Brief: The Free Press Tastes Its Own (Polio) Medicine

In this Listener Stories episode, Matthew sits down with Jude Mills, an old friend from the yoga world, to hear her story about growing up in an anti-theist home in hyper-sectarian Scotland, but feeli...

27 Touko 20246min

There’s been a growing acceptance of religious belief from the previously religious-averse, especially in the Covid contrarian space. This comes in the wake of a number of recent high-profile conversi...

25 Touko 202447min

Philosopher Thi Nguyen first visited us 150 episodes ago (!!) to discuss how social media gamification exploded online conspiracy theories and audience capture drags content producers toward the seduc...

23 Touko 20241h 8min

Russell Brand has accepted Jesus into his heart and been baptized in the spirit. But does his conversion to Christianity make sense along the New Age rebel to right-wing, conspiracy-theorist radicaliz...

20 Touko 20247min

Two weeks ago, several university administrators asked militarized police units to smash pro-Palestinian encampment protests on quads and in occupied buildings. It happened at places like Columbia and...

18 Touko 202437min

Matthew is in the guest seat today! Why? Because in 2019—just months before the pandemic and this podcast kicked off—he published a book titled Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics and Hea...

16 Touko 20241h 2min

In 2020, former NY Times journalist Isabel Wilkerson published Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. The book tells a compelling story: that the root of our social divisions is the invented hierarchi...

13 Touko 20246min

Dr Sarah Ballantyne forged a career in science communication and health education advocating for autoimmune solutions in food and the paleo diet. In 2014, she began questioning her approach. Shortly a...

11 Touko 202444min