It Could Happen Here - Wild Faith: A Conversation with Talia Lavin

Episode Date: September 27, 2024

Molly Conger sits down with Talia Lavin to talk about her new book, Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America. Pre-order Wild Faith now, available in hardcover, audiobook, and e-book October 15. Pre- order: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/talia-lavin/wild-faith/9780306829192/ Talia's Newsletter: https://buttondown.com/theswordandthesandwichSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Call Zone Media. Hello and welcome back to It Could Happen Here, your daily dose of the horrors that are in fact already happening all around us. occasional host, Molly Conger, and I am delighted to be joined today by the critically acclaimed author of Culture Warlords, journalist, researcher, sword enthusiast, sandwich expert, and my friend, Talia Levin. Hello! Yeah, I once introduced myself at an event as a sandwich historian, which I think was the pinnacle of my public speaking career, but this is the second pinnacle. Hey, Molly, what's up the second pinnacle hey molly what's up thank

you so much for coming on today to talk with me about your new book wild faith it is coming out in just a few weeks uh october 15th right yeah wild faith how the christian right is taking over america not the terrible b movie entitled wild faith yeah the se SEO is scrambled on that one, but the book, however, is very good. I mean, first of all, I just want to say, like, so I've been reading the galley copy that you sent me, which honestly made me feel very fancy. I've never received a galley copy of a book that's not out yet before. So I felt, you know, kind of a broadcasting professional with my special book. It's an exclusive club. You're one of like five people that's read it. Oh my God. That is, that's very exclusive. Yeah. Well, it's about to become a lot less exclusive. So feel special while you can.

Right. But I realized while I was reading it, you know, I have my little sticky tabs cause I'm reading a lot more books lately. Regrettably, not, not a big time book guy. It's always reading. I read a lot of court documents but i'm reading a lot of books right now for research for my show and it's like on my little sticky tabs and as i'm reading it i realize i'm not marking passages that i think would be useful for us to talk about in this interview i'm just putting my little tabs on passages that just like punched me in the gut you know uh sorry for punching you no but i mean i mean with the with the power of your words because like a lot of what i'm reading sucks it's just

like i spent all day yesterday reading like 25 year old issues of resistance which was the quarterly magazine for a white power music label so this i mean it's a real departure so you know really just reveling in the richness of the prose and the fact that it you know didn't want to kill me yeah no i also have experienced neo-nazi research fatigue and also just like the sort of relentless grimness of plowing through these like fundamentally hostile texts and also like academic texts which are difficult in their own way i try to write excessively or just like excitingly i find that a lot of especially non-fiction sort of journalism me uh books tend to be a little dry and I'm like, let's not be dry.

Let's be like spicy and you know, like form and function, like you're more likely to be moved by a message if you find the writing compelling, you know, it's just, you have such a way with words. I mean, you know, this, you're a professional writer. I don't want to embarrass you on the show. So if you like twirling my hair, like, yes, I do write for a living. If you'll indulge me, if it's legal, if the publisher will allow this. I just want to read

this passage from the introduction that I think is a good jumping off point, and it was one of the first things I marked because I was just like, oh, hell yeah, we're getting into this. There's good words in here. Okay. The Christian right is a force in American politics and has been for decades, half a century to be precise, during which it has steadily gained power. It started in schoolrooms, continued in courtrooms, and perseveres with the aid of people who are perfectly willing to call in bomb threats to hospitals and attempt to overturn elections. It features self-proclaimed prophets with a distinct interest in politics, newly minted apostles with very definite ideas about spiritual battle and its earthly components,

and pastors eager to usher in the end of the world. Its adherents have hymns and devotionals and speak in tongues on occasion, and the showiest among them are known to march their cities blowing ram's horns in an effort to topple, as Joshua once did, the wicked cities of the world. They have their own insular world, their own media apparatus. They have legislators who give fire and brimstone speeches from the badly carpeted rooms where laws are made. They have lawyers, too.

And in case the lawyers fail, there's always the promise of congregations that might coalesce into mobs or arsonists whose burning holy zeal coalesces into the tiny pinpoint of a Molotov cocktail. And I knew from the intro that we were in for a ride. Yeah, it's like cast of characters, the worst people ever, ever but like let's write about it in an exciting way i i think that one of the themes of the book is really how these extra legal extremist movements like the anti-abortion terror movement and the legal framework of a movement work together

i actually initially heard about this from a friend who was talking about how like during the gay rights movement, you had sort of the ACT UP, well, demonstrations, the die-ins, and then you had the sort of like more respectably coded, like gay people who, you know, were talking to the government and trying to get elected and, you know, really trying to influence research and that every movement needs sort of a radical outside and then a respectable inside. And I'm like, oh, this works in like theocratic movements too, where you have like this, you know, fringe that's burning down clinics and then people steadily working for 50 years to like ban abortion. And they have the same DNA and they have the same dna and they have the same

goals they just go about it differently but complement each other and i think that's like a running theme in the book is that like you have lawyers and you have legislators and then you have mobs and they're sort of all working towards the same goals. And that's really what we're seeing, I think, from the Christian right after decades of building power. Yeah, one of the notes that I wrote down in that vein while I was reading was that, you know, the Christian right drives its power across a spectrum, right, from the clinic bomber to the senator. But it's not, you know, you might say it's two sides of the same coin. But to me, it looks like this isn't two different spheres of power or two sort of separate but coexisting or comorbid ideologies.

They're just different numbers on the same dial, right? It's turning up and turning down. Yeah, it's like the hand that lights the torch and the hand that puts it to the, you know, pyre. They perform different functions functions but they have really the same goals and if like me you view stripping half the populace of its bodily autonomy imposing a theocracy hounding queer people out of public life slash into death as fundamentally violent goals yeah i don't think there's like a respectable iteration necessarily there's just cosplaying respectability and right you can say it with a tie on on the senate floor but it's it's the same message yeah and i think so much of our media apparatus and governmental apparatus is really sort of views like, again, this like form and function.

Right. Like if you are if you say something politely, it doesn't really matter what you're saying. Like if you say something with a suit on in the register of like, you know, in a calm sort of Mike Pence-ian Rush Limbaugh on decaf, as he called himself, boy. Jesus, did he say that? Yeah, that's what he called himself when he did a like evangelical radio show. Yeah, no, no matter what you say, as long as you are like white and you say it politely,

like this is fundamentally sort of fine. And then if you look at it from you know a step or two back and you're like no actually no matter how politely you say it this is like a violent deeply unpopular theocratic agenda that like fundamentally is incompatible with multiracial democracy i also think and i keep running into this like well-meaning liberals being like but isn't there a separation of church and state i'm like i don't know do you fucking think there is in alabama do you think there is in arkansas and all of these you know in texas like all of these figures are like we're christians we're making laws for jesus and we have covenant marriages and we want

you to too yeah like we're gonna outlaw divorce because of god and like you know women dying of sepsis in hospital parking lots is what jesus wants and like and i experienced this i think you probably have too when you like report on you know zealots and extremists. And people inevitably wind up, like, measuring other people's wheat by their own bushel. In other words, they're like, they can't really believe this stuff. And it's like, no, they really do. They can't really have these goals. First of all, they do, but also, does it matter? Right. I mean, the question of, like, impact versus intent first of all it's i think it's perfectly possible to be both a grifter and a true believer at the same time that's just synergy

baby yeah and and also fundamentally this is a world premised on grievance where it's this idea that like the world has got one over on you and so in a sense grift is just like well you know the world's corrupt and i'm fighting a righteous cause so what does it matter the ethics that i sort of skimp on along the way i mean once you've amped the stakes up to we are fighting the literal devil and everyone who's getting in my way is animated by actual demons from hell i mean the stakes couldn't be higher so you do what you have to do exactly and it's this theory of power and so then people sort of standing outside of that paradigm who are not keyed into this idea of like we're in an epical spiritual battle like and we must create like a kingdom of christ on earth in america to win against the devil and then people outside being

like you're hypocrites and it's like it's not a valid criticism to them because they're like first of all you're not like a christian if you're a liberal but also like you're not on our level like we're fighting lucifer and you're probably a stand like on his team if you oppose us so you know a multitude of uh apparent hypocrisies can be excused by by the idea that like this is a holy war and in in war there's like all kinds of apparent behavior that's okay they're doing holy war crimes yeah exactly i mean this is why for example you see a lot of like prominent female figures from Phyllis Schlafly, you know, in the 70s and 80s to like the trad wives now. And it's like, how does this fit in with your overall sort of idea that women should be chaste and submissive and meek and silent? I mean, first of all, trad wife stuff is often fetish that's fetish content but yeah i mean phyllis phyllis schlafly made a living professionally saying that women shouldn't make a living professionally but that contradiction doesn't matter yeah i mean i think i i call them valkyries for feminine submission uh in the book yeah i mean at the end of the day like if you believe that this is your your calling your

mission you know your mission field in the service of the Lord to undo the demonic sort of influence of feminism, like, of course you're going to speak. You've been moved by God to do so. Yeah. And, and of course,

like female leaders within the evangelical community, like sort of minority Republicans can be like knocked off their pedestal quicker and easier but like they they still can come out and exist and and testify and schlafly throughout her very long prolific and lucrative career you know was like i'm a housewife with six kids and that was her that was how she defined herself even while being this incredibly prominent figure and one of the sort of key architects of the current Christian right coalition of right-wing Catholics. She and Paul Weyrich and Leonard Leo and some other right-wing Catholics brought these Catholic values of being all about abortion to the evangelical right, which prior to the 70s was like, that's a weird Catholic thing. We don't really even care.

I wanted to talk about that. So I'm not sure how sort of common knowledge this is, but the Protestant Christian community in the United States did not care about abortion until the 70s. It was not an issue in their communities. They were generally pro-abortion. They were, you know,

the Baptists were in favor of Roe v. Wade. Yeah, the fucking Southern Baptist Convention came out in like 74, I think it was, and was like, yeah, we approve Roe v. Wade. So it's not like, you know, opposition to abortion is baked into Christianity. It is baked into the American evangelical Christianity of post-1975 or so because of this sort of conscious, cynical, political decision. And that, I think, is so interesting because, you know, when you get into this conversation of, well, what are their deeply held beliefs and do they really believe it and does that matter? But we can pin down the moment they started believing this and we know why. And it's segregation yeah i mean and first of all i i would say like people can still like this is like several generations later of like constant barrages of extremely violent propaganda against

abortion so right so the belief is sincere today but you could look at it where it was born yeah exactly you could it should have been it was born. Yeah, exactly. You can, it should have been aborted. Right. Yeah, no, it definitely should not have been carried to term,

but like it's, it's crazy. And in addition to moi's book, Randall Balmer does some really good coverage of this. So the sort of general arc is like pre sort of 1970s. You had this like generally conservative population of southern baptists who were like on board with mccarthyism hated the godless reds but kind of viewed politics as like worldly and not really their sphere um and were not particularly politically engaged. And then Brown versus Board of Education passes.

Immediately, the white Christian populace just disinvest, flees from the public schools, leaving multiple counties in the South without functionally any public education at all. And this mushroom after rain kind of like patch of patches of parochial schools with church or Christian in the name start popping up. And they're all white schools. They're segregation academies is the sort of term of art for these. And they're explicitly under a Christian aegis. They're religious schools.

They're tax exempt as a result. ages, their religious schools are tax exempt as a result. And then in like the late 60s and 70s, the government was like, um, you can't be tax exempt and like considered a charitable organization if you are segregated and don't have any Black students or minority students. And that is what woke the sleeping dragon of the Christian right. Really, like, you know, get your filthy government hands off our tax exemptions. Like, they just went, you know, nuts. They were really mobilized. You know, like, these are the people who are, like, throwing tomatoes at ruby bridges. Like, you know, they're really politically motivated for the first time because they're

experiencing like a consequence for segregation and so this is when like jerry falwell and ralph reed and you know james dobson start sort of coming forward and being more prominent. And then by the sort of mid-70s to 80s, you had these like savvier political operators coming out and saying, hey guys, segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever is like, it's great that it really fired y'all up,

but it has sort of a limited appeal. And they shot George Wallace, it's over. Yeah, like there's gonna be a ceiling on that. And a shot George Wallace. It's over. Yeah. Like there's going to be a ceiling on that. And a lot of people think you suck. So why don't you get in on the ground on this new civil rights struggle abortion where you can fight for the unborn who conveniently will never disagree with you. Right. Their voices don't have to be centered here. We can speak for them. I mean, they're the most convenient political constituency in history. Right, because they're so innocent

and you can't milkshake duck a fetus. He's not even here. Yeah, he can't talk. He's not going to say shit. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a

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writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to the leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible.

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Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story as part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, I mean, that's like the very capsule history. and then of course it becomes this idea of like the moral majority and we're the guardians of america's soul and we're gonna get really weird about sex also it's just like if you strip it all the way down to the studs like the core of this is women are bleeding to death in hospital parking lots because Jerry Falwell didn't want to

pay his taxes or stop being racist yeah I mean that's not fair no people sometimes like are a little skeptical when I'm like all of the hatreds are interconnected but then you look at like concrete historical examples of like this world historical wave of misogyny i mean it's not that this population was like weird about sex or weird about women like to start with i mean maybe they would have gotten here a different way but that's how we got here yeah we got here by just like no we will pay taxes on our segregation academies bob jones university's interracial dating ban is perfectly great and we're gonna mobilize about it and so what you have then now is just like 50 years of political lockstep because and and you see this in like other religious communities i mean like i know

like it's sort of notorious how much corruption slides by in New York because like the Hasidic communities vote as a block. Like it is very useful to have a congregation that all votes the same way. It's politically useful. I mean, what other populations can you get together once a week as a captive audience and speak to with authority? If you can mobilize those people. And that's what Jerry Falwell saw, right? It's like this is a great way to get a lot of people to vote the way i want them to vote yeah and you know the church has always been like a really prominent institution in american civil society especially

as the rest of sort of civil society has fallen away and degraded like churches are some of the only social outlets that americans have and what's interesting when you talk to evangelicals and ex-evangelicals is just like being a republican is like part of their religious identity in a major way it's like this is how you vote and this is you know how you dress and this is how you go to church and and and so on but like the idea of being a democrat is like not only, you know, a little bit out of step with your community, it's heretical.

I mean, that's how the demons get in. Yeah, yeah, demoncrats. I mean, I'm like, yeah, it's stupid, but it's also like half of the people saying demoncrats like literally mean Democrats are aligned with Lucifer. And I think that's a point that I don't want to get lost on the listener. This, you know. This idea that people literally have demons in them, that demons are active in the world, that demons are motivating the actions of their enemies is real for them.

And I'm not saying that to be derisive or, you know, it's real. It's real. It is an animating factor for a lot of these people. And that's hard to wrap your mind around. I mean, I struggle with the idea that that is real for them. But like, that's how you know whether or not they're calling it demons that the existence of some sort of ontological evil that is coming for their children and what and like once you arrive at the place where like where you understand that that's real for them their actions make more sense like they're not behaving irrationally if you if you truly believe that these things were happening you'd act crazy too yeah mean, it's really hard to get people to step outside their own worldviews and in both directions, right? Like I don't believe that demons are, you know, abroad in the world and motivating like every element of political action to someone who-

I'm starting to see them some places, but generally no. To someone who does, my viewpoint is incomprehensible and vice versa so i think part of i mean not that i'm like one of those people that's like polarization is the big problem like you know as opposed to anything with like concrete policy like you know where it's like the big problem is we all don't like each other enough and i'm like no the big problem is like people are espousing policies that will cause deaths and like also that people like believe their political enemies are like literally agents of satan i would say is like a bigger problem than polarization and the the abstract but yeah i mean this this doctrine of

sort of spiritual warfare which if you like google it it's just like oh this is the mindset and it's like you the listener to it could happen here like you've been drafted into the spirit war from like birth. Congratulations, private. You're probably on the side of the devil. So good job. I mean, I don't know. Like a lot of Americans believe in angels and demons and that's fine. But it's like when that starts impinging on the political sphere in a very serious way,

that starts impinging on the political sphere in a very serious way. It's like, how far would you go if you believed your opponent was under the thrall of, like, Satan? You would go pretty damn far. Beth, I mean, that's why, you know, clinic bombings were, and I guess are on the rise again, like these arsons of clinics. It's not like other kinds of crime in my mind, right? It's not a crime of passion or an interpersonal dispute. It is people who have been motivated by this belief that this is a place where a genocide is happening, that there's a Holocaust going on in there, that people are ripping, you know, actual living babies limb from limb. And if you really did believe that, their actions make sense. And that's why it happens so often, right? Because these people are motivated by this belief that God commands them to take this action yeah i mean there's

dual element to that i mean first of all absolutely yes like i've read some anti-abortion terror manuals speaking of extremely unpleasant research and it's just really like these people are murderers it's mass murderers like you're like killing hitler right and wouldn't you wouldn't you kill baby hitler exactly hypothetical about about baby hitler in like a country-wide scale and um when specific abortion doctors have been mentioned in right-wing media those guys end up dead and that's not a coincidence so there's there's that element of it which is the majority of it it's huge but there's also this idea of um demonic geography where like demons can possess sort of places

like abortion clinics or institutions like planned parenthood or even the democratic party which you know i read a lot of uh demonology books and like taxonomies of demons pigs in the parlor was this really big hit in like the 70s and it's been like reissued and reissued and millions of copies and it's just like on one level it's really compelling because it's like are you tired are you sad are you feeling clumsy do you have like persistent stomach aches's demons. And here's how you deal with that. And in a country with shitty healthcare, I can totally see why someone who's really depressed might go to an exorcist or a deliverance minister, which is the Protestant.

If you'll try anything, and this guy's going to do it for free. I watched so many videos of deliverance ministers doing their thing, and it's like crazy it's like people you know are just like sitting there and they're like people praying over them and screaming in their face like and and they wind up vomiting and crying and it's all very like intense and you know if you think about it from a placebo effect perspective for like one

second you're like obviously this person would feel a weight lifted from them they've had this ecstatic experience and this isn't the majority of america this is about 14 of america identifies as white evangelical so many protestants it's still so many people because people keep asking me like how many people really believe shit like this and i'm like well about 80 to 90 percent of like people who identify as white evangelical protestants espouse most of these beliefs so that's like that's like 30 million people yeah yeah and then you add in the catholic right which is getting weirder every day yeah jd vance i hate women women exist to reproduce breed you filthy sow but like even beyond the adult catholic

convert style weirdness like right-wing catholics are an integral part of the christian right like amy coney barrett you know antonin scalia that kind of thing um that's another bunch of millions so this reactionary force has like numerically significant constituency on the other hand it definitely punches way above its weight in terms of right they have an outsized influence of both you know on the legislative floor and when it comes to you know who's racking up the most bodies yeah and also even like the culture wars right like the the sort of loudest culture warriors tend to at least come from like a background of i'm speaking for god or christ is king or whatever it is like how many times have you and i encountered that in extremist context but also

like the sort of more mainstream me, what the fuck the mainstream is. I don't know. It's full of piss, but like the more mainstream me, like Christian grifter, right. They come from this, this I'm speaking from my faith.

These are my religious principles, but like it is worth noting again, and just to, just to rewind in our conversation, but like full concept of religious liberty and religious freedom. Absolutely. full concept of religious liberty and religious freedom absolutely was like an ad slogan coined in the 70s around segregation right religious freedom to do what i mean it's like states right states rights to do what right yeah and like answer the question yeah it's it's religious

freedom to have segregated schools is the answer to that and you still see echoes of that with either still religious schools that um can't accept federal grant money because they don't let students be gay right like it's not racial segregation anymore but they are you know refusing to admit gay students and that is a violation of of federal civil rights law yeah but that's where i mean that's where that slogan started and then it it blossomed to include, basically, like, a gay person came into my shop. Except they didn't. Right, I know, there's no standing. Right, like, Christian right theocracy.

Because you have these, like, absolutely batshit religious zealots. I mean, Amy Coney Barrett is, like, from a cult. And in this unaccountable body, they're passing unpopular theocratic principles that the majority of the American public disagrees with. in public uh disagrees with but like specifically what they are trying to enact and what they are what they are enacting is this theocratic agenda where like the government is in your bedroom the government is in your doctor's office like the government is sniffing your panties and it's it's gross and it's upsetting and fundamentally like theocracies are just very famously all up in your junk like they're obsessed with like controlling and censoring sexuality of all kinds but particularly female sexuality and queer sexuality like snuff those out and so that's part of the reason why so many abortion

arguments like first of all you have the like the you're murdering this cluster of cells which is a full human baby like do you remember that article in the guardian a couple of years ago that like showed the actual size of like fetuses at various stages of development and it was like they were just like so little like these little like little fingernails yeah and it doesn't look like a tiny baby doll that's just very small yeah exactly it's not like a mini baby like in like tides of gore it's like literally like a tiny cluster of of cells so anti-abortion propaganda like you are not immune to propaganda it has like wormed its way into the popular consciousness just by virtue of its ubiquity and constant repetition being the key to successful

propaganda but so many of these arguments in addition to this this abortion is murder stuff is also just like you should have kept your legs closed right this is a this is a consequence god did this to you yeah like sex for your sins a mortal sin and sex should be punished and they must be doing it wrong like i'm like why do you want sex to have consequences and be punished the like intensity of the misogyny around purity culture was so intense hey guys i'm kate max you might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories,

their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Blacklit is for the page turners,

for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to

life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola, mi gente. It's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing

their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral.

Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned silicon valley into a playground for billionaires from the chaotic world of generative ai to the destruction of google search better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose this season i'm going to be joined by everyone from nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and i'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible.

Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God, things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel.

I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian, Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian, Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy

and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzales wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace,

the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I wanted to ask you about the experience of writing the book, right? So, you know, your first book, Culture Warlords, was traumatizing for you to craft, right? Because you had to spend so much time in these digital spaces, in some cases, physical spaces with, you know, neo-Nazis, 4chan guys, you know, aspiring terrorists. And so that's traumatic to experience, you know, but largely that And so that's traumatic to experience, you know, but largely that experience was alone, like at your computer screen, sort of consuming this

content that was eroding your soul. But the second half of this book is about child abuse, right? And like you interviewed people who grew up in this movement about their lives, about their husbands raping them and their parents beating them as children. How do those experiences compare? And like, what was that? I mean, how did you prepare to do that? I don't even know how I would begin to do that with care. I mean, I think my goal going in is like, I'm not going to betray you. Like that was my guiding ethos of just like, I view like your trust in me as a sacred thing,

not like sacred in any formal religious sense, but just like, you know, I view your trust in me as something that I hold very dearly. It's very important. I'm going to treat your pain with as much gentleness and respect as I can. And like I interviewed over a hundred people largely about their experiences with experiencing child abuse in an evangelical milieu, as is laid out with painstaking instructions and like all of these parenting manuals. Actually, like I think reading the parenting manuals was even more disturbing than talking to people. Cause like people were like,

this fucked me up and it was wrong. And then these books are like, no, you must be your toddler because Jesus says so. And like, here's exactly how to beat your toddler. And here's what you should use to beat your toddler. And here's the like supremely fucked up,

like weird ritual that we prescribe. And then like reading those in tandem with like, like the accounts of people who were like this specific thing, like fucked me up for life and really messed up my ability to have like intimacy or self-confidence or whatever, all of that stuff. I mean, it was tough.

I definitely took more time. Like I wrote culture warlords in nine months. So I was like totally immersed constantly. You just like, didn't come up for air. Yeah, I don't. And this one, I was like, I need a little more time guys. Like, um, I wrote it over, you know, almost three years. I also pretentiously started calling this philosophy, guarding your heart because I really got lost in the sauce with culture

warlords. Like I was in a dark place while i was writing it and afterwards i was also like the like it came out in mid covid so that didn't help either but uh it was a real really rough experience with this i was like i'm gonna keep writing i'm gonna write about sandwiches all the way through i'm gonna like make sure i have friendships and stuff that's grounding me. I think consciously having that at the forefront of my mind really helped. That being said, what was really encouraging was all of these people who had experienced this sort of child abuse industrial complex in the evangelical community were like, we really value that someone wants to hear what we have to say.

And also that it's someone from outside the community is like paying attention and thinks this is important, which is not to denigrate like ex-evangelical voices, but more to say that like, I guess there's a certain validation when someone who's like, not didn't grow up in your corner of religiosity, dark corner. And sort of bringing it to an outside audience too. Cause I think a lot of ex-evangelicals their their audiences largely

their fellow ex-evangelicals exactly and i'm someone who like i grew up as a jew and i'm like yeah this sucked this this is terrible i'm like appalled reading like to train up a child by the pearls or or the strong-willed child by james dobson which like to be clear the strong-willed child is a bad thing it's a bad thing to have a child with us you have to beat it out of them sure it literally and i ran i ran into this in the wild recently i don't know if you have come across this guy online do you know the 90s movie the little rascals oh my god alf from the little rascals turns out to be alfalfa the guy who played alfalfa his name is bug hall he like really like i don't know got into a sort of main

character situation over some posts about how he beats his infants he beats infants because that's i guess a good way to raise a baby yeah also i think he's homeless no he's a surf oh he's in a voluntary serfdom arrangement oh my god okay well he sounds like a big rascal yeah he's a big he's continued that trajectory of rascaldom but don't be your kids i mean i will also say the reason why this book focuses so much on child abuse at which like i encountered some some haters and losers and doubters along the way who were like why are you focused so much on child abuse and i was like there are a lot of different theories about like how authoritarianism develops but one of the big ones is focusing on the pedagogy in authoritarian societies

like societies that become authoritarian you know evolve from democracy to authoritarianism and beating the shit out of people from when they're in infancy and particularly when they display disobedience or ask why or you know just deviate from expectation that's a great way to make an obedient brown shirt yeah exactly like this is a recipe for future authoritarians like the people i spoke to had sort of broken away largely from this culture but many of the sort of most obedient soldiers in the armies army of are that way because, again, I can't overemphasize how much these parenting manuals, which spanned from 1970 to 2015, these texts, the dates that they were published, emphasize having an obedient child. What you want is not a child who's kind or

curious or thoughtful or smart it's obedient instantly obedient don't make me count to three is the title of of one of the books and like what you're creating is a culture of people who a like empathize with the aggressor at all times so hence this admiration for strength and even admiration for cruelty people who are trained to obey and obey without question and people who are very acclimated to uh the use of violence i mean you're doing fascism in the home right so the the like alice miller the um the author of the book for your own good lays out a pretty she was also a holocaust survivor she lays out a pretty strong case for like you know early 20th century germany having this poisonous pedagogy that also involved

beating the shit out of your kids until it was like illegal to love your children. Yeah. To obey you. Uh, and how basically this is how you make a torture and the book is called for your own good. And yeah,

I mean, I, I really think it is like undervalued in politics like how much this culture of corporal punishment which is yeah americans have like moved away from universal approval of corporal punishment we're still like a lot higher than other western democracies in that regard and like on a national level we're the only country in the world that hasn't ratified the un conventions on the rights of a child which include like having a name and like not being beaten and not being thrown into like juvie

solitary oh well that's why america can't touch that we need to incarcerate the children yeah the children yearn for the cells um but it's also just like a lot of it actually was like worries that like evangelicals like would sort of object to the the interference in their it's an infringement on their religious freedom to beat the shit out of babies yeah and and their rights, which is another buzzword of this movement. Parental rights is a red flag for me. Oh, yeah. No, I hear parental rights and I think you want to beat the shit out of your kids. You don't want your children to learn science. Yeah. You want to homeschool and under-educate your kids or mis-educate. You want to cause a measles outbreak. Exactly. But that's like for us because we're

weirdos we're like obsessively clued into this stuff if you're not like parental rights is like religious freedom is like it sounds good yeah it's a effective marketing slogan but like what it means is like we're gonna show up at the school board and yell about how i mean and trump is like bought into this obviously because he knows where his bread is buttered he has savvy like he's like you guys do the policy but like his current parental rights based his biggest like policy that he's advocating is like denying federal funding to any school with any vaccine mandate which is basically just like make measles great again like bring back diphtheria i think like yes the the maga movement is sort of the the efflorescence the apotheosis of this

steadily building power but like there's also just like 50 years of of power building behind it and like even if trump is defeated at the federal level, which I profoundly hope he is, sorry to come out as a partisan. A voter. Hashtag a voter. But I think it would be just a nauseatingly, it's a horrifying thought

that he, I mean, first of all, he would absolutely enact every item in this theocratic agenda, starting with a national abortion ban like that would happen in the first hundred days i think which would just functionally plunge american women into like a very very dark septicemic nightmare yeah the dark place that we're going is a coffin yeah yeah yeah but even should he lose which you know hope there's still 22 states where abortion is outlawed or severely restricted and these places are becoming care deserts like medical

residents my extremely sexy partner is a medical resident so i've i've known more about the state of medicine than i otherwise would but like residents don't want to do their residencies in states with abortion restrictions they're like right given a choice gynecological providers just aren't practicing there anymore like even if you know even if your primary focus is not abortions or even if your primary focus is not you know pregnancy care they just don't they just don't work there well it's also first of all that but second of all it's like if you're in the er you're going to experience pregnancy loss because it happens in one in five pregnancies right so they're choosing to work in states where they're not going to go to jail for doing medicine

yeah like they don't want to incur the moral injury of not being able to apply the standard of care to patients in extremely common situations, such as incomplete miscarriage and, you know, pregnancy loss, whether, you know, self-induced or just like miscarriage is super common and nobody talks about it. It's more common than we, and ectopic pregnancy is so much more common than people realize. Like there are so many things that your body could do to betray you that you need a doctor's help with just ordinary pregnancy. When then after the, after the baby's born, then your lustrous hair all falls out.

Yeah. Like ordinary pregnancy is so fraught with like weird body horror. Like, but anyway, that's besides the point, whatever. The point is someone presents with abdominal pain in the ER, and it turns out to be an ectopic pregnancy. And you can't do standard of care like dilation and cure-touch procedures

without checking with the hospital lawyer. That is a really bad position for a care provider to be in. So when you have these fundamentally unscientific laws, right, that are produced by people who don't know anything about pregnancy and are like very intentionally ambiguous so that cautious institutions will sort of interpret them, maximally interpret them, like the life of the mother. How dead does she have to be first? Yeah, she has to be almost dead, right? And then

sometimes she winds up dying because almost dead is tough to judge. Like, it just winds up this grotesque sort of farce of medicine. And very directly, like, residents don't want to train, doctors don't want to practice in these places. And so, you know... Right, so this ends up killing more people than just the ones hemorrhaging in the parking lot there are people who have completely unrelated problems who are now unable to access unrelated kinds of care because the doctors just aren't there yeah or people who have ordinary wanted pregnancies who can't access neonatal care who have to drive hours and hours and hours to like get checkups. Like, you know, I mean, human reproduction is like a pretty major part of like life.

And a lot of people are doing it. Yeah. Like it's sort of how, you know, it's just people do it all the time. And like not being able to access medical care around like the entire spectrum of like reproduction is pretty catastrophic. But yeah, it also impacts all the people not engaging in in reproduction at this moment in time like doctors who are just like fuck this i'm not working at an er in tennessee you know because i want to be able to treat

patients without a lawyer in the room yeah yeah exactly i mean and then there are doctors who are bigots and and doctors who are happily on board with, with abortion bans. But like, do you want that to be the only doctor in your County? I don't think so. You know, it's just, it's,

it's a really grim situation. And I just like, I'm such an absolutist about bodily autonomy. It's like, if you don't own your body, you are not a full citizen, period. End of story.

Like if, if a major organ in your body is, is treated as a controlled substance like you are not right a full and equal citizen with rights which i would like to be i aspire to it yeah so i wanted to ask you one one more question about your book and i will let you go i told you that i wouldn't keep you very long and i lied but it's like it's just because i like talking to you so it's i think i've done the majority of the talk so you can't you can't be like oh it's about your book which you should buy

listeners you pre-order it now wherever you buy your books and if you like the dulcet tones of my voice which are i should have gotten you to narrate my audio books. You crushed that passage. I'm a professional talker now. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I narrated the audio book and then was like, why did I write such complicated sentences afterwards? So now that I read my own writing, like on a regular basis out loud, which is new for me, right? So I, you know, I have my podcast and I'm writing my little scripts and then I'm reading them into a little microphone. Now that I struggle struggle with that i noticed while i was reading your book that oh i wouldn't be able to read this out loud i mean where would i breathe i know it was because i write like that too and it's something i'm like really grappling with right now she's like call me

10 clubs talia i'm like oh fuck this sentence is this paragraph this sentence is a paragraph stop it like i really really lost really lost momentum on that one yeah i know like oh fuck this sentence is this paragraph the sentence is a paragraph stop it like i really really lost really lost momentum on that one yeah i know but like i managed to get through it and if you if you enjoy the dulcet sounds of my voice you can hear it for like i don't know eight hours or whatever i feel weird being like listen to my voice but you know invite me into your mind yeah but i do think it's nice as an author to read your audiobook because i can like get mad and like you know emphasize stuff that i think is important and and and also i'm a theater kid like like i don't have many opportunities to perform and um it is a

performance and it's it's fun but yeah and that comes out the same time as the physical book? Yes. It comes out audio, ebook, physical book with a cool snake on it. Oh, yeah. Oh, I guess this is an audio medium. The listener can't see that I'm showing the cool cover. Yeah, it's got a cool snake, a red and black snake on the cover. I've named him Rocco.

He has a cross for a tongue. If you're looking for a book to give to the metalhead in your life. Oh, yeah. It's pretty metal. Metalheads, atheists, degenerates, everyone is going to love this book. It's perfect for everyone.

And if you're light on cash flow, one tip for supporting indie authors is ask your library to stock it or your local bookstore because library orders are really important and you can just like put in a request in your library system. And that is super helpful. Oh yeah. Everybody go to your library's website right now and request that they purchase a copy

of Wild Faith by Talia Lavin. Yeah. Talia, where else can people find you online? So I have a newsletter. It's on Button Down. I left Substack because they were like, we're never going to censor Nazis, but we will censor porn. And I was like, I don't like your priorities. So I left for Button Down. So it's buttondown.com slash the sword in the sandwich, or if you just Google the sword in the sandwich comes up. Most Tuesdays I read about like the horrific state of politics,

et cetera. And then Fridays I write an essay about a different sandwich on Wikipedia's list of notable sandwiches. And so far I'm, I've written 111 sandwiches. The sandwich content alone is worth the price of admission. You need to find out about these sandwiches. I mean,

it just, and I get really deep into like the history and the provenance and like, like, ah, the shifting of peoples led to this sandwich. But I, so I get really deep into it. And then you can also find me on blue sky where I,

most of the time now because twitter is just like robots and nazis and nazi robots where i'm at swords jew i'm still on vishy twitter as moby dick energy and um you know if you want to say hi or invite me to speak at your synagogue or bookstore i'm at talia laven writes at gmail.com um or church if you're like cool yeah if it's like a cool church yeah you show up and they pass you a snake yeah exactly oh god i didn't do enough speaking in tongues for this book well talia thank you so much for coming on today again the book is wild faith byia Levin, and you can pre-order it now wherever books are sold, and you should request it from your library. Yeah, we stand civic

services, and I'm a huge fan of public libraries and also of Molly Conger. So thanks for having me on, and take care. Bye. Bye. and take care. Bye. Bye. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts

from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. going. That's what my podcast Post Run High is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating.

I don't feel emotions correctly. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take phone calls from anonymous strangers as a fake gecko therapist and try to learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's very interesting. Check it out for yourself by searching for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking música, los premios, all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some

fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us. And it's all packed with gems, fun,

straight up comedia. And that's a song that only Nuestra Gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.