Brad speaks with writer, director, and comedian Holly Laurent, creator of the hit podcast MEGA about a satirical megachurch. They talk about her childhood in Haiti as a missionary, her path of deconstruction, and the winding pathways that healing takes us on. It's a raw interview about caring for family who have fallen into MAGA traps, hoping for change, and finding ourselves even when it feels like we are most lost. Oh, and they a laugh. ALOT.
Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/
MEGA: https://www.megathepodcast.com/
Holly's Essay - Villain: https://maydaymagazine.com/villain-by-holly-laurent/
SWAJ Seminar: https://www.straightwhiteamericanjesus.com/seminars/
Merch: BUY OUR NEW Come and Take It and Election Affirmer ! https://straight-white-american-jesus.creator-spring.com/
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC
Order Brad's new book: https://www.amazon.com/Preparing-War-Extremist-Christian-Nationalism/dp/1506482163
To Donate: venmo @straightwhitejc
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/BradleyOnishi
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
AXIS MUNDY AXIS MUNDY You're listening to an Irreverent Podcast.
Visit irreverent.fm for more content from our amazing lineup of creators.
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
And today I have something we've never done before.
I have a guest who's new and is a lot of things as a writer and is also a comedian.
And I don't think we've ever had a professional sort of comedy person on the show.
We've had so many journalists, writers, we've had entertainers, but Holly Laurent is the first sort of professional funny person ever to come on.
I'm going to talk about it all.
You're a writer.
You're a director.
I mean, you're a director.
You're like a million things.
But anyway, I'm just, I'm really glad you took the time.
Hey, I hope I can bring some levity to people today.
You know, when people think of this show, Lemony is the last thing they, I usually have to tell people like, hey, I'm actually fun at parties.
We don't always just talk about depressing political apocalypse, but you know, so yes, maybe you can help our brand a little bit because we're kind of known as a heavy show.
So let me tell folks about you before we get going.
You're the creator and host of Mega, which is a hit show and it's Really a kind of really genius piece of satire.
It's a podcast.
It's improvised that is all about a kind of fictional megachurch.
And so friends, if you're listening and you've spent time in one of those communities or around one of those communities, if you listen to the show, you're going to get a lot of like Inside jokes, a lot of amazing kind of details that only somebody who lived it would know how to kind of add.
And it's just funny.
So also, I mean, you've kind of worked and contributed everywhere from NPR to The Onion.
You're an alumnus of Second City Mainstage in Chicago.
You performed and toured with them.
And you I've written for television all over the place, just name a couple, AP Bio, All Rise, The Late Late Show with James Corden, Barely Famous, and I have an essay that I'd love to talk about, and we'll get to in a minute, and that's titled Villain, and that was nominated for a 2021 Pushcart Prize.
So, a lot going on, a lot to discuss, and here's where I want to start.
You created this hit podcast, it's all about a fictional megachurch, And it really comes out of your lived experience.
So, one of the aspects of your biography is you were a missionary kid in Haiti.
So, let's start there.
A lot of people listening are going to know how this kind of story goes, but tell us yours.
What was that like?
Where, when, how?
What did your missionary experience look like?
It's interesting because I think growing up in the world that was very much about dualistic thinking, you know, heaven and hell, God and Satan, angels and demons, the stakes were so high.
Everything was about snatching people out of hell and saving their souls forever and getting them on to that, getting them into the book of life so that when they turn up at the gates of heaven, they're going to be ushered in with welcome arms into what I I think is maybe the greatest praise and worship concert that just goes on to infinity.
So I hope you like Hillsong.
And I hope you consider a Hillsong concert, Kevin.
I'm going to deconstruct again.
So if you keep talking like that, I'm going to leave the church again somehow.
I don't know how I'll do it, but I will do it.
So keep it up.
Yeah, I think, now I don't even know where I was going with that.
I'm just thinking about how bad of an image they've painted of heaven for us.
When I was a youth pastor at Omega Church, the teenagers- Wait, now I have to deconstruct again.
I know, I know.
I'm sorry.
Take a break.
All right, we'll come back.
We'll do the interview in a minute.
I apologize.
Did your youth group have a name or was it not that much of Omega Church?
So it was not named as the one on your show is named.
It was not named Climax.
Uh, but it was, let's see, we had a couple.
One of them was Fish Hook, which is kind of reference obviously to Jesus and the fish.
Uh, one of them was, uh, I actually ran escape and somehow now you're interviewing me.
Okay.
So now I actually ran a skate park and that was called Petros after like the Greek word for rock, you know?
So we, we did that.
I was, I'm in the background of a lot of like late nineties, early two thousands.
skate videos where people had no interest in church would just come and like do amazing things and film.
And I'd be like trying to tell them about Jesus or whatever.
So, um, yeah, Petros and fishhook.
So nothing, nothing as good, uh, or as cringy as climax as it is on mega, but, uh, that was our name.
Yeah.
But here, here's why I brought up my youth group.
The kids would always ask me, like, hey, what are we going to do in heaven?
And I'd be like, yo, we're going to worship God forever.
And they'd be like, yeah, OK, but like what else?
Like, well, we're just going to be out there worshiping God.
It's going to be great.
Your mom will be there, your cousins.
And they look at me like I'm 13.
Like, this sounds terrible.
This sounds like so awful.
I don't really I don't you're telling me that's what we're looking forward to.
And I'd be like, well, it's it's probably better than I'm describing.
But, you know, so anyway, all that to say.
Your line of thinking sticks with me because a lot of 13-year-olds, like, grilled me on that back in the day.
Yeah, I mean, I guess it's just skate parks where you don't have to wear a helmet, you never get bruised, no concussions.
There's no parental waiver.
Yeah, no one sues you.
Yeah.
Every trick is gnarly.
Yeah.
Which actually, I've thought of this with the coming AI storm.
If I don't actually have to learn piano and I can just download piano or whatever into my abilities, will I get the same pleasure from playing piano?
I wonder the same thing.
With skating, if you don't get five concussions and ten sprained ankles, are all of the Each time you actually nail a particular move, is it even satisfying or pleasurable?
See, now we're like, we're deep into the human condition right now.
I mean, because, you know, if you, if you don't have to work for it, if you don't have to like actually train, is there any satisfaction?
And yet the training and the cultivation is like the source of our pain and the source of our struggle.
So to be human seems to be like this paradox of pain and struggle with accomplishment and pride and pleasure.
But nonetheless, uh, maybe AI will take all that away and maybe that is heaven.
Who knows?
Yeah, it's interesting kind of like the way the Buddhists take is so I guess just forthright about the human condition being about suffering.
Whereas a lot of what I experienced in it in Christendom was so much about a denial of Not well, definitely a denial of death, but such a destructive spiritual bypassing of suffering that I think then kind of does create a lot of the everything that's going on with us and them divisiveness now, like in our culture, I think so much of it.
It comes from, like, what is with the obsession with, like, trans bills and all these different things?
Like, why are you so obsessed with it?
Is it that on some deep levels when people have not been allowed to feel their own pain, they cannot imagine or muster the energy to ever Understand that anybody else feels any pain or that harm comes to other people.
When, you know, your religion is only about help and zero harm, then it's really hard to hear that people are being harmed and that there is religious trauma.
And so it just turns out to be like, no, no, no, no, no.
And then demonizing it and stuff, which, yeah, so that does bring us back to growing up in a strict evangelical household where it was a high-demand religion, high-control religion, where it's not just a religious community that gives you a sense of purpose and things to say at funerals, but it is nothing less than every part of your entire life, the way you see the world, the way you dress, the way you operate, the way you read, the way you study, the way you function throughout the day, your entire experience of reality.
So that was tough because what that did for me as a kid, being highly sensitive but also being introduced to such a dualism from Jump, I became a very concrete thinker and I think that actually contributes a lot to my comedy because a lot of times When I let my little inner weirdo speak, she speaks from a place of complete thinking, and that's where I pull a lot of my laughs, and I'll be like, whoa!
I always sort of do a quick reverse engineer of like, how did I get that laugh?
That was a really nice laugh.
What was that?
Because usually what I'll be doing is saying something about the way I sincerely see the world, and then I'll be like, oh yeah, I meant it like that, when really I didn't.
I meant it completely sincerely, and I was trying to connect, and instead I created humor.
So that's that's how it is.
Yeah.
Well, no, you're hitting on something that I think is a lot of folks who lived through these high demand religions will be familiar with, which is like you become a concrete thinker and you become in many ways divorced from your body.
And so the way that you like sort of express what you believe about the world feels it feels to others like this really disembodied abstract thing.
Like, you know, when I would tell people about I think Jesus is coming back tomorrow or, you know, soon and you should repent, they would kind of look at me like, You know, man, I can tell you really believe this, but I just, I don't know.
It's like you're living in a different realm than me.
And so I guess what I'm getting at is like the way you express that comedy and the concrete.
Like this or that, us or them way, it really hits because it feels absurd in some sense.
Is that fair?
Yeah, exactly.
That's exactly it.
And I think I always came, as I was coming up in comedy and as like an improv kid in Chicago, I was always so impressed with the way that my favorite improvisers were They were synthesizing a lot of things and creating layered commentary that I found really smart, and it put a fear in me because I have a deep fear that I'm dumb.
And I went to Christian school, and I'm a concrete thinker, and I guffaw all the time, and I say the dumbest shit, and I will uncover still rocks in my brain that have the weirdest dogma under them that I didn't realize was still under that rock.
For sure.
Having to do such kind of constant evaluation and how much I'm changing.
And it really, I feel like if we had this conversation last week, it would be way different than the conversation we're going to have today.
And it would be way different next week because you and I will both be not only just in different emotional states, but like I'm a real sponge and I'm super spongy, like drawing in everything that's around me.
And then that's kind of the way I treat my comedy is I just squeeze out the sponge on stage.
And so I'm drawing more from really life, where I watch other comics, they're drawing more from like imagination.
Yeah.
I think there's a lot of different like, there's a lot of different source that we're tapping into consciously.
I think that's just the way I do it.
But yeah, I think that dualistic way of thinking is truly like a big part of what keeps us in pain.
And so when I believed everything I was told.
I'm still very impressionable.
I'll believe everything.
I'll believe anything.
Just saw a TikTok about how, you know, taking calcium tablets will help you grow six inches or something.
I don't know.
Yeah, absolutely.
So, when I was deep in the belief system and believed that it was reality, that there was an invisible spiritual warfare being waged around us all the time, I was very, very fearful.
I also feel like I never, though I was raised in, you know, both my grandpa's are preachers, my dad's a preacher, both my parents are pastor's kids, I'm a preacher's kid.
In church, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Christian school, chapel three days a week, Bible class five days a week.
I ended up going to Christian college.
I studied Bible and religion.
I ended up learning Koine Greek.
I ran out of Bible and religious classes at my undergrad college, so I started taking classes in the seminary, and they were letting me do that from undergrad because I had run out of classes.
I'm one of those people where it wasn't for lack of trying.
And it wasn't for, and it was not because of any form of like theological illiteracy or biblical illiteracy.
That's actually an indictment that I layer into my commentary in my comedy podcast is that one of my biggest indictments of most modern day American conventional believers is that they are thoroughly theologically illiterate and they have based their entire They have wasted their votes and also thrown away, or they have built their entire reality based on a book that they have not read and that they are not aware of what's in there.
And when faced with people who say like, what was it?
How?
What was it that got you?
What was it that, was it Sam Harris?
Was it just secularism?
Was it, was it that?
Was it that ass shaking rock and roll?
Not that anybody's saying that at this point, but whatever they could be coming up with for what it was, I always say it's the story of a blood sacrifice people and their literature.
It's those 66 books that I've read inside and out and all the commentary on.
And New Testament came to be able to interpret myself and the complexities there of learning to understand the Decision-making process that goes into that and what's actually in the original text and all of that and devoting a lot of time to it.
It was by knowing what's in there and by grappling with it and by trying so hard to get my gear into that, to get my shifter into that gear.
It wasn't for lack of trying or for educating myself.
I've come to a place where I don't know how to identify myself, but I just know that that is not for me.
And I'm working on continuing to not throw the baby out with the bathwater, still be able to engage in an open dialogue about it, while also just in general not being a huge fan of organized religion in general.
No, totally.
I mean, I think you're speaking the language of many people listening who have been part of these communities who would characterize, I don't know if you do, but I know that many people listening would characterize themselves as having religious trauma and they would say, yeah, I'm trying to listen and still engage with people in good faith who want to do that.
It's somewhat difficult after all the experiences that I had and everything I learned.
I mean, I wanted to just touch on one thing before I ask you about squeezing the sponge, because I really love that phrase.
I always say that those of us who left, you know, the more people I meet, it's, we're the duns, not the never worse.
Like, we're the kids who, like you just outlined, you learned Koine Greek, you read the Bible front to back 10 times, Bible class, chapel, Bible study, Sunday morning, Sunday night.
We are the duns.
Like, that was me.
And the more, you know, and the kids who I knew when we were 15 who were just, you You know, dicking around in church, didn't really care.
They're now the ones on Facebook or on IG who are like, you know, 37 and their entire life is father, husband, pastor, you know, masculinity, Jesus.
And it's like, you know, now y'all, now y'all are really invested.
You know, when we were 16, I was the one teaching myself Greek and you didn't have time to like look up and sing the worship songs at summer camp.
So, um, I just, I just, I just hear this so often and I think it, It's something that people will say, well, you never believed in the first place, or you were never really saved, or you got caught up in the wild world of, yeah, as you said, secularism, or that den of sin, Chicago, where you spent so many years.
And in reality, it's like, no, I took this thing to the end and it didn't hold.
There was no center.
It all fell apart in my hands.
And that's why I left, not because I didn't care.
So I just really appreciated you outlining it that way.
And none of us, like, torqued our way out, like, raising the roof and very excited about it.
It's been a long, long, drawn-out, very painful, traumatic experience.
And I wonder, those people who now have those titles under their name on their social media and everything of, like, Christ follower, father, husband, you know, whatever.
Um, I wonder, I don't want to say I walked away with religious trauma because I took it seriously and I actually like integrated it as real.
Yeah.
And it, and it fucked me up.
My knee jerk reaction is to say to that, uh, Christ follower, father, husband, dude, like, or, or mother, whatever.
Um, that my knee jerk is to be like, I don't, I don't think you actually take it as seriously or, or I took it literally and it fucked me up.
And maybe you don't, but I can't say that because I don't know how sensitive or not sensitive they are.
I don't know how realistic it is to them.
I don't know how, if they're taking it.
Um, I don't know if they're taking it.
I can't say they're not taking it seriously, but.
I do think that it kind of gets put into a different category of... I don't know.
It's almost like being out of drinking and talking to people who are still drinking.
It's just really hard to, you know... Yeah.
Okay, yeah.
I understand that it can be good for some people.
It can be really bad for other people, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah, there's more metaphors to interject.
But I'll refrain and I want to come back to this because I think for me this is something that you said that's really profound and it really interests me in terms of you as an artist, as a comedian, as a writer.
You said, I squeeze the sponge out on stage and I'm just wondering, you know, I think a lot of people listening, all of us are trying to find ways to recalibrate our bodies, our nervous system, our thinking.
How has comedy been something for you that has been a pathway to healing in some sense?
Because people ask me that because I spend my whole life basically doing this show and academic work and writing that means I'm always in the thick of the Christianity I left.
And they're like, how do you do that?
And in some ways it's healing for me to do this because I'm talking about it, whatever.
I'm wondering how for you as a comedian and as a writer, you know, doing a podcast like Mega that includes so much material that draws on your lived experience.
Has that been a healing thing for you and something that has really helped you kind of grow and develop into who you are now?
I think at times, yes.
Other times it alerts me to the non-linear Fashion of healing?
Yeah.
Because sometimes things that I've been laughing about for a while stop being funny again and start hurting again, which is weird.
Like, ah, I thought I was kind of over that.
I guess, you know, even once you kill Grendel, there's still Grendel's mother who's deeper and darker in the water, and it's never the thing that you're grappling with.
It's the mother of the thing.
So I'm at a place right now, it's funny that you asked me that today because I've been kind of getting in the weeds with some of my religious trauma lately and I've been really super triggered with stuff lately so a lot of my waters are kind of choppy right now.
And, uh, so the honest answer is that I love hearing when people say that Mega is therapeutic for them because laughing about it is really helpful.
And I find that to be the case a lot of times, too.
And other times, I don't, and it's harder.
I've introduced new characters into the show.
I've been playing my character, Hallie.
I've been playing her son, Day.
Um, who is a teenage male version of basically me.
It's where I get to just say how I actually see things in a straightforward way rather than, um, with Hallie, I have to like kind of always double and flip reverse the commentary.
And I say things like purity culture things through her voice that like still kind of bother me.
So the real truth is that I don't know how long I'll do Mega because I'm, um, sometimes I'm sensing the cortisol that it puts into my body and If that tips into a land of like, this is too much cortisol in my body, man, I really I'm grateful for these years of doing mega because it has kept me really engaging with the conversation.
I watch more Bart Ehrman YouTubes than I at this point, I want to bestow an honorary degree from North Carolina.
I and I've state, you know, I joke that the Internet thinks I'm a Christian because I just do so much Research, and I don't know, I can see a day where continuing to grapple with it and to understand, like, I've fallen in love, speaking of social media, with a bunch of different, like, Dan McClellan, or what is his name?
A lot of different, like, Bible scholars who were like, here's what the Bible actually says about homosexuality.
Here's what the Bible actually doesn't say about Satan.
Where are some of these ideas that we're getting from?
The more I dive in, the more I realize, like, oh, wow, our ideas of Satan come from Paradise Lost, not from the Bible.
That is Milton.
That is not, you know, it didn't make it in the canon.
There is a part of me that really likes it.
Yeah.
But then you can get kind of like looking down your nose about it to be like, y'all, I know what's in your book.
Yeah, no.
And it's hard for me to talk to you when you don't know what's in your book.
Because I, knowing the amount I have had to seek out and discover on my own and how much work that is.
Yeah.
That I can't bring that into a conversation with someone who hasn't done the same.
It's the same with race.
I've had to seek out the real history of race and it's so painful and hard to learn and hard to find and difficult to educate yourself on.
And so it's really hard to enter into a conversation with people who haven't done that.
And I've only maybe half done it.
I'm, I'm still doing it and it's so difficult.
So that's what makes it really hard.
Um, and I, and I've noticed recently that like, I don't know, I'm Maybe I do need to take like a decade away from all of it and go find the things that bring me pleasure and joy and peace and nurture myself with those things and load up on those things so that I can actually start doing the work of
You know, I kind of walked away from some talk therapy for a while because I felt like I was retreading and deepening those neural pathways of those stories that had created harm and that I was reliving constantly and experiencing harm from.
Yeah.
I'm like, wait, I need to go either blast into some new neural networks with psychedelics and see if then I can keep fostering some of those connections and learn how to create more positive ways of thinking on my own.
Um, maybe with some somatic therapies, breath therapies, some other things that aren't talk therapy, um, but because I'm interested in actually getting to some healing or at the very least just rewiring my brain to start thinking differently and to not be so, to not be constantly living in the fatalism and dualism of
The patterns of thinking and the behavioral patterns and the systems of power and oppression and systematic and religious abuse that I come from.
So I think my chipping away at that Berlin Wall, trying to topple it, is maybe my whole life is about toppling it, but comedy is my chisel.
For sure, for sure.
No, that's a great way to put it.
I mean, there's just so much you said there that I think will resonate with people.
The phrase that I'll take away from that, what you just said and be thinking about today is the non-linear fashion of it.
And I think so many people have experienced that.
I think, you know, you see people go through this on social media and just in conversation where they go through these intense periods of like engagement.
You know, I'm going to critique my former church or white Christian nationalism in general, and then they step away and they're like, I need to focus on me and I need to go from deconstruction to rediscovery or renewal or something else.
And I think for me, what I've concluded from all that just personally and from doing the show and engaging our community has just been, whatever you need at any stage is the right thing to do.
And so, and I think, you know, a lot of folks will write to me and be like, hey, I listened to your show for like, like three days a week, nonstop for a year.
And then I had to stop because like, I just needed to stop.
And I'm like, yeah.
And like, and I think they think I'm going to be mad.
And I'm like, yo, go for it.
Like, this is not a show you can listen to all the time.
I totally, if you are in the mood in six months from now and you want to come back and hang with us, awesome.
If not, like, go be well.
Like, live your best life, discover who you can be, discover how you can contribute to this god-awful world we're living through, and that's all good, you know?
Because that's what we need, ultimately.
It's not about... We don't have to stay and simply let the thing that we're healing from consume us, you know, for the rest of our lives, in that one singular sense, at least.
Yeah, definitely.
Well, I'm happy to... I mean, there's so many things I want to ask you about, and I know, like you just said, you have choppy water, so I don't want to, like... Well, it's a ripe time.
It's okay.
I mean, I'm here and willing to talk about anything.
I'm...
I think so often we think like, you know, when I get my weight under control, when I get my trauma healed, when I get my complexion fixed, when I, and, and just having to constantly almost daily remind myself that like, that will never happen in anything with your body, your complexion, your soul, your, and that, um, that it's, it's a practice and it's a process.
And I'm at a really raw part of the process because I honestly think I'm at a stage of growth that is a very, it's the hurt part.
It's the, it's, it's, it's the part of like lifting where you like, then you can't use your arms all night.
Cause you, cause you were benching that day.
I'm sort of there.
I'm like, oh boy.
Yeah.
I got, I got jelly lit.
I got, I got a jelly soul right now.
And, um, and in many ways, I guess that's good.
I keep hearing messages of like, when you're really cut to the quick, it's extremely painful, but it's also such a gift, a gift of great pain, but a gift nonetheless, in that you can keep, you can use that time to reshape the, reshape your life into more of the shape you want to live it rather than continuing to try to bend the thing you were given into the life you want to live.
Totally.
Totally.
And, um, and, and, and, and that's why I feel like I owe a great, um, personal debt of gratitude to comedy because it did sort of slide into that space inside of me that, um, it's very painful when people deconstruct or when they realize they are no longer a person of faith or they have it's very painful when people deconstruct or when they realize they are no longer a person of faith or And it has pulled them out of the community, the relationships, the sense of purpose, like all those things that a high demand or high control religion sort of do to you.
And then, um, but I, I have been noticing too, that like, even as I'm in a lot of pain right now, I've heard a voice, For the first time, for me, saying things like, Holly, you too deserve some compassion, because I'll think like, oh, this boundary that I've put up is hurting my relationship with these people, and they want to be close again, and I should really care about how they feel, and I should
Be about having good open communication and be in good relationships with people.
And I'm like, wait, is that me lifting a boundary that was there for my own safety and growth and healing and all of that?
And oh, yeah.
And but for the first time, I'm starting to as soon as I have that thing of like, well, they deserve to, you know, have good open communication.
I've started to for the first time be like, You know what, I deserve that too and I can offer that to myself because I will give and give and give and people please and people please and people please and all of that stuff.
All of the stuff that comes so naturally to me from having been raised in a high demand religion where the stakes are high and the whole thing is based on being cast out.
I mean, Lucifer was cast out, Adam and Eve were cast out, the people of Israel were cast out.
Again, the stakes are high, and being a highly sensitive person, I've really looked to... It's like how sociologists say, like, if you have four siblings, none of you grew up in the same family.
And I almost feel like it's that way with Christendom, of like, you know, we could even have been in the same church under the same pastor.
For sure.
Very, very different experiences.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm really kind of holding on to something you said a minute ago, which is that, you know, whether it's weight loss, whether it's complexion, whether it's career, whether it's money, you know, the idea is once I get this figured out, once I get it wired, then I'll be happy.
You know, for me, part of what I've had to kind of confront is that that's a really conservative evangelical Christian way of thinking.
That like, you know, the human condition is one where you are incomplete and you have a Jesus-shaped hole in your heart.
So the formula is always, you are lacking A, and thus, if you can get A, you will reach B, which is happiness or fulfillment.
And I think for me, that's been one of the things that has been a consistent theme since I left 15 years ago, which is We're meant, we're actually, as human beings, we're actually, our condition is one in which we are always in between.
We're always in between being born into a world we didn't choose and a death, you know, that we can't avoid.
So we're just in between all the time.
And that's actually the natural state.
It's not the one where I'm fulfilled and I'm complete or I'm, because it goes back to what you said earlier about heaven, like that whole idea about heaven being this full completion.
And like that 13 year old audacious little person in Sunday school being like, sounds terrible.
That sounds so boring.
What's at stake if that happens?
What is there to learn and grow?
What is there to discover and become?
And so I guess for me, that really sticks with me is like, I think I learned a lot of, if I get this, I'll be that from my Christianity.
And that's part of the thing that constantly sort of, I'm trying to resist for myself personally, in terms of those ways of thinking.
Well, those belief systems, their tentacles are so intertwined.
It's like capitalism is so tied into Christianity too, ironically.
But that thing, the ipso facto, the if-then, and it's just, it just isn't that way.
I have women who are senior citizens who look at me and go, I spent my entire life trying to lose five pounds.
What was I doing?
Like, what are we doing?
But it's that thing of the Mad Men thing of like having to make you feel that you're lacking that thing because just because you have bad complexion, you're not going to find love.
And so if you can just get your complexion under control, you know, whatever it is, like fill in the blank.
That thing that you need that will bring you the thing.
That also is so, that madman mentality is also so tied into the Bible.
Totally.
And it is that dualistic thinking that, again, keeps us in pain.
And so I have, same with you, I have been really noticing lately the ways in which The way we operate all day long in our communication, in our relationships, everything, like whatever you want to... it's sort of like...
I have had a real deep impression lately that I'm looking at such a small part of the picture, and so that's why I'm feeling so goddamn confused so often, is because I'm looking at such a small part of the picture.
And what you focus on determines what you miss.
So if I'm focused on, oh, it's attachment theory, I have anxious attachment, or I have avoidant attachment issues, and I focus on that, then I can think it's all about that.
You know, I recently heard Abby Wambach say that like she because she was gay, she could be like, oh, that's the problem is my gayness.
And then those hundred other little ways in which you don't feel like you belong and everything, they can get tied on to one thing.
But and religion really does give us like a catch all for that.
It's a place where we can go and belong and they can kind of like tell us how to function and all of that.
And also, I guess that again goes back to the sponge idea of kind of my comedic sensibilities, is that because I'm so highly sensitive, I'm walking around, I'm listening, I'm paying attention, and I'm soaking up what it feels like to be alive all day long.
The complexities, the The contradictions, the things that are completely opposite that happen to be true at the exact same time, all of that, and then getting up on stage and then the beauty of comedy is that, specifically if I'm in character, if I'm speaking through the voice of a character, I get to express ideas that are somewhat protected because this is the point of view of my character.
And so I have been able to squeeze out a lot of those ideas and try to play to the top of my intelligence and speak from a highly sincere point of view of a character who sees the world this way.
And what I'm also doing inside of that, specifically with my podcast Mega, is I'm trying to sort of release some thought viruses through that very point of view.
That I'm expressing that I personally happen to not agree with, but that I'm trying to get out there.
Well, and it, you know, what it does is it really shows, as I said earlier, it shows the absurdity of many of those ways of thinking.
But in, you know, if we zoom out, as you talked about comedy, it really shows just the contradictions and absurdity of just living.
Like as you're in the world and you, as you say, you soak up everything that's around you and then are able to kind of Squeeze the sponge and represent it through characters.
You know, for me...
The comedy I adore the most is that which shows us the utter contradictions, not just in the big things.
Christian X believes this, what a hypocrite, because they did that.
It's like the very small and minute and everyday quotidian aspects of being a human being that are turned back on your face.
And all of a sudden you see the concrete, you see the weeds that are growing between the cracks in a manner that you never noticed before.
And it's often Just enlightening, you know, and so I really appreciate that aspect of the way you talked about comedy there.
I want to just ask you one more thing before we go and before we run out of time.
And, you know, I'm just wondering if, you know, you have thoughts for people on The ways that they can, uh, you know, you wrote this great essay and I just, I want to at least ask you just one thing about it.
I want to, I want to, I'll link it in the show notes, but everyone should read, uh, Villain, uh, which is the essay.
And it was, it was, uh, nominated for a pushcart, appeared at Mayday.
Um, but it really is this just wonderful account of trying to talk to your parents about the Trump years, the Trump candidacy, um, trying to bring up things that exasperated you, hurt you.
And also, they didn't really want to talk about it.
I talk all over the country, I give book talks, and no matter where I go, I get a question that is this, how do I talk to my family?
Yeah.
Like, the last seven years, the amount of cousins and friends and grandparents and, you know, old colleagues who I just can't talk to now because of this have gone... It's over.
And I don't know what to do because it hurts to, like, have that relationship fall apart.
It also just... I'm just completely stuck.
I don't know how to talk to someone.
Who thinks that the MAGA hat is not a sign of exclusion?
I just don't know how to do that.
I don't know how to explain that when people see the MAGA hat, they feel afraid because of what it stands for.
And so the essay is really harrowing in that sense.
And so as we close, don't want to make you talk about this too long, but any thoughts there?
The essay is really dealing with, at its essence, the idea of, like, if my parents are operating with information that comes from Fox News and they're making their decisions accordingly, and I'm dealing with information that comes from the Washington Post or NPR or the New York Times, and then I'm making my decisions accordingly, like, I can say, like, you know, Your trusted advisor is in bad faith.
Fox News is worm tongue.
It's grima.
It's clouding your judgment.
And they say the exact same thing.
NPR is your grima, worm tongue.
It's clouding your judgment.
It's an advisor that is in bad faith.
Come to our righteous side.
And we're both saying the exact same thing to each other.
So who's the villain?
Who's right?
Who's wrong?
And how complex the emotional experience of that is, of loving someone who sees the world so fundamentally different than you, it's really painful.
And I don't know what to say.
I feel like I'm asking the same question.
How do you talk to your Trumper parents?
So many of us have experienced this over the last decade, of losing our parents to this infotainment that they believe is news.
And how it has corrupted... I get so angry when I think about what a piece of shit, and what a useless piece of shit Trump is, and yet what a profound figure, what a profound role he has played in the disillusionment of my family's, like, original bond.
And what a waste, because he's such a joke.
He's actually, like...
And it's so painful.
And I had my, I've been, again, I've been in a class called Embodied Sexuality, learning about like the last 2,000 years of purity culture and racism that has been intertwined in the complexity of all of these belief systems.
Like even just, even Christian families being conflict-averse and not being able to, like I said in that essay, my family has decided that we will not talk about it.
And so, oh, I guess in one way, like, we're lucky that we're talking at all, and yet we're not talking.
But living inside of a system where something is silenced actually then starts to, the more healing I have experienced, the more pain I'm in, because I realized that continuing in that system of silence, like, oh, these little things of we don't talk about it, is actually
It's the nuts and bolts that create the entire framework of the scaffolding system of silence culture that creates all of this stuff with priests and kids and rape culture directly tied to purity culture directly tied to all the like that these are really big sinister systems that are incredibly overwhelming.
And they play themselves out in tiny little, in the minutiae of our relational dynamics all day long.
And one of the scariest things is that, for me, the way that the Christian mind worked was, for me, it was like the scary horror movie phone call was coming from inside the house.
Like they had put it inside my thinking.
And so when I finally got the call, the scary call out of my house, and now when I get a scary call, it's coming from the outside.
It's not coming from my own brain, except for the times that it is.
And I'm still trying to like, you know, work through all that.
The message I keep getting... So I've finally gotten the call to be coming from outside the house.
If I may mix a million metaphors, forgive me.
But the dynamic that that then creates is that then when I'm about to see family or I'm about to engage with those people that it's so hard to talk about, I start to panic because I'm like, I almost feel like I've done so much work to try to get well and I'm about to go back into the sick ward.
And if I go back into the sick ward, I'm going to get sick.
And I'm trying so hard to be well.
One of the things that, one of the things, my mom said something to me in a conversation recently where she told me that like all of this stuff with Black Lives Matter and everything is, and I should say my family's white, all of this stuff with Black Lives Matter is like blown out of proportion, like black people are trying to now get something that maybe they're overreaching or something because they really haven't had it that hard.
And the reason my mom knows they haven't had it that hard is because she has a friend of color who told her that she's had a good life.
And so, like, I get so dumbfounded in those moments of, like, how, like, the depth of pure, maybe it's naive and not sinister, but pure ignorance that that comes from, the lack of knowledge of actually the way, the incredible
incredible suffering that has come that even to white women based on their role on the ladder of the of oppression and that our our proximity our privilege and our proximity to protection comes at the direct like harm of other people and how do I even it has taken me so long to even get scraps of knowledge about this and and I How do I give those to her to make her understand that what she's saying is wrong?
Because also changing someone's mind, attempting to change someone's mind is not consensual.
So that's information that I'm seeking to change my mind and to open my mind and to Try to remedy some of the falsehoods that I've been raised with that, so that I no longer perpetuate those things or, you know, whatever, even just, just, just the idea of liberation and trying to live inside the truth, setting you free.
What I've realized is that my mom is coming from a system that has so completely convinced her that she is not allowed to feel any of her own pain.
So without her ever being allowed to feel her own pain, how could she ever make room for anyone else to have any amount of pain whatsoever too?
Yeah.
So sometimes I think of it like that with them.
It's hard to Live in that balance of like having compassion for them, but also not reinforcing that belief system that is so harmful.
I, so I think the answer is, I don't know.
When I get high, I always get a message whenever, like at night, if I have cannabis or if I have any amount of psychedelics in my system, I always get the very, very strong message.
Just love them.
I'm like, but it hurts, but it's confusing.
Just love them.
Yeah.
But I walk away bruised, and then I'm sick again, and then I have to start the healing again.
Just love them.
Just love them.
The answer is, I don't know how to do that.
I'm still learning how to love myself.
And I'm asking, how do I even love myself?
I recently had the idea like, oh wow, what if I treat myself and my body the way I treat my dog?
Because I love my dog so much.
What if when I'm like getting dressed, I say like, oh, you beautiful body.
You're so beautiful.
The same way I do my dog.
I'm like, you're so sweet.
You're so beautiful.
You're so perfect.
I love you so much.
What if we treat ourselves like that?
You know, I don't know.
I'm here.
I'm here being like my best idea so far is to treat myself the way I treat my dog.
I don't even know how to treat other people where it's like so complex other than and I don't want this to sound super condescending but sometimes I think about it like that thing of like don't wake up a sleepwalker because they could get hurt like sometimes I think of believers like that of like They're under such a great, massive delusion that to try to be like, hey, do you want out?
I can help you.
There's life on the other side.
Do you want help?
That you could actually hurt them because Yeah.
And again, yeah.
It's, I mean, you just outlined so many things that I think everyone, I mean, not everyone listening, there's a good deal of folks listening who will just, this is going to bring them right into their relationships, their histories, their bodies.
And, you know, you outlined too, I think the real paradox of Don't wake them up because they're probably not going to be willing to do it anyway.
They're not.
It's going to be really hard for them to navigate what is on the other side.
But also the feeling that their beliefs hurt people.
You know, I think for me, that's what comes back is like your beliefs hurt people.
Yeah.
You know, whether it's the Trump presidency, whether it is policies that are going to make reproductive rights all but annihilated in large parts of the country, whether it is separating kids at the border, we could we can go on and on.
And so it's like that paradox of How do I handle the personal and then how do I handle the civic and the public in ways that are, as you're trying to say, honest and authentic and in ways I love everyone involved.
And it's hard.
You know, people ask me this question.
I always say, you know, I used to want to... I've done two things.
I've ignored it and I've also...
kind of combated everything I'm told and everything that I think is false or, as you talked about, is coming from a bad source.
And now I think my question is like, if somebody says, well, you know, Black Lives Matter is overblown.
And I think my next question to them is just, well, what scares you about, like, what would hurt you or scare you about there being a sense of reparation, you know, for Black folks in this country?
Would that hurt you?
Would that scare you?
What would be bad about it?
And then let them talk and just keep asking about the emotional part rather than the belief part and seeing where that takes us because if we can get down to the root of the fear and the anxiety and the grievance, then that's probably more productive than Well, actually, the statistics you cited from Tucker Carlson are absolute conspiracy theory.
You know what I mean?
And we all know it all went nowhere at that point.
And everyone stopped talking, stopped listening.
And, you know, Jenny has turned over Thanksgiving dinner table.
There's pie everywhere.
Someone has thrown the sweet potatoes at another person and stormed off.
Anyway, just so thankful for your honesty.
You're sharing with us kind of some of your process.
Matching, I think, for a lot of people, The, what they hear in terms of your comedy with the personal story and the history that is obviously still something that is so real and so a part of your life and your journey.
So just really appreciate that.
Especially on a day when you, you know, you were saying like, Hey, the waters are muddy today or waters are choppy today.
I'm not sure how it's all going.
Where obviously Mega is up and people can find that wherever they're finding their podcasts, but where are other ways people can connect with you and your work?
What's the, what's the best way to do that?
My website, which is my name, and yeah, Megadethpodcast.gmail and Megadethpodcast on all the socials and all of that.
I have some new projects coming up.
I'm doing a comedy called Soccer Moms with my best friend Katie where it's just a really hard improvised comedy where we play two soccer moms who are so bored at the kids' soccer games that we just start talking into two microphones and it's just bits galore.
I love it.
Oh my God.
That's soccer mom's coming out from iHeart that's coming soon so like there's fun stuff coming up because again I do feel like for me laughter is the best medicine and also laughter is so physical and a huge part of right now for me the healing journey is to become embodied and I was so dissociated from this like
This husk of a beef jerky meat robot that I found myself trapped inside of that was trying to drag me to hell with all of its desires.
I'm actually trying to now get back into that body and experience its desires and see where they take me.
Yeah.
And laughing is part of that.
So, yeah.
I really appreciate the conversation.
It truly is what I love to talk about most.
I've been listening to, I loved your Dr. Laura Anderson being on talking about religious trauma.
That actually made me realize like maybe I do need to get back into talk therapy with someone who actually understands religious traumas and its specificities.
Exactly.
Because I've realized too that like we are such a gaslit generation.
We have been so gaslit from jump, you know, when we go in the water and we're like, I'm scared and it's cold.
We've been told like, no, it's fine and it's warm.
And we're like, oh, OK.
And so we've been so gaslit the whole time.
And then and then Christian Christianity is the ultimate gaslight of like, no, no, no.
We are love.
We are about love.
And our entire message is love.
Wait, but you're a discriminatory institution.
You've turned yourself into a sexual regulatory society.
It's obvious.
No, no, no.
It's about love.
Oh.
Well, then you should get into the LGBTQIA community because there's a lot of love over there.
No, no, no, no, no, not them.
But we're about love.
We're about love.
We're about love.
It's it's.
Yeah, it's we're so gaslit.
It's so it's so hard.
And.
Yeah, so listen to that spark inside of you that tells you to be better and just keep going after that.
My colleague Dan Miller, my co-host, he does every Wednesday, he does this series called It's in the Code.
And when he started, I think he thought, oh, I'm going to do like 10 of these.
But it's gone on for 45 episodes now straight because it's awesome.
People keep emailing him and being like, Hey, could you do, could you decode?
Like, and what they're basically saying is like, Hey, I was gaslit my whole life because I thought love this, love the sinner, hate the sin.
Can you like decode that for me?
So I can actually see behind what is going on.
And like, whenever I talk to Dan, I'm like, Hey, are you, you good?
Like you want to, you've done, you've literally done.
It's in the code like almost a year straight now.
Do you need a break or whatever?
He's like, you know, I'm good.
Everyone emails me all the time.
There's like 78 topics I haven't gotten to, so we'll just keep going.
And I'm like, it's good, but it's that much gaslighting.
It's that much decoding that we need because of it.
So anyway, all that to say.
So I really appreciate you and I loved this talk.
Thank you so much.
And yeah.
I think what you're doing is so important, because it is part of this non-linear, one foot in front of the other thing.
And so, yeah, you're helping us understand the heart side of it.
And maybe my podcast is helping us get down into the like, let your body, I mean, what is a laugh other than like a convulsive release that comes from a little moment of surprise?
No, for sure.
So let it out, let it out.
Crying is free medicine.
It's the same as laughter and it's all convulsing and that's all stimming and like releasing trauma.
So let's go baby!
I always say like laugh if you can and this is so I know what this is gonna let me just say it and then I'm gonna tell you why I'm so embarrassed to say it but like I used to tell people especially students when they're having like a really hard time like you know anytime you laugh in a way that goes deeper than the way you're hurting that day, then that's a really positive day.
If you can laugh deeper or as deep as the hurt, then something is changing and going well.
And as soon as I said, I'm like, hey, buddy, live, laugh, love is already a sign You don't need to be telling people to do that.
Live, laugh, love is not that profound, pal.
So as soon as I say it, I know that.
I know it's very cringy, but I guess what I'm just trying to do is say I agree with you.
If people listening think of those times when they've laughed in that way, And what that does to their body and their brain, it is transformative.
And so anyway, appreciate all it takes for you to do that.
And I'll just say, friends, as we sign off today, we have our own class coming up, Purity, Culture, White Supremacy and Embodiment, April 27th to May 18th.
So sign up.
Sarah Mosner will be there leading that class.
You can see all the details at our website, straightwhiteamericanjesus.com.
We'll be back later this week with It's in the Code, as we just talked about, and the weekly roundup.
