This week, April and Paul have a conversation with Sarah McCammon, the author of The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church, a 2024 book that is part memoir and part journalism, about the movement of people who grew up inside the powerful evangelical subculture and ultimately left it behind.

Sarah McCammon is a National Political Correspondent for NPR and co-host of the NPR Politics Podcast. Her work focuses on political, social and cultural divides in America, including abortion policy and the intersections of politics and religion. She's also a frequent guest host for NPR news programs.

Tara Jean Stevens joins April and Paul to talk about recent church controversies, such as IHOPKC, and the manipulation that is easily found in these environments. Her chart-topping podcast, Heaven Bent, a spotlights Pentecostal and Charismatic movements and helps victims and survivors find healing through telling their stories. Tara Jean has also been a fan-favorite on Vancouver radio & TV, for nearly 25 years. Today, you can hear her Smooth Jazz morning show, weekdays, on WAVE 98.3 - Vancouver’s Coolest Vibe.

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Cynane Shay of Taking off the Tinfoil Hat joins April and Paul for a chat about conspiracy theories within evangelicalism.

Cynane is a nuclear engineer living in South Carolina. Her childhood in White Christian Nationalism (Florida-style) normalized conspiracy theories like Obama Birtherism and the Biblical apocalypse; but 2020, with COVID and Qanon, finally made her realize something was deeply wrong.

Now Cynane is writing a book, “Taking Off the Tinfoil Hat: How Lizard People and Space Lasers Dismantled my Christian Worldview,” to process the deconstruction of her fundamentalist evangelicalism and her propagandistic patriotism. Losing loved ones to the pandemic was a tragedy, but losing loved ones to the rabbit hole was its own tragedy and Cynane needed to understand the “why.” So from Flat Earth to the IBLP cult to Jewish space lasers, she pulled the thread, cracked her faith, and found the inseparable link between cults, conspiracy theories, and American White Christian Nationalism. TakingOffTheTinfoilHat.com