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School of War
Learn what war teaches

This podcast seeks to learn what war teaches. There has been a steady decline in the study of military history and its associated theoretical discipline, strategy.This podcast seeks to fill that gap through in-depth interviews on military and diplomatic history. Our guests have included former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis, and former China Select Committee chairman Mike Gallagher. We discuss the battlefield commanders, diplomats, strategists, policymakers, and statesmen who have had to make wartime decisions in the ancient and modern eras. The subject of an episode may be an historical battle, campaign, or conflict; the conduct of policy in the course of a major international incident; the work of a famous strategist; the nature of a famous weapon; or the legacy of an important military commander or political leader.  


Aaron MacLean is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute. He has worked as a foreign policy advisor and legislative director to Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and spent seven years in the U.S. Marine Corps.


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Rachel Kousser, professor of Classics and Art History at the City University of New York and author of Alexander at the End of the World, joins the show to talk about the violent, brilliant, complex career of Alexander the Great.
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Shyam Sankar, Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Palantir Technologies, joins the show to explain the broken Defense Department acquisition process and how he believes it can be fixed.
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Mark Dubowitz, chief executive officer of Foundation for Defense of Democracies, joins the show to break down the collapse of the Assad regime and the implications for Israel, Turkey, and Iran.
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Host Aaron MacLean recently embedded with the Israeli Defense Forces and saw firsthand Israel’s war with Iranian proxy groups Hezbollah and Hamas. What lessons can Americans learn from Israel’s year of fighting for its survival?
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Michael Leggiere, Professor of Humanities at the University of Florida and editor of War Studies Journal 1, joins the show to discuss the sad state of military history in higher education.
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