Episodios

  • Neal Stephenson on AI, Rome, and How Civilizations Decline

    Neal Stephenson on AI, Rome, and How Civilizations Decline
    Apr 9 2026
    Neal Stephenson, the prophetic author of cyberpunk classics like Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, has shaped how we imagine the future, from the metaverse to crypto to AI. His science fiction has a way of becoming reality. But Stephenson’s thinking is just as rooted in the past, returning to timeless questions of empire and decline. In this episode, he joins Shilo to discuss Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a sweeping work that has captivated readers from Winston Churchill to Iggy Pop. Was Rome undone by barbarians, Christianity, decadence, or elite failure? And what do those patterns reveal about our own age of technological upheaval—and the risks of AI? Old School is proudly brought to you by the Jack Miller Center. If you believe in the importance of civic education and want to help prepare the next generation to carry on our democracy, join us at JackMillerCenter.org. Become a paid subscriber to The Free Press today to enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and reduced ads. Click here to subscribe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Más Menos
    49 m
  • The Two Types of People Who Never Find Happiness

    The Two Types of People Who Never Find Happiness
    Mar 26 2026
    For tickets to our live recording with Jon Meacham in Philadelphia, CLICK HERE and register. Use code TFP for a 20 percent discount. Life is short. How do we live it well? Harvard professor Arthur Brooks has spent years studying happiness. In this episode, he joins Shilo to explore what neuroscience, faith, and philosophy reveal about how to live a happy life. Most of us are caught up in either the pursuit of empty pleasures or the pursuit of great achievement—“slacker” and “striver” extremes that keep us in a doom loop, like addicts. The real keys to happiness are deepening relationships, cultivating faith, and committing to lifelong learning, without concern for external validation or reward. Above all, we must learn to love and be loved and to accept suffering and heartbreak as features, not bugs, of a meaningful life. Arthur’s latest book, The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness, comes out March 31, 2025, pre-order your copy today at the link! Old School is proudly brought to you by the Jack Miller Center. If you believe in the importance of civic education and want to help prepare the next generation to carry on our democracy, join us at JackMillerCenter.org. Become a paid subscriber to The Free Press today to enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and reduced ads. Click here to subscribe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Más Menos
    53 m
  • Hunting Humans for Sport

    Hunting Humans for Sport
    Mar 19 2026
    For tickets to our live recording with Jon Meacham in Philadelphia, CLICK HERE and register. Use code TFP for a 20 percent discount. Richard Connell’s 1924 short story “The Most Dangerous Game” tells of a hyper-sophisticated aristocrat who hunts human beings for sport on his private island. In this episode, best-selling author, screenwriter, and former Navy SEAL sniper Jack Carr joins Shilo to discuss the story’s enormous influence on the thriller genre, including on Carr’s own novels. The conversation explores the thin line between killing and murder—and when violence becomes necessary for peace. Carr also explains why he is skeptical of current U.S. operations against Iran and talk of regime change, and recounts his successful push to change the name of the U.S. Department of Defense back to the Department of War in 2025. Old School is proudly brought to you by the Jack Miller Center. If you believe in the importance of civic education and want to help prepare the next generation to carry on our democracy, join us at JackMillerCenter.org. Become a paid subscriber to The Free Press today to enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and reduced ads. Click here to subscribe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Más Menos
    55 m
  • Joan Didion Knew What Hollywood Would Become

    Joan Didion Knew What Hollywood Would Become
    Mar 12 2026
    The perfect book to read around the Oscars this weekend? Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays. In this episode, Shilo sits down with Peter Savodnik to discuss Didion’s 1970 novel—a book that seemed to anticipate everything ugly about Hollywood, celebrity culture, and the spiritual emptiness that we now take for granted on the red carpet and on social media. They break down why Didion’s story of an actress drifting through 1960s Los Angeles feels like it could have been written in 2026, how she saw the darker underside of feminist “liberation” long before it was fashionable to question it, and why the real problem with today’s young stars is that we hear from them constantly, leaving little of the mystique that once defined celebrity. Old School is proudly brought to you by the Jack Miller Center. If you believe in the importance of civic education and want to help prepare the next generation to carry on our democracy, join us at JackMillerCenter.org. Become a paid subscriber to The Free Press today to enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and reduced ads. Click here to subscribe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Más Menos
    55 m
  • The NYC Public Defender Who Sends Books to Prisoners

    The NYC Public Defender Who Sends Books to Prisoners
    Mar 5 2026
    In this episode, Shilo Brooks sits down with New York City public defender Ben Schatz to discuss the novel True Grit–and the nature of justice in America. Ben founded the nonprofit Books Beyond Bars, which sends requested books (not just random donations) to individuals locked in in New York jails and prisons, giving them dignity, mental escape, and intellectual stimulation. After discussing True Grit, Ben offers his critique of the U.S. criminal justice system itself: its coercive plea bargaining, racism, overburdened defenders and judges, and prisons that function more as warehouses than places of rehabilitation, especially for mentally ill and addicted people. Throughout, the conversation links the moral center of True Grit to real‑world questions about what justice is, who deserves mercy, and how to look past someone’s criminal history. Old School is proudly brought to you by the Jack Miller Center. If you believe in the importance of civic education and want to help prepare the next generation to carry on our democracy, join us at JackMillerCenter.org. Become a paid subscriber to The Free Press today to enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and reduced ads. Click here to subscribe. The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Más Menos
    56 m
  • ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ Helped Inspire the Catholic App Hallow

    ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ Helped Inspire the Catholic App Hallow
    Feb 26 2026
    Alex Jones was using apps like Headspace and Calm to quiet his mind, but he had fallen away from his Catholic faith. Then he read The Brothers Karamazov, and everything changed. Alex, who went on to recommit himself to Christ and start Hallow, the Catholic prayer app with millions of users worldwide, believes Dostoevsky’s classic is the perfect book to read for Lent. In this conversation, Alex explains to Shilo how the novel mirrors Christian scripture, explores Dostoevsky’s answer to the problem of evil, and shares why he chose the Silicon Valley start-up model as his unlikely but powerful way to bring millions of people back to daily prayer. Old School is proudly brought to you by the Jack Miller Center. If you believe in the importance of civic education and want to help prepare the next generation to carry on our democracy, join us at JackMillerCenter.org. Become a paid subscriber to The Free Press today to enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and reduced ads. Click here to subscribe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Más Menos
    55 m
  • ‘Lolita,’ Jeffrey Epstein, and the Real Meaning of a Challenging Classic

    ‘Lolita,’ Jeffrey Epstein, and the Real Meaning of a Challenging Classic
    Feb 19 2026
    One particular novel is all over the Epstein files: Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. Reportedly, this was the one and only book Jeffrey Epstein kept at his bedside table. He owned a first edition. It pops up in emails and in photos, released by the House Oversight Committee, that show young women with quotes from the book written on their bodies. Lolita is about a 38-year-old man who kidnaps and serially rapes a 12-year-old girl. The book is not only a literary masterpiece, but a fixture of American pop culture. The illicit relationship it depicts is often glamorized in film, music, and art. Today, Rafaela Siewert interviews Shilo Brooks about Lolita–and about how a novel narrated by a homicidal pedophile rapist came to occupy such a prominent place in American life. Old School is proudly brought to you by the Jack Miller Center. If you believe in the importance of civic education and want to help prepare the next generation to carry on our democracy, join us at JackMillerCenter.org. Become a paid subscriber to The Free Press today to enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and reduced ads. Click here to subscribe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Más Menos
    49 m
  • The Secret Lives of Ordinary People

    The Secret Lives of Ordinary People
    Feb 12 2026
    Dylan Thomas is one of the 20th century’s legendary poets. In this episode, English journalist David Aaronovitch joins Shilo to discuss Thomas’ 1954 play Under Milk Wood, a portrait of a small Welsh seaside town, originally produced for radio. With rich, musical language, Thomas reveals the secret interior lives of the villagers—their dreams, lusts, resentments, and longings—without condescension, inviting the listener to see that “these people are you” and to recognize one’s own hidden thoughts in even the most comic or disturbing characters. They discuss how the play is exceptional in a flattened, cliché-ridden culture obsessed with exterior image and dismissive of the complexity of ordinary people. Old School is proudly brought to you by the Jack Miller Center. If you believe in the importance of civic education and want to help prepare the next generation to carry on our democracy, join us at JackMillerCenter.org. Become a paid subscriber to The Free Press today to enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and reduced ads. Click here to subscribe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    Más Menos
    54 m