Author and New York Times television editor Jeremy Egner chats with Daniel Ford about his book Believe: The Untold Story Behind Ted Lasso, the Show That Kicked Its Way into Our Hearts. To learn more about Jeremy Egner, read his work with The New York Times. Writer's Bone is proudly sponsored by Libro.fm, As Told To: The Ghostwriting Podcast, and Th…

Paper, bottles, metal scrap, kitchen garbage, rubber, hair, fat, rags, and bones--the Nazi empire demanded its population obsessively collect anything that could be reused or recycled. Entrepreneurs, policy makers, and ordinary citizens conjured up countless schemes to squeeze value from waste or invent new purposes for defunct or spent material, n…

Introduction to Global Military History:: 1775 to the Present Day (Routledge, 2018) provides a lucid and comprehensive account of military developments around the modern world from the eighteenth century up to the present day. Beginning with the background to the American War of Independence and the French Revolutionary wars and ending with the rec…

During World War I, thousands of young African men conscripted to fight for France and Britain were captured and held as prisoners of war in Germany, where their stories and songs were recorded and archived by German linguists. In Knowing by Ear: Listening to Voice Recordings with African Prisoners of War in German Camps (1915–1918) (Duke Universit…

In times of profound crisis, when violence and hatred seem to dominate our world, we often search for voices that can help us navigate through the darkness while holding onto our humanity. Today's conversation with Parker Palmer, one of America's most respected Quaker elders and thought leaders, explores the complex landscape of faith, hope, and he…

The expansion of trade and communication networks has been active since the fifteenth century and has had an undeniable impact on connecting military activity around the world. This fact is visible in the historical record, but has it in the last several decades transformed the historiography of military history? The Boundaries of War: Local and Gl…

The United States stands at a crossroads in international security. The backbone of its international position for the last 70 years has been the massive network of overseas military deployments. However, the US now faces pressures to limit its overseas presence and spending. In Beyond the Wire: US Military Deployments and Host Country Public Opini…

This handbook provides a comprehensive, problem-driven and dynamic overview of the future of warfare. The volatilities and uncertainties of the global security environment raise timely and important questions about the future of humanity's oldest occupation: war. Routledge Handbook of the Future of Warfare (Routledge, 2023) edited by Artur Gruszcza…

Authors and journalists Toluse Olorunnipa and Robert Samuels join Daniel Ford on the show to discuss their Pulitzer Prize-winning book His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice. Toluse Olorunnipa is the White House Bureau Chief of The Washington Post. He joined The Post in 2019 and has covered the last three presi…

The Western Rising of 1549 was the most catastrophic event to occur in Devon and Cornwall between the Black Death and the Civil War. Beginning as an argument between two men and their vicar, the rebellion led to a siege of Exeter, savage battles with Crown forces, and the deaths of 4,000 local men and women. It represents the most determined attemp…

On the latest Friday Morning Coffee, host Caitlin Malcuit discusses the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument, established by President Joe Biden in 2023. Author and journalist Wright Thompson (Pappyland, The Cost of These Dreams) then joins Daniel Ford on the show to discuss his book The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Missis…

Frederick Rutland—”Rutland of Jutland”—was a war hero, renowned World War I aviator…and a Japanese spy. In the years leading up to Pearl Harbor, Rutland shared information on U.S. aviation and naval developments to the Japanese, desperate for knowledge of U.S. capability. The funny thing was, as Ron Drabkin notes in his book Beverly Hills Spy: The …

Between 1776 and 1783, Britain hired an estimated 30,000 German soldiers to fight in its war against the Americans. Collectively known as Hessians, they actually came from six German territories within the Holy Roman Empire. Over the course of the war, members of the German corps, including women and children, spent extended periods of time in loca…

Author and journalist Julie Fingersh joins Daniel Ford on the show to chat about her debut memoir Stay: A Story of Family, Love, and Other Traumas. To learn more about Julie Fingersh, visit her official website. Writer's Bone is proudly sponsored by Libro.fm, As Told To: The Ghostwriting Podcast, and The Shit No One Tells You About Writing.…

Economics sometimes feels like a physics–so sturdy, so objective, and so immutable. Yet, behind every clean number or eye-popping graph, there is usually a rather messy story, a story shaped by values, interests, ideologies, and petty bureaucratic politics. In Cited Podcast’s new mini-series, the Use and Abuse of Economic Expertise, we tell the hid…

After twenty-six years of unprecedented revolutionary upheavals and endless fighting, the victorious powers craved stability after Napoleon's defeat in 1815. With the threat of war and revolutionary terror still looming large, the coalition launched an unprecedented experiment to re-establish European security. With over one million troops remainin…

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Powers (The Overstory, Bewilderment) joins Daniel Ford on the show to discuss his latest novel Playground. To learn more about Richard Powers, visit his official website. Writer's Bone is proudly sponsored by Libro.fm, As Told To: The Ghostwriting Podcast, and The Shit No One Tells You About Writing.…

A critical challenge for militaries is preparing for future, not past, wars. History shows that success often depends on accurately interpreting and harnessing technological and societal changes. In the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), this transformation process has been ongoing, with Brigadier General Eran Ortal as a key advocate for a new paradigm. …

Over the last two decades, the United States has supported a range of militias, rebels, and other armed groups in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Critics have argued that such partnerships have many perils, from enabling human rights abuses to seeding future threats. Policy makers, however, have sought to mitigate the risks of partnering with irregul…

Few would dispute that Hitler’s ideas led to war and genocide. Less clear however, is how and when those ideas developed. In his latest book, Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi (Basic Books, 2017), Thomas Weber highlights the years between 1918 and 1926 as the period in which Hitler’s worldview developed. Challenging Hitler’s own narrative, as w…

On the latest Friday Morning Coffee, host Caitlin Malcuit discusses the annual Merrimack Valley Halloween Book Festival. Author and cartoonist Teresa Wong then joins Daniel Ford to chat about her latest graphic memoir All Our Ordinary Stories. To learn more about Teresa Wong, visit her official website. Writer's Bone is proudly sponsored by Libro.f…

Nazi Germany, Annexed Poland and Colonial Rule: Resettlement, Germanization and Population Policies in Comparative Perspective (Bloomsbury, 2023) examines Nazi Germany's expansion, population management and establishment of a racially stratified society within the Reichsgaue (Reich Districts) of Wartheland and Danzig-West Prussia in annexed Poland …

Legendary author and storyteller Alan Moore joins Daniel Ford on the show to discuss his new novel The Great When, the first book in the Long London series. Follow Alan Moore on Facebook. Writer's Bone is proudly sponsored by Libro.fm, As Told To: The Ghostwriting Podcast, and The Shit No One Tells You About Writing.…

The Shawnee leader Tecumseh came to prominence in a war against the United States waged from 1811 to 1815. In 1805, Tecumseh's younger brother Lalawethika (soon to be known as "the Prophet") had a vision for an Indian revitalization movement that would restore Native culture and resist American expansion. Tecumseh organized the growing support for …

The South China enclave of Macau was the first and last European colonial settlement in East Asia and a territory at the crossroads of different empires. In Neutrality and Collaboration in South China: Macau during the Second World War (Cambridge UP, 2023), Helena F. S. Lopes analyses the layers of collaboration that developed from neutrality in Ma…

How is popular knowledge of war shaped by the stories we consume, what are the boundaries of this knowledge, and how are these boundaries policed or contested by journalists producing knowledge from war zones? Based on years of fieldwork in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Ukraine, Conflicted: Making News from Global War (Stanford University …

The Tormented Alliance: American Servicemen and the Occupation of China, 1941–1949 (UNC Press, 2022) explores the wartime partnership between China and the United States from the ground up. Beginning in 1941, and especially after Pearl Harbor, both sides had high hopes for wartime cooperation against Japan. But as The Tormented Alliance shows, ‘a m…

Over the course of World War II, guerrillas from across the Philippines opposed Imperial Japan's occupation of the archipelago. Although the guerrillas never possessed the combat strength to overcome the Japanese occupation on their own, they disrupted operations, kept the spirit of resistance alive, provided important intelligence to the Allies, a…

Author Snowden Wright returns to the show and chats with Daniel Ford about his latest novel The Queen City Detective Agency. To learn more about Snowden Wright, visit his official website. Also listen to our first interview with the author. Writer's Bone is proudly sponsored by Libro.fm, As Told To: The Ghostwriting Podcast, and The Shit No One Tel…

Writing in the 1920s, Winston Churchill argued that the First World War on the Eastern Front was "incomparably the greatest war in history. In its scale, in its slaughter, in the exertions of the combatants, in its military kaleidoscope, it far surpasses by magnitude and intensity all similar human episodes." It was, he concluded, "the most frightf…