The Truth About Women in Combat (Cultural Support Team)| Stephanie Rotolo
6/20/20261 hr 47 min
Stephanie Rotolo joins us to talk about her path from Mortuary Affairs and MP work to joining the Cultural Support Team program and deploying to Afghanistan with Special Operations Forces. She breaks down CST selection, working with Afghan female tactical platoons, going out on missions with ODAs, and how those experiences shaped her later work in Civil Affairs across West Africa.
Find Stephanie here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-r-d-rotolo-1b01641a6?trk=public\_post\_feed-actor-name
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"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"
00:00 Start
01:43 Stephanie’s origin story and path to the Army
07:20 Mortuary Affairs and working at Dover
12:53 ROTC, commissioning, and becoming an MP
17:04 MP life in Germany and barracks chaos
25:31 Discovering the Cultural Support Team program
28:14 CST selection and Ranger-led training
33:08 Cultural training and preparing for Afghanistan
38:11 Training Afghanistan’s Female Tactical Platoon
48:00 Operations with ODAs, Rangers, and JSOC
58:00 Coming home, reintegration, and CST program gaps
1:04:36 Smokey the deployment dog
1:12:10 Switching to Civil Affairs and language school
1:15:18 West Africa missions in Senegal and Benin
1:26:30 Naples, the reserves, Altru, and final reflections
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSpeaker 10:00
What's up, y'all? Summer's got a different tempo. Everything's a little looser, brighter. One plan turns into another. You hear something, you stay a little longer. Next thing you know, you're somewhere you didn't plan to be. It's those in-between moments, that's where the ideas hit. Conversations stretch out, little memories sneak up on you. Sometimes it's just about what's in your hand, that color, that chill. The new Tropical Butterfly Refresher from Starbucks. Guava and passion fruit flavors with mango pineapple flavored pearls. Yeah, that feels like summer before you even taste it. Funny how one small stop becomes the best part of the day. Start your summer rhythm with Starbucks. Try the new Tropical Butterfly Refresher from Starbucks.
Shannon Maldonado0:46
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Jack Murphy· Host1:16
Hey guys, I wanna tell you tonight about my new novel, The Most Dangerous Man, coming out June 9th. I think, like a lot of you, I read in high school the short story, The Greatest Game,