest: Vincent Bevins, journalist & author Recorded: May 15, 2020 The 1965 anticommunist holocaust in Indonesia killed somewhere between 500,000 and 2 million, though we don't know the actual figure, for reasons we discuss—and it was fully supported by the US Embassy and Washington. Why do we know s

Guest: Yasha Levine, journalist Recorded: May 8, 2020 Intro - On radio intros... 10:10 - "Operation Gideon": Silvercorp USA mercenaries' failed Venezuela coup... 47:02 - "Operation Red Dog" - the failed Reagan-era US mercenary coup in Dominica (see header photo). Proof that "yes, Virginia, they real

Recorded: January 29, 2020 Guest: "Jared," pilot BANGKOK— The War Nerd thumbs his nose at the conovirus from his rental in Bangkok, Thailand, the country with the second largest death count . . . The Nerd and Ames look at current war news, from confessions of a Salvadoran dirty war commander, to war

Guest: Kris Newby, author, filmmaker, science journalist Recorded: July 12, 2019 For non-subscribers, here is a 25+ minute preview of Radio War Nerd episode #190 with guest Kris Newby, author of "Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons" — a remarkable & blood-curdling book

Guest: Kris Newby, author, filmmaker, science journalist Recorded: July 12, 2019 Ames has been pestering the War Nerd community with his obsession over Lyme disease & ticks—and author Kris Newby, a Lyme survivor, has just the medicine to make Ames more miserable than ever: "Bitten: The Secret Histor

Guest: Audra Wolfe, writer & historian Recorded: June 28, 2019 For non-subscribers, here is a 25+ minute preview of Radio War Nerd episode #188 with guest Audra Wolfe about her new book "Freedom's Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science" — on the instrumentalization of science for

Guest: Audra Wolfe, writer & historian Recorded: June 28, 2019 On this show we've looked at the Cold War from many angles: counterinsurgencies, propaganda campaigns, Italy's Years of Lead, highbrow culture wars — and in this episode, science historian Audra Wolfe tells us the little-known story abou

Guest: Joel Whitney, author Recorded: February 27, 2019 The War Nerd talks to author Joel Whitney about his new book "Finks: How The CIA Tricked The World's Best Writers" which exposes how deeply American spies meddled in and weaponized highbrow culture and magazine culture in the Cold War — with a

Guest: Carl Zha, podcaster Recorded: February 23, 2019 It's the 40th anniversary of the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, a brief and bloody war between two Communist neighbors that was little understood in the West, and has largely been forgotten since. The War Nerd invites one of our favorite guests back

"Red Scare!", Russian Disinformation Panic & "The Spike" First — Chelsea pressure cooker bombing + suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami (show recorded Sept 19 morning) . . . US-backed Syrian FSA rebels chase US Special Forces out of Al-Rai . . . US-UK bombs Syrian Army, helping Islamic State . . . Michael Weis