Angry Planet
by Matthew Gault and Jason Fields
Latest episode
Why Wars Never End
Why Wars Never End
About this podcast
Conversations about conflict on an angry planet. Created, produced, and hosted by Matthew Gault and Jason Fields
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Episodes
The newest 50 of 506 episodes
- Why Wars Never End · 1 h 2 minThe world’s great military powers seem to have forgotten how to end wars. The traditional Clausewitzian model of armed conflict sees war as an expression of political power. It’s…
- Dreams of War in Space · 1 h 8 minAir Force Secretary Troy Meink casually dropped the news that America had space-based weapons during the keynote address at a cyber conference. “We are increasing readiness…
- Human Decisions Are Behind Every ‘Rogue’ AI · 60 minA lot of people are afraid right now. I’ve lost track of the times OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta have announced they lost control of their AI. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wants to…
- The Cult of the American Military Academy · 1 h 5 minJournalist Jasper Craven joins the show today to talk about his new book God Forgives, Brothers Don’t. The book is a deep dive into the history of the American military academy…
- If You Must Fight a Trade War, Fight to Win · 55 minThe world I grew up in no longer exists. The decades after World War II were boom times for free trade lovers. During the Pax Americana it seemed that most diplomatic problems…
- Iran Won Because America Is Stuck in the ‘Smart Bomb Trap’ · 1 h 0 minRecorded in May. Join angryplanetpod.com to hear episodes early and commercial free. America’s war against Iran has gone on for more than two months and the United States has…
- Navigating Reality and War During the Age of AI Propaganda · 59 minOn the morning of April 21, Trump posted an image of eight women on Truth Social, claimed they were Iranian dissidents set to be executed, and demanded that Tehran release them…
- Christianity Shaped North Korea’s Cult of Personality · 1 h 0 minKim Song Ju, the man who would become Kim Il Sung, was born to devout Presbyterian parents. Billy Graham’s wife was born to christian missionaries in China and went to high…
- Making the Case America Was Winning in Iran · 1 h 3 minRecorded March 24, 2026. Subscribe at angryplanetpod.com to hear episodes first and commercial free. Last week an article published in Al Jazeera by an academic at the…
- Neutralizing Iran’s Nuclear Material During a War Is ‘Nearly Mission Impossible’ · 54 minAmerica went to war in Iran, we’re told, because the idea of the country developing nuclear weapons was intolerable. Nukes are complicated and technical weapons that require…
- The ‘AI as Nuclear Weapons’ Obsession · 1 h 2 minAI enthusiasts love to say that the technology is as revolutionary and important as nuclear weapons. Even the Trump administration has adopted the metaphor. The President and the…
- A Killer True Crime Fandom & Islamic State’s Digital Caliphate · 1 h 22 minThings have gotten very surreal in the dark corners of the internet. AI-generated prophets are preaching jihad in Facebook groups, Minecraft servers host digital caliphates, and…
- When Americans Became ‘Splendid Liberators’ · 1 h 5 minAmerica spent most of the 19th century at war with itself. It conquered its western expanse then collapsed into civil war. Once the North beat the South, partisan politics…
- Puffins, Zyn, and ‘Polar War’ · 56 minGreenland fever has faded for now but it will return. The world’s polar region, you see, is pretty damn important. As the planet heats and the ice melts, what was once an…
- Online Culture Is the Whole Culture · 1 h 24 minThere was a time, just before the pandemic, when folks would say “Twitter isn’t real life” as a means of dismissing the horrors of social media. This was a cope, a way to ignore…
- How We Thought the First Year Would Go · 1 h 2 minListen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com On January 28, 2025, I sat down with Aram Shabanian to talk about how we thought the first year of the Trump…
- On Spectacles of Cruelty · 53 minOn the last Angry Planet of 2025, novelist and Marine Corps veteran Phil Klay returns to reflect on a year of spectacle and cruelty. Between the Pentagon’s boat strikes and the…
- Google’s Former CEO Is Dancing in Ukraine · 1 h 9 minEarlier this year journalist Ben Makuch caught a glimpse of Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, dancing at a club in Kyiv. It was a surreal moment, a snapshot of a tragic war…
- ‘Capitalism Is a Series of Regime Changes’ · 48 minAnother week and another Angry Planet about the horrifying systems that rule our lives. Is there a depressive theme running through the work right now? Possibly. I promise we’ll…
- The US Government’s AI Grand Bargain · 54 minThe White House is portraying the race to adopt AI as an existential crisis. It’s the next Manhattan Project, they say, a technology so important it will require an unprecedented…
- Deadwood: The Town that Made the Wild West · 51 minListen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com This week on Angry Planet we’re taking a break from the horrors of the present to explore horrors of a past…
- Learning to Love the Stagnant Order · 59 minIs your Empire feeling less than fresh? Does it feel like the modern world’s best days are behind it? Do conquest and global power politics not hit as good as they used to?…
- ‘Goliath’s Curse’ and the Surprising Benefits of Societal Collapse · 1 h 4 minWe’re obsessed with apocalypses, big and small. We fantasize about what the future might look like after the fall of society and fear the coming tribulation. Rome fretted about…
- Yes, US Strikes On Alleged Drug Traffickers Are Illegal. That Won’t Stop Them · 60 minListen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com This week on Angry Planet we have returning guest and former judge advocate Dan Maurer. The last time he was…
- Vanessa Guillén and the Importance of Speaking Up · 48 minListen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com The episode is about Vanessa Guillén, a US soldier who was murdered at Fort Hood in 2020. She also…
- Assassinations Are Shitposts Now · 1 h 28 minListen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com Political assassins often have incoherent politics and Tyler Robinson is no different. The young man who…
- The War On Terror on Drugs · 1 h 2 minListen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com On September 2, 2025 the United States escalated its decades long War on Drugs with a tactic borrowed from…
- Traveling America’s ‘Murderland’ · 1 h 1 minListen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com The Pacific Northwest is known for its startling natural beauty, precocious rainfall, and propensity to…
- After Xi · 57 minListen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com All things move towards their end, even seemingly omnipotent political leaders, and authoritarian systems…
- Does the U.S. Need an Independent Cyber Force? · 1 h 4 minListen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com If the internet is a battlefield, does that mean the United States needs a new military force to dominate…
- Hunting Nazis Online With Canadian Journalists · 52 minListen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com Journalists and Nazis have changed a lot in the years since the end of World War II; journalists are on the…
- How Many Nukes Does It Take to Win a War? (Trick Question) · 1 h 5 minListen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com The world is living with a Cold War hangover. The logic of deterrence, which dominates the minds of the…
- A History of the Iranian Nuclear Program · 1 h 1 minSometimes it’s good to back up and ask the basic questions: How do we know Iran was even developing nuclear weapons? On this episode of the show, the Arms Control Wonk Jeffrey…
- Talking With the Military Ethics Professor Who Resigned in Protest · 60 minListen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com Pauline Shanks Kaurin PhD. was, until recently, the Stockdale Chair for Professional Military Ethics at the…
- The Iran Strikes Beg the Question: What Is Airpower For? · 55 minYou can’t win a war with airpower alone, despite what the U.S. Air Force will tell you. For more than 100 years, the masters of the air have promised that military and political…
- Libya, China, and the Outlaw Ocean · 59 minListen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com The ocean is vast, beautiful, and lawless. Thousands of miles from any coast, power belongs to those who…
- Silicon Valley Wants ‘More Everything Forever’ · 55 minListen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com The futures of the past have curdled into the nightmares of the present. The richest and most powerful…
- America’s Favorite Gunfighters and the Birth of the Old West · 58 minListen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com America loves the Western. Stories about frontier towns, outlaws and lawmen, and—most of all—killing. How…
- The Horror of AI Generals Making Command Decisions · 56 minListen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com Palantir, Anduril and a suite of other Tolkien-inspired tech nightmares want to integrate artificial…
- America’s Pivot to the Pacific · 1 h 15 minListen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com The Pentagon has been trying to pivot to the Pacific for years now. Under President Donald Trump 2.0, who is…
- India and Pakistan: Nuclear Neighbors on the Brink · 60 minListen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com Recorded 5/7/25 India and Pakistan have been unhappy neighbors since 1947 and Britain’s decolonization of…
- Donald Trump Wants to Divide Up the World With His ‘Friends’ · 57 minListen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com Great power competition has gotten old for President Donald Trump—never one for a fair fight. He’s looking…
- Why An Empire Eats · 59 minListen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com Conquest is back baby! Eastern Europe, Taiwan, Greenland, Canada? It’s all on the table—and maybe up for…
- Erdogan’s Path to Pure Authoritarianism · 1 h 1 minListen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com Turkey’s president has grabbed a bit more power for himself with the recent arrest of the mayor of Istanbul…
- Immigration Policy As Defense Policy · 59 minListen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com Special for our international listeners, did you know you can now buy a pathway to U.S. citizenship for the…
- Life Inside Wagner Before and After Prigozhin · 1 h 1 minListen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com For mercenaries, death is a business. It’s all about finding the right market. Wagner and other Russian…
- The Cult of Rationalism in Silicon Valley · 1 h 1 minA lot of the people designing America’s technology and close to the center of American power believe some deeply weird shit. We already talked to journalist Gil Duran about the…
- How Israel Is Using Microsoft AI to Pick Targets in Gaza · 29 minListen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com The Israeli military is using AI products from Microsoft to conduct its war in Gaza. Off the shelf AI…
- Welcome to the Nerd Reich · 1 h 4 minListen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com We’re living in a bizarre age of technofascism. The richest man who has ever lived, a man who dreams of…
- The American Iron Dome Is an Expensive Boondoggle That Won’t Work · 53 minListen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com President Donald Trump wants to build an American Iron Dome. He even signed an executive order to make it…
