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Ronald Reagan Foundation Podcasts

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Young Americas Foundation (YAF) is committed to ensuring that increasing numbers of young Americans understand and are inspired by the ideas of individual freedom, a strong national defense, free enterprise, and traditional values. As the principal outreach organization of the Conservative Movement, the Foundation introduces thousands of American youth to these principles. We accomplish our mission by providing essential conferences, seminars, educational materials, internships, and speakers ...
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The John Batchelor Show is a hard news-analysis radio program on current events, world history, global politics and natural sciences. Based in New York City for two decades, the show has travelled widely to report, from the Middle East to the South Caucasus to the Arabian Peninsula and East Asia.
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Loyalty, Loss, and the Shadow of Mao. Joseph Turigian focuses on Mao's famous phrase about Xi Zhongxun, emphasizing his unwavering loyalty despite repeated suffering at the party's hands. Following the 1949 victory, Xi moved to Beijing, where his son Xi Jinping was born. Xi Zhongxun held complicated views of Mao, feeling gratitude for his survival …
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Mao, Purges, and Ideological Jargon. Joseph Turigian explores Mao Zedong's description of Xi Zhongxun: "The Party Interests Come First." The segment recounts Xi Zhongxun's detention in 1935, nearly facing execution before Mao's Long Marchers arrived. The discussion clarifies the legend that Mao personally saved him versus the complex facts of his e…
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Revolutionary Loyalty and Early Family Tensions. Joseph Turigian discusses the life of Xi Zhongxun, a devoted but persecuted revolutionary communist, emphasizing his deep loyalty to the party, reminiscent of Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon. The segment explores the revolutionary mindset where personal suffering proves dedication to a world-histo…
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Starship and Super Heavy: The Fully Reusable Mars Vehicle. Eric Berger details the development of Starship and Super Heavy at Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas. Starship is the culmination of SpaceX's efforts: a fully reusable, super heavy rocket much larger than the Saturn 5, designed to carry humans into deep space and enable the Mars colony. A criti…
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Crew Dragon and Commercial Human Spaceflight. Eric Berger discusses NASA's Commercial Crew Program, initiated after the Space Shuttle retired. Boeing's entry legitimized the program, securing crucial congressional funding for competitors like SpaceX. SpaceX adapted the Dragon design for crew, involving extensive parachute testing by the "Shoot Show…
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Starlink: Funding the Mars Vision through LEO Constellations. Eric Berger discusses Starlink, a constellation of Low Earth Orbit satellites designed to fund Musk's Mars vision. While the idea wasn't new, deploying thousands of satellites for global internet was previously viewed as impractical due to manufacturing and launch rate limitations. Starl…
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Achieving Reusability and Navigating Launch Failures. Eric Berger reports that in December 2015, SpaceX demonstrated reusability with the successful launch and vertical landing of the Falcon 9 Full Thrust at Landing Zone 1. The launch utilized densified propellant, requiring a tight launch window. The risky landing involved the Air Force approving …
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Falcon 9 Full Thrust: Densification and Barge Landings. Eric Berger describes how, following a 2015 failure, SpaceX developed the Falcon 9 Full Thrust, version 3.0/4.0. Driven by the Mars vision, they adopted densification—chilling liquid oxygen to boost density and increase payload efficiency by 10 to 12 percent. Crucially, they focused on landing…
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Dragon Spacecraft Development and Reusability Focus. Eric Berger explains that SpaceX needed NASA contracts to fund its Mars ambition. NASA provided critical funding in 2006 and 2009 for the Dragon spacecraft to deliver cargo to the International Space Station, replacing retiring vehicles like the Space Shuttle. Dragon was designed for recoverabili…
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Developing and Launching the First Falcon 9. Eric Berger recounts the difficult summer of 2009 preparing the first Falcon 9 booster, featuring nine Merlin engines housed in an octagonal web. Engineers endured intense 100-hour weeks handling complex wiring and propulsion plumbing. The subsequent road trip from Texas to Florida was arduous, including…
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Musk's Audacious Mars Colonization Vision. Eric Berger discusses Elon Musk's remarkable September 2016 speech in Guadalajara outlining the colonization of Mars. Musk proposed building a self-sustaining colony requiring landing a million tons of equipment using a fully reusable massive rocket. This vision, described as audacious and like science fic…
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Western Miscalculation and the Core Problem of Russia's Dominance Ideology. Professor Eugene Finkelargues that debates about Ukraine joining NATO or the EU are secondary, as the core problem remains Russia's deeply rooted ideological belief that it must control Ukraine. Western powers, including the US and Southern and Central Europe, have repeated…
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The Historical Roots of Russian Brutality and Putin's Ideological Driver. Professor Eugene Finkel explains that the pervasive cruelty in Russian forces stems from a historical willingness to use extreme violence, where human life is cheap, evident from Stalin's cynical fears of losing Ukraine to modern conflicts. Russians are willing to make Ukrain…
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Volodymyr Zelenskyy: A Native Russian Speaker and the Evolution of Ukrainian National Identity. Professor Eugene Finkel notes that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has an unusual background: Jewish, a native Russian speaker, and a successful media entrepreneur and comedian. His election symbolizes Ukraine's evolving identity, moving from an ethnic def…
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Putin's Revisionist History and the 2014 Invasion of Crimea and Donbas. Professor Eugene Finkel analyzes how, isolated during the pandemic, Vladimir Putin wrote a historical essay in 2021 based on myths, asserting that Ukraine has always been Russia and must be fully subordinated. This vision clarified his expansionist goals. The 2014 Euromaidan up…
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Khrushchev, Crimea, and Putin's Perception of Ukraine as "Soviet Florida". Professor Eugene Finkel discusses Khrushchev's 1954 transfer of Crimea to Ukraine, undertaken for purely economic and practical reasons, though it remains a point of contention today. During the Soviet "golden period," Ukraine became vital, providing coal, industrial manufac…
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Collapse of Independent States and the Purposeful Famine of the Holodomor. Professor Eugene Finkel examines the period following the 1917 collapse, when attempts to form independent Ukrainian states—the UNR and the ZUNR—failed, facing invasion by various Russian forces united in the belief that Ukraine must belong to Russia. Subsequently, Stalin im…
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Galatia, the "Ukrainian Piedmont," and the Threat of Ukrainian Nationalism. Professor Eugene Finkel touches on the life of his Jewish grandfather, Lev, from Galatia, who joined the Red Army in 1940, illustrating how parts of Ukraine were not under Russian control until World War II. Russia viewed the tolerant Austro-Hungarian region of Galatia as a…
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The Origins of the Russian Imperial Project: Khmelnytsky and "New Russia". Professor Eugene Finkel discusses the statue of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, a 17th-century figure viewed differently by Ukrainians as a founding father and by Russians as a uniter with Moscow. Khmelnytsky, too weak to fight Poland, swore allegiance to the Tsar, which Moscow interpre…
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Ashes Warm-ups Cause Slew of Career-Threatening Injuries; Betting Odds Narrow. Jeremy Zakis reports that Ashes warm-up matches are causing a slew of injuries to older players around 35, including Mark Wood of England and Sean Abbott of Australia, both suffering hamstring injuries. The competition in Perth at Subako Stadium will emphasize muscle and…
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Cold Antarctic Air Collides with Tropical Front, Bringing Flash Flooding and Cyclone Warnings to East Coast.Jeremy Zakis describes severe weather on the Australian East Coast due to a clash between bitter cold Antarctic air and a dense tropical air mass colliding over land. This has caused rapid thunderstorms, flash flooding, and storm damage from …
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Dallas the Dog Fosters Trust with Magpie Family, Enhancing Their Intelligence. Jeremy Zakis chronicles how Dallas the dog has adopted a magpie family, leading to a comfortable second generation residing nearby. Dallas's kind, placid demeanor fosters trust, allowing the smart magpies to grow up around him and even play with his toys. A study suggest…
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Tragic Magpie Attack Blinds Girl; Massive Eastern Brown Snake Invades Home. Jeremy Zakis reports that a massive five-foot-long great eastern brown snake was found rearing up outside a woman's bathroom in Veil View, Queensland, necessitating a snake catcher. This highly venomous species requires prompt antivenom administration within the "golden hou…
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The Green Belt and Rethinking Liberty 30 Years Later. Matthew Longo reflects that thirty years after the Iron Curtain fell, the border site is now an unremarkable "green belt." Researcher Longo considers the meaning of freedom, contrasting Isaiah Berlin's negative liberty—freedom from state interference—with Hannah Arendt's concept of plurality and…
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Panic, Pioneers, and the Moral Choice at the Border Picnic. Matthew Longo recounts that by August 19, 1989, hundreds of thousands of East German refugees were camped near Sopron, terrified of Stasi informers. Nemeth's government used the chaotic Picnic as a test for Soviet intervention. When a mass bolted across the border, mistaking champagne pops…
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Young Activists Plan the Audacious Pan-European Picnic. Matthew Longo describes how in late June 1989, young activists Fedins and Maria in Debrecen conceived an audacious plan to throw a protest party—The Picnic—at the Iron Curtain near Sopron. They aimed to challenge communism and celebrate freedom. Though the Curtain was a deadly "death zone," no…
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