Leonardo da Vinci once wrote that the key to developing a “complete mind” was to “study the science of art. Study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”

In 2009, Sherry Zhang and a group of dedicated California parents who were disillusioned with the schools in their area decided to co-found an academic institution that would put this philosophy into practice.

A former Silicon Valley entrepreneur and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory postdoctoral chemist, Zhang shares her unexpected journey from working in a garage tech start up to being a founding member of a classical academy.

In this episode, Zhang discusses the core philosophy behind classical education—built upon three tenets: truth, goodness, and beauty. She reveals how intensive training in classical Chinese dance, ballet, visual arts, and music causes students to develop habits of perseverance, focus, and attentiveness that transfer to academics.

In an age dominated by instant gratification and digital distraction, Zhang explains how the structure of classical arts provides order that children long for.

One student, Hugo, came to the San Francisco High School of the Arts unable to focus and with failing grades. After one year at the school, he began to prosper academically, and his mother was stunned. His story is just one among many, Zhang says.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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U.S. federal investigators recently discovered a sophisticated tunnel 55 feet underground between Mexico and California—among the largest ever found—with electricity, a rail system, ventilation, reinforced walls, and a complex hydraulic lift system.

White House “drug czar” Sara Carter estimated that it was used to transport narcotics worth hundreds of millions of dollars. This is just one of the over 200 tunnels of varying sizes and sophistication that have been discovered in the last four decades, with many more likely still undetected, she said.

As Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), Carter is fighting to end the narcotic epidemic killing Americans, seize cartel finances, and make a drug-free life the new norm in America.

Deaths from illicit narcotics in America have been rising for decades and reached an all-time high in 2022, with 112,000 Americans dying in a single year. Since the Trump administration took office, that number has dropped to about 68,000 for the 12-month period ending in November 2025. But Americans of all ages are still dying.

In this episode, Carter breaks down the complex pipelines that are driving this epidemic and how the Trump administration has been going on the offensive to attack both the supply and demand sides of this crisis.

How exactly do illicit narcotics and precursor chemicals make their way into the United States? How have America’s enemies weaponized these deadly drugs? And how can we begin to comprehend the truly devastating human cost—the many young lives that were abruptly cut short and the families left behind?

Carter revealed that she always thinks to herself, “This could be my child.”

On the evening of our interview, she told us she would be heading to meet an Angel family who recently lost their son, a recent law graduate, to a line of fentanyl-laced cocaine.

“His parents had all the hopes in the world for him. … He went to a party after law school in Miami and made a huge mistake. He did a line of cocaine that had fentanyl in it, seized, had a heart attack, and died in an instant in the party,” she says.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“We are definitively, with no debate, in a demographic winter in the history of the United States of America. We have never had a lower marriage rate, and we’ve never had a lower fertility rate,” says Timothy Goeglein, vice president of External and Government Relations at Focus on the Family.

Goeglein is the author of multiple books, including most recently “What Really Matters: Restoring a Legacy of Faith, Freedom, and Family.”

In our interview, we explore how America ended up where it is today. Why are millions of prime-age men neither working nor seeking a job? Why do women find it so hard to find a good partner? What is the antidote to America’s high rates of suicide, drug overdose, pornography addiction, and family dysfunction?

“The biggest single challenge facing America in its 250th year … is a spiritual crisis of a pretty substantial order,” Goeglein said. He believes we are witnessing in America “the practical ramifications of destroying an objective moral code … of saying you can’t really define good and evil.”

Luckily, this is not the whole story. In this interview, Goeglein explains the signs of hope he sees and what he calls “a quiet Renaissance.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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There are few people who understand the machinery behind modern disinformation and censorship better than Jacob Siegel. He’s a special features editor at Tablet Magazine and author of the new book “The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control.”

In this episode, we trace the origins of modern information control, from President Woodrow Wilson’s propaganda office during World War I and President Barack Obama’s “whole-of-society” framework, to the policing of information during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He breaks down how government agencies, major tech platforms, and large nonprofits can work together behind the scenes to control who gets to speak and who does not, and what ideas are expressed and which are obscured.

“If you can control the information, you can control the society,” Siegel said. And the digital age makes this possible to a degree never reached before, he added.

So, how has this transformed our society and our liberties?

“The principles of the constitutional order, the principles of the liberal nation state have begun to be profoundly eroded by this new kind of information-based political regime,” Siegel said.

“Those rights are relocated into the digital code, so the question of who can speak, who can express their ideas, is no longer clearly defined and delimited by these print-era documents. Now it becomes a question of who controls the digital code.”

According to Siegel, the transition to the digital era has resulted in a vast “sweeping away of previously existing local organizations [and] civic organizations.” And more recently, we have been witnessing, whether we are aware of it or not, what he calls the “vast acceleration of the erasure of core remnants of civil society.”

So how do we navigate this new digital arena, especially with the rise of artificial intelligence?

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Hungary is undergoing a major transformation with the election of a new prime minister.

After 16 years in power, Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party was swept from office in a historic landslide election in April and with an equally historic turnout of almost 80 percent.

The new Tisza party, led by Peter Magyar, won the largest super-majority in Hungary’s post-communist history with a platform focused on anti-corruption and national renewal. They’ve promised major changes to Hungary’s constitution, known as the Fundamental Law.

So what does this election mean for Hungary and how might the new leadership reorient its relationship with America, the European Union, Russia, and China?

Orban was known for his pro-family and pro-tradition domestic policies, while at the same time cultivating close ties with Russia and communist China and distancing himself from the EU.

Joining us today to break all this down is Hungarian constitutional law scholar Marton Sulyok, a visiting researcher at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution.

Sulyok is, notably, also the son of Hungary’s current President, Tamas Sulyok.

Magyar has demanded the resignation of Sulyok and other Orban allies. It remains to be seen whether they will be forced out by constitutional amendment or other means.

Despite his family ties, the younger Sulyok has remained strikingly detached.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Ahead of the 250th anniversary of America’s founding, New York Times bestselling author and talk show host Eric Metaxas is publishing his latest book, a 600-page volume titled “Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World.”

In the book, he argues that the American Revolution is the “only genuine revolution in the history of so-called revolutions.”

So what separated the American Revolution from other revolutions? What made it succeed? And what critical aspects of the American Revolution are no longer being taught in schools today?

Metaxas argues that America is currently facing its third existential crisis, after the American Revolution and the Civil War, and understanding the core principles behind America’s founding story is critical to preserving the liberties of this nation.

In the interview, we confront some key questions: How is the erosion of spiritual faith transforming American society? How does self-government work without the “moral and religious people” that John Adams described as a prerequisite for self-government? What is the proper role of a good citizen?

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Could communist Chinese infiltration of Canada become an existential threat to American security—or is it already one?

Scott McGregor has spent decades in the Canadian military and Canadian intelligence studying the threat that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) poses to Canada and North America more broadly. He has known about the CCP’s infiltration of Canada for many years and briefed major intelligence agencies in both Canada and the United States about it.

According to McGregor, the strategic partnership between Canada and China is extremely detrimental to Canada’s interests—and also poses a major security threat to America.

McGregor, who is the co-author of the book “The Mosaic Effect,” told me the partnership “came as quite a shock. ... This strategic alliance ... cuts the legs out of the people that have been trying to bring awareness to the threat of China to Canada and North America.”

U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments last year about Canada becoming America’s 51st state alienated many Canadians to such a degree that they are eager to distance themselves from America. But McGregor says the reality is that Canada very much depends on the United States. It’s by far Canada’s most important trading partner and an indispensable military partner.

“Canada relies on the United States as a partner in logistics support, especially militarily. When I deployed, we had Canadians that were saved because Americans had helicopters that could operate in regions that we just couldn’t. We didn’t have the capability. The same goes for weaponry,” he says.

Without American military support, McGregor warns, “We are left on our own. ... Canada needs the United States.”

But do Canadians want to hear such warnings? Do Canadians perhaps tend to overestimate their country’s military strength? Do they understand the depth of the threat from a China under CCP rule? Are they aware of the extent to which Canadian society has already been undermined over the last half century?

And are Canadians perhaps too trusting to realize that the CCP has a plan for Canada and is executing it?

He tells me: “China has a goal, an objective. It’s not destruction at this point. It’s disruption, and the disruption is working. They’ve outflanked us. We’re fighting amongst ourselves—exactly what they want.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

In this episode, I sit down with China analyst Gordon Chang to understand his view of the recent Trump–Xi talks in Beijing.

Who had the upper hand? Why did President Donald Trump take 17 CEOs of America’s largest corporations with him? And what was accomplished?

While Xi Jinping tries to present America as a declining power and China as an ascending one, the reality is that China faces several grave problems, Chang says: a collapsing demography, an ailing economy, and a military in disarray after a series of purges.

But China also holds two strong cards: a near-monopoly on rare-earth processing and on critical pharmaceutical precursors.

At the same time, China is winning the information war, Chang argues.

“Xi Jinping has been beating the crap out of us in the information warfare space, and that’s our fault,” he said.

Where is the future of U.S.–China relations headed? Will Trump call Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te—something no U.S. president has done in 47 years? How are shifting alliances in the region reshaping the geopolitical chessboard? And how close are we to a major confrontation? Is the “Thucydides Trap” narrative real?

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Rosi Orozco is one of the world’s leading voices against human trafficking. She has been working in human rights advocacy for over three decades, and as a member of the Chamber of Deputies of Mexico, she was the driving legislative force behind Mexico’s famous anti-trafficking law.

“There are 50 million people in the world in slavery,” Orozco tells me. And that, she believes, is a low estimate.

She was recently involved in helping three rescued girls, who are now at secure shelter in Mexico. “These three girls were minors, and a cartel was training them to kill, to sell drugs, and to [engage in] prostitution.”

What happened to those three minors—only 14, 15, and 17 years old—is fairly typical, she says. They saw an ad on TikTok that promised them “work in the tourism industry, and [promised] very good payment.” When they arrived at the Mexican tourist resort, they were captured.

Over the years, Orozco has helped more than 400 rescued people, mostly minors, slowly begin to rebuild their lives. But, she says, “400 is nothing compared with the people that haven’t been rescued.” The rescue is just the beginning of a long journey: “It’s difficult work because these girls were completely broken ... to see a smile on their face was really a big victory.”

Many people who rescue trafficked children or work in the security shelters where they are protected often risk their own lives. The theme of Orozco’s 5th International Summit Against Human Trafficking this year is “Heroes Wanted.”

Orozco also serves as president of the Houston-based “United Against Human Trafficking” nonprofit and created the Trafficking in Persons hotline in Mexico in 2013, giving citizens a direct channel to report trafficking.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“People have lost sight of what education is supposed to be,” said Caylan Ford. In 2022, she founded Canada’s first tuition-free classical charter school, the Calgary Classical Academy, with just a dozen faculty members.

Since then, it has grown to 1,500 students across three campuses in Calgary and Edmonton, with thousands more on the waitlist, and has changed its name to Alberta Classical Academy.

For Ford, classical education is all about, as she put it, “turning around the soul so that it’s oriented toward things that are actually eternally true and good and enduring.”

Canadian parents crave the classical education Alberta Classical Academy provides. “A lot of the parents who come to us are absolutely desperate. … The existence of this school is like an answered prayer,” Ford said.

Surprisingly, Alberta is the only province in Canada that allows charter schools. Just as in America, Alberta’s charter schools are public schools that do not charge tuition. They are statutorily barred from having a religious affiliation.

Students study Latin beginning in Grade 5, with additional language options like French in high school. Much emphasis is given to the coherent study of history.

“Our students read a lot of primary source material; they’re not judging the past through current prejudices. They’re trying to understand it on its own terms,” Ford said.

The school also has a rich world literature curriculum where students memorize a lot, for example, poetry.

“We do a lot of memorization work, partly because we want to help them furnish beautiful inner worlds. We want their minds and their souls to be places into which they can retire and find themselves refreshed and renewed,” Ford said.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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