Mixed Mental Arts

Although the concept of the Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol is an ancient one (think scouts), they only began to be used by the US Army in Vietnam in the latter part of the war. Dropped far behind enemy lines, these five to six man Long Range Patrol teams (often referred to as "Lerps") would be tasked with gathering intel on terrain, water supplies and enemy troop movements. Far from significant American military support, these teams had to blend into the jungle and do everything they could to avoid detection. Adopting many of the same techniques as the insurgents gives those who served in these units a unique perspective on the American War in Vietnam.In today's episode, it is our pleasure to have Jim Seymour on the podcast who completed 54 LRP missions during three years spent in Vietnam. In his book, In the Jungle...: Camping With the Enemy Seymour lays out what he learned from his time deep behind enemy lines, how he survived training and how he learned to deal with the possibility that he might not surv

Matthew E. May spent over eight years as a close advisor to Toyota. During that time he developed an appreciation for the power of elegance. As he explains in this interview, all too often in order to make things better we focus on what we can add. However, many of the most powerful pieces of art and engineering achieve their power by having things removed from them. The iPhone was revolutionary because Steve Jobs removed the keyboard. Matt has written four books on business innovation, including In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing and his latest The Laws of Subtraction: 6 Simple Rules for Winning in the Age of Excess Everything. You can follow him on twitter at @MatthewEMay. All of his books are available on Amazon.

The Institute for Justice has been described (by Hunter and probably others) as the libertarian ACLU. In this interview, Scott Bullock (who joined the Institute for Justice at its founding in 1991 and now serves as a senior attorney) tells us about the cases they’re currently fighting and the Institute for Justice’s strategy and philosophy. You can follow the Institute for Justice on twitter at @ij.

In the wake of countless scandals at the highest corporate levels, it’s easy to think that the key to getting ahead in business is to be a taker, but actually it turns out that the success of Enron execs like Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay are the exception rather than the rule. As Adam Grant, the youngest full professor at Wharton has found, Givers are the most successful…and the least successful people. In his fascinating New York Times Bestseller, Give and Take, Adam takes readers through the latest research on the promise and pitfalls of being both a Giver and a Taker. In this interview, Adam shares not only some of his superb book but also some of the other interesting insights in who make the best leaders. (Hint: it’s people who are not men.) Give and Take is available on Amazon, Audible and everywhere else. You can follow Adam Grant on twitter @adamgrant.

After fighting in the first gulf war, John Nagl returned to the United States and took part in a simulated military exercise. As a tank commander, he had all the overwhelming firepower any soldier could hope for…and yet he lost to a group of Alaskan National Guard infantrymen, known as the Nanooks. Nagl’s unit was unassailable by any conventional military force but a group of lightly armed troops, defying all the rules of how wars “should” be fought had defeated a much, much stronger force. That failure bothered him so much that he decided to devote the rest of his life to understanding it and making sure it never happened again. During the 90’s, the American military trained for the war it wanted to fight: a war just like the first Gulf War. Nagl’s experience with the Nanooks had convinced him that no conventional military would ever make the same mistake that Saddam Hussein had made in taking the US Army on head on. Instead, he suspected that the US’ major threats would come from small, irregular groups of

Michael Malice is has co-written books with MMA legend Matt Hughes, comedian DL Hughley and legendary rocker Brett Michaels but we brought him on to talk about the celebrity biography of one Kim Jong Il. In Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il, Michael Malice takes you through the life of North Korea’s dictator as he would have seen it. All of the weirdness that the Western Media likes to use as comedic fodder, but that is only the reader’s way into the book: the real purpose of the book is to bring us face-to-face with the uncomfortable reality of North Korea. In this interview, Michael Malice tells us why he felt compelled the book and gives us a look not just inside the Hermit Kingdom but inside the thoughts and psychology of dictators and the people they oppress. But, as Bryan and Hunter discover, Michael also reveals that he’s one interesting dude. So interesting in fact that when Harvey Pekar, creator of the American Splendor comic book series, met Michael in 2003 they ended up tal

Hannah Lane describes herself as a human-centered designer and social entrepreneur. Basically that means she designs systems that help make the world a better place. While she began in the health space (specifically focusing on HIV/AIDS in Africa), she is currently working for a for-profit technology company that believes in using the tools it develops to work for social and economic justice all over the world. Most recently, she’s been down in Ferguson, MO helping to connect and organize the ongoing movement around the Aug. 9 shooting of Michael Brown. In the last few years, tools like Twitter and Facebook have been used by social movements from the Arab Spring to the Bring Our Girls Back campaign. They have succeeded in channeling and coordinating people's angry enough to do something; the question is what is that something? With a background in psychology and her current work in technology, Hannah Lane has thought deeply about these questions. How far can technology go in changing the world and to what ext

Vanessa Tyson is a Professor of Government at the Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. In this fourth episode of our series of conversations with Vanessa, Bryan is hunting in the woods! So, Hunter and Vanessa take this one alone. And, finally, they get to discuss districting AND campaign finance which makes Hunter very, very happy. You can follow Vanessa on twitter at @vanessactyson. Her book: Twists of Fate: Multiracial Coalitions and Minority Representation in the US House will be coming out in 2015. We’ll be buying it and when it does come out, we’ll be bringing her back on to discuss that. In the meantime, stay tuned for round of Tyson. Next up: the media.

Barb Oakley may be a Professor of Engineering now but all through high school she was a self-professed math hater. She got a D in geometry…twice. She far preferred to follow her passions for literature and languages than waste her time doing something that seemed worthless. After joining the army, learning fluent Russian and getting a degree in it, she was assigned to work as a communications officer and found herself suddenly surrounded by engineers. She realized that unless she made a serious course correction her opportunities in life were going to be severely limited. So, she decided to follow her non-passion and master mathematics. In her latest book, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Mathematics (even if you flunked Algebra), Barb (as she insists we all call her) lays out the simple techniques that she, top teachers and students have used and that you can use too to master mathematics…or anything. What makes Barb’s latest book so interesting is how it fits in with her previous books. While this book h

Since ISIS captured the attention of the West by beheading foreign journalists, the news media has been obsessed with covering them. Since 9/11, some of the most eye-catching terror-related stories have been about Western muslims who have joined the ranks of international terrorist organizations. That storyline has come to the fore with the coverage of ISIS. In this episode, we ask Justin Gest, assistant professor at George Mason University and author of Apart: Alienated and Engaged Muslims in the West, to give us a sense of what life is like for young Muslim men living in Europe and to give us a sense of why these young men turn to terror and what society as a whole can do to engage them in Western society so they aren’t driven to want to tear it down.Apart: Alienated and Engaged Muslims in the West is available on Amazon. Visit Justin Gest online

Caitlin Doughty thinks an awful lot about death. In fact, she’s been doing it for years and that’s what lead her to become a mortician. In Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory, Doughty describes how being constantly faced with death (far from making her morbid) has actually helped bring her emotions back to life. While in former centuries we were constantly faced with the dead, today the dead have been quietly removed from public view. The result is a culture of death denial that is out of touch with reality. Until you accept death, it’s hard to really appreciate just how rare and special every moment of life is. After reading Doughty’s book and hearing her talk, you might want to go work in a crematory for a little while too. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes is available on Amazon. You can follow her on twitter at @TheGoodDeath.

Vanessa Tyson is a Professor of Government at the Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. In this third episode of our series of conversations with Vanessa, Bryan booked a TV job! So, Hunter and Vanessa take this one alone. They try to discuss districting but don’t quite make it there. Instead, they discuss a day in the life of a congressperson and ways in which we have failed to live up to the principles of the Declaration of Independence. You can follow Vanessa on twitter at @vanessactyson. Her book Twists of Fate: Multiracial Coalitions and Minority Representation in the US House will be coming out in 2015. We’ll be buying it and when it does come out, we’ll be bringing her back on to discuss that. In the meantime, stay tuned for the next round of Tyson.

As a Professor at Yale, William Deresiewicz became concerned by what had happened to America’s education. More than anything, he found that rather than turning out leaders was turning out a bunch of mindless followers. In his book, Excellent Sheep Deresiewicz lays out how the nation’s best universities are miseducating our youth to be so obsessed with achieving success at all costs that we end up with politicians and business leaders who are selfish and complacent. You can find Excellent Sheep on Amazon. You can follow Professor Deresiewicz on twitter at @WDeresiewicz. If you reach out to him, he asks that you call him Bill.

Robert D. Kaplan is the author of fifteen books on foreign policy and international affairs. He is Chief Geopolitical Analyst for Stratfor, a private intelligence firm. He is a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, D.C., and has been a foreign correspondent for The Atlantic for over a quarter-century. In 2011 and 2012, Kaplan was chosen by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the world’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers.” In this interview, we discuss with him his recent article Terrorism as Theater (http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/terrorism-theater) and explore how terrorists are taking advantage of the media age and how by getting enraged we are playing right into their hands. You can follow Mr. Kaplan on twitter @robertdkaplan. His most recent books include Asia's Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific and The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us about Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate.

Vanessa Tyson is a Professor of Government at the Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. In this second episode of our series of conversations with Vanessa, we discuss the role that education has to play in creating a citizenry capable of demanding elected officials worthy of our country. Vanessa also explains the process of making a law and how campaign finance affects us all. You can follow Vanessa on twitter at @vanessactyson.Modestly, she hadn’t mentioned until now that she has a book coming out in 2015: Twists of Fate: Multiracial Coalitions and Minority Representation in the US House. We’ll be buying it and when it does come out, we’ll be bringing her back on to discuss that. In the meantime, stay tuned for the next round of Tyson.

When Euny Hong moved to South Korea in 1985, it was by her own description not a wealthy country and yet now it’s one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world. We know how Euny grew up over the last three decades (the natural human growth process) but how did Korea do it? And why does one Korean leader believe that pop culture is the country’s best weapon against North Korea? In her incredibly fun book,  The Birth of Korean Cool, Euny Hong uses fun anecdotes and cultural tidbits to show us not just what makes Korean Culture tick but a practical demonstration of the Soft Power that Professor Joseph Nye was talking about. You don’t need to nuke North Korea out of existence, you can make them disappear with a pop culture invasion.The Birth of Korean Cool is available from all good booksellers. You can follow Euny Hong on twitter at @Euny.

The world seems fascinated with the possibility of an apocalypse. Zombies, mutant viruses, a giant meteorite impact, alien invasions…the point is the same. If everything fell apart, how would we cope and would we survive. Lewis Dartnell’s book begins from the premise that we would. Human beings have always shown tremendous resourcefulness and ingenuity. His question is after the dust has settled how do we rebuild our civilization as quickly as possible? In his book The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch, Dartnell shows us much more than how to rebuild our civilization; he shows us how we built it in the first place. Part history of technology and part tribute to human ingenuity, The Knowledge is highly enjoyable way to learn things that are vital but which in anybody else’s hands wouldn’t be nearly as much fun. There’s loads more available on the book’s website: http://the-knowledge.org You can also get the book directly from: http://georiot.co/Hardback or by going to Amazon. His personal websit

A year ago, we interviewed Jim Rickards about his book Currency Wars which examined how money could be used as a weapon between nations. In his most recent book, The Death of Money, Rickards examines the far greater internal threat by governments recklessly printing money to solve short-term financial crises. Through a maze of jargon like IMF, quantitative easing and terms so complicated I can’t even remember them right now, financial technocrats have obscured what they are doing and convinced themselves that they have the situation under control just as they used complex mathematics to convince themselves that housing prices could never go down. It’s a pleasure to have Jim Rickards on the show again. Both Currency Wars and The Death of Money are available on Amazon and Audible. You can visit Jim on the web at http://www.jamesrickardsproject.com/ and follow him on twitter at @jamesgrickards.

Darwin had a problem with bees. Understanding how evolution might work at the level of individuals was easy. Have an individual whose genes give them an advantage in resisting disease or avoiding predators and on average they will breed more and pass on more of their genes to the next generation. But bees and other social insects weren’t so easy. Kamikaze-like, bees will dive in and sting you, their barbs getting stuck in you and die to save the hive. Of course, when a human being sacrifices their life to save their child, that’s easy enough for evolution to explain. By sacrificing your life for your child, you are helping to ensure that your genes are passed on. But the bee that stings you at a picnic, can’t have children because those bees are sterile. In the Origin of Species, Darwin referred to sterile subgroups as the "one special difficulty, which at first appeared to me insuperable, and actually fatal to my theory.” Nowadays, evolutionary biologists have no problem providing an explanation for this beh

Vanessa Tyson is a Professor of Government at the Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. In this episode, Vanessa, Bryan and Hunter discuss various aspects of government, what is wrong with it and what can be done to fix it. This is the first part in a series. You can follow Professor Tyson on twitter at @vanessactyson.