Kevin Ryan

The best album releases of 2025. Live on Substack.

It was a real treat to join my friend @BridgetPhetasy on her podcast, #WalkInsWelcome, to talk about “Blood and Progress: A Century of Left-Wing Violence in America” (out next Tuesday!). I hope you’ll check this episode out. youtube.com/watch?v=SPKN0a…

That voice coming out of AOC’s mouth when she says, “you can’t earn a billion dollars” is familiar. I know it’s a very old voice, but it’s sadly still very strong & it should be familiar to you too. It’s the voice of Cain… just before he killed his brother.

They released it on X. We officially have the X-Files.

@ProphetOfKek117 The funny part is that they actually couldn’t, disable babies were often hurled into the sea.

If something like this actually happened you’d have people defending it with shit like “bro thinks disabled people didn’t exist back then 😭😭”

The only thing epic here is the aesthetic catastrophe. Nolan is a cerebral director of the global anglo world, all his intelligence put to industrial ends. Grey matter for a grey world. Nothing in this trailer is Greek. Nothing is Mediterranean. No olive groves and no white stone burning under the sun and no salt and no pine and no sea-glare. A deracinated Odyssey, made for imaginary nobodies from nowhere. The script feels like it's going to be the work of a diligent student who took down the events of the Odyssey one by one, forgetting that this is not a novel but an archaic poem, from a time when men and women lived each word as a heartbeat, who sang the soul and flesh of a people and of a world at once real and supernatural. A poem in which Telemachus does not say "my dad is coming home." The Odyssey deserved a Parajanov or a Fellini or a Welles, someone larger than life, a Dionysian ogre, someone hungry, someone who could make a film that smells of figs and raw wool and roasting meat and tar and blood. Monsters that are actually monstrous and seductive witches with real venom and golden shields catching real light and banquets going on for days. And the women of the poem, who are everywhere in Homer and seem so cold and dull here. Circe in her smoke and Calypso in her cave and Penelope at her loom, the sensuality of witches and the rigid loyalty of wives, all replaced by a fashion-armor Athena and a Penelope played as a strong American woman. And then there is what the Odysseus of the trailer says: "No one can stand between me and home, not even the gods". The cunning sufferer who knew how to bow to divine forces turned into a defiant individualist who bows to no one. Greek cunning replaced by American autonomy. The poem's central lesson reversed in a single line of dialogue. I usually don't mind Hollywood slop, but this has made me weirdly angry, and the film isn't even out yet. I feel as if a red line has been crossed, some hubris that has gone too far. The gods have been angered. How could they not be, with the decapitation of that statue at the end of the trailer? An iconoclastic gesture absent from Homer, usual with the monotheistic traditions that have spent centuries smashing pagan images. Nietzsche said he would believe only in a god who knew how to dance. Apollo without Dionysus produces exactly this: cerebral, cold, unambiguous. I cannot trust a filmmaker who is not hungry enough to banquet with the gods.

My parishioner @FreedriftKevin (Kevin Ryan) has a podcast called FreeDrift and we sat down for an interview last week.

Check out my interview with @frobrien, Rector of @holyfamilycath. “Fr. Brian O’Brien Believes in You” on YouTube and Spotify. Profile on FREEDRIFT Substack. youtu.be/1xFHCqCEAvo

Full Dumpster Fire available here for the x junkies.

Life is not a simulation. freedrift.substack.com/p/life-is-not-…

Strap in, folks. This is a weird one. It’s my annoyed response to the “life is a simulation” crowd. Turns out reality is strander and more beautiful than any matrix or amusement park. freedrift.substack.com/p/life-is-not-…

@RollingStone This is low, even for Rolling Stone.

Beyonce's 'Lemonade' is the #1 Greatest Album of the 21st Century, so far. "Lemonade has always been more than just an album. It’s a music film as layered, gorgeous, and haunting as a canonical drama." See the full list: rollingstone.com/music/music-li…

@oculus_grift @QuoteJung Put down the Cioran and read some fun philosophy lol

@QuoteJung The fact that everyone comes up with their own meaning underscores the fact that life is objectively meaningless.

What are your thoughts on Jordan Peterson's views on the meaning and purpose of life?

@nickkoutsobinas @Kierkegaarddd If we’re going with overrated this spot on, if only as a criticism of the insane level of prestige they’ve been lauded.

@Kierkegaarddd Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault but that’s just me.

The most overrated philosopher. Go.

@hdpayens Well said.

Most Catholic apologetics fails not because the arguments are weak. It fails because the delivery triggers Protestant defenses instead of bypassing them. Three mistakes I see constantly. And they're all fixable.

horses always think running makes them better than me. classic one stomach behaviour.

@BBCNews Sounds accurate.

Michael Jackson film is a 'whitewash' and 'ghoulish', critics say bbc.in/3OhQBpX

I can’t believe I have to say this but westerns aren’t racist. @freedrift/note/p-160891196?r=3umok&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">substack.com/@freedrift/not…

I can’t believe I have to say this but westerns aren’t racist. My latest on Freedrift. @freedrift/note/p-160891196?r=3umok&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">substack.com/@freedrift/not…