A Better Peace: The War Room Podcast

A BETTER PEACE welcomes Pulitzer nominated journalist and author Stephen Vogel to the virtual studio to talk about his path to authorship and his love of history. Steve joins our own Michael Neiberg to discuss the differences between his role as a journalist versus his style as a narrative historical author and how that differs even further from academic historical accounts. They both lament the f...

What do a hyper-competitive Monopoly player, an educational methodologist and a U.S. Army War College Faculty member have in common? Well for starters they're all the same person and that combination of skills and interests makes Megan Hennessey the perfect guest on this inaugural WARGAMING ROOM episode of A BETTER PEACE. Megan joins series editor Ken Gilliam in the virtual studio to discuss how w...

Facial recognition technology promises to help law enforcement identify and track suspicious individuals ideally revealing bad actors before they can commit acts of violence or other crimes. The more promising facial recognition becomes as a technology however, the louder grow the voices concerned about the potential invasion of privacy that such mass collection could or would entail. "Only the gu...

It's a two-for-one on A BETTER PEACE this week. Kara Dixon-Vuic and Jason Vuic join Mike Neiberg in the studio for our ongoing ON WRITING series. Kara and Jason share their varied approaches to writing and discuss what literary collaboration looks like in their house. Two very different authors that write on different topics discuss their takes on research, their writing styles and reading each ot...

It's an election year, and leaving all politics aside, the use of opinion polls is already in full swing by all parties involved. Polling performance in recent years has called the accuracy of polls into question. Was the sample size big enough? Did the questions lead to predictable answers? Who is actually willing to answer the polls, and how many are truthful? A BETTER PEACE welcomes Amanda Cron...

"Be All You Can Be", "Army of One", "Army Strong" these are just a few of the most recent slogans used by the U.S. Army Recruiting Command in the last 40 years. The first remained in place for over 20 years. The last was 12 years running. But if the Army is going to meet its recruiting and retention goals it's going to need new and innovative strategies to find and keep, motivated, talented and qu...

Born of an idea first uttered in October 1960 at an impromptu speech by then Senator John F. Kennedy, the Peace Corps was officially established on 1 March 1961. In its first year Peace Corps volunteers served in just 5 countries. Six short years later 14,500 volunteers had served in 55 countries around the world. To date more than 240,000 volunteers have served in 142 host countries. Due to COVID...

Imagine taking a graduate level program in a foreign country in a different language from your native tongue. Now imaging stepping it up and enrolling in the one class that does it completely differently from all the rest, and prides itself on significantly challenging its students to think and behave in a manner that forces them outside their comfort zone daily. A BETTER PEACE welcomes Khaled Al...

The citizen soldiers of the Army's National Guard component often lead different lives from their active duty counterparts. Geographically tied to their state units, they often live out their entire career in their home states spared of the constant moves the rest of the military endures. Guard units in years past have been overlooked for equipment modernization and training. But the wars that the...

If anyone still doubts how integral the Internet is to daily life then shut off your modem or put your phone in airplane mode in the midst of the current pandemic social distancing exercise. Now try and pay a bill, study for a course, contact friends or family, stream a movie -- you get the idea. But that's just the beginning of cyber's reach into your world. A BETTER PEACE welcomes Joe Atkinson a...

Organizational culture, on its face, is a relatively easy concept to understand; who "we" are as an organization is defined by the underlying beliefs, assumptions, and values - spoken and unspoken - held by the members, leadership and the organization as a whole. Truly understanding and identifying those beliefs, assumptions and values can be incredibly difficult. And when members hold or are expo...

The J in JPME stands for joint. In order to qualify for joint accreditation each senior service college and the National Defense University are mandated by CJCS instruction to include a proportional number of students and faculty from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. Each year hundreds of senior officers attend the college of another service and they find themselves confronted with a whole n...

In the last decade the U.S. Army reserve component has moved from a strategic to an operational reserve. This has driven a clear requirement for greater reserve integration amongst the active component. To accomplish this the Army and the Joint force have expanded the use of multi component units (MCUs) to improve efficiency and readiness across the active and reserve components of the DoD. A BETT...

A BETTER PEACE welcomes Alexandra Richie, internationally acclaimed and award-winning writer and historian, and one of the world's foremost experts on World War II in Europe. Richie joined Michael Neiberg to discuss her studies and books on both German history as viewed from Berlin, and the Warsaw Uprising. Their conversation covered how she first started writing and how her study of classical mus...

Playboy magazine first hit newsstands in December 1953, so it was quite well established by the time the United States joined the conflict in Vietnam. Derided by a portion of the population as disgraceful smut, the common retort from the men who perused the sordid pages was "I just read it for the articles." A BETTER PEACE welcomes Amber Batura to the studio as she discusses Playboy's place amongs...

When you talk about the millennial generation a lot of them want some kind of fulfillment out of the work that they're doing and not feel like they're just gonna be a cog in the machine. In September of 2019 we introduced you to the Eisenhower Series College Program. Members of the Eisenhower Program began the year on the road visiting colleges and universities, interacting with audiences often un...

Getting that idea from the battlefield...back into the hands of someone who can fix it back in the states or elsewhere in the world rapidly is absolutely critical. In September of 2019 we introduced you to the Eisenhower Series College Program. Members of the Eisenhower Program began the year on the road visiting colleges and universities, interacting with audiences often unfamiliar with members o...

What do you do when the training your organization requires you to accomplish doesn't actually prepare you for your mission or enhance your unit readiness. You create a board game, of course. A BETTER PEACE welcomes Mike Loftus, Will McKannay and Jim Markley to discuss how Mike and Will, with Jim's help, came to create a board game during their year at the U.S. Army War College. The three join pod...

There is a concept called collective coping. It's using social media and specifically social relationships to cope with issues...more than ever you can see that people are reaching out.   In September of 2019 we introduced you to the Eisenhower Series College Program. Members of the Eisenhower Program began the year on the road visiting colleges and universities, interacting with audiences often u...

Suddenly I was distracted by this amazing roar...and I turned to the umpire and I said 'What is that?' absolutely dumbstruck by this vision and sound and he said 'That's a Spitfire' A BETTER PEACE welcomes James Holland, internationally acclaimed and award-winning historian, writer, and broadcaster. A familiar and trusted face appearing in numerous WWII documentaries, James is also the author of o...

The Defense Acquisition System is the management process by which the Department of Defense provides effective, affordable, and timely systems to the users. -Department of Defense Directive Number 5000.01 Misunderstood, under-appreciated, Congressionally scrutinized, and even mocked and immortalized in a Hollywood movie, the acquisition corps of each of the services have a difficult job. Charged w...

There is no "Latin America" right? It is a region made up of independent sovereign countries, some with different histories, some with different languages...based on that they're going to have different relationships with the United States. In the present day examination of global security, much of the United States' attention is focused on the Middle East, East Asia and Eastern Europe. All too of...

The 2018 National Defense Strategy was clear in its call to shake off strategic atrophy - to maintain competitive advantage against our Nation's adversaries we must evolve. - Commander's Foreword, Army Special Operations Forces Strategy In the realm of national security very few elements ever remain stagnant, and those that do are relegated to irrelevance. As the environment changes, capabilities...

The old adage under Atatürk was zero problems with the neighbors; now the adage is zero neighbors without problems. You would be hard pressed to find a current member of the U.S. military who remembers a time in their service when the United States wasn't involved in conflict in the Middle East. Forty years ago this year Operation EAGLE CLAW, the rescue attempt of American hostages in Iran failed...

It's very hard to implement a long term development project when rebels might overrun and destroy or steal whatever you've implemented. To say that Central Africa has been a tumultuous region for the last three decades is an understatement. Genocide, civil and proxy wars and disease have lead to a death count that numbers in the millions and several million more displaced persons. But how much doe...