Episodios

  • The Root & Branch Petition

    The Root & Branch Petition
    Dec 12 2025
    Nanking in 1937 is one of those moments when history forces us to look at the world without any comforting illusions. A capital city stood in the path of a modern army that believed its victory was inevitable and that its anger was justified. The result was a collapse that left civilians and soldiers trapped together inside a city that could not protect them. When the Japanese army entered Nanking, the violence that followed revealed how quickly human restraint can evaporate once leaders remove the rules that hold it in place. The stories that survive come from diaries, film reels, and the few people who stayed behind to shield as many lives as they could. Today we revisit Nanking not to reopen old wounds, but to understand how they were made. History does not offer comfort here. It offers clarity, and sometimes clarity is the only way forward.
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    6 m
  • Back Home Again in Indiana

    Back Home Again in Indiana
    Dec 11 2025
    Indiana entered the Union on a cold December day in 1816, but its story did not begin with the signing of a document in Washington. It began in the quiet rise of ancient mounds, in the footsteps of hunters along the White River, and in the long echo of cultures that shaped the land long before anyone called it a state. By the time Congress approved Indiana’s admission, the region had already lived through French traders, British ambitions, American expansion, and the fierce resolve of leaders like Tecumseh who understood what was at stake.
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    5 m
  • The Doctrinal Epitaph

    The Doctrinal Epitaph
    Dec 10 2025
    The loss of Force Z on December 10, 1941 stands as one of those moments when history shifts so sharply that everyone involved feels the ground tilt beneath them. Two British capital ships, proud and imposing in silhouette, sailed into a world that had already left them behind. They were sent out in the hope that tradition might still hold the line in the Pacific. Instead, they found a sky that had become the real battlefield and an enemy trained to fight on that field with ruthless precision. This story is not a simple tale of miscalculation or of one admiral’s flawed judgment. It is a story about an entire system that trusted old doctrines more than new realities. Prince of Wales and Repulse carried with them the weight of the Empire, the assumptions of an earlier age, and the belief that steel and armor could still intimidate an adversary. When they slipped beneath the water, that belief went with them. What follows is not a lecture on strategy. It is a walk through the final hours of ships that deserved better from the world that sent them out. Their fate reminds us how quickly history can rewrite its own rules.
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    6 m
  • What The Frock - The Musical

    What The Frock - The Musical
    Dec 5 2025
    For years Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod have filled the airwaves with commentary, complaints, odd theology, accidental wisdom, and a level of bewilderment that most philosophers would envy. The show has always lived at the intersection of humor and honesty, the place where ordinary life becomes absurd enough to laugh at and meaningful enough to talk about. Turning that into a musical seemed impossible. Naturally, that meant we had to do it. What The Frock: The Musical takes everything listeners have come to love and folds it into a story of destiny gone wrong, divine paperwork misplaced, ancient Goliard masters, and two mortals who never asked for a quest yet somehow ended up with one. It is a tale of broken cables, botched recordings, tiny miracles, and the belief that if you keep talking long enough, something true will eventually wander into the room. The songs carry the same spirit. They tease, they question, they sigh, they celebrate, and sometimes they reveal a little more heart than anyone intends. The podcast version of the musical gives listeners the chance to experience the show from the best seat in the house. It unfolds scene by scene with the same warmth, sarcasm, and cosmic side eye that shaped the original idea. You will hear Fortuna guiding the story with dramatic confidence. You will hear heavenly clerks creating more problems than they solve. You will hear medieval chanting, accidental heroism, and the first sparks of a destiny that was never meant to land on two men who can barely keep their microphones plugged in. Most of all, you will hear the heart of What The Frock. Two friends trying to understand the world, laughing at its nonsense, and offering listeners a place to stand while the universe wobbles. There is something beautiful in that work, even when it is wrapped in comedy and confusion. The curtain rises soon. The music begins. And the strange little show that should not exist steps proudly into the spotlight. Welcome to What The Frock: The Musical. Enjoy the chaos. Enjoy the songs. And thank you for being part of the story.
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    1 h y 12 m
  • Devotion

    Devotion
    Dec 4 2025
    There are moments in military history when a decision is made so quickly and with such instinctive devotion that it feels almost otherworldly, as if a crack opened in the ordinary fabric of events and revealed what human beings can be at their very best. In the frozen chaos of the Chosin Reservoir, on a December afternoon in 1950, an unassuming pilot from Massachusetts made one of those decisions. The United States Navy had seen courage before. The world had, too. Yet what Tom Hudner chose to do defied not only common sense but every hard edged rule of survival that experienced pilots learn to follow...
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    7 m
  • A Revolution in Principle

    A Revolution in Principle
    Dec 3 2025
    The election of 1800 does not look like a revolution when you first glance at it. There are no barricades, no mobs storming palaces, and no generals turning their coats inside out in torchlit alleys. Yet Jefferson would later call it the Revolution of 1800, and for once a politician reached for a dramatic phrase that was not entirely inflated. What happened in that year was not a revolution of bullets but a revolution of temperament. It was the moment when the United States proved that power could shift peacefully in the face of anger and fear. Europe, still staggering from the shockwaves of the French Revolution, looked like a warning about what happened when tempers and theories ran ahead of constitutions. In contrast, the United States managed to change course with a kind of weary dignity. It was far from quiet, and it was hardly free of danger, but it worked. There is something impressive about a nation that nearly tears itself apart and then pretends that everything went fine because the furniture was not yet on fire.
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    6 m
  • DDH - Judges

    DDH - Judges
    Dec 2 2025
    Today’s episode looks at the grievance that turned the colonial court system into a warning sign that the imperial relationship was breaking apart. Dave takes listeners back to the moment when King George III decided that judges in Massachusetts would be paid directly from the royal treasury. On paper it looked like an administrative change. In real life it created the perfect storm that swept Chief Justice Peter Oliver out of public trust and into exile. From there the story widens to North Carolina, where the King’s refusal to approve a single provision in a judicial bill left the colony without a functioning court system for more than three years. Justice froze, debts piled up, and colonists learned that the Crown was willing to shut down their legal protections to make a point. Dave uses these two stories to explore a question that never goes away. Do people still believe their judges are truly independent.
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    Menos de 1 minuto
  • Sea Devil Sinks SS Hawaii Maru

    Sea Devil Sinks SS Hawaii Maru
    Dec 2 2025
    There are stories from the Pacific War that settle into the mind with a kind of heavy clarity. They do not shout. They do not demand. They simply sit there and remind us that the ocean has a long memory. Today we are stepping into one of those stories, the night when USS Sea Devil went hunting in the East China Sea and crossed paths with a former passenger liner that had become something far more tragic. Hawaii Maru began her life carrying travelers who dressed for dinner. By the winter of 1944 she was carrying soldiers, gasoline, ammunition, and the burden of a war that was already slipping away from Japan. What happened when Sea Devil found her was swift, violent, and final. It was also a moment that reveals the strange mix of skill, fear, and consequence that shaped submarine warfare.
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    6 m