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In my previous post, I printed a review that I (a human) previously wrote concerning The Polesworth Circle, a book/play that I (a human) wrote. In this post, I am presenting a review that CoPilot, Microsoft’s AI-powered assistant, wrote in response to the instruction posed below.

“Write a 1000-word review of The Polesworth Circle by Robert Burdett.”

CoPilot’s review is published below – verbatim; not one word was changed. After the review, I will come back with a few comments on this “non-human...

When I first wrote my play “The Polesworth Circle,” as an appendix to my book BS3: Etcetera, I also wrote a review of the play (pages 69-70 in BS3). That review – of an imaginative performance of the play – is presented below. As far as I know, no other “humans” have reviewed the play or the book.

In my next post, I will print a “non-human” review of the book, that was written by CoPilot, Microsoft’s AI-powered assistant. I think that you will find the similarities (few) and differences...

Well, this is kind of weird. I am writing a review of a book after reading a review of a book – that book being From Calvinist to Catholic, an autobiography by Peter Kreeft (copyright 2025).

The review, Enjoyably Evangelical, was written by Kevin DeYoung, the senior pastor at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina. I ran across DeYoung’s review in the October 2025 issue of First Things. Let me begin with a few quotes from DeYoung’s review that enticed me to read (and review)...

During my recent Florida vacation, I read two books. The second was The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by John U. Bacon (copyright 2025). In this review, [brackets] are used to denote the pages from his book where the various quotes were obtained.

I previously described my fascination with the Great Lakes, the big freighters that ply them, and the Edmund Fitzgerald in particular, in my previous blog entries – A Michigan Vacation (October 10, 2025) and The “Edmund...

John William Carson (John to his friends, Johnny to his audiences) died 21 years ago on this date, at age 79. He was, for 30 years (1962-1992), the king of late-night television, a title that died with him. I hesitate to use his name today – in the same sentence – with the likes of Jimmy and Steven.

Over the past year, I have read three biographies on Johnny, the last being Love Johnny Carson: One Obsessive Fan’s Journey to Find the Genius Behind the Legend (2025, by Mark Malkoff with David...

During my recent Florida vacation, I read two books. The first was Unfettered, an autobiography by United States Senator John Fetterman (copyright 2025). I found it to be both interesting and easy to read. In this review, [brackets] are used to denote the page or pages where the various quotes were observed.

I first became aware of Fetterman in the lead up to his senatorial election in 2022, when he was the Democrat nominee for the U.S. senate from Pennsylvania, running against the Republican...

Back in October I wrote a travel essay on my 2025 vacation in Michigan. In that essay, I noted that I had been in Michigan only once before – when I changed planes in Detroit. This travel essay is a bit different in that regard. Per my count, I have visited Florida 23 times over the past twenty or so years. Per my calculations, I have spent roughly one half year of my life in Florida.

Twelve of those visits, like my last, were over the Christmas and New Year’s Day holidays, when my wife and I...

“Happy Holidays” from everyone at robertcburdett.com.

The photograph above (or to the side) was taken by my Bird Buddy birdfeeder (and AI-enhanced). AI added the sign and “watercolored” the photograph; everything else is real.

If you are still looking for a unique Christmas gift for someone who likes historical plays about William Shakespeare, please consider The Polesworth Circle. If you are looking for an apologetic series on the Catholic faith and/or praying scripture, please consider one...

As I noted in one of my recent articles, I read magazines with a pen or pencil in hand, underlining or otherwise marking the things that interest me, and then ripping out and saving the articles that are heavily marked up.

Over the last year or so, I ripped out and saved three articles from First Things that were focused on the mental and emotional health of young women, especially self-described liberal women. I suspect that I was interested in these articles, in part, because I am the...

I recently published the December 25, 2025, online edition of the Burdett Bugle (Volume 31, Issue 1). That is the fancy name that I have given our annual Christmas letter – for the past 31 years.

My wife and I got married in 1981 and we apparently avoided Christmas letters until 1990. Then (through 1992) we wrote and mailed out “typical” (newsy and braggadocious) Christmas letters, although ours was lengthier than most (2-3 pages). When I say that “we” wrote, I mean that “I” wrote. This has...

On September 17, 2025, I posted an article about my subscription to The Nation. I let my subscription expire and thought I was through with them – but they are still trying to get me too re-up. The ACLU is still pestering me too. They are wasting their postage.

Magazines in general are in trouble, victims of the internet. Many of them have shuttered their presses; others have switched to e-formats.

In the distant past, I subscribed to a variety of magazines such as Time, Newsweek, U.S. News...

The Institute of Religion and Public Life (the publisher of First Things) was founded in 1989 by Richard John Neuhaus, a Lutheran pastor who later became a Catholic priest.

A recent fundraising letter noted that, “Father Richard John Neuhaus wrote that the public square is naked without religion. An individual without a serious grasp of the role of religion in public life is likewise unclothed, vulnerable to ideological falsehoods. As G. K. Chesterton observed, ‘When men choose not to believe...

The New Oxford Review (NOR), per its website (newoxfordreview.org), “is an orthodox Catholic magazine that explores ideas concerning faith and culture. … [It] was founded in 1977 as an Anglo-Catholic magazine in the Anglican tradition, taking its name from the 19th-century [i.e., 1830s and 1840s] Oxford Movement. Inspired by the Movement’s leading luminary, St. John Henry Newman, and the dynamic papacy of St. John Paul II, the NOR converted to Catholicism in 1983.” Karl Keating, the founder...

In my book A Catholic Prays Scripture: and tips for how you can too, I wrote, … “what we read says something about who we are and who or what is our god. If all you read is the Wall Street Journal and Business Week, then maybe money is your god. If all you read is the sports page or Sports Illustrated, then maybe sports figures are your gods. If all you read is People Magazine and The National Enquirer, then maybe Hollywood is your Holy Land.” I further noted that, “I certainly hadn’t spent...

My previous post was meant to be the introduction to this book review. It detailed how I first got interested in television and broadcasting. I was a small cog at a one-camera, small-market, television station in North Dakota. John Malone is a giant in the global television and broadcasting industry.

So, picking up from where I left off, herein is a review of John Malone’s recently published book, Born to Be Wired: Lessons from a Lifetime Transforming Television, Wiring America for the...

I have been interested in television since I was five or six years old, since KFYR-TV began broadcasting from Bismarck, North Dakota in 1953. I can remember – I am not sure why – sitting in front of my parent’s first black and white television, watching the “test pattern” (the one with the Indian chief), before the station began its abbreviated broadcast day (in the late afternoon).

In those days, I lived in Riverdale, North Dakota, about 60 miles north of KFYR’s temporary transmitter, which...

In my last blog entry, I wrote about some similarities that I observed between how Tucker Carlson reacted to the Capitol “Insurrection” – and how Sir Francis Burdett reacted to the Peterloo Massacre (Manchester, England, 1819). The following blog entry contains an excerpt from Sir Francis Burdett: His Last “Make Believe” Interview, which goes into more detail on the Peterloo Massacre.

The excerpt is from a transcript of the fictional interview that I (RCB) had with Sir Francis Burdett (SFB)....

This is the last article (of four) on Tucker Carlson. If you are interested in the topic, I suggest you begin with the article I published on October 30, 2025. In this excerpt, I strayed off the topic of Tucker Carlson a bit when I wrote “A Trump Aside.”

+++ The Start of Excerpt 4 +++

The Tucker Carlson Paradox and Conundrum

It was bound to happen. Tucker was too outspoken and visible just to comment on the news. He has become part of the news. In a sense, he has become as much of the story as...

Tucker Carlson – Excerpt 3

This is the third article (of four) on Tucker Carlson. If you are interested in this topic, I suggest you begin with the article I published on October 30, 2025.

In this excerpt, I will introduce one of my ancestors, Sir Francis Burdett. Sir Francis was a member of the English Parliament from 1796 to 1844. He had established a reputation as an anti-establishment reformer. He was imprisoned by Parliament in the Tower of London in 1810 for libeling the House of...

This is the second of four articles on Tucker Carlson. If you are interested in this topic, I suggest you begin with the article I published on October 30, 2025.

I ended the first article (excerpt) by noting I was a fan of Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News. I will continue from there.

+++ The Start of Excerpt 2 +++

The show that is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness, and groupthink

That (above) is the phrase that Tucker periodically used to describe Tucker Carlson Tonight. If I were...