Jessa Crispin

A podcast that listens to what anti-vaxxers think rather than lecturing them

Plus: how do we square treating work like a religion and religion like a cult?

Was Mother Teresa's pursuit of asceticism simply masochism when directed at herself and sadism when demanded of her nuns? Photo: Jean-Claude Francolon / Gamma-Rapho / Getty Images 
issue 07 August 2021

Work is our new religion. There are people whose primary job is writing listicles of celebrity gossip, illustrated with gifs from the Fast & Furious franchise, who refer to being a writer as a ‘calling’. If I think about this for too long my brain simply shuts down to protect itself.

What we used to do for God we now do for our work. In a secular culture, it seems totally normal — admirable, even — to sacrifice the possibility of having a family, to give up all leisure time, to starve yourself or live on insane, totally made-up diets like intermittent fasting or paleo for the sake of your job as an Instagram beauty influencer or whatever. But to wear a habit and be celibate and fast out of a religious devotion? That must be a cult!

Instead of a lecture on the idiocy of being anti-vax, they listen to their sceptical guest

The bafflement that those who serve one god (engagement numbers) feel for those who serve another god (God) is present in some parts of iHeartRadio’s new series The Turning: The Sisters Who Left.

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