What happens when a philosopher tries to change the world—not through words, but by shaping a king? In this episode, we sit down with James Romm, classical historian and author of Plato and the Tyrant, a gripping narrative about Plato’s dramatic real-world attempt to bring his philosophical ideals to life in the court of the tyrant Dionysius of Syr…

n today’s episode, we’re joined by Corinna Barrett Lain, a law professor and the author of Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection. With meticulous research and unflinching clarity, she exposes the hidden history of how lethal injection became the preferred method of execution in the U.S.—and how it’s far more troubling, …

In this episode, we’re joined by Dr. Theresa Callaghan, skincare scientist of 35 years and author of Help! I’m Covered in Adjectives: Cosmetic Claims & The Consumer. With wit, science, and decades of industry experience, Dr. Callaghan helps us unpack the seductive language of the beauty industry—revealing how terms like “clinically proven” and “ant…

In today’s episode, we’re joined by Claudia Rowe, award-winning journalist and author of Wards of the State, a searing, meticulously researched account of the U.S. foster care system. Over the course of a century, America’s foster care system has promised protection but often delivered pain. Through deeply human storytelling and journalistic rigor,…

In today's episode we speak with author Steve Eichenblatt about his memoir, Pretend They Are Dead. When Steven's dad, Allen, disappeared, he left behind more than his children-he left a legacy of loss and family secrets. Though working just miles away, Allen gave up his kids for adoption. He was soon replaced by another man, one with his own four c…

Jane Fischer joins us for a heartfelt and revealing conversation about her memoir If You Knew Suzy: Pushing Past the Boundaries of Never. Born with Rare Brain Disorder, Suzy Fischer Was Told She’d Never Walk, Talk, or Thrive—But She Did All That and More Doctors gave Suzy Fischer a grim prognosis at birth: she would never walk, talk, live independe…

Today on the podcast, we’re joined by A.O. Wagner, author of the intriguing philosophical novel The Karma Sequence. In this conversation, Wagner opens up about the origins of the book, its exploration of karma, consequence, and human connection, and how fiction can serve as a powerful lens for spiritual and moral reflection. Whether you're drawn to…

Matt Crawford speaks with author Simon Tolkien about his book, The Palace At The End Of The Sea. Today, we're honored to welcome novelist and historian Simon Tolkien. Known for his gripping historical fiction and literary craftsmanship, Simon's latest novel, Palace at the End of the Sea, is a sweeping, emotionally layered story with the backdrop of…

Matt Crawford speaks with author George Zavershinskiy about his book, The Atomic Shepard. Amid Cold War tensions, a gifted nuclear physicist – poised to become the future father of new weapons – shockingly gains religious faith. Seeking to confess this revelation, he enters the priesthood, finding purpose but facing myriad trials. His startling 197…

Matt Crawford speaks with author Christina Li about her debut adult novel, The Manor of Dreams. Vivian Yin is dead. The first Chinese actress to win an Oscar, the trailblazing ingénue rose to fame in the eighties, only to disappear from the spotlight at the height of her career to live out the rest of her life as a recluse. Now her remaining family…

Matt Crawford speaks with author Judy Karofsky about her book, DisElderly Conduct: The Flawed Business of Assisted Living and Hospice. The book is a personal account of unmet needs in assisted living and hospice aiming to spark discussions about new approaches for America’s aging population and family decision makers. There are 30 thousand assisted…

Matt Crawford speaks with candidate for Lieutenant Governor of California Janelle Kellman about her career and political aspirations. As the Mayor of Sausalito, member of the Town Council, and across ten years serving on the Sausalito Planning Commission, Janelle solved many of the same challenges facing California today. Janelle looks to take acti…

Matt Crawford speaks with NYT Best-selling author Lynne Olson about her book, The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück: How an Intrepid Band of Frenchwomen Resisted the Nazis in Hitler's All-Female Concentration Camp . The extraordinary true story of a small group of Frenchwomen, all Resistance members, who banded together in a notorious concentration camp to…

Matt Crawford speaks with Data Scientist and author Justin Evans about his book, The Little Book of Data: Understanding the Powerful Analytics that Fuel AI, Make or Break Careers, and Could Just End Up Saving the World. Data is not about number crunching. It’s about ideas. And when used properly (read: ethically), it is the problem solver of our ti…

Matt Crawford speaks with Big Pharma Whistleblower Lisa Pratta about her book, False Claims: One Insider's Impossible Battle Against Big Pharma Corruption. In Big Pharma, lives are secondary to profit margins. But Lisa Pratta stood her ground—risking everything to expose the lies of a billion-dollar pharmaceutical business mired in deception, greed…

Matt Crawford speaks with Alia Dastagir, an award-winning journalist and author of For Those Who Have Confused You to be a Person. Part memoir, part cultural commentary, her book is a searing meditation on identity, invisibility, and the hunger for dignity in a fractured world. Alia shares how years of reporting on trauma, injustice, and inequity s…

Matt Crawford speaks with author Sylvia Lerch about her book, Grasp the Nettle. Set in a remote district of Western Australia in the 1920s, an era which outlawed suicide, an unidentified body has been found and police are treating the death as suspicious. The story presents a chance for strangers (the reader) to peruse the very private diaries of t…

Matt Crawford speaks with author David Singer about his book, From Cab Driver to Carnegie Hall. David and I talk about his eclectic careers and how he managed to end up playing Clarinet for two U.S Presidents; one the same day as he was driving a cab. Resilience and gratitude is the overarching message of this book and everyone can take something f…

In this gripping episode, we sit down with Stephen Willeford, the man who courageously intervened during the 2017 Sutherland Springs church shooting, one of the deadliest mass shootings in American history. Willeford, a former NRA instructor and lifelong resident of Sutherland Springs, recounts the harrowing events of that day—how he heard gunfire …

Matt Crawford speaks with author Stephen R. Platt about his book, The Raider: The Untold Story of a Renegade Marine and the Birth of U.S Special Forces in World War II. In this compelling episode, historian Stephen R. Platt joins us to discuss his latest book, The Raider, a powerful chronicle of Evans Carlson—the controversial, visionary Marine off…

Matt Crawford speaks with Columbia Law Professor Susan Sturm about her book, What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Institutions. Even as anti-racism practices seemed to be gaining momentum, the nation shows signs of falling back into long-standing patterns of racial injustice and inequality. Leaders who introduce anti-racist approaches…

Matt Crawford speaks with Academy award winning documentary filmmaker of My Octopus Teacher and author Craig Foster about his book, My Amphibious Soul: Finding the Wild in a Tame World. Craig and I discuss his worldwide phenomenon documentary My Octopus Teacher and how that led to his follow up book My Amphibious Soul. How do we connect with nature…

Matt Crawford speaks with author Dean Van Nguyen about his book, Words for My Comrades: A Political History of Tupac Shakur. Before his murder at age twenty-five, Tupac Shakur rose to staggering artistic heights as the preeminent storyteller of the 1990s, building, in the process, one of the most iconic public personas of the last half century. He …

Matt Crawford speaks with Andrew Holter about his book, Going Around: Selected Journalism Murray Kempton. A courtly man of Southern roots, Murray Kempton worked as a labor reporter for the New York Post, won a Pulitzer Prize while at Newsday, and was arrested at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago along the way. He wore three piece suits …

Matt Crawford speaks with Professor Bill Yousman the director of the Media Literacy and Digital Culture graduate program at Sacred Heart University. We discuss misinformation, disinformation and the important distinction between them as well as how we can become more literate in our media consumption. If we start there, that will enable us to have …

Matt Crawford speaks with former CDC Epidemiologist Dr. Charles LeBaron about his book, Greed to Do Good: The Untold Story of CDC's Disastrous War on Opioids: A CDC Physician's Personal Account. When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that overdose deaths had quadrupled in ten years, hitting a record high of 90,000 in 20…

Matt Crawford speaks with author Robert Walker about his book, Six Moons, Seven Gods: An Arthurian Fantasy Medieval Adventure (The Legends of Baelon Book 1.) The skilled thieves of the Takers Guild plot to overthrow the kingdoms of Baelon, but when their plans are thwarted by a prescient woman and her brooding daughter, they must turn to the League…

Matt Crawford speaks with author Will Bardenwerper about his book, Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America. What happens when a minor league team—the heart and soul of a Rust Belt town in western New York—is shut down by the billionaires who run Major League Baseball? Batavia, New York—between Rochester and Buffalo—host…

Matt Crawford speaks with Susan Polgar about her book, Rebel Queen: The Cold War, Misogyny, and the Making of a Grandmaster. A real life Queen’s Gambit, this captivating memoir tells the story of one of the most renowned women in chess history, Susan Polgar, taking on a sexist establishment and rewriting the rules of what women could achieve agains…

Matt Crawford speaks with author Helen Sheehy about her novel, Just Willa. Just Willa is a family chronicle of rare beauty-more than reminiscent of Willa Cather in capturing the regional flavors of America-stretching over a span of decades through an intimate focus on the life of one woman. In it, Helen Sheehy gives us a character of indomitable sp…

Matt Crawford speaks with Beau L'Amour about his stewardship of his father Louis L'Amour's catalog. L'Amour eventually wrote 100 novels, over 250 short stories, and (as of 2010) sold more than 320 million copies of his work. By the 1970s his writings were translated into over ten languages. Every one of his works is still in print. Beau has taken t…

Matt Crawford speaks with author Lady Dyana Ziegler about her book, Midnight Train From Georgia. Midnight Train from Georgia chronicles the incredible rise of Gladys Knight and the Pips from their origins singing in a small Atlanta church to their induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. When two families' destinies intertwine at Mt. Moriah Bap…

Matt Crawford speaks with professor and author Shelly Fisher Fishkin about her book, Jim: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn’s Comrade. Mark Twain’s Jim, introduced in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), is a shrewd, self‑aware, and enormously admirable enslaved man, one of the first fully drawn Black fathers in American fiction. Haunte…

Matt Crawford speaks with author Kristian Ronn about his book, The Darwinian Trap: The Hidden Evolutionary Forces That Explain Our World (and Threaten Our Future.) When people talk about today’s biggest challenges—pollution, misinformation, artificial intelligence, inept CEOs, and politicians—they tend to frame the conversation around “bad people” …

Matt Crawford speaks with Bremond Berry MacDougall and Lisa Cooper about their new publishing company Quite Literally Books. Quite Literally Books is a heritage press devoted to discovering and reissuing ought-to-be-in-print books by American women authors-and occasionally others-who've been shelved for far too long. We discuss the first six books …

Matt Crawford speaks with Dr. Ran Anbar about his book, The Life Guide for Teens: The Life Guide for Teens: Harnessing Your Inner Power to be Healthy, Happy, and Confident. Today’s generation of teenagers are living in a world no one could have imagined just a couple decades ago, a world of social media and an endless flow of information (and disin…

Matt Crawford speaks with author Denise Haynes about her book, Talent Show. Do you really know your parents? We all think we do but never consider them as persons before parenthood descended. And do they know you? In Talent Show an introverted father becomes talkative and lifts the curtain on who his wife was before she was a mother, who she became…

Matt Crawford speaks with author Rebe Huntman about her book, My Mother in Havana: A Memoir of Magic and Miracle. Writing with a physicality of language that moves like the body in dance, Rebe Huntman, a poet, choreographer, and dancer, embarks on a pilgrimage into the mysteries of the gods and saints of Cuba and their larger spiritual view of the …

Matt Crawford speaks with Editor at large for Project Censored about its State of the Free Press 2025. We discuss media bias, under reported news stories and how algorithms are controlling most of the information we consume. A worthy and thought-provoking listen.By Matt Crawford

Matt Crawford speaks with author Christian Sheppard about his book, The Ancient Wisdom of Baseball: Lessons for Life from Homer's ODYSSEY to the World Series. Who are you, how are you supposed to live, and what about happiness? Answers to age-old questions are offered in classic myths about heroes, gods, and monsters, and at the ballgame. In The An…

Matt Crawford speaks with author Cassidy Randall about her book, Thirty Below: The Harrowing and Heroic Story of the First All-Women's Ascent of Denali. Cassidy Randall draws on extensive archival research and original interviews to tell an engrossing, edge-of-the-seat adventure story about a forgotten group of climbers who had the audacity to beli…

Matt Crawford speaks with author Howard Lewis about his book, Leave Your Phone at the Door: The Joy of Offline. Real life happens beyond your phone screen. Leave Your Phone at the Door embraces the OFFLINE philosophy, which is a celebration of the much underrated virtues of randomness and serendipity. Whether sharing stories of unexpected encounter…

Matt Crawford speaks with author Edward L. Jones III about his book, Medication, Mental Illness, and Murder: What Really Killed the Crespi Twins. While Kim Crespi was getting a haircut, her husband David murdered their five-year-old twin daughters during a game of hide and seek. In the aftermath, family, friends, and even David have more questions …

Matt Crawford speaks with author Samuel Ashworth about his book, The Death and Life of August Sweeney: A Novel. Legendary chef August Sweeney has served his final meal, dying in the middle of service in the very restaurant he built to secure his legacy. When Dr. Maya Zhu, a guarded, intense autopsist, is summoned to investigate, she discovers she m…

Matt Crawford speaks with author Kit Karson about her book, Nefarious Intent: A Sheriff Elliott Mystery. Holiday festivities in tiny Anderson, Montana take an unexpected turn when a welfare check becomes a murder investigation. Stone County deputy Tom Edwards discovers the frozen corpses of a local couple bound to chairs at their home in the Moonli…

Matt Crawford speaks with Neurologist and author Dr. Suzanne O'Sullivan about her book, The Age of Diagnosis: How Our Obsession with Medical Labels is Making Us Sicker. We live in an age of diagnosis. Conditions like ADHD and autism are on the rapid rise, while new categories like long Covid are being created. Medical terms are increasingly used to…

Matt Crawford speaks with Dr. Henry Gee about his book, The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire. In this provocative book, award-winning science writer Henry Gee offers a concise, brilliantly-told history of our species--and argues that we are on a rapid, one-way trip to extinction. The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire narrates the dramatic ri…

Matt Crawford speaks with entrepreneur and CEO Tom Kubiniec about his career and company SecureIT Tactical. How did Tom go from a promising guitarist to a business owner, serial entrepreneur and CEO of SecureIT Tactical, a secure firearm storage after never owning a firearm until 2011? Give a listen and prepare to be inspired. We often think the in…

Matt Crawford speaks with professor of Biology at John Jay University and author Nathan Lents about his book, The Sexual Evolution: How 500 Million Years of Sex, Gender, and Mating Shape Modern Relationships. Evolutionary biologist Nathan H. Lents knows what makes humans unique—and it’s most definitely not our sexual diversity. A professor at John …

Matt Crawford speaks with lawyer, judge, painter, illustrator and author Etienne Labuschagne about his work and his book, Bedtime Stories for Clever Children. Etienne and I discuss how to broach difficult subjects with children and how to empower them to tackle the challenging moments in life. Many of us try to protect our kids from the moments in …