Announcing the Failed State Update newsletter
Stories and conversations from the end of the world
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Most of you are familiar with my podcast Failed State Update, a weekly look at this Orwellian dystopia that we call reality, ca. 2020. It’s been about three weeks since I’ve launched it, and in that time I’ve received some great feedback. It seems like the natural next step is to start up a newsletter.
For years I’ve had this phrase that I'd use whenever I came across the kind of floridly wacky news items that are my bread and butter as a chronicler of the absurd: “failed state update.” (As in, oh geez, a Q Anon true believer killed his family. Another failed state update.) Which I guess is my way of saying that these incidents of high weirdness one finds in American life aren’t isolated events—they're indicative of the nation's decline.
As a journalist, I've met cultists and occultists, flat earthers, doomsday bunker salesmen, various internet con artists, and all manner of unusual characters. I'm also the author of two books on conspiracy culture and the creator an 8-part investigative podcast, The So-Called Prophet from Pittsburgh, about a contemporary UFO cult.
Lately, I’ve been struck by how visible these kinds of stories have become. It's 2020, and the kooky has become commonplace. Fringe ideas have crawled to the center of American life — which makes examining and interrogating these things much more important. That's why I'm producing a podcast, and that's why I'm starting this newsletter.
The Failed State Update newsletter will feature interviews, original reporting, and essays supplementing and expanding upon the podcast, so if you like what you're hearing, you're in for a treat. And even if you hate podcasts, I’m sure you’ll still appreciate having my journalism delivered straight to your inbox.
The newsletter will eventually include a mixture of free and subscriber-only posts, but for the time being, everything (and I mean everything) is free to the people, just like it says above the doors of the Carnegie Library.
So what are you waiting for? Sign up here:
And if you haven't heard the podcast yet, please check it out here: