#740 FireSide Chat w/ the Crew; 24 Sep 2026

FireSide Chat with the Crew | Episode #740

Sometimes the best FireSide Chats are the ones where there is no agenda and no telling where the conversation is going to go.

In this episode of The Lost Art Project FireSide Chat, AJ Cox is joined by fellow Marine veteran Mike McNany for an open conversation about veterans, the growth of The Lost Art Project, old Marine Corps memories, family, getting older, podcasting, and plenty of humor along the way.

Later in the show, Nelson Zapata, a Marine musician veteran who served alongside Mike in the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Band, jumps into the conversation as well.

AJ gives an update on just how far The Lost Art Project has come. The podcast has now reached 38,800+ all-time downloads, 737 episodes, 1,032 veteran appearances, 255 unique veterans, and more than 678 hours of recorded content. AJ and Mike talk about what those numbers really represent—not simply podcast statistics, but hundreds of veterans and thousands of hours of history being preserved for future generations.

The conversation also gets into the continued expansion of the Historical Archivist Program and AJ's goal of having more archivists around the country recording veterans in their own communities. As that program grows, The Lost Art Project could eventually be releasing veteran stories every day while continuing the regular FireSide Chats.

AJ and Mike also discuss something that separates The Lost Art Project from a traditional podcast. The podcast isn't the mission—the stories are. Downloads and views help people discover the veterans and their experiences, but the ultimate goal is to collect and preserve the firsthand accounts of ordinary service members. These are often the voices that don't make it into history books: the young Marines, soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardians and Coast Guardsmen who can tell history from where they actually stood.

With The Lost Art Project preparing for the Arkansas-Oklahoma State Fair, the conversation also turns to getting out into the community, meeting veterans and their families, inviting veterans to record their stories, and raising support for the mission. From there, as FireSide Chats tend to do, the conversation goes in every direction imaginable—with stories about fairs, amusement rides, childhood, Marine Corps nicknames, military humor, marriage, cruises, getting older, and some good old-fashioned trash talking.

There may not have been an agenda for this one, but that's exactly what makes