Episodes

  • Brief: Living with Prediabetes

    Brief: Living with Prediabetes
    May 23 2026
    In February, Derek and his wife, Callan, were surprised to discover she was diagnosed with prediabetes. They didn't know that Asian American adults are at a higher risk of Type 2 diabetes than others without the traditional risk factors. Callan joins to discuss how the diagnosis changed her life, her frustrations with the healthcare system, and how she's navigating her new reality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    25 mins
  • 309: Crybully Christians in the White House

    309: Crybully Christians in the White House
    May 21 2026
    The Trump DOJ's 565-page report from the Task Force for Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias is one of the strangest federal documents in American history. It’s a crybully tome, arguing that the most powerful religious majority in the United States is its most persecuted minority. Julian examines the FACE Act allegations, the FBI-Catholic surveillance controversy, and the selective history propping up the Christian-founding thesis. Derek traces the freethinker and secularist tradition the report erases. Matthew tracks the document's most telling absence: anticommunism. From Eisenhower to Reagan, Christian nationalism always came bundled with a Soviet enemy and a defense of free enterprise and private property. But the 67% of the doc that’s about sexuality, gender, and reproductive rights shows that the billionaire Jesus class thinks the class war is over, and so all that’s left to control is the body itself. Show Notes Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism SPLC: 12 Anti-Semitic Radical Traditional Catholic Groups AXIOS: Assaults Against Abortion Clinics Rose 128% in 2021 DOJ Says Biden Unfairly Attacked Anti-Abortion Groups Is Jane’s Revenge For Real? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    57 mins
  • Bonus Sample: Liberals Punching Left

    Bonus Sample: Liberals Punching Left
    May 18 2026
    Listen to the full episode In this contribution to an ongoing co-host conversation, Matthew argues that the liberal centre's habit of punching left is a historically conditioned class strategy. From FDR's New Deal—designed to inoculate capitalism against socialism—through Hayek, Buckley, the Birchers, Limbaugh, and the Obama-era "socialist medicine" smear, liberals have accepted the premises of Red Scare attacks, because doing so served their own interest in disciplining the actual left. The result is a Ratchet Effect that pulls discourse perpetually rightward, and a narrowing of the Overton window to convert anticapitalist politics into psychological pathology. When the liberal centre engineers conditions in which no structural challenge to capitalism is rational, it can caricature the resulting conflict as hysteria, cultishness, and immaturity. There’s also a gendered dynamic going on here, in which the leftist is unreasonable, nitpicky, always demanding too much, focused on minutiae but also big feelings, and always missing the “big picture”. Sometimes the only real division between right wing and liberal responses to the left is the difference between outright hatred and resentful dismissal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    5 mins
  • Brief: Spirituality After Atheism?

    Brief: Spirituality After Atheism?
    May 16 2026
    It’s normal to feel lost after leaving a cult, transitioning out of fundamentalist religion, or abandoning conspiracy theories. Whether you’ve left behind, you may be asking, "What now?" Britt Hartley joins Julian to talk about her new book, No Nonsense Spirituality: All The Tools No Belief Required, and her recent run-in with the hardcore atheist community, which calls her work “nonsense.” The ex-Mormon practices Sufi mysticism, holds an MA in theology, and is writing her doctoral dissertation. A spiritual atheist, she advocates passionately for reclaiming awe, rituals, pilgrimages, and spiritual experiences from the monopoly of organized religion. Show Notes No Nonsense Spirituality: All The Tools No Belief Required Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    43 mins
  • 308: The AI Slop Machine is Worse Than You Think [feat Mallory DeMille]

    308: The AI Slop Machine is Worse Than You Think [feat Mallory DeMille]
    May 14 2026
    Two months ago, we recorded Episode 291: My Chinese Buddhist Israeli AI Guru, surveying the growing field of AI slopfluencers churning out wellness supplements via Amazon affiliate links. At the time, we weren’t clear on who was behind these accounts. Then Mallory DeMille went down a YouTube and TikTok rabbit hole and found the men making millions from these accounts. Today we’re going to look at what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, and the cultural and racial dynamics at play in their slop. Show Notes An Amish Avatar and an A.I. Monk Are Pitching Supplements on Social Media Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    58 mins
  • Bonus Sample: What's Left?

    Bonus Sample: What's Left?
    May 11 2026
    Listen to the full episode Derek considers the online debates over leftism and liberalism in the context of coalition building. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    8 mins
  • Brief: Antifascist Dad (Audiobook Excerpt)

    Brief: Antifascist Dad (Audiobook Excerpt)
    May 9 2026
    Matthew reads the Introduction from Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    43 mins
  • 307: Conspiracy Reflex Syndrome

    307: Conspiracy Reflex Syndrome
    May 7 2026
    As Cole Allen sprinted into the news cycle, social media accelerated to cover the story—and the conspiracy-beast in the basement flexed his fast-twitch muscle fibers. The now third assassination attempt on Donald Trump (this time at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner) had to be staged. What else could explain it? The one time Trump shows up, an assassin is waiting for him. What are the odds? How about the guy who just calmly kept eating his salad? A highly suspicious AI video showed a security agent’s hat morph into his hair, while another had Allen running faster than humanly possible, which fit with an elaborate story about the shooter actually being a time traveller. We break down what happened, how quickly the conspiracy theories spread, and the cultural and political dynamics of this ubiquitous reflex. Show Notes False-flag Conspiracy Theories Swirl After WHCD The Era of Normie Extremism is Here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    58 mins