Broken but Readable

Broken but Readable

Greg Scaduto is a freelance journalist, corporate finance professional, and a former US Army officer.

Episodes 22
Avg. Duration 11m
Activity Moderate
Since Jan 2026
Latest Episode May 2026

Publishing Details

Schedule
Weekly
Format
Episodic
Consistency
19%
Hosting
api.substack.com

Contact & Outreach

About This Podcast

This is a podcast with short episodes for people who feel vaguely insane watching the news but still believe moral seriousness is possible. Each episode runs 10-20 minutes. I usually start with something human: a stray thought, a joke that maybe goes too far, a glimpse of my interior life. Then I pivot, as cleanly as I can, into a morally serious argument about power, politics, institutions, or whatever fresh confusion the world has served up that week. I’m less interested in taking sides than in asking why so many arguments collapse the moment more than one thing is allowed to be true. I’m not here to sound authoritative, or neutral, or soothing. I’m here to think out loud in good faith, to name the pressures operating behind the scenes, and to ask what kind of people we become when fear, ambiguity, and convenience start doing the work that principles used to do. If it sparks disagreement, good. If it sparks reflection, even better. Mostly, this is an attempt to stay human while taking the world seriously, and to see if that’s still allowed.

gregscaduto.substack.com

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Recent Episodes

A letter to Elon Musk.

May 25, 2026 11m

Dear Elon,I’d like to offer you some advice, if you don’t mind.A great deal has been written about you these last few years, and most of it agrees that you are something monstrous. A villain in a…

In defense of the boomers.

May 18, 2026 11m

My mother grew up in a house with five kids and almost no money. My grandfather made their lunches every day: two slices of Wonder Bread, one slice of bologna, repeat. The day she got into medical…

The death of the phone call.

Apr 29, 2026 7m

You sit at the desk in the basement corner you call your office. The window above it looks at nothing. Just a wedge of grass and the foundation of the neighbor’s house. The screen glows the pale blue…

The inventory of an empty house.

Apr 21, 2026 11m

Gender discourse has become stupid. I do not mean controversial, or incendiary, or even wrong, though it manages all three on a good day. I mean stupid in the technical sense, as a failure of the…

Phronesis

Apr 14, 2026 11m

I recently walked around Princeton University’s campus on a Saturday afternoon. It was beautiful in the way old American campuses always are: stone buildings with ivy climbing the walls, oak trees…

You were never meant to love your job.

Apr 09, 2026 8m

Most people are told to follow their passion. This advice is exactly wrong for most of them.For most of us, and I mean most of us, like the overwhelming, unglamorous, beautiful majority of us, you…

The wound beneath the wound.

Apr 05, 2026 8m

Trauma. We are all very into trauma right now. It is on our podcasts and in our group chats and in the passive-aggressive email your aunt sent after Thanksgiving, which is technically about the…

Into the black

Mar 23, 2026 13m

They built me and they named me Voyager and they lit the fire and they stood back. Not one of them could follow. They knew this. They built me knowing this and they lit the fire anyway and I rose up…

The two things that could end human control forever.

Feb 27, 2026 9m

The AI ProblemTwo topics have something important in common: they both defy easy analysis because they refuse to stay inside a single discipline. One is artificial intelligence. The other is the…

A question for the American South (and all my beloved Catholics, too): what would Jesus redact?

Feb 14, 2026 9m

As I listened to Pam Bondi’s testimony, I felt a physical dread I have rarely known. A cold thing low in the gut like a stone falling through water. I searched my memory for its equal and found it:…

The political economy of not answering the question

Feb 09, 2026 16m

I love Reddit. The discussion website Reddit.I love it the way I love watching people at the airport after a flight gets canceled.There’s this moment when the announcement comes through and…

There are no dreams here.

Feb 07, 2026 25m

People sometimes ask why I return to these accounts.I don’t return to them. They return to us.Men and women encounter things that do not ask to be believed. They arrive in the night, or in still…

Eyes in the dark.

Feb 04, 2026 23m

In the past 30 days since I started doing these podcasts, over a thousand people a day are have been downloading them, but of course not subscribing. I’m not too worried about that. But I’m going to…

Why, unfortunately, I can no longer read the New York Times

Feb 02, 2026 7m

A note from management, to beloved listeners: at several points throughout this audio essay written for A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, I mistakenly say “A.J.” instead of…

The great moral sleepwalk: how Sam Harris, Ross Douthat, and Caitlin Flanagan lost the plot

Feb 01, 2026 13m

Two brief notes from the author, offered in good faith and with affection, which I invite listeners to read before sharpening their knives:1. At approximately 1 minute and 35 seconds into the…

What does non-speaking autism feel like?

Jan 30, 2026 9m

We talk about autism as if it were a single thing, when it’s really an argument between biology, identity, suffering, and love, carried out inside real lives. People are always trying to define it,…

In North Dakota's man camps, Indigenous women disappear

Jan 29, 2026 11m

Before I started doing these as audio essays, back when this was all just words on a screen that you scrolled through while pretending to answer emails, I wrote a piece that I assumed would sink…

Who is Iran?

Jan 28, 2026 21m

We have to start far back. Because Iran does not yield itself to haste. It is not a young country that wandered into trouble, but an old one that learned how to survive it.Long before the present…

The lecture hall of dead-eyed undergraduates.

Jan 23, 2026 15m

The CampusI walked across Fordham’s Bronx campus in the early fall, when the air still held a trace of summer but the light had already begun to thin. Leaves scraped along the walkways like small…

NATO is not a charity

Jan 21, 2026 18m

In 2014, Vladimir Putin was helping himself to Crimea, as one does when one has tanks and a complicated relationship with borders. In the summer of that year, the U.S. Army sent my unit to Germany to…

Frequently Asked Questions

How many episodes does Broken but Readable have?

Broken but Readable has published 22 episodes since January 2026, covering topics in Philosophy, Society & Culture.

Is Broken but Readable still active?

Broken but Readable is currently moderate with new episodes weekly. Average episode length is 11m.

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