How America Lost Its Mind, and Do We Even Want It Back? Episode 5: The Velvet Rope Loneliness isn't a personal failure. It's what happens when work, rent, exhaustion, and the cost of being alive leave people with fewer places to meet one another. Then someone arrives selling community for $9.99 a month, plus a loyalty test and a promise never to question the person collecting the subscription. In this episode, Azi, Aaron, Inna, and Julian look at why influencers and political movements can make people feel more welcome than organizations trying to build collective power. You show up wanting to talk about rent control or healthcare and somehow end up defending your vocabulary while your boss enjoys the most productive workplace investigation of his career. We talk about parasocial relationships, purity tests, social rejection, and the way genuine loneliness becomes a market. People want connection. The people selling it often need them to stay angry, afraid, or dissatisfied enough to come back tomorrow. We also get into chronic illness, disability politics, masking conflicts, and the attention economy's habit of turning vulnerable people into content. A creator doesn't need to solve a problem if the problem keeps producing views. IN THIS EPISODE Why loneliness is shaped by work, housing, time, and money. How influencers turn recognition into subscriptions and unpaid public relations work. Why the right turns rejection into recruitment. How leftist purity tests shrink movements and exhaust potential allies. Why social media profits from outrage, suspicion, and endless enemies. How symbols and group identity can build belonging or divide a coalition. THE GRIFTY QUESTIONS Who's making money? Who's gaining power? Who benefits if I stay angry? Those questions don't explain everything. They do explain an alarming amount. FURTHER READING Ted Cruz is on Obamacare How the Affordable Care Act was negotiated 15 Times Republicans Have Sabotaged the Affordable Care Act The Sum of Us 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 Find us at grifty.org and follow @griftypod on Instagram. We're also @griftypod on Threads If you'd like to keep up with the people having these arguments, follow us individually on Instagram: Azi Ghafari at @the.wellness.therapist, Aaron McCall at @mrneuropolitan, Inna Kanevsky at @_dr_inna, and Julian Walker at @realityandmeaning. Want more Grifty between episodes? Subscribe to Grifty on Substack for show notes, sources, writing, and bonus material.Subscribe free, or go paid if you'd like to support the research and productio n behind the show. We spend a lot of time asking who's making money, so eventually we had to admit we'd like some too.

Episode 4: The Snake Oil Caucus How America Lost Its Mind, and Do We Even Want It Back? Healthcare is broken. That part isn't a conspiracy. It's a business model with lobbyists. In this episode, we follow the anger created by insurance denials, medical neglect, corporate influence, and political failure. We look at the Affordable Care Act, Project 2025, MAHA, abortion restrictions, vaccine misinformation, and the people who recognize a genuine crisis and think, excellent, there's a market here. The ACA protected people with preexisting conditions, expanded Medicaid, and helped millions afford coverage. It also left private insurers between patients and care. We can defend what the law improved without pretending it solved healthcare or made corporate influence charming because the tie was blue. We examine what Project 2025 proposed, what MAHA promised, and what happened when those ideas reached government. We discuss documented cases involving abortion restrictions and pregnancy-loss care, while keeping the evidence honest about what is established and what remains uncertain. Then we move from policy to business. Insys, Teami, paid influencers, supplement companies, and wellness brands all offer different versions of the same pitch: conventional institutions have failed you, so trust us instead. Sometimes that trust comes with a discount code, a product line, a lobbyist, or a checkout page. The wellness industry is not outside corporate capitalism because its products come with softer lighting. We ask who is making money, who is gaining power, who benefits from public distrust, and what happens when a legitimate criticism becomes another way to sell certainty. 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 How the ACA Was Negotiated 15 Times Republicans Have Sabotaged the Affordable Care Act The Myth of the Welfare Queen The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee 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. 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 Find us at grifty.org and follow @griftypod on Instagram. We're also @griftypod on Threads If you'd like to keep up with the people having these arguments, follow us individually on Instagram: Azi Ghafari at @the.wellness.therapist, Aaron McCall at @mrneuropolitan, Inna Kanevsky at @_dr_inna, and Julian Walker at @realityandmeaning. Want more Grifty between episodes? Subscribe to Grifty on Substack for show notes, sources, writing, and bonus material.Subscribe free, or go paid if you'd like to support the research and productio n behind the show. We spend a lot of time asking who's making money, so eventually we had to admit we'd like some too.

How America Lost Its Mind, and Do We Even Want It Back? Episode 3: Why MAHA Worked: How the Wound Became a Worldview MAHA did not persuade millions of people because they suddenly forgot how to think. It worked because it found people who were sick, exhausted, underinsured, ignored by doctors, and furious at a healthcare system that can save your life, deny the claim, and bill you for both. In this episode, Azi, Inna, and Julian follow that anger from Jenny McCarthy and Andrew Wakefield to wellness influencers, conspiracy culture, parasocial relationships, and the creator economy. Aaron is away working on an exciting side-hustle episode, presumably somewhere near a microphone and a monetization strategy. We look at how a real experience of medical neglect can become attached to an explanation that the evidence doesn't support. We talk about medical racism, the weaponization of Tuskegee, and the difference between believing someone's experience and accepting their conclusion. Those are apparently separate skills now. MAHA took grievances with progressive roots, removed the collective solutions, and sold them back as consumer choice. Cleaner air became better supplements. Corporate distrust became collagen. Public health became dye-free Doritos, while the water protections waited patiently in the lobby. The episode asks how a wound becomes a worldview, how a worldview becomes a market, and why certainty is so much easier to sell than an honest explanation that begins, "We don't know yet." IN THIS EPISODE Why MAHA attracted people from different political and cultural backgrounds, including MAGA organizers, crunchy wellness communities, chronically ill people, regenerative farmers, libertarians, and Christian-right activists. How Jenny McCarthy and Andrew Wakefield helped turn the vaccine-autism myth into an emotionally powerful story, even after the underlying research was exposed as fraudulent and contradicted by much larger studies. Why medical distrust can be understandable without making every explanation that grows out of it true. How Black women's documented experiences of medical racism can be exploited by anti-vaccine organizations that borrow real historical trauma to sell false claims. Why patients often need recognition before they can hear a lecture, and what happens when the first person to say "I believe you" is also selling a protocol, a course, or an affiliate link. How wellness culture converted collective demands for safer food, cleaner air, and accountable institutions into individual shopping assignments. The role of Oprah, daytime television, social media, podcasts, and infinite scroll in giving charismatic people more authority than their evidence deserves. Why parasocial trust can make even scientifically minded people less likely to check claims from someone who feels familiar and reassuring. How political movements use the same sales funnel as wellness influencers: identify the pain point, provide the hidden explanation, create an enemy, build belonging, and eventually ask for the credit card number. 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 Jenny McCarthy's FRONTLINE interview shows how parental fear, personal testimony, and the promise of hope shaped the vaccine-autism movement. OUTRAGE, ALGORITHMS & INTERNET BRAIN The Center for Countering Digital Hate's report on the Disinformation Dozen examines the small group of accounts responsible for a large share of anti-vaccine content online. CONSPIRACY THEORIES, MISINFORMATION & WHY OUR BRAINS LOVE THIS STUFF The Danish nationwide cohort study on MMR vaccination and autism followed 657,461 children and found no increased autism risk after MMR vaccination. The KFF report on Black women's experiences in healthcare documents unfair treatment and negative health consequences that can make medical distrust rational for many people. Retraction Watch's account of the Wakefield paper follows the long afterlife of a fraudulent study that continued to shape public health beliefs after its retraction. POLARIZATION, DEMOCRACY & THE OTHER TEAM The Vaccine War, from FRONTLINE traces the history of vaccine controversies, including the role of celebrity advocacy and Andrew Wakefield's discredited research. PODCASTS, BECAUSE APPARENTLY WE SHOULD ALSO INVESTIGATE OURSELVES The Grifty podcast is where we keep following the money, the power, and the claims that arrive with suspiciously convenient checkout pages. WATCH The Vaccine War, from FRONTLINE traces the history of vaccine controversies, including the role of celebrity advocacy and Andrew Wakefield's discredited research. 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 Find us at grifty.org and follow @griftypod on Instagram. We're also @griftypod on Threads If you'd like to keep up with the people having these arguments, follow us individually on Instagram: Azi Ghafari at @the.wellness.therapist, Aaron McCall at @mrneuropolitan, Inna Kanevsky at @_dr_inna, and Julian Walker at @realityandmeaning. Want more Grifty between episodes? Subscribe to Grifty on Substack for show notes, sources, writing, and bonus material.Subscribe free, or go paid if you'd like to support the research and productio n behind the show. We spend a lot of time asking who's making money, so eventually we had to admit we'd like some too.

Grifty Side Hustle How America Lost Its Mind, and Do We Even Want It Back? We Lost Our Mind 160 Years Ago When We Failed the Test of Reconstruction Show Notes Welcome to Grifty Side Hustle. Between regular Grifty episodes, one or two of us take a closer look at something we're really into. Each episode stands on its own, whether we're following someone's career, revisiting a period in history, or examining an idea or institution that gets us asking bigger questions. Sometimes it's an obvious grift. Sometimes it's a political promise or a national myth that refuses to stay in the past. The cast may be smaller, but the suspicion is fully staffed. We're looking at who gets power, who lives with the consequences, and how old ideas keep being repackaged as common sense. Did America lose its mind? And if it did, what if it actually happened 160 years ago? Grifty Pod co-host Aaron McCall launches the series' first-ever Grifty Side Hustle to dig deeper into that question by looking to the Civil War and the Reconstruction period. Senator Hiram R. Revels was the first African American senator elected during the Reconstruction era. But was the Civil War exclusively about slavery, or was it also about the tensions behind the promise of a nation where "we are all created equal with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"? The more we dig into Senator Hiram Revels's career and the society around him, the more we see that the Reconstruction period and the present day share many of the same conflicts, struggles, and political tensions. Aaron ends the episode by asking what we can learn from the past in order to understand our present-day struggles. Subscribe to Grifty Pod and follow the show @GriftyPod on Instagram, and find each of the hosts individually. Azi is @The.Wellness.Therapist, Aaron is @mrneuropolitan, Inna is @_dr_inna, and Julian is @realityandmeaning. 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 Want more Grifty between episodes? Subscribe to our Substack for show notes, sources, writing, and bonus material. Subscribe free, or go paid if you'd like to support the research and production behind the show. We spend a lot of time asking who's making money, so eventually we had to admit we'd like some too. Subscribe to Grifty on Substack POLARIZATION, DEMOCRACY & THE OTHER TEAM The Cherry Tree Myth Hiram Rhodes Revels The First Black Man Elected to Congress Was Nearly Blocked From Taking His Seat Black Leaders During Reconstruction The Dred Scott Case Timeline of Labour Issues and Events An African Carpetbagger Was First Black Man Elected to Congress in 1868 ABOUT GRIFTY POD About Grifty Grifty is a late-stage capitalism podcast by and about false idols. Hosted by Azadeh Ghafari, Aaron McCall, Dr. Inna Kanevsky, and Julian Walker, Grifty dives into the strange, seductive overlap of politics, media, pop psychology, conspiracy culture, technology, celebrity, branding, and disinformation. We unpack how charismatic personalities, political movements, corporations, influencers, and institutions hijack the language of truth, freedom, justice, identity, and community to build audiences, sell certainty, and gain power. What starts as culture becomes content. What starts as belonging becomes a business model. And eventually, everything becomes something to monetize. Welcome to Grifty: a little snarky, a little scholarly, deeply historical, definitely political, and always asking the bigger questions. Come find us Find us at grifty.org and follow @griftypod on Instagram. We're also @griftypod on Threads and @GriftyPodcast on Twitter. If you'd like to keep up with the people having these arguments, follow us individually on Instagram: Azi Ghafari at @the.wellness.therapist, Aaron McCall at @mrneuropolitan, Inna Kanevsky at @_dr_inna, and Julian Walker at @realityandmeaning. Want more Grifty between episodes? Subscribe to Grifty on Substack for show notes, sources, writing, and bonus material. Subscribe free, or go paid if you'd like to support the research and production behind the show. We spend a lot of time asking who's making money, so eventually we had to admit we'd like some too.

HOW AMERICA LOST ITS MIND, AND DO WE EVEN WANT IT BACK? Episode 2: The Long Con In 2009, Ashton Kutcher beat CNN to a million Twitter followers. CNN had reporters around the world. Ashton had Punk'd. Somehow, we'd found a way to compare them. Azi follows The Gong Show, The Real World, and American Idol into a culture that sells humiliation and mistakes watchability for authority. The Apprentice gave Trump a carefully edited business reputation, and being good at television could get you taken seriously in a completely different job. Political loyalty can start to look a lot like attachment to a TV character. Paris Hilton didn't cause fascism. We're not putting that on the woman who gave us "that's hot." We wanted celebrity access, then found ourselves expected to post our breakfast, our divorce, and our opinion on a controversy eleven minutes old. Even silence needed an explanation. Aaron traces slavery and Reconstruction through Obama's presidency and the racial backlash that came with it. Obama organized online; Trump promoted birtherism. Aaron also looks at the political decisions behind neglected schools and out-of-reach healthcare. Anger about those failures doesn't become imaginary because a grifter exploits it. We follow how it gets turned into money and political authority. Inna asks how well anyone can know a person through curated posts, even honest ones. Platforms respond to what users choose, and companies learn what keeps us clicking. Filter bubbles aren't inevitable; they depend on how that loop is built. Julian explains Michael Barkun's stigmatized knowledge: when institutions reject a claim, believers can find it more persuasive. We get into QAnon, wellness conspiracies, and the habit of borrowing Tuskegee's documented abuses to make unrelated vaccine allegations sound credible. We connect just-world beliefs to manifestation's convenient defense: when correct thinking doesn't deliver, blame the customer. The seller stays an expert. IN THIS EPISODE Reality TV, The Apprentice, and Trump's business image Kutcher's million-follower race against CNN Bush, 9/11, Iraq, and damaged public trust Obama's digital campaign and Trump's birtherism Reconstruction, citizenship, and voting rights QAnon and conspiracy psychology next to New Age conspirituality Stigmatized knowledge and real institutional misconduct at Tuskegee Just-world beliefs and victim-blaming, plus manifestation Online identity and mental-health communities, and algorithms, user choices, and filter bubbles Hospitality in The Odyssey and community beyond online connections 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 Want more Grifty between episodes? Subscribe to our Substack for show notes, sources, writing, and bonus material. Subscribe free, or go paid if you'd like to support the research and production behind the show. We spend a lot of time asking who's making money, so eventually we had to admit we'd like some too. Subscribe to Grifty on Substack HORSESHOES, DIAGONALS & STRANGE POLITICAL BEDFELLOWS The Emergence of Conspirituality. Charlotte Ward and David Voas linked New Age spirituality and conspiracism in 2011, years before QAnon. It doesn't describe everyone into alternative spirituality. OUTRAGE, ALGORITHMS & INTERNET BRAIN Curation Algorithms and Filter Bubbles in Social Networks. Ron Berman and Zsolt Katona model algorithms alongside users' own connections and choices. Design changes the outcome, and personalization doesn't automatically build an echo chamber. "I See Me Here": Mental Health Content, Community, and Algorithmic Curation on TikTok. Sixteen interviewees describe support, doubts about credibility, and harmful content they struggled to escape. Relatable isn't the same as accurate. These are qualitative findings, not population estimates. The Internet's Role in Campaign 2008. Pew documents online political participation, including organizing and donations. CONSPIRACY THEORIES, MISINFORMATION & WHY OUR BRAINS LOVE THIS STUFF A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America. Michael Barkun traces stigmatized knowledge through beliefs about secret political control, aliens, religion, and coming catastrophe. The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion. Melvin Lerner on how believing people get what they deserve can encourage victim-blaming. It also saves you the trouble of asking why someone was treated unfairly. "The Secret" to Success? The Psychology of Belief in Manifestation. Lucas Dixon and colleagues associate manifestation with confidence about success and with financial risk, but not with higher income. The findings don't establish causation. Confidence and results remain inconveniently different measurements. About the Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee. The CDC documents how Black men were deceived and denied available treatment. Accountability requires evidence, and this history can't substantiate unrelated allegations. POLARIZATION, DEMOCRACY & THE OTHER TEAM Are Republicans and Conservatives More Likely to Believe Conspiracy Theories?. Adam Enders and colleagues found no consistent partisan asymmetry across the claims and contexts they examined. Which conspiracies people accepted depended partly on content and political context. That doesn't mean equal institutional power or equal consequences. Laws and Court Cases: African American Voting Rights. National Archives records on constitutional changes, Black citizenship, and the fight to make voting rights enforceable. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Robert Putnam on declining civic participation and the organizations where people once met and worked together. That history predates social media. The Odyssey, Book XIV. Eumaeus welcomes Odysseus as a stranger in need, before knowing whom he's helping. WATCH President Trump. PBS FRONTLINE traces real estate, celebrity branding, The Apprentice, and birtherism. Transcript available; video currently unavailable. America After 9/11. FRONTLINE examines the government's response, the wars that followed, and damaged public trust. 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 Find us at grifty.org and follow @griftypod on Instagram. We're also @griftypod on Threads If you'd like to keep up with the people having these arguments, follow us individually on Instagram: Azi Ghafari at @the.wellness.therapist, Aaron McCall at @mrneuropolitan, Inna Kanevsky at @_dr_inna, and Julian Walker at @realityandmeaning. Want more Grifty between episodes? Subscribe to our Substack for show notes, sources, writing, and bonus material. Subscribe free, or go paid if you'd like to support the research and production behind the show. We spend a lot of time asking who's making money, so eventually we had to admit we'd like some too. Subscribe to Grifty on Substack  

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 [email protected], 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.

Grifty Pod Bonus Episode "Beating a Dead Horse" We're back because the group chat got out of control. This week we break down the Eric Swalwell allegations, Azi's firsthand experience as a whistleblower in the Eric Bauman scandal, and the bigger issue of power, patriarchy, and why "believe women" suddenly comes with exceptions. We also get into cult of personality politics and what happens when the left gets its own Joe Rogan with Hassan Piker. Messy, honest, and very online but with a real point. Stop worshipping individuals and start holding systems accountable. Listen, then log off and go do something useful.

Episode Summary Welcome back to Grifty Pod. If you are listening to this episode without a helmet or a seatbelt, you are far braver than we are. This week felt like the entire nation had a stroke while standing upright. The Epstein documents dropped and inside that cursed file dump we discovered the soul bending phrase Trump and Bubba which was not on any of our bingo cards. Marjorie Taylor Greene tried to pick a political fistfight with Trump and it looked like two malfunctioning Roombas colliding in a hallway. Every headline seemed to be written by a bored demon trapped in a newsroom. So today we are taking you on a tour of American unreality. First we slide back into the nineties to revisit the DARE program which gave entire generations a deeply misplaced sense of safety. Then we blast forward to the current moment where right wing influencers are turning on their own in something called transvestigation which is exactly as deranged as it sounds. The circus is in town. Let us begin. What You'll Learn in This Episode The DARE Program and the Comforting Lie That Posters Fix Everything Charlie and Erika Kirk and the Digital Fever Dream of Transvestigations Is it A Grift? Real News or Fake Grift Fever Dream? The DARE Program and the Comforting Lie That Posters Fix Everything What DARE Was Selling The DARE program arrived in Los Angeles in 1983 and quickly metastasized into a national tradition. A smiling uniformed officer would walk into an elementary school classroom and deliver a series of highly scripted moral lectures about resisting drugs, alcohol and peer pressure. Children signed pledges. Children received neon yellow T shirts that glowed like irradiated dandelions. Children were assured that they were now fortified against the evils of the world. By the mid nineties DARE had infected more than seventy percent of school districts across the United States. It was not a curriculum so much as a branding operation. Parents adored it. Politicians bragged about it. The police treated it like a goodwill tour. The problem is that the entire thing did not work. Multiple meta analyses found that DARE had either no measurable effect on future drug use or effects so small they barely registered. A few studies found that students who completed DARE even experimented more possibly because children are curious, confused and easily entertained by forbidden concepts. The program was built on slogans rather than science. It substituted good intentions for meaningful intervention. It made addiction look like a moral failure instead of the complex social crisis it is. DARE was America in miniature. A shiny T-shirt pretending to be a solution. Why This Matters Today DARE is a perfect case study in institutional showmanship. It demonstrates our national desire for easy answers. It teaches us that if something feels helpful enough people will stop asking whether it is actually helpful. This is how grifts survive. This is how nostalgic myth becomes public memory. ⸻ Charlie and Erika Kirk and the Digital Fever Dream of Transvestigations What Transvestigation Actually Is Transvestigation is a conspiracy subculture devoted to claiming that public figures are secretly transgender. The reasoning is not medical, psychological or scientific. It is forensic fan fiction. These groups analyze photos of celebrities and politicians and apply invented rules about jaw shape collarbone angle shoulder width rib cage length wrist thickness and something they ominously call skull markers. There is no science behind it. There is no method behind it. There is only paranoia amplified by people who believe they are citizen detectives protecting the world from a conspiracy that does not exist. For years this fringe movement targeted women on the left. Michelle Obama was their white whale. They also went after celebrities like Taylor Swift, Meghan Markle, Serena Williams and Adele. Any woman with a strong jawline or athletic build was declared part of a secret gender agenda. The harassment has been relentless. But now the movement has turned inward. They have run out of enemies and begun pointing their microscopes at their own heroes. What They Are Saying About Erika Kirk According to the THEM article and recent digital surveillance here are the claims: They say her jawline fits what they insist is a male coded shape. They circulate side by side photos comparing her face to older images of male celebrities and trans women in transition even though none of the comparisons are coherent. They insist her collarbones sit too high and too straight. They point to photos where her shoulders look square in certain angles and treat this as biological evidence. They claim her wrists appear too thick in one photo where she is holding a water bottle. They argue that the way her thumb rests on a plastic bottle is masculine. This is considered a smoking gun in transvestigation circles. They point to her rib cage and claim it is too long for a woman which is a concept that has no scientific foundation but is treated as gospel by these content creators. Some go further. They say Erika Kirk is part of a hidden elite trans infiltration network. They call it the trans deception agenda. They never define it. They just insist it exists. What They Are Saying About Charlie Kirk The conspiracists accuse Charlie of similar fabricated markers. They say his shoulder to hip ratio aligns with what they consider feminized skeletal patterns. They claim his skull structure shows traits they have decided indicate a trans woman who transitioned early in life. They circulate old photos of him and create imaginary transition timelines like they are solving a case on CSI That Makes No Sense. They say his face changed shape over time and they treat normal aging as a covert biological anomaly. Why They Are Doing This The THEM article explains that this is what happens when you cultivate distrust as a political currency. The right wing has spent years fueling suspicion of trans people. They turned gender into a battlefield where everything is a clue and everyone is a suspect. Now the machine they built has turned back toward them. This is not about Charlie or Erika. This is about a conspiracy algorithm that can never be satisfied. When you reward content creators for uncovering hidden enemies eventually they will manufacture enemies from your own supporters. The Broader Crisis Transvestigation is not just ridiculous. It is dangerous. It treats gender identity like scandal material. It promotes body shaming disguised as detective work. It turns the public into unpaid inquisitors. And now the movement is eating itself alive. This is the logical endpoint of conspiracy thinking. When truth stops mattering the accusation becomes a spectacle. ⸻ GRIFTY GAME - Real News or Fake Grift Fever Dream? Three stories. One true. The other two were born from the national imagination which is not exactly a safe place to be. ⸻ That concludes our weekly descent into the archives of American absurdity. We covered nostalgia that never worked and conspiracy thinking that never will. The past is clownish. The present is unhinged. The future is unclear. Thank you for staying with us through the fog. Kendrick Lamar take us out. Resources & Mentions First Segment: Public Books - "DARE Is More Than Just Antidrug Education It Is Police Propaganda" https://www.publicbooks.org/dare-is-more-than-just-anti-drug-education-it-is-police-propaganda/ Teen Vogue - "The DARE Program Tried To Reshape the Image of Police Officers for Children" https://www.teenvogue.com/story/dare-program-reshape-image-police-officers Reason Magazine - "DARE Did Not Make Kids Say No To Drugs" https://reason.com/2024/04/02/dare-to-fail/ Bureau of Justice Assistance - Research and evaluation on DARE outcomes https://bja.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh186/files/media/document/cci_dare.pdf WOSU Public Media - Coverage of Ohio districts ending the program https://www.wosu.org/news/2014-02-26/many-ohio-schools-dropping-drug-resistance-program Wikipedia overview- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_Abuse_Resistance_Education Second Segment: THEM Magazine - "The Right Is Now Transvestigating Charlie Kirk and His Wife Erika" https://www.them.us/story/charlie-erika-kirk-transvestigator-trans-transvestigation Yahoo News - "MAGA Has Lost the Plot and Is Now Transvestigating Charlie Kirk" https://uk.news.yahoo.com/maga-lost-plot-now-transvestigating-181426105.html Tyla - "Transvestigating Explained as Conspiracy Theorists Target Erika and Charlie Kirk" https://www.tyla.com/news/transvestigating-explained-erika-charlie-kirk-conspiracy-theory-843901-20251114 Timestamps [00:00] Introduction [05:15] It's DARE [25:00] the Fever Dream of Transvestigations [40:00] Grifty Game Connect With Us Follow Us on Social Media: Instagram: @griftypod Twitter: @griftypod Bluesky: @griftypod.bsky.social Follow Azi @the.wellness.therapist Follow Aaron @mrneuropolitan Follow Rebelle @therbellewriter Follow Sierra @itsabitcomplex Follow Taryn @thefoxandtheowl Subscribe to the Podcast: Substack Apple Podcasts Spotify Email Us: [email protected] Support the Podcast Thanks for reading! Grifty runs on real people like you. Not corporations, not billionaires, not the faux-rebels funding their "truth telling" with hedge-fund money. We're here because the world is loud and full of grifters who think a ring light makes them philosophers. Our job is to cut through the noise, call out the scams, and make sense of the mess. If you want analysis that isn't bought, polished, or PR-approved, subscribe free or paid. Every sign-up keeps this work alive. And while you're here, listen to our new episodes wherever you get your podcasts, follow us on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky @griftypod, and show us some love by subscribing, commenting, and sharing. For anything else Grifty, visit our website. Thanks for being here with us in the chaos.

This week on Grifty, we are heading north… way north. where climate change, government chaos, and corporate greed have collided at once. Alaska is in free fall. A typhoon has slammed the western coast, wiping out villages and food stores that took generations to build. The federal government is shut down, freezing aid and cutting off SNAP benefits for tens of thousands. While people are trying to keep their families fed, the Trump administration is approving new oil leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This is not about the weather. It is about what happens when a government built on extraction leaves its people to fend for themselves. It is about sovereignty, survival, and the politics of pretending the climate crisis is still up for debate. We are joined by Dr. Brian Heaslet, a lifelong Alaskan who knows what it takes to keep food and supplies moving across the most isolated parts of the state. Also joining is our own Sierra Montoya, bringing her sharp Alaskan insight and humor to unpack what life in the Last Frontier really looks like when disaster meets politics.