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It's up to you how much you give and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. People live in a world with their own making.

Frankly, that seems to be the problem.

Welcome to Angry Planet. I'm Jason Fields. Matthew Gault had some car trouble and he'll be back soon.

Right now Russia is learning a lesson as old as combat.

Morale is at the center of any fighting force.

How does it change things though when you can pick up your cell phone and call your mom to

share your experiences or even complain about your commanders. How do you build a band of

brothers when home is just a phone call away. Colonel John Spencer asked himself these questions and wrote a book about it called Connected Soldiers, Life, Leadership, and Social Connections in modern war.

Spencer is the chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me. I'm going to ask just the most basic question.

You know, neither Matthew and I have ever served and I know, you know, hopefully we've never

pretended otherwise.

So at its most basic, how do you create an effective fighting unit

out of a bunch of guys who just came out of many different backgrounds.

So, you know, while that's a simple question, it's actually really complex,

but there are things that we've learned across the history of warfare that work in because

war is both an individual act right the so the individual soldiers psychology his physiology his belief of control but it's more

importantly a group act so everything from the day we enter the military much of what we're told to do or what we do as kind of an organization is has this combat translation, right?

Everything from eating together, sleeping together, achieving a sense of group identity is all about really preparing them for war as we know and research shows the number one answer to any soldier really in any military

why do you fight why are you moving forward in the face of insane horrible things waiting to try to kill you?

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