REDACTED Culture Cast

Talk Back to Me Just like a bad toupee, we can fool ourselves into thinking that we are good at detecting disinformation. But like propaganda, a good piece of fake hair is difficult to detect. If taken to extremes, our attempts at discerning truth from manipulations can either lead to blissful ignorance, or monomania.  While Disinformation is a dirty word in the realm of politics, it has a more sp...

Talk Back to Me When was the last time you heard someone talk about a bright future? Not just for themselves, but for the United States, or the West? Chances are, if you are like me, you cannot remember a time in adulthood where any source of optimism really shined through the darkness. And although that may be a bleak outlook, it isn't the end.  Fatalism is a worldview, less about pessimism,...

Talk Back to Me Does what you watch inspire you to greatness, or only make you anxious about the world? There's a difference between podcasts that inform us when making decisions, and people who merely complain for profit. It's not that nothing ever happens, but that that we, ourselves are passively watching the world go by.  The media we consume may not define us, but it does shape the...

Talk Back to Me We can become lost in tribal arguments or we can look at the Minnesota ICE shooting to better understand asymmetrical warfare. In this episode we introduce a thought experiment where the line between combatant and non-combatant gets blurred.  A common tactic of asymmetrical warfare is to leverage public opinion through potentially deceptive media to garner animosity against the opp...

Talk Back to Me Victim Narratives plague our generation. Yet history tells a longer story. Black Lives Matter, Antisemitism, and White Men now have their own victim narratives. We are aware of the presence of victim narratives, but do we understand how they hijack our desire for justice in order to justify atrocities?  For the Squid Scrim kit, go to axladvanced.com  -- Up your helmet camo game: pi...

Talk Back to Me The words Tactics, Operations, and Strategy have meanings deeper than mere marketing. Rather, we use the metaphor of Gardening to decipher the differences between them and how they work together like pieces of a puzzle.  An ambush is a form of tactics.  Interrupting a supply line represents an operational goal.  And Economic Dominance is a strategy pursued by governments and nation...

Talk Back to Me Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, a manhunt continues in the minds and perhaps hearts of Americans. A great interest in identifying the killer illustrates the divide between citizens of the United States. As of now, we have a story building. The FBI has its story, its culprit, and not two but three main reactions represent this divide. There are the components of the sto...

Talk Back to Me At its core, Ghost Recon Wildlands is a game about Insurgency. You, the player, engage in various forms of Unconventional Warfare, on a mission to take down a Drug Cartel set in a Fictional Bolivia. The Success of Wildlands rushed a sequel: Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Despite being set up for success, Breakpoint bombed, leaving the players that loved Wildlands disappointed and distrust...

Talk Back to Me On August 27th, 2025, a school shooting took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The transgender shooter identified by authorities followed a pattern of recent mass shootings, paying homage to earlier murderers.  Churches, facing violence against their congregations by ideologies supported by some state governments, are pressed with a moral question of what to do. Christians are in an...

Talk Back to Me From the Gun Culture to Americans, the West, or Mankind as a whole, we are not a serious peoples. We approach the world around us, following people more than truths. The questions flow: If we took Gun Control seriously, would be debate it?  If we believed in the Deep State, would we talk about it? We watch the news, listen to people talk about grave realities, threats to our wellbe...

Talk Back to Me While the Antihero Podcast has gone through great journalistic lengths to investigate the claims made by Tim Kennedy in his book, this episode is to probe the question of how someone could have gotten so far without someone noticing. The Special Operations community is small, and everyone knows each other or at least has a pretty short chain of connection. When someone claims to ha...

Talk Back to Me After some time away from the desk, the REDACTED Culture Cast returns with a review of the Brave Castle Chest Rig. Having an opportunity to attend a course at DARC that required a chest rig, this one was selected for its inherent "features." While others tend to silo into either the sewn together or modular categories, Brave Castle did something a little different with th...

Talk Back to Me The first six months of 2025 have displayed a roller coaster of events, many of which presented as catastrophes, or great victories depending on political affiliation. At the same time, the Gun Culture has witnessed the end of an era, where names that once led companies and held the attention of millions slip away in disgrace. Not all kingdoms are built to last.  Whether it's...

Talk Back to Me This weekend, a so-called Peacekeeper opened fire, shooting and killing a bystander at a No Kings protest this weekend. The presence of these armed individuals at left-wing protests has increased since the summer of love in 2020. Generally identifiable by loose, barely used gear, they present a specific type of danger to themselves and those present, similar to conscripted soldiers...

Talk Back to Me Adventure, what a marketing term. We grew up on Lord of the Rings and watched as beloved characters embarked on a great journey. Ivan Loomis of Kit Badger joins the show to talk about spending a whole year shooting left handed, and balancing risk in thrill seeking. Join us in this episode as we talk about discerning good training, challenging the status quo on advanced skill, and t...

Talk Back to Me The media will tell you that Soldiers are trained to dehumanize their enemy in order to become more efficient fighters. The propaganda sacrifices our own soldiers on the alter of efficiency, leaving them later to pay the price in the form of PTSD and trauma. And while we can be critical of the military, and of media, and of our politicians, none of this really matters if we don&apo...

Talk Back to Me Both Army Rangers and Special Forces call back to Robert Rogers in their lineage. Today, the missions of the Green Beret and the Tan Beret are vastly different, so who is right? Zach Masek joins the show again to go deep into the history of Robert Rogers starting with his rise to fame and his fall from grace.  If you ask the soldiers of fortune, you'll find out they don't...

Talk Back to Me The Flux Defense Raider has been on the scene for a few years now. This Flux Raider review is less about the Chassis alone, and more about how, with the right parts and a little bit of garage engineering, one can make the tool sing.  Is it worth the attention or is there more to it than meets the eye? The Flux Raider has garnered attention, and for good reason: it challenges the st...

Talk Back to Me The acronym TTP refers to Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures. While these terms are most at home in military situations, we're seeing more than just soldiers implement them. In this episode we break down the definition of tactics, and take a look at the Siege of the 3rd Precinct in Minneapolis back in 2020 to identify the TTPs of anarchist groups present at the time.  What ab...

Talk Back to Me Both Rangers and Green Berets point to Robert Rogers as a figurehead of their history. But in today's conflicts, they perform considerably different roles. Where the current Ranger Battalion focuses on direct action, Green Berets point to Unconventional Warfare as their primary task.  Zach Masek of the Dead Warrior Society, a Green Beret Veteran and Columbia graduate draws out...

Talk Back to Me Is it immoral for a brand to sell a Bible?  Does our answer change within the context of Gun Culture?  As we witness a revival of Faith in this loosely-bordered community, we watch as the imagery, iconography, and storefronts shift from the nihilistic, to the Christian. Instead of tap-rack-bang morale patches featuring lewd imagery, we see a cross, a Bible verse, a call to convicti...

Talk Back to Me The Screwtape Letters , by C.S. Lewis presents the interaction between demons and humans from the point of view of a senior devil in Hell's administration. The novel consists of a series of letters from one Screwtape to Wormwood, who has been assigned to an unnamed human for the purpose of winning the poor man over to the clutches of the wicked. In the 17th Chapter, our senior...

Talk Back to Me Beyond the bottom line, the latest statements by SIG Sauer regarding the P320 failed to reduce talk around the pistol, instead inviting more criticism. While there may be another story taking place, vocal characters on social media received the statement to suggest that the noteworthy firearms manufacturer was accusing its critics of being "anti-gun" or anathema when it c...

Talk Back to Me I find it unabashedly funny when people argue passionately over what they should or shouldn't train, especially when we all know neither party is practicing what they preach. The drama over such low hanging fruit cannot be allowed to go to waste, so in this episode we are addressing one formula for ensuring that you're excellent at the fundamentals, and capable in rare, b...

Talk Back to Me Beneath the surface, there's a battle between light and dark. Those on the surface feel the consequences, without knowing what is going on beneath. But there comes a time when men must leave the mundane and enter into the world of light and darkness, where good is good and evil is evil. Those who reject this render themselves prone to PTSD, where a contradiction commands their...