Flipping Tables

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Why do institutions built on moral authority so often become safe harbors for predators?
Abuse scandals within religious institutions are recurring patterns with shared structural causes. This episode breaks down why churches, regardless of denomination, repeatedly find themselves at the center of abuse cover-up stories, and why victims so often find themselves silenced.
We walk through several prominent cases that have made headlines in recent years spanning Catholic dioceses, evangelical megachurches, and independent ministries examining the common threads: delayed reporting, internal investigations kept away from civil authorities, institutional loyalty placed above victim care, and the "forgiveness" framework weaponized to shut down accountability.
Then we go deeper into the structural question: hierarchy itself. When authority flows unidirectionally downward challenging a leader becomes spiritually dangerous for members. Whistleblowers risk not just reputation but community, belonging, and in some traditions, their eternal standing. This creates near perfect conditions for abuse to go fester and grow.
Sources
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I feel very confident in saying that this is quite possibly the most important, powerful, and for me, inspiring interview I've ever done. This one is on the longer side but it is worth every minute. I could have done a series with Deeyah.
Deeyah Khan is a BAFTA– and two-time Emmy Award–winning documentary filmmaker known for her deeply empathetic and unflinching storytelling. Her work explores some of the most urgent and polarising issues of our time, including extremism, violence against women, racism, inequality, and social exclusion.
Over the course of her career, she has spent years engaging directly with individuals involved in violence and extremist movements. Her documentaries feature jihadists, convicted anti-abortion terrorists, as well as current and former white supremacists and armed militia groups in the United States. Through these encounters, she seeks to understand the human stories behind radicalisation and division.
In addition to her filmmaking, Deeyah is the founder of Fuuse, an independent media and arts production company. In 2016, she was appointed UNESCO’s first Goodwill Ambassador for artistic freedom and creativity.
Born in Norway to Muslim immigrant parents, Deeyah’s experience of navigating multiple cultures informs her creative vision. This perspective brings a distinctive emotional honesty and humanity to her work, shaping films that not only challenge audiences, but also foster connection, deeper understanding and dialogue.
I encountered Deeyah's work in her documentary "White Right: Meeting the Enemy" and it is TRULY transformative. She sat in rooms with white supremacists I'd be nervous to sit in and she did it with fierceness, determination, courage and love. And some of those men left the movement due to her influence. She is a rockstar and I can't wait to share this story with you.

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Like many of you, I watched a viral video of a gorgeous woman walking through her house, opening her Bible to Matthew 25 and reading the passage on "the least of these". This was in response to a TikTok comment of someone lashing out at Jen because she (the commenter) "was maga and loved Jesus". After calmly reading the Bible, Jen simply says "sounds pretty liberal to me" and ends the video.
That simple video caused MAGA to call Jen's job where she works as an OB Nurse to get her fired, reported her online and tried to call her licensing board to get her nursing license revoked! Because she read the Bible and they didn't like it. She even had to have private security when she spoke at a conference.
And that is how I met a kind, compassionate, funny, loving lady who shares my alma mater. We talk about our journey's through faith, Liberty, growth, change, and what it means to love your neighbor.

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My grandma Ena was a pilot and they were her favorite stories to tell. I am sure its no surprise that I grew up with Amelia Earhart as one of my heroes. The woman who flew so that my grandma could fly.
She vanished into the sky—and into one of the greatest mysteries of the modern age.
In this episode, we fly into the world of Amelia Earhart, a woman who refused to stay grounded, refused to stay compliant and traditional in a time when society expected her to. She became record-breaking aviator and one of the most famous women in the world. The first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. A symbol of independence, grit, and relentless ambition.
But Earhart wasn’t just chasing records—she was chasing the edge of possibility itself.
In 1937, she set out on a daring attempt to circumnavigate the globe, navigating thousands of miles over open ocean with only the tools and technology of her time. Somewhere over the vast Pacific, near a tiny speck called Howland Island… she disappeared.
No confirmed wreckage. No distress call that told the full story. Just silence.
In this episode, we’ll trace her rise from a curious, rebellious girl to one of the most famous pilots in history and then dive headfirst into the theories, investigations, and unanswered questions that have kept her story alive for nearly a century.
And we will take a brief flyover to meet the Night Witches of the USSR's air service.
This episode is to celebrate Women's History month with women who paved a runway for those who would come later!

Rachel Hartigan, Lost: Unsolved Mysteries of Amelia Earhart and the Bermuda Triangle
Susan Butler, East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart
Doris L. Rich, Amelia Earhart: A Biography
Mary S. Lovell, The Sound of Wings: The Life of Amelia Earhart
Candace Fleming, Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart
Ric Gillespie, Finding Amelia: The True Story of the Earhart Disappearance
Elgen M. Long and Marie K. Long, Amelia Earhart: The Mystery Solved
Mike Campbell, Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last
Fred Goerner, The Search for Amelia Earhart
Vincent V. Loomis, Amelia Earhart: The Final Story
Les Kinney, Amelia Earhart: Beyond the Grave
Theodore G. Tharpe, Crash and Sink: The Salvage of the Earhart Electra
National Geographic Society, “Amelia Earhart Biography and Disappearance”
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, “Amelia Earhart”
Library of Congress, “Amelia Earhart Papers”
FBI Records: The Vault, “Amelia Earhart”
TIGHAR (The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery), “Amelia Earhart Project Research”
U.S. Navy Historical Center, “Earhart Search Operations 1937”
PBS American Experience, Amelia Earhart
History Channel, “Amelia Earhart Disappearance Theories”

This episode is brought to you by Ground News. Subscribe for 40% off their vantage plan at groundnews.com/tables. Project MKUltra was a secret research program run by the Central Intelligence Agency beginning in 1953 during the Cold War. Its goal was to explore methods of mind control, interrogation, and psychological manipulation, partly out of fear that rival nations like the Soviet Union were developing similar techniques.

The program funded dozens of experiments at universities, hospitals, and prisons. Researchers tested drugs such as LSD, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, electroshock, and other methods to see whether human behavior and memory could be controlled. Many subjects were not informed they were part of experiments, and some were exposed to powerful drugs without consent.

The program remained secret until the 1970s, when investigations by the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities revealed the experiments. Much of the documentation had already been destroyed on orders from CIA director Richard Helms.

MKUltra became one of the most controversial intelligence programs in U.S. history and led to new oversight of intelligence agencies and stricter ethical rules for human experimentation.

Sources available by request at [email protected]