Thecuriousmanspodcast

Matt Crawford
  • 5.0 (28)
  • History
  • Updated Semiweekly

The curious man Matt Crawford interviews authors and interesting people about topics ranging from history to politics to everyday stimulating topics. If you like to learn and are as curious as I am please join in!

  1. 14h ago

    Dr. Christopher Choukalas Interview

    There is a version of fatherhood we rarely talk about. We talk about the sleepless nights, the diapers, the exhaustion, and the joy. We talk about the transformation that comes with becoming a parent. But what happens when a father isn't feeling joy at all? What happens when the person everyone expects to be strong, capable, and in control is quietly falling apart? My guest today knows that experience from both sides—as a physician who understands medicine and as a father who discovered that medical knowledge doesn't necessarily protect you from your own suffering. Dr. Christopher G. Choukalas is an anesthesiologist and intensive care physician and the author of Even the Darkest Night, a deeply personal memoir about paternal depression, fatherhood, marriage, trauma, and recovery. After the traumatic birth of his twin daughters nearly claimed his wife's life, Christopher found himself spiraling. He withdrew from his family, spent long evenings alone in his garage, struggled with anxiety, panic attacks and sleeplessness, and couldn't understand why he wasn't experiencing the happiness he believed he was supposed to feel. The turning point came when his wife confronted him and urged him to seek help. Through therapy, medication, the support of other fathers, and a painful examination of his own childhood, Christopher began the long process of finding his way back to his family—and to himself. Today we're going to talk about paternal depression, the pressures men place on themselves, why even doctors can miss the warning signs, and what it takes to ask for help when you're accustomed to being the person everyone else depends on. This is Dr. Christopher G. Choukalas, and his memoir is Even the Darkest Night.

  2. 1d ago

    David Wlabert Interview

    What if the biggest problem with American elections isn't that election manipulation is something new—but that we've forgotten just how long it has been part of our history? From the disputed presidential election of 1876 to contested elections involving Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter, from voter suppression and gerrymandering to Bush v. Gore and the modern battles over election legitimacy, American history contains a long record of political actors fighting over who gets to vote, how votes are counted, and who ultimately gets to decide who won. My guest today has spent more than five decades on the front lines of those battles. David F. Walbert is a constitutional and voting-rights attorney who has litigated election cases at every level, including before the United States Supreme Court. His new book, Stealing Elections, American Style, examines the history of election manipulation and voting restrictions in America—and the recurring patterns that connect those historical episodes to the debates we're having today. The book isn't simply a history of famous disputed elections. It examines the machinery behind them: voter suppression, gerrymandering, voter purges, election administration, court decisions, and the ways political actors can attempt to shape an election before a single ballot is cast. As the country heads into the 2026 midterm elections, we're going to look backward in order to understand what election disputes have looked like throughout American history—and what voters, journalists, lawyers, and citizens should understand about the system today.

  3. 4d ago

    25th Anniversary of September 11th, 2001

    My thoughts on the 25th Anniversary of September 11th, 2001.

  4. 5d ago

    John E. McDonough

    America spends more on health care than any other wealthy nation—and yet millions of Americans struggle to afford care, medical debt remains widespread, and our health outcomes often lag behind those of countries spending far less. So what happened? Did American health care simply become too complicated? Did insurance companies become too powerful? Did hospitals become too corporate? Did politicians fail us? Or did something much bigger happen? Something changed in American political and economic thinking beginning in the early 1980s—and according to Harvard health-policy professor and former Massachusetts legislator John E. McDonough, that transformation fundamentally reshaped American health care. His new book, America's Wrong Turn, argues that the rise of neoliberalism, deregulation, consolidation, and shareholder-driven economics created a health-care system that increasingly rewards financial performance rather than human health. Today, we're going back to the moment when America took that wrong turn—and asking the most important question of all: Can we find our way back?

  5. 6d ago

    Katie Sanders Interview

    Imagine parachuting into Nazi-occupied France with no guarantee that you'll survive the night. Your mission: arm the Resistance, sabotage the enemy, gather intelligence, and rescue Allied airmen. Now imagine doing it while sometimes posing as a fashion designer or a Vichy official—and then surrendering to more than 100 German soldiers because you've negotiated to save an entire French village. This isn't the plot of a Hollywood spy thriller. It's the story of Pierre "Peter" Ortiz, one of the most decorated members of America's Office of Strategic Services, the wartime organization that became a forerunner of the CIA and modern American special operations. And one of the Allied airmen Ortiz rescued was the grandfather of today's guest. Years later, journalist Katie Sanders discovered a 1949 recording of her grandfather describing his experience—and began a journey into the extraordinary life of a man she'd never heard of. Today we're going behind the classified history of World War II, into occupied France, the French Resistance, the OSS, and the remarkable story of the man who saved her grandfather's life.

  6. Sep 8

    Emil Wilson Interview

    1985. A small Oregon town. A teenage girl named Lou Miller is preparing to graduate high school when her father makes an unexpected announcement: a coworker named Jim—and his two Pomeranians—are moving into the family home. But there's something Lou doesn't know. Jim has AIDS. At a time when fear, misinformation, and stigma surrounded the disease, one teenager's decision to look beyond the diagnosis and see the person underneath it would create a friendship neither of them would ever forget. Award-winning artist Emil Wilson brings that true story to life in his forthcoming graphic novel, The Nightingales—a moving, funny, and ultimately heartbreaking story about friendship, queer history, mortality, and the extraordinary power of simply choosing to care. Today, Emil Wilson joins us to talk about the real people behind the story, the AIDS crisis that shaped it, and why a friendship between a teenager and a dying man still has something important to teach us four decades later.

  7. Sep 7

    Beau L'Amour Interview

    What do you do when your father leaves behind an unfinished novel—and your father happens to be one of the most beloved and prolific storytellers in American literature? Do you finish it? And if you do, how do you make it his story while also making it your own? That's the fascinating challenge Beau L'Amour faced with Skyring Water, a new novel based on a partial manuscript by his late father, legendary author Louis L'Amour. The story takes us to 1961, when the Cold War is reaching a dangerous point. The Berlin Wall is dividing East and West. Nuclear tensions are escalating. Empires are crumbling. And then, in Barcelona, a rogue East German STASI officer sets off a chain of events involving struggling arms dealers, organized crime, intelligence agencies—and 30 tons of stolen gold hidden in an icebound wilderness at the end of the world. At the center are Mike Fowler, a former Navy salvage diver and OSS assassin, and Anton Voss, an expatriate German scientist whose mysterious past becomes increasingly dangerous. Once enemies, they've become inseparable friends. But when Mike discovers Anton standing over a midnight visitor with a gun, everything changes. Soon they're running from gangsters, the CIA, Israeli intelligence, and a mysterious organization intent on building an invisible empire. The trail stretches from Marseille to Caracas to Patagonia—and eventually leads straight into Anton's Nazi past. Today, I'm joined by Beau L'Amour to talk about Skyring Water, the extraordinary process of completing a story his father began, and what it means to collaborate with a writer who has been gone for years—but whose voice remains unmistakable.

  8. Sep 4

    Ilan Stavans Interview

    What does God have to do with the American story? The answer, as you'll discover in today's conversation, is complicated. For four centuries, Americans have argued, preached, written, protested, prayed, rebelled, questioned, and sometimes fought over the meaning of the divine. Puritan ministers, enslaved poets, abolitionists, presidents, transcendentalists, scientists, civil-rights leaders, comedians, LGBTQ+ writers, atheists, and pop stars have all wrestled with the same enormous questions: Who—or what—is God? What does God demand of us? And perhaps most importantly, what happens when a nation invokes God while profoundly disagreeing about what God supposedly wants? My guest is acclaimed editor and writer Ilan Stavans, whose extraordinary new anthology, A Nation Wrestles with God: American Prophets, Philosophers, and Firebrands, brings together more than 400 years of American writing about the divine. The collection includes more than 100 voices and an astonishing range of forms—from sermons, letters, essays, and speeches to poems, newspaper columns, comic strips, and song lyrics. And these aren't voices that all agree. Far from it. The anthology moves across the ideological, religious, racial, cultural, and political spectrum—from Thomas Jefferson to Oliver Sacks, from abolitionists to atheists, and from historical prophets to contemporary cultural figures such as Lana Del Rey. At a moment when millions of Americans describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated, while belief in some form of higher power remains remarkably widespread, Stavans asks a fascinating question. Not "Does God exist?" But: "What have Americans done with the idea of God—and what has that idea done to America?"

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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
28 Ratings

About

The curious man Matt Crawford interviews authors and interesting people about topics ranging from history to politics to everyday stimulating topics. If you like to learn and are as curious as I am please join in!

Information

  • Creator
    Matt Crawford
  • Years Active
    2018 - 2026
  • Episodes
    100
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2018 TheCuriousMansPodcast All Rights Reserved
  • Show Website
    Thecuriousmanspodcast

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