Happy Pride month, y’all! Please help me welcome lifelong activist and Arizona Drag Show organizer, Christopher Jay Hall, to the pod. Earlier this week, Christopher and his father were featured in a CNN article & this episode is a timely follow-up. Listen in as Christopher shares about his upbringing in rural Arizona, and how he & his dad have repaired their relationship in recent years. Despite his dad’s early-on rejection of his...
“Be Like Penny.” If you visit my current hometown of Cottonwood, Arizona, you’ll see these three words displayed around town. Penny Smith was a friend to many and a living example of how everyday citizens can make a meaningful difference in their local communities. She passed away in 2021, but her legacy lives on in the hearts of those who know and love her, and also through The Penny Peace Project. In this episode, I’ll...
Nikki G isn’t the type to say “I told you so.” Nevertheless, it was just one year ago when she was on the podcast, walking us through the evangelical vision behind Project 2025 and the looming theocratic dominionism of the far right. Now that the NAR agenda (see Ep.81) is coming to pass, she’s back to regroup. Nikki & I discuss how to maintain sanity and balance under narcissistic rule, what it means to occupy our lane in the...
It’s no accident that gender essentialism is a (sometimes vitriolic) obsession on the right, with folks clinging to the idea that gender is fixed and immutable. Strict enforcement of gender norms is page-one in the fascist playbook. In this episode, I talk about why, and also, what we can do about it. Places I go in this release >> Inspired by Judith Butler, I argue against essentialism and ask: what if gender is a social construct?...
It's still dark outside. I spent an hour tossing and turning about unimportant shit and then my mind caught up to reality and here we are. Dystopia is no longer a Netflix diversion, it is my newsfeed daily. My will to bright-side has been lost to the night. Time is speeding up, but sometimes it moves slow enough that I can see the wreckage all around me/us... damage of our own choosing. How can this be? I knew humans could be ugly, but I didn't...
In today's release, I lay the foundation for a series of episodes that'll be rolling out on the main feed in the coming weeks. Because as life would have it, 'cult'ure series content is syncing-up with my graduate studies... and in a big way! While I don't 'talk politics in this particular episode, a critique on modern leadership is of existential importance right now. Also, a friendly heads up... today's content may challenge your core beliefs...
Time for another encore! Ep.80 is even more relevant now than when I recorded it one year ago. In the updated intro, I share audio from Saturday's Hands Off Protest in Flagstaff, Arizona. It was one of over 1400 protests around the globe where over 5 million individuals said aw-hell-no to the Trump regime's patriarchal power flex. Daddy issues are alive in the zeitgeist right now and, like it or not, they are shaping our collective responses...
I'm doing a lot of deep breathing lately and I know I’m not alone. A helluva lot of Americans are feeling overwhelmed, discouraged, and preoccupied by a single question: What can I possibly do in response to a billionaire-funded fascist coup? Long-time friend of the pod, Susan McCulley, is here to help us find a few answers to that question. No, she's not a seasoned activist or recognizable political figure; she's an everyday...
This week on TDP… an encore presentation of an episode I dropped almost two years ago. Ep.59 is ripe for a reboot because fascism has come for America and much of what I speak to in this drop has become an everyday norm. I re-recorded the intro to reflect our current reality, and I hope you listen to the end, where I take a closer look at tone policing and why it works to silence us. (The right knowledge can help us to beat them at their own...
I'm back. Because silence isn't an option right now. In this episode, I share how graduate study / critical inquiry into leadership and social psychology is helping me make sense of an upside-down world. Groupthink, aka hive mind, isn't just a 'culty' thing. For better and for worse, conformity happens everywhere along the political spectrum. I speak to how unspoken "display rules" keep us from speaking up, then make the argument that...
