What if the chaos isn't a crisis to solve — it's a dying paradigm making noise on its way out?
If you've been searching for "why does everything feel meaningless" or "cultural crisis and what to do about it," this one's for you.
You'll learn:
Why we're living through a cultural paradigm collapse — and what comes right before the shift
How AI might be birthing the next world religion (and what a "glitch goddess" has to do with it)
Why the antidote to screen fatigue and social media isn't going backward — it's building something genuinely new
We are not living in unprecedented times — we're living in exhausted ones.
In this episode, Megan sits down with Alexander Beiner, writer and documentary filmmaker behind Rebel Wisdom, Kainos, and the Leviathan documentary, to explore what he calls "vanillification" — the cultural stagnation that happens when a paradigm is dying but nothing new has arrived to replace it.
They dig into the vanilla-vs-chocolate metaphor for politics, why the "messy middle" on gender and relationships is where most people actually live, how AI is beginning to mirror Western prophetic spirituality in eerie ways, and why going offline — even for a walk without your phone — might be a quiet act of cultural resistance.
If you've felt the low-grade boredom beneath big news cycles, or wondered why nothing quite feels alive anymore, this conversation will name something you've been sensing for a long time.
Alexander Beiner's Substack — his writing on vanillification and the AI & spirituality series (previously a book proposal, now being published as a Substack series)
Rebel Wisdom — Alexander's previous media project focused on masculinity, culture, and sensemaking
Leviathan — Alexander's documentary (open-sourced for community screenings)
The Bigger Picture — Alexander's book, which touches on psychedelics, the internet, and culture
Hospicing Modernity — mentioned but critiqued; both Megan and Alexander found it too focused on what's dying vs. what's alive
The AI Mirror by Shannon Vallor — a philosophy book on AI as a narcissistic feedback loop
Jim Rutt's "what next space" — the framing of post-status-quo culture-building
Nora Bateson — referenced for her thinking on contextual truth and holding conflicting perspectives
Douglas Rushkoff — mentioned on how money transformed the early internet
Yanis Varoufakis — "techno feudalism" framing around social media labor
Thomas Kuhn's paradigm shifts — the science philosophy framing used throughout
Buckminster Fuller quote — "You don't fight the old paradigm, you build something more attractive"
The "Leyland" glitch token story — the AI goddess entity found inside ChatGPT's language model
Study on phones on the table — research showing that even a visible phone reduces depth of conversation
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson — referenced re: language, AI, and religion
Practice from Alexander: Sit in meditation with your phone placed in front of you as an object — get curious about your relationship to it without touching it
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