Old School with Shilo Brooks
Episodes
How Sports Became Our Civic Religion
30 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
For tickets to our live recording with Jon Meacham in Philadelphia, click here and register. Use code TFP for a 20 percent discount. In this episod...
The Ancient Jewish Wisdom Behind a $5 Billion Company
16 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
For tickets to our live recording with Jon Meacham in Philadelphia, CLICK HERE and register. Use code TFP for a 20 percent discount. As he built Ki...
Neal Stephenson on AI, Rome, and How Civilizations Decline
09 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Neal Stephenson, the prophetic author of cyberpunk classics like Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, has shaped how we imagine the future, from the metave...
The Two Types of People Who Never Find Happiness
26 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
For tickets to our live recording with Jon Meacham in Philadelphia, CLICK HERE and register. Use code TFP for a 20 percent discount. Life is short....
Hunting Humans for Sport
19 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
For tickets to our live recording with Jon Meacham in Philadelphia, CLICK HERE and register. Use code TFP for a 20 percent discount. Richard Connel...
Joan Didion Knew What Hollywood Would Become
12 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The perfect book to read around the Oscars this weekend? Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays. In this episode, Shilo sits down with Peter Savodnik to ...
The NYC Public Defender Who Sends Books to Prisoners
05 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Shilo Brooks sits down with New York City public defender Ben Schatz to discuss the novel True Grit–and the nature of justice in Am...
‘The Brothers Karamazov’ Helped Inspire the Catholic App Hallow
26 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Alex Jones was using apps like Headspace and Calm to quiet his mind, but he had fallen away from his Catholic faith. Then he read The Brothers Karamaz...
‘Lolita,’ Jeffrey Epstein, and the Real Meaning of a Challenging Classic
19 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
One particular novel is all over the Epstein files: Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. Reportedly, this was the one and only book Jeffrey Epstein kept at hi...
The Secret Lives of Ordinary People
12 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Dylan Thomas is one of the 20th century’s legendary poets. In this episode, English journalist David Aaronovitch joins Shilo to discuss Thomas’...
David Mamet vs. the Snobs
05 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright David Mamet spent his childhood cutting class and reading at the local library. His first pick was Sinclair Lewis’...
Colin Quinn on Incels, Woke Activists, and Peaking at 14
29 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, legendary comic Colin Quinn dives into a cult classic that still makes him cry with laughter: John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of...
Dante: The Most Famous, Least Read Poet
22 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Dante Alighieri is one of the most consequential poets in human history, and his The Divine Comedy is essential to understanding Western civilization ...
America’s Most Righteous War Produced Its Best Anti-War Novel
15 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In Venezuela, a U.S. operation that captured President Nicolás Maduro has sent shock waves through the hemisphere. In Iran, a deadly crackdown on nat...
Why ‘Middlemarch’ Changed This Catholic Priest’s Life
08 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Middlemarch is George Eliot’s (real name Mary Ann Evans) masterpiece. The 900-page Victorian novel is about the people living in a fictional English...
The Lost Art of Taking the Piss with Richard Dawkins
18 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Dawkins is best known as a formidable evolutionary biologist and biting critic of religion. But when he wants a break from polemics and proofs...
Living Through the Fall of a Regime
11 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” This famous line from The Leopard has become a shorthand for moments when a r...
Read This Book Instead of ‘The Catcher in the Rye’
04 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
According to Ryan Holiday, Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer is like the better, more mature cousin to The Catcher in the Rye. In this episode, Shilo Bro...
George Orwell’s Lessons on the Class Divide
20 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Most of us have read 1984 or Animal Farm. But fewer know of George Orwell’s first great work—an unvarnished account of his descent into the world ...
What ‘The Great Gatsby’ Taught Fareed Zakaria About America
13 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It’s been 100 years since The Great Gatsby was published. In this episode, Shilo Brooks sits down with journalist Fareed Zakaria to explore why the ...
How Thomas Sowell Transformed Coleman Hughes
05 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why do we believe what we believe? And how do those beliefs shape our politics? Thomas Sowell, one of the world’s most influential economists and...
Nick Cave on ‘The Adventures of Pinocchio’
30 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio is a dark, dazzling Italian fable that is worlds apart from Disney’s sanitized version. Beneath its fa...
Why We Still Need Plato
23 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What is justice? And why should we live justly? These questions lie at the heart of Plato’s Republic, the foundational text of Western philosophy. I...
What Steven Pinker Taught this Pro Bodybuilder about Genetics
16 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Mike Israetel is a bodybuilder and scientist who believes reading is as important as a gym session. Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate changed his ...
MeatEater’s Steven Rinella on Lessons from the Wilderness
09 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Few people have turned a love of the wild into a cultural force quite like Steve Rinella, the outdoorsman and author behind the MeatEater empire. Jim ...
The Old Man and the Sea with Admiral James Stavridis
09 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Admiral James Stavridis once commanded fleets as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. Now he commands a collection of 5,000 rare books. Ernest Hemingway’...
Introducing: Old School with Shilo Brooks
22 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Fewer of us than ever are reading books for pleasure. Shilo Brooks is on a mission to change that. Old School is a new podcast from The Free Press abo...