Episodios

  • Documentary Review on You Know Who

    Documentary Review on You Know Who
    Feb 3 2026

    Disclaimer: Side effects may include laughter and/or anger. Read or watch at your own risk.

    It’s the documentary that has been the talk of the town and the top of the talk shows. Sure, Variety magazine is reporting that we are in the press are now forbidden to be able to see it at the Kennedy Center because a sober analysis might leak out. But, Ladies and gentlemen—no, scratch that—subjects… you can now Rise. Adjust your posture. Lower your expectations. You will not be merely watching a documentary. You are being granted an audience.

    This is about the Empress of the Ballroom— our first lady – about whom the greatest documentary has ever been made. A soon to win every possible award documentary about the most astonishing woman to glide across the scorched marble floors of human history. A woman so luminous, so immaculately aloof, that even the camera seems to apologize before rolling. Amazon didn’t buy this film. Amazon knelt. Forty million dollars for the rights, thirty-five million more to announce to the world that yes, capitalism has finally found its final form: worship with a streaming interface.

    The visuals? Regal. The lighting? Vatican-level reverence. The pacing? Slower than time itself, because when a goddess moves, the universe waits. This isn’t propaganda—it’s devotion, filmed in couture focus, narrated in hushed tones usually reserved for relics and unexploded ordnance.

    Now, you may have heard rumors—ugly, jealous rumors—that two-thirds of the crew declined to be listed in the credits. Let us correct the record with elegance.

    They didn’t refuse.

    They withdrew in humility.

    Made Possible by People Like You—Literally.

    Because how does a mere mortal—some grip named Steve, some camera op with opinions—justify placing their ink-smudged name next to a being of such poise, such marble stillness, such metaphysical detachment? To appear in the credits would have been presumptuous. Arrogant. Like autographing the Sistine Chapel because you held the ladder.

    This was not a protest. It was a monastic vow of silence.

    Yes, the First Lady exercised executive control. Of course she did. You don’t ask a Michelangelo to crowdsource the ceiling. Final cut wasn’t “control”—it was curation. Truth, refined. Reality, edited for posture. History, but with better cheekbones.

    And the director—ah yes, the director. A controversial figure, they say. A man with a past. But what is controversy if not proof that an artist once mattered too much? Redemption arcs are biblical, darling. This wasn’t a liability; it was texture. Shadows exist only to make the subject glow brighter.

    Every so-called “problem” with this film—the secrecy, the withdrawals, the silence, the air of quiet terror—has been tragically misunderstood. These were not red flags. They were awe. The kind that empties rooms. The kind that makes professionals stare at their résumés and whisper, I am not ready.

    So when the credits roll—and they will roll faster than you expect—notice the absence. Feel it. That emptiness isn’t scandal.

    It’s reverence.

    This is not a documentary. It’s a coronation reel. A cinematic genuflection. Proof that when history finally stops talking and just looks… she’s already gone—leaving behind perfect framing, immaculate silence, and a country still trying to decide whether it watched a film or witnessed a visitation.

    Two hours of immaculate lighting, selective memory, and a budget so large it could’ve fed a mid-sized democracy. (most documentaries cost about 80,000, not 60 million). This cinematic miracle is Power, polished until it squeaks. Reality, upholstered. History, rewritten by people who bill by the minute and sleep like angels. It’s a beta test. A dress rehearsal for the future. A master class in how narrative replaces accountability, how wealth curates truth, and how the camera becomes a moral laundering device.

    Made Possible by People Like You—Literally.

    Copyright Audiences United, LLC – all rights reserved

    Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.



    This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caryharrison.substack.com/subscribe
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    8 m
  • How The "Terminator" Is Coming for You

    How The "Terminator" Is Coming for You
    Jan 22 2026
    Disclaimer: Side effects may include laughter, anger, historical recognition, and sudden distrust of people who say “this is for your own good.” Not approved by wellness gurus, congressional committees, or anyone who believes discomfort equals virtue. Read or watch at your own risk.Let’s get something straight before the civics textbooks start hyperventilating.This isn’t a conspiracy.It’s a supply chain.It’s not a shadowy cabal.It’s a frequent-flyer program.And it doesn’t start with a jackboot.It starts with a training seminar, a PowerPoint deck, and a complimentary bottled water.For years—years—thousands of American law-enforcement officers, including the kind with medals, pensions, and a deep emotional attachment to authority, have been quietly hopping on planes to Israel. Since the early 2000s. Not for hummus. Not for archaeology. For training. Policing. Military-style. Crowd control. Surveillance. Population management. How to pacify people without calling it pacification.Think of it as a professional exchange program:You bring your badge; we’ll show you how to run a neighborhood like a spreadsheet.This wasn’t advertised as repression. It was sold as best practices. Because nothing travels faster across borders than a technique for controlling human beings while still calling yourself a democracy.(Small Money, Big Damage - Early drafts, cartoons, heresies included)And once those techniques land back home, they don’t stay in the locker room. They metastasize. They spread through departments, task forces, fusion centers—like an invasive species with a grant budget.Now here’s where the story gets truly American.Because while the cops were getting trained, Silicon Valley was packing its lunch.The hoodie class—those soft-spoken monks of “disruption”—weren’t asking whether this apparatus should exist. They were asking how fast they could scale it.They didn’t bring ideology. They brought infrastructure.And infrastructure is ideology that doesn’t have to argue.Sophia Goodfriend nailed it: U.S. companies sharpened their surveillance tech in Israel and brought it home like a souvenir—except instead of a snow globe, it’s your metadata, your movement history, your social graph, your insomnia, your browsing habits, and that weird text you sent at 2:17 a.m. that you forgot about but the database didn’t.By 2015, firms like Babel and Palantir were already feeding ICE the raw material of modern power: data. Not just data—relational data. Who you know. Who you talk to. Who you stand near. Who shares your last name. Who liked whose post. Who went to the same mosque, protest, clinic, or birthday party.They turned human life into a logic puzzle.Then the real heavy equipment rolled in.Amazon.Microsoft.Google.The holy trinity of cheerful monopolies.They didn’t bring whips or chains. They brought cloud services—which is just a cute way of saying: We’ll store the nation’s private life on servers you’ll never see, governed by contracts you’ll never read.And here’s the joke the future will laugh at us for:Where AI fails technically, it succeeds ideologically.It doesn’t have to be right.It just has to feel inevitable.It just has to make the bureaucracy feel powerful.Like a toddler gripping a steering wheel while the bus careens downhill.Now we’re told “the parts are all in place.”That’s the phrase they use right before something irreversible happens.Palantir—named after Tolkien’s all-seeing stones, because nothing screams humility like borrowing props from fantasy literature—has reportedly been building ICE an “immigrationOS.”An operating system.For people.Reports that can generate what immigrants look like, where they live, where they travel, who they associate with—and monitor their location in real time. Add social-media surveillance. Add AI pattern recognition. Add predictive tools that decide who looks suspicious enough today.And to justify it, they dust off the ugliest nouns in the language—“terrorist,” “antisemite”—because power always launders itself through moral panic. It doesn’t matter who fits the label. What matters is that the label exists.Then comes the quote that should be tattooed on the forehead of the century:“We need to treat this like a business.Like Amazon Prime—but with human beings.”There it is.Two hundred and fifty years of Enlightenment thought, reduced to free shipping and live tracking.Now, let’s talk about Palantir itself—because this isn’t just software. It’s a worldview wearing code.Their original flagship platform—Gotham—connects everything in a battlefield. Soldier sensors. Drones. Satellites. Cameras. All fused into a single interface. The general’s wet dream: total visibility, zero uncertainty, no fog of war—just a clean dashboard with color-coded deaths.Every general in history would’ve sold their mother for this.And then Palantir did what all powerful technologies ...
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    39 m
  • Germany's World War I King is Reborn

    Germany's World War I King is Reborn
    Jan 21 2026
    Disclaimer: Side effects may include laughter, anger, historical recognition, and sudden distrust of people who say “this is for your own good.” Not approved by wellness gurus, congressional committees, or anyone who believes discomfort equals virtue. Read or watch at your own risk.Speaking to reporters in Davos ahead of the World Economic Forum, CA governor, Gavin Newsom, compared Trump to a T-Rex that “you mate with him or he devours you.”(Small Money, Big Damage - Early drafts, cartoons, heresies included)Many people think there’s a similarity between Germany of 120 years ago and the leadership that we see today. But let’s go back 100 years to the true template for the guy building the giant ballroom, six times bigger then the White House. And we’re still in Germany – no surprise. But it was the last emperor who was almost interchangeable with what we’re seeing today. Kaiser Wilhelm II didn’t accidentally stumble Europe into catastrophe. He strutted it there—chest out, medals clanking, ego wobbling like a loose wheel on a royal carriage.This was a man who confused volume with authority, costumes with competence, and tantrums with leadership. Europe, at the turn of the twentieth century, was already a tinderbox—nationalism, alliances, arms races, the usual historical explosives. What it needed to go up was a spark. What it got was Wilhelm: a human sparkler with a mustache and a navy fetish.Wilhelm didn’t govern. He performed. He loved uniforms the way insecure men love mirrors. Every speech was a dress rehearsal for greatness. Every foreign policy decision was theater—big gestures, loud declarations, and absolutely no follow-through. Diplomacy, to him, was improv, and the rest of Europe was forced to sit in the front row while he forgot his lines.He talked too much. Constantly. To journalists. To ambassadors. To anyone within earshot. He’d announce Germany’s intentions like a drunk at a wedding announcing secrets he barely understood himself. Allies panicked. Rivals armed up. Wilhelm, baffled, took offense—because nothing enraged him more than other countries reacting rationally to the things he said out loud.Then there was the navy. Oh, the navy. Wilhelm wanted ships the way a bored child wants fireworks. Britain had a fleet, so naturally Germany needed a bigger one—not for defense, not for strategy, but for status. This was geopolitics as a pissing contest, and Wilhelm insisted on drinking more water.The result? Britain stopped seeing Germany as a continental power and started seeing it as a threat. An arms race followed. Trust evaporated. The temperature rose. Wilhelm called it prestige. Everyone else called it trouble.Inside Germany, he did what insecure leaders always do: he fired the adults. Experienced diplomats? Gone. Cautious advisers? Replaced. In their place he elevated generals who flattered him, men who spoke in timetables and inevitabilities and worst-case scenarios. Civilian control thinned. Military logic took over. Once the trains were scheduled, reason was no longer invited to the meeting.And then came 1914.A gunshot in Sarajevo. A regional crisis. The kind Europe had handled before. This was the moment for restraint—for quiet pressure, for delayed decisions, for statesmanship.Wilhelm responded by throwing a blank check at Austria-Hungary like a man tipping wildly at a bar he couldn’t afford. Total support. No limits. No exit ramp. It was pure emotion—offended honor, wounded pride, imperial solidarity cosplay.When things escalated, he panicked. He wavered. He tried—too late—to slow it down. But the machinery he empowered didn’t pause for second thoughts. Mobilization rolled forward. Alliances snapped into place. Europe marched.Wilhelm had wanted a moment. He got a world war.Four years later, millions were dead, empires were gone, and Wilhelm fled into exile—still convinced history had misunderstood him. Of course it had. History is terribly unfair to men who believe dressing like a general counts as governing.Europe didn’t fall into catastrophe because fate demanded it. It fell because it handed an unstable system to a man who treated power like a costume rack and diplomacy like a stage cue.And once he pulled the lever, there was no intermission.The Cary Harrison Files is a listener-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Look for my complete book “A MAGA history of the United States” (MAGA: Making Academia Great Again) coming out in the next months. I perform chapters often on my LA public radio show, the Cary Harrison Files”, Fridays at 10 AM Pacific, KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles.Copyright Audiences United, LLC – all rights reservedThank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.(Small Money, Big Damage - Early drafts, cartoons, heresies included) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other...
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    22 m
  • What Is the Monroe Doctrine

    What Is the Monroe Doctrine
    Jan 12 2026
    Disclaimer: Side effects may include laughter, anger, historical recognition, and sudden distrust of people who say “this is for your own good.” Not approved by wellness gurus, congressional committees, or anyone who believes discomfort equals virtue. Read or watch at your own risk.Year one of His Imperial Kumquat’s second act was domestic thuggery: a slow, sticky, bureaucratic mugging of the Constitution in broad daylight, with Our Leadership standing around like mall cops arguing over whose radio battery died first. Year two? Now the swagger goes international. Why settle for bullying your own institutions when you can expand the brand and start shaking down the whole hemisphere?And that’s the pitch now: Venezuela is in our “backyard,” and apparently, in Washington DC, “backyard” means you own it, like a dog that’s found a bone and is prepared to bite God Himself over possession rights. We didn’t like the guy in charge, so—poof—there goes the old postwar pretense that borders matter and war is something you do only when you’re attacked or authorized, not when you’re annoyed.Here’s the part you’re supposed to swallow without gagging: if the United States can treat another country like a misbehaving rental property, then every other strongman on Earth gets a shiny new permission slip. You don’t have to love Putin to see the sales pitch: “If Washington gets to ‘stabilize’ its neighborhood with force, why can’t I stabilize mine?” Same for Xi. Same for Netanyahu. The whole planet becomes one big HOA run by men who settle disputes by lighting your house on fire and calling it “maintenance.”Remember the post–World War II order? The one built—at least on paper—to stop exactly this kind of “might makes right” territorial bullying? It was supposed to be the great human compromise: no more empires carving up the map because they feel entitled, no more “spheres of influence” where the strong eat the weak and call it geography.Well, that order is getting replaced with something older, uglier, and much more honest: the pre–World War II model where thugs draw circles on a globe and say, “Mine.” Not a rules-based system—more like a bar fight with flags.For decades, Washington DC kept up a glossy moral cover story: democracy, alliances, freedom, humanitarian concern, soft power, that whole sermon. Sure, the sermon was frequently accompanied by coups, friendly dictators, and the occasional “misunderstanding” involving napalm, but the packaging mattered. It gave the empire a patina—thin, but shiny—enough to sell itself as a necessary force for order.Now? The mask is falling off and landing face-first in the oil.Because listen to the new gospel: “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies go in, spend billions, fix the infrastructure, and start making money for the country.” That’s adorable. It’s the kind of sentence a pickpocket says while you’re still applauding his concern for your financial wellness. “Making money for the country” is the bedtime story. The grown-up translation is: they’ll make money for themselves, and the “country” is just the stage scenery.And once you accept that logic—once you normalize “we can run your nation because we’ve got the hardware and you’ve got the resources”—you’ve officially entered the world where tyrants thrive. It’s not democracy versus authoritarianism anymore. It’s competing protection rackets, each with its own flag, its own propaganda, and its own list of “neighbors” who’d better behave.That’s the nightmare on offer: three big blocs, three big bosses, three big excuses. One bloc under Putin’s boot, one under Xi’s, and one under Really stable genius—with assorted junior thugs playing regional assistant managers. In this model, being someone’s “neighbor” means you either comply with the neighbor’s wishes or you get “managed.” Sovereignty becomes a subscription plan: pay monthly in obedience, or enjoy the deluxe package of sanctions, destabilization, and helpful missiles.And if this sounds new, it’s only because the marketing department refreshed the logo.This is the Monroe Doctrine with a modern haircut. The original version, back in 1823, was a polite little throat-clear dressed up as moral principle: “Europe, keep your hands off the Americas.” It was charming, like a raccoon slapping a bear and declaring the forest a raccoon-only zone. James Monroe delivered it with the calm confidence of a man standing behind the British Navy and pretending it was his own muscle. Britain did the heavy lifting; America wrote the press release.The pitch was noble. The subtext was territorial. The translation was: “We’re not strong enough to police this hemisphere yet, but we’re calling dibs.” Geopolitical puberty—awkward, loud, and convinced the future owes it something.And then America grew up, found muscles, ...
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    29 m
  • Cary Harrison's "MAGA History of the United States" [Part 3] - Circumcision to World Wars

    Cary Harrison's "MAGA History of the United States" [Part 3] - Circumcision to World Wars
    Jan 7 2026
    Disclaimer: These events are told from the viewpoint of this descendant of one of the first American families. One side came over on the Mayflower; the other to colonize for the crown, participate (on both sides) in the Revolutionary War, had Lincoln as an ancestor on one side; slavers on the other, Quakers, quaffers, and a cabal of creatives from TV, movie-making, to radio.WARNING:This book contains– Unauthorized history– Unsupervised satire– Graphic depictions of hypocrisy– Blasphemy against national myths– Improper handling of revered figures– Unlicensed moral claritySide effects may include laughter, anger, historical recognition, and sudden distrust of people who say “this is for your own good.”Not approved by wellness gurus, congressional committees, or anyone who believes discomfort equals virtue.Read at your own risk.Chapter 13a: THE CEREAL KILLER(or, How America Let a Flake-Peddling Puritan Declare War on the Human Body)Dr. Kellogg is one of my favorite American scalawags! America has always had a special weakness for lunatics who arrive wearing lab coats, wielding clipboards, and promising cleanliness. Enter Dr. John Harvey Kellogg—physician, health reformer, breakfast tyrant, and the sort of man who looked at the human body and saw original sin with plumbing.This was a man so terrified of lust that he dedicated his life to chasing it with spoons.Kellogg ran the Battle Creek Sanitarium, a health resort for the rich, anxious, and chronically guilty. Patients came seeking vitality. Kellogg offered them multiple fanny enemas, yogurt injections, electrotherapy, and lectures delivered with the warmth of a tax audit. His gospel was simple: if you felt joy in your body, something had gone terribly wrongNaturally, America listened.Because Kellogg spoke fluent authority. He was a doctor. He published papers. He wore white. And most importantly, he wrapped his personal revulsions in the language of hygiene. Sex wasn’t sinful, you see—it was unhealthy. Masturbation wasn’t normal—it was a disease. Desire wasn’t human—it was a mechanical failure.And when something malfunctions, you fix it. Preferably with medical instruments and sharp blades.Kellogg’s obsession with suppressing sexual behavior metastasized into what can only be described as a surgical tantrum. Circumcision, he declared, would solve the problem. Not as a religious rite. Not as a personal choice. But as a preventative moral appliance—like a chastity lock installed by a man who hated doors. And it was done during the time of puberty, before the advent of sterilization. So, as you can imagine, there was a lot of blood, plus, scar tissue and very little desire to ever touch oneself again, even with soap. So as a young man continued to grow, so did the scar tissue of a lousy circumcision turn his prong into a bent banana - a mangled, corkscrewed tragedy that couldn’t point straight if its life depended on it.Circumcision, in Kellogg’s mind, was not a religious rite or a medical necessity. It was a behavioral deterrent—a punitive firmware update for the body designed to make pleasure inconvenient, joy suspicious, and adolescence feel like a disciplinary hearing. He openly advocated performing it without anesthesia so the lesson would “stick.” This was not medicine. This was spite with a scalpel. Surgery as moral spanking.Kellogg reached for metal. His was not a medical practice so much as a Victorian dungeon masquerading as public health, a place where the human body arrived flawed and left traumatized.For boys and men, he devised what can only be described as genital penitentiaries—iron chastity cages fitted over the penis like a medieval apology. These contraptions were strapped, buckled, or banded into place, engineered to prevent erection, access, or any hint of optimism below the belt. Some featured internal spikes, because Kellogg believed the body learned best when pain arrived promptly and without ambiguity. A swelling penis, in his theology, was not a biological event—it was an insurrection, and insurrections were to be crushed.There were also rings—cold, unyielding metal circles clamped at the base, sometimes studded with spikes, designed to act as tripwires for nocturnal treason. The moment the body dared dream, the device bit back. This was behaviorism before Skinner, Pavlov with a wrench, a feedback loop of shame and steel. The lesson was simple: arousal equals agony. Learn it or bleed.Children, naturally, were not spared. Kellogg endorsed chastity belts for boys, smaller versions of adult restraints, justified with the calm assurance that childhood curiosity led directly to madness, weakness, and moral collapse. These belts were meant to be worn continuously. Hygiene was incidental. Psychological damage was considered a feature. The goal was not health—it was preemption.Girls and women fared no better. Kellogg recommended clitoral shields and restraints, often incorporated into ...
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    1 h y 2 m
  • From Cary Harrison's "MAGA History of the United States" [Part 2]:

    From Cary Harrison's "MAGA History of the United States" [Part 2]:
    Dec 29 2025
    Disclaimer: These events are told from the viewpoint of this descendant of one of the first American families. One side came over on the Mayflower; the other to colonize for the crown, participate (on both sides) in the Revolutionary War, had Lincoln as an ancestor on one side; slavers on the other, Quakers, quaffers, and a cabal of creatives from TV, movie-making to radio.Chapter 10: Founding Fathers — Enlightenment Thinkers with Slaves and SyphilisThe American Revolution didn’t just create a nation—it kicked off one of history’s most ambitious rebranding campaigns. Men like Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison—names etched into currency and concrete—crafted a republic from scratch using Enlightenment ideals, French wine, hookers and, where necessary, a flexible definition of hypocrisy.They talked about liberty, of course. Endlessly. Liberty was the word of the day, the week, the whole century. But the liberty they spoke of was a very exclusive club—strictly gentlemen only. Membership required land, whiteness, and an aversion to paying taxes unless you were the one collecting them.Let’s begin with Thomas Jefferson, the man who penned “all men are created equal” with one hand while cradling a whip in the other. He owned over 600 enslaved people throughout his life, including Sally Hemings, a woman he legally owned and personally impregnated—several times.Enlightened? Maybe. Consensual? Less so.Jefferson was also deeply conflicted about slavery—but in the same way a man is “conflicted” about eating meat while grilling a steak. He wrote pages on the moral rot of bondage... but kept the plantation running because, well, Monticello wasn’t going to weed itself.George Washington, the general who would not be king, had wooden teeth, which were not actually wood but rather harvested from the teeth of enslaved people. He freed his slaves in his will—after he died—a final gesture of conscience best described as too little, slightly too late.And then there’s Ben Franklin, the jolly polymath who did everything from inventing bifocals to founding libraries to allegedly contracting syphilis in every available French salon. He started out owning slaves, then had a political epiphany late in life—roughly around the time it became fashionable in Philadelphia to pretend you were an abolitionist. When I was around 13, I met my grandparent’s neighbor (in Englewood Florida), Benjamin Franklin VIII. This later ancestor had the Franklin family Bible which listed in the back Pages the pounds and shillings the original Ben had earned as one of the world’s greatest “Whoremasters”, running his brothel in Philadelphia. It was around that time that I also read this astounding Founding Daddys’ autobiography which was seminal in helping me develop critical thinking skills and lofty opinions.Alexander Hamilton, Broadway’s tragic antihero, did not own slaves personally—unless you count the human beings his in-laws owned, whom he occasionally rented. A technicality, perhaps, but not exactly the stuff of moral high ground. He opposed slavery, mostly, but also opposed doing anything practical about it.James Madison, the so-called Father of the Constitution, was five foot four, owned over 100 slaves, and spent his life talking about the delicate balance between liberty and tyranny while sitting comfortably atop the heads of the enslaved.These men gathered in Philadelphia, drafted documents with florid calligraphy and righteous tone, and created a government “by the people, for the people”—so long as “the people” excluded women, Black people, Native Americans, and anyone without property. They codified freedom with such straight-faced earnestness, you’d almost forget half of them died surrounded by unpaid laborers and unpaid debts.Yet, despite all this, they built something lasting. That’s the American contradiction: the same men who drew the blueprint for democracy also nailed shut the door on half the population. And we’ve been living in that contradiction ever since—calling it freedom while debating who counts.We honor the Founding Fathers not because they were perfect—but because they were flawed and audacious.Enlightenment thinkers with plantation schedules. Syphilitic philosophers who wrote sonnets to freedom and then foreclosed on it.They were brilliant, brave, and ambitious.And yet, what they started was real. Fragile. Glorious. Hypocritical as hell (depending on who you are). But real.So here’s to the Fathers of the Nation:* Enlightened, but not fully awake.* Principled, until the mortgage came due.* And forever inscribed in history—warts, wigs, whips, and all.Chapter 10a: REVOLUTION! Tea, Tantrums, and the Guillotine(or, “How America Declared Independence and France Picked Up the Bill”)Let’s dispense with the powdered wigs and patriotic incense right up front: this was not a revolution. This was a colonial meltdown—a fiscal hissy fit...
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    58 m
  • The Pilgrims: God’s Least Enjoyable Party Guests

    The Pilgrims: God’s Least Enjoyable Party Guests
    Nov 29 2025
    Disclaimer: These events are told from the viewpoint of this descendent of one of the first American families. We settled in Maryland. I’ve just returned from Holland, where the pilgrims spent 12 little-known years before going back to England to then head to the New World. I spent the summer tracing the deranged footsteps of our ancestor pilgrims.Chapter 1: How to Flee Every Country Until You Finally Find One Without NeighborsHistory insists the Pilgrims were paragons of virtue: earnest, long-faced saints trudging forth to build God’s vacation home in the wilderness. That’s the brochure version. The truth? They were a wandering sack of wheezing moral carbuncles who drank like condemned sailors and lectured like unpaid interns of the Inquisition. These were my ancestors—on my mother’s side—proof that genetics carru a sense of humor.They weren’t “religious refugees”; they were walking noise complaints. England didn’t persecute them—it quietly changed the locks.Their first stop on the global Tour of Being Unbearable was Amsterdam, a city that could tolerate anything: hash smoke, sailors with questionable piercings, anarchists juggling flaming pamphlets, and the odor of a million pickled herrings. Yet even Amsterdam—the spiritual capital of “do what you want, just don’t bleed on the furniture”—took one whiff of the Pilgrims’ sanctimony and said, with Dutch politeness, “F*ck No!”The Dutch, who could peacefully co-exist with Catholics, Jews, prostitutes, philosophers, and windmills—all at the same dinner table—took one look at the scowling God Squad and collectively wondered whether Spanish rule might’ve been the better deal.So the Pilgrims lurched onward to Leiden, a lovely scholarly town unprepared for the arrival of Calvinist mildew. Leiden welcomed them with open arms and closed nostrils. “Yes, come in,” said the locals, “start your linen shops, enrich our culture—please, diversify our gene pool! We beg you.”Twelve years later, the same townspeople were reconsidering every decision they had ever made. The Pilgrims refused to learn Dutch, refused to experience joy, and refused to let their children become anything other than junior-grade killjoys. They looked upon Leiden—a quiet university haven with cobbled streets and excellent cheese—and declared it another Sodom, only better organized.So Leiden, in an act of refined civic mercy, escorted them to the exit. Probably with a nice loaf of bread and a pair of wooden shoes to speed their departure. “Thank you for your enthusiastic hostility,” the Dutch likely said. “Please never return. The tulips fear you.”And so, having exhausted the patience of the most tolerant society in Europe, the Pilgrims gazed across the Atlantic—toward a continent where nobody yet knew them, and thus nobody had told them to go away. It must have felt like destiny. It was, in fact, the last refuge for people so irritating that even world champions of tolerance issued a restraining order.Thus these morally inflamed scarecrows boarded the Mayflower and set out to build a land where they could finally be free:Free to punish everyone else for existing.And that is how a band of joy-proof religious auditors fled every civilized country that asked them to leave, only to plant their flag in someone else’s backyard and call the whole thing “liberty.”Chapter 2 — The Great Retreat: How the Pilgrims Fled Holland, Sank a Ship, Terrorized Two Ports, and Still Somehow Made It to AmericaLeaving Leiden wasn’t a “fresh start.” It was an act of pest control.After twelve excruciating years of Puritan spiritual pollution—thick, choking clouds of sanctimony drifting over canals like Calvinist smog—the Dutch finally broke. This is a nation that tolerates everything: weed, prostitution, anarchists riding bicycles naked, and tourists from Ohio. But even they have limits, and those limits were reached the moment the Pilgrims refused to smile, assimilate, or shut up.Amsterdam had already tried to shake them off like a wet umbrella.Leiden lasted longer, because Leiden is polite.But eventually even its famously calm citizens agreed that living near the Pilgrims felt like attending a 12-year funeral for someone who wasn’t dead yet.The message was universal, unmistakable, and delivered with a complimentary pair of wooden shoes:“Please leave before morale collapses and the windmills unionize.”So the Pilgrims waddled down to Delfshaven to board the Speedwell, a ship whose very name was an act of historical satire. This pathetic little craft looked less like a vessel of destiny and more like the punishment a shipwright receives for being drunk at work. If the Speedwell had been an animal, the humane thing would have been to put it down.But no — the Pilgrims climbed aboard, packing it with their belongings, their grievances, and enough religious judgment to sink the Spanish Armada.Enter: The Speedwell’s Suicide ...
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    1 h
  • America on the Brink: Greg Mello Reads the Warning Signs

    America on the Brink: Greg Mello Reads the Warning Signs
    Nov 17 2025

    Why Upgrade? Now that government funding has been snipped like a spaniel’s scrotum, many of us public radio vets will continue to provide unfiltered insight, irony, and the kind of “why” reporting that refuses to kiss power’s ring. Corporate coffers can’t buy integrity, but your subscription can.

    You ever wake up, stretch, and realize the nation’s steering wheel is now in the hands of a man I’ll politely call His Imperial Kumquat — only to discover he’s steering with his elbows while juggling nuclear policy with the enthusiasm of a drunk circus clown? You have? Good. Then you’re already ahead of the curve.

    Because Washington DC — Our Leadership, the Dowager Empress of the Ballroom — has once again graced you with a spectacle so grand, so operatic, so deeply stupid, it makes the Roman Senate look like a Montessori school. We’re now living in a country where “nuclear testing” is tossed around with the same seriousness as a TikTok dance challenge, except this time the challenge is not to see who can get more likes but who can vaporize fewer cities.

    And the punchline? We’re told not to worry — because apparently nobody actually asked for nuclear explosions. No, no. His Imperial Kumquat simply suggested we should test things “on an equal basis” with Russia and China. Like it’s a bake-off. Like he wants to make sure our mushroom clouds rise at the same elegant angle as theirs.

    Meanwhile Russia’s out there test-driving nuclear-powered doomsday toys — a cruise missile that apparently runs on Chernobyl fumes and whatever dignity the Kremlin has left, and a torpedo that sounds like something a Bond villain ordered off Etsy. And China? They haven’t popped one since the last time fax machines were still considered cutting-edge. But that hasn’t stopped Washington DC from panting like a bulldog left in the sun too long, insisting we need to “keep up.”

    Of course, those boring, sober people known as “scientists” — you know, the ones who prefer math over swagger — keep reminding us that actual nuclear explosive testing is obsolete. Not just unnecessary, but the policy equivalent of duct-taping a lit match to a can of hairspray and calling it “innovation.”

    But the bureaucratic pyromaniacs in Washington DC have already burned through treaties like they were old parking tickets.

    The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty? Torn up.The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty? Dumpstered.Non-Proliferation obligations? Misplaced somewhere under the national couch.

    And just when you thought the grown-ups might reclaim the room, we get a “first use” doctrine floated like an idea on a bar napkin.

    The Dowager Empress of the Ballroom doesn’t just move the goalposts — she burns them down, salts the earth, and then quietly leases the land to a defense contractor.

    And all the while, quietly in the background, the United States bombs Iranian facilities like it’s ordering a side of fries. Israel — a country that allegedly, officially, absolutely does not have nuclear weapons (wink), is right there helping out, while Washington DC does a little two-step pretending not to notice the nuclear arsenal behind the curtain.

    Into this circus wanders a man who has spent his life studying nuclear policy like a fire marshal studying a rave thrown inside a fireworks warehouse. He’s the executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group. He’s taught science, commanded hazardous materials incidents, led environmental crackdowns, lectured at Princeton, and probably forgotten more about radioactive stupidity than Washington DC has ever known.

    He’s watched Washington set its own eyebrows on fire so many times that at this point he’s just checking to see if they’ll finally commit to roasting the whole head.

    You know him.You’ve probably read him.Today, we rely on him.

    Greg Mello.

    Why Upgrade? Now that government funding has been yanked, many of us public radio vets will continue to provide unfiltered insight, irony, and the kind of “why” reporting that refuses to kiss power’s ring. Corporate coffers can’t buy integrity, but your subscription can.



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