Pod Only Knows

Kelly J. Baker and John Brooks
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Pod Only Knows Podcast

Hosted by Dr. Kelly J. Baker and John Brooks. Kelly and John invite other people from the wide and wild world of religious studies to talk to them about why and how they do what they do and why their work matters to us all. They also talk to each other about the ideas, stories, and histories that fascinate them and that they think you should know about, too.

  1. 17 SEPT

    #034 – Thomas Lecaque - Why the right can't stop loving the Crusades (and other losers)

    This week, in part inspired by the anniversary of 9/11, Kelly and John invited Thomas Lecaque on the show to talk about the ways the Christian right frame the Crusades and other violent failures to justify their own acts of political and religious violence. Thomas Lecaque is an associate professor of History at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa. He specializes in the nexus of apocalyptic religion and political violence. He has written for the Washington Post, Religion Dispatches, Foreign Policy and The Bulwark, among others. He has recently turned his attention to colonial America, examining the ways in which Christian holy war zeal shaped the American landscape Also this week, John delivers some really bad news about ciabatta, and Thomas and Kelly go head to head in POK's exciting new game "What The Hell Was He Talking About?" You can find Thomas on Twitter @tlecaque

    1h 8m

  2. 3 SEPT

    #033 – “Jesus Camp” (2006) with Megan Goodwin

    Jesus Camp was 2006's other big documentary, nominated for the Academy Award for documentary feature but losing out to a little film called An Inconvenient Truth. Directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (and timed, coincidentally, to the appointment of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court) it mainly follows three young evangelical Christians as they prepare to attend the Kids On Fire summer camp, run by a youth pastor named Becky Fischer. Largely through interviews with Fischer and the children, Ewing and Grady paint a picture of an emerging movement to indoctrinate young people in order to take on secularism at every level of American life as adults. 18 years later, Jesus Camp provides a fascinating juxtaposition between the far-right evangelical movement then (with its obsession with George W. Bush, Harry Potter, Intelligent Design, and Ted Haggard) and the post-January 6th, Trumpian present. Megan Goodwin again joins Kelly and John to sort through all this and more. For an update on the three featured kids, you can check out Jennifer Tisdale's post on Distractify here: https://www.distractify.com/p/jesus-camp-where-are-they-now

    1h 16m

  3. 13 AUG

    #032 - Stockholm Syndrome: The Story of a Dumb Idea

    Stockholm Syndrome is a really good MUSE song. Unfortunately, it's not a good anything else.0 On a recent episode of television's worst show, The Five on Fox News, panelist Jessica Tarlov, herself Jewish, asked her fellow panelist Greg Gutfeld why Jews tend to be Democrat and not Republican. His answer? Stockholm syndrome. Most people could probably give a decent summary of what Stockholm syndrome supposedly is - the phenomenon of a hostage coming sympathize and even identify with their captor - but few of them would be able to accurately recount the story that gave rise to its supposed existence. This stubbornly enduring - and almost certainly wrong - belief has gone on to influence the way we think about why people take on certain political positions, join cults, or even adhere to extremist religious views. So we decided it was worth taking a look at the story at its center to find out what it can tell us about why we are so wrong about how we think about out other people think. Of the many resources used for this episode, none was better at filling in the most important gaps than Rebecca Armitage's piece for ABC News Australia https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-23/is-stockholm-syndrome-a-myth/102738084

    51 min

  4. 30 JUL

    #031 - Project 2025 (and why you should really, really care about it)

    Project 2025 has (finally) become an enormous national news story. But while its goals (which go after everything from contraception to the Department of Education) have rightly been in the spotlight, it's also important to understand that, far from being the fantasy wish list of a group of fringe conservatives, it is in fact a project of a major think tank, decades in the making. It comes out of the Heritage Foundation, an organization founded by anti-democratic far-right Christian nationalist Paul Weyrich and currently run by the like-minded Kevin Roberts...whose upcoming book has a forward by JD Vance. This week, John and Kelly unpack a little bit about why you should take anything coming out of the Heritage Foundation very seriously.   LINKS! P2025 Explained: Project 2025: The myths and the facts Democrats Are Sounding the Alarm About Project 2025. What’s in It? What is Project 2025? What to know about the conservative blueprint for a second Trump administration Project 2025: A wish list for a Trump presidency, explained Other Resources: Trump allies prepare to infuse ‘Christian nationalism’ in second administration Trump claims not to know who is behind Project 2025. A CNN review found at least 140 people who worked for him are involved J.D. Vance has made it impossible for Trump to run away from Project 2025 Liz Theoharis and Shailly Gupta Barnes - Project 2025: The Christian Nationalist Vision to be Imposed on America

    1h 4m

  5. 16 JUL

    #030 - "Marjoe" (1972) with Megan Goodwin

    The 1972 film Marjoe won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. And then it spent a long time having largely been forgotten until it was restored and rereleased in 2005. Marjoe is an intimate look at the life of Marjoe Gortner, who rose to fame in the charismatic evangelical revival world as the world's youngest preacher until he was ultimately unmasked as a fraud, trained (often through torture) to deliver sermons with fake piety while fleecing untold crowds of true believers. The film starts with Marjoe in his twenties having made a comeback, fully aware he was still a conman and showing at least some signs of remorse and discomfort with the grift. It's a film told from a questionable perspective, dripping with iffy journalistic ethics, but it poses (even if inadvertently) some tantalizing, unanswerable questions about, among other things, the role sincerity plays in the preacher-believer relationship and the unfortunate ease with which religion can be leveraged to stay cons. Our friend Megan Goodwin joins us to talk through all of it.

    1h 1m

  6. 2 JUL

    #029 - Thou Shalt Not Violate the 1st Amendment

    Well it's been a heck of a week of bad news, and even before the Supreme Court decided the the president was king, Kelly and John decided to look at two news stories likely to play into next year's Supreme Court decisions: Louisiana's new Ten Commandment school mandate and Oklahoma's new requirement to include the Bible in its public school curriculum. On the surface, both of these measures are clearly, explicitly unconstitutional, and both have plenty of precedent to back up their unconstitutionality. But in this episode we argue that that may not matter, and that lawsuit-hungry ideas like these are designed to fine-tune a decades-long attempt to bring Christian indoctrination into the public education system. And, given the makeup of the current court, one of them may actually work. Some resources used in this episode:

    55 min

  7. 18 JUN

    #028 - Dr. Matthew Taylor on An Appeal to Heaven, Alito, and the NAR

    We're back for season two, and we're kicking it off by talking to Dr. Matthew D. Taylor about that weird An Appeal to Heaven flag that got Justice Samuel Alito in so much trouble! Taylor holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies and Muslim-Christian Relations from Georgetown University and an M.A. in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary. His book, Scripture People: Salafi Muslims in Evangelical Christians’ America (Cambridge University Press), offers an introduction to the oft-misunderstood Salafi movement in the U.S. by way of comparison with American Evangelicalism. He is also the creator of the acclaimed audio-documentary series  “Charismatic Revival Fury: The New Apostolic Reformation,” which details how networks of extremist Christian leaders helped instigate the January 6th Insurrection. His next book, The Violent Take It By Force: The Christian movement that is threatening our democracy (Broadleaf Books), will be published in Fall 2024. He joined Kelly and John to talk about the threat to democracy the flag represents, and offered his thoughts about what we can still do to break the spell of Christian Nationalism in America.

    1h 13m

  8. 7 MAY

    #027 - DeSantis v Satan

    Last month, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill authorizing Florida school districts and charter schools to adopt a policy for chaplains “to provide support, services, and programs to students"...provided those chaplains aren't Satanists. "We're not playing those games in Florida. That is not a religion," DeSantis said of Satanism. "That is not qualifying to be able to participate in this." The thing is, though, Satanism most definitely is a religion, and in the case of The Satanic Temple it is a religion in the eyes of United States tax law. DeSantis may well have said this knowing his bill likely violates the 1st amendment and thus inviting an inevitable legal fight with The Satanic Temple's founder, social justice and 1st Amendment activist Lucien Greaves. In our final episode of the season - marking the podcasts' one year anniversary - Kelly and John talk about the bill as part of creeping Christian Nationalism, why it's so hard to define a religion (and why governments shouldn't be in the business of doing so), and what Lucien Greaves and The Satanic Temple actually stand for.

    1h 2m
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About

Hosted by Dr. Kelly J. Baker and John Brooks. Kelly and John invite other people from the wide and wild world of religious studies to talk to them about why and how they do what they do and why their work matters to us all. They also talk to each other about the ideas, stories, and histories that fascinate them and that they think you should know about, too.

Information

  • Creator
    Kelly J. Baker and John Brooks
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2024
  • Episodes
    136
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    ℗ & © 2020 The CageClub Podcast Network
  • Show Website
    Pod Only Knows

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