The Elsa Kurt Show

You know the type. You share good news and they top it. You tell a story and they hijack it. You ask a question and suddenly they're the expert on everything. 😅 This week I'm breaking down the four kinds of Spotlight Snatchers: the Hijacker, the One-Upper, the Humble Bragger and the Know-It-All. We'll talk about what's really going on underneath (hint: it's usually a hear...

A person is found alive on a waste dump, carrying clues that shouldn’t exist and suddenly a secret agency, a powerful corporation, and a global web of exploitation snap into focus. That’s the spark behind Chasing Zodiacs to Repair the Soul of Humanity, and author Max Tolo joins us to unpack how a thriller can be entertainment and a wake-up call at the same time. We get into the unexpected origin o...

A leader with the army behind him. A fragile new nation drowning in debt. A world where strongmen rarely step down. Then George Washington does something so unnatural to politics that people across Europe can’t believe it: he gives up power, and he does it twice. We sit down with Richard Lim, PragerU’s resident historian and host of This American President, to unpack the true story behind “refusin...

Paris isn’t just “having a moment” and we can’t treat it like a distant spectacle. We walk through what’s being shown, what’s being downplayed, and why the France riots and looting story keeps getting framed as anything except the policy choices that set the stage. When borders go unsecured, schools and public services get stressed, and leaders argue about optics instead of outcomes, the cleanup b...

A nurse offers compassion. A patient becomes obsessed. And a hurricane makes an already terrifying situation even more dangerous. Former travel nurse and suspense author Cindy L. Johnson joins me to talk about Stalking the Storm and The Storm Within , the nursing experiences that inspire her fiction, and the human resilience at the heart of her stories. We explore compassion, boundaries, survival,...

We move from real life updates to the week’s biggest flashpoints and keep coming back to one idea: facts and incentives matter more than viral outrage. Along the way, we challenge the instinct to turn violence, scandal, and celebrity into content while pretending it has no consequences.  •Behind-the-scenes stories from the Reacher set and what it reveals about teamwork and professionalism  •Why li...

The American Dream used to feel like a simple promise: work hard, buy a house, build a family, and slowly climb toward stability. Talk to a lot of 25 and 30-year-olds today and that same promise can sound like science fiction. Housing affordability is collapsing, interest rates are punishing, and even “doing everything right” does not guarantee financial independence anymore. Mark Deluzio joins El...

A 57-year marriage doesn’t end neatly. It leaves an echo in every room, in every routine, and in the simple comfort of knowing someone is nearby. Author Harper Law joins us to talk about what happened after he cared for his wife through the final stretch of her life and then had to figure out who he was on the other side of that loss. What surprised me most is how honest he is about grief: you don...

Pandas, power, and superintelligence shouldn’t belong in the same conversation, yet that’s exactly where we land as we sort through a week of headlines that feel like politics as performance. We start with Xi Jinping’s Washington visit and the kind of symbolism that gets dismissed as fluff but still moves relationships: flyovers, state dinner visuals, and panda diplomacy. Underneath the smiles are...

AI is moving into the workplace whether we feel ready or not, and the real question isn’t just what it can do. It’s what it does to us. I sit down with Dr. Christopher Warren, a nationally recognized safety and risk management leader and the author of “Artificiomics: Mitigating Human Risk of AI Technologies in the Workplace Using Industrial Hygiene Principles,” to talk about what happens to human...

A violin maker connects two lives, and that chance connection helps spark a spy thriller where music can give you away. I’m joined by Gerald Schoeltzel, a professional musician turned attorney and screenwriter whose résumé is as gripping as the fiction he writes. Gerald shares how he and co-author Leonid Prymak found each other through matching Italian instruments, then built Heard a Ghost: Love,...

They can block a camera from the Oval Office, but they can’t block the argument that follows. We dig into the White House press pool standoff and the question underneath it: is this a necessary pushback against editorialized “journalism,” or a precedent that will boomerang the moment power changes hands? We also walk through the real legal wrinkle people miss when they shout “First Amendment,” and...

Change shows up whether we invite it or not, and the hardest part is rarely the ending or the fresh start. It’s the stretch in between, when the old identity doesn’t fit anymore and the new one hasn’t arrived. That’s where so many of us feel lost, especially in midlife, retirement, or the later chapters of adulthood when the culture quietly tells us to fade out.  We sit down with Dr. Elaine Yarbro...

A child gets labeled “behind” and starts believing it. A parent gets told what “good” looks like and starts chasing it. Then life breaks the script, and you either cling tighter to the box or learn to see what was there all along. We sit down with Lindsey Erin Vesnic, author of the Amazon number one bestselling memoir Raising Light, for a raw and hopeful conversation about faith, family, and the m...

Imagine a world three centuries from now where the map has changed, the weather has changed, and “home” becomes a moving target. That’s the jumping-off point for my conversation with Norman Westhoff, a former medical doctor who now writes climate fiction (cli-fi) that feels less like a lecture and more like a lived reality. We start with the experiences that built his sense of scale, including ear...

AI is getting smarter, faster, and cheaper and the people building it are starting to sound genuinely uneasy. That is the moment we stop scrolling past the headlines and start asking the only question that matters: what happens to regular people when the tools get powerful enough to reshape jobs, education, security, and even politics. We also own the irony right up front, including the reality th...

A lot of people talk about “finding purpose” after the military. Dana Corriveau ( https://www.mantlechallenge.org/events ) actually had to fight for it. Dana served eight years in the United States Air Force in Security Forces, deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and came home with the kind of accelerated maturity that doesn’t always fit neatly back into small-town life. Later, he builds a new caree...

The calendar forces two heavy anniversaries into the same week, and we can feel it. We start by naming what a lot of people avoid saying out loud: 9/11 is not just a memory, it’s a measuring stick. Twenty-five years later, we’re still asking what the United States actually learned about security, culture, civic duty, and the cost of pretending warning signs do not exist. We talk about how we perso...

Support the show Elsa's AMAZON STORE Elsa's FAITH & FREEDOM MERCH STORE Elsa's BOOKS Elsa Kurt :   You may know her for her uncanny, viral Kamala Harris impressions & conservative comedy skits, but she’s also a lifelong Patriot & longtime Police Wife. She has channeled her fierce love and passion for God, family, country, and those who serve as the creator, Executive Pro...

The fastest way to spot real resilience is to listen to someone who had every reason to quit and chose to build anyway. We’re joined by Veronica Ventura, a Puerto Rican entrepreneur, mother, and author of *Working for Her: Puerto Rican Entrepreneur, Making It With No Excuse*, and her story is equal parts raw and actionable. We talk about what “no excuses” actually means when the stakes are high: m...

Some stories don’t just inspire you, they steady you. Curline Matthews joins us with the kind of wisdom you only earn through time: 45 years of marriage, raising four children, loving eleven grandchildren, and learning how faith holds up when life breaks your heart. Her memoir, *Where Faith Meets Family*, began as a way to keep her late husband’s memory alive, but it became something more a practi...

A chef’s story can be inspiring, but Chef Franco Lania’s story goes far beyond the kitchen. He is an award-winning master chef, culinary educator, and entrepreneur who has cooked at the highest levels, from elite restaurants to luxury cruise lines. He’s also a 9/11 survivor who was evacuated from Tower Two, and he shares what that morning felt like from the inside, including the chaos, the noise,...

Support the show Elsa's AMAZON STORE Elsa's FAITH & FREEDOM MERCH STORE Elsa's BOOKS Elsa Kurt :   You may know her for her uncanny, viral Kamala Harris impressions & conservative comedy skits, but she’s also a lifelong Patriot & longtime Police Wife. She has channeled her fierce love and passion for God, family, country, and those who serve as the creator, Executive Pro...

She starts as one of the only women in her engineering program, builds a career in telecommunications, becomes a single mom, then pivots again into a classroom where she spends 20 years helping kids learn math and find their footing. That alone is a story worth hearing. But what happens next is where the imagination kicks in: she turns a painful family season and the loss of her mother into a chil...

If you’ve ever looked at an election result and thought, “I guess we just have to trust it,” this conversation is for you. I sit down with Mark Gotz, known as the election expert, who has spent more than 20 years monitoring elections and wrote a practical guide on how to inspect, validate, audit, and enforce federal elections. We get specific about where modern elections feel weakest, especially a...