The reality of war is portrayed in a new light as the sensibility of contemporary war novels such as Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket is brought to historical novels set during wars in the middle ages. Each chapter starts with a line from one of the great chroniclers of chivalry.
The podcast episode features stories about haunted battlefields alongside a discussion about the intersection of success in acting and sexuality in Hollywood.
The hosts discuss Operation Mincemeat which was one of the most successful military deception plans in history. Comparable to the Trojan Horse, Operation Mincemeat utilized a creatively ingenious plan of fooling the Nazis into believing that the Allies were planning to invade Greece instead of Sicily.
The true experiences of soldiers on the ground during war are often too awful to be used as a propaganda tool or as entertainment, leading to a sanitized and disneyfied representation in media that does not reflect reality.
The hosts discuss the sad reality of suicide in military veterans and how it is often romanticized as a "warrior's death," but the pain and struggle leading up to it is very real.
Soldiers in the Middle East have retold supernatural stories, passed on like folklore in which they witnessed unexplained phenomena that left them chilled despite being equipped with the most advanced technology in the world.