Dispatches, Episode 46,
March 23, 2026: Here's Episode 46 of “Dispatches” in which Arts Editor Marc Leepson interviews the journalist and author Wil Haygood, best known for his bestselling 2013 biography, “The Butler,” the story of Eugene Allen, a long-time White House butler that later became a big Hollywood film. This episode focuses on Haygood’s new book, “The War Within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and At Home,” in which he writes about how Black Americans experienced the Vietnam War and its aftermath during the waning days of Jim Crow in the South and the nationwide upheavals of the Civil Rights movement. [23:52]

Dispatches, Episode 45,
February 20, 2026: Here's Episode 45 of “Dispatches,” our video web series. In it, Arts Editor Marc Leepson interviews the novelist, journalist, and Vietnam War veteran Philip Caputo, whose first book, “A Rumor of War,” a brilliant memoir that came out in 1977, has become part of the American Vietnam War literary canon. They will be discussing his tour of duty as a U.S. Marine in the Vietnam War, “A Rumor of War,” and Caputo’s latest book, “Wandering Souls,” a first-rate collection of short stories, two of which deal directly with the Vietnam War. [23:52]

Dispatches, Episode 44,
January 5, 2026: Here's Episode 44 of “Dispatches,” our video web series. In it, Arts Editor Marc Leepson interviews Steven Grayhm, who wrote, directed, and stars in “Sheepdog,” an extraordinary new film, as a young Army war veteran struggling to hold his life together, and the award-winning actor Vondie Curtis-Hall, as a Vietnam War veteran with his own issues who comes into his life at a tumultuous time. The movie opens in theaters nationwide on January 17. [25:41]

Dispatches, Episode 43,
November 23, 2025: Here's Episode 43 of “Dispatches,” our video web series. In it, Arts Editor Marc Leepson interviews Ron Osgood, a U.S. Navy Vietnam War veteran and an award-winning documentary filmmaker. They’ll be talking about his Emmy-winning film, “Just Like Me: The Vietnam War/The American War,” stories of Americans and Vietnamese who took part in the war; “My Vietnam, Your Iraq,” which highlights families of Vietnam War veterans whose children served in the Iraq War; and his latest, “I Do Remember,” a highly engaging personal film in which Osgood creatively tells the story of an unexpectedly eventful 1972 road trip that stars himself and his old, cranky Volkswagen van. [32:10]

Dispatches, Episode 42,
November 3, 2025: Here's Episode 42 of “Dispatches,” our video web series. In it, Arts Editor Marc Leepson interviews the long-time journalist and editor Philip Taubman and his brother William, an Amherst College Emeritus Professor of Political Science and Pulitzer-Prize-winning biographer. They’ll be discussing their eye-opening new book, “McNamara at War: A New History,” a first-rate, in-depth, cradle-to-grave biography of the controversial—to say the least--former Secretary of Defense who ran the Vietnam War from 1963 to 1968. [32:07]

Dispatches, Episode 41,
September 1, 2025: Here's Episode 41 of “Dispatches,” our video web series. In it, Arts Editor Marc Leepson interviews Alex Vernon, a Distinguished Professor of English at Hendrix College in Arkansas, a 1989 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy who served as a Tank Lieutenant in the Persian Gulf War—and the author or editor of eleven books. They will focus on Professor Vernon’s new book, “Peace is a Shy Thing: The Life and Art of Tim O’Brien,” a brilliant literary biography of the most accomplished and acclaimed Vietnam War veteran writer. [38:58]

Dispatches, Episode 40,
July 23, 2025: Here's Episode 40 of “Dispatches,” our video web series. In it, Arts Editor Marc Leepson interviews Monmouth University history professor Melissa Ziobro, the author of The Battlin’ Bastards of Bravo, which gives voice to more than two dozen members of B Company, 1st/506th in the 101st Airborne Division who served in the Vietnam War from 1968-71. They’ll also discuss her work as Music Curator of the Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music at Monmouth and Springsteen’s support of Vietnam War veterans—and Vietnam Veterans of America. [29:34]

Dispatches, Episode 39,
June 30, 2025: Here's Episode 39 of “Dispatches,” our video web series. In it, Arts Editor Marc Leepson interviews Iraq War veteran Kyle Haussman-Stokes, an award-winning film director and writer. This lively discussion focuses on his terrific new movie, “My Dead Friend Zoe,” a dramatic and darkly funny story of the wartime friendship between two veterans of the Afghanistan War--including inside-Hollywood stories about the film’s two Vietnam War veteran characters played by the great Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris, and the impact that Kyle’s grandfather, a Vietnam veteran, had on his career—and the film. [29:52]

Dispatches, Episode 38,
May 19, 2025: Here's Episode 38 of “Dispatches,” our video web series. In it, Arts Editor Marc Leepson talks with Sandra Lima-Wenger, the author of the award-winning 2024 novel, “Beneath the Swaying Willow” written under her penname Amily D’Nas. The book deals with how disruptive and divisive the Vietnam War was for many young American couples. It focuses on Nora and Russ, whose lives are all but torn apart after Russ is drafted into the Army and finds himself trying to stay alive as a tunnel rat in the Vietnam War. They go through an emotional roller-coaster during his tour of duty, and things only get worse after he comes home. [25:17]

Dispatches, Episode 37,
April 28, 2025: Here's Episode 37 of “Dispatches,” our video web series. In this episode, Arts Editor Marc Leepson has a lively conversation with Vietnam War veteran Doug Bradley, the author, long-time veterans’ advocate and educator, and one of the nation’s top experts on the music of the Vietnam War. He’s written four books on the subject, including “Dispatches from the Air-Conditioned Jungle,” “Who’ll Stop the Rain,” and “We Gotta Get Out of This Place,” which “Rolling Stone” named Best Music Book of 2015. His latest book, “The Tracks of My Years,” a music-heavy memoir, will be released in August. And as you’ll see, this is a music-heavy interview featuring snippets of songs from back in the day. [31:19]

Dispatches, Episode 36,
March 24, 2025: Here's Episode 36 of “Dispatches,” our video web series. In this episode Arts Editor Marc Leepson has a lively conversation with Bill Broyles, the acclaimed journalist, author, magazine editor, and screenwriter who served a 1969-70 tour of duty as a 1st Marine Division LT in Vietnam. After the war, he became the founding editor of Texas Monthly magazine in his home state in 1972. He later was the editor of Newsweek magazine. In 1984, he became one of first American war veterans to return in Vietnam, a trip that resulted in his pioneering 1986 book, Brothers in Arms. Two years later, he co-created the pioneering Vietnam War TV dramatic series, China Beach. He went on to write screenplays for many Hollywood movies, including Apollo 13, Cast Away, Planet of the Apes, Polar Express, and Jarhead. Bill Broyles is a featured on-screen contributor to the new Apple TV docuseries, Vietnam: The War That Changed America. [37:42]

Dispatches, Episode 35,
January 6, 2025: Here's Episode 35 of “Dispatches,” our video web series. In this episode, Arts Editor Marc Leepson talks with Todd DePastino, the founder and host of Pittsburgh-based Veterans Breakfast Club, which offers podcasts and a blog, as well as weekly programs online and in-person in which veterans of all ages and service branches share their stories. Marc and Todd discuss—among other things—how VBC came about and has evolved, and how all its programs “connect and heal, educate and inspire” veterans of all eras, including Vietnam War veterans. [30:37]

Dispatches, Episode 34,
January 27, 2025: Here's Episode 34 of “Dispatches,” our video web series. In this episode, Arts Editor Marc Leepson talks with the artist, writer, and cartoonist Rick Parker, best known for the 28 MTV Beavis and Butt-Head comic books and his graphic novel “Deadboy.” They’ll be discussing Parker’s new graphic memoir, “Drafted,” an off-beat, clever, insightful, often-funny look at his short but eventful military career after being conscripted into the Army in 1966. It’s a book that millions of Vietnam War veterans can relate to as Parker brilliantly brings to life in words and pictures experiences all us went through during those memorable months of our lives. [31:57]

Dispatches, Episode 33,
January 6, 2025: Here's Episode 33 of “Dispatches,” our video web series. In this episode, Arts Editor Marc Leepson talks with Ray Boomhower, a prolific author who specializes in telling life stories, including biographies of war correspondents Richard Tregaskis, Ernie Pyle, and Robert Sherrod. He’ll be discussing his latest book, “The Ultimate Protest: Malcolm W. Browne, Thich Quang Duc, and the News Photograph that Stunned the World,” a slice-of-life biography of the Pulitzer Prize-winning American Vietnam War correspondent Malcolm W. Browne. As the Associated Press’s Saigon Bureau Chief, Browne took one of the most reproduced and important photographs of the Vietnam War, the Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc's self-immolation in the middle of a Saigon street on June 11, 1963. [29:02]

Dispatches, Episode 32,
December 16, 2024: Here's Episode 32 of “Dispatches,” our video web series. In this episode, Arts Editor Marc Leepson talks with former Green Beret Jim Morris, who served three tours of duty in the Vietnam War and went on to a multi-faceted writing career that including contributing to magazines such as Esquire, Rolling Stone, and Soldier of Fortune, and working as a book editor and writing books of his own. They’ll be discussing Morris’ wartime exploits and “War Story,” his award-winning 1985 Vietnam War memoir, and “The Dreaming Circus,” a spiritual memoir of his post-war reintegration into civilian life. [28:10]

Dispatches, Episode 31,
November 25, 2024: Here is Episode 31 of our “Dispatches” video series. In this lively interview, Arts Editor Marc Leepson talks with University of North Texas History Professor Geoffrey Wawro about "The Vietnam War: A Military History," his highly praised new book. It’s a deeply researched, compellingly written, analytical dive into the war that concentrates on military tactics and strategy, along with the political calculations behind them that had an impact on developments on the battlefield. Tom Ricks, in his New York Times review, called the book “the best overview of America’s misadventure in Southeast Asia,” and one that is “sure to become the standard one-volume book on the war.” [37:03]

Dispatches, Episode 30,
October 30, 2024: Here is Episode 30 of our “Dispatches” video series. In this lively interview, Arts Editor Marc Leepson talks with Julia Cooke, the widely published journalist and the author of “Come Fly the World.” That illuminating book, which came out in 2021, is an important story about the hundreds of Pan American World Airways stewardesses who volunteered to serve aboard Pan Am charters that took troops into and out of the war zone throughout the entire Vietnam War. The book offers fascinating details about an underappreciated and little-known story—and one that hundreds of thousands of Vietnam War veterans experienced. [29:18]

Dispatches, Episode 29,
October 9, 2024: Here is Episode 29 of our “Dispatches” video series. In this lively interview, Arts Editor Marc Leepson talks with Marc Yablonka, a long-time military journalist and author who’s written for many publications, served as a public affairs officer with the California State Military Army Reserve’s 40th Infantry Division, and has written a great deal about the Vietnam War, including in his books, Tears Across the Mekong, tales of the so-called “secret war” in Laos; Vietnam: Bao Chi: Warriors of Word and Film; and his latest, Hot Mics and TV Lights: The American Forces Vietnam Network, a history of AFVN. [29:08]

Dispatches, Episode 28,
August 16, 2024: Here is Episode 28 of our “Dispatches” video series. In this lively interview, Arts Editor Marc Leepson talks with Bob Parsons, the self-made entrepreneur, marketing wizard, and philanthropist best known as the founder of GoDaddy.com and PXG Golf. They’ll be discussing Parsons’ time in the U.S. Marine Corps in Vietnam in 1968 where he was severely wounded, the impact his wartime service and serving in the Marine Corps has had on his life since then, his new book, “Fire in the Hole! The Untold Story of My Traumatic Life and Explosive Success,” and much more! [26:48]

Dispatches, Episode 27,
July 22, 2024: Here is Episode 27 of our “Dispatches” video series. In this lively interview, Arts Editor Marc Leepson talks with Carl Sciacchitano, the writer and illustrator, about his brilliant new graphic novel, “The Heart That Fed: A Father, a Son and the Long Shadow of War.” This creatively crafted and compulsively readable book focuses on Carl’s father David’s radically life-changing 18-month Vietnam War tour of duty as an Air Force aircraft mechanic who—among many other things—manned an M-60 machinegun during an NVA attack near Quang Tri during the 1968 Tet Offensive, and also flashes back and forward to David’s and Carl’s lives before and after the war. [33:08]

Dispatches, Episode 26,
June 17, 2024: Here is Episode 26 of our “Dispatches” video series. In this lively interview, Arts Editor Marc Leepson talks with in Molly Stillman, who hosts the “Can I Laugh on Your Shoulder?” podcast, and is the author of a great new memoir, "If I Don’t Laugh. I’ll Cry." They’ll be talking mainly about Molly’s mother, Lynda Van Devanter, a Vietnam War surgical nurse who became a powerful women veterans advocate. After joining Vietnam Veterans of America in 1979, the year after it was founded, Lynda became the head of VVA’s Women’s Project, the first-ever U.S. veterans service organization’s women veterans advocacy group. In 1983, she wrote what would become a classic Vietnam War memoir: "Home Before Morning." [29:43]

Dispatches, Episode 25,
May 22, 2024: Here is Episode 25 of our “Dispatches” video series. In this lively interview, Arts Editor Marc Leepson talks with in Alice McDermott, one of the nation’s most distinguished novelists, whose 1997 novel, “Charming Billy,” received the National Book Award for Fiction. They will be discussing her highly acclaimed new novel, “Absolution,” which is set primarily in Saigon during the fateful Vietnam War year of 1963 and includes two significant GI characters, a selfless Army Doctor, and a good-hearted EM named Dominic who works in an Army hospital. [30:49]

Dispatches, Episode 24,
April 26, 2024: Here is Episode 24 of our “Dispatches” video series. In this lively, informative interview, Arts Editor Marc Leepson talks with former Washington Post foreign correspondent Charlie Trueheart about his brilliant new book, Diplomats at War: Friendship and Betrayal on the Brink of the Vietnam Conflict. This one-of-a-kind, revealing look at the crucial years (1961-63) of the war is a deft blend of solid historical research, compelling writing, and insightful analysis, along with an intriguing and consequential family story. [32:37]

Dispatches, Episode 23,
March 20, 2024: Here is Episode 23 of our “Dispatches” video series. In this lively interview Arts Editor Marc Leepson interviews Kristin Hannah, the prolific, best-selling author of 19 novels, whose books have been translated into 43 languages. He’ll be talking to her about “The Women,” her new novel, which shot to the top of all the bestseller lists when it came out February 6 and has remained there ever since. It’s the compelling story of a young woman who joins the Army Nurse Corps at twenty and within months finds herself in just about the worst that war can offer in an evac hospital in South Vietnam—as well as what she faced after coming home from the war. [27:04]

Dispatches, Episode 22,
February 28, 2024: Here is Episode 22 of our “Dispatches” video series. In this lively interview, Arts Editor Marc Leepson talks with Jack McLean, the author of two outstanding Vietnam War memoirs, “Loon, (2009),” the account of a vicious battle he and his fellow Marines took part in Vietnam in March 1968, and his 2023 memoir “Found.” Thae new book contains flashbacks to what happened to McLean in Vietnam, as he covers the shameful treatment he received after coming home from the war; his battles with the VA over the benefits he earned; and his long quest to reunite with the men he served with in Vietnam and the son and wife of one of his best buddies, Tom Morrissey, who was killed at LZ Loon. [37:13]

Dispatches, Episode 21,
November 27, 2023: Here is Episode 21 of our “Dispatches” video series, a lively interview by Arts Editor Marc Leepson with Peter Pritchard, one of the nation’s top journalists who, among other things, has been a sportswriter, police and courts reporter, TV columnist, feature writer, and op. ed. page editor. He was USA Today’s editor in chief from 1988-94, and went on to run the great Washington, D.C., journalism museum, the Newseum. A life member of Vietnam Veterans of America, Peter was drafted into the Army in 1967 and spent a tour of duty in Vietnam working in intelligence in 1968-69. In the upcoming episode, he discusses his military service, his journalism career, and his new novel, “Killing Grace: A Vietnam War Mystery,” which we reviewed in the November/December Books in Review column in the magazine. [30:28]

Dispatches, Episode 20,
October 3, 2023: Here is Episode 20 of our “Dispatches” video series, a lively interview by Arts Editor Marc Leepson with Bill McCloud, the award-winning writer, poet, and educator best known for his book, “What Should We Tell Our Children About Vietnam,” which he wrote while preparing to teach a class on Vietnam War history at Pryor Junior High in Oklahoma in the ‘80s and has since become a Vietnam War literary classic. Bill is a life member of VVA who served in Vietnam with the 147th Assault (Support) Helicopter Company in 1968-69. He tells the surprising story of why and how he joined the Army and the unlikely backstory of how “What Should We Tell Our Children” came about, discusses the impact of the war on his poetry and much more about his eventful literary and academic life.. [38:24]

Dispatches, Episode 19,
May 29, 2023: Here is Episode 19 of our “Dispatches” video series, a lively interview by Arts Editor Marc Leepson with Henry Threadgill, the acclaimed jazz composer, saxophonist and flutist who served a tour of duty with the U.S. Army’s 4th Infantry Division in the Vietnam War. The Pulitzer-Prize-winning musician will discuss growing up in Chicago, getting drafted, how he wound up in Vietnam with the 4th Infantry band—and also carrying an M-16—how his tour of duty influenced his musical career, and his terrific new autobiography, Easily Slip into Another World: A Life in Music. [30:44]

Dispatches, Episode 18,
May 29, 2023: Here is Episode 18 of “Dispatches,” our video interview series. In this episode, Arts Editor Marc Leepson talks to Harvey Pratt, the renowned artist and sculptor best known for creating the striking National Native American Veterans Memorial at the Smithsonian’s Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. A Cheyenne and Arapaho tribal member, Harvey Pratt joined the U.S. Marine Corps in and put in a 1963-64 Vietnam War tour of duty with the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion at Da Nang Airbase working in air rescue and base security. He will discuss his Vietnam War experiences, his forensic work with the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, his artwork, and the story behind the memorial. [35:24]

Dispatches, Episode 17,
April 30, 2023: Arts Editor Marc Leepson interviews the acclaimed photographer, artist, author, and storyteller Jessica Hines about her stunning book, “My Brother’s War,” a powerful artistic remembrance of her brother Gary, who was drafted into the Army and served with the 178th and 132nd Assault Helicopter companies in Chu Lai. After coming home from Vietnam, Gary Hines took his own life in 1980. “My Brother’s War” is both Jessica Hines’ tribute to her brother and an attempt to come to terms with his loss. [29:31]

Dispatches, Episode 16,
March 27, 2023: In this episode, Vietnam War veteran Diane Carlson Evans, who served as a U.S. Army nurse in Vietnam and later was the driving force behind the Vietnam Women’s Memorial, discusses her intense tour of duty; her adjustment problems after she came home; the amazing story of her successful fight to have a memorial to the American women who served in the Vietnam War installed on the National Mall in our Nation’s Capital; and much more. [35:33]

Dispatches, Episode 15,
February 26, 2023: In this episode, Vietnam War veteran Homer Hickam, the prolific, best-selling author best known for his acclaimed memoir, “Rocket Boys,” fills us in on growing up in Coalwood, West Virginia; his topsy-turvy tour of duty as a young U.S. Army Lieutenant with the Fourth Infantry Division in 1967-68 and much, much more. [31:13]

Dispatches, Episode 14,
January 23, 2023: Oral historian and archivist Joseph Carpenter at the Vietnam Center and Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University fills us in on the many facets of the Center’s enormous archival collection of Vietnam War materials. [17:42]

Dispatches, Episode 13,
December 19, 2022: Jan Scruggs—the founder of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund who conceived of the Memorial and led the effort that culminated in The Wall's dedication 40 years ago—tells his Vietnam War story, as well as the inside story of how The Wall evolved from an idea he had in 1978 to its dedication on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in 1982. [32:36]

Dispatches, Episode 12,
November 22, 2021: Pulitzer-Prize-winning novelist Viet Nguyen discusses his 2015 novel, “The Sympathizer,” a beautifully-crafted tale that deals with the Vietnam War and its postwar political and social landscape; and the 2021 sequel, “The Committed,” which zeroes in on the fallout of the Vietnam War in France. [30:15]

Dispatches, Episode 11,
November 1, 2021: Best-selling novelist James Lee Burke—the creator of the famed fictional Vietnam War veteran Louisiana sheriff’s deputy Dave Robicheaux—discusses Robicheaux’s origin story, his sophisticated literary antecedents, and the Vietnam War’s effects on Robicheaux and his hell-raising sidekick Clete Purcell. [28:48]

Dispatches, Episode 10,
October 11, 2021: Actor, writer and musician Tucker Smallwood, talks about his tour of duty commanding a five-man Mobile Advisory Team in Vietnam, his decision to make acting a career, and insider stories about his work on movies and television. [31:56]

Dispatches, Episode 7,
August 9, 2021: Bill Ehrhart discusses his action-heavy tour of duty in the Vietnam War and its impact on his life and work, including teaching the war for more than two decades to high school students. [33:00]

Dispatches, Episode 2,
April 19, 2021: Renowned military advisor Dale Dye explains how dogged persistence was the secret to his becoming Hollywood’s go-to man for battlefield realism. [24.05]

The Outlet, Episode 3,
May 3, 2021: Vietnam Veterans of America President John Rowan and Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Maryland) discuss VVA’s legislative priorities and other key issues facing veterans at large. [30:00]