The Professor Liberty Podcast

In this episode of the Professor Liberty Podcast, Mr. Palumbo examines the controversy surrounding Columbus Day and the growing movement to replace it with Indigenous Peoples’ Day. He argues that Columbus Day was originally established to combat discrimination against Italian immigrants and anti-Catholic prejudice, and contends that modern efforts to rename the holiday reflect a broader attempt to rewrite American history and undermine shared national identity.

In this episode of the Professor Liberty Podcast, we explore John F. Kennedy’s remarkable evolution in the Cold War. The Bay of Pigs, the Berlin Crisis, and especially the Cuban Missile Crisis forced Kennedy to confront the terrifying reality of nuclear escalation and began changing his question from How do we win the Cold War? to How do we prevent it from destroying us? While his administration continued expanding the American commitment in Vietnam, Kennedy was simultaneously exploring withdrawal and pursuing a broader strategy of de-escalation. That transformation came into the open with his June 1963 “Strategy of Peace” speech, in which he challenged Americans to rethink their assumptions about the Soviet Union and argued that peace could not simply be an American military victory imposed on the world. His pursuit of coexistence, arms agreements, and reduced tensions increasingly brought him into conflict with elements of the national-security establishment. By the fall of 1963, Kennedy was testing a fundamentally different approach to the Cold War—but on November 22, 1963, that experiment came to an abrupt end, leaving unanswered the question of what JFK would have done next.

This episode explores John F. Kennedy’s transformation from Cold War hawk to advocate for peace. The 1961 Vienna Summit, Berlin Crisis, and especially the Cuban Missile Crisis forced Kennedy to confront how quickly nuclear confrontation could spiral beyond anyone’s control. Cuba became a turning point, convincing him that military strength alone could not guarantee security and that managing escalation was essential to survival. By 1963, Kennedy was challenging the assumptions of the Cold War and publicly calling for a new “Strategy of Peace,” even as his changing worldview increasingly collided with the powerful military and national security institutions built around permanent confrontation with the Soviet Union.

In this episode of the Professor Liberty Podcast, Mr. Palumbo explores one of the most memorable moments in Rocky the iconic "Going the Distance" scene and explains why the film's greatest triumph has little to do with boxing. Inspired by the recently released I Play Rocky trailer, your favorite obscure social studies teacher examines Rocky Balboa's quiet confession to Adrian that he doesn't believe he can beat Apollo Creed, revealing how the heart of the film is really about self-respect, dignity, and confronting the fear of not being enough. Through Rocky's vulnerability, listeners are reminded that true courage isn't the absence of doubt it's stepping into the ring anyway. It's about going the distance. 

In this episode of the Professor Liberty Podcast, Mr. Palumbo explores the provocative idea that American politics often resembles professional wrestling. Using wrestling terminology and history as a framework, he explains how sports entertainment evolved from legitimate competition into a carefully crafted spectacle built around characters, rivalries, and storytelling. The episode examines concepts such as babyfaces, heels, promos, heat, getting over, kayfabe, and turns, showing how wrestling creates emotional connections with audiences through heroes, villains, and dramatic conflicts. Building on that foundation, Mr. Palumbo applies the wrestling analogy to modern American politics, arguing that political parties often present themselves as opposing forces in a larger performance designed to keep citizens emotionally invested. He examines campaign speeches, partisan conflicts, elections, Supreme Court battles, and political messaging through the lens of wrestling storylines while encouraging listeners to question whether the differences between political parties are as significant as they appear.

In this Father’s Day episode of the Professor Liberty Podcast, host Mr. Palumbo reflects on the role and importance of fathers in family life and society, emphasizing everyday acts of responsibility, sacrifice, and consistency that often go unrecognized. He argues that involved fathers positively influence children’s educational outcomes, behavior, and emotional well-being, and he extends this to both sons—who learn models of manhood—and daughters, who form expectations for relationships.

This episode of the Professor Liberty Podcast opens with Mr. Palumbo returning to a “Motivational Monday” format after a long stretch of pirate-themed episodes, shifting the focus from historical storytelling back to direct personal advice for listeners feeling overwhelmed or mentally stuck. At the center of the episode is a practical framework for what to do when life feels unmanageable—when work, relationships, finances, and personal struggles stack up into what feels like multiple “fires” burning at once. Mr. Palumbo draws on his experience as a teacher who often finds himself in the role of informal counselor, noting that many people eventually arrive at the same emotional conclusion: “I just don’t know what to do.” Throughout the episode, Palumbo uses extended metaphors—firefighting aboard a ship, war “fronts,” and domino chains—to reinforce a single theme: when life feels chaotic, the solution is not intensity, but prioritization and stabilization.

In this second episode of our pirate series we explore the brutal realities of life during the Golden Age of Piracy and why so many sailors abandoned imperial service for outlaw life on the open sea. Far from romantic adventure, the Atlantic world of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was shaped by mercantilism, rigid trade monopolies, violent naval discipline, and extreme inequality. Mr. Palumbo examines how sailors endured disease, starvation wages, corruption, and harsh punishment aboard legal vessels, why piracy increasingly appeared to many as a rational alternative rather than simple criminality, and how pirate crews organized themselves through elected captains, profit-sharing systems, strict internal discipline, and survival contracts designed to align risk with reward. The episode also explores the blurry line between pirates and privateers, state-sponsored raiders legally authorized to attack enemy commerce revealing how governments themselves often encouraged maritime violence when it served imperial interests.