Unf*ck the Poor

Mississippi has been withholding federal funds to repair its capital city's water problems. Majority black Jackson, Mississippi, has been at the mercy of the majority white state legislature for decades, which acts as overseer of the city's finances.

Climate change has brought severe weather to the state - flood conditions and freezing weather overwhelms Jackson's ancient infrastructure and causes burst pipes, broken p...

Who's ready to get weird? Like...uncomfortably weird. In the final episode of The Apostate Peter Ruckman we get into the pettiness of bible believers and the biblical evidence of aliens, UFOs, alien-government conspiracies, lizard people, and how Ruckmanism is but one example of religious fascism that has crept upon us for over half a century. Super fun stuff.

Wouldn't it be neat if you could justify all your prejudices by...

Wouldn't it be neat if you could justify all your prejudices by interpreting the Bible however you wanted and then saying that it's the inerrant word of God? If you're Dr. Peter S. Ruckman, that Bible is the King James Version, aka A.V. 1611, and your interpretation will come to be known as Ruckmanism. The souls you save, should they cling to your teachings, will become Ruckmanites. As far as cults go, Ruckmanism is as ...

Wouldn't it be neat if you could justify all your prejudices by interpreting the Bible however you wanted and then saying that it's the inerrant word of God? If you're Dr. Peter S. Ruckman, that Bible is the King James Version, aka A.V. 1611, and your interpretation will come to be known as Ruckmanism. The souls you save, should they cling to your teachings, will become Ruckmanites. As far as cults go, Ruckmanism is as ...

Wouldn't it be neat if you could justify all your prejudices by interpreting the Bible however you wanted and then saying that it's the inerrant word of God? If you're Dr. Peter S. Ruckman, that Bible is the King James Version, aka A.V. 1611, and your interpretation will come to be known as Ruckmanism. The souls you save, should they cling to your teachings, will become Ruckmanites. As far as cults go, Ruckmanism is as ...

In Part 2: Divine Fascism we dive into the historical context of the Religious Right and how evangelical Christians became so emboldened as to propose legislation explicitly pushing their own batshit crazy beliefs upon the entire nation.

We're discussing the Moral Majority, the Heritage Foundation, the John Birch Society, and the anti-semitic/anti-democratic/fascist trio of the 1930s: Gerald LK Smith, William D. Pelley, and Ger...

House Bill 874 is possibly the most batshit crazy document I've ever read - and I've read "Your Best Life Now" by Joel Osteen. House Bill 874 was introduced in 2022 to impose a national year of humiliation, fasting, and prayer, meant to deliver our wayward nation from sin and back into the loving arms of a Christian god.

Lifelong friend and inventor of the game show "That's not food get it out of your mo...

From RachelCorrieFoundation.org, a reading of Rachel Corrie's emails to friends and family during her time volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement in Rafah. Rachel Corrie was an American college student and activist who spent winter quarter in Gaza sleeping next to water wells and protecting homes from IOF destruction. Her emails are witness to the policy of expulsion and dehumanization of the Israeli military.

To celebrate the holiday season - whatever and however you're celebrating - we're celebrating the life of Rachel Corrie, the 23 year-old American college student who was killed by Israeli Occupation Forces in 2003 while protecting a Palestinian home from being demolished.

Rachel Corrie was born an activist, a true champion of the underdog. I am moved by the earnestness of her actions, by her openness and compassion for not...

UFTP took the shitshow on the road over the November holiday break, sitting down with my brother David and our mother in North Carolina to get more history on the man we knew as our father.

Spoiler: he was always a giant piece of shit.

From being a non-dancing, gaslighting, child abusing Church-of-Christ piece of shit to a one-upping, narcissistic, child abusing non-denominational piece of shit, the guy was a real piece of shit.

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Me and ol' Trademark keep pulling the thread on mental health. I go further into my personal history - the 5 year anniversary of sobriety and life itself and how I crawled out of the deepest, darkest pit of my life.

Why is the psychiatric hospital the best place ever? Are psychiatric medications worth the cost and the hassle? Can you get the therapeutic experience outside of a mental health facility? Luke says yes, absolutely....

Remember during the Covid lockdowns when we were all practicing self-care because life as we knew it was changing permanently and in real-time and felt like an out of control nightmare?

That's what mental health crises feel like, except there is no pandemic and the nightmare is all in your head. It's a nightmare that festers and grows out of control until you yourself lose control. And self-care? Wtf is that? It's all ...

In this episode Ashe and I discuss our personal experiences with body image, the impact of social media and pop culture on how we view ourselves, the how and why of steroid use among gay men - the pros, the cons, the arbitrary side effects - and the popularity of cosmetic surgeries among increasingly younger men and women.

In this episode: body dysmorphia, Ryan Phillippe, botox, roid rage, vaping, Ashe's weird eyebrow, OnlyFan...

Ashe and I are back to discuss the Stonewall Riots (but briefly), the muscle magazines of the 1950s and 60s, Hal Fisher in the 1970s, how HIV/AIDS transformed physical culture in the 80s, Hulk Hogan, monkey pox, and steroid use.

Beefcake Dysmorphia is a multi-episode series on body dysmorphia disorder in the gay community. I'm grateful to my lifelong friend Ashe for sitting down with me to discuss camp, queerness, the resilien...

I'm writer and freelancer Joe Love, and this is my podcast where I bring you the freelance articles I pitched but couldn't sell.

One editor said my pitch on child trash pickers in Kenya was “too depressing for a children’s magazine.” That article was titled "Unfuck the Poor" and in retrospect that’s probably too aggressive for Highlights. 

I cover everything. Mental health, the environment, racism, war, pop cultu...

Is the person in the mirror worthy of love?

In this episode series I discuss body dysmorphia in the gay community with one of my oldest friends, Ashe!

We can trace the modern phenomenon of body dysmorphia down to modern advertising and three groundbreaking revelations about the consumer. If you want to keep the customer clamoring for more, just appeal to their desires, habits, and fears.

Women and gay men process advertising and ...