The Junto Podcast

In episode 68 Edgar Mills continues his series on contradictions by examining today’s gender discourse. Using Ellen/Elliot Page’s recent documentary as a springboard, he questions tensions between calls for unconditional acceptance and the choice to medically alter the body, discusses mental-health comorbidities, and explores the role of social media, policy, and medical evidence, especially for young people.

With stated compassion for individuals, the episode urges clearer thinking, honest debate, and careful policy and medical decisions, and previews future episodes on related contradictions.

Episode 67 explores major contradictions within modern progressive movements, examining how positions on LGBTQ rights, Islam, immigration, race-based spaces, free speech, and public policy often clash in practice. Edgar Mills breaks down examples from global events, college campuses, and political trends to show where rhetoric and reality diverge.

He urges listeners to be curious but skeptical about these ideological and intellectual inconsistencies and to look for underlying motives and strategies behind every claim.

This episode explores the American spirit by tracing practical ideas of self-reliance, character-building, plain speech, and humor through the lives of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Benjamin Franklin, Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, Mark Twain, and Will Rogers. He stresses that America does not need to be redefined; that if we truly love America, we can find our place within the current and past definition by following these men's examples.

Edgar Mills explains how these figures turned big ideas into practical daily habits and systems, challenges listeners to test and grow their own character, and encourages reading the original works to better understand today's values.

Ben Franklin https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20203/20203-h/20203-h.htm

Mark Twain https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76

Frederick Douglass https://gutenberg.org/files/23/23-h/23-h.htm

Booker T. Washington https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2376?msg=welcome_stranger

Ralph Waldo Emerson https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16643

Will Rogers https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/9392

Host Edgar Mills explores why small talk matters in both personal and professional life and argues for authenticity over performance. Drawing on military stories, references to Will Rogers and Benjamin Franklin, and social media critique, he offers practical tips for building rapport: default to curiosity, share a small personal detail, use good manners plus a little warmth, and ask thoughtful follow-up questions.

The episode aims to help listeners break through awkwardness, build trust, and use conversation as a tool for real connection and effective collaboration.

https://www.willrogers.com/back-stage-research-archives

In episode 63 Edgar Mills explores the decline of basic politeness and good manners across generations, tracing causes from 60's political activism, social media, and identity politics to changing work habits.

He shares practical, low-effort habits like holding doors, remembering names, making eye contact, offering help, and makes the case that small acts of courtesy benefit both giver and receiver and can rebuild respect and community one simple act of courtesy at a time.

Hello America. Edgar Mills tackles the debate over communism, socialism, and democratic socialism. In this episode he argues the three share core goals: state control of the economy and the end of private ownership, traces the history from Marx to modern U.S. politics, summarizes the Communist Manifesto’s ten planks, and points to contemporary policies that echo those pillars. He challenges listeners to look past labels, warns about centralization of power, and invites factual, not emotional, feedback.

In episode 61, Edgar Mills examines communism and democratic socialism from a classical liberal perspective, comparing central planning to free markets and explaining why these doctrines repeatedly fail.

He reviews historical evidence and human costs under regimes like Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, explores why young people are attracted to these ideas, and urges critical thinking, personal responsibility, and voluntary solutions. He provides suggested reading to fully understand the topic:

-The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (Stéphane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Margolin, et al., 1997). Catalogs Communist regimes’ crimes across the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere. It estimates ~94–100 million deaths from executions, famines, gulags, and purges, arguing that terror and repression are inherent to the system’s pursuit of a classless society.

-The Gulag Archipelago (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1973; abridged editions available)  Based on the author’s own eight years in the Soviet forced-labor camps plus testimonies from over 200 survivors, this work exposes the vast network of prisons, torture, and slave labor that killed millions under Lenin and Stalin. 

-The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine (Robert Conquest, 1986) A definitive account of Stalin’s 1932–33 engineered famine in Ukraine (the Holodomor), which killed an estimated 3–7 million through grain seizures and blockades. 

-Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–1962 (Frank Dikötter, 2010)  From recently opened Chinese archives, Dikötter reconstructs the Great Leap Forward’s death toll of at least 45 million from starvation, violence, and forced labor. He details cannibalism, mass burials, and cadre brutality, arguing that Mao’s utopian Communist experiment was a man-made catastrophe rooted in the rejection of private property and incentives.

-Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (Timothy Snyder, 2010)  A comparative history of the Soviet and Nazi killing fields in Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltics (1933–1945). Snyder documents Stalin’s deliberate famines, mass deportations, and executions (alongside Hitler’s crimes), showing how Communist totalitarianism produced millions of deaths through engineered scarcity and political purges. 

Host Edgar Mills reflects on Memorial Day, urging listeners to honor and thank individual service members while separating their sacrifice from the political decisions that send them to war.

He discusses the dangers of partisan social media, recalls lessons from wars like Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and shares recruiting statistics and reasons people join the military.

The episode closes with a call to support veterans and local charity efforts, information about upcoming events, and a plea for compassion and thoughtful patriotism.

Host Edgar Mills examines data showing drunk driving is disproportionately reported among white men and compares roughly 12,000 annual DUI deaths to about 15,000 firearm homicides, arguing DUI is an under-discussed public health crisis.

He explores cultural and geographic drivers (social drinking, rural/suburban transport gaps, and soft privilege), calls for consistent application of justice, and urges personal responsibility and contingency planning to prevent needless deaths.