Podcasts about Revolutionary War

It's oft said that Washington refused a crown. With Richard Lim of This American President, we get real about this topic. His book Refusing a Crown is the first book to place Washington's decisions within the sweeping Western shift from monarchy to republic, showing why that transition was anything but inevitable. Drawing on the Judeo-Christian moral tradition and the political inheritance from Great Britain, Refusing a Crown reveals how early Americans sought to build a republic strong enough to govern real people—not an idealized political fantasy. At a time when Americans once again argue about leadership, power, and the future of self-government, one figure continues to stand apart: George Washington. Across the political spectrum—from Donald Trump to Joe Biden—leaders still invoke him as the ultimate measure of political greatness. Refusing a Crown reveals why.Washington's most extraordinary achievement was not winning the Revolutionary War or helping found a new nation. It was something far rarer: He gave up power—twice. First, when he resigned his command after victory. Then again, when he stepped down as president, establishing a precedent no law required and no force could compel. In an age dominated by kings and emperors, Washington chose restraint—and in doing so, he helped define the American experiment. Book (Preorder):https://www.amazon.com/Refusing-Crown-George-Washington-Changed/dp/1645721280 Website:https://www.richardmlim.com/ This American President:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thisamericanpresidentX: https://x.com/ThisAmerPresFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ThisAmerPres/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisamericanpresident LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-l-4116094/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David N. Gellman interviews Nicholas P. Wood on Let the Oppressed Go Free: Abolitionism in Colonial and Revolutionary AmericaIn Let the Oppressed Go Free, Nicholas P. Wood presents the opponents of slavery who sustained and expanded the antislavery movement during the American Revolution in the face of widespread hostility. These early abolitionists were inspired by antislavery theology: the view that slavery was a sinful form of oppression that would provoke God's wrath against slaveholding societies. These principles were first advanced by a handful of Quakers and Puritans as early as the 1600s, but they did not become widespread until the second half of the eighteenth century. Quakers embraced antislavery theology during the French and Indian War, which they interpreted as divine chastisement for the sin of colonial slavery. Citing the prophet Isaiah, they pledged to please the Lord by letting the oppressed go free.Antislavery theology became even more prominent during the American Revolution. When Parliament provoked an imperial crisis in the 1760s, abolitionists argued it was further evidence of God's anger over slavery. The outbreak of war in 1775 made these arguments increasingly persuasive. Let the Oppressed Go Free demonstrates that antislavery activism during the Revolution by Quakers, African Americans, and evangelical patriots was more sophisticated and influential than historians have recognized. The northern states that began abolishing slavery during the Revolution did so in response to tenacious agitation and generally described their actions as designed to earn God's blessing.Let the Oppressed Go Free challenges many common assumptions about abolitionism and the American Revolution. Wood demonstrates that religion remained central to abolitionism rather than being displaced by “secular” arguments about natural rights. And whereas some have argued that the Revolutionary War hindered antislavery progress and fueled racism, Wood shows that the war accelerated reform. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Revolutionary War was fought not only on the battlefields of North America but also across the world's oceans, where Britain's mighty Royal Navy faced an unlikely challenge from a fledgling American naval force. In this first installment of a three-part series, James and Audrey explore the harsh realities of life aboard British and American warships, the rise of privateering, and the birth of the Continental Navy under leaders like John Adams, George Washington, and Esek Hopkins. We'll examine the first American naval operations, including Washington's "secret navy," the raid on Nassau, and the creation of a force that dared to challenge the greatest maritime power on earth. Join us as we set sail on the remarkable story of the Revolutionary War at sea and the beginnings of the United States Navy.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The story of Earl Percy and the Revolutionary War has been a big theme on the Alnwick Castle podcast this year, especially with our currently exhibition (still available to visit at Alnwick Castle until 20 October, and again in 2027).So when Bill Openshaw published a second volume of letters and papers from Earl Percy and his time in America, we had to get him back on the podcast to find out more.Redcoats in New York and Rhode Island picks up where the first volume by Bill, The Road to Lexington, left off. Here you will hear Bill tell us about the Battle of Long Island, the effect of the Declaration of Independence, and the connections Percy had with famous Brits like General Howe and Sir Peter Parker - and famous Americans like Benedict Arnold, Alexander Hamilton and George Washington himself.Redcoats in New York and Rhode Island is available now wherever you get your books, as well as in the Alnwick Castle gift shop!

Donna takes us to Merion, Pennsylvania, where the General Wayne Inn served travelers for nearly 300 years and, if you believe the stories, some of them never checked out. She digs into the Revolutionary War–era ghosts, the staff who swore something was sharing the building with them, and why this old tavern has been called one of the most haunted in America. Kerri covers Sherri Papini, a young mom from Redding, California, disappeared while out on a run and was found 22 days later on Thanksgiving Day with an account of being abducted that launched a massive search for her captors. Kerri walks through what investigators uncovered in the years that followed, and the real people who were affected along the way. If you have any local true crime, local urban legend/lore, ghost stories.. we want them all!! We want to hear from YOU. Especially if you have any funny Ambien stories! Email us at aparanormalchicks@gmail.com Join The Creepinati @ www.patreon.com/theAPCpodcast Edited by Caden Baughman at Guestroom Studio https://www.gstrmstudio.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donna takes us to Merion, Pennsylvania, where the General Wayne Inn served travelers for nearly 300 years and, if you believe the stories, some of them never checked out. She digs into the Revolutionary War–era ghosts, the staff who swore something was sharing the building with them, and why this old tavern has been called one of the most haunted in America. Kerri covers Sherri Papini, a young mom from Redding, California, disappeared while out on a run and was found 22 days later on Thanksgiving Day with an account of being abducted that launched a massive search for her captors. Kerri walks through what investigators uncovered in the years that followed, and the real people who were affected along the way. If you have any local true crime, local urban legend/lore, ghost stories.. we want them all!! We want to hear from YOU. Especially if you have any funny Ambien stories! Email us at aparanormalchicks@gmail.com Join The Creepinati @ www.patreon.com/theAPCpodcast Edited by Caden Baughman at Guestroom Studio https://www.gstrmstudio.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A decisive Revolutionary War battle began on this day in 1781. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Two of America's most recognizable historic landmarks sit just steps apart in Philadelphia, but how much do you really know about Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell?As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary, we explore the history of Independence Hall, the meeting place of the Second Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, and the site forever connected to the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the United States.We also dig into the fascinating history of the Liberty Bell: its enormous size, famous inscription, how it got its name, and the surprising story behind that iconic crack.Along the way, we uncover some American history trivia involving George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, the Continental Army, the U.S. Postal Service, and even the appearances of Independence Hall on American currency.

Good evening, friends. In this edition, we're taking a ghostly journey through Delaware, the First State, and uncovering some of its most haunted locations. Grab your favorite fall cocktail – we're sipping on a delicious mix of bourbon and salted caramel apple cider, aptly named "Mabon".Delaware is small but packed with rich history and ghostly tales. From its colonial beginnings to the Revolutionary War, the spirits of those who lived and died here linger on.

September 25, 2026September 25 is Dolly Parton Day and also National Lobster Day, National Lobster Day honors the cultural and economic history of the lobster industry, Lobsters have been vital to Maine's coastal communities, but were once scorned as poor man's food, It was fish that were central to the English settlement of North America, Scholars have called the discovery of fish in the Atlantic and the trade it sparked, the “Fish Revolution,” Fishing meant big money and British fishermen fished the Grand Banks and had moved into the Gulf of Maine by 1600, European fishermen brought diseases for which the Indigenous populations had no immunities and tribes were wiped out, The fish trade was so important to New Englanders that access to fishing grounds was written into the third article of the Treaty of Paris, which officially ended the Revolutionary War.To read this letter, click here:Listen on Apple PodcastsListen on SpotifyYou can also find Heather at:YouTubeBlueskyInstagramFacebookThreadsTikTok Get full access to Letters from an American at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe

Historian will discuss early American music "Yankee Doodle" is the oldest patriotic song that many Americans still know. And, unlike "The Star-Spangled Banner," it's associated with the Revolutionary War, the country's crucible. During the War of 1812, when the British evacuated after launching a failed land strike on Baltimore and bombarding Fort McHenry for almost 24 hours, the rampart's defenders hoisted a giant flag and played "Yankee Doodle" in defiance. Few people nowadays take the ditty seriously, but it helped spread news and boost morale during the fight for independence, says Manley Roberts, who is presenting a three-pronged program, Music of the American Revolution, at 7 p.m. on Thursday (Oct. 1) at the Howland Cultural Center in Beacon. The event is being organized by the Beacon Historical Society and Mayor Lee Kyriacou. Roberts, who volunteers at Cowpens National Battlefield in South Carolina, provides cultural context for the sounds of the conflict. A friend of Kyriacou since they met at Yale Law School, he's in town to attend his daughter's wedding at The Yard. She lives in New York City and is enamored with Beacon. Roberts plays piano and performs with the Charlotte Master Chorale, which occasionally augments the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra. "Music is a great way to teach history because it gets people involved and they feel like they're part of it," says Roberts, who will project song lyrics and encourage a singalong. After covering musical life in the colonies, he will play popular selections from both sides during the war, including the laudatory "British Grenadiers" contrasted with the patriot version, "Free America." Melodies remained recognizable, but words shifted around like folk tunes, he says. With copyrights nonexistent, "they all freely borrowed from each other." "Yankee Doodle," known as the song with 100 verses, began as a British diss toward Americans during the French and Indian War (1756-63), "but we turned it into a badge of honor" and used the tune to pass messages and propaganda, says Roberts. In one version, a purported visitor to a Continental Army camp reported: "There we saw the men and boys as thick as hasty pudding." One aspect of the program that often surprises people, Roberts says, is the military use of fifes, drums and bugles in the field to drill and conduct battles. "You couldn't hear the human voice above the muskets and cannons, so they developed a communications system; when bands played a particular drum pattern, everyone turned to the right. Even in camp, they had signals for doing chores." Though "Yankee Doodle" remains part of the country's cultural lexicon, Roberts contends that "Chester," written by the first American composer of note, William Billings (1746-1800), served as the war's de facto anthem. "It was an important song that helped support the cause," Roberts says. "Musicians played it all the time, and the army marched to it." Like many repetitive tunes from the era, "Chester" is written for four-part harmony in a stilted religious style that hindered its legacy. "A lot of the music from the period is church-like, militant or arranged for chamber voicing and instrumentation," says Roberts. "It's telling that 'Yankee Doodle' is the most enduring song from the Revolution."

How did George Washington's Culper Spy Ring outsmart the British Empire for five years without exposing its principal agents? Discover how Benjamin Tallmadge built an extraordinary Revolutionary War spy network and became Washington's spymaster. In this episode of America's Founding Series on The P.A.S. Report Podcast, Professor Nick Giordano reveals the true story of Major Benjamin Tallmadge, Nathan Hale's close friend and the architect of the Culper network. After British forces executed Hale, Tallmadge helped create a disciplined system of trusted agents, numerical ciphers, invisible ink, dead drops, and covert routes across British-held New York. Culper reports alerted Washington to the threat against French forces at Newport, while Tallmadge later stood at the center of the Benedict Arnold crisis. More importantly, Benjamin Tallmadge's example reveals why secret power demands character, restraint, and accountability. As America approaches its 250th anniversary, his story offers a timely lesson: institutions are only as trustworthy as the people who operate them. What You'll Learn in This Episode: Nathan Hale's Legacy: How Hale's fatal mission revealed the need for a secure American intelligence network. The Chain of Trust: How personal relationships and shared purpose helped the Culper Spy Ring survive inside British-occupied New York. Revolutionary War Tradecraft: How Tallmadge used aliases, James Jay's invisible ink, numerical ciphers, couriers, and whaleboat routes to protect Washington's spies. Newport and West Point: How Culper reports helped Washington respond to the British threat against French forces and how Tallmadge's judgment kept Major John André in American custody. The Lesson for Today: Why institutional trust depends upon character, accountability, sound judgment, and loyalty to the Constitution. Episode Chapters 00:00 Nathan Hale's Final Mission and Sacrifice 02:07 How the Culper Spy Ring Began 03:00 Benjamin Tallmadge Becomes Washington's Spymaster 04:34 Inside Washington's Revolutionary War Spy Network 09:19 How Culper Intelligence Helped Protect the French at Newport 13:04 Benedict Arnold's Treason and the West Point Plot 14:41 John André's Execution and Benjamin Tallmadge's Character 17:21 What Benjamin Tallmadge Teaches Us About Institutional Trust ⭐ Help Keep Authentic American History Alive: If you believe the sacrifices that built this nation must never be forgotten, follow The P.A.S. Report Podcast, leave a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and text a link to this episode to 3 or 4 friends and family members right now.

How is it, Samuel Johnson famously asked on the eve of the Revolution, that Americans could so vociferously demand freedom for themselves while so conspicuously continuing to deny it to those they held in slavery? With Seeking the High Ground: Slavery and Political Conflict in the British Atlantic World (U Virginia Press, 2025), Matthew Mason helps answer that piercing question. As he shows, the language of slavery and freedom had long suffused Anglo-American political debates in the eighteenth century, with the Revolution emerging as one particularly hyperdramatic act during which combatants on both sides of the war of words connected the idea of slavery to the headline issues of the day. Mason details how Patriots and Loyalists alike deployed the rhetoric of slavery in their debates about all the crucial questions of the day, including republicanism, taxation and representation, and—by claiming the moral high ground—the nature of the Revolutionary War itself. These debates left complex rhetorical and political legacies for those seeking to abolish and defend slavery in both the new US and the remaining British Empire.“No one understands the politics of slavery and the rise of antislavery better than Matthew Mason. This is because he knows the original sources and deeply understands what historians have done and where they've taken detours. He keeps his eye on the big picture and his feet on the ground even while explaining the achievements and the limits of those who reached for the higher ground.”- David Waldstreicher, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, author of The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet's Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence“Matthew Mason's important new book cuts through some of the sharpest historiographical debates on the role of slavery and abolition in the Revolutionary Era to reveal a textured and dynamic portrait of the transatlantic political world.”- Rachel Shelden, Pennsylvania State University, author of Washington Brotherhood: Politics, Social Life, and the Coming of the Civil War Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How is it, Samuel Johnson famously asked on the eve of the Revolution, that Americans could so vociferously demand freedom for themselves while so conspicuously continuing to deny it to those they held in slavery? With Seeking the High Ground: Slavery and Political Conflict in the British Atlantic World (U Virginia Press, 2025), Matthew Mason helps answer that piercing question. As he shows, the language of slavery and freedom had long suffused Anglo-American political debates in the eighteenth century, with the Revolution emerging as one particularly hyperdramatic act during which combatants on both sides of the war of words connected the idea of slavery to the headline issues of the day. Mason details how Patriots and Loyalists alike deployed the rhetoric of slavery in their debates about all the crucial questions of the day, including republicanism, taxation and representation, and—by claiming the moral high ground—the nature of the Revolutionary War itself. These debates left complex rhetorical and political legacies for those seeking to abolish and defend slavery in both the new US and the remaining British Empire.“No one understands the politics of slavery and the rise of antislavery better than Matthew Mason. This is because he knows the original sources and deeply understands what historians have done and where they've taken detours. He keeps his eye on the big picture and his feet on the ground even while explaining the achievements and the limits of those who reached for the higher ground.”- David Waldstreicher, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, author of The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet's Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence“Matthew Mason's important new book cuts through some of the sharpest historiographical debates on the role of slavery and abolition in the Revolutionary Era to reveal a textured and dynamic portrait of the transatlantic political world.”- Rachel Shelden, Pennsylvania State University, author of Washington Brotherhood: Politics, Social Life, and the Coming of the Civil War Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nathanael Greene's brilliant campaign in the Carolinas left Charles Cornwallis with little choice but to carry the war into Virginia, setting in motion the chain of events that would decide the American Revolution. As George Washington, the Comte de Rochambeau, Admiral de Grasse, and the Comte de Barras coordinated one of the war's most daring and complex campaigns, the Franco-American allies trapped Cornwallis's army at Yorktown. After a relentless siege, Cornwallis surrendered more than 7,000 troops in one of history's most decisive military victories. Join James and Audrey as they examine the strategy, leadership, and international cooperation that secured American independence and effectively ended the Revolutionary War.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on Wes Iseli's MagicLife Podcast, Wes and Natalie are recapping their latest family vacation—and this one was a little different from their usual trips!Instead of heading to Cancun or spending the week at the beach, the Iseli family changed things up and traveled to the Williamsburg, Virginia area for a vacation filled with history, family adventures, and plenty of unexpected moments along the way.Wes and Natalie talk about staying in a house on the river, exploring Yorktown and Jamestown, hearing Revolutionary War cannons fire, the kids taking part in the Junior Ranger program, Lex chanting “Independence! Independence!”, and discovering which historical stops they loved…and which ones Wes would be perfectly happy never visiting again.

This week, Constitutional attorney Mark Smith of Four Boxes Diner joins John on what actually started the Revolutionary War, the 1792 law that still decides which firearms are protected, and why "dangerous and unusual" can't describe something tens of millions of Americans already own. Plus what body camera footage did for gun rights that no argument could. ----------------------- Special thanks to our sponsor for supporting this season! Kershaw Knives - Built for the everyday carry, ready for anything. Get your Kershaw today. Patriot Mobile – Get 1 month free with code “GOA” at checkout on their website!Right To Bear - Use code “GOA” for 15% off Life Membership

In this podcast, Pamela shares Revolutionary War stories and first hand accounts.https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/revolutionary-war-diary-of-moses-sleeper.htmhttps://www.nps.gov/subjects/americanrevolution/stories.htmRadio.NewHeightsEducation.orgInfo@NewHeightsEducation.orgBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/new-heights-show-on-education--4114185/support.

This is a Grave Talks CLASSIC EPISODE!Built in 1765 by British officer Roger Morris, the Morris-Jumel Mansion was never meant to be anything more than a quiet summer retreat. But more than 250 years later, that plan has clearly failed. Today, the mansion stands as Manhattan's oldest surviving house—and one of its most haunted.Over the centuries, the home has hosted some of the most powerful figures in American history, including George Washington and Aaron Burr. It's also been the backdrop for scandalous love affairs, whispered conspiracies, possible murders, and Revolutionary War intrigue. With that much emotional intensity packed into one place, it's no surprise that many believe some residents never truly left.Vincent Carbone has spent years exploring the strange activity inside the Morris-Jumel Mansion. From shadow figures and unexplained footsteps to spirits believed to be tied to former occupants, Vincent breaks down why this historic home continues to attract both historians and ghost hunters alike.Is the mansion haunted by those who loved, fought, and died within its walls—or by something far darker that feeds on centuries of unrest?#MorrisJumelMansion #TheGraveTalks #HauntedManhattan #ParanormalHistory #HauntedAmerica #TrueGhostStories #HistoricHauntings #RevolutionaryWarGhosts #HauntedNYC #RealParanormal Love real ghost stories? Want even more?Don't just listen—join us on YouTube and be part of the largest community of real paranormal encounters anywhere. Subscribe now and never miss a chilling new story:

This is a Grave Talks CLASSIC EPISODE! PART TWOBuilt in 1765 by British officer Roger Morris, the Morris-Jumel Mansion was never meant to be anything more than a quiet summer retreat. But more than 250 years later, that plan has clearly failed. Today, the mansion stands as Manhattan's oldest surviving house—and one of its most haunted.Over the centuries, the home has hosted some of the most powerful figures in American history, including George Washington and Aaron Burr. It's also been the backdrop for scandalous love affairs, whispered conspiracies, possible murders, and Revolutionary War intrigue. With that much emotional intensity packed into one place, it's no surprise that many believe some residents never truly left.Vincent Carbone has spent years exploring the strange activity inside the Morris-Jumel Mansion. From shadow figures and unexplained footsteps to spirits believed to be tied to former occupants, Vincent breaks down why this historic home continues to attract both historians and ghost hunters alike.Is the mansion haunted by those who loved, fought, and died within its walls—or by something far darker that feeds on centuries of unrest?#MorrisJumelMansion #TheGraveTalks #HauntedManhattan #ParanormalHistory #HauntedAmerica #TrueGhostStories #HistoricHauntings #RevolutionaryWarGhosts #HauntedNYC #RealParanormal Love real ghost stories? Want even more?Don't just listen—join us on YouTube and be part of the largest community of real paranormal encounters anywhere. Subscribe now and never miss a chilling new story:

Tune in here to this Wednesday's edition of the Brett Winterble Show! Brett kicks off the program by talking about President Donald Trump’s United Nations address and his escalating pressure on Iran. Trump used his speech before the U.N. General Assembly to defend U.S. actions against Iran and warned that he could “annihilate” the Islamic Republic if a deal is not reached. He also questioned whether Iran would agree to negotiations that could allow the country to rebuild and move toward a different future. We're joined by Bob Inman from Liberty Mountain Drama to talk about the Battle of Kings Mountain and the story behind the historical production. Inman explains how his interest in American history and family connections to the Revolutionary War inspired him to help bring the story to the stage. Bo Thompson from Good Morning BT is also here for this special episode of Crossing the Streams. Brett and Bo talk about the 37th anniversary of Hurricane Hugo’s impact on Charlotte and the lasting memories of the storm at WBT and WBTV. The conversation also turns to Bob Inman, the longtime WBTV anchor who joined Brett earlier in the program to discuss Liberty Mountain Drama and his connection to the region’s history. Bo also shares what he and the Good Morning BT team have coming up, including coverage of tonight’s school board meeting, following the latest local developments and revisiting President Trump’s U.N. speech tomorrow morning on Good Morning BT! Listen here for all of this and more on The Brett Winterble Show! For more from Brett Winterble check out his YouTube channel. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tune in here to this Wednesday's edition of the Brett Winterble Show! We're joined by Bob Inman from Liberty Mountain Drama to talk about the Battle of Kings Mountain and the story behind the historical production. Inman explains how his interest in American history and family connections to the Revolutionary War inspired him to help bring the story to the stage. The conversation explores the significance of the 1780 Battle of Kings Mountain, where Patriot forces defeated British and Loyalist troops during a pivotal period of the Revolutionary War. Inman discusses how the production portrays the settlers of the Carolinas and surrounding regions who were drawn into the conflict after initially hoping to avoid the fighting. He also explains the use of historical figures, including his ancestor Colonel James Williams, alongside fictional characters and composite families representing people who settled in the region. Inman says the production is designed to combine historical accuracy with live action and entertainment, with the battle unfolding both onstage and throughout the audience. Listen here for all of this and more on The Brett Winterble Show! For more from Brett Winterble check out his YouTube channel. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Some drivers in South Carolina don't know their state's history – especially when it comes to the Revolutionary War. Sgt. William Jasper was one of the country's first heroes, and his image now adorns the Palmetto State's new standard plates. The Y'all Show is a production of Yall.com and hosted by Jon Rawl.

How did Henry Knox, a 25-year-old Boston bookseller, move nearly 60 tons of artillery across 300 winter miles and help break the Siege of Boston without a costly ground battle?  In this episode of America's Founding Series on The P.A.S. Report Podcast, Professor Nick Giordano reveals the incredible true story of Henry Knox and the Noble Train of Artillery. As America marks its 250th anniversary, discover how this largely self-taught Patriot transported 59 cannons, mortars, and howitzers from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston and gave George Washington the firepower to force a British evacuation. Knox's journey demonstrates how self-education, competence, perseverance, and civic responsibility helped transform a former bookseller into Washington's chief of artillery and one of the American Revolution's most consequential leaders. Most Americans know Fort Knox as a military installation associated with America's gold reserves. Few know the Revolutionary War hero whose name it bears. What You'll Learn In This Episode: The Bookseller Who Mastered Artillery: How Henry Knox educated himself and earned George Washington's trust  The Noble Train of Artillery: How Knox moved nearly 60 tons of weapons across 300 miles of winter terrain  The Hudson River Crisis: What happened when a cannon crashed through the ice  The Victory at Dorchester Heights: Why the American position made British control of Boston untenable  The Lesson for America Today: What Knox teaches us about preparation, initiative, competence, and civic duty Episode Chapters 00:00 Henry Knox and the Siege of Boston 00:53 From Boston Bookseller to Washington's Artillery Chief 02:02 Fort Ticonderoga and the Noble Train of Artillery 06:50 Henry Knox's 300 Mile Winter Artillery Mission 10:02 The Cannon Crisis on the Frozen Hudson River 14:32 Dorchester Heights Breaks the Siege of Boston 18:26 Henry Knox's Lessons for America Today ⭐ Help Keep Authentic American History Alive: If you believe the sacrifices that built this nation must never be forgotten, follow The P.A.S. Report Podcast, leave a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and text a link to this episode to 3 or 4 friends and family members right now.

Thomas Jefferson has had no issue being remembered in American History. Ask anyone, this man was fundamental to Independence. But did he fight in the Revolutionary war itself?Don is joined by Michael Hattem, author of 'The Memory of '76: The Revolution in American History'; 'Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution'; and 'The Declaration of Independence: A Concise History', which will be published in November 2026.Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Tim Arstall. Senior Producer was Freddy Chick.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast.History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Next week marks 250 years since Connecticut's Nathan Hale was executed by British soldiers. This hour we look back at the life of Nathan Hale, and the local historian who kept his legacy alive. Plus, we'll learn about spying during the Revolutionary War, and discover another Connecticut spy who escaped Hale's fate. GUESTS: Alexander Rose: Author of books including Washington's Spies: The Story of America’s First Spy Ring. His last two books have been on American secret intelligence. He is also a writer and producer on the television series Turn: Washington’s Spies Michael Morand: Director of Community Engagement at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. He is also the City Historian of the City of New Haven Claire Bellerjeau: Co-author of Espionage and Enslavement in the Revolution: The True Story of Robert Townsend and Elizabeth and the founder of Remember Liss, a nonprofit sharing this story in schools and communities Music featured (in order): The Girl I Left Behind Me – The Norman Luboff Choir Hush – Joy Williams & Matt Berninger (Theme to the AMC Original Series “Turn”) Spies – Coldplay My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose – Wendy Weatherby Miller and the Lass – Eliza Carthy Turpin Hero – Colin Meloy Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Case 213: The Logan Inn: A Haunted Room, a Dead Soldier and the Mystery of EmilyThe Logan Inn in New Hope, Pennsylvania, has been welcoming travellers for nearly 300 years, and with that history has come a formidable collection of ghost stories.Room 6 is at the centre of many of them.Guests have reported unexplained footsteps, voices, moving objects, pillows being pulled from beneath their heads, strange figures reflected in mirrors and the unmistakable scent of lavender. And then there is Emily, the woman said to haunt the room.But who was Emily?Depending on who tells the story, Emily has been described as the mother of a former owner, the daughter of the owners, a former owner herself, and even confused with other female spirits at the inn. Her portrait, her furniture, where she lived, where she died and even the paranormal activity attributed to her have changed as the story has been retold.Anne traces the evolution of the Emily legend, going back through older accounts to discover what was originally reported, what was added later, and what we can actually establish about the real Emily Lutz.And Emily isn't the Logan Inn's only mystery.Deep beneath the inn is a basement where, according to legend, bodies were once stored when the frozen Pennsylvania ground made burial impossible. One particularly disturbing story claims that a man, later described in some versions as a Revolutionary War soldier, was placed amongst the dead only to wake and discover that everyone believed he was already a corpse.Did it really happen? Is there evidence that bodies were ever stored beneath the Logan Inn? And how did a story about a man mistakenly believed dead evolve into reports of a ghostly soldier roaming the building and a disembodied voice calling for “help”?Renata takes us through the extraordinary history of one of Pennsylvania's oldest inns, while Anne investigates the reported hauntings, eyewitness accounts, paranormal investigations and the changing folklore surrounding Emily, Room 6 and the soldier in the basement.After almost three centuries of history, is the Logan Inn genuinely haunted, or have generations of storytellers created ghosts with histories far more certain than the evidence?It's time to decide whether the Logan Inn is a True Haunting.Find Anne & Renata / True Hauntings

Over the past three segments, Dr. Thomas Murphy, author of Unsettling Scripture: Iroquois and the Book of Mormon, has walked us through his research connecting Haudenosaunee history to the origins of the Book of Mormon — from the Dartmouth/Moor’s Charity School connection, to the prophet Handsome Lake, to overlooked ties between Native nations and the Revolutionary War era. But all of it has been building toward one question we haven’t asked him directly yet: can the Book of Mormon be both fiction and scripture at the same time? https://youtu.be/0j-GMPVf1_o Thomas Murphy’s Answer! In our final segment, Murphy finally answers it. He also doesn’t shy away from the harder conversations his research raises — including the ethics of archaeology and the handling of indigenous remains in the search for Book of Mormon evidence, and where he actually lands on the long-running Heartland versus Mesoamerica debate. This is the conversation this whole series has been leading up to, and it’s one of the most personal, thoughtful answers we’ve heard on this show. Newsletter subscribers get early access to the full segment — sign up free at gospeltangents.com/newsletter to hear Murphy’s complete answer before it goes public. Listen to the rest of the series wherever you get your podcasts. Don't miss our other conversations with Thomas: https://gospeltangents.com/people/thomas-murphy/ Copyright © 2026 Gospel Tangents All Rights Reserved Check out a transcript of the interview on Amazon.

Tune in here to this Wednesday's edition of the Brett Winterble Show! We're joined by Alex Manley from Liberty Mountain to talk about his role as Colonel James Williams and the experience of bringing American history to life on stage. Manley discusses how he got started in acting, including his time performing in The Lost Colony at North Carolina’s Outer Banks. He explains what makes Liberty Mountain unique, from its historically accurate costumes and passionate performers to its intimate and explosive portrayal of the people who fought during the Revolutionary War. Manley also highlights the importance of preserving local history and theater while giving audiences an opportunity to experience the events in real time. He shares what audiences can expect from the production and encourages listeners to attend throughout the 2026 season. Liberty Mountain runs from September 18 through October 11, with performances Friday through Sunday. Tickets and additional information are available at https://www.libertymountaindrama.com/ Listen here for all of this and more on The Brett Winterble Show! For more from Brett Winterble check out his YouTube channel. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tune in here to this Wednesday's edition of the Brett Winterble Show! Brett kicks off the program by talking about the growing debate over artificial intelligence and the competition between the United States and China to lead the development of AI technology. Brett examines concerns surrounding AI safety, calls for slowing development and China’s approach to regulating and expanding artificial intelligence. He discusses recent concerns from technology leaders about the risks associated with increasingly powerful AI systems, while also highlighting the broader geopolitical competition surrounding the technology. We're joined by Alex Manley from Liberty Mountain to talk about his role as Colonel James Williams and the experience of bringing American history to life on stage. Manley discusses how he got started in acting, including his time performing in The Lost Colony at North Carolina’s Outer Banks. He explains what makes Liberty Mountain unique, from its historically accurate costumes and passionate performers to its intimate and explosive portrayal of the people who fought during the Revolutionary War. Manley also highlights the importance of preserving local history and theater while giving audiences an opportunity to experience the events in real time. He shares what audiences can expect from the production and encourages listeners to attend throughout the 2026 season. Liberty Mountain runs from September 18 through October 11, with performances Friday through Sunday. Tickets and additional information are available at libertymountaindrama.com. Beth Troutman from Good Morning BT is also here for this Monday episode of Crossing the Streams. Brett and Beth talk about artificial intelligence and the growing concerns surrounding its impact on privacy, technology and society. Beth shares her perspective as someone who has never been particularly enthusiastic about technology while discussing conversations with cybersecurity expert Theresa Payton and the importance of understanding AI’s potential risks. Brett and Beth also examine why concerns about artificial intelligence have intensified recently, including calls from technology leaders to slow down development and the possibility of factors such as financing, business interests and the global economy playing a role. Beth also compares the current AI conversation to the rapid rise of social media and the challenges that followed its growth without sufficient guardrails. Beth also shares what she and the Good Morning BT team have coming up tomorrow, including Andrea Bocelli tickets, an appearance from Winthrop University’s Scott Huffman and more on Good Morning BT! Listen here for all of this and more on The Brett Winterble Show! For more from Brett Winterble check out his YouTube channel. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You joined the Facebook group & went to the meet-up hoping for real answers. You left with 15 curriculum recommendations, 5 co-ops to research, and more overwhelm than you started with.A noisy homeschool support group isn't what you need. Purposeful, Bible-based community is.This episode shows you how to filter out the noise and find the kind of support that actually builds your homeschool from the inside out — with 3 practical steps you can take starting today:✅Why most homeschool support groups create analysis paralysis instead of peace✅How to audit your current sources of advice and cut what's draining you✅The power of ONE monthly Bible-based focus, instead of constantly switching direction✅Why a simple, daily routine matters more than a packed schedule or a perfect curriculum✅2 questions to ask any homeschool mom that instantly deepen the conversationClick the link below to join the Insider FastPass and get the targeted, Bible-based support your homeschool actually needs.Resources for YouInsider FastPass (free live workshop, exclusive bonuses, dinnertime conversation starters)Free Masterclass - 3 Tips to Lead Your Family with Peace & Confidence (From Schedule Manager to Spiritual Mentor)Show Notes:Why You Leave Feeling More Overwhelmed Than When You Walked InYou join a local Facebook group or head to a park meetup hoping to find encouragement, connection, and real answers for your homeschool. But within ten minutes you're sitting in a circle listening to complaints. Or worse — you leave with a list of 15 new curricula to check out, five co-ops to consider, and 10 blogs you must read. You drive home feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, and more isolated than before you even walked in.The truth is most traditional homeschool support groups give you noisy advice — venting sessions instead of targeted, biblical direction.A Room Full of Opinions Is Not the Same as Real SupportA room full of opinions does not equal a community of support. Support groups that focus on venting about kids or sharing endless online ideas create analysis paralysis instead of peace. And all you're really looking for is peace — peace within yourself so you'll know what direction to go, peace in your home, peace in your family.You don't have extra hours to sift through Pinterest or wander through internet forums and Facebook groups to find simple, battle-tested ways to add the Bible to your routine and bring purpose and intention to your homeschool. If you're getting real support, you would not leave feeling guilty. You would find ways to simplify your day and focus your kids' hearts on Jesus.What Abigail Adams Did InsteadDuring the Revolutionary War, Abigail Adams was homeschooling her kids on a farm in Quincy — surrounded by chaos and war. John Adams wrote to her: the education of our children is never out of my mind. He told her to train them in virtue, habituate them in industry, activity, and spirit.She didn't look for a bunch of social groups to get to with all her kids. She didn't need to vent. Instead, she intentionally built a network of targeted correspondents — women who wrote letters to one another and focused their conversations on virtue, on biblical duty, and on practical family and home management. They sharpened each other so they could raise their kids up to be leaders.Abigail's son, John Quincy Adams, eventually became president — just like his father. She was very purposeful in who she spent time with. And I think that's something you really need to consider. Where are you getting your support and who are you spending your time with?Sarah Edwards and the Power of Intentional CommunitySarah Edwards was the wife of Jonathan Edwards and raised 11 kids who all became influential in the community. Visitors from around the colonies would come to her home just to watch what she was doing and learn from her methods of teaching her children.She replaced chaotic advice with clear, peaceful routines in her house. She met regularly with other moms for direct, Bible-focused encouragement. And her intentional mentorship produced lasting results.Someone did a study on the Jonathan Edwards family around 1900 — about 200 years after they lived. Here's what that family produced: 13 college presidents, 65 professors, 100 lawyers, a dean of a law school, 30 judges, 80 holders of public office, three US senators, mayors of three large cities, governors of three states, a vice president of the United States, and members of their family wrote 135 books, edited 18 journals and periodicals, and sent out 100 missionaries overseas.That is what intentional, faith-focused family leadership looks like across generations.Filter Your Input — A Quick AuditYou cannot add extra hours to your day. So you need to look honestly at where you're spending your time and getting your ideas. Take inventory. Where are you getting your homeschool community and advice right now? If those sources are making you feel like you aren't doing enough — cut them off. If they leave you feeling drained and overwhelmed — mute them. That is not where you need to get support.Replace the endless scrolling with one Bible-based focus for the month. We're not adding anything. Most of you probably eat a meal together anyway — so just be more intentional and purposeful around that time. That's a very simple place to start.Real growth happens when you focus on executing one thing each month. Not adding a bunch of busy work. Not adding more curriculum. One focused action with one or two people who can support you and give you ideas. That is how real growth happens.Two Questions to Ask InsteadThe next time you connect with a fellow homeschool mom or even talk to your spouse, skip the generic how is school going. Ask these two questions instead.What is one small area of character that God is helping your family work on this week? Maybe it's work ethic. Maybe it's kindness. Maybe it's telling the truth. Just one small area.And what is one thing you can simplify or completely take off your plate today? When you do these two things — focus on character and remove one thing — it shifts your environment from all the overwhelming noise to targeted, peaceful action.You don't need another 50 blogs or podcasts to follow. You need someone who can walk alongside you with proven, simple steps. Someone just a little further along than you — like my friend Susan, who was one stage ahead of me with her kids. I watched what she was doing in high school, in college, as they got married, as a grandma. That's what you need.Imagine starting each month with a clear Bible-based teaching, a simple guide to grasp onto, and monthly office hours where you can ask your exact questions face to face. That's how you stop feeling isolated and start building roots into your kids.I'm launching something new and I'd love to invite you to our FastPass Insider Circle. Members will get a free live workshop with me where you can ask your questions about being purposeful, intentional, and character-building in your homeschool. You'll also get exclusive bonuses, including dinnertime conversation starters for your kids. I'm also hosting a free masterclass next week where we'll talk about getting the Bible into your children — not just teaching it, but showing them how to live it. Links are in the show notes.

Watch on YouTube Ted Fyock Jr. spent six years as an Army armor officer, deployed to Iraq with the 3rd Infantry Division, and then built a career in consulting before starting Carolina Expressways, a bulk freight brokerage, from nothing. Jared Flinn sat down with Ted at Fort Hunt, Virginia, on land George Washington once owned, to walk the whole road. Winston-Salem roots and a family that has served in nearly every American conflict since the Revolutionary War. ROTC at Appalachian State and a commission in 2007, at the height of the surge. Kuwait, Baghdad, and Sadr City. Marrying at 24 and meeting his wife in Paris at the six month mark of a twelve month deployment. Then twelve years at Deloitte Consulting that ended when DOGE cut roughly $20 million of the contract work he was leading and a reduction in force followed. At Oktoberfest at his church, he turned to his wife and told her he was going to start a business. The back half is the freight education. Why he chose bulk instead of a saturated broker market, what his first Bulk Freight Conference in Branson did for a guy with zero industry experience, and the tuition he has paid in year one, including a truck hauling corn that was struck by a CSX train. He gets into how a brand new brokerage gets in a shipper's door, why veteran owned is more than a line on a website, how running supply for a tank company translates to moving hoppers, moving a skid steer to a private island, and where Carolina Expressways is headed by 2030. Faith, family, and 250 years of American opportunity close it out. CHAPTERS 00:00 Fort Hunt, Virginia, on land George Washington owned 01:34 A family that has served since the Revolutionary War 04:00 ROTC at Appalachian State and commissioning in 2007 05:11 What an armor officer actually does 07:05 Married at 24, then a year apart 10:21 Kuwait, Baghdad, and Sadr City 13:20 Coming home and the assignment at Walter Reed 17:53 Leaving the Army at the six year mark 19:55 Twelve years at Deloitte Consulting 23:01 DOGE, $20 million in contracts, and a layoff 27:02 "I think I'm going to start a business" 27:49 How Carolina Expressways got its name 33:05 Why he chose bulk freight 34:38 First trip to the Bulk Freight Conference in Branson 40:01 A load of corn and a CSX train 47:48 How a brand new broker gets in the door 57:41 Why veteran owned is more than a marketing line 01:00:38 The military is a logistics organization 01:06:19 Where Carolina Expressways goes by 2030 01:13:04 Faith, family, and 250 years of opportunity

Are there echoes of Book of Mormon & Revolutionary War? When we talk about the relationship between early Mormonism and Native American communities, the conversation usually runs in one direction: how indigenous traditions may have influenced Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. But in this segment of our conversation with Dr. Thomas Murphy, author of Unsettling Scripture: Iroquois and the Book of Mormon, we explore something far less discussed — how Haudenosaunee communities weren’t just absorbing outside religious ideas, they were producing scriptural traditions of their own. https://youtu.be/5H7qSRgK5lc At the center of this discussion is the Seneca prophet Handsome Lake, who in the early 1800s developed a body of teachings — now known as the Code of Handsome Lake — blending traditional Haudenosaunee spirituality with elements adapted from the Christian missionaries who were increasingly present in Native communities at the time. Murphy argues that Handsome Lake’s movement deserves to be understood on its own terms: not simply as a reaction to Christianity, but as a genuine act of religious innovation, produced by Native leaders navigating a rapidly changing world. It’s a reminder that the flow of religious ideas during this period wasn’t one-directional, and that Native communities were active shapers of their own spiritual futures, not passive recipients of outside influence. From there, Murphy turns to something that surprises many readers: possible echoes of Onondaga language, geography, or tradition embedded within the Book of Mormon text itself. While these connections remain a matter of scholarly debate, Murphy lays out why he believes they deserve more serious attention than they’ve typically received, especially given the documented presence of Haudenosaunee students and communities in and around the Smith family’s world in upstate New York. Book of Mormon & Revolutionary War The conversation then shifts to a period most listeners will recognize from American history class, but rarely connect to Mormon origins: the Revolutionary War. Murphy highlights the often-overlooked role of the Oneida Nation, one of the few Haudenosaunee nations to formally ally with the American colonists during the war, and explores why this alliance — and its long-term consequences — matters for understanding the world the Smith family grew up in decades later. It’s a piece of history that rarely gets mentioned in conversations about the Book of Mormon’s origins, but Murphy argues it shouldn’t be treated as a footnote. Taken together, this segment challenges listeners to think about the relationship between Native American history and early Mormonism as something more complicated — and more mutual — than a simple story of influence flowing in one direction. Murphy’s research suggests a much richer, messier picture: one where Native nations were simultaneously responding to colonization, encountering Christianity, allying with revolutionary movements, and building their own theological frameworks, all while living in close proximity to the very family that would go on to produce the Book of Mormon. This is part 3 of our 4-part series with Dr. Thomas Murphy. In our previous segments, we covered his background and the controversial DNA research that first made him a controversial figure within LDS scholarship, along with the Dartmouth/Moor’s Charity School connection between the Smith family and Haudenosaunee students. In our next and final segment, Murphy tackles perhaps the biggest question of all: can the Book of Mormon be both fiction and scripture at the same time? Listen to the full conversation wherever you get your podcasts. Don't miss our other conversations with Thomas: https://gospeltangents.com/people/thomas-murphy/ Copyright © 2026 Gospel Tangents All Rights Reserved Check out a transcript of the interview on Amazon. 1:21 – Indigenous Response to Christianity & Handsome Lake’s Visions 6:36 – Jesus in Haudenosaunee Tradition & Comparison with King Lamoni 9:40 – Three Nephites, Four Thunders & Joseph Smith’s Christianization 12:01 – Zelph, Onondagas & Giants 16:17 – Oneidas, Lafayette & the Book of Mormon as Revolutionary War Allegory 19:07 – Amalickiah & Ammoron as Sir William Johnson & Joseph Brant

The story of the first recorded submarine attack during the Revolutionary War. Discussing the U-Haul survey revealing migration trends across different generations. Weekly To Do on growing balcony gardens. What rolling shades can do for protection from the elements and security for your home. Broadcast archive page with expanded content https://rosieonthehouse.com/podcast/open-home-hour-live-listener-call-ins-texts-emails-weekly-to-do-balconygardens/

In the wake of the Revolutionary War, a spiritually depleted and intellectually skeptical America faced a crisis of faith, only for an unexpected wave of revivals to ignite across New England's local parishes and elite college campuses—documented soberly in the Connecticut Evangelical Magazine and spearheaded by leaders like Timothy Dwight and Ashbel Green. Unlike the sensationalized frontier rallies or the technique-driven revivals that followed, this quiet awakening dismantled Deism through cold logic, deepened parish life without emotionalism, and restored moral clarity to the rising generation before being largely eclipsed by the louder chapters of American history.

In the wake of the Revolutionary War, a spiritually depleted and intellectually skeptical America faced a crisis of faith, only for an unexpected wave of revivals to ignite across New England's local parishes and elite college campuses—documented soberly in the Connecticut Evangelical Magazine and spearheaded by leaders like Timothy Dwight and Ashbel Green. Unlike the sensationalized frontier rallies or the technique-driven revivals that followed, this quiet awakening dismantled Deism through cold logic, deepened parish life without emotionalism, and restored moral clarity to the rising generation before being largely eclipsed by the louder chapters of American history.

The British occupation of Newport, Rhode Island, in late 1776 set the stage for one of the Revolutionary War's most important—and most overlooked—campaigns. In this episode, James and Audrey examine the American attempts to recapture the strategic port, culminating in the first major combined military operation between the United States and its new French ally under Admiral d'Estaing. We follow the campaign from its promising beginnings through the devastating storm, the diplomatic crisis that nearly shattered the Franco-American alliance, and the hard-fought Battle of Rhode Island. Although the campaign failed to retake Newport, it marked a turning point in the war by demonstrating the growing strength of the Continental Army and the profound strategic impact of France's entry into the conflict.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Washington’s most extraordinary achievement was not winning the Revolutionary War or helping found a new nation. It was something far rarer: He gave up power, twice. First, when he resigned his command after victory. Then again, when he stepped down as president, establishing a precedent no law required and no force could compel. In an age dominated by kings and emperors, Washington chose restraint, and in doing so, he helped define the American experiment.There’s really no comparison to what Washington did, except for Byzantine General Belisarius and Roman general Cincinnatus. After being granted absolute dictatorial authority to rescue an encircled Roman army, Cincinnatus held it for only 15 days, and immediately resigned his office to return to his small farm across the Tiber. Belisarius was offered the Western Roman imperial crown by the Ostrogoths in 540 but claimed the city for Emperor Justinian, and surrendered command to return home. Washington’s renunciation was harder because, unlike Cincinnatus and Belisarius, he had no emperor above him or proven institutional framework to enforce his departure, instead walking away twice when his own unpaid, loyal army actively urged him to seize supreme power over a fragile, untested nation. Today’s guest is Richard Lim, author of “Refusing a Crown: How George Washington Changed the World.” We place Washington’s decisions within the sweeping Western shift from monarchy to republic, showing why that transition was anything but inevitable. After all, From Napoleon to Simón Bolívar, revolutionary leaders across the world found themselves compared unfavorably to the American who walked away from power. We see why Washington walking away from power was the most important moment in early American History.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Brethren, this Short Talk Bulletin Podcast episode was written by MW Bro Conrad Hahn, and is brought to us by WBro Bill Vivian, GP - ME. This year marks the 293rd Anniversary of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts. It was formed during that historic period between the witch trials and the start of the Revolutionary War, and has been a part of the history of our nation. It has witnessed great strides in the development of society and history and particularly in the evolution of Freemasonry in the United States. Enjoy, and do share this and all of these Podcast episodes with your brothers and your Lodge.

In this week's episode, I take a look back at the movies and streaming shows I watched in Summer 2026 and rate them. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Ghost Armor series at my Payhip store: FALLARMOR The coupon code is valid through September 21, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this fall, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 319 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is September the 4th, 2026, and today I'm looking back at the movies and streaming shows I watched over Summer 2026. We will also have Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. So let's start off with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Ghost Armor series at my Payhip store. That coupon code is FALLARMOR. As always, you can get the coupon code and the links to my Payhip store available in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code will be valid through September 21st, 2026, so if you need a new ebook for this fall, we have got you covered. Now an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. I'm pleased to report that the rough draft of Blade of Visions is done. It came to 99,000 words. It'd be kind of cool if it came to 100,000, but as I've learned in the 15 years I've been doing this, it's not a good idea to pad things for length. Editing is underway. I'm about 15% through the first pass of edits. I'm working on the cover design, so I'm on good track to have the book out before the end of the month. I also wrote a tie-in short story called Winter Crown and don't forget that [newsletter] subscribers will get a free ebook copy of that short story when Blade of Visions comes out later this month. So this makes a very excellent time to subscribe to my new release newsletter. I am also 12,000 words into Elven-Warlock, which will be the seventh book in the Half-Elven Thief series. Hopefully that will be out in October, if all goes well. In audiobook news, I think Blade of Thieves (as narrated by Brad Wills) and Cloak of Worlds (as narrated by Hollis McCarthy) are now finally available at all the usual audiobook stores, which includes Audible, Apple, Amazon, Kobo, Google Play, Chirp, and all the others. So if you want to listen to those if you are going on a Labor Day road trip, you can check those out. A reminder that Stealth and Spells Online: The Complete LitRPG trilogy (narrated by C.J. McAllister) is also available on Audible, so check that out. That's 32 hours long and that would also cover all your Labor Day travels. So that is where I'm at with my current writing, publishing and audiobook projects. 00:02:22 Main Topic of the Week: Summer 2026 Movie Roundup So let's move on to our main topic this week. Our main topic this week is the Summer 2026 Movie Roundup and I always enjoy doing those. These episodes are a little less serious than some of the other episodes and it's fun to talk about things I enjoyed and that you might enjoy as well. And I did see a lot of new movies this summer. In fact, I went to the actual theater four times for Masters of the Universe, The Odyssey, Spider-Man, and Coyote vs. Acme, which is probably more than I've gone in a single season since before COVID times. So as usual, here are the movies I saw this summer (rated from least favorite to most favorite). The grades are totally subjective and based on nothing but my own thoughts and opinions. First up is The Breadwinner, which came out in 2026. This is basically standup comedian Nate Bargatze's act come to life as a movie. If you've seen Bargatze's standup, his usual routine is to portray himself as the dumb husband and bumbling Girl Dad, which is actually quite clever from a comedic standpoint since you're unlikely to have outraged mobs calling for your head if all you're doing is making fun of yourself. Anyway, Bargatze portrays Nate Wilcox, the best Toyota salesman in Nashville. (Don't worry, this is the first of only many product placement moments.) He lets his wife Kate manage the household and do the bulk of the work with their three daughters. When Kate's invention takes off on Shark Tank, she has to go to South Korea for two weeks to oversee manufacturing, leaving Nate in charge of the kids. Comedic chaos ensues. On the positive side of this movie, I did approve how this movie showed a married couple trying to work through a rough patch and do what's right for their kids and each other in a semi-productive way rather than blowing up their lives over nonsensical trivialities in the style of Eat, Pray, Love. On the downside, there was a lot of product placement, to the point where it at times felt like an extended commercial with bits of plot jammed in between product endorsement. No doubt most of the production budget came from product placement money. Will Forte was funny as an eccentric roofing contractor and Martin Herlihy as a shifty DoorDash employee. Kumail Nanjiani was funny as Nate's rival salesman at the car dealership. So overall, I would say this was blandly amusing and inoffensive with some funny slapstick moments. Overall grade: C- Next up is Supergirl, which came out in 2026. This movie really was sort of a strange combination of John Wick and the human trafficking subplot from 2020's Black Widow. The end result wasn't quite as good as Superman from 2025, alas. I did like this movie's interpretation of Supergirl. Kara Zor-El's departure from Krypton was way more traumatic than Superman's, so she's dealing with her unresolved emotional issues by traveling from planet to planet with red suns and getting hammered since the same yellow sun that gives Kryptonians their superpowers on Earth also keeps them from getting drunk because their bodies process alcohol too efficiently. However, Kara comes to a planet where a girl named Ruthye lives. Ruthye's family has been slaughtered by ruthless brigands yet led by Krem of the Yellow Hills and she's going on a quest for revenge. When Ruthye tries to recruit Kara for the quest, she's not interested, but then Krem steals Kara's spaceship and poisons her dog Krypto. Krem carries the antidote on his person, so now Kara and Ruthye team up to get vengeance on Krem and to heal Krypto. Krem is a nasty piece of work and he and his space gang travel from planet to planet abducting women to be their wives. I think the problem was that Krem was kind of a boring but nasty villain, but he was still boring. He was basically a space thug with too many piercings. Lex Luthor from 2025 Superman, by contrast, was a really interesting villain, this malignant narcissist who knows that his obsession with Superman is over the top, but he's going to act on it anyway. Additionally, I don't think this version of Supergirl is quite capable of being a lead character on her own. She'd make a superb secondary character, but I don't think she could quite carry a movie on her own. And Jason Momoa was pretty good as Lobo. Overall grade: C- Next up is Troy, which came out in 2004. I wanted to see this either before or after I watched The Odyssey this summer and ended up watching it the day before I went to see The Odyssey. I would say this movie was slow and ponderous, but I did enjoy watching it. This is an adaption of The Iliad and has the sort of slow stateliness of epic films from the '60s. It had good performances and good battle scenes. Brian Cox was enjoyable as a scenery chewing Agamemnon and Brad Pitt worked as Achilles. Interestingly, his version of Achilles reminded me of the interpretation of Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen from Dune 2 as sort of a violent psychopath with his own twisted sense of honor. Oddly, despite the fact that this was rather a long movie, the ending seems a bit rushed, like we needed to hurry up and get to the Trojan Horse. It was amusing how Achilles' relationship with Patroclus was changed to "cousin" for the modern audience, but Greek views on sexuality would definitely be unpalatable with both right-wing and left-wing versions of the modern mind, which is a good thing because while the Greeks contributed a great deal to the development of civilization, they were into a lot of unsavory stuff. So overall, I would say this was a fun, epic movie, but I think this walked so the 2026 version of The Odyssey could run. Amusing fact: Christopher Nolan was apparently supposed to direct this, but the deal fell through and he got Batman Begins as a consolation prize instead. Overall grade: B- Next up is The Dink, which came out in 2026. This is an Apple TV comedy movie about pickleball of all things. I feel like this was made because some Apple executive got made fun of by some tennis players for playing pickleball and then decided to take revenge through media. Jake Johnson plays Dustin Boyd, a washed up former child tennis star who now works at his father's tennis club. The club has difficulties because of a growing influx of pickleball players who the hardcore tennis players hate. Dustin's father decides to use the club's bylaws to force a duel match to decide the issue, in the grand tradition of wacky comedy stakes. Dustin really wants to play the duel match, but his wrist is injured in an accident. To get his wrist mobility back, the doctor suggested he play some pickleball and Dustin views this as beneath him, but he really wants to play again, so he signs up for pickleball. This ends up being a wacky sports company/buddy movie as Dustin gradually befriends an eccentric older pickleball player. Ed Harris should really do more comedic roles. He was great as Dustin's stern, yet unscrupulous father. I do admire Apple TV's dedication to making random stuff. Overall grade: B- Next up is Green and Gold, which came out in 2025, and this is a melodrama about a farmer and his granddaughter dealing with the grim economic realities of farming. This is set in 1992/1993 era Wisconsin. Buck refuses to modernize his dairy farm in Door County, Wisconsin. His granddaughter Jenny is a talented musician and also a skilled farmer, and Buck wants her to take over the farm one day, but Jenny's ambitions are looking elsewhere. Events come to a head when Jenny realizes that Buck is deeply in debt to the bank, which is about to foreclose on the farm. However, Buck and the chief banker have a personal animosity, so they settle on a bet. If the Green Bay Packers win a Super Bowl title in 1993, the banker will give Buck one more year to turn things around on the farm. Meanwhile, Jenny begins to wonder if her music ambitions might generate the money to save the farm. Of course, if you are familiar with the history of the Packers, you know that they won a Super Bowl in 1996, not 1993. The movie has carried on the back of the very strong performances of its actors. It also has an ambiguously happy ending, as is true with so many things in farming. I like this movie because I've spent a lot of my life in the American Midwest, [and] I did appreciate how it shows the difficulties of the farming life. Also, this is important: a fall from a ladder is a plot point. Ladder safety is important, people! If you are going up a ladder, for heaven's sake don't climb the ladder in high heels like the character in question does. Wear sensible, well-fitting shoes with good soles. A very long time ago, I used to work with a guy who would climb extension ladders in cowboy boots. It is nothing short of the mercy of God that he didn't fall off and shatter half the bones in his body. Overall grade: B Next up is Grumpy Old Men, which came out in 1993. Apparently this is set in Wabasha, Minnesota, which is amusing because filming actually took place in several areas in the Twin Cities in Eastern Minnesota, but not actually in Wabasha. I found that personally amusing because I'm quite familiar with the area and so I recognize several filming locations. Anyway, the movie is about two retirees, Max and John, who are enemies and have been enemies for years, but Max is lonely and wants to get married again, and John is about to lose his house to the IRS due to tax problems. Things come to a head when an attractive literature professor moves across the street and both Max and John take an interest in her and start competing for her affections. However, it turns out that Max and John are actually best friends whose love language happens to be hatred and practical jokes, kind of like Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner, but more on them below. This was a good character comedy/drama. It was interesting that the professor was an early version of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope, albeit several decades before someone came up with the term. This is worth watching both as a character and comedy drama and a time capsule of the 1990s. Sometimes a movie ages a bit badly (Airplane and the Thomas Crown Affair from the Spring Movie Roundup come to mind), but this didn't. The sequel Grumpier Old Men from 1995 is basically the same movie, but with the characters acting about 20% dumber so a sitcom style plot can happen. Still entertaining, but not as good as the first one, so Grumpier Old Men only gets a B-, but Grumpy Old Men gets a B+. Next up is Masters of the Universe, which came out in 2026. It was amusing to read reviews of this movie because people thought way too hard about a movie that is essentially about battling action figures. Anyway, this was pretty good. It was nice to see a movie about a science fiction property that doesn't actually hate the source material. Basically it's a live action version of the cartoons from the '80s, albeit with somewhat more thoughtful moments. I heard someone suggest that it was close in tone to Thor: Ragnarok, and that seems accurate. The plot is that Skeletor conquers Eternia and 10-year-old Prince Adam is sent with the Sword of Power through a magical portal to Earth to keep him and the sword out of Skeletor's reach. However, Adam loses the sword while passing through the gate and 15 years later is working in human resources. He's still seeking for the sword despite his therapist trying to convince him that it was a trauma-induced fantasy. However, his persistence pays off and he does find the sword. Teela, who is one of the resistance leaders against Skeletor's rule, comes to Earth to find him and bring him back, but Skeletor's minions arrive to claim the sword as well. Adam and Teela escape back to Eternia and it's up to Adam to find a way to use the Sword of Power to become the hero that Eternia needs. Dolph Lundgren's cameo was great. Overall, I would say this is a fun movie to watch, especially if you're a Millennial or Gen Xer who saw the cartoons or the live action movie back in the '80s. Jared Leto has something of an increasingly questionable reputation these days, but he did a good job as Skeletor, played him halfway between the solemn gravitas of the 1987 version and the malevolent comedic cornball of the cartoons. Of course, in my opinion, the Frank Langella version from 1987 is the best version of Skeletor since he placed it with all the seriousness of a Shakespearean villain monologue at the Royal Shakespeare Company. In hindsight, it wasn't terribly surprising that this underperformed at the box office. It felt like it was made for guys my age, not for kids. I would've been comfortable bringing an eight-year-old to see The Mandalorian and Grogu or Super Mario Galaxy, but I would've been less certain bringing a kid that age to see Masters of the Universe. Additionally, it seemed very Marvel in tone, and I think the overall mood of the US these days is less "Marvel Cinematic Universe quips and banter" and more sort of the grimness of The Odyssey, which we'll talk about shortly. Overall grade: B+ Next up is Young Washington, which came out in 2026, a biopic of the early life of George Washington, covering how he more or less accidentally started the French and Indian War and how he recovered his reputation at the Battle of Braddock's Field. To be fair, the international situation at the time meant that someone was going to start the French and Indian War. It just happened to be Washington, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Overall, I liked this. It was reasonably historically accurate, though some of the emotional and family dialogue at times was a bit clunky. Additionally, Washington was portrayed as having revolutionary leanings much earlier in life than he actually did, since when he was a young man, he had no thoughts of being anything but a British subject and officer. That said, some of the most implausible stuff in the movie actually happened in real life. Like if I were to write in a novel that the future president of the United States personally rallied the army's rear guard to save as many men as possible from an ambush, and in the process had two horses shot out from under him and ended up with bullet holes in his hat and coat (all while fighting continuously), you would probably find that a bit implausible, but it actually happened that way. Washington's daring actions during that battle were one of the reasons he was appointed commander of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, that and there weren't many other colonials with as much experience of military command as Washington. In that vein, the battle scenes were the best part of the movie. They captured the brutality and messiness of 18th Century warfare without being especially graphic. Anyway, I'm glad this is getting a sequel. Maybe we'll end up with a Young Washington Cinematic Universe. Overall grade: B+ Next up is Meet the Parents, which came out in 2000, and this is probably one of the apex forms of cringe comedy. Ben Stiller plays Greg Focker, a nurse who's in love with schoolteacher Pam Burns. Greg wants to marry Pam, but overhears a phone call with her sister where she says her fiancé asked permission of her traditional father first. Greg decides that he's going to ask Pam's father's permission first to get off on the right foot, and so accompanies Pam to her sister's wedding and her parents' house to, as the title says, Meet the Parents. However, Pam's father is the former CIA counterintelligence officer Jack, and he and Greg immediately get on each other's nerves. To make things worse, the airline has lost Greg's luggage. From these two starting premises follow a cascading series of hilarious disasters that accumulate in a septic tank fire on the lawn. I'm not sure, but I think I saw this one in the theaters when it came out in 2000, and I thought it was funny then. With 26 years of additional life experience under the belt, I still think it's pretty funny, though you could still tell that this movie was filmed before 9/11 because if Greg had his airport meltdown seen today, the consequences would've been much worse. Overall grade: B+ Next up is O Brother Where Art Thou, which came out in 2000. This is a very, very, very specific adaptation of The Odyssey directed by the Coen brothers. George Clooney plays Everett, a convict who escapes from a chain gang in Mississippi during the Great Depression. He wants to find a treasure and he recruits fellow convicts Delmar and Peter to assist him. Along the way, Everett and his team encountered 1930s era versions of the Sirens, the cyclops, the blind prophet Tiresias, and other characters and foes from the original Odyssey myth. Everett and his friends end up running a scam where they pretend to be a Christian music group, but as it turns out, they're actually pretty good at singing, so this leads to unexpected hilarity and opportunities. This was also a very funny movie. Imagine The Odyssey is a comedy with a lot of singing set in the Deep South during the Depression, and you're there. If you're a fan of bluegrass music, this is worth watching. If you've seen Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, it's worth watching this just to ponder how the same source material can produce such wildly divergent interpretations. If you don't care about The Odyssey, then this is still a fun movie to watch. Proof: I mentioned to someone that I had seen this and she responded that she both loved the movie and was surprised to learn that he had in fact been inspired by The Odyssey. Overall grade: A- Next up is Hoppers, which came out in 2026. Like most Pixar movies, this was very high concept. Unlike many recent Pixar movies, it wasn't too depressing and didn't disappear up its own tailpipe. In the city of Beaverton, hot tempered girl Mabel bonds with her grandmother in their favorite place, a woodland grove favored by beavers. Years later, Mabel is a biology student under Dr. Fairfax, but is neglecting her studies to face off against her nemesis, the popular yet sketchy Mayor Jerry of Beaverton. Mayor Jerry wants to build an expressway that will wipe out the woodland grove, and he's perfectly within his rights to do it since no animals have been found living there. Since Mabel's grandmother has died, she's unwilling to give up the grove. However, Dr. Fairfax's research might give her a way. Dr. Fairfax has worked out a way to temporarily transfer human consciousness to a robotic beaver capable of speaking to real beavers, much like the plot of Avatar. In a funny scene, Fairfax angrily denies that it's just like Avatar. Mabel gets the idea to use this to convince real beavers to settle in the grove, thereby thwarting Mayor Jerry's plans. This touches off both a wacky yet poignant adventure. The plot was very well structured and it followed the proper rules of story structure, which I've talked about before. Mabel definitely is a protagonist who takes action, but experiences setbacks and problems of her own creation. It was pretty good. I say it was a return to form for Pixar after some of their weaker movies in the 2020s. Overall grade: A Now it's time for my three favorite movies of summer 2026, all of which I actually saw in the theater. First up is Coyote versus Acme, which came out in 2026. This movie had an extra surge of popularity from the fact that Warner Brothers canceled it as a tax write-off, but distributor Ketchup Entertainment revived it. That makes it a plucky underdog since Warner Brothers senior executives are kind of like the apex version of soulless corporate bug men. Like if I wrote characters in my books who acted like Warner Brothers senior executives, people would think I was being didactic and heavy-handed. Anyway, after decades of failures in efforts to capture the Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote decides to sue Acme Corporation for its numerous defective products. Coyote teams up with a lazy strip mall lawyer named Kevin Avery, who specializes in getting small settlements from Acme. However, Avery and Coyote end up filing a massive lawsuit against Acme, which means they'll face the full wrath of Acme Corporation, including its ace lawyer Buddy Crane and its ruthless CEO, Foghorn Leghorn. What follows is a comedic courtroom battle as Coyote and Avery try to defeat Acme Corporation, defeat its sinister plans, and Coyote starts to realize that Road Runner might actually be his best friend. Both quite amusing and touching, and I'm glad this was rescued from the tax write-off vault. Overall grade: A Next up is The Odyssey, which came out in 2026. This wasn't quite as good as Oppenheimer in 2023 in my opinion, but it was still very good and very much worth seeing. It was weird that The Odyssey was briefly a football in the never-ending US culture war scrum because the movie isn't really political and doesn't really have a message beyond "war is destructive and bad", which every sensible person would agree with, and a lesser message of "violating the law of morality has unforeseen cascading bad consequences, including the destruction of civilization", which is also quite true and was one of the themes of Oppenheimer. Nolan himself dismissed the controversies as "irrelevant" and "part of the territory" since no one had actually seen the movie yet, and given that The Odyssey has made a billion and a half dollars as of this recording, I think that may have proved his point. I imagine the scrutiny from Batman fans back in the 2010s was way more intense since in the modern era, many people care more deeply about the accuracy of Batman than The Odyssey. I do think the debate over the historical accuracy in The Odyssey is pointless because the Odyssey is myth, not history. The Iliad and The Odyssey are a lot like Arthurian myth in terms of their actual historicity. Even when Arthurian legend was massively popular with English kings and nobles in the late medieval and early modern period (for example, Henry VIII's older brother was named Arthur in imitation of King Arthur), the version of Arthurian myth they celebrated and wished to emulate had virtually no connection to the reality of Britain in the 500s AD and was instead a sort of fantasy version of their own time in the 14th and 15th centuries. By the time The Odyssey was written down, no doubt a similar process was underway. Both The Iliad and The Odyssey and the Arthurian cycle probably have a kernel of historical truth buried underneath the tales of magic swords, sirens, cyclopses, and vengeful witches with magic islands. There likely was a Romano-British warlord who might have been named Arthur (or possibly Ambrosius Aurelianus) who held off the Saxons for a while before he was overwhelmed and killed. Likewise, Heinrich Schliemann was a highly eccentric and very sketchy crazy rich guy, but he did prove that there really was some version of the city of Troy that was destroyed at the end of the Bronze Age. But everything beyond those basic details came from thousands of years of embellishments and flourishes from later poets and writers. So arguing about the historical accuracy of The Odyssey is a bit like arguing if Star Wars portrays faster than light travel in an accurate way. That kind of argument is just missing the point entirely. It's also interesting to see how modern standards clashed with the ancient mindset. You know how I always say that everywhere in the United States is exactly the same right until it really, really isn't? I think ancient people are just like us until they really, really weren't. Like ancient people would have been superstitious to an extent that even the most credulous crystal and aura influencer on TikTok would find horrifying and frequently violent in a way that the most strident self-defense advocate would find shocking. The Odyssey's version of Odysseus feels guilt and remorse over his actions in a way an actual ancient Greek probably wouldn't have, but so what? This is The Odyssey viewed through the lens of the 21st century, just as those English nobles viewed the myth of King Arthur and his knights through the lens of their time. As I mentioned with Troy above, the ancient Greeks were often quite brutal and would celebrate sacking an enemy city. One side note before we get to the movie, I probably found it funnier than I should have how Nolan favorably cited classicist Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey as a source, and Wilson then had an extended and unintentionally comedic multi-article crashout about how much she hated the movie and of course how much she hated the commemorative Trojan Horse popcorn bucket. Apparently Wilson hated the movie so much she's going to do a new translation of The Odyssey, much to her publisher's baffled dismay. No one does offended huffy petulance quite like an academic. Anyway, back to the movie. It follows the familiar story of Odysseus through Christopher Nolan's preference for non-linear storytelling and practical effects. I did think it was interesting how in this interpretation, Odysseus explicitly connected the ruse of the Trojan Horse with the collapse of the Bronze Age and the rise of the Sea Peoples. It's also probably the most supernatural film Nolan has ever done with actual fantasy and supernatural elements as opposed to science fiction like Inception, Tenant, and Interstellar. Odysseus talks to Athena throughout the movie and it's left up to the viewer's interpretation whether or not he's actually talking to Athena or his own guilt-ridden hallucinations. That said, Odysseus encounters a witch with actual magic powers and travels to the underworld to speak with the shades of the dead, so it's entirely possible he's talking to the actual Athena. In this version, as I mentioned, Odysseus is guilt-ridden over the ruse of the Trojan Horse, which is shown as a violation of the sacred hospitality of Zeus's law and as great a crime as the creation of the atomic bomb in Oppenheimer, which of course is similar to Oppenheimer, where Oppenheimer's creation of the atomic bomb is treated similarly. There are also some genuinely scary sequences in the movie. The bit with the underworld is very spooky, the cyclops is actually quite frightening, and the character of Circe reaches the level of scary previously attained by Heath Ledger's version of The Joker in The Dark Knight. If Nolan ever decides he wants to do a horror movie, it will probably be one of the scariest ones ever made. To sum up, The Odyssey has great performances, great spectacle, great cinematography, and great action sequences. As an interesting interpretation of the original myth, definitely worth seeing. I think you can tell it was a great movie because of all the arguments on the Internet about "what does it really mean?" Great art often has that effect. Overall grade: A The final of my three favorite movies of [Summer] 2026 is Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which came out in 2026. There's a rumor, and I don't know if it's true or not, that Tom Holland found the experience of working with Christopher Nolan on The Odyssey so eye-opening that he insisted that if they made another Spider-Man movie, it had to have a reason for existing other than "make a lot of money". If this story is true, it clearly worked. Previously, I though the two best Spider-Man movies were Spider-Man 2 from 2004 and Spider-Man: No Way Home from 2021. I must now amend that opinion to say that there are three best Spider-Man movies and Spider-Man: Brand New Day is one of the three. It is pretty good. I would've trimmed it here and there, but I thoroughly enjoyed it and is an excellent Spider-Man story that totally captures the essence of the character within a good story. It takes place four years after the events of No Way Home erased everyone's memory that Peter Parker was Spider-Man. Peter has now been crime fighting full time, but it is taking a severe toll on his emotions and personal life that he's deliberately ignoring. Meanwhile, Spider-Man has become the beloved crime fighter of New York, trusted by both the NYPD and the Federal Department of Damage Control, which is a reoccurring frenemy for superheroes from other movies. When someone launches an attack on the headquarters of Damage Control, the director recruits Peter to fight their new enemy, a mysterious figure who uses telepathy to possess people from a distance. Peter is the only one who can sense it thanks to his spider sense, and he's also the only one able to resist the telepath's possession abilities. But despite his resistance to possession, fighting a telepath is a dangerous proposition for someone with as many emotional issues as Peter, and things start to spiral out of control when the telepath starts digging into his life. But there's another lesson Peter has to learn. People (and especially superheroes) who take the federal government at its word tend to regret it. For that matter, ignoring his emotional issues is causing Peter's spider powers to start acting in strange ways. But of course, at the end of the day, Spider-Man always follows his conscience, no matter how high the cost to him personally. Definitely an enjoyable movie. All the scenes with Spider-Man and Punisher were great, and the two of them had a great dynamic together. A few other Marvel Cinematic Universe people show up, but this is probably one of the most standalone movies the MCU has done in a while. Of course, the risk of MCU Continuity Lockout is always there (which is one of the reasons I started writing Half-Eleven Thief in 2023). Overall grade: A So I would say it was a pretty good summer for movies. It's also valuable lessons in not taking the Internet too seriously, which too many people do nowadays. There are all these dedicated analyses on X, Threads, and Reddit in June and May explaining why The Odyssey was going to fail for whatever reason, and instead it made $1.5 billion. So I think that's a good lesson in not taking everything you read on the internet a little too seriously. So that's it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show enjoyable. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy, and we'll see you all next week.  

Families with children with disabilities can have a lot to consider when traveling – this nonprofit is helping make it easier. Meet a Revolutionary War witness that's still standing hundreds of years later. And after decades of trying to clean up the Bronx River, conservationists just got a pretty adorable sign that it's paying off. One barber is easing the cost of back-to-school season by giving students free haircuts. Plus, a 91-year-old just broke a major hiking record – and what science tells us about staying active as we age.  Host/Producer: Krista Bo Polanco  Producer: Eryn Mathewson   Senior Producer: Felicia Patinkin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“C” is for Cowpens, Battle of (January 17, 1781). The Battle of Cowpens was a turning point in the Revolutionary War.

We've launched Minimum Competence CLE, and our first course is now available completely free. Researching Federal Tax Issues After Loper Bright looks at how the Supreme Court's decision ending Chevron deference changes the way lawyers should research and evaluate Treasury regulations, IRS guidance, and other federal tax authorities.Take the course and earn CLE credit at cle.minimumcomp.com.This Day in Legal History: The Treaty of ParisOn September 3, 1783, American and British negotiators signed the Treaty of Paris, formally ending the Revolutionary War and, with it, securing the thing the whole war had been fought over: British recognition of the independence of the United States. For the young nation, this was the moment it became, in the eyes of international law, a sovereign country among sovereign countries.The American delegation—Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay—negotiated remarkably favorable terms. In its very first substantive article, Britain acknowledged the United States to be “free, sovereign and independent.” The treaty set generous boundaries, extending the new nation west to the Mississippi River, granted Americans valuable fishing rights off Newfoundland, and addressed the thorny questions of pre-war debts and the treatment of Loyalists. Franklin, ever the shrewd diplomat, had played the European powers against one another to extract terms far better than a defeated-looking rebellion might have expected.The significance of September 3, 1783 is foundational in the most literal sense. A declaration of independence is a claim; a treaty of peace in which your former ruler concedes that claim is its legal realization. The Treaty of Paris is the document in which the United States stopped being a rebellion and started being a nation with recognized borders, treaty-making power, and standing in the world. Everything that followed—the Constitution four years later, the entire edifice of American law—was built on the sovereignty this treaty secured. And it's worth remembering Franklin's hard-won wisdom, captured in today's opening quote, from a man who had seen the war up close: there was never a good war, or a bad peace. On a day of stories about the ordinary business of a functioning legal system, it's worth pausing on the treaty that made that system possible.Google has won a major victory: a federal judge has declined to force the company to sell off its advertising-technology business, opting for behavioral remedies instead of a breakup. Some background: last year, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Virginia found that Google had illegally monopolized key parts of the ad-tech market—the plumbing that places digital ads across much of the web. This week's ruling was about the remedy, and remedy is where antitrust cases are won or lost in practice. The Justice Department and a coalition of states wanted a structural remedy: forcing Google to divest its ad exchange, breaking the company up to restore competition. Judge Brinkema declined to go that far. Instead, she imposed behavioral remedies—requiring Google to change how it operates, to open up aspects of its ad auctions and share data with rivals, under ongoing oversight. Here's the legal significance. Courts are historically very reluctant to order structural breakups; they're drastic, hard to administer, and risk unintended consequences, so judges tend to prefer conduct remedies that police behavior rather than dismantle a company. We just saw the same pattern in the separate Google search-monopoly case, where a different judge also declined to force a divestiture. So a picture is emerging: Google keeps being found to have violated antitrust law, and keeps avoiding a breakup, landing instead with behavioral restrictions. Critics argue conduct remedies are weak—that a monopolist told to behave will find new ways to dominate. Google and its defenders say a breakup would be overkill. The significance is that this is the central debate in modern antitrust: when you've found illegal monopoly power, do you regulate the monopolist's conduct, or do you break it up? For now, in the ad-tech case, the answer is conduct—and that's a big win for Google. Google defeats US bid to force ad-tech sale | ReutersCNBC · BloombergBoeing has paid a $3.1 million fine to the Federal Aviation Administration over a raft of safety and quality-control violations—and the number itself is the story. The penalty covers a series of failures, including the January 2024 incident in which a door plug blew off an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 in mid-flight, along with other lapses like unqualified work and improper pressure on an FAA-designated representative. Here's the thing to understand: $3.1 million is, essentially, the maximum civil penalty the FAA is statutorily allowed to impose for this set of violations. And for a company the size of Boeing—which books tens of billions of dollars in revenue—critics, including families of crash victims and aviation-safety advocates, call a figure like that a rounding error, a cost of doing business rather than a genuine deterrent. That's the real legal and policy issue here: the gap between the penalties regulators are authorized to levy and the scale of the companies they regulate. When the maximum lawful fine is trivial relative to a company's balance sheet, the deterrent value of the penalty largely evaporates, and enforcement becomes symbolic. This is separate from the criminal exposure Boeing has faced over the earlier 737 MAX crashes; this is the civil, regulatory side. The significance is a recurring question in regulatory law: statutory penalty caps, often set decades ago and never updated for inflation or corporate scale, can leave regulators without the tools to meaningfully punish or deter misconduct by the largest players. Boeing writes a $3.1 million check, and the deeper questions about its safety culture—and about whether our regulatory penalties have any teeth against a corporate giant—remain very much open.Boeing paid $3.1 million fine to FAA over widespread safety violations | ReutersUS News · CBS NewsAnd finally, a federal judge has blocked the EPA from sending California's landmark vehicle-emissions rules to Congress for a possible fast-track repeal—a ruling that turns on a genuinely clever piece of administrative-law maneuvering. Here's the setup. Under the Clean Air Act, California has a unique, long-standing power to set its own, stricter vehicle-emissions standards through “waivers” granted by the EPA, and other states can choose to follow California's lead. The EPA, this June, took the position that those waivers should have been submitted to Congress under the Congressional Review Act—the CRA—which is significant because the CRA lets the Senate repeal a federal “rule” by a simple majority vote, bypassing the 60-vote threshold that would otherwise be needed. In other words, by reclassifying California's waivers as “rules,” the EPA could hand the Senate a path to wipe them out with 51 votes. California sued, arguing the waivers aren't rules and don't belong in the CRA process at all. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell agreed, and she did not mince words—she said the EPA was asking the court to “engage in Orwellian doublethink,” writing that “the EPA cannot say one thing to Congress while ignoring any consequence from reclassifying these waivers as rules.” The significance operates on two levels. Substantively, it protects California's authority to regulate tailpipe emissions, which shapes the auto market nationwide because so many states follow California's standards. Procedurally, it's a check on a creative attempt to use a reclassification to unlock a simple-majority repeal—a reminder that agencies can't relabel their actions to reach a preferred political outcome without legal consequences. The fight over how America regulates car emissions just ran into the fine print of administrative law, and for now, California's rules stand. US judge bars EPA effort to send California vehicle emissions rules to Congress | ReutersPolitico · Courthouse News This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

We've launched Minimum Competence CLE, and our first course is now available completely free. Researching Federal Tax Issues After Loper Brightlooks at how the Supreme Court's decision ending Chevron deference changes the way lawyers should research and evaluate Treasury regulations, IRS guidance, and other federal tax authorities.Take the course and earn CLE credit at cle.minimumcomp.com.This Day in Legal History: The Treasury Department Is CreatedOn September 2, 1789, Congress passed the act establishing the Department of the Treasury—the third executive department created under the new Constitution, after Foreign Affairs and War, both of which we've marked on this show. A week or so later, President Washington would name Alexander Hamilton its first Secretary, and with that appointment, one of the most consequential careers in American governance began.The Treasury Department was, in a real sense, where the abstract new government became a functioning state. Hamilton inherited a country drowning in Revolutionary War debt, with no reliable revenue, no national bank, and shaky credit at home and abroad. Over the next few years, from that department, he engineered the financial architecture of the United States: the federal assumption of state debts, a system of customs duties and excise taxes to actually bring in revenue, the First Bank of the United States, and the establishment of public credit as a national asset. His conviction—captured in today's opening quote—was that a manageable national debt, properly serviced, would knit the country's creditors to its success and give the young republic financial standing in the world.The significance of September 2, 1789 is that the Treasury became, and remains, one of the most powerful institutions in American life. It runs the IRS, manages the public debt, enforces sanctions, and shapes economic policy in ways that touch every person in the country. The debates Hamilton started—about debt, about taxation, about how much the federal government should do with its fiscal power—are debates we are still having, quite literally, in every episode where we cover a tax question. And it's a fitting anniversary for today, because our final segment is a tax story—a reminder that the unglamorous machinery of how governments raise revenue, which Hamilton built, is where an enormous amount of real policy actually happens.A Utah judge has ruled that there is enough evidence to send Tyler Robinson to trial for the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk—and, critically, that prosecutors may seek the death penalty. We covered the prosecution's theory of this case back in July; now it has cleared its first major legal hurdle. At a preliminary hearing, Judge Tony Graf found the state had met the probable-cause standard on all seven counts, including aggravated murder, concluding that the evidence was “sufficient at this stage to support a reasonable belief that the defendant is the individual who shot and killed Charlie Kirk.” A word on that standard, because it matters: a preliminary hearing is a low bar. The state doesn't have to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt—that's for the trial. It only has to show probable cause, a reasonable belief that a crime occurred and this defendant committed it. So this ruling isn't a verdict; it's a green light to proceed. The most consequential fight at the hearing was over whether this qualifies as aggravated murder, the charge that makes the death penalty available. Under Utah law, that generally requires an aggravating circumstance—and here prosecutors argued that Robinson, by allegedly firing a rifle from a rooftop toward Kirk near a crowd at Utah Valley University, knowingly created a great risk of death to people other than his target. The prosecutor called it “common sense” that shooting into a crowd endangers others; the defense contested it. The judge sided with the state, keeping capital punishment in play. The significance is that this now becomes a death-penalty trial in a case already saturated with political meaning, and everything—the evidence, the alleged motive, the aggravating circumstances—will now be tested under the far more demanding standard of a jury trial. Utah judge rules accused killer of Charlie Kirk will stand trial, face death penalty | ReutersNPR · CNNNow for something lighter, though still a real lesson in criminal procedure: Tiger Woods has reached a plea deal in his Florida impaired-driving case, and will lose his driver's license for five years. Woods was arrested in March after a rollover crash on Jupiter Island; no one was hurt. Under the plea agreement, prosecutors amended the charges—the first count down to reckless driving as a second offense, and the second to a careless-driving citation—and Woods agreed to the five-year license suspension plus a $1,500 fine, avoiding jail time. This is a textbook illustration of how plea bargaining actually works: the vast majority of criminal cases never go to trial, and instead resolve through negotiated pleas in which the defendant accepts responsibility for a reduced charge in exchange for a lighter, more certain outcome, and the state secures a conviction without the cost and risk of trial. Two details are worth flagging. First, “second offense”—Woods had a prior reckless-driving plea back in 2017, and repeat offenses generally carry stiffer consequences, which is part of why the license suspension is so long. Second, the judge was pointed about that suspension, saying it's “for the safety of the public” and that there are “no exceptions”—drive for any reason at all, the judge warned, and Woods goes straight to jail. The significance, beyond the celebrity, is a clean look at how the system handles impaired driving for someone who isn't a first-timer: not incarceration, but a charge reduction paired with a long, strictly-enforced license suspension aimed squarely at keeping him off the road. It's the everyday machinery of criminal justice, applied to an extraordinarily famous defendant. Woods gets 5-year license suspension in plea deal | ReutersABC News · CNNAnd finally, in my column for Bloomberg Tax this week, I take on a delightfully wonky problem with a real-world bite: the way Massachusetts taxes interstate trucks. My argument is that the state's rolling-stock tax is backward—it functions, weirdly, as a reverse carbon tax and a hidden tax on consumers—and that the fix isn't simply to exempt trucks, but to redesign the tax around where the trucks are actually used.Here's the problem. Massachusetts applies its sales and use tax to the full purchase price of an interstate truck, even if only a sliver of that truck's miles are logged in Massachusetts. Under state guidelines, a truck basically escapes the tax only if it spends six or fewer days in the state over a year—spend a week, and you can owe tax on the vehicle's entire price. Now layer on a perverse consequence: newer, cleaner trucks cost more money, so a tax based on purchase price falls hardest on the newest, most efficient, lowest-emission equipment. That gives carriers an obvious incentive to keep their clean new trucks out of Massachusetts and send in their older, dirtier ones. A state that says it cares about emissions has built a tax that literally rewards operating older, more polluting trucks within its borders. And because this is a tax on a business input, it doesn't stay with the trucking companies—it gets baked into freight costs and shows up in the price of groceries, medicine, and building materials, a phenomenon economists call tax pyramiding and the rest of us call higher prices.So what should Massachusetts do? There's a House bill to exempt qualifying interstate rolling stock, and I say that moves in the right direction—but the state shouldn't stop at a blanket exemption. The cleaner solution is apportionment: tax the Massachusetts share of the truck's use, based on in-state mileage, the same way states already apportion other business activity. Massachusetts taxes the Massachusetts piece, New York the New York piece, and so on. That six-day threshold is a lousy proxy—the seventh day a truck rolls through the state doesn't magically make the other 358 days of interstate driving Massachusetts activity. I also argue the state should make sure that upgrading to a cleaner fleet never increases a carrier's tax bill—give newer, higher-emissions-standard vehicles a credit or adjustment. And because no carrier should face a different tax regime every time it crosses a state line, I think the right long-term answer is a uniform, mileage-based model rule developed through something like the Multistate Tax Commission. The bumper-sticker version of my argument: removing this distortion is environmental policy, even though it looks like a tax break—because sometimes the cheapest, smartest thing a government can do is just stop taxing the very behavior it claims to want. Massachusetts Truck Taxes Need Revamp Beyond Adding an Exemption | Bloomberg Tax This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

Comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds examine Staten Island during the Revolutionary War. They are joined by Ben Naddaff Hafrey from Revisionist History for our first crossover. SOURCESTOUR DATESOFFICIAL MERCHSQUARESPACE - Use OFFER CODE: DOLLOP to save 10%Download Cash App Today: https://capl.onelink.me/vFut/4cq1zeop #CashAppPod. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. Cash App Visa® Debit Flex Cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC, and The Bancorp Bank, N.A., pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. See terms and conditions for the Sutton prepaid card, Sutton debit flex card, and Bancorp debit flex card. Discounts and promotions provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Independent investigative journalism, broadcasting, trouble-making and muckraking with Brad Friedman of BradBlog.com

Send us Fan MailOysters, whaling, shipwrecks, the Revolution, bananas and a town built around the sea—David Wright brings the wonderfully strange history of Wellfleet to life.Check out the website: www.drinkingonthejob.com for great past episodes. Everyone from Iron Chefs, winemakers, journalist and more. 

It's rare to see large-scale bronze installations built today. In Washington, D.C., as part of America's 250th anniversary celebration, Matthew Taylor has transformed the long-neglected Freedom Plaza with a beautiful new memorial celebrating Revolutionary War heroes. He is an artist, filmmaker, and senior adviser at the National Endowment for the Humanities.Among those featured in the new Spirit of ‘76 installation is Samuel Whittemore, who was 78 when he decided to join the Revolutionary War effort against the British.“They bayoneted him 13 times. They shot him in the head and left him for dead, and yet he lived another 18 years to the age of 96,” says Taylor.“The great thing about these soldiers is most of these people either don't have statues [or] are not very well-known, and this shows that this is the common citizen,” he says.These were “ordinary people doing extraordinary things to help create and build this nation,” he says.The equestrian statue of Caesar Rodney—which had been taken down in Wilmington, Delaware, during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests—is now also on display on a new pedestal in Freedom Plaza.He epitomizes the extraordinary determination of those who secured American independence.“He had facial cancer and emphysema, and he rode 80 miles overnight in a storm to sign and … be the tiebreaker, Delaware, which would ultimately create the Declaration of Independence,” Taylor says.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Unleashed: The Political News Hour with Susan Price – Those who "know" know there have been Godly forces at work behind the scenes for all of mankind's welfare and existence. We are at the end of this 2nd Revolutionary War, and no doubt, it will take some time to clean up the foul remnants of those responsible for the evil acts of tyranny, sedition, piracy, and crimes against humanity...

Bestselling presidential historian Michael Beschloss joins David M. Rubenstein for a wide-ranging conversation on American history. They discuss the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the pivotal events and presidents that shaped the United States in the twentieth century.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices