Ancient Classics EPISODES

FAN MAIL--We would love YOUR feedback--Send us a Text Message A single moment at Abbey Gate still captures a whole era of American foreign policy: a Marine identifies a threat, asks for permission to act, and is told no until the danger disappears into the crowd. Hours later, the Kabul evacuation turns into a massacre that kills 13 American service members and scores of Afghan civilians. Five years on, we slow down and tell the story with the weight it deserves, because remembrance means more...

FAN MAIL--We would love YOUR feedback--Send us a Text Message Ninety hours of World War II history sounds like a stunt until you realize what it does to your perspective. I just finished Rick Atkinson’s Liberation Trilogy on Audible, spread across six years, and I can’t stop thinking about what it means to “walk” from North Africa to Sicily, up the Italian campaign, and into the final push across Western Europe. This isn’t a cheerleading tour of victory. It’s a clear-eyed account of how the U...

FAN MAIL--We would love YOUR feedback--Send us a Text Message A 78-year-old man sits in solitary confinement in Hong Kong with a 20-year sentence hanging over him. He could have left. He could have said the words that would have set him free. Jimmy Lai refused to lie, and that single act of conscience explains why authoritarian power reacts so fiercely to one person who won’t be bought or frightened into agreement. We trace Lai’s story from his rise as a self-made publisher and founder...

FAN MAIL--We would love YOUR feedback--Send us a Text Message Where do your rights come from, and what happens to a country when it gets that answer wrong? We tackle the most radical political claim baked into the American founding: unalienable rights don’t come from the state, they come from God, and government exists to protect what you already have. That single idea flips the usual power equation and draws a hard line around conscience, belief, and the limits of political authority. We le...

FAN MAIL--We would love YOUR feedback--Send us a Text Message America starts as a broke, debt-soaked upstart with a near-worthless currency and almost no industrial muscle, then turns into a nation that produces a massive share of what the world makes. That’s not a trivia fact to us. It’s a question worth wrestling with, because the answer points to what actually drives prosperity and what quietly kills it. We pull three “nuggets of wisdom” from John Steele Gordon’s An Empire of Wealth and l...

FAN MAIL--We would love YOUR feedback--Send us a Text Message “These are the times that try men’s souls” still lands like a hammer and we use it as a mirror for the hardest civic question a free country faces: when is war truly necessary? As America nears 250 years, we go back to December 1776, when Washington’s army is collapsing and Thomas Paine writes The American Crisis. Washington has Paine’s words read aloud before the Delaware crossing and the Battle of Trenton, and that moment sets th...

FAN MAIL--We would love YOUR feedback--Send us a Text Message Iran’s nuclear clock isn’t measured in election cycles or think-tank white papers. It’s measured in days. That’s the premise driving this Liberty Minute as I respond to Cardinal Robert McElroy’s homily calling U.S. action in the U.S.-Iran war “immoral” and “needless.” I take the claim seriously and do the one thing our public arguments rarely do: I run the Catholic just war theory criteria all the way through, using the facts and t...

FAN MAIL--We would love YOUR feedback--Send us a Text Message A lot of us meet Fulton Sheen in fragments: a quote card, a grainy clip, a meme. But when you actually sit with his work, something steadier happens. During Holy Week, I reflect on three books that quietly re-ordered my interior life: Peace of Soul, The World’s First Love, and Life of Christ. They feel like three doors into one home, leading from a restless conscience, to a stronger Marian devotion, to a real encounter with Jesus C...

FAN MAIL--We would love YOUR feedback--Send us a Text Message What if a single covert operation rewired the modern Middle East? We revisit the 1953 CIA–MI6 coup that toppled Mohammad Mossadegh and restored the Shah, then follow the consequences forward: repression, the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and a foreign policy defined by proxies and confrontation. Drawing on Stephen Kinzer’s research, we explore a hard question with fresh urgency: did the quest for short-term stability seed decades of blo...

FAN MAIL--We would love YOUR feedback--Send us a Text Message A frail voice shouts “Nay,” an old man falls, and the House of Representatives freezes. That image of John Quincy Adams collapsing at his desk in 1848 isn’t just a dramatic opening—it’s a window into a life spent turning dry procedure into a living defense of liberty. We trace Adams from child witness to revolution and master diplomat to a president hobbled by the “corrupt bargain,” then into the most improbable chapter of all: a f...

FAN MAIL--We would love YOUR feedback--Send us a Text Message Explore the seismic shifts poised to redefine the Republican Party as we dissect the battle between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis on the brink of the Iowa caucuses. We promise to equip you with a profound understanding of the undercurrents shaping the GOP's trajectory towards the 2024 Presidential showdown. From Trump's economic legacy to DeSantis' growing influence, we navigate the tumultuous waters of immigration reform, heal...

FAN MAIL--We would love YOUR feedback--Send us a Text Message In todays MM, we re-examine one of the most popular Christian classics of the 20th century, The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. Key Points from the Episode: Screwtape's description of Hell as "one thing is another thing and...my good is my good and your good is your good."There are no neutral sides in this spiritual war A Nefarious Plot movie coming April 14thOther resources: www.brownchairbooks.com Want to leave a rev...

FAN MAIL--We would love YOUR feedback--Send us a Text Message We have good news to share on this Liberty Minute 🗽 and that good news is coming from the Middle East! Today, let us learn from Benjamin Netanyahu--the current and longest reigning Israeli Prime Minister-- and from his fascinating book, Bibi: My Story Key Points from the Episode: Benjamin Netyanyahu will be remembered as the Winston Churchill of the 21st century. His economic successes in liberating Israel's economy fr...

Our second installment--in this first full week of Lent for Christians--we check out, perhaps, the greatest autobiography in the world, the Confessions of Saint Augustine.

Key Points from the Episode:
Check out prior MM's 52 and 57 for Dante's Divine Comedy.

Why is St. Augustines's Confessions so compelling?

Why do we commit evil for evil's sake?

In a society obsessed with sex, how to live a virtuous life?

Other resources:
Audible version of Confessions narrated by Simon Vance

Want to leav...

This is a fun episode, where go to back to one of the great books of all time by perhaps one of the greatest philosophers of all time, Aristotle and his Nicomachean Ethics.

Key Points from the Episode:
Habits are very powerful in good ways and unfortunately in bad ways too.

Aristotle's famous quote on habits

Librarians collect information, data and organize it. Let us act on NOT being librarians but on doers--putting into practice this information.

Other resources:
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In this short MM, we will discuss how to pursue a life of virtue with inspiration from Buddha and his water pots.

Key Points from the Episode:
Good vs Evil

Not the totality of time but the consistent day by day actions and decisions

Drop by Drop by Drop

Other resources:

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In MOJO Minute 61 , we continue to explore Angela Duckworth's book on Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance.
Key Points from the Episode:
MM#33--Talent vs Hard Work

What is Grittiness?

Why effort counts twice?

Other resources:

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Because we care what you think about what we think and our website, please email David@teammojoacademy....

In this quick MOJO Minute we build on our last episode and explore Angela Duckworth's book on Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance.
Key Points from the Episode:
Why are high achievers special and what traits do they have of which we need to cultivate?

What is the secret to success?

Whats your roadmap to success?

Other resources:

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In this second episode on Dante's Inferno, we continue to look back at Dante's Divine Comedy, 700 years later and how it continues to teach and instruct us as one of the greatest classics ever written and most certainly the greatest Christian poem every penned. David dives deep into Anthony Esolen's translation of the Inferno, The Divine Comedy, book one, Inferno by Dante Alighieri to explore human nature confronting the gates of hell.

Key Points from the Episode:
We encounter the gates of Hell...

In this episode, we look back at Dante's Divine Comedy, 700 years later and how it continues to teach and instruct us. David reads from Anthony Esolen's translation in the Inferno, The Divine Comedy, book one, Inferno by Dante Alighieri
Key Points from the Episode:
The MOJO Academy's first dive into the classics

Why the Divine Comedy is a masterpiece

What can we learn from Dante's Inferno so as to avoid Hell for ourselves

Other resources:

Anthony Esolen's study & commentary on Inferno in aud...

In this episode, we are inspired to save our country from the cultural suicide in which we are headed. In saving our country, Peter Kreeft's latest book, How to Destroy Western Civilization and Other Ideas from the Cultural Abyss, helps us too unpack what exactly is going on in our culture.

Key Points from the Episode:
we discuss Europe's suicide taking place for the last twenty years

a great listing of the virtues of Western Civilizations virtues

a call to action to read the great history bo...