{"podcast":{"title":"BardsFM","slug":"bardsfm-428602","podcast_index_feed_id":428602,"rss_url":"https://www.bards.fm/feed.xml","website_url":"https://bardsfm.podbean.com","image_url":"https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/image-logo/7724201/BFM_Logo_Image2_FinalMidJourney_DraftV1.png","author":"Scott Kesterson","episode_count":2999,"summary":"War is the teacher, soldiers its students. Faith and Knowledge the greatest weapons of war. Through stories, we reshape the narratives to strengthen our resolve, awaken the truth, expand our vision beyond the limits of the Matrix and bring us closer to God. In the end, God wins.","last_synced_at":"2026-09-19T10:22:12.483264+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/bardsfm-428602"},"episode":{"title":"Horse Soldiers: The Green Berets Who Rode Into Afghanistan on 9/11's 25th Anniversary │ BardsFM","slug":"horse-soldiers-the-green-berets-who-rode-into-afghanistan-on-9-11-s-25th-anniversary-bardsfm","published_at":"2026-09-11T22:09:37+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/bardsfm-428602/horse-soldiers-the-green-berets-who-rode-into-afghanistan-on-9-11-s-25th-anniversary-bardsfm","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/bardsfm-428602","url":"https://www.bards.fm/e/horse-soldiers-the-green-berets-who-rode-into-afghanistan-on-911s-25th-anniversary-%e2%94%82-bardsfm/","audio_url":"https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/7t23ghmh9jixkypz/BFM_20260911.mp3","summary":"Episode 4223 │ September 11, 2026 American soldiers rode horses into battle for the first time since World War II. They had never ridden before. They had eighteen days to learn. WHAT THIS EPISODE COVERS Scott Kesterson marks the 25th anniversary of September 11th by first remembering the astonishing thirty days of national unity that followed the attacks — Canadians opening their homes to stranded Americans, strangers handing cash to people in need at highway off-ramps, a nation that briefly set aside every division to grieve and help as one — before turning to the story of the Fifth Special Forces Group's Operation Detachment Alphas, twelve-man teams flown into Afghanistan through sandstorm and near-zero visibility to link up with Northern Alliance fighters who had never met them, learning to ride ill-fitting Afghan saddles by force of necessity and calling in the first close-air B-52 support since Vietnam to topple the Taliban regime within a month. Scott reads the actual Special Forces prayer alongside firsthand accounts from Task Force Dagger veterans, documenting the friendly-fire tragedy that killed three Americans on December 5, 2001, and the full casualty accounting of both the Afghanistan war and the original attacks, closing with a memorial prayer written for the 25th anniversary that asks not for an explanation of evil but for the harder peace that carries a scar and still chooses to build. KEY QUESTIONS ADDRESSED What happened in America during the thirty days following September 11th — and why does Scott argue that the nationwide outpouring of generosity, from Canadian radio callers offering strangers a place to stay to drivers handing cash out their windows, represents one of the most remarkable and under appreciated responses in the nation's history? Wha…","meta_description":"Episode 4223 │ September 11, 2026 American soldiers rode horses into battle for the first time since World War II. They had never ridden before. They had…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":3372,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/bardsfm-428602/episodes/horse-soldiers-the-green-berets-who-rode-into-afghanistan-on-9-11-s-25th-anniversary-bardsfm/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/bardsfm-428602/horse-soldiers-the-green-berets-who-rode-into-afghanistan-on-9-11-s-25th-anniversary-bardsfm.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}