Profiles in Havok

Scott Mann is a professional storyteller. His play Last Out is a full-spectrum treatment of our war in Afghanistan. It is not an anti-war play. It is not a pro-war play. It is simply a play about war and all its complications - the toll it takes on the warfighter; the way it impacts the warfighter’s family - both positively and negatively; the intersection of cultures in this particular war; findi...

Toby Harnden's latest book is First Casualty: The Untold Story of the CIA Mission to Avenge 9/11 . He is a winner of the Orwell Prize for Books. A former foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times of London and the Daily Telegraph who reported from thirty-three countries, Toby specializes in terrorism and war. Born in Portsmouth, England, Harnden was imprisoned in Zimbabwe, prosecuted in Britain f...

My guest this week was Hollie McKay. Hollie has worked on the frontlines of several major war zones and covered humanitarian and diplomatic crises in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Iran, Turkey, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Burma, Russia, Africa, Latin America, and other areas. She has written for Coffee or Die, the Wall Street Journal and many other publications where she has garnered a slew of fore...

I am not exaggerating when I say that High Risk Soldier:Trauma and Triumph in the Global War on Terror may be the best first-person military memoir I've ever read. Culled from Terron Wharton’s personal journal and emails home, it captures so many sights, sounds, and emotions that come with a deployment that you will feel like you’re there – but even more than that, you will also read descriptions...

When I started the Weekly Havok it was supposed to be a roundtable discussion with the staff and writers at Havok Journal. You probably noticed it increasingly because one-on-one interviews. Honestly, it's just hard to wrangle three guests for a panel each week. That's why it started becoming more "spotlight" episodes where I did one-on-one interviews. So, after a little thinking, we've rebranded...

Dave Campisano is the founder and president of 22 Mohawks. So it's no surprise we start talking about veteran suicide, the pros and cons of raising awareness about veteran suicide, the "dysfunctional veteran" narrative.  But that is only the start. How much does sex and death fuel our life choices? How do you rebound when your hopes and dreams are denied? How did Dave manage to go through Special...

Ayman Kafel is no stranger to the Weekly Havok, but every time he's been on he's managed to pique my interest with another personal tidbit that I don't have time to dive into during a roundtable discussion. Until now. From a childhood in spent in the Liberian and Lebanese civil wars to combat tours in Iraq to a prolific law enforcement career, Ayman has had an incredibly unique life. In a conversa...

This episode was recorded during the holidays, but no holiday spirit was harmed during the making of it. Well, actually, it was. Driven by a few text messages, I plunge into a recap of the past few months in Afghanistan and what it likely means for the rest of the world.  Show Notes Second Mission Foundation Operation Recovery Save Our Allies Pars Equality Center Chinese mines at Mes Aynak

Charlie and I end the year talking about Zulu, one of my favorite military movies of all time. If you haven't seen it, you owe it to yourself - and your kids. No, it's not politically correct. But then, what was in 1879? (That's when the Battle of Roarke's Drift occurred. Not the movie. That was 1964. But still not a super politically correct time.) What it lacks in neuroses, it makes up for in ac...

It's the holidays, well, pretty much. So what, did you think we were going to knock ourselves out? It's not that we didn't want to - there is an AFG-focused episode or four coming up - but for the holidays, we wanted to do something a little lighthearted. Not to mention give you some inspiration for holidays movies to share with the family. Well, maybe. So this week, Charlie and I sat down to talk...

It is on record. Mike Kelvington predicts: Army 31-17, with Army passing 5 times. Charlie Faint says: Army wins by two touchdowns. Marshall McGurk goes with: Army by 21 points or more. And I said: I was enlisted and can't play in these reindeer games. Now, you're probably thinking that since it was just a bunch of Army types, we must have conducted a very biased episode of the Weekly Havok. Apart...

I sat down with Lani Hankins, Lori Buttieries and Dex for a frank conversation about not just women in the military, but femininity in the military - its uses, its problems - and how each of them personally wrestled with it. We cover a lot of ground - the cliquishness of female servicemembers, the need to never be the weakest link, the desire to be held to the same standards. The ladies were artic...

A brief summary of this episode

Daniel Gade returned to the show for a spotlight episode about a month ago. As with all spotlight episodes, there's a long flash-to-bang before airing since these are evergreen episodes that we use to cover down on weeks I'm probably too busy with VetRep . Daniel is an American disability and veteran rights activist, political candidate, professor, and researcher. He is a West Point graduate. He b...

James Gordon Meek is an Emmy, SPJ and Overseas Press Club Award-winnng national security investigative reporter for ABC News. Previously he was Senior Investigator and Senior Counterterrorism Advisor to two chairmen of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security. With LTC Scott Mann he created Task Force Pineapple, an ad hoc group of veterans who evacuated hundreds of Afghans after the fall of K...

Show Notes Project Sapient Havok Journal Veterans Repertory Theater Savage Wonder

This week got a little taboo. There's been a lot of stuff in the media lately about porn - including the resuscitation of the feminist/evangelical alliance against porn - so it made me think about porn in the military. I bounced the idea off of Charlie and Ben Varlese and Chris Otero came on the show to discuss porn in the military. The pros, the cons, the unintended consequences and the way porn...

A few weeks ago, during our crossover episode with Project Sapient, I got to talking with 22 Mohawks founder Dave Campisano about masculinity and what it means, especially to veterans. I told him we needed to do a show on just that topic, so this was the week. We brought on former Marine and current poet Mason Rodrigue as well as Havok Journal owner Charlie Faint to talk about it. And Dave attempt...

Our first ever Spotlight episode shines a light on Havok Journal writer Greg Drobny. Greg is a former Airborne Infantryman, PSYOP Team Chief, political consultant, professional mil blogger, and Code Platoon’s Student Outreach Coordinator. He holds a BA and MA in history, as well as a Masters of Science in organizational psychology.   Show Notes Code Platoon Havok Journal Veterans Repertory Theater...

This week, I sat down with Liz DeGraeve, Elana Duffy and Havok Journal owner Charlie Faint to talk about purpose. Liz has shifted from a colorful and accomplished 23-year career in Army intelligence into being a 6th grade teacher. Elana held an Ivy League master's degree before becoming an accomplished combat veteran who earned the Purple Heart and a medical discharge and has leveraged it all to b...

On Monday, September 27 at Clerys in downtown Boston...the Weekly Havok and Project Sapient pulled off a massive 2.5 hour crossover podcast for Project Sapient's Vet2Vet event. Worlds collided. DC and Marvel together. Batman killed Thanos. Epic. There may have been alcohol involved. Big shout out to 22mohawks Home Base, a Red Sox Foundation and Massachusetts General Hospital Program and everyone t...

This week I talked with Charlie Faint and Jeff Marshburn about veterans in education – how education can impact veterans and how veterans impact the educational realm, whether as students or teachers. We talk about the tokenization of veterans, the cognitive dissonance felt by veterans immersed in academic culture and the particular culture of West Point. No, it never devolves into a West Point in...

Some weeks, the Weekly Havok isn’t just the name of the show, it’s also the way the show comes together. This was one of those weeks. We threw every hiccup and technical glitch we could at Ben Varlese and Dax Mallory and they kept on ticking. Best of all – thanks to our producer Michael Neal – none of the glitches will even make it into the episode. So you will never know the landmines you dodged...

On 9/11, Ayman Kafel was an American college student of Middle Eastern descent and Marshall McGurk was a second-year cadet at West Point. How they interpreted 9/11 and how they responded to a nation suddenly at war didn’t just take them to the sharp tip of the spear in the War on Terror – it changed their lives irrevocably – but not regrettably. It was a privilege to sit down with these two though...

Consider this the first Tri-Weekly Havok episode. Now, we had a 9/11 episode planned as part of our regularly scheduled programming. But I did this solo recording for two reasons: I really wanted to post something that would go out on 9/11 itself especially on a 9/11 as significant as this one and I didn’t want to detract from our roundtable by diving too deeply into my personal 9/11 experiences....