50 episodes listed below
Air Force officership, explained from inside the work.
CommissionED follows Colin Slade and Reid Gann through practical conversations about Air Force officership, from cyber and electronic warfare roles to fitness culture and trust. Its tone is reflective, specific, and grounded in the everyday constraints of serving while speaking publicly.
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CommissionED is a completed Air Force officer-development podcast hosted by Colin Slade and Reid Gann. The show centers on the practical formation of officers: how they think, communicate, serve, train, and make decisions inside a large military institution. Its strongest episodes often function as career-field field guides. Major Brian Thorne appears in a two-part look at 17X cyberspace warfare, where communications, cyber operations, deterrence, technical literacy, and project management all come into view. Capt Johnny Snyder brings a specific look at the 12R Electronic Warfare Officer path. Maj John Boswell's Olmsted Scholar conversation gives the archive a rare window into a professional-development opportunity. Matt Reynolds' episode connects fitness culture, organizational trust, and Air Force leadership from the perspective of Barbell Logic. The show also makes room for lighter but still occupationally informed conversations, such as its good, bad, and ugly reading of Top Gun: Maverick. Those episodes work because the hosts keep comparing screen drama with day-to-day military reality. CommissionED is plainspoken and structured, but not stiff. It cares about doctrine, rules, forms, and career codes, yet it also leaves room for personal transitions and frustration. The final episodes make that especially clear. Colin Slade and Reid Gann explain the show's ending through the practical limits of voice, audience, timing, compensation, and DoD ethics rules. That transparency gives the archive a useful second layer: it is about officer development, and also about the boundaries around public commentary by serving military members. The show is best for listeners who want grounded professional context rather than surface-level military inspiration. It rewards attention to details such as AFSC changes, reserve status, mission qualification training, performance reports, and the way officers translate experience into civilian-readable skills. Its value is cumulative. Across the archive, CommissionED builds a picture of officership as a long series of disciplined choices, not a slogan.
Made for: Best for Air Force officers, officer candidates, military professionals, and civilians seeking a grounded view of officer development. It also suits listeners comparing career fields or trying to understand the practical culture behind airpower and space-related service.
What sets it apart: CommissionED stands apart through its mix of career-field specificity and transparent professional self-scrutiny. The hosts do not just interview guests about opportunities; they also examine rules, ethics, timing, and the limits of speaking publicly while serving.
Welcome to CommissionED: The Air Force Officer Podcast where we explore the training and development of America’s leaders in the application of airpower and the Profession of Arms.
Top Gun's magic briefing graphics get the scrutiny you were saving for the credits.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
CommissionED ends with a policy-bound farewell that keeps officer character at the center.
CommissionED closes by making its own ending a matter of military service, public office, and the limits those roles place on a podcast. Colin Slade and Reid Gann walk through how shifts in the show's voices, topic, audience, and timing brought them to DoD Instruction 5400.17,…
A candid third-year review ties Commission Ed's podcast goals to military training, reassignment, and professional change.
Commission Ed's third-year review works best as a clear-eyed check-in on what the podcast is trying to be and how its work gets made. Colin Slade and Reid Gann use the milestone to look back at the show's goals, but the episode becomes more substantial when Slade explains the…
A grounded review of how Air Force communications experience can widen into cyber operations and transferable leadership skills.
Major Brian Thorne's career path gives the episode a firm institutional spine, tracing a move through the 17 Delta communications officer and 17 Sierra cyber operations officer communities.
A military aviation podcast measures Top Gun: Maverick against the routines, roles, and limits of service life.
Colin Slade and Reid Gann give Top Gun: Maverick a grounded military read, weighing its crowd-pleasing aviation fantasy against the routines and roles it smooths out for the screen.
Strategy beneath the threshold of war.
Sea power, policy, and history in context.
Business, culture, and chaos in one room.
Leadership lessons with history in the room.
Weekly military policy, pay, and deployment briefings.
CommissionED’s final episode has Reid Slade and Colin Gann walking through three reasons the show is ending: their voices have shifted from company-grade officers to field-grade officers, their audience still exists, and the timing no longer works for their own development.
CommissionED’s year-three review centers on 155,000 all-time downloads, 54K downloads in the third year, and 75,000 YouTube views after a channel launch that began in September.
Maj Brian Thorn maps the 17X cyberspace warfare officer pipeline, including a year and a half to two years of offensive training and about nine months to a year at Keesler.
Major Brian Thorne traces a path from wanting Annapolis and West Point to accepting the Air Force Academy after an eyesight issue changed his plans.
CommissionED hosts Colin Slade and Reid Gann react to Top Gun: Maverick, saying the film crossed $1 billion and that Tom Cruise’s first billion-dollar movie is worth seeing in a theater.
Colin Sleed and Reed Gann argue that protecting Americans' freedoms requires military officers to accept restrictions on their own speech and political activity.
Major Joseph Strabley, a prior-enlisted fuels specialist and Air National Guard logistics readiness officer, explains how LROs support Air Force operations.
Colin Slade and Reed Gann outline the Air Force change of command, a ceremony that may last about 20 minutes.
Hosts interview Major John J.B.
Hosts discuss fitness culture in the Air Force and interview the CEO of Barbell Logic on building a culture of trust.
Hosts interview an Air Force officer about his career and promotion to major, discussing electronic warfare and officer development.
Hosts Colin Slade and Reid Gann introduce an interview with Captain Megan Thiem, a former Army combat medic turned Air Force flight nurse, discussing her career and experiences.