HeyJaredThe Unconventional Soldier
"Letting the Guest Tell the Story"The Unconventional Soldier Podcast explores conflicts from the Second World War, the Cold War, Northern Ireland and the Global War on Terror.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 7
- Latest publication
- Sep 16, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 15, 2026
Latest episodes
After The Army: Identity & Purpose In Civilian Life (opens the original)
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CONTENT The guest today is Gemma Gardner, a British Army veteran who moved into performance psychology. After experiencing mental health issues following her medical discharge, she developed the Orus framework, which focuses on the five pillars of awareness, understanding, regulation, identity, and stability. The discussion highlights the psychological difficulties soldiers face when their military identity is stripped away, often leading to a loss of purpose and confidence in civilian life. Gem
The Bayonet Is Obsolete (opens the original)
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CONTENT My guests for this podcast are Neale Smiles and Stuart Lyle. Stuart is the Urban Operations Lead at the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, or Dstl, part of the Ministry of Defence. Neale is a former soldier working in the defence industry. For generations, the bayonet has been one of the most enduring symbols of the infantry soldier. But does it still have a meaningful place on the modern battlefield? In this episode, we examine the declining practical value of the bayonet i
Sweden's Cold War Stay-Behind Operations (opens the original)
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CONTENT The guest today is Dr Johan Wennstrom an intelligence historian and writer on statecraft, from the Cold War underground to today’s crises. He is the author of “The Stay Behinds: Sweden’s Cold War Guardians” a national bestseller in Sweden recently translated into English and also writes on Substack as “Our Man In Stockholm” (https://johanwennstrom.substack.com/). On this episode we discuss the secretive history of Sweden’s "stay-behind" network established in 1949. This clandestine organ
The Brutal Reality Of A Private Military Contractor's War In Syria (opens the original)
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CONTENT Listener information - On this episode we discuss the realities of life in a war zone and suicide. My guest is Graham Paul Roberts, a former Welsh Guardsman and private military contractor who served in numerous global conflict zones in the military and as a PMC. He describes his journey from a premature birth and childhood bullying to training Syrian forces during the civil war. We discuss the psychological toll of war, including his struggle with complex PTSD and the hallucinations tha
Operation Market Garden: The Psychological Failures Behind Montgomery’s Biggest Gamble (opens the original)
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CONTENT The guest today is Dr. Gary Buck, a psychologist and military historian, who uses psychological frameworks to analyze the planning failures of Operation Market Garden. Gary applies the OODA loop and Myers-Briggs personality types to examine why high-level commanders like Montgomery, Browning, and Urquhart made critical errors during the 1944 mission. He suggests that extreme stress and organisational pressure caused leaders to abandon their typical caution for risky, uncharacteristic gam
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