MCA Scuttlebutt

Hey, Scuttlebutt listeners. Thank you for joining us and your continued support. As you probably have deduced from the episode title, this is Episode 250. We said it when we hit 100, and then again when we hit 200, but we’ll say again how honored, and quite frankly, surprised we are to be going now 250 strong. That being said, we recognize that thi...

Hey, Scuttlebutt listeners. Thank you for joining us and your continued support. This week, we welcome Jonathan Hackett to the scuttlebutt. Jonathan is a retired MARSOC operator, intelligence specialist and interrogator, the author of the books,  Theory of Irregular War  and  Iran’s Shadow Weapons , and is now a student at Yale Law School. He has been the ex...

Hey, Scuttlebutt listeners. Thank you for joining us and for your continued support. This week, we welcome the Vice President of the Marine Corps Association Foundation, retired Col Tim Mundy, to the scuttlebutt. With Father’s Day coming up this weekend, we thought it would be fun to bring someone who is the son of, and father of, a Marine. We mention in the conversat...

Hey, Scuttlebutt listeners. Thank you for joining us and your continued support. This week, we bring you another installment of World of Wargaming with two gamers who need little introduction: Aidan and Noah Ruble. These two were kind enough to come on (under threat of much tearing of clothes and gnashing of teeth from their father) and give us their review of Not&nbs...

Hey, Scuttlebutt listeners. Thank you for joining us and for your continued support. This week, we welcome 1stSgt Chase McGrorty-Hunter back to the scuttlebutt. Chase is a first sergeant with 11th Marines, the first winner of the Modern Day Marine Obj 1 wargaming competition (now known as the Commandant’s Cup) and our guest for Episode 200. Cl...

Hey, Scuttlebutt listeners. Thank you for joining us and your continued support. This week, we welcome Josh Bates to the scuttlebutt. Josh is a retired Marine infantry officer, podcaster, and author of the book,  Baghdad Shuffle , a noir crime thriller set in the backdrop of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It goes without saying that this is a genre-ben...

Hey, Scuttlebutt listeners. Thank you for joining us and for your continued support. This week, we bring another installment of our new series, Literary Lethality, to the scuttlebutt. In this series, we dive deep into the Commandant’s Professional Reading List, exploring various titles and talking with authors about some of the books on the list. Today, we welcome Kacy Tellessen back to the show....

Hey, Scuttlebutt listeners. Thank you for joining us and for your continued support. This week, we welcome David Kneiss and Dennis Mannion to the scuttlebutt. David is the director of the films  The Gift  and  The   Siege at Khe Sanh,  and Dennis is a Marine Vietnam veteran and the subject of  The   Siege at Khe Sanh.   Both&nbs...

Hey, Scuttlebutt listeners. Thank you for joining us and for your continued support. This week, we bring another installment of our new series, Literary Lethality, to the scuttlebutt. In this series, we dive deep into the Commandant’s Professional Reading List, exploring various titles and talking with authors about some of the books on the list. Today, we w...

Hey, Scuttlebutt listeners. Thank you for joining us and for your continued support. This week, we bring you another installment of Semper Cinema with our review of the 1970 made-for-TV movie,  Tribes . Full disclosure, we chose this movie because we wanted to break the Semper Cinema paradigm and veer a bit off our normal course to go with a movie we knew was les...

Hey, Scuttlebutt listeners. Thank you for joining us and for your continued support. This week, we’re super excited to be welcoming retired MajGen James Lukeman to the scuttlebutt. MajGen Lukeman is President and CEO of the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation. To go through his entire career would require a multi-episode documentary series, but n...

Hey, Scuttlebutt listeners. Thank you for joining us and for your continued support. This week, we’re talking Modern Day Marine 2026, so we brought the MCA’s Director of National Military Association Engagement and Expositions, Marta Sullivan, and the Director of Strategy, Plans & Assessment at Headquarters Marine Corps Comms Directorate, LtCol Nick Mannweiler, to...

Hey, Scuttlebutt listeners. Thank you for joining us and your continued support. This week, we welcome August Cole back to the scuttlebutt. August joined us last year at Modern Day Marine in Episode 193 and was kind enough to come on again. Please go back and check that out. For those who missed it, August is the co-author of the books  Ghost...

Hey, Scuttlebutt listeners. Thank you for joining us and for your continued support. This week, we bring another installment of our new series, Literary Lethality, to the scuttlebutt. In this series, we will be doing a deep dive into the Commandant’s Professional Reading List, exploring various titles and talking with authors about some of the books on the list. Today...

Hey, Scuttlebutt listeners. Thank you for joining us at the scuttlebutt. This week, the team comes together to form Voltron to recognize this month as the 110 th  anniversary of the Marine Corps Gazette being in continuous publication. It’s no small feat for any publication to continuously be in circulation for this long, especially in this digital...

Hey, Scuttlebutt listeners. Thank you for joining us and your continued support. This week, we welcome Josh Cannon to the scuttlebutt. Josh is a veteran Marine of OIF and the Director of Research for the Frederick Honors College at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also the author of  Fatal Second Helen: A Modern Veteran’s Iliad , a book that overlays his...

Hey, Scuttlebutt listeners. Thank you for joining us and for your continued support. This week, we bring another installment of our new series, Literary Lethality, to the scuttlebutt. In this series, we will be doing a deep dive into the Commandant’s Professional Reading List, exploring various titles and talking to different authors about some of the books on the list. Today, Michael Jerome Plunk...

Hey, Scuttlebutt listeners. Thank you for joining us and for your continued support. This week, we welcome Editor-in-Chief of Leatherneck and Gazette magazines, Col Chris Woodbridge, to the scuttlebutt to talk about the US’s military operation in Iran. We recorded this episode on day 10 of the war, knowing that by the time you listen, things may have ch...

Hey, Scuttlebutt listeners. Thank you for joining us and for your continued support. This is an episode that we wanted to do when we first thought up the idea of hosting a podcast, but never really thought we would actually get to do it. This week, it is an honor to welcome the 39th Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen Eric Smith, and...

Hey, Scuttlebutt listeners. Thank you for joining us and for your continued support. This week, we welcome Mike LeBlanc to the scuttlebutt. Mike is a veteran Marine ground intelligence officer who is now the co-founder of Foundation, a company that specializes in robotics. He is also the author of the book, What If Anger is the Answer?, due out in June of this year, t...

Hey, Scuttlebutt listeners. Thank you for joining us at the scuttlebutt. This week, we welcome retired Master Gunnery Sergeant Adam Walker back to the show. Adam is on deck to talk with us about the Marine Corps’ new E-8 Redesignation pilot program, which gives master sergeants and first sergeants a one-time option to “lat move” between the E-8 designations. Adam helps us...

Hey, Scuttlebutt listeners. Thank you for tuning in and your continued support. This week, we bring you another installment of Semper Cinema in reviewing the documentary, The Last 600 Meters, detailing the battles of Fallujah and Najaf during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Released last year, The Last 600 Meters chronicles the two deadliest battles of the Iraq War, Najaf in...

Hey, Scuttlebutt listeners. Thank you for tuning in and for your continued support. In Dec of 2025, the Commandant’s office released Gen Smith’s update to the Commandant’s Professional Reading List. In our pursuit of enabling professional development and self-study, throughout 2026, we will be doing a series of deep dives into the CPRL and some of Gen Smith’s selections through...

Hey, Scuttlebutt listeners. Thank you for tuning in and for your continued support. This week we welcome Peter Cook to the scuttlebutt. Peter is a former Marine turned high school economics teacher and author of the book, Bootleg Heroes. Released last year, the fictional narrative of Bootleg Heroes is inspired and informed by his time serving as a Marine embassy security g...

Hey, Scuttlebutt listeners. Thank you for tuning in. If you’re like me, the news cycle churns at a dizzying pace, and events come and go off the radar like submarines in The Hunt for Red October. To that, the situation in Venezuela is still very fluid and fraught with hazards. Carrier groups remain in the Caribbean, and there are clearly forces still op...