John Batchelor's Friday Night Blue Plate Special Show (Updated)

I guess the planets were in the proper alignment on Friday. Michael Vlahos raised up his aspect and gathered all his attributes to deliver a stunningly perceptive analysis of the strange new cold war.

Then Gregory Copley's explanation of China's grand global plans and how they're playing out in Djibouti and Pakistan. That was enough light on dark corners for one night. But Gregory followed up in the next segment with a show-stopping explanation of the incoming urban-led era of chaos and how this will affect the United States.

Then -- then! Sohrab Amari explained (in the second part of the interview) how a nice Iranian-American association got up Obama's nose (my terminology. This explains much about many things.  

Then it was book review time with David K. Devaney, author, They Were Heroes: A Sergeant Major's Tribute to Combat Marines of Iraq and Afghanistan. The anecdotes focused on Iraq. They also discussed the Navy medics who served the Marine units. The stories were so riveting the 40 or so minutes of the segment seemed to compress into 5 minutes.

The strong antiwar streak in Hollywood means few if any of the stories will ever be brought to the screen. But hearing Devaney tell in his plain-spoken way just a few of them exposes the "Game of Thrones" TV show and CGI enhanced supermen films for the crap they are. The Americans he described are real supermen.    

The discussion also brought out the amazing ethos of the American military. When we talk about the decline of American values -- it's not there, not there. There, on the battlefield, the values are practiced under life-or-death conditions.
       

(Update:  Batchelor's interview with Devaney about the book was the second of two. The first was aired March 6; here is the link to the podcast.)  

Then, then, in the last half hour of the show, two ten-minute interviews, excerpts from John's upcoming three-hour interviews with the British authors. The first is about American colonies in the 17th Century and the second deals with the 18th Century events that inexorably led to the Revolutionary War. 

Between Two Worlds: How the English Became Americans, by Malcolm Gaskill
An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America, by Nick Bunker 

The second interview held a big surprise about an incident that American historians never considered central to the genesis of the war, but which Bunker explained was a huge deal to the British government.

I wish I'd had popcorn.

Well, here's the Schedule page for the Friday night show and its accompanying Podcast page. Have fun -- and absolutely don't miss Gregory's "Chaos" tutorial.


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