The Learning Out Loud Podcast

Before Yale became a name synonymous with presidents, power, secret societies, and institutional prestige, it began as a Puritan project rooted in New Haven’s Bible-governed colony, strategic family lines, colonial commerce, and a web of ministers, merchants, rectors, and symbols that still echo through America’s ruling institutions. In Episode 14 of Learning Out Loud, we begin The Fruits of Yale series by going before ...

They took rhetoric out of your education on purpose. For 2,500 years — from the courts of Syracuse to the halls of Rome — a trained class of men have used the precise science of persuasion to move populations, win property disputes, build empires, and pass laws. They knew the five canons. They knew Aristotle. They knew Cicero. They knew exactly how to open a speech, arrange a body of proof, deploy a figure of speech, an...

Logic isn’t “just arguing”—it’s the ancient toolset that lets you separate true from false, spot deception, and think in clean, testable forms. In EP 12 of Learning Out Loud, Dustin William and Whitestone walk through the Trivium’s second pillar (Logic), trace it back to logos (the Word), and show how real reasoning works—from propositions and syllogisms to the way lawyers (and sophists) us...

Episode 11 kicks off our new Trivium series by going back to the beginning: Grammar—not as “rules,” but as the foundation of how words latch onto reality. If you’ve ever felt like modern life is built on shifting definitions, this episode is your toolkit: naming things correctly (Aristotle’s categories), learning how symbols shape thought, and why etymology isn’t trivia—it’s a way to ...

Equity isn’t “made‑up discretion”—it’s the ancient correction of rigid law where universality fails, rooted in what is just ex aequo et bono. In Foundations EP 10, we trace equity’s lineage from Aristotle’s definition through Roman and English Chancery, the Curia Regis, and the rise of the Chancellor—showing how a system built on principle (Not caprice) became the engine for trusts, r...

Episode 8 is live—and it’s one of the most practical conversations we’ve had yet. We crack open a rare 1918 volume, Law, Banking, and Business, and use it as a window into how contracts, notes, deeds, affidavits, agency, and trusts were explained in plain language—then connect those foundations to the living principles of equity: intention, conscience, and diligence. If you’ve ever felt like modern &ld...

EP 7 is live—and we’re walking straight into the machinery of equity. In hour one we unpack two foundational maxims from Murray F. Tuley’s 1903 speech: “Equality is equity” and “Where there are equal equities, the first in order of time must prevail.” From commingled funds and unlawful preferences in Cunningham v. Brown (the Ponzi case), to competing equitable liens in Martin v. National Su...

In this member episode of Learning Out Loud, Dustin William and Whitestone walk through Equity Maxim Five — He Who Seeks Equity Must Do Equity — and show how the principle operates in real litigation: equity will grant relief only on the condition that corresponding equitable rights are recognized on the other side. Along the way, they connect the maxim to the clean hands doctrine (and its limits), clarify what a court-...

What does it really mean to come with "clean hands"? In Episode 5 of Learning Out Loud, we crack open one of equity's most powerful maxims — He who comes into equity must come with clean hands — and trace it from its roots in conscience-based courts all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Using primary sources from Pomeroy's Equity Jurisprudence, Murray F. Tully's 1903 address to the Illinois State Bar, and two landmark ...

What if equity could reach back through time to make right what was never done? In Episode 4 of Learning Out Loud, we break down the most foundational maxim in equity jurisprudence — "Equity regards that as done which ought to be done" — straight from Pomeroy's Equity Jurisprudence and Murray F. Tully's 1903 address to the bar. We walk through how courts use this principle to enforce intent over technicality, how trust ...

What happens when the law says one thing but the truth says another? In Episode 3 of Learning Out Loud, Dustin William and Whitestone crack open the second equity maxim from Murray F. Tully's 1903 address to the Illinois bar: "Equity looks to the intent rather than to form." This principle — that courts of equity will pierce through the outer shell of any transaction to reach its real substance — is the reason shell cor...

"When you go to law, you get the law as it is. When you go into equity, you get justice." In Episode 2 of Learning Out Loud, we break down the most fundamental maxim of equity jurisprudence — agere in personam, equity acts on the person. Drawing directly from Murray F. Tully's 1903 address to the Illinois State Bar Association, Joseph Story's Commentaries on Equity Jurisprudence, and Pomeroy's Equity Jurisprudence (3rd ed., 1...