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By TSHA ~ in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. - https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/kyle-christopher-scott, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=99454880It was June 28, 2011, and Chris Kyle and Steve Bannon were in Pella, Iowa for the world debut of the former Trump advisor Bannon’s widely panned hagiographic movie about Sarah Palin, The Undefeated. I had hoped to get an interview with Palin about her rumored presidential run in 2012 and wanted to find out why the movie claimed she was “undefeated” when she and John McCain had lost the 2008 presidential race to Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Today we find ourselves on a very special anniversary in the history of the New York Mets: five years ago, an emotionally-impactful, yet seemingly-nonsensical exchange took place between manager Terry Collins and umpire Tom Hallion that made baseball fans everywhere ask the question: What is an “ass in the jackpot?” Is it a bad thing? For those who may not recall, Terry argued about Noah Syndergaard getting ejected for allegedly throwing at Chase Utley, and Hallion defended the decision by screaming, “our ass is in the jackpot!

There’s a marvellous scene in Fred Zimmerman’s The Day of the Jackal (1973)— right at the beginning of the film: with a line of chauffeurs (suited and booted) squashing their Gitanes into the gravel, firing up their black presidential Citroens and sweeping through the stone gates of the Élysée Palace, the rear pneumatic suspension hitting the rainy Parisian cobbles with a thwack: the power of the French State: discreet, stylish, clinical— and ruthless.

I cut my teeth on Contemporary Christian Music—or CCM, as it is often called—as a young boy in Indiana. Petra, 4Him, Point of Grace, Degarmo & Key, Whiteheart, Steve Camp, and so many others were instrumental in forming my musical proclivities …as well as my spiritual ones. When I landed a job in Christian Radio during college, I felt I had hit the Christian Subculture jackpot. What could be better than an all-access pass to the behind-the-scenes lives of the most important influencers of my fledgling faith?

This week, the friends and family of a school principal in Toronto gathered to celebrate his life. Richard Bilkszto, sadly, took his life last month, at the age of 60, and much of the reporting on his death has focused on a DEI training and the lawsuit that he launched about it. A reminder to listeners that the claims you will hear have not been proven in court. My guest today is a reporter whose story on Richard Bilkszto has gained international attention — and our conversation grapples with a number of difficult issues, including suicide and how it’s covered in the media.

Fresh from a Grammy win for “The Battle of New Orleans” as the best country song, Johnny Horton thrilled a sellout crowd at the Skyline Club on Friday Nov. 4, 1960, then loaded his equipment into the trunk of his Cadillac, and took the wheel for the five and a half hour drive from Austin back home to Shreveport. Horton had plans to meet fellow country singer Claude King in the morning, the first day of duck-hunting season.

On the evening of Thursday, August 2, 1923, Warren G. Harding, 29th President of the United States, died suddenly in room 8064 in the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. He was the second President to die in office in the 20th century, the first to die west of the Mississippi and the only one to die in a hotel. The cause of his death has been disputed. Some medical experts believe it was a sudden heart attack.

A milk float. Roland Barthes’ essay The Death of the Author was a thing when I was studying English Literature at the University of Edinburgh in the 1990s. We all had to read it, alongside TS Eliot’s Tradition and the Individual Talent and a handful of other foundational works of 20th century literary criticism. Apparently, some academics in the American Ivy Leagues had got into Barthes around the same time they were discovering Derrida and Foucault, and their peers in Britain, slavishly worshipful of whatever the cool kids in the cultural hegemon across the Atlantic were up to, naturally had to follow suit.

“Making the bed” was written by Daniel Nigro and Olivia Rodrigo and on the surface it’s about setting yourself up for failure and feeling regret due to your own actions. There’s a lot of meaning to the phrase “Making the bed”. In my opinion, it’s mostly a reference to a saying that goes, “You made your bed, now lay in it.” Verse one goes like this, “Want it, so I got it, did it, so it's done