125 episodes

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.

Pod Only Knows Kelly J. Baker and John Brooks

    • Society & Culture
    • 4.8 • 33 Ratings

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.

    #023 - Sarah Posner

    #023 - Sarah Posner

    Sarah Posner has been covering the Christian right and Christian Nationalism for more than a decade. A regular contributor to MSNBC, her works has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Salon, The Nation, The American Prospect, Al Jazeera America, and many other publications.
    Posner is the author of 2008's God's Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters and 2020's Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind.
    She joined Kelly and John last week, on the eve of the State of the Union Address and just as Donald Trump had secured the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential race, about how she came to cover religion, how Christian Nationalism has evolved over the past few decades, and what she thinks is ahead, whether Trump returns to power or not.
    Her website is http://sarahposner.com.

    • 56 min
    #022 - God's Army with Amanda Moore

    #022 - God's Army with Amanda Moore

    For the last couple years, Amanda Moore has spent her time covering the far right on her Substack The Turtle Diaries
    Amanda infiltrated the far right during the final year of the Trump administration and has written about her experiences in publications like The Nation.
    She recently went to the Texas border to cover the arrival of "God's Army" - a group of truckers (possibly) who took it upon themselves to defend the border from an "invasion" and maybe possibly kick of the 2nd Civil War (they didn't).
    Amanda joined Kelly and John to talk about her experience at the border (which led to her acquiring a new far-right, J6-alumnus stalker), growing up with fundamentalism, how she sees QAnon as a perfectly predictable offshoot of evangelicalism, and whether she thinks the right is poised to bubble over in violence once again.
    You can find her on Twitter (and other social media) @noturtlesoup17

    • 1 hr
    #021 - Dr. Nicole Symmonds

    #021 - Dr. Nicole Symmonds

    This week, Kelly and John talk to Dr. Nicole Symmonds, who works as an Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics and, it happens, used to work a few cubicles down from John at Beliefnet a decade and a half or so ago.
    Dr. Symmonds' work sits at the intersection of Christian ethics and women, gender, and sexuality studies. She explores Black women’s embodiment, particularly the practices of liberative embodiment they craft as a method of resistance to domination and as a simulation of freedom.
    Dr. Symmonds identifies as Black Catholic, a religious tradition that follows the rite of the Roman Catholic Church but is driven by the spirit of Blackness in all its forms according to Black people’s diasporic origins and heritage. She is a parishioner at Our Lady of Lourdes, the Mother Church of African-American Catholics in the Archdiocese of Atlanta.
    In this episode, she discusses her work studying evangelicals and anti-sex-trafficking work, becoming a Black Catholic, TikTok, and why she emphasizes the term "womanism" in her studies.`
    She is on Twitter @nicole_symmonds

    • 1 hr 13 min
    #020 - Dr. Judith Weisenfeld

    #020 - Dr. Judith Weisenfeld

    As a nice break from all the doom and gloom in the world (and the depressing stuff we often cover), we decided to ask the wonderful Dr. Judith Weisenfeld to come talk to us about her life and work.
    Judith Weisenfeld is the Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor of Religion at Princeton University, Associated Faculty in the Department of African American Studies and the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies, and a member of the Executive Committee of the Effron Center for the Study of America.
    Her research focuses on early twentieth-century African American religious history, and she has explored a range of topics, including in the relation of religion to constructions of race, the impact on black religious life of migration, immigration, and urbanization in African American women’s religious history, and religion in film and popular culture.
    She is currently the Director of The Crossroads Project: Black Religious Histories, Communities and Cultures, a four-year project funded by the Henry Luce Foundation aimed at producing deeper understandings of the history and diversity of Black religious life in the U.S.
    Here she talks to Kelly and John about how she got into religious studies, the joys of accidentally discovering new things during research, and her books Hollywood Be Thy Name and New World A-Coming.
    She is on Twitter @JLWeisenfeld

    • 1 hr 12 min
    #019 - The Cult of Peloton?

    #019 - The Cult of Peloton?

    Is Peloton a cult?
    Well, Kelly owns one, so she is uniquely qualified to answer.
    In all seriousness, a Google search for terms like "peloton cult" or "fitness cult" yields a lot of results.
    Fairly or not, the fitness equipment company Peloton has been accused of fostering cult-like behavior in its customers. And the same can be said for branded workout companies like CrossFit and SoulCycle.
    But why? And is there anything to this?
    In this episode, Kelly and John ask those very questions, and explore what thinking about fitness culture in the framing of religion and cult behavior can tell us about all three of those things.
    And they also look at the emerging "cults" that appear to defy our traditional understanding of what they are and what leads people to them, like Twin Flames.

    • 1 hr 3 min
    #018 - David Feltmate - The Simpsons, Religion, and Other Stuff

    #018 - David Feltmate - The Simpsons, Religion, and Other Stuff

    34 years ago, in December of 1989, Fox aired Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire, a Simpsons Christmas special, the de facto pilot to the subsequent primetime sitcom, and a cultural phenomenon was born.
    To people of a certain age, The Simpsons is part of the cultural DNA. And as an animated sitcom, it had unique license to explore elements of American culture that no other series could. And one of those elements was religion.
    The Simpson family went to church. They lived in a multicultural, multiethnic (but still predominantly white and Christian) community. They exposed aspects of American religious life that were hiding in plain sight.
    Dr. David Feltmate wrote about all this (in addition to how religion is portrayed in Family Guy and South Park) in his book Drawn to the Gods, and this week, he joined Kelly and John to talk about his life in religious studies, why he loves The Simpsons, and how religion exists in a post-Simpsons America.

    • 1 hr 20 min

Customer Reviews

4.8 out of 5
33 Ratings

33 Ratings

ted00031 ,

This show ROCKS

Full disclosure: my thoughts on this podcast may not be 100% objective given my friendship with John, but if you even have a passing interest in religious studies/religion (and it’s impact on the world, history, and culture) or you just enjoyed The Beach Boys reference in the title—you’ll enjoy this show. I’m a religious studies nerd and educator, but even non-religious studies/philosophy nerds should enjoy the way John, Kelly, and their guests explore the topics chosen for the each episode. In other words, you won’t need prior knowledge to have a good time. Keep the episodes coming guys!

Logisteffez ,

❤️❤️

Love this show!

Jerry>M ,

Fabulous

Brilliant podcast, exactly just what I wanted! Highly recommend!!

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