Episodes

  • When Companies Run The Courts

    When Companies Run The Courts
    May 12 2026
    Today I sit down with Brendan Ballou and discuss a book EVERYONE should read: When The Companies Run The Courts.

    America has a hidden justice system. There, decisions are made in secret, and “judges” are paid for by the companies and abusers who are being sued. Victims usually lose. But when they do, they cannot appeal, and they cannot turn to real courts for help.

    They are trapped in this system, and quite likely, so are you. You joined it when you accepted the Terms and Conditions on a website, opened a new credit card, or started a new job. When you did, you agreed to be trapped in this secret justice system called “forced arbitration.” Through its secrecy and corruption, forced arbitration helps companies cheat their workers, helps banks deceive their customers, and helps predators act with impunity. If companies and the very powerful often seem beyond the reach of the law, it’s because they are, and forced arbitration is the reason.

    Yet despite the fact that forced arbitration profoundly shapes our lives, almost nothing has been written about it. Brendan Ballou’s When Companies Run the Courts changes that. It shows how forced arbitration came to be, how it makes your life worse, and how we might escape it.

    Buy The Book HERE.

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    44 mins
  • Athens and Sparta: The Rivalry That Shaped Ancient Greece

    Athens and Sparta: The Rivalry That Shaped Ancient Greece
    May 12 2026
    Today I am proud to welcome back renowned historian, Adrian Goldsworthy, to discuss his latest book: Athens and Sparta: The Rivalry That Shaped Ancient Greece.

    No period has more profoundly influenced the Western world than classical Greece, and at its center stood two cities: Athens and Sparta. Side by side, they beat the Persians, the only superpower of that age. Yet later, they spread conflict and destruction throughout the eastern Mediterranean, culminating in the horrors of the Peloponnesian War.

    Athens and Sparta tells the definitive history of the relationship between brutal, militaristic Sparta and brash, radically democratic Athens. Eminent historian Adrian Goldsworthy narrates their incredible rise to prominence and how they became allies, rivals, and enemies. Ultimately, Goldsworthy shows that Athens and Sparta were more than competitors vying for power. They were polar opposites in ideology and culture, both driven by the Greek longing to excel, who led radically different experiments in how to run a state.

    A remarkable account of ancient Greece at its height, this is the tale of the two cities that helped build it—before almost tearing it apart.

    Buy The Book

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    59 mins
  • Episode 535: I won't be Reconstructed...

    Episode 535: I won't be Reconstructed...
    May 8 2026
    The era we call Reconstruction is one of the most hopeful, and ultimately, heartbreaking of American history. The passage of the Reconstruction Amendments provided legal rights to thousands of people. But the bargain of 1877 and the corruption of the Gilded Age ultimately prove too much weight for the promise of equality to bear.

    Western Civ 2.0
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    43 mins
  • Episode 534: European Supernova

    Episode 534: European Supernova
    May 1 2026
    In the second half of the 19th Century, Europe goes nuclear and expands across the globe. The "Scramble for Africa" and press for colonies drove the European states to compete with one another in ways that will have disasterous consequences.

    Western Civ 2.0
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    34 mins
  • Europe: A New History

    Europe: A New History
    Apr 28 2026
    In this bonus, author interview, I sit down with historian Roderick Beaton and discuss his latest book, Europe: A New History.

    What do we talk about when we talk about Europe? Is it defined by geography? Or is it politics, or shared culture? In Europe, award-winning historian Roderick Beaton tells the story of Europe as never before—as the history of an idea, and a collective identity.

    Since its dramatic birth in ancient Greece, “Europe” has been defined, and redefined, by its people. Through this powerful lens, and with the narrative drive and scope of a novelist, Beaton deftly surveys Europe’s major historical developments: the rise and fall of Rome; the explosion of Christianity; the intellectual ferment of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment; the arrival of Europeans in the Americas; the violent upheavals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and the uncertainties of the present. Throughout, original sources allow the voices of the past, from Tacitus to Thatcher, to speak for themselves.

    Grappling with the multilayered identities that have always come with being European, Europe places the Europe of today in a long arc of history stretching back more than 2,500 years.

    BUY THE BOOK

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    45 mins
  • Episode 533: Blood and Iron

    Episode 533: Blood and Iron
    Apr 24 2026
    In the span of a decade, Bismarck does the unthinkable. He unites Germany, changing the history of western civilization forever.

    Western Civ 2.0
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    1 hr and 25 mins
  • Episode 532: Italy

    Episode 532: Italy
    Apr 17 2026
    Over a period of thirty years, Italy goes from a fragmentation of independent, kind of, states and kingdoms and into a unified, kind of, nation.

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    1 hr and 1 min
  • Episode 531: Canons to the Right of Them!

    Episode 531: Canons to the Right of Them!
    Apr 10 2026
    The Crimean War really does sound the advance warning of the death knell for the Concert of Europe. If only anyone knew that...

    Western Civ 2.0
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    39 mins