Conspirituality

“Meet the man who built RFK Jr’s kitchen cabinet” goes the title of a recent investigative article in Politico. Yet that man, Jeffrey Tucker, is much more than that. In fact, you can make the case, as Politico does, that Tucker is one of the main driving forces behind MAHA.

We’ve covered Tucker before on this podcast, including two previous interviews with his estranged daughter, Julia—who Matthew will again be talking to in segment 2 today. Derek will then talk to Duke professor Gavin Yamey, who was cited in the article as well. Before that, we return to Jeffrey Tucker, founder of the Brownstone Institute, architect of the Great Barrington Declaration, a romantic faux-libertarian who wants to see the return of childhood smoking and the demise of child labor laws and seat belts, and, as Politico uncovered, a man who had to leave a prominent position at a libertarian think tank due to accusations of sexual misconduct.

Show Notes

Meet the man who built RFK Jr.’s kitchen cabinet

Leaked Brownstone Institute Emails Reveal Support for Child Labor, Underage Smoking

Brief: My Dad Became a MAGA Power Broker (w/Julia Tucker) — Conspirituality

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Earlier this year, a spate of news stories told of chatbot users travelling through the looking-glass right into Conspirituality. Paranoid conspiracies, spiritual awakenings, even falling head-over-heels in love with the simulated personalities of large language models like ChatGPT.

Could AI have finally crossed the threshold into autonomous sentient consciousness? Could it be that chatbots were anointing new prophets—or, conversely, that very special users were awakening their very special friends via the power of love and illuminating dialogue?

Step aside, QAnon, the code behind the screen is illuminated by God!

Sadly, some of these stories trended very dark. Suicides, attempted murder, paranoid delusions, spouses terrified of losing their partners and co-parents to what looked like spiritual and romantic delusions.

For this standalone installment of his Roots of Conspirituality series, Julian examines this strange new phenomenon, then takes a detour into Ancient Greece and the oracle at Delphi to show that everything old is actually new again—just dressed up in digital technology.

Show Notes

I Married My Chatbot

FTC Complaints Against OpenAI for Chatbot Psychosis

AI Spiritual Delusions Destroying Human Relationships

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Social media has been filled with clips of Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee for mayor of NYC. He's been proving quite the foil for Andrew Cuomo's attempt to upset Zohran Mamdani. But who is this man, exactly? Derek and Julian discuss.

Show Notes

16 Cats, 320 Square Feet and One Long-Shot Candidate for Mayor

7 Takeaways From the Final N.Y.C. Mayoral Debate

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Tech billionaire Peter Thiel is no cuck philanthropist. The co-founder of Palantir is leading his company at the bleeding edge of mass surveillance, facial recognition, predictive policing, and AI-assisted warfare. He also fancies himself a political player, responsible for funding his protege, JD Vance, to a heartbeat away from the presidency. Considering this CV, the announcement that Thiel would give a series of four lectures on the AntiChrist was puzzling. 

Why would a tech-bro with a notoriously awkward and inarticulate speaking style hold forth on religious prophecy? Or would this be a coming out party, where he would finally confirm his alliance with Satan? Now that the lectures have happened, we can finally tell you—and later, we’ll frame it in the context of Thiel’s mentor, René Girard.

Show Notes

Inside tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s off-the-record lectures about the antichrist

It Kind of Seems Like Peter Thiel Is Losing It

Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoît Chantre: René Girard

I See Satan Fall Like Lightning: René Girard

“A Geometry of Desire: René Girard’s Mimetic Theory, Part 1.”: John Ganz

“The Iron Triangle: René Girard’s Mimetic Theory, Part 2.”: John Ganz

“Escaping the Kingdom of Futility: René Girard’s Mimetic Theory, Part 3.”: John Ganz

“The Cure for Envy: René Girard’s Mimetic Theory, Part 4.”: John Ganz

Know Your Enemy Ep 87, featuring John Ganz

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Listen to the full episode on Patreon

After attending the No Kings rally in Portland on Saturday, Derek shares some thoughts about the week leading up to the nationwide protests.

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Stephen Miller is once again making headlines for saying the quiet part out loud. Derek and Julian look into this strange little man from Santa Monica.

Show Notes

Stephen Miller: Understanding the man who became ‘Trump’s brain’ through his Chronicle opinion column

‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat

What Stephen Miller Was Like in High School - Charles Gould

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ICE is on the loose in our cities, acting with seeming impunity. They've repelled from Black Hawk helicopters, thrown journalists and protestors to the ground, and belligerently refused to unmask, provide identification, or present warrants for the people they're kidnapping.

Among the social media videos documenting this despicable stormtrooper behavior came the image of a priest being hit in the head and knocked to the ground by a pepper ball shot from an ICE building rooftop.

We've homed in on this disturbing moment to ask if what we'd seen so far had not crossed a red line for the American public, what does it mean to shoot at a priest protesting injustice in prayer?

Show Notes

Surge in U.S. Concern About Immigration Has Abated

Portland’s ‘War Zone’ Is Like Burning Man for the Terminally Online

DC Churches to Trump: Stay Out of Our Parking Lots

Religious protesters say ICE threatens religious freedom in Chicago 

In LA, faith leaders protest to stand up for the detained and keep the peace

Chicago Pastor Sues Trump Admin After Allegedly Being Shot by ICE Agents

Federal lawsuit brought by Black et al against Noem and DHS 

Evangelical Pastor Doug Pagitt on Christian Nationalism 

Exclusive: The Churches Fighting Back Against ICE 

Religious leaders offering communion to detainees turned away at Broadview ICE facility

Bishop Rojas on rise in ICE raids: ‘It is not of the Gospel of Jesus Christ'

Religious leaders offering communion to detainees turned away at Broadview ICE facility

Signs of Faith Against Fascism: An Interview with Eric Martin
Paul Elie: Daniel Berrigan was a fierce critic of the United States. He was also a great American.

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Hey everyone… special drop today: the inaugural episode of Matthew’s new side project, Antifascist Dad Podcast. 

Matthew sits down with songwriter Nathan Evans Fox to talk about kinship, Appalachia, and the viral hymn that’s resonating across communities. Nathan shares the roots of his concept of yallidarity—solidarity rooted in labor, joy, food, music, and taking care of one another.

They discuss the myths and realities of Appalachia, the erasure of labor history, and the dangers of “bootstrap” individualism. Nathan tells about his upbringing in fringe charismatic churches, the connections between charismatic Christianity and Trump-style politics, and how faith traditions can nurture resilience—or be co-opted by empire.

They dig into Nathan’s viral “Hillbilly Hymn”: why the cops disappear when Jesus returns, why kinship always beats bootstraps, and how to imagine an abolitionist future that doesn't erase culture but reorients it toward joy, justice, and care.All theme music by the amazing www.kalliemarie.com.

Show Notes

Everything Nathan Evans Fox

Gaza Sumud flotilla: How Israel breaks international maritime law | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera

Gaza-bound flotilla rejects Israeli claims of Hamas funding | Euronews

Contact Restored with Global Sumud Flotilla after Israeli Interference - Palestine Chronicle

The Sabbath Year and the Year of Jubilee

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Full episode on Patreon

Part 2 moves from Christofascist spectacle to the “mushy middle” of liberal Christianity—why it so often blesses order over justice and falters when fascism rises. Drawing on MLK’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, Reggie Williams’s Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus, and lived experience inside white urban churches, he traces how bureaucratic piety, respectability politics, and spiritual bypassing drain the Gospel of conduct and courage—what Bonhoeffer called a “funeral wreath” laid on the culture.

How do institutions become procedurally compassionate yet politically inert? Matthew weaves in memories of global South Christian art, Denys Arcand’s Jesus of Montréal, and the everyday service-industry grind of parish life to show how care without solidarity becomes maintenance—while Black Jesus points to co-suffering, mutual aid, and material resistance.

Touching grass means moving from abstraction to accompaniment and from decorum to defense.

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In this first installment of Antifascist Christianity: Black Jesus, Matthew revisits Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s journey from the theological classrooms of Berlin to the Black churches of Harlem — where he encountered a Jesus entirely unlike the imperial figure of his upbringing. Bonhoeffer arrived in New York a servant of white European Christendom, and left transformed by the radical, suffering, and liberatory presence of Black Jesus.

Matthew connects Bonhoeffer’s awakening to today’s spectacle of white nationalism in worship — from the triumphalist religion on display at Charlie Kirk’s memorial to the enduring cultural power of “white Jesus” as theology for empire. Drawing on Reggie Williams’s Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus, Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism, and Jeanelle Hope and Bill Mullen’s The Black Antifascist Tradition, the episode traces how colonialism created a Christ built to bless domination, and how the Black church reclaimed him through solidarity, suffering, and resistance.

The contrast between the fortress hymn A Mighty Fortress Is Our God and the spiritual Were You There becomes the turning point in Bonhoeffer’s faith — from triumph to trembling, from power to empathy.

Part 2, out Monday on Patreon, explores how liberal Christianity tried to stand between these poles, and why it failed.

Show Notes

Hope, Jeanelle K., and Bill V. Mullen. The Black Antifascist Tradition. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2023.

Robinson, Cedric J. Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. Revised and Updated Third Edition. Foreword by Robin D. G. Kelley. Preface by Damien Sojoyner and Tiffany Willoughby-Herard. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020.

Williams, Reggie L. Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2014.

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