Advertise on podcast: Echoes of the Vietnam War

In November 2025, Dave Mann flew to Vietnam, a country he'd felt hostile toward his entire life. He met sons and daughters of the enemy’s fallen, and he stood on the same ground where his father died in 1969. When he came home, Dave’s hostility had transformed into something different.

In May 1969, a 20-year-old farm boy from Illinois was killed at Dak To, just six weeks into his tour. He left behind a pregnant wife who would give birth to their son three months later. That son grew up angry, and he carried that weight a long time — 47 years — until he finally found a community to share it with.

In Vietnam, keeping our military force fed was a massive logistical undertaking. For infantry units operating in the field for weeks at a time, mess cooks had to set up kitchens in jungle clearings and find creative ways to refuel men exhausted by intense heat and constant danger. Dan Gooch was one of those cooks.

Helicopter pilots made up about 1.5% of the total service members in the Vietnam War, yet they represent about 4% of the total killed in action. In this episode, an Army aviator pays tribute to the generation of helicopter pilots who trained and inspired him.

Ross Meador was just a 19-year-old kid with $500 and a one-way ticket to Vietnam, thinking he'd play with some kids for a few weeks before continuing his trip around the world. Instead, he found himself at the center of one of the most dramatic humanitarian evacuations in American history.

Robert McNamara is one of the most polarizing figures in the history of the Vietnam War. A revealing new biography draws upon previously unseen personal papers, letters, and diaries to shed new light on one of the most consequential and tormented figures of his era.

In Part 1 of this two-part series we explored how families navigate the system designed to find America's missing warriors. This episode examines the hopes and the frustrations flowing from that continuing effort, questions about closure, what Vietnam MIA families should expect, and what they can do in the meantime.

September 19 is National POW/MIA Recognition Day in the United States. In this two-part series, we'll explore what it means to be part of that ongoing story — the families who wait, the system created to find answers, and the private researchers who work to complement the government's efforts.

What happens when the stories we tell about war take on a life of their own? In this episode, a Vietnam veteran-turned-historian explores how memory, myth, and personal testimony have shaped America’s understanding of the Vietnam War and why resilience and truth matter as much as remembrance.

Nurses like Sarah Blum spent their tours in Vietnam doing the unimaginable, accumulating and internalizing trauma that would surface over the decades that followed. In this episode, Sarah shares what it takes to do this work... and what it takes to heal.

We all have heard the proverb, "Like Father, Like Son." Patrick Naughton is a military historian and a combat veteran of the Global War on Terror. His father is a combat veteran of the Vietnam War. Patrick recently published his first book, in which he compares his father’s experience in Vietnam to his own experience in Iraq.

Sometimes the most important thing isn't fixing someone's pain — it's simply being willing to sit with them while they endure it. As we draw near the end of National PTSD Awareness Month, we’ll find out how a tragic death became a bridge between father and son, and how the work of healing trauma never really ends.

In this final episode of our series about the Vietnamese-American experience over the past 50 years, we’ll explore how that community has evolved from refugees to contributors, from survivors to leaders, and how their success stands as perhaps the most enduring testament to what American service members fought to preserve.

Fifty years ago, thousands of Vietnamese refugees arrived in America with little more than the clothes on their backs and memories of a homeland left behind. In the second of this three-episode series, we explore how they transformed themselves from displaced people into one of America's most vibrant communities.

In the first installment of a three-part series, we explore the chaotic final days of April 1975, when thousands of South Vietnamese citizens desperately sought escape as North Vietnamese forces closed in on Saigon. You'll hear firsthand accounts from both sides of this massive evacuation, and from those who were part of the waves of exodus that followed.