An American Prestige bonus interview.
Vice President JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance stand with Col. Susan Meyers, commander of the US military’s Pituffik Space Base, as they tour the base on March 28, 2025, in Pituffik, Greenland. (Jim Watson / Pool / Getty Images)
Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
Danny and Derek speak with historian Gretchen Heefner about how the US military (unsuccessfully) set out to conquer extreme environments and what those efforts reveal about empire, climate, and power. They discuss the US Army training for a desert war that turned out to be mud, the Pentagon’s disastrous attempts to master Greenland’s ice, early blueprints for building on the moon, efforts to gather “environmental intelligence” across the globe, and other failed endeavors showing the limits of American military power.
Read Gretchen’s book Sand, Snow, and Stardust: How U.S. Military Engineers Conquered Extreme Environments now!
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Danny and Derek speak with historian Gretchen Heefner about how the US military (unsuccessfully) set out to conquer extreme environments and what those efforts reveal about empire, climate, and power. They discuss the US Army training for a desert war that turned out to be fought in mud, the Pentagon’s disastrous attempts to master Greenland’s ice, early blueprints for building on the moon, efforts to gather “environmental intelligence” across the globe, and other failed endeavors showing the limits of American military power.
Read Gretchen’s book Sand, Snow, and Stardust: How U.S. Military Engineers Conquered Extreme Environments now!
Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/subscribe.
Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
Danny and Derek speak with David Sirota, founder and EIC of The Lever, about journalism, independent media, and the consolidation of presidential power. They discuss the difference between journalism and media, the attention economy, capitalist media, audience capture, the decline of local news, the Powell Memo, the unitary executive theory, war powers, and Donald Trump’s use of executive power.
Be sure to listen to The Kingmakers, the second season of David’s investigative podcast Master Plan.
Don’t forget that AP’s new, weekly livestream is back this Wednesday at 8pm ET on our YouTube channel.
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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Daniel BessnerTwitterDaniel Bessner is an historian of US foreign relations, and cohost of American Prestige, a podcast on international affairs.
Derek DavisonDerek Davison is a writer and analyst specializing in international affairs and US foreign policy. He is the publisher of the Foreign Exchanges newsletter, cohost of the American Prestige podcast, and former editor of LobeLog.