Thecuriousmanspodcast

What do we inherit from the people we lose too soon?

Author Hilary Plattner joins the show to discuss her memoir The Momma Puzzle, a poignant story of grief, discovery, and family history.

After her mother's death by suicide, Hilary spent decades carrying unanswered questions. Eventually, she began piecing together her mother's life through personal artifacts, family interviews, and historical research—including her mother's experiences working for the Foreign Service in Saigon during the 1950s.

We discuss memory, loss, mental health, family secrets, intergenerational healing, and the ways storytelling can help us understand both those we've lost and ourselves.

What happens when you leave everything familiar behind and start over in a place where you can't read the signs, speak the language, or even confidently order lunch?

For many people, immigration is not an abstract political topic—it's a daily reality filled with uncertainty, adaptation, frustration, discovery, and growth.

In this episode, I'm joined by award-winning author and educator Janet Flaugher to discuss her acclaimed memoir Two Bottles of Water.

The book chronicles the three years Janet and her husband spent living in Beijing after she accepted a position as superintendent of an international school in 2002. Through humor, honesty, and sharp observation, she explores culture shock, language barriers, identity, belonging, unconscious bias, and the surprising lessons Americans can learn from Chinese culture.

This is a fascinating conversation about what it truly means to become a stranger in a foreign land—and how that experience can fundamentally change the way you see the world.

The Holocaust is often told through statistics—millions murdered, thousands of communities destroyed, entire cultures erased.

But history is ultimately made up of individual lives, individual families, and individual acts of courage.

In this episode, I'm joined by journalist and author Keith Morgan to discuss his powerful book Ruta's Closet.

The book tells the remarkable true story of Ruth Kron Sigal and her family, who endured the horrors of the Shavl Ghetto in Lithuania during World War II. Through years of research and firsthand testimony, Morgan brings to life a Jewish community that has often been overlooked in Holocaust history and explores the resilience, courage, and humanity that survived amid unimaginable brutality.

This is a conversation about memory, survival, storytelling, and why preserving these histories remains so important today.

In this episode, I'm joined by historian, national security intelligence veteran, and author Ralph DeFalco to discuss his new novel The Counterfeit.

Set in a chilling near future, the novel imagines an America defeated in a Pacific war, politically fractured, economically broken, and increasingly authoritarian. At its center is a daring intelligence operation involving identity, deception, resistance, and the fight to preserve freedom from within.

Drawing upon a five-decade career in intelligence and national security, DeFalco blends geopolitical realism with thriller pacing to explore questions that feel increasingly relevant in today's uncertain world.

In this episode, I'm joined by global health advocate, founder and CEO of the Initiative for Medicines, Access, and Knowledge (I-MAK), and author Tahir Amin to discuss his groundbreaking book Pharma Monopoly: The Battle for the Future of Medicines.

Drawing on decades of work challenging pharmaceutical patents and advocating for equitable access to medicine, Amin argues that the modern drug system is shaped not only by science, but by law, politics, economics, and monopoly power. From insulin and cancer drugs to the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic, this conversation explores who controls medicine, who profits from it, and what a more just global health system could look like.

Monaco is often seen as a playground for the rich and famous—a tiny kingdom of casinos, superyachts, and royalty.

But according to veteran intelligence operative and author Robert Eringer, beneath the glamour lies a far more complicated world of espionage, organized crime, money laundering, and political intrigue.

In this episode, we discuss his explosive memoir The Spymaster of Monte Carlo, the story of how he says he was recruited by Albert II, Prince of Monaco to build a modern intelligence service for the Principality of **Monaco>.

Part spy thriller, part political memoir, and part insider account of palace politics, this conversation explores the murky intersection of power, privilege, intelligence work, and the personal cost of pursuing uncomfortable truths.

Family stories are often built on cherished memories, treasured photographs, and carefully preserved traditions.

But sometimes, buried beneath those stories are secrets, tragedies, and wounds that ripple across generations.

In this episode, I'm joined by Phyllis Karas, New York Times bestselling author, professor of journalism at Boston University, and longtime journalist, to discuss her powerful book Curse of the Blumenthals.

Part true crime investigation, part family memoir, and part exploration of generational trauma, the book traces the extraordinary saga of the Blumenthal family—from immigration and Prohibition-era bootlegging to devastating tragedy, murder, family estrangement, and ultimately the search for healing.

This is a conversation about family secrets, memory, resilience, journalism, and how understanding the past can help us break cycles that span generations.

In this episode, I'm joined by acclaimed anthropologist and longtime ethnographer of political movements Ida Susser to discuss her book The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy.

When the Yellow Vest movement erupted across France in 2018, it confounded observers. It drew support from across the political spectrum, united people from different classes and backgrounds, and challenged conventional ideas about protest and political identity.

By embedding herself within the movement, interviewing participants, and observing its evolution firsthand, Susser offers a rare look inside one of the most important grassroots political movements of the 21st century. We discuss democracy, populism, economic inequality, social movements, and what the Yellow Vests reveal about the future of politics around the world.

Why do some founders thrive under pressure while others burn out trying to scale?

In this episode, I'm joined by entrepreneur, investor, and five-time CEO Patrick J. Sweeney II to discuss his book The Founder's Creed.

Drawing from neuroscience, high-stakes leadership, and decades spent building companies and investing in startups, Sweeney argues that hyper-growth isn't driven by strategy alone—it begins with belief. In the book, he introduces the "BOODA Doctrine," a framework that inserts belief ahead of the traditional OODA loop to help leaders move faster, act with conviction, and avoid the chaos that destroys so many founders.

This conversation explores entrepreneurship, decision-making, neuroscience, burnout, resilience, and what it really takes to lead under extreme uncertainty.

Some memoirs tell the story of a life.

Others tell the story of survival, identity, and the invisible emotional currents that shape generations.

In this episode, I'm joined by physician, healthcare leader, and author Mai Pham to discuss her debut memoir Bridge from Saigon.

As a child refugee fleeing Saigon, Mai's journey carried her from war and displacement to institutions like Harvard and Johns Hopkins, eventually leading to influential work shaping Medicare and Medicaid policy. But beneath those achievements lies a deeply personal story about family history, psychological struggle, healing, and the search for belonging.

This conversation explores immigration, trauma, medicine, resilience, identity, and what it means to build a bridge between past and present.