The Curious Middle

Alyssa Rosenheck was one of the only Jewish kids in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when a classmate stood up in class, pointed at her, and said, "The Jew took it." She pushed the girl down. Her dad's response: "My daughter has my permission to deck anyone who offends her family or faith."

That courage runs hrough everything that followed: a tennis scholarship, a decade in corporate medical sales, a thyroid cancer diagnosis that scared her into finally living, a camera she picked up to heal, and a divorce that hinged on one line from her husband she "can't unhear." After October 7th, Alyssa lost a book deal, got labeled part of a literary boycott, and co-founded Artists Against Antisemitism instead of going quiet. Her new book, White Blonde Jew, is what she wrote instead.

In this episode:

• (02:00) Growing up one of the only Jews in Tulsa — and the classmate who pointed at her and said, "The Jew took it"

• (08:55) Chasing financial security after an unstable, alcoholic childhood — tennis scholarship to 3M to spine sales

• (11:15) The thyroid cancer scare that became her first real "life pivot"

• (13:33) Picking up a camera as therapy — and building a 14-year photography career from it

• (15:55) Her advice for anyone raised by an alcoholic parent

• (18:15) The marriage, and the line from her husband she "can't unhear": "He did not want to have Jewish children"

• (22:43) The New Southern — accidentally writing the most inclusive design book in the industry

• (24:45) Her 2021 "light bulb moment" on Israel, BDS, and October 7th

• (27:00) Losing a book deal 10 days into speaking out — and co-founding Artists Against Antisemitism

• (29:08) Fighting BDS resolutions in Nashville

• (31:26) Inside White Blonde Jew — out August 18

• (40:15) The Kashariyot, and why being underestimated is a weapon

Quotes

• "I really allowed my haters to title the book. If it offends you, great, I wrote it for you. And if it doesn't, and you feel seen by it, I also wrote it for you."
• "Cancer gave me so much more than it took away."
• "When you get pushed down, you have to double down in the very thing that they don't want you to do."
• "It was a little bit like digital Ozempic." — on losing friends and followers after speaking out
• "My skin color would not have insulated me or protected me on October seventh, nor would it have protected me against the Nazis."
• "This project serves as historical insurance."
• "You can't create when you're stressed. You can't create when you're in chaos. You can't create when you're in fear."

About the book: White Blonde Jew (BenBella Books / Geffen Books) releases August 18 — pre-order now. Three sections, White / Blonde / Jewish, each chapter closing with a book-club discussion prompt.

Liza Libes is defending literature like it's under siege, and after this conversation, you will understand why.

Liza went to Columbia wanting to study Tolstoy and came out having read more Edward Said and Sartre she signed up for. We got into how her English degree turned into a theory degree overnight, why Anna Karenina isn't the feminist manifesto her professors taught it as, and why so much of what gets published now has had the backstory and the beauty edited right out of it by agents chasing a formula.

Liza's family fled the Soviet Union, and her grandfather was imprisoned for being Jewish. Watching that same ideology resurface in new packaging on American campuses is terrifying.

Find Liza at PensandPoison.org She also runs Advictus Prep and is shopping her first novel, which is basically a love letter to beauty written in spite of a literary world that's decided beauty is suspect. If you've been meaning to finally pick up that classic on your shelf, this is your sign!

Memorable Quotes:

"I don't think I met anyone in the English department who had the same reaction... A lot of people I think were actively trying to push this agenda because it had been sold to them." — Liza

"Good fiction is inherently moral. That's not to say moral in one specific restricted sense, but good fiction should teach us something about the way to live our lives." — Liza

"A lot of our art today is ironic, nihilistic, cynical, and just downright amoral." — Liza

"If your response to [boredom in a marriage] is I'm just going to abandon this whole thing that gives everyone meaning, then that is going to lead you to a dark place." — Liza, on Anna Karenina

"People will hold onto their identity more than the truth." — Polina, paraphrasing Chase Hughes

"My family kind of went through horrific examples of antisemitism twice, just in our personal lives... and it's horrific that it's happening again." — Liza

"If you're going to make one change in your life to lead a more full and fulfilling life, read classic literature." — Liza

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Episode Time Stamps

• 04:32 — Arriving at Columbia expecting to study literature, getting Edward Said and postcolonial theory on Jane Austen instead
• 06:36 — Same pattern outside the English department — a philosophy class teaching Hegel through the lens of BLM, and why she eventually stepped back from academia
• 08:46 — How Pens and Poison started, and the slow, stuck-at-20K-followers climb before it took off
• 11:05 — The daily messages from silenced students and aspiring writers — and how the same ideological capture spread into publishing
• 13:15 — Columbia's Core Curriculum as a partial exception, and why STEM friends noticed the politicization more than English majors did
• 15:29 — Pausing to unpack just how deep this runs — you can't study literature today without studying Marx
• 17:39 — Edward Said and the "settler colonist" framing; Sartre's introduction to The Wretched of the Earth
• 19:57 — More on Sartre's radicalization, Simone de Beauvoir, and the ideas of theirs still taught as fact
• 22:10 — Derrida, deconstruction, and the postmodern claim that literature has no objective meaning
• 24:21 — Paulo Freire and how "social justice as the point of education" filtered into every subject, not just humanities
• 28:55 — Why you don't need to be a humanities major to benefit from literature — it as a stand-in for religious meaning
• 31:19 — Anna Karenina as a case study: Tolstoy's actual argument vs. balancing tradition with modern life
• 33:37 — T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, the cost of losing ritual, and the case for reading fiction (not just nonfiction)
• 38:12 — My Year of Rest and Relaxation as an example of fiction that critiques without offering anything — the retreat from beauty and sincerity in "serious" art
• 40:14 — Does bleak fiction reflect a bleak culture or create one? Introducing her novel-in-progress, inspired by Mann's Doctor Faustus
• 44:44 — The same pattern in music, art, and publishing; does fiction need a moral lesson, or is beauty enough?
• 47:06 — Noticing beauty as the theme of her novel, and the one contemporary book she's excited to read — Theo of Golden, rejected by publishers, self-published, then sold millions
• 49:12 — Why contemporary fiction gets rejected or forced into a formula: word counts, no backstory, action on page one
• 51:37 — What's lost without backstory or physical description — fiction that never lets you rest with an idea
• 53:39 — Her own reading habits: rereading Dostoevsky in the original Russian, and why she's wary of new bestsellers
• 55:44 — Life-changing book #1: Mann's The Magic Mountain and how it reshaped her sense of time
• 58:06 — Life-changing book #2: Zweig's The World of Yesterday and the loss of creative freedom
• 1:00:29 — Why so many young people can't name their own values
• 1:02:41 — How literature classrooms swap out "morality" for ideology without saying so (Anna Karenina as "anti-feminism")
• 1:04:58 — Othello and The Merchant of Venice taught through one narrow lens instead of the whole picture
• 1:07:08 — Social justice as a stand-in religion, and the Columbia encampments
• 1:09:25 — Her family's history: fleeing the USSR on political asylum, her father imprisoned and her great-grandfather killed for being Jewish, and where to find her — Pens and Poison (pensandpoison.org)

What if you could name the thing tearing America apart? Benedict Beckeld joined us to trace a pattern that has played out in every great civilization in history: ancient Greece, Rome, Enlightenment France, Britain, and now America. The more successful a society becomes, the more its own people turn against it. Wealth, safety, and open intellectual space create the exact conditions for a culture to start eating itself alive.

Benedict is a writer and philosopher whose work spans contemporary culture, political philosophy, and the philosophy of history. He holds a master's in ancient Greek, Latin, and German, and a PhD in philosophy. His book Western Self-Contempt: Oikophobia and the Decline of Civilizations is the only full-length study of the subject, and the work that brought the term into mainstream conversation.

We get into all of it: why universities are ground zero, why intellectuals are the most susceptible, what October 7th has to do with it, whether religion is the antidote, and the uncomfortable historical truth about whether oikophobia has ever actually been reversed.

The good news, America is different. The bad news, the odd are not good. Uderstanding what we're up against is the first step to fighting back.

https://www.benedictbeckeld.com/

Key Quotes

• "The fact that we until recently only had a word for hating foreigners is itself a sign of oikophobia — it means it's only the hatred of the foreign that we consider worthy of condemning." — Benedict Beckeld
• "There is nothing so human as taking a good idea too far. We take the potential positive of self-criticism and it becomes a competition about who can be the most self-hating." — Benedict Beckeld
• "Historically, it has never been reversed. Which is not to say we shouldn't try — and I mean this, because America is unique." — Benedict Beckeld
• "Imagine if you were sick and didn't know what was going on — you'd be panicked. But if a doctor gave you a diagnosis, you'd say: okay, I know what this is, this is how I treat it. Before this, we were very sick and had no word for it. Now we do." — Polina Rubin
• "There is a spirit of freedom in America that is unmatched in the world. You say an idea in Europe and people say, are you sure that's wise? You say the same thing here and people say, that's amazing, what can I do to help?" — Benedict Beckeld

More Podcasts on Culture:

• Alll the News that's Fit to Spin with Ashley Rindsberg
• From Foster Care to Yale with Rob Henderson
• From America is Evil to American Exceptionalism with Lucy Biggers
• Why so Many Gen Z's Cant Take a Joke or a Different Opinion

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• Contact us: [email protected]

Adam Louis Klein is a PhD student in anthropology at McGill who became one of the leading voices against antizionism after October 7. He was in the Amazon jungle doing fieldwork when the attacks happened. When he returned and refused to stay silent, he was immediately labeled a Zionist and told he had no future in his field. Instead of backing down, he built a movement.

In this episode, Adam explains why antizionism is its own category of bigotry, distinct from antisemitism but equally harmful, and why naming it matters more than debunking individual claims. He lays out a practical framework for how to respond when you're hit with terms like "colonial," "apartheid," or "genocide," and why the key is boundary-setting rather than fact-checking.

We cover:

• Real-time role play: what to say when someone claims Israel is colonial, genocidal, or apartheid
• Why calling something antisemitism often backfires and what to say instead
• How antizonism functions as a moral identity, not just a political position
• What Jewish antizionism actually is and where it comes from
• The role of legacy institutions, philanthropy, and academia in changing the narrative

Adam's movement, MAAZ Action (mazaction.org), offers free trainings — 1 to 2 hours — that communities, synagogues, and corporations can access right now.

Know someone who needs to hear this? Send it. Share it in your community. Especially with people who think you can be anti-Zionist and still be a friend to the Jewish people.

https://www.movementagainstantizionism.org

About Adam Louis Klein

Follow Adam on IG

What if pursuing wealth isn't greedy, it's morally good?

Rabbi Daniel Lapin has spent decades making that case, and in this conversation he makes it clearly. He's the bestselling author of Thou Shall Prosper, founder of the American Alliance of Jews and Christians, and one of the most practical thinkers on money, character, and how to live well.

We get into his Five F's framework: Family, Finance, Friendship, Fitness, and Faith, and why these five areas, arranged in a circle, are the clearest measure of whether someone has their life together. Rabbi Lapin breaks down which F matters most at different life stages, why your relationship with money says more about your character than almost anything else, and how ancient biblical wisdom maps directly onto the way the world actually works.

We also talk about why socialism keeps spreading, what the fall of empires has to do with America right now, and why AI is being overhyped in exactly the same way the internet and the automobile were.

90% of Rabbi Lapin's listeners are not Jewish. These are universal principles — and this is one of those conversations you'll want to share.

A few of our favorite lines from this episode. It's full of transformative life advice, but you'll have to listen for the rest:

• "I ask people on planes: what do you do for your fellow human beings? Not what do you do for a living, that's a very self-centered way of looking at it."
• "Empires end not because of outside invasion — but because of internal collapse. The breaking apart of a common moral shared outlook."

If this episode made you think of someone , that's your sign. Stop and share it with them!

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Timestamps:

• 0:00 — Intro: why Polina and Yelena are obsessed with Rabbi Lapin and what to expect
• 3:43 — The Five F's introduced: Family, Finance, Friendship, Fitness, Faith
• 6:03 — Family defined: all relationships that flow from male-female connection
• 7:30 — Finance defined: money, ownership, and your professional relationships
• 8:29 — Faith explained: anything that can't be measured in a lab — including why you paid $64 for jeans
• 10:43 — Why the Five F's live on a circle, not a ranked list
• 11:50 — Which F matters most by life stage — counterintuitive advice for men and women
• 13:45 — Why society is conditioned to see wealth as greedy — and why that's wrong
• 15:17 — What a man's relationship with money reveals about his character
• 19:46 — Jewish tradition views the pursuit of profit as morally good
• 20:45 — Why socialism spreads and why it's dangerous
• 22:04 — Freedom vs. equality: you can't have both
• 24:25 — The 250-year empire cycle — and America turns 250 this year
• 28:43 — Money and God: gold is the eighth thing God calls "good" in Genesis
• 31:01 — Why half the guests at a Jewish wedding are business connections, not family
• 33:11 — Yelena's personal question: how do you measure worth when you've stepped away from a career?
• 35:20 — Why having children above 2.1 is one of the most important contributions to society
• 37:44 — Abundance vs. scarcity mindset — and why you can't will money into existence
• 40:05 — The Screw Magazine story: why everyone needs to believe they're doing something of lasting value
• 42:26 — Whale oil, copper wire, and the pattern of false scarcity throughout history
• 43:45 — AI is being overhyped — same pattern as the internet and the automobile
• 47:02 — People need people: why AI won't replace human connection
• 49:27 — How media has brainwashed us to see business as villainous
• 51:00 — Perspective check: 1930, 1941 — things have been worse and we got through it
• 53:45 — What to actually do right now: build your Five F's
• 56:16 — Closing: happiness is a decision

Matt Nuclear is one of the most compelling young voices in political commentary right now. He went viral debating Amanda Seales on Jubilee's Surrounded series, one Black conservative among twenty, and has been building a reputation for tackling the issues most people his age avoid entirely.

We invited Matt for a converrsationa about what it actually takes to form independent opinions in an age of social media groupthink.

Matt grew up in a 90% white state, came to the US from Angola at age six, and found his way into political debate not through mentors or family ideology, but through Discord arguments about veganism. From there, he read Benny Morris, Alan Dershowitz, and Ilan Pappé before most people his age could name a single book on Israel-Palestine.

In this episode:

• 02:00 – The Jubilee Surrounded debate: one Black conservative vs. 20, debating Amanda Seals
• 04:00 – How Matt got started: TikTok live debates, Discord, and going viral
• 06:00 – Matt's background: Christian family, Angola to Maine to Florida, no political mentors
• 08:30 – How Matt researches complex topics: reading Benny Morris, Dershowitz,& Ilan Pappé on Israel-Palestine
• 11:00 – Debating systemic racism and reparations as a young Black man and what his friends actually think
• 13:00 – Why he has no interest in running for office
• 15:00 – Matt's media diet: Reuters, AP, Al Jazeera, Ben Shapiro, Daily Wire
• 15:30 – Matt's advice to young people: read before you conclude
• 17:30 – Why politics touches everything, including your friendships
• 19:45 – Amanda Seales telling him his opinion doesn't count because he wasn't born in America
• 22:00 – Why so many people get Israel-Palestine wrong: social media, context, and thousands of debates later
• 24:15 – Ukraine-Russia: his realist take
• 25:30 – AI and disinformation: why the guardrails aren't keeping up with the technology

Watch Jubilee: https://www.youtube.com/@jubilee

Follow Matt

See Matt on Ben Shapiro

https://www.instagram.com/matnuclear/

https://www.tiktok.com/@matnuclear

Please share this episode with a friend!

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How much power does The New York Times really have , and what happens when that power is used to shape narrative instead of pursue truth?

In this episode of The Curious Middle, we speak with Ashley Rindsberg, author of The Gray Lady Winked, about the Times' reporting on some of the most important stories of the last century: the Nazi invasion of Poland, Stalin's Soviet Union, the Holocaust, Israel, the 1619 Project nd more.

Ashley Rindsberg is an investigative journalist and author focused on media malfeasance, information warfare, and the hidden systems influencing public discourse.

Ashley joins us to explain why he believes the paper has repeatedly protected power, buried inconvenient truths, and helped shape public opinion in ways that changed history. We also talk about the Sulzberger family, the culture inside elite newsrooms, the collapse of trust in journalism, and how listeners can build a healthier media diet today.

Follow Ashley's Substack

In this episode:

• What first inspired Ashley to write The Gray Lady Winked
• Why the New York Times is unlike any other media institution
• The Times' Holocaust coverage and what was buried
• How tne NYT Created a Narrative on the Soviet Unioo, Hitler, Cuba, Iraq, Israel and the Intifada,
• The 1619 Project and narrative-driven reporting
• The Tom Cotton op-ed controversy, safe spaces, silencing dissent and newsroom ideology
• How to find better journalism in a fractured media environment

More reading:

Books:

• Buried by the Times by Laurel Leff
• Stalin's Apologist: Walter Duranty: The New York Times's Man in Moscow by S.J. Taylor

Articles

• About the NYT Nazi Correspondent from Tablet Magazine
• NYT journalist Walter Duranty, who downplayed the Ukraine famine.

"Committed to protecting his own influence and to a future "greater good" promised by the Soviet regime, Duranty at first dismissed rumors of the Ukrainian Famine. Then he downplayed them. Then he claimed that Ukraine's "food shortages" were the result of local mismanagement and the work of "wreckers" and "spoilers" intent on undermining Soviet progress."

More podcasts with Ashley:

• Ashley on the Coleman Hughes podcast
• Ashley on the Winston Marshall podcast

Key Quotes

• "They set cultural agendas, they set the news agenda, they influence politics, they influence culture."
• "They didn't want to appear to be the Jewish newspaper that was advocating for Jewish lives or Jewish people. So they did the exact opposite."
• "You don't bury a story about tens of thousands of people being murdered in Europe by accident."
• "The narrative was so overpowering for them that it obliterated what was in front of their faces."
• "It became a culture of silence."

Timestamps

05:13: Origin Story of the Book

• Spark: reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
• Shock discovery: NYT reported Poland invaded Germany (1939)
• Core question: "If they got that wrong, what else did they get wrong?"

08:42 – Why Focus on The New York Times 11:32 – Ochs-Sulzberger Family Ideology

• German-Jewish assimilation philosophy:
  • Judaism = religion only (not identity)

14:23 – Holocaust Coverage Critique

• Only 6 front-page Holocaust stories in 6 years

17:56 – Historical Parallels to Today

• Narratives like:
  • "Jews cause wars"
  • "Israel manipulation"

20:34 – Could Coverage Have Changed History? 21:12 – Fascination with Power / Dictators 24:15 – Ukraine Famine Denial (Walter Duranty) 26:43 – Publishing Barriers

• Publishers avoided book due to:
  • Fear of NYT retaliation
  • Bestseller list control
• Insight: NYT bestseller list = editorial, not purely sales-based

30:12 – NYT Power Today

• Less local dominance, more global reach
• ~600 million monthly users
• Now a digital ecosystem

32:32 – NYT Lack of Accountability 35:30 – State of Journalism Today 38:48 – Misleading Image Example (Second Intifada)

• Photo falsely captioned:
  • Palestinian victim → actually Jewish man being saved
• Example of narrative overriding facts

41:20 – Mohammed al-Dura Case

• Widely reported killing blamed on Israel
• Later forensic evidence contradicted it
• NYT never corrected narrative

43:10 – The 1619 Project

• Claim: U.S. founded on slavery, not liberty
• Criticism:
  • Historians said key claims were false
• Still:
  • Won Pulitzer
  • Entered school curricula

51:54 – Tom Cotton Op-Ed Controversy 57:55 – Future of Media 59:27 – Advice for News Consumers (GREAT CLIP)

🔥 "Unbundle the news like Spotify unbundled albums"

1:01:09 – Closing + Current Work

• Focus on:
  • Narrative spread across platforms
  • Wikipedia, Reddit, AI manipulation
• Company: NPOV

Follow @thecuriousmiddlepod

Contact us: [email protected]

Johnny Chafin, a political commentator and host of The Johnny Chafin Show, joins us to share how he went from a two-time Obama voter to an outspoken conservative in deeply blue Los Angeles.

His political evolution started with a willingness to engage seriously with people who challenged his worldview.

"I thought everybody gathered information the way I did — weighing the source, questioning the agenda. I didn't know people weren't like that."

What began as open-minded conversations with a close friend who supported Trump eventually led to Johnny taking a public stance of his own — even at the cost of friendships and social belonging.

"The stakes felt too high to stay silent."

In this conversation, we reflect on our own shifting political perspectives and why it takes real courage to change your mind when new information challenges old assumptions. People forget that life often means choosing between imperfect options, based on imperfect information — guided by our deepest values.

We discuss:

• Media literacy, bias, and censorship
• Free speech absolutism and the Skokie case
• "Oikophobia" — the rejection of one's own culture
• Emotional manipulation in political discourse
• Family structure, gratitude, and civilizational inheritance

One of our favorite moments comes when Johnny shares how a college class on political extremism shaped his understanding of free speech:

"A truly free society preserves speech even when it's offensive. You can't leave that power in the hands of the government."

This episode isn't about party loyalty. It's about intellectual flexibility, civilizational gratitude, and the courage to question dominant poltical narratives.

If you've ever felt politically homeless or isolated for your view this conversation is for you.

3:30 – The "Slow Awakening" How a close friend's support for Trump sparked years of questioning and debate.

08:00 – When Politics Became Existential

10:30 – From Private Views to Public Voice The gym T-shirt moment that launched his media presence.

15:00 – Media Manipulation & Election Interference The events that fundamentally shifted his trust in institutions.

18:00 – Social Isolation & Speaking Out The personal cost of political dissent in Los Angeles.

22:00 – Emotional Politics & Gun Control How debates often hinge on emotion rather than principle.

24:00 – Oikophobia Explained The concept of civilizational self-hatred and its historical parallels.

28:30 – Hollywood, Tech, and Cultural Silence Why powerful voices stay quiet — and why that matters.

38:00 – Family, Two-Parent Privilege & Outsourcing to the State The cultural implications of broken family systems.

43:00 – Intellectual Flexibility How he was able to change his mind — and why more people don't.

45:00 – Media Literacy & Free Speech The college class that shaped his understanding of free speech absolutism.

47:30 – Final Reflections Gratitude, responsibility, and preserving civilizational inheritance.

In this powerful episode, we sit down with Jonathan Harounoff, British-Iranian journalist and author of Unveiled: Inside Iran's Woman, Life, Freedom Revolt.

Jonathan takes us inside the Woman, Life, Freedom movement—how it began, why it refuses to die, and why the regime continues to answer peaceful protest with barbaric force. Drawing on years of reporting and deeply personal conversations with Iranians inside the country and across the diaspora, he shares the brutal realities of life under the regime—and the extraordinary courage of people who keep standing up anyway.

We talk about hunger, fear, and economic collapse. About mothers, daughters, and young people risking everything. About why the regime blames Israel and the West—and what Iranians are actually fighting for: dignity, choice, basic freedom, and a future without constant terror.

We also ask a question that feels almost unthinkable, and yet possible: What would a free Iran mean for the Middle East, and for the world?

This is a sobering yet hopeful conversation about sacrifice, resilience, and the power of ordinary people to challenge unimaginable tyranny and change history.

Memorable Quotes:

• "There's a very clear distinction between the Islamic Republic and the 92 million Iranians it governs."
• "This is a proud, resilient civilization with thousands of years of history—and they're not giving it up for a 47-year-old regime."
• "The regime will blame Israel, the U.S., even 'cloud theft'—anything except its own mismanagement."
• "Women were deliberately shot in the eyes to leave a permanent mark."
• "A free Iran wouldn't just transform the Middle East—it would transform the world."

Timestamps:

• 00:00 – Why this moment in Iran matters
• 01:46 – Jonathan's book and the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising
• 04:08 – Iranians vs. the Islamic Republic
• 06:22 – Why Israel gets blamed for everything
• 08:36 – Is this the biggest uprising yet?
• 10:56 – What Iranians want after the regime
• 12:40 – How the regime crushes dissent
• 15:41 – Can the protests survive another crackdown?
• 17:15 – Do Iranians want Western help?
• 18:09 – What a free Iran could mean for the world
• 20:23 – The UN's silence on Iran
• 21:30 – Stories that changed Jonathan forever
• 22:36 – How to truly learn Iranian culture
• 24:51 – Hope for a free Iran

Please share this episode with a friend:

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We speak with Marissa Streit, CEO of PragerU about education, civics, and parenting in a time of cultural chaos. Marissa shares the moment that inspired her to "enlist" through education, explains why activism can show up even in math and literacy, and calls on parents to stop outsourcing values to institutions. Plus: practical ways to use PragerU at home in just 5–20 minutes a day.

https://www.prageru.com

Timestamps & Key Moments

00:04 — Intro: Who is Marissa Streit & what is PragerU Why parents must play an active role in teaching civics and history.

04:36 — Education as the root of today's cultural crisis Marissa argues education didn't just reflect the problem—it helped create it.

06:28 — A formative moment at Yad Vashem How a visit at age 13 shaped her belief in personal responsibility and moral courage.

08:55 — America under attack—through ideas, not force Why failing to teach civics leaves the country vulnerable.

17:59 — Division vs. unity in schools From "melting pot" to identity fragmentation.

22:32 — Activism in education How ideology shows up in teacher training and classrooms.

24:55 — The NEA agenda shock What disturbed Marissa most about the union's priorities.

29:45 — Bureaucracy, unions, and incentives A critique of the education system's structure and power dynamics.

38:32 — Civics collapse How can kids defend a country they don't understand?

40:53 — The parent solution Teaching values, debate, and civic responsibility at home—regardless of school quality.

45:20 — Young women, meaning, and modern feminism Marriage, family, and fulfillment in a confusing cultural moment.

54:43 — Europe as a warning What happens when a shared civic identity disappears.

57:02 — Cultural literacy Why "we all spoke American" matters.

59:23 — How parents can use PragerU A simple daily habit that works.

If you enjoy this podcast and topic, check out our conversations with America's favorite government teacher Sharon McMachon and Professor of Political Science Lindsey Cormack on How to Raise a Citizen

One Semester of Civics: The Threat You didn't See Coming with Sharon McMahon

Key Quotes

• "Education got us into this mess. Education is going to get us out of this mess." (≈ 04:36)

• "Most people rely on others to do the fighting for them… and they don't begin to fight until it's absolutely too late." (≈ 06:28)

• "America… is being taken down through ideas, through the erosion of what it is to be an American." (≈ 08:55)

• "Civics education is reduced to just activism… How do you defend a country that you don't understand and don't love?" (≈ 38:32)

Please share this episode with a friend:

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