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Care about wildlife conservation, China-Africa politics, religious freedom, and character-driven storytelling with real stakes, this conversation is for you. 

An interview with author David Pinault on his real world fiction book

A Spiritual Entertainment

Ignatius Press

A quiet librarian gets pushed out, grabs a stuffed monkey, and walks straight into the underbelly of our global moment. We dive into Earth Dragon Run, a propulsive novel that uses one endangered creature—the pangolin—to map the hidden circuitry of animal trafficking, cyber scams, and state-backed extraction across Africa and Asia. What starts as a quirky quest becomes a moral investigation: How do you keep your soul when markets price everything and protect nothing?

We follow Danny Quirk, a 70-year-old with more books than friends, and Minnie Meixing, a Hong Kong student-turned-refugee who channels her courage into wildlife rescue near the China border and later in South Africa. Their paths illuminate hard truths: demand for pangolin scales in traditional medicine, snares that silently kill in the bush, and mines where “cost optimization” erases worker safety and scars the land. Along the way we unpack Cardinal Zen’s witness, the Vatican’s uneasy deal with Beijing, and why younger Chinese volunteers abroad quietly defy cruelty even as the Party tightens its grip.

The conversation moves from San Francisco’s Chinatown to Hong Kong marches, from snare sweeps near Kruger to casino-linked cyber scam hubs in Cambodia. We meet characters inspired by real encounters—Afrikaner farmers, Zimbabwean migrants, mixed patrol teams—whose cooperation in the bush cuts through propaganda. We also set Catholic tradition beside Jain nonviolence to ask what genuine compassion demands now: not slogans, but practices that shield the vulnerable. And yes, we talk Latin, old prayers, and the armor of God—because spiritual formation isn’t nostalgia; it’s training for a world that fights back.

Find out more about Professor Pinault other books  https://ignatius.com/authors/david-pinault/

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Article by Adam Entous of the New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/12/30/world/europe/ukraine-war-us-russia.html

We trace Ukraine’s war from early U.S.–Ukraine partnership to a fragile “separation,” where support is uneven, Europe scales up late, and a DMZ-style end state competes with continued attrition. Adam Entous of the New York Times lays out the battlefield, the backchannels, and the choices that could lock in peace—or prolong risk.

• The shift from artillery dominance to drone warfare and frozen lines
• Why Donetsk and Luhansk are strategic, not just symbolic
• Security guarantees as deterrence architecture short of NATO
• Sanctions and Ukrainian drone strikes targeting Russian refineries
• U.S. policy splits: munitions for Ukraine vs Indo-Pacific stockpiles
• The Whitkoff–Kushner channel and Russia’s “inevitability” narrative
• Europe’s rearmament and the slow ramp of 155 mm production
• Russian incompetence vs Ukrainian resilience on the ground
• What a DMZ-style settlement might require to hold

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You can find out more about me at https://www.bookclues.com

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Forget the tinsel and crowns—let’s meet the Magi where history lives. We sit down with Fr. Dwight Longenecker, author of The Mystery of the Magi, to rethink the famous journey to Bethlehem through the lenses of archaeology, geopolitics, and Scripture. Instead of mystical monarchs following a neon star, we explore a compelling alternative: Nabataean court advisors—astrologers and diplomats—from Petra, navigating trade routes, Roman power, and Herod’s volatile court.

We dig into why Matthew includes the Magi while Luke doesn’t, and how reading the Bible with historical context can strip away later legends without losing wonder. Fr. Longenecker maps the power players of the era—Rome, Herod the Great, and the Nabataeans—and explains how Aretas IV’s shaky throne and dependence on Roman goodwill could have sparked a diplomatic mission to Judea. The gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh move from pure symbolism to economic fingerprints of Arabian trade, pointing to a real origin and a recognizable protocol of royal homage.

And the star? We weigh leading theories: supernatural sign, astrological reading, or rare astronomical event. Rather than a celestial spotlight dragging caravans across dunes, Matthew suggests discerning signs that prompt a journey to Jerusalem and then to Bethlehem. Along the way, we call out Gnostic embellishments—like the “burning baby in the sky”—and return to a leaner, stronger account where faith and reason meet. If you care about biblical history, Epiphany, or how ancient trade networks intersected with theology, this conversation brings the Nativity’s most enigmatic visitors into crisp focus.

If the reframe sparks your curiosity, follow the show, share this episode with a friend who loves history, and leave a review with your take on who the Magi really were.

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Merry Christmas everyone!!!  This is a re-run but one of my most popular podcasts about the beloved Charlie Brown.  Who doesn't love the Charlie brown Christmas Tree?  I hope all of you are captured by the wonder of this season, surrounded by love and to remember what it is to love. God Bless all Look forward to everyone in the New Year.

Michele McAloon 

We explore how Charles Schulz turned Peanuts into a cultural mirror for Cold War fear, public faith, and civil rights, and why that gentle, open style still disarms a polarized audience. Historian Blake Scott Ball joins us to trace the choices behind Linus’s blanket, Franklin’s debut, and a Christmas scripture that nearly didn’t air.

• Schulz’s Midwestern roots, WWII service, and shy start in art
• The syndicate’s Peanuts title and Schulz’s pushback
• Vulnerability as cultural critique in the 1950s
• Linus’s security blanket as language for anxiety
• Faith voiced through Linus and the Christmas pageant
• The A Charlie Brown Christmas gamble with Luke 2
• School prayer, God and country in public life
• Franklin’s integration and Schulz’s ultimatum to editors
• Media fragmentation and the changing “family audience”
• Why Peanuts endures for new generations

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If you love Christmas  history, urban culture, or just the glow of a winter night, this conversation will change how you walk a market lane. Subscribe, share the episode with a friend who loves Christmas markets, and leave a quick review to tell us your favorite Christmas market  whereever you are in the world.

Connect with the Catholic Thing Fear – and Hope – in Europe’s Christmas Markets' from The Catholic Thing.

https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2025/12/13/fear-and-hope-in-europes-christmas-markets/

with Michele Mcaloon https://www.bookclues.com

Cold air, warm lights, and the quiet pull of memory: that’s the spell of a Christmas market. We sit down with Dr. Dirk Spennemann, an Australian cultural heritage expert, to unpack how Europe’s winter fairs grew from pragmatic provisioning into the social spectacles we love today—and why their magic endures even as they change.

We start with the basics: these markets weren’t born holy. They were winter lifelines where townspeople and traveling traders met before roads iced over. Over centuries, they slid toward Advent, picked up nativity scenes and ornaments, and became seasonal stages for community life. Dirk explains how heritage professionals read those stages—what gives a stall, a pyramid, or a steaming cup value, and how that value shifts as societies evolve. From COVID artifacts to AI and digital preservation, we explore why today’s ephemeral signs, screens, and rituals deserve careful saving for tomorrow’s storytellers.

Then we step into the square. Think LED constellations, towering Erzgebirge pyramids, and carefully choreographed footpaths shaped by security and crowd flow. Food now leads the experience: region-specific glühwein and hot cider, beloved sausages and pastries, alongside fairground favorites and global bites. We look at how big-city markets diversify for different audiences while parishes and fire brigades revive neighborhood tradition with weekend pop-ups. Most of all, we talk about nostalgia—the child’s-eye view of lights and sugar, the adult desire to pass that feeling on—and why the setting, from cathedral to cobblestone, holds the key to the market’s spell.

If you love history, urban culture, or just the glow of a winter night, this conversation will change how you walk a market lane. Subscribe, share the episode with a friend who loves Christmas markets, and leave a quick review to tell us your favorite stall and city.

Connect with the Catholic Thing..Michele's article on the meanining and history of Christmas Markets in Germany and France

 Fear – and Hope – in Europe’s Christmas Markets' from The Catholic Thing.

https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2025/12/13/fear-and-hope-in-europes-christmas-markets/

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A million stories rest under the trees of Père Lachaise, and some of them still move. We sit down with curator and author-photographer Benoît Galliot to walk the avenues of Paris’s most visited cemetery and discover why it feels so alive. From neo-gothic chapels and art nouveau tombs to foxes raising kits among ivy, this tour blends cultural history with urban ecology in a way that surprises and soothes.

Benoît opens the gate on a distinctly French approach to burial: time-bound concessions that allow families to share space across generations and, when abandoned, make room for new remembrance. He explains how careful reclamation keeps the cemetery from becoming a frozen museum and why that policy matters in a dense city. Along the way, we talk about the book that sparked this conversation—full of tender photos of foxes, birds, and statuary—and the unexpected comfort wildlife brings to grieving families.

We also meet the man behind the name: Père La Chaise, a Jesuit confessor to Louis XIV, whose association with the land shaped its identity long before 1804. Benoît shares his own path from a family of stonemasons to law to public service, eventually becoming curator and living on site with his children. No ghosts here—just quiet nights, the rustle of wings, and a renewed sense that memory can coexist with growth. Come for the legends of Chopin, Oscar Wilde, and Jim Morrison; stay for the everyday life that makes this place breathe.

If this journey moved you, follow and review the show, share it with a friend planning a trip to Paris, and subscribe so you never miss our next conversation.   Follow Me at https://www.bookclues.com

You can find Benoit Gallot and the picture of Pere laChaise cemetary at Instagram @la_vie_au_cimitiere 

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In this fascinating podcast episode, historian Gareth Russell delves into the riveting life of King James I. Michele McAloon, the host, describes Russell's latest book, 'The Six Loves of James the First,' as a compelling historical narrative that rivals even the most intricate fiction. Russell shares captivating anecdotes about James I's dramatic upbringing amidst religious turmoil, his complex relationships, and his influence on history, including the creation of the King James Bible and Jamestown. Throughout the discussion, Russell emphasizes the importance of balancing historical accuracy with the dignity of both historical figures and contemporary readers.

Connect with Michele on her website Bookclues https://www.bookclues.com/

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War Eagel! Roll tide! College game day! The Iron Bowl

A single game can define a state. We sit down with Yahoo Sports senior writer Jay Busbee to unpack how Alabama vs Auburn became the South’s fiercest mirror, reflecting pride, pain, progress, and power from 1893 to NIL. Jay’s new book, Iron in the Blood, traces the Iron Bowl’s evolution from picnic blankets and early tailgates to bowl-driven TV eras and today’s high-dollar recruiting wars, revealing how a rivalry without pro competition in the state grew into a year-round identity.

We go beyond scores to meet the people who built the myth: Bear Bryant’s thunderous authority and complicated path through integration; Sug Jordan’s Normandy-forged steadiness and Auburn family ethos; Nick Saban’s era-defining system that asked five-stars to wait their turn and won anyway. Along the way, we examine the 40-year hiatus, Birmingham’s iron roots, how a tossed-off line became the rivalry’s name, and why the legislature once had to force the schools to play again. Jay explains how football offered the South a way to rebuild civic pride after the Civil War and how the sport later became a public stage for change, even as politics pressed hard on the pace.

We also get honest about money. Boosters shaped both programs for decades, but NIL brought the cash into daylight and opened new fronts against mega-donors in the Big Ten and beyond. What happens to tradition when a playoff softens single-game stakes? Can another Saban rise in an era of transfers and player power? And why do Auburn and Alabama feel so different up close—one centered on family ties, the other scaled by dynasties and reach? Jay leaves us with a grounded prediction for the next Iron Bowl and a sober look at where the sport is heading.

If this conversation adds something to your Saturday, tap follow, share it with a friend, and leave a review with your favorite Iron Bowl memory or hot take on NIL—War Eagle or Roll Tide?

Find Michele https://www.bookclues.com/

https://sports.yahoo.com/author/jay-busbee/

Jay Busbee @jaybusbee on X

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A freighter longer than a skyscraper is tall. Waves four seconds apart that can bend steel. A ballad recorded in a single take that changed how an entire industry thinks about risk. We sat down with John U. Bacon, author of The Gales of November, to trace the Edmund Fitzgerald from blueprint to bell, and from storm science to the quiet rooms where families still keep watch.

We unpack what makes the Great Lakes uniquely dangerous: freshwater’s sharper, closer-spaced waves; locally brewing systems that sit right over your head; and the long, narrow hulls forced by the Soo Locks. John explains how changes to the Plimsoll line let ships ride lower and heavier than intended, why welded seams and added tonnage tightened margins, and how a northern route, dark beacons, and dead radar turned one November run into a blind sprint. We revisit the race dynamics of the locks, the near-miss culture of “just one more trip,” and the accident chain that can turn routine into tragedy in minutes.

Beyond the mechanics, we spend time with the people whose choices and dreams were on board: a celebrated captain delaying retirement to pay for his wife’s care, a young deckhand saving for a road trip and a future he’d mapped out, an engineer mailing a ring home days before the lake took him. Then we follow the song—Gordon Lightfoot’s first-take recording that became a national memorial—and how attention, grief, and storytelling helped drive reforms. The most striking fact remains: from 1875 to 1975, the lakes saw thousands of wrecks; in the fifty years since the Fitzgerald, not one commercial ship has been lost.

If you care about maritime history, human resilience, and how culture can push safety forward, this conversation belongs in your queue. Listen, share with a friend who loves Great Lakes lore or music history, and if it moved you, subscribe and leave a review to help others find the show.

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Find out more about Cross Word Books at

https://www.bookclues.com/

Professor Beer's website https://mollybeer.net

A woman without a rank helped a country find its balance. We sit down with Professor Molly Beer to explore Angelica Schuyler—born Engeltia into Dutch New York, educated at a royal governor’s table, and fluent in the quiet arts that hold a republic together. Her new book, Angelica: For Love and Country in Time of Revolution, uncovers a life lived at the center of events we think we know: Saratoga and Yorktown, the emergence of parties, and the uneasy peace that follows victory.

Across these pages and letters, we follow Angelica from Albany’s river-crossroads to London drawing rooms and the salons of Paris. She befriends Hamilton and Jefferson at once, attends Burgoyne’s Cambridge gatherings after Saratoga to enact peace in public, and navigates a marriage that gave her unusual latitude to move, write, and influence. Sixteen years in England offered a crucial vantage on the French Revolution—first the promise, then the terror—which sharpened her warning against faction at home. The themes feel urgent now: amiability as an active civic practice, soft power as statecraft, and the daily work of keeping rivals talking.

We also face the contradictions. Raised in a northern household that practiced domestic slavery, Angelica’s views evolved under French antislavery currents and through ties to figures like Pierre Toussaint. The record doesn’t flatter or flatten her; it traces change over time, showing how ideals and habits collide. Molly’s research—letters preserved by Jefferson, Hamilton, Lafayette, and the Schuyler family; archives across the Atlantic; houses that still stand—lets the story read with the pulse of a novel while staying anchored in evidence.

If you’re drawn to Revolutionary history, women’s leadership, and the subtle forces that shape public life, this conversation reframes the founding through a different lens. Listen to learn how a gifted hostess became a strategic peacemaker, how letters steered alliances, and why the most underrated builders of the United States may be the ones who put down the pistol case and set a longer table. Enjoyed this conversation? Follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review to help others discover it.