His Dad Was Radicalized By a Prophet Online - with Zach Mack

Brad Onishi: How many of you have had the experience where you check in with a cousin or your brother or even your mom, and over a few short months, they've been radicalized online? Whether by Facebook posts from friends, conspiracy theories sent to them by people at church, or simply a prophet claiming to know what's ahead—to have been inspired by God to tell everybody about the ways that the world will change rapidly, and everyone should get ready. Whether it's vaccines, COVID, what happened in the 2020 election, or what will happen in 2025, most of us know what it means to see a loved one go down a rabbit hole, to understand what it means to lose someone close to you to misinformation.

Today, I speak with somebody who had that very experience. His dad was radicalized online. They'd never been particularly close, but since every other family member was growing more and more distant from his father, Zach Mack thought it was time to try to do something different. He approached his father about the ways he had gone all in on conspiracy theories and New Apostolic Reformation prophecies. He'd become seduced by Julie Green, a NAR prophet who makes wild predictions about what will happen in the future. In the past, she's predicted that the U.S. would undergo martial law, that Barack Obama would be put in jail, and so on.

Zach approached his father, and they ended up making a bet—10 things that would come true in the next year, 10 things predicted by online conspiracy theories and NAR prophets. And if they did, Zach would have to say he was wrong. But if they didn't, his father would... What happened over the course of the year was something that surprised everybody. Zach and his father grew closer without having to argue about the wildly different perspectives of their worldviews. They found ways to talk, to interact. Zach found a way to understand what these conspiracies did for his father, the mechanics behind them, and why he held onto them so dearly, even though it drew him further and further into isolation, away from his family members, and even cut off from his spouse and his daughter.

Today, I speak with Zach Mack, the host of "Alternate Realities," a series from NPR's Embedded. Zach is an award-winning podcaster and audio maker who has produced podcasts like The Rewatchables, The Big Picture, and Binge Mode. Zach called me about a year ago to ask about what to do with somebody who's gone down a rabbit hole of conspiracies—a parent lost to radicalization online. I talked about the thousands of folks in my audience, people who I've interacted with, you, who've told me similar stories. Now that the podcast is out, I had a chance to catch up with Zach and see what he'd learned.

I'm Brad Onishi, and this is Straight White American Jesus.

Brad: Zach, welcome to Straight White American Jesus. On this fine Monday, as I just said, I have a very accomplished guest, and you know, somebody who makes me kind of nervous as a podcaster, because he's just sort of done so much. I'm usually interviewing professors and authors whose microphones are from 1996 and who don't really know how to do this stuff. And here I am talking to Zach Mack, so Zach, thanks for coming by. Really appreciate it.

Zach Mack: Yeah, thanks for having me, Brad. It's good to see you again.

Brad: So as I just said, you've done so much as a podcaster and really just produced some amazing stuff. But we're here to talk about "Alternate Realities," which is out now from NPR's Embedded. And it's a show that, of course, touches on the very heart of this show, Straight White American Jesus, because it's all about your dad and a kind of long journey of you realizing how he's been radicalized online through various conspiracy theories, NAR prophets and so on, and your attempt to get to know him a little better, to understand why he has gone down that rabbit hole, and what you can do about it.

There are thousands of people listening right now who have undergone that same experience, so I'm sure there's going to be a lot of resonance. Let's start here: You talk about in the show not being always that close to your dad, even though when you listen to the pod, he just comes off as genial and kind of like that dad-jokey guy who, like, if you went to dinner at the house when you were 16, you'd be like, "Oh, Mr. Mack's pretty nice, he made meatloaf, he made a ton of corny jokes, no problem with him." What was that like for you guys growing up?

Zach: I mean, he was always like that. He's always been very friendly, loves to talk to strangers, loves to make bad dad jokes, that kind of thing. So he's always been that, and he still is that, for sure. I just think we weren't close, and we sometimes would butt heads on things. We have very different beliefs about life and how we see the world. My father was the lone Christian conservative in our household—my mom is Jewish, my sister and I are not particularly religious—and so he was always a little bit of the odd man out, kind of doing his own thing. He was the disciplinarian in the family. So yeah, I think he and I were not very close, and my mom was always just the one who was around. She was the one going to all the PTA meetings and picking us up from soccer practice, and knew all our friends' names. She was just much more present.

Brad: You mentioned watching Ohio State football. There's also the Bay Area. Would you help us understand where you grew up? What's the connection to the Midwest? What's the connection to the Bay?

Zach: So my dad grew up in Ohio, and they moved to Indiana sometime after, and eventually he and my mom met in Chicago. So both of my parents are from the Midwest. My dad wanted to go to grad school, so he came over to California with my mom. They were in their mid-to-late twenties. Eventually, they got married, later they had my sister and I, and we grew up in the Bay Area. I was born in Oakland, and it's a really liberal place.

When my parents got together, neither of them were religious. My mother's background is Judaism, and she's still not particularly religious, but she participates in more of the communal aspect of it. Then my father, shortly after I was born, started returning to the church and just getting more and more into it. And as the years went on, he got more and more into it, and his views became more and more conservative and a little more extreme. It just kept ramping up.

But growing up—Ohio State—because he's from Ohio, he loved Ohio State football, and so he got me into that. Even though I was born and raised in California, I'm just a die-hard Ohio State football fan. It's pretty funny. We were the only Ohio State football fans I knew growing up because we lived in California. Everybody was like, "Why do you like this random team from Ohio?" But that's what it was. They're a fun team to root for because they're always competitive.

Brad: You know, somebody who lives in the Bay Area has a lot of friends in the East Bay—Oakland, Berkeley—who does a lot of work at Berkeley, I can tell you this is just not one of those regions where you're going to find large pockets of people who are participating in New Apostolic Reformation prophecies. I live here now. I grew up in Orange County. If you go down to Orange County, California, it's kind of expected: "Hey, what mega church do you go to? Where's the 'God bless you' in the sign-off of your email?"

So as I've talked to you about this project, as I've listened to the finished product, I've really gotten this picture of your dad as kind of a contrarian, as somebody who's sticking out in your family and in his own larger community. You noticed him getting more radicalized. I think at one point in episode two or three, you talk about him getting more extreme, and it's kind of a word he doesn't like. What effect did this have on your mom and your siblings?

Zach: I think it's been hard for a long time. As he has gotten increasingly religious, he and my mother have had less and less in common. I remember this time when I was really young—I must have been like eight years old—and I could sort of hear them arguing. They didn't really fight or argue a whole lot, so it was just one of those times where I could sort of hear them, and I came out. I remember I got out of bed and came out, and they were arguing. I think I found out years later he sort of went through this thing where he became extremely worried that she wasn't going to go to heaven with him. And that was this really difficult thing. My mom was just like, "I'm not interested in going on this journey with you. I'm not interested in believing in any of this. Please stop asking me."

And that has been a tension for decades, just that alone. But at some point, that tension began to build because his views have gotten more extreme and have gotten increasingly less in touch with reality, unfortunately. Then, a couple years ago, my sister came out to him, and that didn't go particularly well. Because of his religious beliefs, he really couldn't fully get on board with that. So I think that was like a really significant wound for the family.

And then, in the year or two leading up to that, he was saying more and more conspiratorial stuff, and then in the two years since she came out, it had just really ramped up. So we were just sort of watching him get further and further away from us and become more and more of the odd man out. But yeah, I think you're right—he is a contrarian. For so long, he's been the guy who doesn't share the beliefs with the people around him, both in his family and in just the liberal Bay Area, and our friends and social circles. My mom hangs out with a bunch of former Deadheads and stuff. They're not into the church stuff the way he is, and so he's often the odd man out.

Brad: This brings us to you and him, and the whole journey of this podcast. I'm not going to spoil it, I'm not going to sort of let the cat out of the bag—there's a lot of details and twists and turns. But this strikes me as one of those moments, and you can correct me here if I'm wrong, where you get to a certain point in adulthood—you know, you get to be in your late twenties and early thirties—and you start to want to know your parents as people.

What I mean by that is: by the time you get to that age, they're your parents, yes, but you don't need them anymore. You have a job, you moved out to New York City, you've been making podcasts and other media for a long time. And you get to that age and you think, "Who is my parent really? Not as my dad, but as a human, as a man, as somebody who's gone from the Midwest to the West Coast, whatever may be." What about his dad? What about his journey?

This whole series feels to me like you trying to get to know him in that way. Is that an accurate summation of wanting to find a way to get close to him, even though he's gone down this radicalized rabbit hole in the years prior?

Zach: So you're right in that that is what happened. We got closer, and I found out so much more about him and our family history and all that stuff. But that was not the intention. That was not the intention of the podcast or the bet.

The whole thing started with my father challenging me—challenging me to a bet after we got into an argument. That's how it started. It started with an ego-measuring contest. It's a very guy thing to do when two guys are arguing and they can't come to a conclusion. I feel like it usually ends in making a bet or setting up some sort of celebrity boxing match. Those are the two ways we solve things.

So he challenged me to a bet, and I think we were each eager to prove each other wrong. Once we made the bet and decided to do this podcast and sort of track our bet over the course of the year, then there was a bit of a truce established, because we each had a year until it was proven who was right and who was wrong.

So I think we sort of said, "Hey, for the next year, neither of us is right or wrong. We sort of have a year to coast, and we can check in as things go." And as we were checking in, that's sort of when the closeness started to happen. I just began to find out a lot more about him. I was really curious about how he came to these ideas, and what were these ideas doing for him? Why were these conspiracies so appealing? Because for years, we had just been trapped in these circular arguments, and I realized just lobbing facts at him wasn't going to work, and arguing with him in this way was not working. So we tried something else, and I think we had more success that way.

Brad: There's something to me that's really insightful there, and really something that I think folks listening at home might latch onto, which is: the closeness and the ability for you to relate to your dad and your dad to you as just two human beings trying to get to know each other—you as a son who's curious about him, about his worldviews, where he's getting his information, what his relationship with his own parents were like, what's going through his head as he's aging and getting older—it happens when the trying to prove which worldview is right is paused, and you just become two folks who are kind of checking in. I mean, it's really you checking in on him, but trying to get closer.

I've always said that if you can get to a place where you are people who have an emotional connection and an emotional trust, then there might be some openings for intellectual inroads. I'm wondering if some of those things presented themselves in that year, where neither of you had to prove that you were right or wrong, and because there was a detente, there was attention to just each other as human beings.

Zach: Yeah, yeah. You know, it's funny—you phrase it that way, you phrased it so similarly when I spoke to you a little over a year ago. You're one of the first people I interviewed, and you gave me advice. It was good advice. We ended up using a clip of that in the trailer. You can hear yourself in the trailer saying, "If you guys can just talk as humans, then you have a chance, and you're not coming at each other from these warring ideologies."

And yeah, I think for my father, the way we were able to finally have productive conversations is I put on a different hat. I think I took off the upset son hat, and I put on the investigative journalist hat. I just sort of approached this with curiosity and as much empathy as I could, and just trying to understand: "How'd you get here? Why are these ideas so appealing?" Just asking him questions and being curious. Through that—and being genuinely curious, not trying to trap him in some answer where he tells on himself, but just earnestly asking and being as patient as I could be, and talking to him for months for long periods of time—by the end of that year, we were having the best conversations we've ever had. And it's just because there was a level of trust there, and I do think we were just able to get to a place that we had not been before.

Brad: It's interesting to think about that kind of investigative reporter hat. For me, as somebody who's dealing with his own parents getting older, and how many times am I going to see my own father play with my kids and so on—my brothers and I have actually given my dad prompts for him to answer, and sometimes we record them. We do a podcast style. And it's one of these very sad things, apparently, about masculine relationships—men relating to men these days—is you have to have a podcast in order for everyone to want to sit on the couch and talk. But you know, what are you going to do?

One of the things he says, and I think this comes out in these conversations you're referencing—and I promise friends, we're going to get to the ideas, the New Apostolic Reformation ideas, the conspiracies, but I want to talk about the mechanics first—is they help him see the world as it really is. Did that come through to you as you got to know the ins and outs and details of the kinds of things he's believing in?

Zach: Yeah. When he first proposed the bet to me, this bet had all these very politically apocalyptic ideas. I could not see how this had anything to do with God at all. I don't understand how throwing Barack Obama in jail for treason or our country coming under martial law had anything to do with God. It seemed completely separate.

But the more that we talked and the more research I did, I started to understand just the fusion that has taken place between right-wing politics and this sect of Christianity. He's really gotten into these online prophets who—it's like a full-throated mixture of religion and politics. So I don't even think he... I remember saying, "Dad, I don't remember you ever being into politics. Now, all of a sudden, you're so into politics." And he's like, "What do you mean? This isn't politics." And I'm like, "Every single one of these is politics. This has nothing to do with religion." But he was still seeing it as religion. I think that just speaks to that full merge between those two worlds, and I don't even think he thinks of it as politics sometimes.

Brad: It's amazing to think about what you just said, because I think there are millions of people around this country right now who would tell you the same thing—that their faith has only gotten more devout because of the internet. They can listen to sermons and prophets online. Religion, religion, religion. And you're like, "Hey, I'm your son. You were never like that political dad who was super into watching Meet the Press and the local political machines." And he's like, "What are you talking about? I'm not into politics." And you're like, "Everything we're betting on..."—and again, I don't want to give it all away, the things you bet your dad about—but one of them you mentioned is the U.S. will have martial law. Another one is Barack Obama will go to jail. And you're like, "What does that have to do with the New Testament? Or the Sermon on the Mount, or the Golden Rule, the Good Samaritan?" It doesn't seem like a lot.

This brings me to Julie Green, who I have to mention, and just because of this show, we've talked about the New Apostolic Reformation at length. We made a series called "Charismatic Revival Fury" with Dr. Matthew Taylor all about this. But Julie Green is an online prophet who's part of the New Apostolic Reformation. What do you think led your dad to Julie Green? What are some of the things that he learned from her? Why was she such an attractive figure for him at this juncture?

Zach: So he told me at some point during the pandemic, he came to believe in the idea of prophets—that God still speaks through intermediaries the way he did in the Old Testament. And he said to me, he never understood why God would stop speaking to his people, and he came to believe in prophets.

My dad is not very tech-savvy, and he is really not an internet native. He's very lost on the internet. So literally—he was describing it to me—he was just Googling "God's prophets." And Julie Green is one of the first hits that came up when you type that in, I guess. And he listened to her, and I think he liked what she had to say.

I also just think he liked that she wasn't really over the top. She has kind of a Midwestern vibe to her—I think she's from Iowa—and she's a little more low-key in her presentation. She's not super theatrical, but what she's saying is very theatrical. Her presentation is a little more tamped down than a lot of the fire-and-brimstone type of preachers you're used to seeing. So he liked her, and they started watching her.

I think partially because my dad is not a big news junkie, because he's not so invested in politics, I think that makes him a little more susceptible to hearing this kind of stuff. Now he's hearing it with the mixture of the stuff that he's so used to hearing, which is all the Christian, all the God stuff, and then here comes all the right-wing politics stuff that's in there. It's sort of like it's getting slipped into his food. You listen to that for hours and hours every week, and eventually it really starts to take hold. I think these ideas are really insidious. So he became pretty into these ideas and thought they were for sure going to happen. And he came to believe that God is really speaking through Julie Green.

I do have a funny story to tell you about him and Julie Green that didn't happen on the podcast. At some point, he made another bet—he made a second bet with my mother. This was right in the summer. You remember Joe Biden had decided to step down, and Kamala was going to run for president in his place. So it was kind of a crazy month in the middle of the summer, and we're leading up to the DNC.

I remember the week before the DNC, my dad was like, "The Democrats are gonna toss Kamala at the DNC. I promise you." And I was like, "Dad, what? They just got rid of their candidate. They're not gonna do it a second time. That would be political suicide. There's no coming back from that. It's gonna be hard enough for Kamala to win." And he was like, "No, no, they're gonna toss her, I promise you. I have it on good authority." And I was like, "Okay."

My mom was just like, "What are you talking about?" And he was like, "Well, do you want to bet on it?" He proposed to bet with her because he was sure Kamala was going to get tossed at the DNC. And the terms were, if he won, she would have to give up all mainstream media, as he put it, for the rest of the year. And she was like, "Okay, well, if I win, you can't watch Julie Green anymore." And he agreed to it.

Then, sure enough, a week later, Kamala accepts the nomination officially, and he can't watch Julie Green anymore for the rest of the year. But the unfortunate part is that didn't matter. He just immediately moved on to the next prophet. It didn't really seem to be about Julie Green. There were 10 others to quickly take her place. And now he's like, "I don't even need her anymore. I check out all these other people." And now there's this other woman that he likes more. So that's just where it is.

Brad: But there's something really important that you talked about there, which is your dad's not a news junkie. Your dad is not the person who has been consuming Fox News for 30 years. I remember when I was growing up, my stepdad at one point discovered Rush Limbaugh, and all of a sudden he was super into the Rush Limbaugh talking points. But to me, what's really compelling about your dad's story, and one that many people will identify with and already are through the podcast, is he's not the guy watching four hours of Fox News or Rush Limbaugh or the political podcasts.

He Googled "God's prophets" because he was convinced God still speaks directly to people. He finds Julie Green. And Julie Green—friends, many of you know, many of you don't—is a New Apostolic Reformation prophet who believes God speaks directly to her. She makes prophecies all the time. She predicts things in the future, many of which don't—I mean, almost all of which never come close to coming true. But nonetheless, she claims not that she's inspired by God—that's one claim—but she claims that God tells her what is going to happen, like an Old Testament prophet, like the prophet Jeremiah, like the prophet Isaiah.

And I bring that up because this is what radicalizes your dad. It's not Rupert Murdoch. It's not Tucker Carlson. It is these folks who are mixing prophecy with bonkers conspiracy theories that, of course, link into a whole network of conspiracy theories about the New World Order and about martial law and Barack Obama and the Illuminati and QAnon and everything else. And that leads him to that thing we talked about earlier, which is that he can see the reality as it really is, and everyone else is blind.

If you want to listen to the rest of this episode, you’ll have to subscribe. You can find all the info in the show notes or go to Axis Mundi. AxisMundi.us. It costs 5.99 a month, less than that latte you bought on the way to work today. Guess what? If you subscribe to bonus content from our show, not only do you get more content each Monday, you get more free listening, an invite to our Discord, and access to the entire 800-episode archive. But wait, there’s more. You’ll also get also to Andrew Seidal’s On Nation, Indivisible bonus content every Tuesday. If you’re a fan of this show, I know you’ll be a fan of Andrew, and get access to the entirety of his work. Sign up now at axismundi.us. It’s the best decision you’ll make today. 

Brad: The podcast is out—"Alternate Realities." Tell us where we can keep up with the pod, keep up with you and future work, and best ways folks can just follow along with everything you're doing.

Zach: Yeah, I mean, I'm not hard to find. I'm online a number of places. Zach Mack, Z-A-C-H M-A-C-K, you'll see me. I'm the podcast Zach Mack. There's another guy who sells beer in New York who's a good guy—I do like him a lot, but that's not me. And the podcast itself is on the Embedded feed on NPR. So anywhere you get your podcasts, if you just search NPR Embedded, you will see "Alternate Realities." It's right there. And if you go to Apple Podcasts right now, it's at the top of the page, so it's there. I don't know when this is running, but yeah, it's not hard to find. "Alternate Realities," NPR Embedded is the show.

Brad: Episode two, you'll hear a familiar voice. I get a little cameo there, so that's always fun. As always, friends, thanks for listening. Thanks for tuning in today. I'm sure many of you are identifying closely with Zach's story and what's going on with his dad. We'll be back Wednesday with "It's in the Code," Friday with the weekly roundup. And if you haven't already, go subscribe to Andrew Seidel's "One Nation Indivisible"—all the bonus content on that show is available on SWAJ Premium. So all the info for both of those things is in the show notes. If you haven't subscribed yet, now is the time. Thanks for being here. We'll catch you later.