Pod Only Knows
Pod Only Knows is a podcast about religion and religious studies hosted by Dr. Kelly J. Baker and John Brooks. In each episode the hosts invite scholars and other people from the wide world of religious studies to explain why and how they do their work and why it matters. Kelly and John also talk with each other about the ideas, stories, and histories that fascinate them. The show mixes interviews with casual conversation, making academic work on religion accessible to a general audience.
Episodes
#066 - The Resurrection of Ned Ludd
The word Luddite has a lot of unfair negative connotations. It's also almost always misused.
In this episode, we look at the recent trend of reevaluating the Luddites - the radical labor rights movement of the early 19th century - in the age of AI and data centers.
Who was Ned Ludd? How did he begin a movement? And what does it say about the religious nature of that movement that (spoiler) he ne
#065 - "Contact" (1997) with Lauren Turek
(SORRY ABOUT YESTERDAY! Naturally, our production staff have all been fired and fed to the wolves.* We BELIEVE the episode should now be glitch free!)
1997's "Contact", directed by Robert Zemeckis, remains one of the best "What if aliens made contact?" movies ever made.
Conceived by astronomer Carl Sagan, the film thoughtfully wrestles with ideas of humanity, religion, and international relation
#064 - Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey"
More summer movie series fun as we (finally) talk about Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" after Kelly (finally) sees it because John told her she should.
Did Kelly like it? Not really! But after we discuss Nolan's take - which explores themes like PTSD, the morality of war, and Christian militarism - she liked it a little more!
For this episode, we reference the following:
The W.H.D. Rouse T
#063 - The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby with Michael Blanding
Journalist and author Michael Blanding's new book The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby tells the story of the billionaire Green family, whose commitment to right-wing Christian activism has touched every corner of modern American life.
Blanding paints a thorough and fair portrait of the family, their motivations, and how they found themselves right in the middle of one of history's most expansive
Football Is (The Way, The Truth, and The) Life! - World Cup Special
Football (or soccer if you want) like all sports has a religious dimension...and when it comes to the World Cup, the line between football and religion shrinks to the point of all-but-invisibility.
We talk about how football is an and isn't a religion, the "Hand of God" 1986 and the sanctification of Diego Maradona, and how Brazilians blaming the national team's loss on Protestantism is actually
#062 - Woke Pope Updates! Schism and AI Encyclicals (with Nitish Pahwa)
In May, Pope Leo released his first Papal Encyclical. Its focus was on the moral and material threat posed by AI.
Journalist Nitish Pahwa, whose normal beat is technology and business, read the whole thing and shared his thoughts in a great piece for Slate:
I Read the Pope’s Encyclical on A.I. I’m Astounded By What He Wrote.
This week, we talked about Leo's recent excommunication of the Society
Reissue (from 2023) #005 - Is July 4th a Religious Holiday?
This week, Kelly and John take on July 4th and ask if it's possible to wrestle it away from the darker side of American history as well as its increasingly Christian Nationalist connotations.
Even though (or maybe because) America is not, in fact, a Christian nation and has no official religious identity, is July 4th a religious holiday? Has the project of state that (purportedly) guarantees free
#061 - RELIGULOUS with Shaily Patel
We're joined by our friend Shaily Patel who last joined us for our discussion of HERETIC to talk about a movie that has a lot in common with HERETIC - Bill Maher's 2008 "documentary" RELIGULOUS.
Both feature and insufferable asshole who has figured out religion by researching the internet and wants all you foolish believers to know about it!
But the difference is that RELIGULOUS is bad.
We talk
We're back!
Kelly has officially mastered the fine arts, so after a half year break, we're back!
We'll have real episode coming up in a week or so, but for now we catch up on where we've been as Kelly talks about finishing her MFA and John talks about the World Cup and how England is definitely going to win it all for real this time.
Sarah Posner - On her new podcast, Epstein, and other news
Friend of the pod Sarah Posner joins John to discuss her great new podcast, Reign of Error. They also look at the various ways of understanding new developments in the Epstein case through the religious studies lens.
*IMPORTANT PODCAST UPDATE*
Kelly will be taking a few months away from the show. We plan to get back to normal rotation in the summer. In the meantime, John will be joined by some
RERELEASE (from 12/23): Ghosts of Christmas Past - with Sara Cleto and Brittany Warman
Kelly is away, so our next new episode will be released in two weeks.
This is a rerelease of an episode originally published on December 19th, 2023.
But Scrooge was all the worse for this. It thrilled him with a vague uncertain horror, to know that behind the dusky shroud there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him, while he, though he stretched his own to the utmost, could see nothing but a
RERELEASE (from 12/24): Did Dickens "Invent" Christmas? - with Kristen Hanley Cardozo
The 2017 film The Man Who Invented Christmas, starring human treasure Dan Stevens as Charles Dickens, is a lovely bit of an anachronistic historical revisionism (though, to be fair, it gets a number of things right both in fact and in, pardon the pun, spirit). But it also perpetuates an increasingly popular myth - that Charles Dickens...well...invented Christmas. At least, that is, Christmas as we
#060 - Selling Out Santa - with Vaughn Joy
Dr. Vaughn Joy's new book, Selling Out Santa, explores the role Christmas movies played in shaping American culture (and vice-versa) during the Cold War.
Via a case study on Hollywood Christmas films released between 1946 and 1961, Selling Out Santa offers an examination of political pressures on Hollywood in the post-war period and the cultural ramifications of federal involvement in the motion
RERELEASE: Unraveling the Thanksgiving Myth - with Dr. David J. Silverman (11/2023)
RERELEASE FROM 11/2023
What better way to celebrate Thanksgiving than to have Kelly and John ruin it for you?
Just kidding! We're not here to cancel Thanksgiving and we hope you have a lovely one.
But holidays are weird things - we often celebrate them without really examining why, or how we arrived at the myths and rituals that emanate from their core.
And Thanksgiving is, in many ways, our s
#059 – The Passion of the Marjorie Taylor Greene
It's been a heck of a week on the internet!
Marjorie Taylor Greene went from MAGA darling to MAGA outcast and from Georgia Congresswoman to Soon-to-be-Former Georgie Congresswoman in record time.
We look at her attempted redemption/resurrection story with a skeptical eye, muse on what this means for the future or MAGA.
Plus - Silicon Valley is suddenly obsessed with the End Times and Peter Thie
#058 – THE EXORCIST EFFECT with Joseph Laycock
Last episode we discussed The Exorcist, so this time we're taking a closer look its impact on our culture and religious beliefs as explored in The Exorcist Effect by Eric Harrelson and our guest Joseph Laycock.
Laycock is an associate professor of religious studies at Texas State University. He holds a MTS from Harvard Divinity School and a PhD from Boston University and has written several books
#057 – THE EXORCIST with Matthew J. Cressler
1973's The Exorcist is a landmark film for any number of reasons (many of which we get into here). It's also a film Kelly had never seen, and a favorite of our friend Matthew J. Cressler. Matt talked to us about Catholic horror and The Exorcist two years ago, but we really wanted to dig into the film in detail, so here we are.
The Exorcist is one of many examples of art imitating life imitating a
#056 – Paranormal America with Darryl Caterine
It's spooky season, and to start off our spooky and spooky-adjacent episodes, Kelly and John talk to scholar Darryl Caterine, author of 2011's Haunted Ground: Journeys through a Paranormal America which explores the meaning of our nation’s fascination with paranormal phenomena through a series of thick descriptions and analyses of a Spiritualist camp in upstate New York, the Roswell UFO Festival i
RERELEASE: What really happened at Salem - with Kathleen M. Brown
Due to some scheduling difficulties, we're pushing back this week's episode to next week and then going back-to-back Tuesdays.
In the meantime, enjoy this episode from last Halloween with Kathleen M. Brown on the Salem Witch Trials
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The Salem Witch Trials may well be the single most notorious and iconic event of America's colonial period. Every Halloween, Salem
#055 – Taylor Swift: Christian TradWife Extraordinaire!
As soon as Taylor Swift announced her engagement to podcast host and occasional football player Travis Kelce, the weirdest weirdos on the Christian right burst into excitement over the possibility that Swift might finally, finally be morphing into one of them, urging her to "submit" to Kelce as a TradWife.
It seems unlikely that a billionaire in her mid-30s like Taylor Swift will feel inclined to
RERELEASE (from 2/25 ): The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover with Lerone A. Martin
Given recent events, we have decided not to release a new episode this week. Instead, given rising concerns about state retribution to political violence and the weaponization of law enforcement, we are re-releasing our conversation with Lerone A. Martin from February, in which he discusses his book The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover.
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This w
#054 - James Dobson (1936-2025) with Hilde Lovdal Stephens (SORRY ABOUT JOHN'S AUDIO!!)
James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family and author of many popular books about "Christian parenting", died in late August at the age of 89.
Dobson's death was celebrated by many ex-Evangelicals of a certain age who were raised in part or in total by Dobson's teaching and methods.
He leaves behind a complicated and questionable legacy, including a generation of ex-Evangelicals who despis
#053 – Heretic (2024) - with Shaily Patel
Heretic was released in theaters in 2024 and quickly developed something of a cult fandom, especially among religion nerds.
Starring Hugh Grant in a rare villainous dark turn, Heretic tells to story of two young Mormon missionaries, Sister Paxton and Sister Barnes, who find themselves forced to defend their faith (and their lives) against the human manifestation of dickish online atheist bros.
W
#052 – At Last, A Woke Superman!
We're back, and we're catching up on the things we missed this summer: Woke Superman, Ryan Walters' porn crisis, the DHS's weird fascism Twitter posts, and more!
Kelly tells us about her surgery and recovery. John talks about his trip and getting a ridiculous amount of poison ivy on him. And they both talk about how Ryan Walters, the notorious Christian Nationalist in charge of Oklahoma schools,
#051 – Acute Religious Experiences - with Richard Saville-Smith
This week, Richard Saville-Smith joins Kelly and John to talk about his book Acute Religious Experiences – Madness, Psychosis, and Religious Studies, which was published by Bloomsbury in 2023.
Saville-Smith is an independent researcher who focuses on the intersection of madness, mental disorders, and acute religious experiences, from a mad studies perspective. He earned his PhD in Philosophy and
#050 - Severance - The Church of Keir
Apple TV's Severance wrapped its long-awaited 2nd season recently and left us with more answers than questions.
But some answers! We (sorta) know what Severance is really all about, and we (sorta, maybe) know what Lumon is up to now!
So while we wait the ungodly eternity for Severance to return, John and Kelly invited scholar Niki Dolfi on to talk about the cults, religious allusions, identity,
#049 – Our Pope Watch Has Ended
Last week, the Catholic Church absolutely shook the world by electing Robert Prevost - an Augustinian from Chicago - Pope Leo XIV, making him the first ever American pope.
Immediately, MAGA lost their collective minds, calling Leo XIV a woke Marxist and an anti-Trump liberal.
Leo XIV's election was, without question, a statement by the Church directed squarely at MAGA and Donald Trump, but so ma
#048 – Annika Brockschmidt
This week, author and journalist Annika Brockschmidt joins John to talk about the perception of the American Christian Right in Europe, the possibly intentional downplaying of Christian Nationalism in Trump 2.0, and Pete Hegseth's tattoos.
Annika Brockschmidt studied History, German Studies, and War and Conflict Studies in Heidelberg, Durham and Potsdam. She is a freelance journalist and author,
#047 – Rethinking "Lord of the Flies" in the age of MAGA
William Golding's 1952 novel Lord of the Flies is one of those books most of us of a certain age were forced to read in high school and pretty much universally hated.
Often presented as a bleak meditation on human nature, Lord of the Flies certainly isn't that. But why were its real themes - the destructive nature of colonialism, the inconsistency between the ideals of democratic nations and their
#046 – The MAGA Attack on Higher Education
Higher education is under attack in a way few saw coming.
Maybe they should have, and maybe that's part of the problem.
Institutions of higher education have been a laser target of the Trump administration's authoritarian project in its first two months. And while authoritarians have long prioritized going after and dismantling academic institutes, this strategy also includes the cynical use of ma
#045 – Roko's Basilisk, Pope Watch 2025, and Paula White
Before you listen to today's episode, you should know that knowing about Roko's Basilisk can doom you forever.
Still here? Great.
This week, John and Kelly explore a few of the religion stories that have surfaced in recent weeks, including what happens and if when Pope Francis dies soon, and the evangelical backlash of Trump appointing Paula White as the White House Faith officer.
Then, we take o
(Edited Reissue) #024 - Simulation Theory, or Young Earth Creationism for Atheists
We recorded this about a year ago, for the 25th anniversary of the release of THE MATRIX.
But since Elon Musk now controls the country, we're republishing an edited-down version because it's important to know how Musk thinks.
Next episode, we'll be talking about a number of the other beliefs that shape Musk's worldview, among them Roko's Basilisk, so this episode is good preparation for that con
Chris Kluwe - (Republished from "Hard to Believe" - April, 2021)
This is a republished episode from John's former podcast Hard to Believe featuring an interview with Chris Kluwe
In light Kluwe making national news with his recent act of anti-MAGA civil disobedience, we decided to republish an interview John conducted with Kluwe in 2021, in which he describes, among other things, how he came to be an activist and advocate for justice causes.
Here is the origin
#044 – The Lord of the Right: Tolkien, Fascism, and Race - with Marika Rose
What's the deal with the far-right's obsession with Tolkien?
Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is, ostensibly, a story of different races coming together to defeat a shared enemy - one that intends to shroud the world in darkness and despair.
Or...is it?
If you ask billionaire fascist Peter Thiel - whose surveillance company Palantir is named for an evil crystal ball in Lord of the Rings - the answer is
#043 – The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover with Lerone A. Martin
This week, Kelly and John are joined by Lerone A. Martin to discuss his unfortunately timely and prescient book, The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism.
Martin is the Martin Luther King, Jr., Centennial Professor in Religious Studies, African & African American Studies, and The Nina C. Crocker Faculty Scholar. He also serves as the Dire
#042 – Jason Kirk on "Hell Is A World Without You"
Writer and journalist Jason Kirk's debut novel, Hell is a World Without You, was released in December of 2023 to wide acclaim.
Hell is a World Without You tells the story of Isaac Siena, an Evangelical teenager living in Pennsylvania at the turn of the millennium who struggles with the dual-challenges of adolescence and his faith. The novel is drawn from elements of Kirk's own life and is set agai
#041 – A Load of Comstock - The life and times of Anthony Comstock
Anthony Comstock might be the most significant American that it's entirely possible you've never heard of. A zealous Christian crusader against so-called "obscenity" in the late 19th century, he is the namesake of the Comstock Act, the interstate commerce law that the Heritage Foundation plans to use to curb access to abortion pills and pornography.
Born in Connecticut in the mid-1800s, Anthony Co
#040 – Did Dickens "Invent" Christmas? - with Kristen Hanley Cardozo
The 2017 film The Man Who Invented Christmas, starring human treasure Dan Stevens as Charles Dickens, is a lovely bit of an anachronistic historical revisionism (though, to be fair, it gets a number of things right both in fact and in, pardon the pun, spirit). But it also perpetuates an increasingly popular myth - that Charles Dickens...well...invented Christmas. At least, that is, Christmas as we
RERELEASE (11/21/23) - Unraveling the Thanksgiving Myth - with Dr. David J. Silverman
(Rerelease from 2023)
What better way to celebrate Thanksgiving than to have Kelly and John ruin it for you?
Just kidding! We're not here to cancel Thanksgiving and we hope you have a lovely one.
But holidays are weird things - we often celebrate them without really examining why, or how we arrived at the myths and rituals that emanate from their core.
And Thanksgiving is, in many ways, our stran
#039 – Breath of Fire: Conspirituality, Fraud, and the Prosperity Dharma
Directed by first time documentary directors Haley Pappas and Smiley Stevens, Breath of Fire was released on MAX in October as a four-part documentary series.
Breath of Fire is based on the 2021 Vanity Fair piece The Second Coming of Guru Jagat by Hayley Phelan, who also appears in and executive produced the series.
It tells the story of Kundalini yoga practitioner turned de facto cult leader/prof
#038 – Welp...what now? - with Andrew Tobolowsky
We'll just cut to the chase - this week sucked and the next four years are going to be very dark and very difficult.
But we're not here just to rage and doomcast. This Kelly and John were joined by fellow religion scholar Andrew Tobolowsky to try to provide some perspective on what's ahead, what the fight is going to be, the role Project 2025 will and won't play, and why the more likely challenge
#037 – What really happened at Salem - with Kathleen M. Brown
The Salem Witch Trials may well be the single most notorious and iconic event of America's colonial period. Every Halloween, Salem, Massachusetts, hosts untold thousands of tourists who revel in the city's occult history and reputation as America's haunted capital of spookiness.
But as well-known as the Salem Witch Trials are, they remain a hotbed of historical inaccuracy and misconception.
So wha
#036 – HELL HOUSE (2001) - with Jason Bivins
George Ratliff's 2001 documentary Hell House chronicles the development of the 10th annual Hell House Halloween production put on by Trinity Church in Texas.
A Hell House is a variation on the Halloween haunted house tradition, in which actors play out horror movie scenarios as guests move room to room to be frightened out of their minds. But Hell Houses are, instead, tools of Christian indoctrina
#035 – Sarah Posner - Humor vs. Rage and The Ohio Blood Libel
"They're eating the dogs" is already enshrined as one of the most memorable and iconic (and insane) phrases ever to enter the arena of American politics.
Donald Trump is a ridiculous, unserious, and increasingly gullible person, and his amplifying of a fake story of Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating pets in front an audience of tens of millions is a new low even for him.
"They're eating the dogs"
#034 – Thomas Lecaque - Why the right can't stop loving the Crusades (and other losers)
This week, in part inspired by the anniversary of 9/11, Kelly and John invited Thomas Lecaque on the show to talk about the ways the Christian right frame the Crusades and other violent failures to justify their own acts of political and religious violence.
Thomas Lecaque is an associate professor of History at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa. He specializes in the nexus of apocalyptic r
#033 – “Jesus Camp” (2006) with Megan Goodwin
Jesus Camp was 2006's other big documentary, nominated for the Academy Award for documentary feature but losing out to a little film called An Inconvenient Truth.
Directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (and timed, coincidentally, to the appointment of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court) it mainly follows three young evangelical Christians as they prepare to attend the Kids On Fire summer camp, ru
#032 - Stockholm Syndrome: The Story of a Dumb Idea
Stockholm Syndrome is a really good MUSE song. Unfortunately, it's not a good anything else.0
On a recent episode of television's worst show, The Five on Fox News, panelist Jessica Tarlov, herself Jewish, asked her fellow panelist Greg Gutfeld why Jews tend to be Democrat and not Republican. His answer? Stockholm syndrome.
Most people could probably give a decent summary of what Stockholm syndrome
#031 - Project 2025 (and why you should really, really care about it)
Project 2025 has (finally) become an enormous national news story.
But while its goals (which go after everything from contraception to the Department of Education) have rightly been in the spotlight, it's also important to understand that, far from being the fantasy wish list of a group of fringe conservatives, it is in fact a project of a major think tank, decades in the making.
It comes out of
#030 - "Marjoe" (1972) with Megan Goodwin
The 1972 film Marjoe won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. And then it spent a long time having largely been forgotten until it was restored and rereleased in 2005.
Marjoe is an intimate look at the life of Marjoe Gortner, who rose to fame in the charismatic evangelical revival world as the world's youngest preacher until he was ultimately unmasked as a fraud, trained (often through
#029 - Thou Shalt Not Violate the 1st Amendment
Well it's been a heck of a week of bad news, and even before the Supreme Court decided the the president was king, Kelly and John decided to look at two news stories likely to play into next year's Supreme Court decisions: Louisiana's new Ten Commandment school mandate and Oklahoma's new requirement to include the Bible in its public school curriculum.
On the surface, both of these measures are c
#028 - Dr. Matthew Taylor on An Appeal to Heaven, Alito, and the NAR
We're back for season two, and we're kicking it off by talking to Dr. Matthew D. Taylor about that weird An Appeal to Heaven flag that got Justice Samuel Alito in so much trouble!
Taylor holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies and Muslim-Christian Relations from Georgetown University and an M.A. in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary. His book, Scripture People: Salafi Muslims in Evangelical Chri
#027 - DeSantis v Satan
Last month, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill authorizing Florida school districts and charter schools to adopt a policy for chaplains “to provide support, services, and programs to students"...provided those chaplains aren't Satanists.
"We're not playing those games in Florida. That is not a religion," DeSantis said of Satanism. "That is not qualifying to be able to participate in this.
#026 - Dr. Richard Newton
Dr. Richard Newton is an Associate Professor and Undergraduate Director in the Religious Studies department at the University of Alabama
From the University's website:
Dr. Newton's areas of interest include theory and method in the study of religion, African American history, the New Testament in Western imagination, American cultural politics, and pedagogy in religious studies. His research explo
#025 - Eclipse Day Special! - featuring journalist Emily McFarlan Miller
It's Eclipse Day, so we're releasing a day early!
The solar eclipse that will be visible for much of the United States today had evoked all kinds of reactions, from overbooked hotels in wholly unprepared corners of the country to end times zealots declaring it a warning from God.
Eclipses have always been a source of wonder and religious interpretation, and if Marjorie Taylor Greene's Twitter feed
#024 - Simulation Theory, or Young Earth Creationism for Atheists
In 2003, Oxford University philosophy professor Nick Bostrom published a paper titled Are You Living in a Computer Simulation, thus giving rise to the modern incarnation of Simulation Theory, which posits that our experienced reality is actually the product of an advanced (possibly future-self) civilization running a simulation experiment.
But the paper on might have been written off as a useful t
#023 - Sarah Posner
Sarah Posner has been covering the Christian right and Christian Nationalism for more than a decade. A regular contributor to MSNBC, her works has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Salon, The Nation, The American Prospect, Al Jazeera America, and many other publications.
Posner is the author of 2008's God's Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Value
#022 - God's Army with Amanda Moore
For the last couple years, Amanda Moore has spent her time covering the far right on her Substack The Turtle Diaries
Amanda infiltrated the far right during the final year of the Trump administration and has written about her experiences in publications like The Nation.
She recently went to the Texas border to cover the arrival of "God's Army" - a group of truckers (possibly) who took it upon them
#021 - Dr. Nicole Symmonds
This week, Kelly and John talk to Dr. Nicole Symmonds, who works as an Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics and, it happens, used to work a few cubicles down from John at Beliefnet a decade and a half or so ago.
Dr. Symmonds' work sits at the intersection of Christian ethics and women, gender, and sexuality studies. She explores Black women’s embodiment, particularly the practices of liberative
#020 - Dr. Judith Weisenfeld
As a nice break from all the doom and gloom in the world (and the depressing stuff we often cover), we decided to ask the wonderful Dr. Judith Weisenfeld to come talk to us about her life and work.
Judith Weisenfeld is the Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor of Religion at Princeton University, Associated Faculty in the Department of African American Studies and the Program in Gender and S
#019 - The Cult of Peloton?
Is Peloton a cult?
Well, Kelly owns one, so she is uniquely qualified to answer.
In all seriousness, a Google search for terms like "peloton cult" or "fitness cult" yields a lot of results.
Fairly or not, the fitness equipment company Peloton has been accused of fostering cult-like behavior in its customers. And the same can be said for branded workout companies like CrossFit and SoulCycle.
But wh
#018 - David Feltmate - The Simpsons, Religion, and Other Stuff
34 years ago, in December of 1989, Fox aired Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire, a Simpsons Christmas special, the de facto pilot to the subsequent primetime sitcom, and a cultural phenomenon was born.
To people of a certain age, The Simpsons is part of the cultural DNA. And as an animated sitcom, it had unique license to explore elements of American culture that no other series could. And one of t
#017 - Ghosts of Christmas Past - with Sara Cleto and Brittany Warman
But Scrooge was all the worse for this. It thrilled him with a vague uncertain horror, to know that behind the dusky shroud there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him, while he, though he stretched his own to the utmost, could see nothing but a spectral hand and one great heap of black.
So Charles Dickens described Ebenezer Scrooge's encounter with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in his be
#016 - A Brief History of the War on Christmas
It's December, which means it's time for everybody's racist uncle's favorite holiday tradition, the War on Christmas.
Every year, sure as silver bells chime and lit wreathes line the streets of America's most aggressively white suburbs, Fox News delights eager viewers by trotting out this year's new battlefront narrative: Gay nutcrackers at Target! Insufficiently Christmassy Starbucks cup! Liberal
#015 - Unraveling the Thanksgiving Myth - with Dr. David J. Silverman
What better way to celebrate Thanksgiving than to have Kelly and John ruin it for you?
Just kidding! We're not here to cancel Thanksgiving and we hope you have a lovely one.
But holidays are weird things - we often celebrate them without really examining why, or how we arrived at the myths and rituals that emanate from their core.
And Thanksgiving is, in many ways, our strangest holiday - a secula
#014 - Mike Johnson - Christian Nationalist Wolf in Normal Guy Clothing
Mike Johnson is the new Speaker of the House or Representatives.
And what the media seems to think you should know about him is that he's very nice, he's smart. he's well-respected by his colleagues, he's personally liked by Democrats, and he's conservative Christian. Oh, and did we mention he's nice? Mike Johnson - real nice guy!
What we think you should know about him, however, is that he is now
Halloween Special - NEVERMORE: Poe, Pain, and "The Fall of the House of Usher"
Jenn Tisdale joins John and Kelly to talk about Edgar Allan Poe and the new Netflix series from Mike Flanagan The Fall of the House of Usher
Like he did for Shirley Jackson with The Haunting of Hill House, Flanagan's series remixes and reimagines much of Poe's work and life story to create something haunting, timely, and revelatory, exposing themes in Poe's work and digging into the author's sense
#013 - Religion of Fear - Horror in Conservative Evangelical America - with Jason Bivins
Jason Bivins is a specialist in religion and American culture an is the author of 2008's Religion of Fear: The Politics of Horror in Conservative Evangelicalism.
He has also published multiple articles, review essays, and occasional pieces on religion, politics, and culture in the United States.
His most recent book is Embattled America: The Rise of Anti-Politics and America’s Obsession with Reli
Midnight Mass Rerelease - From Hard to Believe 10/20/2021 (RAIN DELAY FILLER CONTENT!!)
Mike Flanagan's "Midnight Mass" revisits a lot of the themes of much of his previous work: grief, death, trauma, loss (and you can listen to our discussion of his "Haunting Of" Netflix series here).
But it also covers some a lot of new ground, including the complicated relationship between human beings and the religions they build. It is a show grounded as much in humanity as it is in horror, and
(Emergency Alert) Chit-Chat Episode #5 - The 5G FEMA Zombie Endtimes
If you've been feeling a little off lately, it's probably because FEMA recently tested a new emergency alert system and it activated the nanotech in your covid vaccine and now you're a zombie.
As least, that's what a disturbing number of people on the right thought would happen.
And maybe some of them still think it DID happen?
You can find all about that in Matt Shuham's piece in the Huffington P
#012 - The Power of Christ Compels You - Catholic Horror with Matthew J. Cressler
Horror would be nothing without Catholic horror. From crucifixes to demon possession, from Dante's "Inferno" to the "The Nun II", Catholic imagery and imagination have shaped horror for centuries.
But the intersection of Catholicism and horror has a dark real-world connection, as well. The Hero Priest trope at once masks and alludes to a hidden legacy of clerical sexual abuse, and the threat of he
Weekend Chit-Chat Episode #4 -The White Christianity to Western Chauvinism Pipeline
In this Weekend Chit-Chat, we discuss:
How the Klan of 1920s used mainstream acceptance and the mantle of Christianity to push their agenda in the center of American life, and we ask how the descendants of that group, like the Proud Boys, have altered those tactics in ways that seem radically different on the surface but maybe aren't so different after all.
We talk absurd memes, the "it's just a j
#011 - God Has Forsaken Ashley: Chick Tracts ‐ with Chelsey Weber-Smith
If you happen to fall within a certain (fairly broad) age range, there is a very good chance that somewhere, at some point, you have encountered Chick Tracts.
Jack Chick's horrific, over-the-top, feverish warnings about what happens if you don't accept Christ before you DIE!!!! have literally littered city streets and coffee shop tabletops for decades.
Chick Tracts are outlandish and, if you don't
#010 - Religion and The Labor Movement - with Dr. Heath Carter
For many, Labor Day is not much more than the end of summer movie season, a reason to have a cookout, or the symbolic beginning of the school year. It's the holiday we talk least about, in large part because the labor movement is one of the most underexamined areas of American history.
So in honor of Labor Day, Kelly and John talked to Dr. Heath Carter, who has written extensively about the someti
#009 - Deus Ex Machina - Jesus Chatbots and the Religion of A.I.
Did you know A.I is not just the title of one of the best movies of the 21st century - it's a also a thing that's making a lot of news??
Well, we did, because we're very young and hip and with it.
In this episode, we consider the implication of some of the emerging areas of A.I. - like ChatGPT - on religion.
First, Kelly spent some time chatting with Jesus on two different platforms - a text based
#008 - Solomon Missouri - Twitter's Pastor
It's Kelly's birthday (John's was yesterday...) and so we decided to talk to one of her favorites - Solomon Missouri, known to those in the know as Twitter's Pastor.
In his own words, Rev. Solomon Missouri's ministry focuses on sexuality and spirituality outside and beyond church walls. We talk about how he stumbled into his role as Twitter's favorite spiritual leader, where Christianity is going,
#007 - Preparing for War - Brad Onishi on the threat of Christian Nationalism
Dr. Bradley Onishi is the author of the recent Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism and What Comes Next as well as the co-host of the podcast Straight White American Jesus, which focuses on the the state of Christian Nationalism from a variety of angles.
He joined John and Kelly to talk about his book, his experience growing up in California and converting to eva
Weekend Chit-Chat Episode #3 - Your True Authentic Self
On this chit-chat, we try to define what we mean when we say "authentic", what is "the true self", and we are all so prone to dividing religion into "real" and "fake".
Also - fitness cults, the console wars, Coke and Pepsi, and Haruki Murakami.
For this episode, we looked at work by Chrissy Stroop (https://religiondispatches.org/christian-nationalism-is-authentically-christian-and-according-to-a-n
#006 - Dr. Shreena Gandhi - Yoga, White Supremacy, and Caste
Shreena Gandhi is a part of the Religious Studies Department at Michigan State University, where is primarily teaches classes on religion and race in the Americas.
She is currently finishing up edits on a manuscript, A Cultural History of Yoga in the United States, which looks at the impacts of race, gender and class on how yoga is practiced and commodified in religious and secular spaces.
And she
#005 - Is July 4th a Religious Holiday?
This week, Kelly and John take on July 4th and ask if it's possible to wrestle it away from the darker side of American history as well as its increasingly Christian Nationalist connotations.
Even though (or maybe because) America is not, in fact, a Christian nation and has no official religious identity, is July 4th a religious holiday? Has the project of state that (purportedly) guarantees freed
#004 - UFOs as Religion - with Toby Ball
Toby Ball is the host and creator of the series Strange Arrivals, a production of iHeart Radio an Aaron Mahnke's Grim and Mild.
The recently-concluded third season of his show looks at UFO researchers who developed theories to explain the phenomenon and the consequences those theories had for people who believed they had experienced the paranormal.
In the finale, Toby explores the ways in which be
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