Afleveringen
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A couple years ago I learned that there is a reason that the 'L' comes first in LGBTQ+ and I want to share that with you.Through much of the 20th century, "gay" served as an umbrella term, and early activist groupings often led with gay men, producing orderings like "GLB." The shift to placing "L" first took hold in the late 1980s and early 1990s in the United States, and it was a deliberate gesture of respect.
The most cited reason is the AIDS crisis. As the epidemic devastated gay male communities in the 1980s, lesbians showed up in enormous numbers as caregivers, nurses, blood donors, fundraisers, and organizers. Lesbians like those in the Blood Sisters of San Diego organized blood drives when gay and bisexual men were barred from donating. This solidarity reshaped the movement, and foregrounding the "L" became a way of acknowledging that labor and centering women who had frequently been rendered invisible within both gay male spaces and the broader feminist movement.
Lesbians were central to progress long before the acronym existed. The Daughters of Bilitis, founded in San Francisco in 1955, was the first lesbian civil and political rights organization in the U.S. Figures such as Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon spent decades organizing. Lesbians were present at the 1969 Stonewall uprising and in the Gay Liberation Front that followed. Within 1970s feminism, lesbians pushed a frequently resistant women's movement to take their concerns seriously, even as Betty Friedan infamously dismissed them as the "lavender menace", a slur activists reclaimed in a celebrated protest.
Lesbians also did foundational work that benefited everyone: building community institutions, bookstores, health collectives, and mutual-aid networks; advancing lesbian feminist theory; and fighting for custody rights, anti-discrimination protections, and visibility at a time when being out could cost a woman her job and children.
References
Armstrong, E. A. (2002). Forging gay identities: Organizing sexuality in San Francisco, 1950–1994. University of Chicago Press.
Bernstein, M. (1997). Celebration and suppression: The strategic uses of identity by the lesbian and gay movement. American Journal of Sociology, 103(3), 531–565.
Brier, J. (2009). Infectious ideas: U.S. political responses to the AIDS crisis. University of North Carolina Press.
Cohen, C. J. (1997). Punks, bulldaggers, and welfare queens: The radical potential of queer politics. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 3(4), 437–465.
Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), 139–167.
Faderman, L. (1991). Odd girls and twilight lovers: A history of lesbian life in twentieth century America. Columbia University Press.
Faderman, L. (2015). The gay revolution: The story of the struggle. Simon & Schuster.
Gallo, M. M. (2006). Different daughters: A history of the Daughters of Bilitis. Carroll & Graf.
Gould, D. B. (2002). Life during wartime: Emotions and the development of ACT UP. Mobilization: An International Quarterly, 7(2), 177–200.
hooks, b. (1984). Feminist theory: From margin to center. South End Press.
Hutchinson, B. (2015). Lesbian blood drives as community building activism in the 1980s. Journal of Lesbian Studies, 19(1), 115–128. https://doi.org/10.1080/10894160.2015.959876
Lorde, A. (1984). Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. Crossing Press.
Schulman, S. (2021). Let the record show: A political history of ACT UP New York, 1987–1993. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Shilts, R. (1987). And the band played on: Politics, people, and the AIDS epidemic. St. Martin’s Press.
Vaid, U. (1995). Virtual equality: The mainstreaming of gay and lesbian liberation. Anchor Books.
Zimmerman, B. (1981). What has never been: An overview of lesbian feminist criticism. Feminist Studies, 7(3), 451–475.
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In March 2026, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth stood before a Pentagon worship service and prayed for "overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy", calling for the eternal damnation of America's enemies. Military commanders across every branch have been reported, in over 200 formal complaints, telling troops the Iran war is "God's plan" and that Trump was "anointed by Jesus" to trigger Armageddon. Benjamin Netanyahu has quoted 1 Samuel 15:3, the command to destroy the Amalekites, sparing "neither man nor woman, infant nor ox" to justify Israeli military operations.
This is what happens when political leaders weaponize faith to sanctify violence. And it has been happening for 1,700 years.
From Constantine's battlefield vision in 312 CE and the subsequent murder of philosopher Hypatia by a Christian mob, through Augustine's just war doctrine that gave state violence a Christian vocabulary, to Charlemagne's massacre of 4,500 Saxon prisoners at Verden for refusing baptism. We cover the First Crusade's Rhineland pogroms, where Jewish mothers drowned their children rather than see them forcibly baptized, and the Jerusalem massacre of 1099, where chroniclers described blood reaching horses' knees. We examine the Albigensian Crusade's destruction of Béziers, where the papal legate reportedly said "Kill them all, God will know his own," and the witch trials that followed, killing up to 60,000 people (80% of them women) using Heinrich Kramer's Malleus Maleficarum as theological cover.
We also cover what this history did specifically to women, a thread that runs unbroken from Tertullian calling women "the devil's gateway" in 200 CE, through the rape of nuns during the Fourth Crusade's sack of Constantinople, to the sexual violence documented in California's Spanish mission system, to the girls in Native American boarding schools whose hair was cut, languages stolen, and bodies abused under church-run federal contracts.
The only thing more dangerous than a tyrant, is one who believes God gave them permission.
SOURCES
Augustine, The City of God, c. 413–426 CE
Tertullian, De Cultu Feminarum, c. 200 CE
Socrates Scholasticus, Historia Ecclesiastica, c. 439 CE (murder of Hypatia)
Annales Regni Francorum (Charlemagne / Verden massacre)
Barbero, Alessandro — Charlemagne: Father of a Continent, UC Press, 2004
Chazan, Robert — European Jewry and the First Crusade, UC Press, 1987
Mainz Anonymous and Solomon bar Simson Chronicle (Rhineland massacres, 1096)
Raymond of Aguilers, Historia Francorum (Jerusalem, 1099)
Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus Miraculorum, c. 1220 (Béziers)
Nicetas Choniates, Historia, c. 1206 (Fourth Crusade / Constantinople)
Brenon, Anne — Le vrai visage du catharisme, Loubatières, 1988
Kramer, Heinrich — Malleus Maleficarum, 1487 (ed. Mackay, Cambridge UP, 2006)
Levack, Brian — The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, Routledge, 4th ed., 2016
Cuneo, Michele de — Letter of October 28, 1495, trans. Samuel Eliot Morison
Díaz del Castillo, Bernal — True History of the Conquest of New Spain, c. 1568
Hassig, Ross — Mexico and the Spanish Conquest, U of Oklahoma Press, 2006
Pedro Pizarro — Relation of the Discovery and Conquest of Peru, c. 1571
Stannard, David — American Holocaust, Oxford UP, 1992
Kamen, Henry — The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision, Yale UP, 1997
Jouanna, Arlette — La Saint-Barthélemy, Gallimard, 2007
Parker, Geoffrey — The Thirty Years' War, Routledge, 1997
Regan, Donald — For the Record, Harcourt Brace, 1988
Maurice, Jean-Claude — Si vous le répétez, je démentirai (Bush / Gog and Magog)
NPR — "Netanyahu's references to violent biblical passages raise alarm," Nov. 7, 2023
U.S. Dept. of the Interior — Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report, 2022
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada — Final Report, 2015
Johnson v. McIntosh, 21 U.S. 543, U.S. Supreme Court, 1823
Vatican Statement repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery, March 30, 2023
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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My entire life I heard my Dad say "Freedom isn't free" and perhaps the best application of that is the Civil Rights Movement. It's easy from a place of comfort to not fully understand the risk and sacrifice required for... the right to vote. The right as a black person to have equal and fair access to elections, job protection, education. We are in our own Civil Rights moment now and we can learn a lot from what they didv
Sources:
U.S. Congressional Records, Joint Committee on Reconstruction, 1866 (Memphis Massacre testimony)
FBI Files on the murders of Medgar Evers, Emmett Till, and the Mississippi Burning case (MIBURN)
Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission Records — Mississippi Department of Archives and History (publicly available since 1998)
Department of Justice Civil Rights Division records and case files
NAACP Anti-Lynching Campaign Records — Library of Congress
Congressional Record, Senate filibuster of the Civil Rights Act, March–June 1964
Books — Scholarly and Narrative History:
Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63 (1988). Simon & Schuster.
Branch, Taylor. Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963–65 (1998). Simon & Schuster.
Branch, Taylor. At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965–68 (2006). Simon & Schuster.
Berman, Ari. Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America (2015). Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Anderson, Carol. White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide (2016). Bloomsbury.
Anderson, Carol. One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy (2018). Bloomsbury.
Du Bois, W.E.B. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 (1935). Harcourt, Brace.
Garrow, David J. Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1986). William Morrow.
Hamer, Fannie Lou. The Speeches of Fannie Lou Hamer: To Tell It Like It Is (2011). University Press of Mississippi.
Lewis, John, with Michael D'Orso. Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement (1998). Simon & Schuster.
Litwack, Leon F. Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (1998). Knopf.
Marable, Manning. Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction and Beyond in Black America, 1945–2006 (2007). University Press of Mississippi.
McAdam, Doug. Freedom Summer (1988). Oxford University Press.
Stevenson, Bryan. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014). Spiegel & Grau.
Tyson, Timothy B. The Blood of Emmett Till (2017). Simon & Schuster.
Wells-Barnett, Ida B. Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases (1892). New York Age Print.
Wells-Barnett, Ida B. A Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States (1895). Donohue & Henneberry.
Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (2010). Random House.
Woodward, C. Vann. The Strange Career of Jim Crow (1955). Oxford University Press.
Memphis-Specific Sources:
Honey, Michael K. Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign (2007). W.W. Norton.
Mlinar, Zeljko, et al. Memphis Sanitation Strike Archives — Memphis Public Library Special Collections
Tucker, David M. Memphis Since Crump: Bossism, Blacks, and Civic Reformers, 1948–1968 (1980). University of Tennessee Press.
Wright, Sharon D. Race, Power, and Political Emergence in Memphis (2000). Garland Publishing.
Legal Cases Referenced:
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896)
Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944)
Boynton v. Virginia, 364 U.S. 454 (1960)
Browder v. Gayle, 352 U.S. 903 (1956)
Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013)
United States v. Price et al. (Mississippi Burning prosecutions), 383 U.S. 787 (1966)
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Apologies for the lateness of the post, our dashboard encountered a technical difficulty that showed my podcasts didn't exist and had to be fixed before an upload could happen. Thanks for your patience.
After being at Montgomery last weekend I wanted to do a deep dive into what I never learned as a kid. What led to the Civil Rights movement, its danger, its courage. Part one takes us through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and part two takes us beyond.
SOURCES
U.S. Congressional Records, Joint Committee on Reconstruction, 1866 (Memphis Massacre testimony)
FBI Files on the murders of Medgar Evers, Emmett Till, and the Mississippi Burning case (MIBURN) — available through FOIA requests and the University of Mississippi's Mississippi Digital Library
Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission Records — Mississippi Department of Archives and History (publicly available since 1998)
Department of Justice Civil Rights Division records and case files
NAACP Anti-Lynching Campaign Records — Library of Congress
Congressional Record, Senate filibuster of the Civil Rights Act, March–June 1964
Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63 (1988). Simon & Schuster.
Branch, Taylor. Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963–65 (1998). Simon & Schuster.
Branch, Taylor. At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965–68 (2006). Simon & Schuster.
Berman, Ari. Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America (2015). Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Anderson, Carol. White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide (2016). Bloomsbury.
Anderson, Carol. One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy (2018). Bloomsbury.
Du Bois, W.E.B. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 (1935). Harcourt, Brace.
Garrow, David J. Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1986). William Morrow.
Hamer, Fannie Lou. The Speeches of Fannie Lou Hamer: To Tell It Like It Is (2011). University Press of Mississippi.
Lewis, John, with Michael D'Orso. Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement (1998). Simon & Schuster.
Litwack, Leon F. Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (1998). Knopf.
Marable, Manning. Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction and Beyond in Black America, 1945–2006 (2007). University Press of Mississippi.
McAdam, Doug. Freedom Summer (1988). Oxford University Press.
McWhorter, Diane. Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama — The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution (2001). Simon & Schuster.
Payne, Charles M. I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (1995). University of California Press.
Stevenson, Bryan. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014). Spiegel & Grau.
Tyson, Timothy B. The Blood of Emmett Till (2017). Simon & Schuster.
Wells-Barnett, Ida B. Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases (1892). New York Age Print.
Wells-Barnett, Ida B. A Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States (1895). Donohue & Henneberry.
Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (2010). Random House.
Woodward, C. Vann. The Strange Career of Jim Crow (1955). Oxford University Press.
Honey, Michael K. Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign (2007). W.W. Norton.
Mlinar, Zeljko, et al. Memphis Sanitation Strike Archives — Memphis Public Library Special Collections
Tucker, David M. Memphis Since Crump: Bossism, Blacks, and Civic Reformers, 1948–1968 (1980). University of Tennessee Press.
Wright, Sharon D. Race, Power, and Political Emergence in Memphis (2000). Garland
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896)
Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944)
Boynton v. Virginia, 364 U.S. 454 (1960)
Browder v. Gayle, 352 U.S. 903 (1956)
Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013)
United States v. Price et al. 383 U.S. 787 (1966)
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We met the carefully curated Ronald Reagan in part 1. We saw the Hollywood grin, the borrowed cowboy myth, the astrologer in the basement, the informant and the corporate lackey. In Part 2, we follow the money. The sale of a new economic dream for Americans during a time of desperate stagflation, unemployment and uncertainty. And what it sold has cost this country more than any single presidency in modern American history.
Reaganomics was pitched to Americans as common sense. The government takes too much, thats the problem. Taxes on "job creators" choke the economy, corporations are going to run if you tax them you know. Cut taxes, slash regulation, trust the market — and a tide of prosperity will lift every boat. Cut off the welfare queen and free the small business owner. Trust the rich. Trust the men in suits who already had everything to know what was best for the woman scrubbing the floor at the hospital. He sold it the way only Reagan could, with a tear in his eye, a flag behind him, and a story about a Cadillac driving welfare cheat in Chicago who statistically did not exist.
In this episode, we trace what actually happened next.
The top income tax rate fell from 70 percent to 28 percent. The estate tax was gutted and capital gains were slashed. Corporate rates collapsed. All the ways the wealthiest among us make wealth were unleashed while the rest of us stayed tethered, shouldering more than our share of the burden. Union membership crashed from one in four American workers to roughly one in ten. Wages stopped tracking productivity. The federal minimum wage was frozen in time. Wall Street was deregulated, manufacturing was offshored, and the bottom half of the country watched its share of national wealth fall from 4 percent to barely 2.5, while the top 1 percent's share doubled. All while the national debt tripled. The mental health system was hollowed out, causing homelessness to explode. And every Republican economic platform since has been some version of do that again. Even Democratic leaders have allied themselves with this ideology in some way.
We also dismantle the lie at the heart of it all, that spending on people is waste. Because every credible economist who has actually run the numbers has found the opposite. Every dollar invested in SNAP generates up to $1.80 in economic activity. Every dollar spent on early childhood education returns $7 to $12. Public transit returns roughly $4 to $1. WIC saves $3 in future Medicaid costs for every dollar it spends. Universal preschool, paid family leave, Medicaid expansion, infrastructure, these aren't handouts. They are the highest-return investments any government can make. The math has been clear for forty years. We were just told not to look.
Reaganomics were one expensive lie for the American people. In this episode we talk about why we bought it, who profited, who's still paying — and what this country would actually look like if we ran the numbers instead of the mythology.
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Three decades before the White House, Ronald Reagan was being assembled in plain sight. This episode traces the apprenticeship most highlight reels skip: the New Deal Democrat who became FBI informant "T-10," the B-list actor who turned a corporate speaking tour into a political movement, and the lapsed Midwestern kid who would one day broker the marriage of the Republican Party and white evangelical America.
In postwar Hollywood, where Reagan, as Screen Actors Guild president, simultaneously fed names to the FBI and lent SAG's institutional cover to the blacklist. His October 1947 HUAC testimony was polite; the private file was not. Careers ended on the strength of "fraternal" reports.
Then in 1954, General Electric Theater, and eight years on the GE plant circuit under Lemuel Boulware, the hardline VP who handed Reagan a reading list of Hayek and Hazlitt and turned his pep talks into a portable free market gospel. Corporations were buying preachers and performers to sell their "anti-union, low regulation" gospel. By 1962 GE had cut him loose, but "The Speech" was finished and in 1964 it launched Goldwater and, with him, Reagan himself.
Finally, the wedding of cross and capital. Reagan, never a churchgoing adult, became the indispensable broker between corporate donors and a politically homeless evangelical electorate. In Dallas, August 1980, he closed the deal with one line: "I know you can't endorse me, but I want you to know I endorse you." That coalition outlived him still runs our country. In Part 2 we talk about the longterm staggering impact of Reaganomics.
References
Balmer, R. (2021). Bad faith: Race and the rise of the religious right. Eerdmans.
Cannon, L. (2000). President Reagan: The role of a lifetime. PublicAffairs.
Crespino, J. (2007). The new right and the southern strategy. Journal of Southern History, 73(4), 895–924.
Critchlow, D. T. (2005). Phyllis Schlafly and grassroots conservatism: A woman’s crusade. Princeton University Press.
Dochuk, D. (2011). From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain‑folk religion, grassroots politics, and the rise of evangelical conservatism. W. W. Norton.
FitzGerald, F. (2017). The evangelicals: The struggle to shape America. Simon & Schuster.
Hancock, A. (2004). The politics of disgust: The public identity of the welfare queen. New York University Press.
Kohler‑Hausmann, J. (2017). Getting tough: Welfare and imprisonment in 1970s America. Princeton University Press.
Kruse, K. M. (2015). One nation under God: How corporate America invented Christian America. Basic Books.
Levin, J. (2019). The queen: The forgotten life behind an American myth. Little, Brown and Company.
Mittelstadt, J. (2005). From welfare to workfare: The unintended consequences of liberal reform, 1945–1965. University of North Carolina Press.
Nadasen, P. (2005). Welfare warriors: The welfare rights movement in the United States. Routledge.
Nickerson, M. M. (2012). The Reagan administration’s response to the gender gap. Journal of Policy History, 24(1), 115–140.
Perlstein, R. (2020). Reaganland: America’s right turn 1976–1980. Simon & Schuster.
Reagan, R. (1986, February 15). Radio address to the nation on welfare reform [Speech transcript]. Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/radio-address-nation-welfare-reform
Rich, C. G. (2020). The “welfare queen” goes to the polls: Race‑based fractures in gender politics. Georgetown Law Journal, 108(4), 1–67.
Shilts, R. (1987). And the band played on: Politics, people, and the AIDS epidemic. St. Martin’s Press.
Sick, G. (1991). October surprise: America’s hostages in Iran and the election of Ronald Reagan. Times Books.
Troy, G. (2009). The great communicator: Media and the Reagan image. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 39(3), 458–470.
Unger, C. (2024). Den of spies: Reagan, Carter, and the secret history of the treason that stole the White House. Mariner Books.
Wilentz, S. (2008). The age of Reagan: A history, 1974–2008. HarperCollins.
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In this deeply personal episode, Crystal Dawn opens up about the slow, often invisible process of religious deconstruction. Raised inside a tight-knit faith community where belief wasn't just a doctrine but the architecture of every relationship, Crystal walks us through the cracks that started as questions and widened into a chasm she could no longer pretend wasn't there.
Crystal Dawn is a writer and content creator shedding light on the patriarchal systems of harm within evangelical culture. Her experiences growing up a pastor’s daughter, as well as her own deconstruction journey, give her a unique lens… one she blends with research and history to give language to what many people experience in coming out of those spaces. She is currently at work on her first book, forthcoming in 2027.
Follow Crystal Here:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crystaldawnalchemy4/
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/CrystalDawnAlchemy
Website: www.crystaldawnalchemy.com
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Resource packet mentioned in podcast: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JHWbiYVQ4sD5gX-o0yHC-5hXnY1KPf0kBvw2rZSJfiE/edit?tab=t.0
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We have all seen the photos and videos of Gaza the last two years. We have heard the stories. We have watched politicians deflect and people say "but October 7th!!". But there's a story that spans far beyond October 7th. There is a series of decisions that decimated a region and crushed the vulnerable under the thumb of the powerful. How did we get here? what is the history that led to this point? To help talk about his heartwrenching story, we welcome Dr. Daniel Bannoura. Daniel is a Palestinian theologian and podcaster. He is a professor at the University of Notre Dame, where he received his PhD degree in Qur'anic Studies. He’s also the Director of Public Engagement at the Bethlehem Institute of Peace and Justice, and host of “Across the Divide”, a podcast that provides a space for thoughtful conversations about Palestine-Israel through the lens of faith and peacemaking.
Recommended Reading: 100 Years War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi
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That feeling you get at 11pm on a Tuesday as you crawl into bed after another long day. You've been moving nonstop since you got up and theres a gnawing guilt you can't quite shake. That you haven't done enough, you should be doing more, working harder. That feeling has a 400 year history. Born on a ship off the coast of Massachusetts in 1630, preached from a Puritan pulpit, secularized by Benjamin Franklin, bolted to a factory wall, and then deliberately and expensively marketed to you by a public relations firm hired by General Motors.
The message wanders through the mill towns where clergy were quietly put on the company payroll to preach that strikes were sins against God; through the Gilded Age sermons of Henry Ward Beecher telling starving railroad workers that bread and water was enough; through the jaw-dropping story of Spiritual Mobilization, a corporate-funded operation that distributed pre-written anti-union sermons to seventy thousand American ministers during the New Deal era. The Protestant pulpit, for a generation, was a subcontractor of the American boardroom.
But it's also a story of the people who fought back and the saga ends with a powerful question "What if rest itself is the most radical act left available to us?"
References: full list at patreon.com/montemader
Bowler, K. (2013). Blessed: A history of prosperity gospel. Oxford University Press.
Carnegie, A. (1889). Wealth. The North American Review, 148(391), 653–664.
Carter, H. W. (2015). Union made: Working people and the rise of social Christianity in Chicago. Oxford University Press.
Cotton, J. (1641). The way of life. Printed by M. F. for L. Fawne and S. Gellibrand.
Dochuk, D. (2011). From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain folk religion, grassroots politics, rise of evangelical conservatism. W. W. Norton.
Federici, S. (2004). Caliban and the witch: Women, the body, and primitive accumulation. Autonomedia.
Franklin, B. (1904). Advice to a young tradesman. In A. H. Smyth (Ed.), The writings of Benjamin Franklin (Vol. 2).
Franklin, B. (1909). The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. P. F. Collier & Son.
Fraser, N. (2016). Contradictions of capital and care. New Left Review, 100, 99–117.
Gilman, C. P. (1898). Women and economics: A study of the economic relation between men and women as a factor in social evolution. Small, Maynard & Company.
Grant, H. J. (1936, October). Conference report. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.
Han, B. C. (2015). The burnout society (E. Butler, Trans.). Stanford University Press.
Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford University Press
Hersey, T. (2022). Rest is resistance: A manifesto
Kruse, K. M. (2015). One nation under God: How corporate America invented Christian America.
Machen, J. G. (1933). The Christian view of man. William B. Eerdmans.
Osborn, I. (2008). Can Christianity cure obsessive OCD? A psychiatrist explores the role of faith in treatment. Brazos Press.
Petersen, A. H. (2020). Can’t even: How millennials became the burnout generation. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Phillips-Fein, K. (2009). Invisible hands: The businessmen’s crusade against the New Deal. W. W. Norton.
Price, D. (2021). Laziness does not exist. Atria Books.
Rodgers, D. T. (1978). The work ethic in industrial America, 1850–1920. University of Chicago Press.
Rose, J. (2001). The poverty of virtue: The ethical foundations of American welfare reform. Journal of Religious Ethics, 29(2), 247–272.
Sutton, M. A. (2014). American apocalypse: A history of modern evangelicalism. Harvard University Press.
Suzman, J. (2020). Work: A deep history, Stone Age to the age of robots. Penguin Press.
Tawney, R. H. (1926). Religion/rise of capitalism. John Murray.
Winthrop, J. (1838). Model of Christian charity. In Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society (3rd series, Vol. 7, pp. 31–48). (Original work delivered 1630)
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Why do institutions built on moral authority so often become safe harbors for predators?
Abuse scandals within religious institutions are recurring patterns with shared structural causes. This episode breaks down why churches, regardless of denomination, repeatedly find themselves at the center of abuse cover-up stories, and why victims so often find themselves silenced.
We walk through several prominent cases that have made headlines in recent years spanning Catholic dioceses, evangelical megachurches, and independent ministries examining the common threads: delayed reporting, internal investigations kept away from civil authorities, institutional loyalty placed above victim care, and the "forgiveness" framework weaponized to shut down accountability.
Then we go deeper into the structural question: hierarchy itself. When authority flows unidirectionally downward challenging a leader becomes spiritually dangerous for members. Whistleblowers risk not just reputation but community, belonging, and in some traditions, their eternal standing. This creates near perfect conditions for abuse to go fester and grow.
Sources
Baptist News Global. (2026, March 21). The Southern Baptist Convention did not get played. https://baptistnews.com/article/the-southern-baptist-convention-did-not-get-played/
Barr, B. A. (2021). The making of biblical womanhood
Chen, Y. (2024). Ecclesiastical abstention or judicial abdication? The First Amendment and clergy sexual abuse. Yale Law & Policy Review, 42(1), 1–58.
CrossPolitic Studios. (2026, March 17). How the SBC got played [Documentary film]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/XNQk2y8cUJY
Du Mez, K. K. (2020). Jesus and John Wayne
Freyd, J. J. (2022). Institutional betrayal and institutional courage. In L. S. Brown & E. Pantalone (Eds.),
Guidepost Solutions. (2022). Report of the independent investigation: The Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee’s response to sexual abuse allegations and an audit of the procedures and actions of the Credentials Committee. https://guidepostsolutions.com/sbc-ec-investigation/
Hess, R., & Hess, J. (1989). A full quiver: Family planning and the lordship of Christ. Wolgemuth & Hyatt.
Ingersoll, J. (2015). Building God’s kingdom: Inside the world of Christian Reconstructionism. Oxford University Press.
Joyce, K. (2009). Quiverfull: Inside the Christian patriarchy movement. Beacon Press.
Klein, L. K. (2018). Pure
Kvam, K. E., Schearing, L. S., & Ziegler, V. H. (Eds.). (1999). Eve and Adam: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim readings on Genesis and gender. Indiana University Press.
MinistryWatch. (2022, February 15). Former plaintiffs in Bill Gothard abuse lawsuit hit back at Institute in Basic Life Principles’ statement to NBC News. https://ministrywatch.com/
MinistryWatch. (2025, August 1). TX Supreme Court rules against Bill Gothard and the Institute for Basic Life Principles. https://ministrywatch.com/
Netflix. (2022). Our father [Documentary film]. Blumhouse Productions.
North, G. (1996). Crossed fingers: How the liberals captured the Presbyterian Church
Portugal, T. (2023). Donor Deceived: Doctor donor fraud cases. https://donordeceived.org/
Pride, M. (1985). The way home: Beyond feminism, back to reality. Crossway Books.
Provan, C. D. (1989). The Bible and birth control. Zimmer Printing.
Recovering Grace. (2014). Firsthand accounts of sexual harassment and abuse at IBLP. https://www.recoveringgrace.org/
Right to Know. (2023). Fight fertility fraud now: State and federal legislation tracker. https://righttoknow.us/fertility-fraud-laws/
Silliman, D. (Director). (2023). Shiny happy people: Duggar family secrets [Documentary series]. Amazon Studios.
Stewart, K. (2020). The power worshippers
Type Investigations. (2016, January 8). New charges allege rape by prominent religious leader. https://www.typeinvestigations.org/
Worthen, M. (2013). Apostles of reason
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I feel very confident in saying that this is quite possibly the most important, powerful, and for me, inspiring interview I've ever done. This one is on the longer side but it is worth every minute. I could have done a series with Deeyah.
Deeyah Khan is a BAFTA– and two-time Emmy Award–winning documentary filmmaker known for her deeply empathetic and unflinching storytelling. Her work explores some of the most urgent and polarising issues of our time, including extremism, violence against women, racism, inequality, and social exclusion.
Over the course of her career, she has spent years engaging directly with individuals involved in violence and extremist movements. Her documentaries feature jihadists, convicted anti-abortion terrorists, as well as current and former white supremacists and armed militia groups in the United States. Through these encounters, she seeks to understand the human stories behind radicalisation and division.
In addition to her filmmaking, Deeyah is the founder of Fuuse, an independent media and arts production company. In 2016, she was appointed UNESCO’s first Goodwill Ambassador for artistic freedom and creativity.
Born in Norway to Muslim immigrant parents, Deeyah’s experience of navigating multiple cultures informs her creative vision. This perspective brings a distinctive emotional honesty and humanity to her work, shaping films that not only challenge audiences, but also foster connection, deeper understanding and dialogue.
I encountered Deeyah's work in her documentary "White Right: Meeting the Enemy" and it is TRULY transformative. She sat in rooms with white supremacists I'd be nervous to sit in and she did it with fierceness, determination, courage and love. And some of those men left the movement due to her influence. She is a rockstar and I can't wait to share this story with you. -
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Like many of you, I watched a viral video of a gorgeous woman walking through her house, opening her Bible to Matthew 25 and reading the passage on "the least of these". This was in response to a TikTok comment of someone lashing out at Jen because she (the commenter) "was maga and loved Jesus". After calmly reading the Bible, Jen simply says "sounds pretty liberal to me" and ends the video.
That simple video caused MAGA to call Jen's job where she works as an OB Nurse to get her fired, reported her online and tried to call her licensing board to get her nursing license revoked! Because she read the Bible and they didn't like it. She even had to have private security when she spoke at a conference.
And that is how I met a kind, compassionate, funny, loving lady who shares my alma mater. We talk about our journey's through faith, Liberty, growth, change, and what it means to love your neighbor. -
This episode is brought to you by Ground News. You can get 40% off their Vantage plan and stay up to date with all the news by going to groundnews.com/tables
My grandma Ena was a pilot and they were her favorite stories to tell. I am sure its no surprise that I grew up with Amelia Earhart as one of my heroes. The woman who flew so that my grandma could fly.
She vanished into the sky—and into one of the greatest mysteries of the modern age.
In this episode, we fly into the world of Amelia Earhart, a woman who refused to stay grounded, refused to stay compliant and traditional in a time when society expected her to. She became record-breaking aviator and one of the most famous women in the world. The first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. A symbol of independence, grit, and relentless ambition.
But Earhart wasn’t just chasing records—she was chasing the edge of possibility itself.
In 1937, she set out on a daring attempt to circumnavigate the globe, navigating thousands of miles over open ocean with only the tools and technology of her time. Somewhere over the vast Pacific, near a tiny speck called Howland Island… she disappeared.
No confirmed wreckage. No distress call that told the full story. Just silence.
In this episode, we’ll trace her rise from a curious, rebellious girl to one of the most famous pilots in history and then dive headfirst into the theories, investigations, and unanswered questions that have kept her story alive for nearly a century.
And we will take a brief flyover to meet the Night Witches of the USSR's air service.
This episode is to celebrate Women's History month with women who paved a runway for those who would come later!
Rachel Hartigan, Lost: Unsolved Mysteries of Amelia Earhart and the Bermuda Triangle
Susan Butler, East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart
Doris L. Rich, Amelia Earhart: A Biography
Mary S. Lovell, The Sound of Wings: The Life of Amelia Earhart
Candace Fleming, Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart
Ric Gillespie, Finding Amelia: The True Story of the Earhart Disappearance
Elgen M. Long and Marie K. Long, Amelia Earhart: The Mystery Solved
Mike Campbell, Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last
Fred Goerner, The Search for Amelia Earhart
Vincent V. Loomis, Amelia Earhart: The Final Story
Les Kinney, Amelia Earhart: Beyond the Grave
Theodore G. Tharpe, Crash and Sink: The Salvage of the Earhart Electra
National Geographic Society, “Amelia Earhart Biography and Disappearance”
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, “Amelia Earhart”
Library of Congress, “Amelia Earhart Papers”
FBI Records: The Vault, “Amelia Earhart”
TIGHAR (The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery), “Amelia Earhart Project Research”
U.S. Navy Historical Center, “Earhart Search Operations 1937”
PBS American Experience, Amelia Earhart
History Channel, “Amelia Earhart Disappearance Theories”
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This episode is brought to you by Ground News. Subscribe for 40% off their vantage plan at groundnews.com/tables. Project MKUltra was a secret research program run by the Central Intelligence Agency beginning in 1953 during the Cold War. Its goal was to explore methods of mind control, interrogation, and psychological manipulation, partly out of fear that rival nations like the Soviet Union were developing similar techniques.
The program funded dozens of experiments at universities, hospitals, and prisons. Researchers tested drugs such as LSD, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, electroshock, and other methods to see whether human behavior and memory could be controlled. Many subjects were not informed they were part of experiments, and some were exposed to powerful drugs without consent.
The program remained secret until the 1970s, when investigations by the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities revealed the experiments. Much of the documentation had already been destroyed on orders from CIA director Richard Helms.
MKUltra became one of the most controversial intelligence programs in U.S. history and led to new oversight of intelligence agencies and stricter ethical rules for human experimentation.
Sources available by request at [email protected]
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The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was a 40-year medical experiment conducted by the United States Public Health Service in Macon County, Alabama to observe the natural progression of untreated syphilis in Black men.
Beginning in 1932, researchers recruited about 600 poor African American sharecroppers—399 who had syphilis and 201 who did not. The men were told they were being treated for “bad blood,” a local term used to describe various illnesses. In reality, they were not given proper treatment, even after Penicillin became the widely accepted cure for syphilis in the 1940s. Instead, doctors deliberately withheld treatment so they could study how the disease damaged the body over time.
Participants were misled about the nature of the study and were subjected to painful procedures such as spinal taps while being told they were receiving medical care. Many men died from syphilis or related complications, infected their wives, and children were born with congenital syphilis.
The study continued until 1972, when a whistleblower, Peter Buxtun, exposed it to the press. Public outrage led to congressional hearings, a class-action lawsuit, and major reforms in medical research ethics, including stricter informed consent requirements and oversight by institutional review boards.
In 1997, Bill Clinton formally apologized on behalf of the U.S. government to the surviving participants and their families. The scandal remains one of the most infamous examples of unethical human experimentation in American history and contributed to long-lasting distrust of the medical system among many African Americans.
Sources available by request [email protected]
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Another crossover episode from my true crime podcast Highway to Hell because of its relevance to whats going on today. If you are a true crime and travel fan please check us out wherever you listen to podcasts.
After his sweetheart deal in 2008, Epstein was able to reintegrate into life and maintain his trafficking ring without any loss in wealth, associations or connections.
This episode tracks his life and dealings from 2008 to his death in 2019, the aftermath of his cruelty, the arrest and trial of Ghislaine Maxwell and the recent release of the Epstein files.
As of now, no man involved with Epstein and his human trafficking has been arrested in the US
Sources
The source list is way too big for the show notes but is available upon request at [email protected]
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Thank you to my patrons for your continued support of the show. Subscribe for ad free episodes at patreon.com/montemader.
A sticky sweltering Tennessee courtroom in 1925 would change the course of Christian conservative perception of "persecution" for the next 100 years. Tennessee's passage of the unconstitutional Butler Act in March of 1925 was fertile soil for a challenge by the ACLU who offered to represent any teacher prosecuted under the law. It was also prime opportunity for the ailing town of Dayton to draw in some much needed publicity to stimulate a strangled local economy.
John T Scopes, a substitute biology teacher would stand trial for teaching evolution from the state approved textbook. The prosecution was led by William Jennings Bryan, lawyer and presidential nominee and the defense was led by Clarence Darrow, the greatest defense attorney of his time. A Christian nationalist judge refused any testimony or experts for the defense and in a desperate move Darrow called prosecutor Bryan to the stand. The interrogation of literal interpretations of the Bible would not win the case, but it would cast Christian conservatives opposition to science into humiliation across the country. Journalist HL Mencken would exacerbate the embarrassment by mocking the "backwoods" people nationwide.
The humiliation didn't change them, it changed their strategy. They decided Christians in the US were being persecuted, formal education was the enemy and they withdrew from society and began to found their own institutions that would lead to Christian colleges, media platforms, conglomerates, PACS, and production agencies. The rhetoric of Christian persecution would fuel the rise of the radical right, the moral majority and the neo nazi platforms we see today.
Sources:
Armaly, M. T., & Enders, A. M. (2022). The sources and consequences of Christian nationalist victimization rhetoric. Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, 8, 1–15.
Armaly, M. T., & Enders, A. M. (2023). Experimental evidence on persecution narratives and violence. Political Behavior, 45(2), 345–367.
Burke, K. J., & Hadley, H. (2025). Christian nationalism and educational policy in the United States. National Education Policy Center.
Darrow, C. (1904). The Resistible Rise of Democracy. Public lecture, later reprinted in Darrow's collected writings.
Du Mez, K. K. (2020). Jesus and John Wayne: How white evangelicals corrupted a faith and fractured a nation.
Ginger, R. (1958). Six days or forever? Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes.
Halbrook, P. N. (2015). The Scopes Trial in educational perspective [Master's thesis, North Carolina State University]. NC State Libraries.
Hart, R. P. (2016). H. L. Mencken and the mythology of American journalism. American Journalism, 33(4), 432–450.
Jones, P., & Cooter, A. (2024). White Christian nationalism after January 6. Middlebury Institute, CTEC Research Series.
Larson, E. J. (1997). Summer for the gods: The Scopes trial and America's continuing debate over science and religion.
Larson, E. J. (2005). Understanding the Scopes Trial 100 years later. Vanderbilt Law Review, 78(2), 571–590.
Marsden, G. M. (1980). Fundamentalism and American culture. Oxford University Press.
Mencken, H. L. (1925). Newspaper dispatches from the Scopes Trial. Reprinted in Pierce, J. K. (2000). The Scopes Trial. American History Magazine.
Moore, R. (2001). The lingering impact of the Scopes Trial on high school biology textbooks. BioScience, 51(9), 790–796.
Perry, S. L. (2025). Secularism, sorting, and Americans' political knowledge. Social Forces, 103(2), 835–857.
Pierce, J. K. (2000). The Scopes Trial. American History Magazine.
State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, 154 Tenn. 105 (1927).
State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, Trial Transcript (1925). Reprinted in Famous Trials Project.
Whitehead, A. L., & Perry, S. L. (2020). Taking America back for God: Christian nationalism in the United States. Oxford University Press.
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This episode is brought to you by Ground News. Subscribe for 40% off their vantage plan at groundnews.com/tables
Lets examine the birthplace and ideological architecture behind Project 2025 and the modern conservative movement driving it, tracing its roots through theology, institutional strategy, and political power . What is framed as a “Second American Revolution” is not merely transition planning but a coordinated effort to concentrate executive authority, weaken democratic safeguards, and embed a hierarchy-first moral framework into federal governance. We walk through the founding and evolution of The Heritage Foundation its key figures such as Paul Weyrich, Edwin Feulner, Kevin Roberts, Paul Dans, and Roger Severino, and analyzing how theological commitments to natural order and authority have been translated into policy blueprints.
Lets explore the projected human impact of Project 2025. We outlines how proposed changes would affect undocumented immigrants, people of color, the unhoused, women seeking reproductive care, people living in poverty, LGBTQ communities—especially trans individuals—and Indigenous nations. Across issue areas, it identifies a recurring pattern: civil rights reframed as bias, equality recast as disorder, and harm justified as restoration. Policies targeting health care access, environmental protections, voting rights, labor standards, and social safety nets are presented not as isolated reforms but as part of a coherent effort to shrink democracy until it no longer obstructs a predetermined moral hierarchy.
But people are pushing back morally, legally, and politically. Leaders such as Reverend William Barber II, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Women’s Law Center, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, LGBTQ advocates, and Indigenous organizers, and highlight counter-visions rooted in pluralism, shared power, and inherent rights. RESIST.
American Civil Liberties Union. (2023). Project 2025: Threats to constitutional governance and civil rights [Issue brief]. American Civil Liberties Union. https://www.aclu.org
Arendt, H. (1969). On violence. Harcourt, Brace & World.
Barber, W. J., II. (2018). The third reconstruction: How a moral movement is overcoming the politics of division and fear. Beacon Press.
Bendix, R. (1977). Nation building and citizenship: Studies of our changing social order. University of California Press.
Bonilla-Silva, E. (2018). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in America (5th ed.). Rowman & Littlefield.
Brugge, D., deLemos, J. L., & Oldmixon, B. (2016). Exposure pathways and health effects associated with chemical and radiological toxicity in Indigenous communities. Environmental Health Perspectives, 124(8), 1232–1240. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP.1509889
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. (2019). Work requirements do not cut poverty, evidence shows. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. https://www.cbpp.org
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. (2021). How immigration enforcement harms children and families. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. https://www.cbpp.org
Critchlow, D. T. (2007). The conservative ascendancy: How the GOP Right made political history. Harvard University Press.
Davis, J. (2022). How the public administrative state became the enemy [Conservative legal and policy commentary on the “administrative state,” 2016–2022].
Feagin, J. R. (2013). Systemic racism: A theory of oppression. Routledge.
Feulner, E. J. (1986). The conservative vision. The Heritage Foundation.
George, R. P. (1999). In defense of natural law. Oxford University Press.
Gorski, P. S., & Perry, S. L. (2022). The flag and the cross: White Christian nationalism and the threat to American democracy. Oxford University Press.
Goss, R. E. (2009). Queering Christ: Beyond Jesus acted up. HarperOne. -
This is not an error! Because of the recent release of the Epstein files I felt sharing my true crime show Highway to Hells 2 part series on Jeffrey Epstein would be valuable bonus for people.
If you are a true crime and travel fan please subscribe and listen to Highway to Hell wherever you get your podcasts. Part 2 comes out next Tuesday on Highway to Hell.
**Please forgive some slight quality changes as this had to be recorded remotely*
3 million more Epstein files were released and yet in the US there has been no further investigation, no arrests. Files that detail the rape, murder, cannibalism of children result in no arrests.
The release of the files almost extend Epsteins story- a man of deception, greed and who skated through his life with absolutely no accountability. The middle class Jewish boy, born into an average Brooklyn jewish family but who called himself "poor, smart, and desperate to be rich". Desperate for the elite and the luxury of New York, and then the world.
A man, who with no college degree who was hired to teach at the elite Dalton school anyway because of his proficiency at math. He was inappropriate with teenage girls but removed quietly- no accountability, no embarrassment for the school. But a parent who met him there brought him into Bear Sterns, with no degree, no qualifications, and when his deceit ran out, he was released quietly. Epstein then shaped himself as the financial advisor of the elite of the elite. He only needed one client, and he found it in Leslie Wexner who gave Epstein all of the keys to his kingdom. When Epstein misappropriated funds, basically gave himself a New York mansion, they settled quietly out of court- no accountability, no embarrassment.
If any single person had exposed Epstein for who he was, the files likely wouldn't exist. And when he finally did get caught for abusing minors, the district attorney and FBI cut him the sweetheart deal of a lifetime. 12 hours a day in jail for 13 months, getting to work in his private office, privacy and a non prosecutorial agreement for all his friends who participated in trafficking and raping minors. They went so far as to lie to his victims about it.
No accountability. No embarrassment. Boys will be boys after all.
FULL LIST OF SOURCES AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST
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Metro Surge in Minneapolis brought with it horror and conflict. Civilians and US citizens were killed, migrants were abducted without warrants, legal observers were tear gassed, people were held in extended detainment without help. Federal officers murdered without investigations, the DOJ and DHS broke federal law without any recourse and it left people wondering "what can I legally do?". It's also become progressively more important to understand how our immigration system works in the US, how its flawed and what all of our rights are.
Daphne Delvaux, is a former immigration attorney and now educator who helps people know their rights and understand how the system works. She is also an immigrant herself and shares her story of going through the system in the US, one that denied her the first time because she and her husband chose not to mix finances. Here she tells her story, teaches us about our rights and gives us some hope and gentle mothering towards the end. Something I desperately needed.
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