Alison Gieschen spent thirty years on a farm, raising horses, raising kids, living in a house her husband Dan built by hand. Then they sold all of it, the furniture, the horses, the house, and moved onto a 43-foot sailboat named Equus to sail around the world.

This is the conversation about what that costs and what it gives back. Alison takes Stan back to the last night in the farmhouse, into the Atlantic storm that left her with PTSD, and to the friend whose question ("do you know how lucky you are?") put her back on the water. From a tiny island in the Marquesas, she has been watching America from the outside since 2017.

Along the way: what 50 countries taught her about freedom versus security, the poverty she found in Cape Verde, the Chinese fishing fleets killing the ocean she now calls home, and the novel she wrote where horses sit in judgment of the human race. And the question Stan asks every guest: what is America to you?

- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sailmates_on_equus/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sailmates.org/
- Author site and books: alisongieschen.com
- Blog: Sailmates.org

Jeff Kruszyna has raised over a hundred million dollars for Christian conservative causes. He does it with paper letters that arrive in your mailbox. Twenty years ago, watching the second plane hit the second tower on a television set at SUNY Stony Brook, he changed his major from computer science to political science. He has been writing fundraising letters for America First causes ever since, with God, he says, as the real CEO.

This conversation traces the tradition behind Jeff's work: from John Winthrop's 1630 sermon on a ship crossing the Atlantic to Ronald Reagan's optimistic nationalism to what Jeff calls the Patriot Economy, a marketplace where purchasing decisions become acts of faith. Stan asks about Max Weber, the prosperity gospel, Martin Luther King, and the money changers in the Temple.

Two questions drive the hour. Is this the most American thing imaginable? And is that a comfort or a warning?

Connect with Jeff:

- Free 30-minute strategy session: http://www.getjeffk.com

- Agency website: http://www.jmkvictory.com

- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/Kruszyna

- X: @Kruszyna

Bryan Mark Rigg failed first grade twice. Today he's a Yale and Cambridge-trained historian, a former Marine Corps officer, and the author of six books on World War II that have rewritten what we thought we knew about the war.

In this episode, Stan sits down with Bryan to unpack three of his most explosive findings:

That 150,000 men of Jewish descent served in Hitler's military, and that Hitler himself signed thousands of exemption papers declaring individual Jews "Aryan." That the "ideal Aryan soldier" on Goebbels' propaganda magazine turned out to have a Jewish father. That a half-Jewish German veteran broke down on camera when he learned his wife and baby boy had been gassed at Auschwitz, and that his second wife discovered, in the same moment, after 50 years of marriage, that she was the second wife.

That Woody Williams, the last living Medal of Honor recipient from Iwo Jima, fabricated key parts of his story. That a Marine Corps general told Bryan, "don't publish the truth, publish the myth." That Bryan said no, and Woody slapped him with a federal lawsuit. Bryan won at the Supreme Court of West Virginia.

That Japan killed 30 million people during World War II, three times more than Nazi Germany, and almost no one knows.

We also talk about Bryan's own American story. Severe dyslexia, ADHD, an MBD diagnosis at age six, a mother named MaryLee Rigg who refused to give up, and the small-classroom private schools that taught him how to read. The boy from Arlington, Texas who made it to Yale, the Marine Corps, and Cambridge.

It's a conversation about hidden history, the cost of telling the ugly truth, and what America makes possible.

About Bryan Mark Rigg:

Website: https://bryanmarkrigg.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bryanmarkrigg/ Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Mark_Rigg