My brother in law, Brian Parra, has launched a groovy new podcast, There’s No Time to Explain. And I was his first interview subject (episode 1). It’s an example of my favorite kind of podcast, where we both chat about all kinds of things that mostly aren’t the usual things I’m talking about over and over.

As Brian describes the episode, “we talk about [Richard’s] life as a freelance historian and traveling author and then our conversation turns to the idea that we wage war very differently depending on our cultural ideas.” But boy is there so much more! The first part is a lot about making a living as an independent artist. Then we get to what he asked me on to talk about, which was an obscure remark I made on another awesome podcast, the MABOOM show (I think this episode, which is my favorite of the three I did with them), about how national cultural values might be reflected in the design of our battletanks.

I’ve had so many people ask me about that, since on MABOOM I just mentioned it and moved on without explaining because we had to get back on topic. Well, Brian got the chance to ask me about it on his show, and it becomes the linchpin launching the rest of the show, inspiring us to talk about many other aspects of how differences in culture change how people think about war, bravery, even suicide. Many points come up relating to how this has led to certain evils in our politics and economics, affecting public war policy and the manipulation of voters. And one thing that he eggs out of me is one of my least-told sea stories from the Coast Guard, about how we broke the law (well, civil law anyway) for the good of our country…and it’s not my story about saving dolphins many have already heard (yes, maybe I’ll tell that story more publicly someday); it’s about how we said fuck you to the military industrial complex by disregarding a graft-ridden contract to do what’s right under cover of night. Of course officially that never really happened. Oh no. I am totally making it all up just to impress the ladies. Yeah. That’s the ticket.

But then this episode ends with a special segment Brian intends to close every episode with, which is having his guest do something weird from a list of weird things he has, and the one I chose from his list was “obscure movie review.” I give a brief review of the excellent but definitely obscure silent film The Call of Cthulhu (produced in 2005).

So you might enjoy this one! Not your usual podcast fare.

Corrections to note: On the Historicity of Jesus was published at the University of Sheffield (the peer reviewed publishing company is an independent entity but run by Sheffield faculty on the Sheffield campus). Following Brian’s lead in the heat of conversation we didn’t notice we said Bonzai pilots when we meant Kamikaze pilots. My stepdad Hal designed avionics software for fighter jets, not the jets themselves. M1 Abrams tanks cost millions of dollars, not a billion. And the co-host with Sean Taylor of the MABOOM show is Jim Eliason (not Jim Elias). And of course MABOOM stands for Make a Believer Out of Me, not Make Me a Believer! Also, in case it isn’t obvious, this show was recorded a couple years ago, when I was still married.

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