Does God have a recipe? That’s the first line of the blurb of Holy Food: How Cults, Communes, and Religious Movements Influenced What We Eat: An American History by independent food historian, Christina Ward. Ward’s survey of American religious groups and cults through the foods they grow, source, and prepare leads into an in-depth discussion about cults and high-demand groups that use food, and food restrictions, as a method for control. 

Masculinity, in all its wounded and preening anxiety, is the perennial currency of American populism. America’s foremost public historian on fitness and education, Natalia Petrzela, returns to the pod to discuss her recent study, with Ilyse Hogue, of the appeal RFK Jr. has with young men, and what progressives can learn from it. 

Documentarian of the uncanny, Brad Abrahams, takes our correspondent seat this week to explain how Shirley MacLaine, Burt Lancaster, Andy Kaufman, Charlie Mingus, and tens of thousands of Americans got drawn into the morbid healing craze, psychic surgery, that kicked off in the 1970s, and which may have seen its last hurrah with the imprisonment of Brazil’s John of God.

Derek and Matthew discuss recent confessions of faith by Joe Rogan, Russell Brand, and Andrew Huberman.

To get an insider’s view of the Conscious Life Expo, Julian donned his gray baseball camp and grabbed his recorder to do his own research on the latest iteration of conference room conspirituality.

Brad Onishi of Straight White American Jesus sits down with Matthew to analyze the debut of “America’s Bishop,” Joseph Strickland, on the CPAC stage, where he blessed MAGA Christian Nationalism with his purple finery and endless torrent of anti-choice bafflegab. 

We’re joined by science journalist Tara Healle, whose work has appeared in Scientific American, NY Times, Washington Post, and more. She’s also the Infectious Disease Core Topic Leader at the Association of Health Journalists. Her work covering the pandemic, vaccines, and the Long COVID connection, which combines reporting on the latest science as well as writing from patients and patient advocates, has been indispensable in understanding this spectrum of diseases.

Julian sits down with returning guest, Dr. Jonathan Howard, the author of We Want Them Infected. They talk about Vinay Prasad (among others) who play a sensationalist science-distortion role in the digital economy and their connections to libertarian think tanks like AIER (architects of the Great Barrington Declaration) and Brownstone Institute—who’s founder, Jeffrey Tucker, wants to repeal laws around child labor and underage smoking.

Katherine Stewart is an investigative reporter and author who has covered religious liberty, politics, policy, and education for over a decade. Her journalism appears in the NY Times, NBC, the New Republic, and the New York Review of Books. Author of the book, The Power Worshippers, Stewart joins us today to discuss the dangers of growing Christian Nationalism in America.

An anti-vax, COVID-grievance, climate-science denying, communism panic-generating film by Mikki Willis just won “Best Documentary Feature” at the Santa Monica International Film Festival. Julian attended the festival in order to track how Willis’s latest paranoid pseudomentary, “Plandemic 3: The Great Awakening,” was platformed at this annual fete held in affluent Santa Monica.

Dr. Jen Gunter is an OB/GYN who has been offering actual women’s health information through a solidly feminist lens for decades as the author of several books, including 2019’s The Vagina Bible, 2021’s The Menopause Manifesto, and her newest book, which dropped just 3 weeks ago: Blood: The science, medicine, and mythology of menstruation.

Author, lawyer, and social impact consultant Dax-Devlon Ross takes Derek on a journey through the life of a DEI facilitator—and corrects the bias and misinformation pundits like Chris Rufo and Bari Weiss spread as gospel.

This episode has been brewing for some time. This week we ask: which hole is coffee really supposed to go in? Because, in the contrarian and conspiratorial wellness world, a growing number of influencers advocate for your morning java to go where the sun doesn't shine. If that's not alarming enough, they claim coffee enemas will treat autism, cancer, parasites, and much more.

Mallory DeMille is here to finally flush out this nonsense.

From the Supreme Court to Project 2025, reactionary Catholics are on the frontlines of this year’s war on democracy. Many of them bend the knee to an Italian redpilled Vatican diplomat: Cardinal Carlo Maria Viganò. 

Taylor Lorenz joins to discuss reporting in an age of conspiracy theories and online trolling, the challenges of covering long Covid in an age of overwhelming health misinformation, and what it’s like to be extremely online. 

Julian checks in on some of the legacy conspiritualists profiled in our book—Russell Brand, Dr. Christiane Northrup, Mikki Willis, JP Sears, and Lorie Ladd—to see what their online messaging around Christmas and the New Year tells us. 

Cat Bohannon joins to discuss her book, Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution.

Dr. Taslim Alani-Verjee discusses how it feels to see her community drawn into culture war territory over sex ed and gender issues.

To help us understand MAGA and beyond, we're joined by journalist, professor, and documentarian, Jeff Sharlet. His books, The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War and The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power are field guides for understanding modern America.

David Lesondak breaks down what fascia is, how it functions in the body, and why fascia pseudoscience by the likes of Human Garage is so dangerous.