Henry Rollins doesn’t do small talk. The punk icon, author, USO road dog, and longtime friend of the show returns from Nashville to deliver one of the most blistering hours we’ve recorded this year. He keeps dragging the conversation back to the number no cable network wants to sit with: 13 dead American service members, and countless wounded, from a war in Iran the president picked and can’t justify. Rollins walks through what a USO trip actually sounds like — young troops telling him the mission is simply “get to D-FAC” — and asks the only question that matters from the resolute desk: how do I get every one of them home?
From there it’s a wide-open briefing on the state of the republic. Rollins on Tennessee’s generational shift and the independents rising inside a red state. Rollins on Operation Ajax, the JCPOA, and why no previous president pulled this trigger. Rollins on a White House that paved over Jackie Kennedy’s rose garden, demolished the East Wing, and put MMA behind a paywall on the people’s lawn. And Rollins on what’s still good — neighbors who shovel each other out, strangers who change your tire in the rain, and a country whose arc, even now, still bends toward better. If you’re in the angry middle, this one will hit a nerve and put some fight back in you.
In this episode
- Why Rollins keeps coming back to one number: 13 dead American service members — and the war crime he says someone owes a bill for
- “Get to D-FAC” — what young troops actually told him on USO trips to Iraq, Afghanistan, Walter Reed, and Bethesda
- Operation Ajax, 1953, and the history of US–Iran relations the current president can’t find on a map
- Why every previous president, including George W. Bush, knew not to touch the Strait of Hormuz — and what closes on day one
- Tennessee’s generational shift: 100 people a day moving to Nashville and what it means for independent politics
- The rose garden paved in cement, the East Wing demolished, and MMA on the White House lawn behind a paywall
- The first trillionaire, USAID, and the grain of sand that could feed the world
- His week walking around Tehran with no security: “My friend, what are you doing here?”
- Saving the tapes of the Cramps: an unreleased 1977 Memphis record dropping in August
- What’s still good: neighbors, strangers, and a country that can take a licking and keep on ticking
