Cowley’s Crusade is about stirring the pot. The podcast is about holding their toes to the line. It’s about finding facts amid the barrage of misinformation, disinformation, and outright lies we hear daily, and those passed down through the ages.
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A podcast about loving greatly through grief. Scalawag knows that for many of us, our grief is simultaneously never news, and the only news. From the mind and lived experience of celebrated jazz artist Nnenna Freelon, Great Grief is a life-honoring outpouring of word, story, and song that plumbs the depths of her own sorrow after the death of her beloved husband, Philip, and her sister, Debbie Irene. Award-winning Great Grief re-emerges at Scalawag through podcasts and live events as a dynam ...
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What if we told you Bartholomew Columbus, Jerome Bonaparte and Kermit Roosevelt were all real people? Did you know that there is a direct link between Napoleon Bonaparte and tin cans? Thomas Jefferson and barbed wire? John Travolta and Forrest Gump? Dive into the rabbit hole of history's obscure facts and unique narratives with host Albort Einstone as he connects the dots between past and present. Join us for a hearty dose of Scattered Curiosities.
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The man is violent. He is running out of time. And laying the groundwork. Beware.Richard Cowley által
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Part two of the Mitch McConnell story. We examine McConnell’s contribution to Trump’s Presidency and the McConnell Supreme Court.Richard Cowley által
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Today, we discuss the most powerful Senator in Congress, Mitch McConnell. The first of a two-part podcast. Take a look at who he is and what he has accomplished in nearly forty years of power.Richard Cowley által
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A special episode. A final comment about the September 10 Presidential debate. A 2-minute and 35-second podcast. Worth your while.Richard Cowley által
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A King's Ransom - an idiom we use when we spend an exorbitant amount for an item.What is the story behind the phrase?Check out this 10-minute podcast.Richard Cowley által
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Scalawags, Scoundrels, and Villains - Episode Six - a King's Ransom
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Recently, I purchased an expensive wristwatch and felt like I paid a king's ransom. Have you ever wondered where that phrase came from? Listen to our 10-minute podcast. The phrase is part of our history.Richard Cowley által
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People, politicians, and power. A toxic blend. That’s nothing new. Let’s take a break from the 2024 election chaos to peek at one of the most romanticized monarchs in history and his take on power. Something old, something new.Richard Cowley által
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Episode Four - The Trump Travesty
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Richard Cowley challenges you to decide. Is # 45 a scalawag, scoundrel, or villain? He provides historical context on the 170 years of the Republican Party. He offers a few notes on the Trump family story.Richard Cowley által
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Episode Three calls out Donald Trump for his treasonous actions. As President, he attempted to take control of Congress, our Federal law-making body. He attempted to force the Vice President to invalidate the Electoral College vote, thereby allowing him to be President for life. He is Benedict Arnold, 2024 version. Episode Three calls out the voter…
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Scalawags, Scoundrels, and Villains Episode Two
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Liars, cheats, thieves, killers, and fools populate Western European History. Some are benign scalawags like Robert Ripley. Some are scoundrels like Victor Lustig who steal your money. And some are malignant. Some are political leaders. Some are minions like Tucker Carlson, eager to curry favor with power. Some are killers. I have a background in E…
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Scalawags, Scoundrels, and Villains - Episode Two: The Wolf is at our Door
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In Episode One, I went after Trump, offering my opinion about the man, his track record as President, and his character. This week, I present Project 2025, a worrisome manifesto designed to give Trump a game plan should he win the 2024 Presidential election this year.Richard Cowley által
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Episode One: Scalawags, Scoundrels, and Villains
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News junkies wake up and smell the coffee. You’re listening to political commentary with a historical and literary bent. My name is Richard Cowley. And I have an ax to grind.Richard Cowley által
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59 Foolin' With You
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Court jesters have been associated with positions of authority throughout time in memorial from the Pharoah Neferkere to the conquests of Atilla the Hun to the Battle of Hastings and through the Age of Discovery. These wisecracking wearers of the "cap and bells" have gone by various titles: minstrel, juggler, jolly, clown, comedian, joker, harlequi…
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Seasons of Change, Episode 4: Holiday Season
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The festive season carries such a high expectation of joy that can feel inaccessible for so many grievers. In this previously-recorded live edition of Great Grief, Nnenna Freelon gathers with community to create a warm space for us to sit with our loves and our losses in the company of those who also know suffering. Join Scalawag and Nnenna Freelon…
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Seasons of Change, Episode 3: The World Since You Left
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How do we communicate with those who have “gone?” Is it even possible? In this episode of Great Grief, Nnenna Freelon sets about asking the moon, the sun, and even the leaves how she might get in touch with her beloved Phil. If grief shows us that time isn’t linear, maybe sorrow is more than a season. Maybe it’s a portal. Join Scalawag and Nnenna F…
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Seasons of Change, Episode 2: Ashes, Ashes
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Grief can take us to our knees—right back to the dirt, dust, and the earth, from which all things grow. In this episode of Great Grief, Nnenna Freelon consults Mother Nature—and a Black woman hemp farmer—to lean into how we might grow on even in harsh environments and bitter seasons. Join Scalawag and Nnenna Freelon in Durham, North Carolina, on Su…
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Seasons of Change, Episode 1: Falling
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39:25
In this episode of Great Grief, we follow Nnenna Freelon on a walk through the woods, where she contemplates autumn, the changing of the seasons, and the possibility of renewal after everything dies. Read a transcript of this episode. Join Scalawag and Nnenna Freelon in Durham, North Carolina, on Sunday, December 10 for "Great Grief—Live! Home for …
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Great Grief with Nnenna Freelon, season 2: "Seasons of Change," launches November 28, 2023. The seasons are changing, an apt metaphor to talk about the shedding, withering, and falling away that accompanies the most painful parts of grief. In the latest series of Great Grief, Nnenna looks to nature and the cyclical movement of time to delve deeper …
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58 1986: Balki In Space
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1:11:45
1986 (a 365-day time frame fraught with discharge of toxic material, skyjackings, and espionage) was dubbed the International Year of Peace by the United Nations. And why not? The U.K. and Netherlands officially ended the 335-Years War, Hands Across America was raising funds for hunger and homelessness, the late Martin Luther King Jr. was honored w…
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Wailing Women, Episode 4: Black Widow
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The podcast Great Grief takes shape around Nnenna’s own great grief, which she experienced after the death of her husband, Philip Freelon, in 2019. A wife for nearly 40 years, Nnenna wonders in this episode what to make of the term "widow."Perhaps loss does not make her into a widow. Perhaps it is turning her into something else altogether. Read a …
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Wailing Women, Episode 3: Hairstory
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Our relationship with our hair is a complicated entanglement. It holds our history, personality, and identity. It also holds our grief. In this episode, "Hairstory," Nnenna sits us down in the chair at her mother’s beauty salon, where for generations, Black women have celebrated one another and have gathered to discuss hair—the grief over it, and t…
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Wailing Women, Episode 2: Sister Sister
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No woman makes it through life without a sister. In grieving the death of her baby sister, Nnenna alights on all the ways Black women experience sisterhood. Through faith, family, and struggle, we inhabit a deep solidarity that allows us to hold one another close, even at the very end. Read a transcript of this episode. This is episode two in our f…
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Wailing Women, Episode 1: When Grief Speaks
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Grief is a woman with plenty to say. This shape-shifting step-sister of ours wasn’t originally a part of the plan, but now she is coming with—no choice there. But did you know you also have the ability to shape your grief? It's true, but first, you must be willing to meet her where she lives. In this episode of Great Grief, Nnenna Freelon asks us t…
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Grief is your shape-shifting step-sister. While she wasn't originally part of the plan, now she is coming with—no choice there. In order to shape your grief, you must first be willing to meet her where she lives. With "Wailing Women," the first four-part installment of Great Grief, Nnenna Freelon uses story and song to explore the profound beauty a…
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Since The Simpsons debuted over three decades ago, Albort’s Jeopardy game has been embiggened exponentially. But for the Simpsons, he would never have known about Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose, or William Alton Carter’s Billy Beer; and that’s just scratching the surface. This episode celebrates the random factoids lear…
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How many movies have you seen that feature a wardrobe montage, a protagonist tearing out an IV to hastily leave the hospital, post-coital bed-sheets that magically only cover the woman’s chest, or characters uttering stale lines like, “We’ve got company”, “No time to explain”, or “He’s behind me, isn’t he?” All are examples of clichés but they aren…
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55 Magnetic Tape, Joysticks, and Pizza Theaters
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It's been fifty years since Atari’s revolutionary game, Pong, ushered in a Renaissance for video arcades in America and gave rise to the animatronic house bands of Chuck E. Cheese and Showbiz Pizza. Albort experienced it in real time and invites you to join him for a stroll down memory lane with detours at the 1982 World’s Fair, Blockbuster Video a…
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Better Half E4 - Pearls, Pants Suits, And The Golden Age Of Capitalism 1944 - 2022
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This is the final episode of our four-part Better Half mini-series containing six lectures apropos to the First Ladies from the Cold War up to the present time. What is known of the First Ladies of the United States we have covered up to this point comes down to us via the press, memoirs, what can be divined from letters, paintings, anecdotes, and …
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Better Half E3 - Amelia And Eleanor's Excellent Adventure 1933 - 1944
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This third installment of our four-part Better Half mini-series departs from the regular format as it is not focused solely on the First Lady of the United States of America and only features one of them. Today's narrative was built around the 1933 evening when Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt ducked out of a party at the White House to take a …
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Better Half E2 - Scalawags, Carpetbaggers, And The Gospel Of Wealth 1865 - 1933
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This is the second apportionment of our four-part Better Half mini-series containing four lectures regarding the First Ladies of the United States within the Reconstruction Era, the Gilded Age, through total global interwar, the Mad Decade, and up to the brink of the Dirty Thirties. The sixty-eight-year span features a shy First Lady entreating the…
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Better Half E1 - Remember The Ladies 1789 - 1865
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This is the inaugural episode of an introductory four-part mini-series regarding the First Ladies of the United States of America. The New Nation's inception thought nothing of what to call the President's wife as "First Lady" did not appear in print until thirty-six years after Martha Washington's death. Because women have been so thoroughly shaft…
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54 LOST In History
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It has been eleven years since ABC’s smash drama LOST has been off the air, yet fans continue to debate and mythologize its doctrines via blogs and hundreds of podcasts devoted solely to dissecting the mysterious island series from multiple perspectives, delving deeper into the characters' connections to one another; this is not one of them. Instea…
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What happens when a paranormal consultant remembers an incarcerated Nelson Mandela dying in the 1980s instead of famously being released from his twenty-seven-year sentence in 1990, becoming the first Black President of South Africa and living an additional three decades? The rara avis known as False Memory Syndrome gets rebranded as The Mandela Ef…
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51 The Quarantine Wine Whine
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When did fashion dolls morph into America’s movable men? Why do unicorns and Pegasus get confused for one another? Who, among rock stars, would make the ugliest, but most talented, baby? What Golden Raspberry Award-winning actor and former BOP Boy are we infatuated with? How is it that Weebles wobble but do not fall down? And where does Albort drea…
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50 Amelia and Eleanor's Excellent Adventure
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Did President Franklin Delano Roosevelt have Amelia Earhart shot down over the Pacific during a “reconnaissance” mission in retaliation for her lesbian affairs with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt? Probably not, but if you nit-picked your facts, you might be able to construct a plausible explanation to support that theory; we are not the first to sugg…
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49 Let's Talk About Secs Part II
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At long last, the conclusion to our series highlighting the men and women (finally) to hold the position of US Secretary of State has arrived. This installment brings us into and through the 20th Century, covering the annexation of Hawaii, the Spanish American War, the Treaty of Versailles, the concept of “Dollar Diplomacy”, the Marshall Plan, the …
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48 Sinter Wodan Kringle Claus
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*WARNING: CONTENTS OF THIS EPISODE CONTAIN CHRISTMAS SPOILERS. NOT FOR CHILDREN* Join Albort as he explores the many incarnations of the most fantastical, generous, Coca-Cola loving character of the holiday season, Santa Claus; from Saint Nikolas of Myra to Sinterklaas of the Netherlands to Pere Noel of France to L. Frank Baum’s “Neclaus” and why t…
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It’s October and time for our most spooktacular episode yet. Get a lesson in the provenance of Halloween and the many names it goes by, from the Celtic festivities of Calan Gaef and Samhain to All Hallow’s Eve, Hallowmas, All Saint’s Day, Reformation Day, Founder’s Day and the Day of Seven Billion. Albort’s cauldron is brimming with vampires, witch…
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46 Let's Talk About Secs
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Having already covered Presidents and Vice Presidents, we are now continuing the tradition of an annual show dedicated to the men and women who have run the United States since its inception with the elusive position of Secretary of State, a job held by a few would-be presidents: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Mar…
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Orville Redenbacher, Mario Puzo and James Brown walk into a podcast…don’t you wish that was the set up to a fantastic joke? It’s not (sorry) but a connection between the three can be found in the year 1969; as well as Ho Chi Minh/Dwight D. Eisenhower, Judy Garland/Sharon Tate, Jack Kerouac/Joseph Kennedy, Sr. and Boris Karloff/Frank Loesser. Join A…
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Capital cities are the center of government to nations states and provinces but are not always the most prominent, popular, populous or permanent (New York City and Philadelphia are NOT capital cities…anymore). Pensacola and Saint Augustine are also former heads of state that ceded to Tallahassee when East Florida and West Florida unified.Join Albo…
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It is time for this season’s language analyzing episode, featuring near miss accidents, poison versus venom, Judas Priest, Alzheimer’s Disease, The Pirates of Penzance, bald faced lies, Diphtheria, Contronyms, Malapropisms, Voiceless Labiodental Fricatives and Albort explaining the difference between amused/bemused, viable/feasible, ultimate/penult…
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42 Distinguished Despots And Enigmatic Eminences
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It’s the season three premiere and boy is it a scattered one, including little known factoids about some infamously ferocious historical redheads and a queen whose hair turned white overnight. Delve into the many loves of Cleopatra and Gaius Julius Caesar (along with each other), cross-dressing Romans, decisive beheadings, felinophobes, the tale of…
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41 TAMT Teenage Avant - Garde Master Talents
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It’s the Season Two Finale and Albort thinks the Renaissance names for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were not assigned properly and intends to make a case for it. Get the back story on the cold-blooded half-shelled vindicators of justice and their belletristic namesakes of antiquity Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael.…
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Albort reflects on his fortieth year on this our fortieth episode. Travel back to the mystical year one thousand, nine-hundred ninety-eight to decide if Albort predicted the Bird Flu virus as he reads excerpts of his recently dusted off writing assignment book borne of his ten year old, pop-culture infected mind to discover how he and the world hav…
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39 Nickels, Bullets, Boats and the Pickle Man
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1:27:17
Snowmen, Alan Alda, Candy Canes, and Cherries are just some of the many nicknames for pairs in playing cards and the first two make up four fifths of the infamous Dead Man’s Hand. Join Albort for a lesson in poker tournaments, game strategy and learn the jargon that will have you talking like a pro in no time. Discover how the World Series of Poker…
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It’s the first Tinysode of the season, a lost relic from the series premiere of the Scattered Curiosities. Get a very brief overview of the Battle of the Downs, one of Albort’s favorite paintings at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and find out what it has to do with the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Curacao and St. Maarten.…
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37 Cereal Killers
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Take a trip down Saturday Morning Memory Lane with Albort Einstone as he recalls some favorite cereals, commercials, toys and mascots from the late 1800s to today. Learn the history behind some of the biggest companies in breakfast and how Battle Creek, Michigan became ground zero for the start of the unending mascot wars and cereal killers.…
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36 The Leaded Balloons That Ouched Humanity
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Albort knows a thing or two about being full of hot air and blows quite a bit of it in this episode surrounding the rigid airships of the early to mid-1900s and how hot air balloons used in the US Civil War helped to inspire the creation of the Luftschiff Zeppelin. Get to know the LZ129 Hindenburg, how it crashed and then wound up on the record jac…
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35 The Return of Bobby Fulton
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35 The Return of Bobby Fulton by Albort EinstoneAlbort Einstone által
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