Editor’s note: The following essay contains references to explicit language.
Earlier this year, comedian and cultural critic Theo Von appeared as a guest on The Joe Rogan Experience — the top performing podcast in the world.
Von, whose own podcast garners five million monthly listeners, expressed dismay over the Trump administration’s abandonment of domestic concerns in order to pursue Israel’s foreign interests.
“All of our f***ing money goes to Israel and they’re using it to f***ing genocide people!” he exclaimed “Everybody is scared out of their wits right now.”
Also according to Von, both major political parties are wholly ineffective when it comes to protecting minors and effecting real change.
“They haven’t been helping anybody forever. They’re letting f***ing politicians slurp on kids!” he argued. “It’s all just a cat and mouse game. People are like, ‘we’ll elect the Democrats next time.’ But it’s all the same s**t has been happening forever.”
Von’s comments then took on a spiritual nature.
“Our religious leaders are afraid to speak out … it’s a time where like Satan is amongst us. Religious leaders are f***ing talking about bulls**t at the polls.”
Von’s assessment of political trends through a religious lens is not something that would have been common or even well received just ten years ago. Yet, his viewpoint is increasingly gaining purchase among young people, as well as other podcasters.
Rogan himself, who initially mocked Von during their conversation to get off the “antidepressants” but later apologized in May doing so, was formerly an avowed atheist who regularly disparaged Christianity in his early podcasting days. While not embracing the one true faith, he has admitted to attending a “non-denominational” church recently.
Likewise, Von, who was raised, as he describes it, “probably Christian but nothing heavily,” is showing a deeper spiritual understanding of the battles waged in this world.
The Dispatch
Other influencers abandon irreligious past
Perhaps most encouraging has been Shawn Ryan’s spiritual growth.
Ryan is a former Navy Seal turned podcasting giant. During a recent appearance on The Tucker Carlson Show, he revealed that he underwent frightening spiritual assaults, describing a journey to “hell” during a psychedelic episode.
Ryan has conducted interviews with multiple clergy as of late, including Fr. Chad Ripperger, Fr. Dan Reehil, and Fr. Stephen Gadberry. He told Carlson that he has been seeking spiritual advice from exorcists and that the results were convincing. He also informed him that he now attends Mass several days a week with his children. It is not readily known if he attends the Latin Mass or the Novus Ordo.
Ryan further told Carlson about his disgust with the current political system in the United States and how nearly everything is based on lies. He openly questioned if there was anything in the world other than the Bible that wasn’t a lie.
Is Tucker converting?
Carlson, 57, was raised in the Anglican Church, a fact which he often makes fun of for understandable reasons. He, too, has delved heavily into religious themes on his show, even going so far as to claim atomic technology is influenced by the demonic.
Carlson has interviewed multiple Catholic guests, including Fr. Ripperger. Like Ryan, he is disillusioned with the temporal politics of our nation and is frustrated with Israel’s influence over American politicians.
While each of these individuals’ turn toward a more broadly Christian and even explicitly Catholic point of view is unique to them, a common pattern has become clear: the sheer volume of lies, particularly among politicians and the Zionist movement, has awakened the moral conscience of those who attend to such matters.
Podcasters are ostensibly the most in the know when it comes to such matters, since their job involves — hopefully — the search for truth. For many, or so it seems, that search has led them to recognize the lies and evil at work in the world, which has prompted them to search for the opposite of such evils and lies in religion.
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It should therefore not surprise us that many podcasters, in seeking the counterbalance to such dark forces, would identify Jesus Christ as that opposing force and that, in cooperation with the grace of God, they will ultimately enter the one Church of Christ.
