Avoiding Babylon

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Fear doesn’t always feel like fear. Sometimes it shows up as “being responsible,” “being prepared,” or “staying in control.” We sit down with Elliot Hulse to talk about the moment that illusion breaks, and what happens when God starts asking for more than your habits, your hustle, or your plans.

Elliot walks us through his backstory: growing up Catholic, drifting after the sacraments, wrestling with identity, and going deep into philosophy and Eastern spirituality before finding his way back to Jesus through charismatic Protestantism. Then YouTube success hits hard, and so does the crash. What follows is one of the most concrete parts of the conversation: repentance that leads straight to confession, daily Mass, and a Catholic reversion that reshapes his marriage, his parenting, and his entire home.

We also go into modern masculinity and the manosphere, why young men look online for the guidance they can’t find elsewhere, and how “red pill” insights can rot into rage when Christ is removed. From there we turn to the pandemic mindset, prepping, homesteading, and the spiritual trap of believing we can save ourselves. Elliot connects it all to Abandonment to Divine Providence and the daily practice of acting from love and peace instead of fear and mammon.

If this conversation challenges you, share it with a friend, subscribe for more, and leave a review so more people can find it.
Support the show

Get 10% off an amazing Black Monk Rosary by going to https://www.blackmonkrosaries.com/?ref=AVOIDINGBABYLON and using code AVOIDINGBABYLON at checkout!
Check out our sponsor, Nic Nac, at www.nicnac.com and use code "AB25%" for 25% off of your first order!
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A highway can change more than traffic, it can dissolve a community. We talk with Dr. E. Michael Jones about the argument behind *The Slaughter of Cities*: how urban renewal, redevelopment, and forced dispersion reshaped Catholic ethnic neighborhoods and quietly reduced their cultural and political influence. Along the way, we get specific about the mechanics, not just the slogans, including what archives revealed, why certain neighborhoods emptied out, and how “progress” can become a tool of social engineering.

The conversation also turns to credibility and censorship: what happens when a controversial writer is removed from major platforms, and why citations and documentation matter more than ever. We dig into how information travels through Catholic media, how narratives get framed, and why funding, gatekeeping, and distribution channels can determine what the average listener even hears. Some of the claims raised are provocative and hotly disputed, so we constantly come back to a practical listener question: what can you verify, and where are the sources?

We close by zooming out to demographic decline and mass migration in Europe, plus the deeper issue of institutional formation, from Catholic schools to public history. Whether you come for urban planning, Catholic culture, deplatforming, or media literacy, you’ll leave with a clearer sense of how power operates through infrastructure, publishing, and “respectable” messaging.

If this episode challenges you, share it with someone who will actually argue the details, then subscribe and leave a review so more people can find the conversation.
Support the show

Get 10% off an amazing Black Monk Rosary by going to https://www.blackmonkrosaries.com/?ref=AVOIDINGBABYLON and using code AVOIDINGBABYLON at checkout!
Check out our sponsor, Nic Nac, at www.nicnac.com and use code "AB25%" for 25% off of your first order!
Please subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKsxnv80ByFV4OGvt_kImjQ?sub_confirmation=1
https://www.avoidingbabylon.com
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Locals Community: https://avoidingbabylon.locals.com
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Want to reach out to us? Want to leave a comment or review? Want to give us a suggestion or berate Anthony? Send us a text by clicking this link!
The world before September 11 felt slower, smaller, and oddly harder to explain to anyone who didn’t live it. We’re not just talking about flip phones and dial-up, but the way information moved, the way rumors spread, and the way a single day could lock an entire country to the television like it was the only window to reality. We share where we were when the towers were hit, what we saw from New York, and what it felt like trying to reach the people we loved when networks went down and the city shut its doors. 

From there, we follow the aftershocks: the blackouts, the anthrax scares, the rise of the 24-hour news cycle, and the emotional stampede into the War on Terror. We also wrestle with why doubt persists for some people, including how footage replays, controversial TV clips, and long-running claims about timing and collapses keep resurfacing every 9/11 anniversary. Our goal is not to turn grief into entertainment, but to talk honestly about memory, media literacy, and why “trust the narrative” became such a loaded demand after a national trauma. 

We end by tracing the line from 9/11 to Iraq, “shock and awe,” and the political world we’re living in now, where suspicion is common and unity feels rare. If you care about September 11 history, World Trade Center remembrance, Building 7 debates, or how propaganda and polarization take root, this conversation will give you a lot to think about. Subscribe for more, share this with someone who remembers that day differently, and leave a review with the one detail you think the country still misunderstands.
Support the show

Get 10% off an amazing Black Monk Rosary by going to https://www.blackmonkrosaries.com/?ref=AVOIDINGBABYLON and using code AVOIDINGBABYLON at checkout!
Check out our sponsor, Nic Nac, at www.nicnac.com and use code "AB25%" for 25% off of your first order!
Please subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKsxnv80ByFV4OGvt_kImjQ?sub_confirmation=1
https://www.avoidingbabylon.com
Merchandise: https://avoiding-babylon-shop.fourthwall.com
Locals Community: https://avoidingbabylon.locals.com
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Want to reach out to us? Want to leave a comment or review? Want to give us a suggestion or berate Anthony? Send us a text by clicking this link!
One juror. One note to the judge. One phrase that can blow up weeks of testimony: “refusing to follow the instructions.” We bring on our longtime friend Mark, a working attorney who lives in the world of jury trials, to help us sort out what’s actually happening inside the Lindsay Clancy trial and what the court can legally do next.

We walk through how jury instructions function, what “reasonable doubt” is supposed to mean, and why it gets messy fast when real people bring their own definitions into the jury room. We also dig into the high-stakes choices that follow a deadlock: questioning a juror, seating an alternate, risking a mistrial, or setting up the case for appeal. Along the way, we talk about the practical reality that the public rarely sees: juries are persuadable, courtroom procedure matters, and a case that lives on social media doesn’t stay neatly inside the courthouse.

From there we get into the insanity defense and why Massachusetts rules around burden of proof can change the entire shape of a verdict. We also tackle the fairness problem nobody can wish away, especially in a headline case: if jurors aren’t sequestered and they go home to phones, feeds, and opinions, how “untainted” can deliberations really be? Mark also shares real-world stories from municipal court and CPS work that show the moral weight behind legal systems, then we close with a clear breakdown of Fourth Amendment basics, probable cause, DWI checkpoints, drug-sniffing dogs, and why polygraphs don’t deserve the trust pop culture gives them.

If you want clearer thinking about jury deliberations, reasonable doubt, and the insanity defense, subscribe, share this with a friend who’s following the trial, and leave us a review with your take on what the judge should do next.
Support the show

Get 10% off an amazing Black Monk Rosary by going to https://www.blackmonkrosaries.com/?ref=AVOIDINGBABYLON and using code AVOIDINGBABYLON at checkout!
Check out our sponsor, Nic Nac, at www.nicnac.com and use code "AB25%" for 25% off of your first order!
Please subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKsxnv80ByFV4OGvt_kImjQ?sub_confirmation=1
https://www.avoidingbabylon.com
Merchandise: https://avoiding-babylon-shop.fourthwall.com
Locals Community: https://avoidingbabylon.locals.com
Full Premium/Locals Shows on Audio Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1987412/subscribe
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Want to reach out to us? Want to leave a comment or review? Want to give us a suggestion or berate Anthony? Send us a text by clicking this link!
A hung jury sounds like a procedural hiccup until you ask what it exposes about the whole system. We start with the Lindsay Clancy hung jury and the obvious elephant in the room: when a case is drenched in TikTok clips, podcast commentary, and public protest energy, how can a non-sequestered jury realistically stay “clean”? We talk through jury dynamics, why one holdout matters, and what a retrial, institutional sentence, or appeal could look like when the internet is effectively sitting in the jury box. 

Then we get into the argument everybody wants to shortcut: SSRIs, postpartum depression claims, and the temptation to turn tragedy into a blanket excuse. We’re not pretending medication and mental illness never matter, but we are worried about precedent and accountability in criminal law. If the standard becomes “the system did it,” what happens to future cases, especially cases involving child abuse where online fandoms can blur moral clarity into therapy-speak and sympathy campaigns? 

From there we pivot to institutions watching institutions: the Richmond FBI memo on “radical traditionalist Catholics,” the Latin Mass, “integralism,” and the wild framing that compares orthodox Catholic ideas to Islamist ideology. We react to the screenshots, talk about why insular communities attract scrutiny, and even contrast that with other tight-knit religious enclaves in New York. We close by teeing up the Deloney clip and the modern therapy trap where “counsel” can quietly plant suspicion and divorce inside a marriage. 

If you got something out of this, subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a rating and review so more people can find the show.
Support the show

Get 10% off an amazing Black Monk Rosary by going to https://www.blackmonkrosaries.com/?ref=AVOIDINGBABYLON and using code AVOIDINGBABYLON at checkout!
Check out our sponsor, Nic Nac, at www.nicnac.com and use code "AB25%" for 25% off of your first order!
Please subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKsxnv80ByFV4OGvt_kImjQ?sub_confirmation=1
https://www.avoidingbabylon.com
Merchandise: https://avoiding-babylon-shop.fourthwall.com
Locals Community: https://avoidingbabylon.locals.com
Full Premium/Locals Shows on Audio Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1987412/subscribe
RSS Feed for Podcast Apps: https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/1987412.rss