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)
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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 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.
Derek has returned, but he keeps trying to get Danny to go to some seminar led by a charismatic “mentor” he encountered in his travels. In this week’s news: war breaks out in Ethiopia’s Tigray region (0:43); Flavio Bolsonaro wins the first round of Brazil’s presidential election as the right makes major gains (6:46); in Yemen, the government’s counteroffensive against Ansar Allah stalls (9:51), the group attacks airports in Saudi Arabia and Yemen (12:40), and Saudi Arabia seeks outside military support (13:42); the U.S. prepares to resume its war against Iran as the Islamic Republic intensifies attacks on oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz (17:44); in Japan, a U.S. Marine’s arrest for alleged murder sparks protests against the American military presence on Okinawa (22:18); Sudan’s military advances in North Kordofan (25:20) and Sudanese military chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan rejects peace talks (28:06); in Mali, Tuareg rebels withdraw from Kidal as government forces retake the town (29:54); the U.S. and the WHO seek information about suspected plague cases at a Russian lab (29:54); Russian attacks across Ukraine kill at least 25 (32:57); Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez calls a snap election (35:00); the U.S. bombs another alleged drug boat in the Caribbean (37:12); and Trump creates a new AI task force called the Super Intelligence Force (38:12).
Note: Since recording, Trump has said that the U.S. will not attack Iran before the November midterm elections.
Watch a replay of last night’s livestream with journalist Michael Fox about Brazil’s elections.
Subscribe and check out our History of Modern Palestine series with Rashid Khalidi.
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Daniel BessnerTwitterDaniel Bessner is a historian of US foreign relations and is the author of, among other books, Imperialist Realism.
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.