Monte Mader Deconstructs Alt-Right Christian Nationalism (Find Out podcast on YouTube)

We're mixing things up on this episode of the Find Out Podcast with our guest, Monte Mader. Monte is not only a culture critic, musician and podcaster, she was raised in a far right Christian Nationalist community who has flipped sides and now offers guidance to white, ex-Evangelical Christians who want to leave the MAGA movement.

Monte explains to us deeply engrained her family was in Christian Nationalist Republican politics. Growing up in a deeply religious household in Wyoming, her father home schooled and raised her to believe that you can't be a Christian and a Democrat. We find out what caused her to finally leaver the Christian Nationalist community and why they worship Donald Trump.

Chapters

00:00 I Took My Bible & I Threw It Across The Room
01:24 Raised At The Intersection of Republican Politics & Religion
05:52 Christian Apologetics
08:51 What Was the First Seed of Doubt?
12:41 The First Time I Realized I Was Intentionally Lied To
16:11 Realizing Christian Nationalism Is The Problem
23:51 My Dad Held Trump To The Same Moral Standard He Held Clinton
29:38 James Dobson, Eugenics, Larry Ellison & The Paramount/Warner Bros. Merger
36:19 What's The Difference Between Trump's Iran Plan & Trump's Vietnam Plan?
42:17 Matt Schalpp of CPAC Has Been Credibly Accused
45:40 Ronald Reagan Was A Piece Of Sh*t
49:10 You Cannot Expect or Demand Apologies From People That You Victimized
57:34 Let's End On Something Hopeful

Interview: 

https://youtu.be/VoQhokCN3w4?si=Pdu0fUsV8Z4GFoXR

‘A rude awakening’: more doctors running for office in rebuke to Trump’s health policies

Medical professionals are entering the political arena as funding cuts, layoffs and RFK Jr’s vaccine skepticism spur them to action…

 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/02/doctors-midterm-election-trump-policies-health

 

Musical artists bail from Freedom 250 fair over ‘political involvement’ - POLITICO

“Unfortunately, what was presented to us as a celebration of our country has evolved into something much more divisive than what I agreed to be a part of,” Michaels wrote Thursday on Instagram. The Poison lead singer also said the safety of his fans, band, crew and family was factored into his decision, including threats that were “completely unfounded and unforgivable.”…

 https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/29/freedom-250-fair-musical-lineup-00942818 

Petition drive to get "money out of politics" submits signatures for ballot campaign

Supporters of Michiganders for Money out of Politics argue those groups have given money to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to buy political influence and avoid accountability...

 https://www.michiganpublic.org/politics-government/2026-05-28/petition-drive-to-get-money-out-of-politics-submits-signatures-for-ballot-campaign

Hawaii vs. Citizens United

Earlier this month, a nearly unanimous and bipartisan majority…of Hawaii’s state legislature voted to change the powers of corporations doing business in the state and no longer grant them the ability to spend on most political causes. 

 “Corporations are not people. They are granted powers and privileges by the state,” State Senator Jarrett Keohokalole told me this week, explaining the rationale of the bill he sponsored. “How can a creation of the state have inalienable rights? It doesn’t make any sense.”…

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/05/hawaii-corporations-political-money/687159/

China’s Long Game

“China is betting that American decline will continue,” Ryan Hass writes. This is why China believes that the surest path to international power is not through a direct confrontation, but through patience:

 https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2026/05/china-trump-american-decline/687087/

Evangelicalism is Collapsing: The Story Nobody's Talking About!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAH9q3o0DPM

Trump already tipped his hand on war as a political tool

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ErmH6kznJlM

 

David P. Barash says "the soul is due for a takedown" | Freethought Radio: In Studio (YouTube)

FFRF Co-Presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor sit down with evolutionary biologist and psychologist David P. Barash to tackle one of religion’s most enduring claims: the human soul. Drawing from his book "The Soul Delusion," Barash breaks down what people mean when they talk about souls, why the concept persists, and how science explains consciousness without invoking the supernatural.

Interview: 

https://youtu.be/nhlNsgKLDak?si=T7cd6MMj0_2_ZWRF

Takeaways From ProPublica’s Investigation on Public Lands Grazing — ProPublica

Livestock grazing is allowed across 240 million acres of federal land. Our investigation revealed the subsidies propping up ranching, its impact on the environment and the politics underpinning the system...

https://www.propublica.org/article/grazing-public-lands-investigation-takeaways 

 

Trump’s Venezuela moves shake Florida politics as midterms heat up - POLITICO

Florida politicians have long harnessed opposition to Nicolás Maduro to energize Venezuelan American voters. Now, Republicans are eager to turn his capture under President Donald Trump into a midterm mobilization moment...

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/05/trump-venezuela-florida-politics-midterms-00711537 

 

Johnson Amendment under attack by Christian nationalist effort

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CSCJ1gYGzaI

 

How curiosity could help your Thanksgiving gathering and our politics - The Washington Post

The "how" question shouldn't be posed as a gotcha but with humility: I don't know this stuff as well as you. How would it work? Once your interlocutors realize they don't know, they become more open to new information and ideas. By abandoning the attempt to persuade Uncle Billy and Aunt Sally to change their minds, we actually make it more likely that they will...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/11/21/curiosity-politics-polarization-arguments-thanksgiving/ 

 

Mamdani's Grocery Stores Might Be More Realistic Than You Think - POLITICO

Politicians on both the right and the left have used urban subsidies to rise to power in countries around the world...

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/10/20/mamdani-groceries-politics-turkey-00613292 

 

In Guns We Trust: The Unholy Trinity of White Evangelicals, Politics, and Firearms (Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, Freethought Radio podcast)

Journalist William J. Kole tells us about his book, “In Guns We Trust: The Unholy Trinity of White Evangelicals, Politics, and Firearms.” Then, we speak with historian and poet Jennifer Michael Hecht, author of “The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives.”

Interview: 

https://ffrf.org/news/freethought-radio/freethought-today-october-16-2025/

The antichrist has long haunted American politics. Now it’s rearing its head again

Labelling neighbors "antichrist" is not simply an insult; in this very Protestant American culture, it marks the enemy of God and humanity, the architect of persecution, the final deceiver. Once your opponents become eschatological villains, the normal habits of politics and pluralism feel like complicity with evil. In extreme cases, violence begins to look sanctifying...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/13/antichrist-peter-thiel-michigan

 

HUD website says 'radical left' will cause pain over shutdown in red banner - The Washington Post

A bright red banner alarmed federal workers Tuesday morning as shutdown anxiety mounted…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/09/30/goverrnment-shutdown-politics-ethics/ 

 

‘Fear and hopelessness’: one in four professors in the US south are leaving

Survey by American Association of Professors shows nearly quarter of respondents are switching due to states's politics…

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/23/professors-us-south-leaving

Is Rogan REALLY Leading a Death Cult? (Conspirituality podcast, #274)

If it wasn't all so tragic, politics might seem like a bad joke. But how did comedy become so unfunny, so politically toxic?

From his hideout in a remote mountain cabin, anonymous video collage artist and essayist The Elephant Graveyard has finally cracked the code. According to him, Joe Rogan has created a doomsday death cult that feeds the dad-shaped hole in the hearts of its followers. In this allegory, his Comedy Mothership theater in Austin is like the alien spacecraft zooming in from behind the Hale Bop comet to take the Heaven's Gate group suicide victims home, freed from their earth-suits.

And it turns out tech oligarchs Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are really behind it all.
Interview: 

https://www.conspirituality.net/episodes/274-is-rogan-really-leading-a-death-cult

NIH whistleblower complaints reveal vaccine resistance - The Washington Post

The documents provide a window into the ongoing upheaval inside the National Institutes of Health, in which political review has been inserted into the scientific process...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2025/09/05/whistleblower-complaints-nih-vaccines/