Some questions don't resolve. They deepen. The TOP Podcast — Taking On the Past — lives in that space where literature and history converge, where the words of the long dead speak with unsettling precision to the world we're living in right now. Each episode is a scripted journey through the texts, figures, and ideas that shaped us — and an honest reckoning with what they still have to say.

Michael DiMatteo is a historian, educator, and published author whose work has appeared in RealClear History and RealClear Public Affairs. He brings to each episode the instincts of a storyteller and the discipline of a scholar — along with the conviction that great writing, wherever it comes from and however old it is, was always meant to provoke thought rather than settle it.

New episodes on Substack and Spotify. Never go straight. Always go forward.