{"id":6886,"date":"2013-02-19T15:04:48","date_gmt":"2013-02-19T19:04:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=6886"},"modified":"2015-05-23T22:29:03","modified_gmt":"2015-05-24T02:29:03","slug":"podcast-gods-way-of-teaching-americans-geography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/podcast-gods-way-of-teaching-americans-geography","title":{"rendered":"Podcast: God’s Way of Teaching Americans Geography"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virtual Memories – season 3 episode 4 –
\nFred Kaplan – God’s Way of Teaching Americans Geography<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/virtualmemories\/Season_3_Episode_4_-_Gods_Way_of_Teaching_Americans_Geography.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a><\/p>

Subscribe: Spotify<\/a> | TuneIn<\/a> | RSS<\/a> | More<\/a><\/p>\n

Every generation, we find ourselves fighting one of these insurgency wars, but the last one — Vietnam — was so awful that the generals threw out all the training manuals and lessons from it, saying, “We’re not doing that ever again.” The problem was, they didn’t have a choice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Why was the U.S. Army so unprepared for the insurgency in Iraq? Why did it take years after the fall of Baghdad for the military and its civilian command to understand what sort of war we were fighting? What did we achieve in Afghanistan, and what did we hope to achieve?\u00a0Fred Kaplan<\/strong>, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of\u00a0The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War<\/a>\"\", discusses all this and more in the latest episode of The Virtual Memories Show<\/em>! (My contribution is a comparison of war analytics to pharmaceutical clinical trials.)<\/p>\n

\"Untitled\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There’s a tendency for people to believe that everybody around the world is pretty much like us, and to the extent that they’re not, it’s because a dictator is stomping his boot on their heads. The thinking goes, when that boot is lifted, they’ll become like us. It’s a very one-dimensional view of conflict.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

http:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/virtualmemories\/Season_3_Episode_4_-_Gods_Way_of_Teaching_Americans_Geography.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a><\/p>

Subscribe: Spotify<\/a> | TuneIn<\/a> | RSS<\/a> | More<\/a><\/p>\n

Enjoy the conversation!<\/a>\u00a0Then check out our archives<\/a> for more! (If you dig this one, you’ll probably like the episode with Ron Rosenbaum<\/a> from January ’13.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Follow The Virtual Memories Show<\/em> on iTunes<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, Facebook<\/a>, Tumblr<\/a>, and RSS<\/a>!<\/p>\n

About our Guest<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fred Kaplan<\/strong>\u00a0writes the War Stories column at Slate.com<\/a> and jazz reviews for Stereophile<\/a> magazine. In addition to The Insurgents<\/em>, his books include 1959: The Year Everything Changed<\/a>\"\", Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power<\/a>\"\", and The Wizards of Armageddon (Stanford Nuclear Age Series)<\/a>\"\". His articles, reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The LA Times, The Boston Globe, Time, Newsweek, New York Magazine, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, The New York Observer, The Forward, Architectural Digest, Home Theater, GQ,<\/em> and a whole lot of other venues over the years. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1983 while at the Boston Globe<\/em>.\u00a0Visit his website<\/a> for more about his work.<\/p>\n

Credits: This episode\u2019s music is <\/em>Start a War\u00a0by The National. The conversation was recorded at Willard Spiegelman’s home in New York City, on a pair of AT2020 mics<\/a>\"\", feeding into a Zoom H4n<\/a>\"\" recorder. <\/em>I recorded the other material on a Blue Yeti USB mic<\/a>\"\" into Audacity.\u00a0All editing and processing was done in Garage Band. Also, I have a yucky headcold, so that’s why the intro\/outro sounds so bad this time around. I’ll come up with another reason for next episode’s bad intro\/outro.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Virtual Memories – season 3 episode 4 – Fred Kaplan – God’s Way of Teaching Americans Geography Every generation, we find ourselves fighting one of these insurgency wars, but the last one — Vietnam — was so awful that the generals threw out all the training manuals and lessons from it, saying, “We’re not doing … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Podcast: God’s Way of Teaching Americans Geography”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1183,17],"tags":[1593,1605,1599,1591,1615,1613,1600,1621,1595,1618,1588,1601,220,1619,1608,1241,1606,1620,1590,523,1609,1603,1594,1592,1604,1612,1607,1611,1616,1614,1617,1610,1602,1596,1598,1589,1597],"class_list":["post-6886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-podcasts","category-politics-explicit","tag-afghanistan","tag-ahmed-chalabi","tag-al-gore","tag-anbar-awakening","tag-biden","tag-celeste-ward","tag-condeleeza-rice","tag-containment","tag-counterinsurgency","tag-david-kilcullen","tag-david-petraeus","tag-dick-cheney","tag-donald-rumsfeld","tag-emma-sky","tag-fred-kagan","tag-fred-kaplan","tag-george-casey","tag-george-kennan","tag-george-lincoln","tag-george-w-bush","tag-h-r-mcmaster","tag-hamid-karzai","tag-insurgency","tag-iraq","tag-l-paul-bremer","tag-maliki","tag-meghan-osullivan","tag-moqtada-al-sadr","tag-obama","tag-peter-chiarelli","tag-raymond-odierno","tag-robert-gates","tag-saddam-hussein","tag-sean-macfarland","tag-sosh","tag-u-s-army","tag-west-point"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-1N4","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9614,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-165-fred-kaplan-wnjpoets-corner","url_meta":{"origin":6886,"position":0},"title":"Episode 165 – Fred Kaplan w\/#NJPoet’s Corner","author":"Gil","date":"April 24, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show #165: Fred Kaplan (& #NJPoet's Corner) \"I asked someone who had worked at Tailored Access Operations [the NSA's black bag division], 'I'm in your cubicle at work; what am I seeing?' and he said, 'I'm sitting at a monitor, and I'm typing code. And behind me is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"dtcover","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/dtcover.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":17307,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-622-fred-kaplan","url_meta":{"origin":6886,"position":1},"title":"Episode 622 – Fred Kaplan","author":"Gil","date":"January 20, 2025","format":"audio","excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show 622: Fred Kaplan \"This is a book about Washington culture, a sort of comical 'How Things Work'.\" After 4+ decades as a reporter and with a half-dozen nonfiction books under his belt, Fred Kaplan rejoins the show to celebrate his first foray into fiction, A CAPITAL CALAMITY\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/kaplan2025compB.jpg?fit=1118%2C800&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/kaplan2025compB.jpg?fit=1118%2C800&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/kaplan2025compB.jpg?fit=1118%2C800&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/kaplan2025compB.jpg?fit=1118%2C800&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/kaplan2025compB.jpg?fit=1118%2C800&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":6873,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/droning-on","url_meta":{"origin":6886,"position":2},"title":"Droning on","author":"Gil","date":"February 11, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"David Carr has a good piece in the NYTimes today about the public's lack of interest in the U.S. government's use of unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) to assassinate people. You should read it. Drone warfare came up in my podcast interview with Ron Rosenbaum, and will again in next week's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7492,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/podcast-war-is-a-self-licking-ice-cream-cone","url_meta":{"origin":6886,"position":3},"title":"Podcast: War is a Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone","author":"Gil","date":"December 1, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Virtual Memories \u2013 season 3 episode 29 - War is a Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone \u201cThere is a great tradition of very brilliant, outside-the-box, non-traditional, dynamic thinkers in the Marine Corps. . . . At the same time, our totem animal is the bulldog, not an animal known for its\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=voyantpublishing&l=as2&o=1&a=1416561110","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8139,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/podcast-the-war-poet","url_meta":{"origin":6886,"position":4},"title":"Podcast – The War Poet","author":"Gil","date":"August 26, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show: Jonathan Rose\u00a0- The War Poet \"Churchill was one of the last members of the Aesthetic Movement, except he applied his aestheticism to war.\" Professor Jonathan Rose joins the show to talk about his new book, The Literary Churchill: Author, Reader, Actor\u00a0(Yale University Press). It's a fascinating work\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Adventures in Gin"","block_context":{"text":"Adventures in Gin","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/adventures-in-gin"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=voyantpublishing&l=as2&o=1&a=0300204078","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8463,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/podcast-the-hollow-man","url_meta":{"origin":6886,"position":5},"title":"Podcast – The Hollow Man","author":"Gil","date":"December 29, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show: The Hollow Man It's the ONE-HUNDREDTH EPISODE\u00a0of The Virtual Memories Show!\u00a0And they said it would never last!\u00a0To celebrate hitting the century mark, I asked past guests, upcoming guests and friends of the show to interview me this time around! This special episode includes questions and recorded segments\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Podcasts"","block_context":{"text":"Podcasts","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/podcasts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=voyantpublishing&l=as2&o=1&a=B002SQJLA4","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6886"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8814,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6886\/revisions\/8814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}