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PODCAST

T.O.P. Podcast with Michael DiMatteo

Michael DiMatteo

The T.O.P. Podcast with Michael DiMatteo Welcome to The T.O.P. Podcast—where stories meet the human condition. Hosted by Michael DiMatteo, author, writer, and thinker of things, this podcast dives into the art and craft of writing, the lessons found in history, and the stories that shape who we are. From reading chapters of his own works to exploring the “why” behind each page, Michael invites you into the creative process—unfiltered, thoughtful, and grounded in real experience. Whether you’re a

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All Episodes

00:22:57

T.O.P. Podcast - Episode 21: Pens, Power, and the...

T.O.P. Podcast with Michael DiMatteo ·

2025/12/19

The Roman Republic didn’t fall to an army. It fell to a story. And Julius Caesar wrote it.This is the first episode exploring how Roman writers wielded language as a weapon during the Republic’s collapse. Next week: poets and philosophers navigating imperial Rome. Today: four voices that shaped power itself.CAESAR: THE GENERAL WHO WROTE HIS OWN MYTHPicture Rome, 52 BCE. Rumors swirl about Caesar’s growing power in Gaul. Then his *Commentaries* arrive—not gossip, but Caesar’s own account. Written in

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00:22:51

T.O.P. Podcast - Episode 20: Love as Muse and Eternal...

T.O.P. Podcast with Michael DiMatteo ·

2025/12/11

What happens when history's greatest minds fall completely, irrevocably in love? When passion meets genius, when devotion transcends death itself?In this episode, we explore four extraordinary love stories that span more than a century of history—from revolutionary Paris to Victorian London, from Regency England to Belle Époque France. These aren't fairy tales. These are real people who loved so deeply that their relationships transformed not just their lives, but literature and history

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00:30:59

T.O.P. Podcast - Episode 19: The Price of the Rebel

T.O.P. Podcast with Michael DiMatteo ·

2025/12/04

The Price of the Rebel: What Happens When Everyone's a RevolutionaryChe Guevara's face on t-shirts at Urban Outfitters. Apple selling computers with images of Gandhi and MLK. Every other Instagram bio: "Rebel." "Disruptor." "Resistance."We worship the rebel. It's become our highest virtue, our most aspirational identity. To be called a conformist is an insult. To be called a rebel is a badge of honor.But here's what we don't talk about: What happens when rebellion stops being a last resort and

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00:18:21

T.O.P. Podcast - Episode 18: The Tyranny of Memory

T.O.P. Podcast with Michael DiMatteo ·

2025/11/20

The Tyranny of MemoryThere's a photograph from 1937 that captures something unsettling: Joseph Stalin walking beside Nikolai Yezhov along the Moscow-Volga Canal. Three years later, Yezhov was executed—and in the photograph, he simply vanished. Airbrushed out. Replaced by water. As if he had never existed at all.This episode explores one of humanity's most profound paradoxes: memory is both what liberates us and what imprisons us.Milan Kundera wrote that "the struggle of man against

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00:14:27

T.O.P. Podcast - Episode 17: The Excuse Economy

T.O.P. Podcast with Michael DiMatteo ·

2025/11/13

In every age, there’s a currency that defines the soul of a people.Gold, honor, faith, freedom — once they held weight.Today, our currency is lighter. It costs nothing to make and everything to spend.It’s the excuse.In this episode, The Excuse Economy, we explore the moral and cultural decay that follows when blame becomes a way of life. From the fires of ancient Rome to the excuses of modern politics and education, the pattern is clear: when we stop owning our failures, we lose the ability to

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00:14:04

T.O.P. Podcast: Episode 16 - The Noise and the Silence

T.O.P. Podcast with Michael DiMatteo ·

2025/11/06

Episode Summary: “The Noise and the Silence” — The T.O.P. Podcast with Michael DiMatteoWhat if the greatest threat to modern life isn’t hatred, ignorance, or greed — but noise?In this episode of The T.O.P. Podcast, Michael DiMatteo explores the quiet catastrophe of the modern age: our inability to sit still, to be alone, and to listen. Drawing from philosophy, history, and literature, The Noise and the Silence journeys from the deserts of the ancients to the digital hum of the present, asking

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00:19:41

T.O.P. Podcast: Episode 15 - What is Life?

T.O.P. Podcast with Michael DiMatteo ·

2025/10/30

From clay tablets to quantum equations, every generation has asked the same question: What is life?In this episode of The T.O.P. Podcast, Michael DiMatteo invites you on a journey across civilizations and centuries — from the first storytellers of Mesopotamia to the philosophers of Athens, from Laozi’s calm river of existence to Einstein’s cosmic wonder. It is a conversation that began before philosophy had a name and still echoes in the noise of our digital world.Life, says each voice, carries a

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00:12:11

T.O.P. Podcast - Episode 14: The End of Heroism

T.O.P. Podcast with Michael DiMatteo ·

2025/10/23

How courage became content — and why meaning still matters.Once, every culture had its own idea of the hero — a figure who stood against chaos, carried the weight of others, and dared to believe that one life could make a difference. But somewhere along the way, heroism lost its footing. The divine grew quiet. The moral center blurred. And the heroic became something we watched, not something we lived.In this episode of the T.O.P. Podcast, Michael DiMatteo traces the long arc of heroism across the

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00:15:05

T.O.P. Podcast - Episode 13 - The Ties That Hold

T.O.P. Podcast with Michael DiMatteo ·

2025/10/16

In this episode of the Triple Option Podcast, Michael DiMatteo turns his attention to one of life’s quietest and most enduring mysteries — friendship.Why do some friendships last a lifetime, while others fade into memory?Why does it hurt so much to be forgotten?And what does it really mean to be known by another person?Through literature, history, and lived experience, The Ties That Hold explores the many faces of friendship — its birth in Renaissance humanism, its moral depth in Chinese and African

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00:13:59

T.O.P. Podcast - Episode 12: The Myth of the Noble Rebel

T.O.P. Podcast with Michael DiMatteo ·

2025/10/09

Every generation celebrates its rebels. They fill our pages, our art, and our imaginations—men and women who stand alone against the world and call it courage. But beneath the romance of rebellion lies a haunting question: When does defiance serve truth, and when does it become its own kind of tyranny?In this episode of The Triple Option Podcast, author and historian Michael DiMatteo explores the timeless allure—and the danger—of the noble rebel. Drawing on literature, history, and moral philosophy,

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00:16:19

T.O.P. Podcast - Episode 11: What is Truth?

T.O.P. Podcast with Michael DiMatteo ·

2025/10/02

Episode 11 – On the Search for Truth“What is truth?” Pilate’s question to Jesus still lingers. In this episode of the T.O.P. Podcast, we follow humanity’s search for truth across time and cultures — from Socrates in Athens to Augustine in North Africa, from Confucius and Laozi in China to Solzhenitsyn in the gulag.The ancients believed truth was worth dying for. Socrates declared, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Plato warned that most of us mistake shadows for reality. In Egypt, truth was

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00:14:30

T.O.P. Podcast - Episode 10: The Dignity of Aging:...

T.O.P. Podcast with Michael DiMatteo ·

2025/09/25

Aging. It’s universal, it’s relentless, and it’s something that every culture and every era has had to reckon with. From the philosophers of ancient Rome to modern-day music legends, the question remains: what does it really mean to grow old? Is it decline, wisdom, endurance, or something else entirely?In this episode of the TOP Podcast, Michael DiMatteo takes you on a journey through the history, literature, and culture of aging. We begin with Cicero’s De Senectute (On Old Age), where the Roman

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00:18:33

T.O.P. Podcast - Episode 9 - Demons

T.O.P. Podcast with Michael DiMatteo ·

2025/09/18

Episode: Dostoevsky’s Demons — The Warning We Still NeedWhen Fyodor Dostoevsky published Demons in 1872, he wasn’t just writing a novel—he was writing a prophecy. What begins as the story of a revolutionary conspiracy in a provincial Russian town becomes a chilling diagnosis of what happens when ideas break loose from faith, morality, and tradition.Demons gives us unforgettable characters:Nikolai Stavrogin, the aristocrat whose charm conceals a hollow soul.Alexei Kirillov, the engineer who reasons

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00:13:21

T.O.P. Podcast - Episode 8 - Harry Butters

T.O.P. Podcast with Michael DiMatteo ·

2025/09/11

In this episode of the Triple Option Podcast, we turn our attention to a forgotten name from the First World War—Harry Butters, an American who chose to fight and die for a cause larger than himself before his own country had even entered the conflict. Butters was not a soldier of fortune, nor a thrill-seeker looking for adventure. He was a man of conviction, shaped by faith, family, and an acute sense of duty. His life and death raise questions that echo forward to us today: what do we stand for,

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00:12:42

T.O.P. Podcast Episode 7 - The Weight of Legacy

T.O.P. Podcast with Michael DiMatteo ·

2025/09/04

We all inherit something. A name, a story, a dream left unfinished by those before us. Sometimes that inheritance feels like a gift, but often it becomes a burden. That’s what I’m calling today: the weight of legacy.In my Flavius Fettotempi novels, this theme is front and center. Flavius lives under the shadow of his father Honorius, chasing a vision that was never truly his own. It’s a tragedy not only of ambition but of inheritance—the cost of living someone else’s story.History echoes with the

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00:12:52

T.O.P. Podcast - Episode 6 - Missed Opportunities

T.O.P. Podcast with Michael DiMatteo ·

2025/08/28

In this week’s episode of The T.O.P. Podcast, we explore the quiet force that shapes history, literature, and our personal lives—missed opportunities.We often imagine turning points as moments of bold action and decisive clarity. But just as often, the real hinge of history is what doesn’t happen. What isn’t said. What we hesitate to do. And what we can never get back once the moment passes.We begin in literature, where stories are built on what could have been:• Jay Gatsby, reaching for a dream

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00:09:30

T.O.P. Podcast - Episode 5: The Hats We Inherit

T.O.P. Podcast with Michael DiMatteo ·

2025/08/22

What does it mean to inherit a hat? Not just the fabric or brim, but the memory and identity sewn into it. In this week’s episode of the TOP Podcast, I explore the hat we inherit—the objects, values, and burdens passed down through generations.A hat can identify us, protect us, and connect us to a story larger than ourselves. I see it every time I glance at my grandfather’s old paperboy cap. It’s not just cloth—it’s a reminder of the man he was.Literature is full of these inheritances: Gogol’s The

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00:16:35

T.O.P. Podcast - Episode 4 - The Literary Canon

T.O.P. Podcast with Michael DiMatteo ·

2025/08/14

What keeps a culture from drifting into amnesia? In this episode, we make the case for the literary canon as one of civilization’s most reliable anchors. From Homer to Shakespeare to Twain—and from Confucius to Achebe—these works carry the collective memory of entire peoples, binding past and present through shared language, moral debate, and enduring stories.Drawing on David Christian’s Big History and a historian’s eye for shifting reputations, we show how both history and literature are selective

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00:13:46

TOP Podcast - Episode 3 - Generations

T.O.P. Podcast with Michael DiMatteo ·

2025/08/06

In this episode of the TOP Podcast, Michael DiMatteo exploreswhwat it means to honor those how came before us, and what we lost when we don't. From the wisdom of ancient councils of elders to the quiet reflections of a grandfather in 1920s America, we examine how generations voices shape our understanding of life and resilience. This episode also reflects on intergenerational loneliness, the fading connection between young and old, and the lessons waiting for us in our own family histories

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00:16:37

TOP Podcast - episode 2 - Harry Crews

T.O.P. Podcast with Michael DiMatteo ·

2025/07/31

In this episode of the TOP podcast, we'll take a look at the great Southern Gothic writer - Harry Crews. We'll also find out what Southern Gothic is, along with what makes it special. I'll also read some excerpts from Harry Crews' A Childhood, along with a short selection from A Feast of Snakes. It's a genre that's a little out of the ordinary today, but one that is fascinating and interesting all at the same time.

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