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Pyongyang wasn’t always a synonym for missiles and mass parades. Long before the Kim dynasty, it was called the Jerusalem of the East, packed with churches, schools, hospitals, and missionary energy that helped make Korea one of the most Christian places in the world. That single fact flips the usual “North Korea history” narrative on its head, and it’s where our conversation with Wall Street Journal journalist Jonathan Cheng begins.

Jonathan joins us to unpack his book The Korean Messiah: Kim Il-sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea’s Personality Cult, tracing how Protestant Christianity spreads in northwest Korea, how Japanese colonial rule turns the church into a shelter for national identity, and how shattered political hopes push some Koreans toward Marxism-Leninism. We also dig into Kim Il-sung’s origin story as Kim Song-ju, a boy steeped in the Bible, church music, and Sunday school, and why that background matters when he later builds a regime that functions less like a normal state and more like a political religion. 

We talk about what a cult of personality looks like when it becomes daily ritual: portraits in every home, badges worn over the heart, bowing at statues, weekly sessions that resemble confession, and information control that keeps alternative realities out. Jonathan also shares what he saw on visits to North Korea, plus the strange late-life moments when Kim Il-sung invites Billy Graham and opens tightly managed churches that offer a narrow “crack of light” without real religious freedom. 

The Free Press Book Club thefp.com/forum/book-club

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The Mississippi looks familiar on a map, but it gets weird fast when you stop treating it like a single line and start treating it like a living system. I’m joined by writer and nature critic Boyce Upholt  boyceupholt, author of The Great River: The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi, to ask a deceptively simple question: where does the Mississippi actually begin? The answer opens into “thinking like a watershed” and realizing that a million-plus square miles of rainfall, tributaries, and human choices all belong to the same river story.

If you enjoy natural history, American history, climate risk, and big landscape stories, subscribe, share this conversation, and leave a review so more listeners can find it.

Find Boyce Upholt's beautiful magazine  Southlands

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Europe looks peaceful right up until you inventory what’s actually ready to fight. After spending months in Europe, Professor Andrew Michta joins us to lay out a sober strategic picture: a continent still disarmed, a defense industrial base that will take years to rebuild, and a NATO alliance split by radically different threat perceptions from the Baltic Sea to the Sahel.

We get specific about what modern war is teaching in Ukraine. Drones are changing everything, but Andrew explains why tanks and armor still matter because wars are ultimately decided by mobility and control of terrain. The real breakthrough, he argues, is not just more unmanned systems, but restoring maneuver through electronic warfare and spectrum dominance so soldiers can move without being hunted on a transparent battlefield. We also unpack the hard math behind “arrow vs arrow” economics and what that means for sustainable deterrence.

From there, we zoom out to NATO’s Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative and the urgent need for allies to take ownership with concrete regional planning, exercises, and capabilities. Andrew connects that to a bigger US problem: a crisis of simultaneity across Europe, the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East, and Korea, at a time when force structure and supply chains are stretched thin. We close with a plainspoken answer to the question many Americans ask: why should anyone in a town far from Europe care about Poland, Finland, or the Baltics? Because Europe and Eurasia shape US prosperity, shipping lanes, and homeland security, and because strong alliances are how democracies avoid fighting alone.

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Looking for a big timely summer read? Dad book extraordinaire! This is it. 

From LaSalle to Thomas Jefferson, the story of how our country was made in the grand sweep of time. 

A true American tale as bold as the people who lived the story. Native Americans, Immigrants and enlsaved people. Lives coming together to establish a nation. 

Four cents an acre. The greatest real estate deal in history. A clean swap that doubled the United States overnight. Those lines are catchy, and they’re also wildly incomplete. We sit down with historian Alexander Mikaberidze, author of The Louisiana Purchase: The Grand Bargain and the Making of America, to rebuild the story from the ground up and follow the long chain of events that made 1803 possible.

We start where most retellings don’t: the Seven Years’ War (the French and Indian War) and the imperial scramble it triggered across North America. From LaSalle’s sweeping 1682 claim over everything west of the Mississippi River to the hard reality that Indigenous nations already held sovereignty, Louisiana begins as a gigantic, poorly defined idea. That ambiguity fuels decades of rivalry among France, Spain, and Britain and turns places like Natchez and New Orleans into high-stakes borderlands where diplomacy, trade, and military power collide.

If you like early American history, Napoleonic history, constitutional debates, and the real origins of US continental expansion, hit play, then subscribe, share this with a fellow history reader, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

Find Professor Alexander Mikaberidze https://www.amikaberidze.com/

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What is conservatism?  How can conservative principals replace MAGA and populism in the Republican Party 

Connect with Our Republican Legacy ourrepublicanlegacy.com

The Republican Party is headed for a reckoning, and the real battle is not going to be fought on cable news. It is going to be fought in precinct meetings, county conventions, state parties, and the delegate math that decides who gets to call themselves “conservative” in 2028.

We dig into the mission of Our Republican Legacy and why it is organizing inside the GOP rather than building a third party or another think tank. You will hear the five principles they want to unify around: peace through strength, free enterprise, fiscal responsibility, national unity, and the Constitution and the rule of law. We also talk NATO and alliances, tariffs and free trade, and how rapid tech change and AI pressure-test both free enterprise and civil liberties.

 Politically homeless?  but still care about constitutional government, this conversation gives you a concrete path to engage before the 2028 presidential cycle accelerates. Subscribe for more idea-driven conversations, share this with a friend who argues in good faith, and leave a review with the principle you think the country can’t afford to lose.

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American Revolution | Historical Fiction | Thomas Paine | George Washington | Revolutionary War

What does courage look like when you don't feel brave?

George Washington “vaccinated” soldiers by giving them smallpox on purpose, and it may have saved the Revolution. That jaw-dropping history is just one of the realities we dig into with author Katherine Goodwin Tone as we explore her debut novel, The King’s Broad Arrow, an American Revolution adventure that doubles as a coming-of-age story about courage.

In this episode of Cross Word Books, we speak  about Sam Nevins, a 14-year-old boy living in Revolutionary-era Maine who believes he's the only person with no desire to fight and no courage to offer. Through Sam's journey, we explore how courage is often less about personality and more about the choices we make when fear would rather send us home.

Drawing on years of working with children and teaching, Katherine discusses themes of responsibility, friendship, happiness, and moral growth. We also dive into the world of Revolutionary America, exploring the impact of the printing press, censorship, banned books, Enlightenment thought, and the influence of Thomas Paine and his famous pamphlet Common Sense.

If you enjoy historical fiction, young adult novels, American Revolution history, or thoughtful conversations with authors, this episode is for you.

Cross Word Books — Where Cultural Clues Lead to the Truth of the Word.

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Our Wild Familiars: How Animals Are Adapting to Cities and Reshaping the Natural World,  Dan Werb

published by crown books of penguinrandomhouse.com

Smart nature writing, urban planning ideas, and clear-eyed conversations about conservation and public health

Nature is moving into the city, and it is not waiting for our permission. I sit down with award-winning writer and epidemiologist Dan Werb to talk about Our Wild Familiars: How Animals Are Adapting to Cities and Reshaping the Natural World, a book that reframes urban life as something far more alive than we usually notice. Once you learn the word synanthropy, you start seeing it everywhere: wild species living “together with humans,” adapting to our buildings, our routines, and our blind spots.

 Why are cities are no longer “biological deserts,” and why urban is ecology  forcing a correction in how we think about biodiversity and conservation?. Dan shares stories that make the science feel personal, from bats thriving in the built environment to the startling discovery that giant Pacific octopus can be more common near the most industrial parts of Seattle’s waters. That leads to a bigger realization: the reach of urban development does not stop at the shoreline. Our roads, rail, and waste reshape land and water, and that reshaping creates winners, losers, and unexpected new neighbors.

Because Dan is also an infectious disease researcher, we also talk openly about zoonotic disease spillover, outbreaks, and what pandemic surveillance can realistically do to reduce risk without turning wildlife into a scapegoat. We keep coming back to practical coexistence: why garbage is often the real “wildlife management” issue, how simple infrastructure changes reduce conflict with rats, raccoons, baboons, bears, and coyotes, and why fortress conservation alone cannot solve human-wildlife tension in a crowded world.

If you enjoy , subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review. What wild animal have you noticed in your own neighborhood lately?

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You Visited Me.  Grace and Healing in the Modern Medical Center

By Dr Robert Collins, MD            Ignatius Press    ignatius.com

A cancer doctor who lives by evidence and protocols tells a story that begins with an interruption he can’t explain: a question, heard like a voice in a lab, that challenged the idea that reality is only matter and chance. Dr. Robert Collins joins us to talk about his work in leukemia and lymphoma care, his journey from teenage skepticism to Christianity and Catholicism, and why he now sees hope as something sturdier than optimism. If you’ve ever searched for faith and medicine, prayer and healing, or what “whole person care” really means in a hospital, this conversation meets you right where you are. 

We dig into what medicine is actually for, beyond fixing organs and chasing numbers. Dr. Collins explains healing as restoring wholeness, which means treating a patient as a person with relationships, fear, responsibilities, and a spiritual life that shapes how they face illness. He shares how prayer functions in his daily routine and in clinical practice, from quick hallway prayers before entering a room to the rare moments when he prays with a patient, always rooted in presence rather than performance. 

Then we go to the hard ground: miracles and suffering. Dr. Collins offers a wider definition of miracle that includes the quiet work of grace, timely words, and the mysterious overlap of the spiritual and the material. We also wrestle with the question everyone asks sooner or later, why a good God allows suffering, without turning it into bullet points. A patient story of redemptive suffering and a son drawn back to faith shows how love can gather around a person at the end of life. 

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Exploring the Secret History of the American Revolution, from Spain to India and Back Again by Derek Baxter  published by  Source Books 

Follow the American Revolution far beyond the 13 colonies and trace how diplomacy, logistics, and foreign interests shape independence. We talk with author Derek Baxter about the overlooked allies and global battlefields that turn a colonial revolt into a true world war.

• Mercy Otis Warren as a trailblazing historian with a front-row view of the war
• The Declaration of Independence as a strategic message to foreign powers
• Gunpowder, artillery, and naval weakness as the Patriots’ early crisis
• The failed Canada campaign as a lesson in diplomacy and homework
• Bernardo de Galvez and Spain’s decisive Gulf Coast victories
• Comte de Vergennes and Lafayette driving French support and public momentum
• St Eustatius as a Dutch smuggling hub and the first foreign salute to the US flag
• The Channel Islands and the failed France Spain invasion threat that pins Britain down
• The Mysore Kingdom in India and the rocket technology tied to later British warfare
• Why these stories fade from US memory and why the global view matters now

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Alito

The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution by Mollie Heningway

The Supreme Court doesn’t just decide cases; it teaches the country what power is allowed to do. Today on Cross Word Books, Michele McAloon talks with Molly Hemingway, senior editor at The Federalist and Fox News contributor, about her book on Justice Samuel Alito and why his originalism sits at the center of America’s biggest constitutional fights.

They discuss judicial activism, the rise of originalism, religious liberty, free speech, the Voting Rights Act, and how Supreme Court opinions are actually built behind the scenes.

If you care about the Constitution, judicial restraint, and how the Court really works, this episode will give you a clearer framework and sharper questions.

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Check out Basic Liberty Publishing!

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