Episodes

Americana is based on a fundamental understanding, a basic agreement that recognizes that our freedom does not give us permission to assault our neighbor, to disturb our neighbor's rights. In this episode, Alan Cohen delves into history to give context into what is happening in America circa 2025, particularly on the streets of Minneapolis. History shows today's events are little more than a power play, theater for the faint hearted. Moreover, history shows that today's events are miniscule comp...

Purpose. Since Eve was the first to achieve consciousness, the knowledge of good and evil, of our own eventual demise, we exist in a perpetual state of self-evaluation: What is my purpose. The pious amongst us know their purpose: To Serve God. But the Rene Goods of the world are empty vessels in search of purpose, seeking to fit in. And the Rene Goods of the world are thus susceptible to death cults. Thus, rather than seeing her purpose as a mother of a young child, she sought a place in a grand...

In the early 18th Century, a Great Awakening spread from England and into the American colonies suggesting to slave owners that it was their duty to educate their slaves in the virtues of Christianity. Sixty years later, a Second Great Awakening triggered the beginning of the end of chattel slavery in Western Civilization. This surge in religiosity, with the Quakers as the moral leaders, caused Great Britain to, not only end the slave trade, but to become its greatest foe. Eventually, this movem...

In a recent interview with Michael Knowles, a 19-year-old genius going by the name Clavicular gave the clearest argument yet in favor of the marketplace, restating the American ideal of self-improvement to make himself the most marketable individual possible by maximizing his greatest asset, his looks. In so doing, Clavicular espoused a naturalist theory of the human desire for beauty, that as scientists have confirmed, is ingrained in our DNA. Yet, Clavicular is not being crass, he is restating...

The week before Christmas 2025, Vivek Ramaswamy penned an article in the New York Times describing the United States as a classless society, as a credal society. We all live in privity of the Founding Generation who, by ratifying the Constitution as the governing document of the Declaration of Independence, agreed on behalf of themselves, and the citizens of their respective states, that we were all free to pursue happiness in our respective faiths and raise our children in our faiths, and that ...

The film "Kramer v. Kramer," released in 1979, epitomizes American marriage in the 1970s, where both men and women were lost in a nation that promised freedom, but forced them into roles that they didn't necessarily want. Federal policies and social pressure insisted that Joanna, the wife, seek a life where she would marry, have children and stay at home, while Ted was likewise forced into the role of provider. Joanna escapes only to return to force Ted back into his role, only to, miraculously,...

America was founded on two pillars: Religious Liberty and The Right to Contract. Marriage was, at the Founding, a marketplace, where individuals were required to vet their prospective life partners and, once chosen, enter into a private marital agreement based on the principles of their faith. Then suddenly, Four Self-Anointed Justices of the United States Supreme Court decreed that all Americans were subject to State control. The Court, in usurping the freedom from all Americans, led the format...

On Halloween, Conservatives Michael Knowles and Jack Posobiec expressed why they believe the Supreme Court should reverse itself and disallow same-sex couples the Right to Marry. Alan Cohen explains why they are profoundly wrong, but for the wrong reason, and why, since America is not a theocracy, why all marriages, and people, are created equal.

Margaret Mead said women were society defined. Therefore, marriage was not an agreement between the couple, but an agreement with society, and agreement that this woman and this man are off limits, off the market. Yet, beginning in the late 19th Century, chivalry intervened. Women were suddenly damsels in distress, and that was up to society to protect them from rogues, even their husbands.

In 1888, four men in black robes changed America forever. In 2015, the United States Supreme Court found that marriage in America began as a private contract that somehow morphed into a public one, never explaining how that happened and why. Author and former Family Law attorney Alan W. Cohen answers that question, explaining how the entirety of Family Law is based on a single, incredibly flawed, Supreme Court decision. Cohen further explains why the current Supreme Court should overturn that de...

Everything you think you know about Family Law is wrong. The ability of the State and Federal government to dictate to married couples and to parents how to raise their children is an unconstitutional fiction. Host Alan W. Cohen explains the true history of marriage in America and how it began as a private contract, an agreement between the couple and their faith, how the State and Federal governments seized control only to destroy what had been the foundation of American Society. Cohen explains...