Ep. 158: I have talked about a lot of Tudors. If you want to go back and do some digging, I have episodes about the War of the Roses and Richard III which explain how the original Tudor monarch, Henry VII, won the throne on the battlefield without much of a claim at all, beginning the unlikely Tudor dynasty. I have episodes about his son, Henry VIII, of course, and all of his six wives. I have an episode about Mary I, eldest daughter of Henry VIII and the first queen regnant of England. I’ve

Ep. 157: My youngest son has always been a precocious child, speaking full sentences at a year and a half old. I’ll never forget one night, when he was probably 2 years old. I was laying him down in his crib, tucking him in at bedtime. I covered him with his blanket and laid my hand on his head, if only to feel his soft, warm baby hair. “Goodnight buddy,” I said, expecting a “night night mama” in return. What he said instead unsettles me to this day. “I used to be a grown up,” he said, suddenly

Ep. 156: Picture Japan. Maybe you’re thinking of Mount Fuji towering in the distance, framed by cascades of pink cherry blossoms. Perhaps a buddhist temple perched serenely beside a lake dotted with lotus flowers, ever floating, gliding slightly in the mostly still water. Japan seems… nice. It seems calm. It seems peaceful. In the back of our minds maybe we know Japan was on the wrong side of World War II. There was Pearl Harbor and all that. But we don’t tend to let it taint our views of the