Naval Postgraduate School
Assistant Professor
in the Department of Defense Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School
in Monterey, California; retired special forces officer who served as
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations (2007-2009)
Best of KCRW Podcasts: Forces of Nature This is a special holiday episode highlighting the best KCRW podcasts of 2018. After a year of fires and mudslides, who doesn’t think about how to reckon with the forces of nature? In a story from the newest podcast in the KCRW fold, Nocturne , we learn how animals deal with the most destructive force of nature: humans. Then, KCRW’s podcast The Organist tries to convince us that plants have secret lives, and to embrace the overlap of science and art.
National Security: An Adult in the Room America’s mainstream media are obsessed with President Trump’s off-hand policymaking in military and foreign affairs. But his mistakes don’t justify the unquestioned authority given the Pentagon, the CIA and the FBI. William Arkin is quitting NBC News with a scathing assessment. He says the national security state has created a condition of “perpetual war” without making America safer--and that the media are failing to report it. L ater on our Climate Change Update segment: how the government shutdown is hurting American science.
Do it for the kids, Gavin Gavin Newsom’s early policy proposals offer a glimmer of hope for California’s youngest residents.
One year later, the threat of more mudslides still exists One year ago, torrential rain pelted the hillside community of Montecito, which was scorched a month earlier by the Thomas Fire. It unleashed a flow of mud and boulders the size of cars and killed 23 people. We check in with the community one year later and talk about what’s being done to prevent another debris flow.