HOW AMERICA LOST ITS MIND, AND DO WE EVEN WANT IT BACK? Episode 1: It's Not a Horseshoe. It's a Business Model. The wellness people think your toothpaste is poisoning you. Finance bros think empathy is bad economics. Somebody on the far right thinks Taylor Swift is a Democrat psy-op, while someone on the far left thinks your aunt buying hummus is personally funding colonialism. On parts of both fringes, everything is somehow Israel's fault. The old antisemitic conspiracies apparently have remarkable staying power among people who think they're having brand-new thoughts. Then, while the MAGA right was helpfully laying out its intentions in Project 2025, a corner of the online left looked at Russia and the Islamic Republic of Iran, a regime that jails journalists, murders protesters, brutalizes women, and executes gay people, and thought, "Maybe these guys have a point." It's impressive how much authoritarianism you can overlook once you've decided the authoritarians hate the right people. Different politics, same inability to enjoy Thanksgiving. And somehow, all of these people have podcasts. Actually, so do we. Welcome to Grifty Pod. We're opening a season about how America lost its mind, which every podcast host seems to have already solved. In our defense, we're planning to disagree with each other, which is a terrible way to run a cult. We start with Horseshoe Theory: the idea that the far left and far right eventually bend toward each other. Shared conspiracies and purity tests don't mean these movements want the same world or have equal power. The American far right has substantial electoral, judicial, governmental, and media power. Your neighborhood tankie with 600 followers does not. Aaron asks why standing in the middle automatically makes you right, bringing in slavery, Reconstruction, and racial hierarchy. Moderation can be a tactic; it isn't automatically a worldview. Julian brings in diagonalism to explain how people with very different politics unite against shared enemies. He connects that to conspirituality and the pandemic-era collision of wellness, libertarianism, QAnon, anti-vaccine politics, and MAGA. Some spiritual influencers decided Trump was a lightworker. After all that talk about letting go of the ego, that's quite a man to end up defending. Inna talks about Soviet Ukraine, the propaganda she believed while her parents kept dangerous truths from her, the USSR's collapse, and antisemitism she later heard echoed in America. She's now a psychology professor, but once believed she was psychic, making her the only Grifty host theoretically capable of predicting your five-star review. Julian traces his politics from growing up white under apartheid in South Africa and conscientious objection through Pat Buchanan, the Tea Party, and QAnon. Seeing Americans put Hitler mustaches on Obama posters over health care was quite something. Apparently the tyranny was going to begin when somebody could afford a doctor. He and Inna also disagree about emotional labor: people can only explain their marginalization so many times. We get into why arguments can harden beliefs, too. Being wrong can threaten your identity and your place in a group. Changing your mind is hard enough without admitting that the person who's been annoying you has a point. Azi's leftist parents joined Iran's 1979 revolution hoping for something better. Her mother marched while pregnant; another authoritarian order followed. So when somebody says "burn it all down," Azi would like to know who takes over afterward. Her family has already tried the version where you find that out later. Children, disabled people, and the elderly don't get to skip the collapse. That's where we come back to vulnerability. Economic insecurity, loneliness, and institutional failure give people real reasons to be angry. We're asking who turns that anger into audiences, markets, and power. A grifter doesn't have to invent your pain. They can just tell you who caused it, preferably right before the ad break. IN THIS EPISODE Horseshoe Theory, diagonalism, and why power matters Conspirituality, QAnon, wellness culture, and political radicalization Purity politics, cognitive dissonance, and the cost of changing your mind Soviet propaganda, antisemitism, pseudoscience, and institutional collapse Apartheid South Africa, Pat Buchanan, the Tea Party, and the culture war Iran's revolution and the fantasy of "burn it all down" How legitimate grievances become audiences, markets, movements, and power THE THREE GRIFTY QUESTIONS Who's making money? Who's gaining power? Who benefits if I stay angry? They do not explain everything. They explain an alarming amount. FURTHER READING HORSESHOES, DIAGONALS & STRANGE POLITICAL BEDFELLOWS Coronapolitics from the Reichstag to the Capitol. Quinn Slobodian and William Callison's Boston Review piece on diagonalism, conspiracism, entrepreneurial contrarians, and "incitement capitalism." Useful if you're wondering how people with incompatible beliefs end up marching together, and who benefits from keeping them worked up. The Women Making Conspiracy Theories Beautiful. The Atlantic on how QAnon was repackaged through Instagram aesthetics, wellness, motherhood, and lifestyle branding. Sometimes radicalization comes with tactical gear. Sometimes it comes in a tasteful beige infographic. The curtains are lovely. OUTRAGE, ALGORITHMS & INTERNET BRAIN How Social Learning Amplifies Moral Outrage Expression in Online Social Networks. Research showing that positive feedback for expressing outrage can encourage more outrage expression later. We can learn what kind of anger gets rewarded, and keep giving the audience more of it. Misinformation Exploits Outrage to Spread Online. A Science study examining misinformation, moral outrage, and sharing, including people's willingness to share without reading. Furious remains an extremely effective distribution strategy. Reading the article apparently slows things down. Out-Group Animosity Drives Engagement on Social Media. Posts about political opponents were much more likely to be shared in the social-media data studied. Apparently love of country has competition from the ancient human tradition of really disliking those people over there. The Spread of True and False News Online. The landmark study finding that false news traveled farther and faster than true news in the Twitter data examined. Bad news for everyone whose content strategy is "boring but accurate." Exposure to Opposing Views on Social Media Can Increase Political Polarization. A complication for the idea that we'd all calm down if we just encountered the other side more often. Republican participants became more conservative in this Twitter experiment; the Democratic shift wasn't statistically significant. Exposure alone doesn't guarantee persuasion. CONSPIRACY THEORIES, MISINFORMATION & WHY OUR BRAINS LOVE THIS STUFF The Psychological Drivers of Misinformation Belief and Its Resistance to Correction. A major review of the cognitive, social, and emotional factors shaping misinformation belief, including why a correction doesn't necessarily erase the original claim. Useful for anyone who has sent a relative a carefully sourced article and received a YouTube video in return. Why People Believe in Conspiracy Theories. Psychologist Karen Douglas talks with the APA about how conspiracy theories begin, persist, and promise understanding, security, or belonging. There's a reason "they don't want you to know this" may be the most durable sentence on the internet. Trust Nobody: How Voters React to Conspiracy Theories. Research finding that exposure to foreign conspiracy theories reduced trust in domestic information sources. That distrust can extend beyond the specific claim, although the study didn't establish the same effect on evaluations of politicians or political institutions. POLARIZATION, DEMOCRACY & THE OTHER TEAM Polarization versus Democracy. Milan Svolik on how partisan loyalty can lead voters to tolerate attacks on democracy from their own side. Very committed to the rules, until the rules inconvenience our guy. How Affective Polarization Shapes Americans' Political Beliefs: A Study of Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Research on how hostility toward the other party shaped COVID-era political judgments. Disliking the other team can become part of how we decide what to believe, even when the immediate problem is a virus. ABOUT GRIFTY POD Grifty is a late-stage capitalism podcast by and about false idols, hosted by Azi, Aaron, Inna, and Julian. We get into the strange, seductive overlap of politics, media, pop psychology, wellness, conspiracy culture, technology, celebrity, branding, and disinformation. We're interested in how charismatic personalities, political movements, corporations, influencers, and institutions use the language of truth, freedom, justice, identity, and community to build audiences, sell certainty, and gain power. You come looking for an explanation, or somewhere to belong, and somebody discovers a business opportunity. Grifty is a little snarky, a little scholarly, deeply historical, definitely political, and always asking who benefits. Come find us Grifty Pod is hosted by Azi, Aaron, Inna, and Julian. Listen on Apple Podcasts, find us on Substack, or visit grifty.org. If you enjoyed the episode, share it. Leave a comment on our social media or email us at griftypod@gmail.com, especially if we got something wrong. We'd like to find out before we say it again with even more confidence. Find Grifty on Instagram at @griftypod, Threads at @griftypod, and Bluesky at @griftypod.bsky.social. You can also follow us individually on Instagram: Azi at @the.wellness.therapist, Aaron at @mrneuropolitan, Julian at @realityandmeaning, and Inna at @_dr_inna.
