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1054 - Almost Providential feat. John Semley (7/16/26) (Patreon)

Published:
2026-07-17 01:59:08
Imported:
2026-07

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This week on Chapo, we review JD Vance’s conversion memoir Communion with writer John Semley. Why did Vance convert to a religion that’s damning his wife and entire family to Hell? Why is he still a Catholic if he openly despises the Pope? We answer these and talk about his recent Joe Rogan humiliation. PLUS: Mamdani vs. the Italian-American community.

Read John’s review of Communion: https://thebaffler.com/latest/catholic-bloc-semley 

CHUNKS IS COMING! Get your tix to the streaming premiere of CHUNKS on July 19 at 8p ET, available on-demand after:  https://www.patreon.com/chunkstv 

CHAPO LIVE - NYC - NOV 6. - TEN YEARS IN THE ZONE

Chapo & friends will be live at New York’s Society for Ethical Culture on Friday November 6th.

Tickets are going fast, get yours now! https://link.dice.fm/zaf99528079e

Files

Comments

sg

1

sg

finally. meaning!

proskater4

chunks chunks chunks chunks

Digby Tomei

"whatever makes sense..." 🍩🍩🍩

Dogmatic Cat

Hot off Trump's televised stroke!

Ian H. B.

Jance Dance Vance

Jerimiah

Rogan being full 2020 Stop the Steal now is hilarious.

Alex

Chapo curse again, recording *just* before Trump’s stunning revelations that the 2020 election was, get this, stolen!

J. A.

What happened

J. A.

Well fuck me running

Travis

Felix begins speaking at 1 minute and 43 seconds

Mitchell Nolte

oh i saw mention of a review of Communion first and thought, cool, Whitley Strieber's book about his alien abduction would be great to review

etienne

John Semenley

Syndrome of a Downs

Felix and Will should have the Cumtown boys on as guests. Then, right before the episode starts, Felix and Will can take the day off. Then we get a new episode of Cumtown, and they get a day off.

JD Nonce

I know very little about religion but from the little I understand all of these Catholics who don’t like the pope and are reading the bible and interpreting it themselves seem to fundamentally misunderstand what Catholicism is and are just accidentally Protestants despite claiming not to be? Like the deal with Catholicism is ‘the church decides on how you practice the religion’, no?

dfumps

Next stop: Zoroastrian

J K

Wait how is JD the first catholic VP if Brandon was a catholic VP during obungler?

JN

So… not Whitley Strieber ‘s alien yarn?

jg

i tried a similar move with a hasidic landlord in bushwick in 2012. “Did I mention that my roomate’s name is Teveleshwitz?” “and? does your jewish friend have $7,500 for a security deposit?” based af

ploob

All knowing, all powerful entities hate this one weird trick.

ploob

NOOOO! Someone should do something!

GenZ Poster

Does anyone else think it’s brace belden that did the trump and RFK jr impression on the second to last real infowars ep

Esteé Dee

OH LORD CHUNKS IS COMING

Mungo Franczak

JD Vance is such a greasy, slimeball fuck who is so obviously appointed to his position because his fucking daddy Thiel bought him the position and he was actually retarded enough to embarrass his entire fucking family and his hot ass wife by deciding halfway thru his life he’s gonna decide he’s a white nativist adult catholic convert member of Opus Dei all on the chance Trump will die in office and he will serve 2 years as president I’m sorry if this doesn’t make sense I just really fucking hate him. Him and Karoline Leavitt always make my fucking blood boil when they’re on screen

Corey Reynolds

JD won’t cuss in his book? He was cussing up a storm on Joe Rogan. And what’s up with the red scare gals? Haven’t heard from them in awhile? Are they still fake catholic?

drizzly_november

How many times did you ride (a lot) How many Memaws done died (a lot) How many chances Usha done gave you fuckin’ round with these thots

Henry

?

drizzly_november

We need a total and complete shutdown of American converts to Catholicism until Pope Leo can figure out what the hell is going on.

XvinzXznivX

Amazing guest but a missed chance to have the trillbillies on

Quinten

What are the two other potential paths of American decline? Anyone remember the ep where they discuss this?

caroline

AI often misuses the word “almost” so that’s probably what it was.

pulled a muscle yearning

Every time I hear the title it distracts me because it's the same title as the Whitley Streiber book where he gets prostate milked by aliens. I imagine the same happened to JD in some way

Max Joyner

Really appreciating the stream of constant ASOIAF references from Felix recently.

Andy Kraushaar

Speaking of Sandy Honig, anyone else miss "Three Busy Debras"?

Agent Grange

Not to be annoying but it's funny how the Italians are having their moment of claiming that they're being culturally erased. When I have family members that are alive who were victims of native family separation and assimilation schools. But you know if I were the Italians I would just really lean into the being allowed to play each other in a movies thing. Flex that street cred by proxy like "Eyyyy us n the natives we like fricken brodders!"

James Winter

First Catholic Convert VP? I miss the days when American conservatives hated Catholics.

Kainien Morel

The great philosophical takeaways from this conversation: Melisandre does, in fact, believe in the Lord of Light that made her hot, and religion, especially "personal faith", is not always to be taken seriously. At all. Like being a devout audiophile, basically.

Special Adeline

Oh my god I love the argument between Sammy Gravano and Sammy Franzese I reference that clip all the time lol it’s so funny to bicker over zoom about who did more killing

Evan Pitkin

Felix could probably talk JD into killing himself.

Ennui

only until it’s no longer convenient for them to act as such

JD Nonce

Ok I listened and they went into this in depth. I withdraw my comment

Michael S. Judge

J.D. VANCE: 1,000,000% MOLESTED. NEW CATHOLIC CHAMPION.

Michael S. Judge

I could believe that Peter Thiel believes in God as an entity Who can, and must, be killed

Michael S. Judge

JD fucked them so long that they ignored Anna's kid and it died

B b

I think JD heard about the Opus Dei guys and hoped converting would get their attention. He’s an eternal Smither’s always looking for new masters.

Alec

STICK YOUR HAND IN THE COLLECTION PLATE FOR NO REASON

Michael S. Judge

Catholic eschatology doesn't necessarily hold that all non-Christians/non-Catholics automatically go to Hell, and a lot of the most interesting though about this was being done in the "Dark Ages" – a lot of the earliest Church Fathers were proponents of apocatastasis, the idea that God does not and would not create anything that God cannot and would not redeem, and that was a pretty common attitude thru something like 1000 A.D. Then we really needed some modern-style races and nations, for to slice up Europa and really fuck around with that New World, and then the entire white world got John Calvin totally wrong for 500 years

Ted Lavender

I’m tired of Brandon erasure

Jacobo

I also think Usha is hot

Mungo Franczak

That one pic of her boarding the plane with her stupid husband behind her 😮‍💨

Robert Armstrong

2028 election: JD walks out to "Nearer My God to Thee."

Big Problem

It’s impossible to feel anything but contempt for a man who has spent his entire life molding himself in the image of Grima wormtongue, especially if he looks like he should be wearing a propeller hat and a giant lollipop 24/7. At least Grima was a servile worm to a cool wizard and not someone who looks like he would be profiled on Dateline as “the twink slasher”

Big Problem

👏 ex 👏 communicate 👏 J 👏 D 👏 Vance 👏

Gabe Juniper

If there's such a thing as 'child molester physiognomy,' JD Vance has it.

ST Promotion

I want to hear him say he put his grief behind him

Isaac

Many blessings Travis-San 🙏

C. Andrew

He doesn't deserve her! I can save her!

James Blackmon

Nick Mullen reading from Confessions

C. Andrew

Yeah I was raised catholic and did catholic school K-12 (I'm doing fine) and I converted to being normal when I went to college and we called them cafeteria catholics or easter and christmas catholics. The reality is that God as society is dead, and religion is just another identity that you can buy at the Marketplace of Ideas and tack on to your soul armor for different buffs depending on your background. I will say though, the literacy gap between the protostant homeschool evangelical kids and the catholic school kids was astronomical.

outb0undflight

I hate to be this person but I always feel obligated to do it...no, Usha Vance is not going to hell in Catholic theology. Catholicism has, for quite a while now, taken the tack that what actually sends non-Christians to Hell is not the rejection of Christianity or Christian doctrine itself but a—loosely defined—rejection of "Christ." The tl;dr version basically boils down to, "If you're a good person and a non-Christian, that's Christ-like, you're in welcome to Heaven. If you're Muslim and a giant douchebag, that's rejecting Christ you're going to hell, but it's the douchebag part that did it really, you'd have gone to hell even if you were a Catholic." It's more or less the "God just wants you to be a good person" thing that most of the Mainline Protestant churches believe, but with a thin veneer of Catholic doctrine.

Michael Mapes

John Semley, this guy rocks 🫡

C. Andrew

The more you read about it and dig into church history and the evolution of christianity, it's clear the truth is closer to the origin point in time right? Like the 1-3 century AD Christians were so on the money. The more men tinkered with it, and certainly once it became an instrument of the State, it was tarnished and turned into the disgusting thing that it is now - personified by JD Vance perfectly.

fratthew

The Catholic Church as the 76ers bit is so good please clip that one

Rosie Stuyvesant

He was a cradle catholic not a convert. Converts are creepy.

Max Baier

Felix makes the first Game of Thrones reference at 6:52

Oliver Clozov

It's a fucken nickname. His family name is Mamdanerelli

Harry Walker

With headphones at the start it sounds like jd is sneaking up on you from your left

T4Tina

53:50, when John says “but you can’t get into that with an Italian American: you’ll ruin a whole afternoon” is my new favorite way of calling someone stupid.

Brian Reis

I can only hope that enough people who want to read the JD Vance “Communion” accidentally buy and then read the Whitley Strieber book instead.

Jason Matthews

One more vote for Usha 💣❤️❤️

Jason Matthews

Has anyone made the hack joke about this memoir using Whiteley Streiber’s Communion as a template, where Thiel is the grey alien?

Jason Matthews

Also, the ‘almost providential’ moment sounds ripped straight from the final shot of the X-Files episode “Conduit.” JD is a confirmed cringe Millennial sci fi fiend.

Whistle Dog

Fr! It’s when Catholicism comes up on the pod that Matt’s insights are especially missed

Dexter Harvey

Let's not let partisan politics blind us, Usha is a barstool sports 10/10 dime piece of the week

bruce

JD should have credited the wise CFO

Whistle Dog

I too “survived” a k-12 Catholic education and it’s exactly like public school but with Catechism and monthly mass in the gym. Millennials love to qualify their normal Catholic upbringings as “religious trauma” but no American born after 1960 has ever been beaten by a nun with a wooden spoon, John, please be serious!

Jonathan Thomas

There is no “theory of cultural Marxism” outside of what exists in the minds of conservative podcasters and right wing YouTubers, and even then it’s like, “Ew, they want to share stuff with immigrants.”

Elo

+1 for "Molochian child furnace." Great guest

Keith

Don't confuse the annoying trolls on the internet who pretend to be Catholic with actual Catholics. Pope Leo is very popular with real Catholics.

Dude of H-town

JD has to be the only person in America who: (a) converted to Catholicism as a married adult and (b) whose spouse practiced a different religion and (c) didn’t convert but (d) they stay married. Right? Best case there can’t be more than a few? Just shows how empty both the conversion and the marriage are.

Dude of H-town

Whoever was president in 2020 really has some ‘splainin to do.

El Esdee

JD Vance is a cautionary tale about allowing the poors into ivy league institutions

nick

Their JD impression has just become their Ron DeSantis impression.

Reece Coren

JD should be tied up like a piñata and every tax paying American should get a swing at him with a wooden baseball bat

Skitzaf Raynik

Anna Thema is such a good drag name (anathema)

Mungo Franczak

I’ve been Catholic my entire life. My girlfriend is a Shaivite woman from Tamil Nadu. I just think many people in America don’t care what the religion of the person they love is. I don’t think JD even gives a fuck

Travis

Yom tov to you

Alex B

Peter Thiel believes in God to the extent that he believes one day he will find and kill God.

Nick

RE: Thiel, I think it’s a mistake to dismiss weirdos like him as pure religious LARPers. He’s definitely not Christian in any coherent sense, but it’s clearly some kind of meaningful preoccupation given his moronic antichrist fixation.

Return of The Mac 2nite

Cultural Marxism is just a neo nazi slogan replacing the Nazi antisemitic trope of cultural Bolshevism. Why are you interrogating the concept or even acknowledging it as remotely valid, Will? Smdh

Throw Away

They don’t want to be Italian, they just want to endlessly criticize Italians

Eli

Fun fact: J. D. Vance’s first name is actually “J. D.” - those aren’t initials for anything

Jonathan G

Really smart and funny guest

justdave

I'm sure gramsci had some anti Italian beliefs

Damen Irving

I think JD meant to become Mormon but stopped when he found out he would have more than one wife and thus have to have sex with a woman more than once every three years

Reece Coren

great guest great episode

Reece Coren

I know more about catholicism and protestantism than jd and all I know is what I retained from listening to hell on earth high four years ago

Greasy_Jones

Donnie is a listener and does this specifically to torment them

Michael

Rod Dreher influenced JD Vance’s conversion to Catholicism. That says it all.

@ByTheBaeram

This is the conservative version of Gavin Newsome “young man in a hurry” book tour. It’s gearing up to pitch him for president.

Reece Coren

Jd’s dad shouldve put him in a backpack and sent him down the river like season three of eastbound and down

Michael

26:05 sounds like JD Vance trying to do a right wing Jed Bartlett impression.

Amer Naik

I like the will and Felix episodes where they read articles

Season of the Glitch

He shortened "Jorkin Dapeanus" to JD because Catholics don't swear.

Jack

Was looking for this - I was raised catholic and went to a very evangelical summer camp, and every summer without fail my counselors and (as we got older) fellow campers spent a lot of time making the case to me that non-christians were automatically consigned to hell. In my experience “worshipping Mary” stuff etc. was rarely overt. Rather, the biggest sticking point was always the “who gets to go to heaven” thing.

Ted Lavender

Anna Themma is my new roller derby alter ego.

AbeLinkin

Time for Will to commit sepuku - @ 12:42 he means, “SINcere,” not, “concere.” Thank you.

Dara Higgins

Felix hatred of the Irish going strong! 🍀😭

Scott La Londe

Revolutionary socialist Kshama Sawant is running for Congress!!!!! If endless wars, genocide, ICE detention centers, mass surveillance, poverty wages, no healthcare, and the oncoming climate apocalypse ain’t yo thing-then she’s the candidate for YOU! Tired of progressives winning elected office only to instantly sell out their base and the purported values that got them there for career, clout, and fame? Jungle primary election is August 4th!

boop

theres a ton of little free libraries in my neighborhood and i always grab the conservative or christian books and recycle them

etienne

the Québécois nationalists in Québec are about as annoying as the Italian Idpol SJWs but at the very least they still speak French (most of the time)

Axel H.

Right-wing converts being obsessed with "lore" and not having much to say about, you know, Jesus, is so accurate. It's just such obvious play-acting/LARPing, wanting to belong to an exclusive, arcane "club" that they see as arch-conservative. I've met a couple of these types who will go on and on about how the only thing that matters is the Church, the Vatican, etc. and then say how much they hate Pope Leo and how he's just a leftist politician pretending to be a church father. Just the typical newcomer who immediately launches into how everything is being done wrong and only they know the best way to do everything. As someone who was raised Catholic, I see these people and I want them to GTFO. For some of them at least, this is probably just one conversion among several (Rod Dreher being a prime example of this). Trying out religions like trying on hats.

Eamon Short

Okay, someone last ep said "Felix has been watching HOTD and ASOIAF lore vids on youtube" and if it was ever in doubt back then, this ep proves that person right. EDIT; 37:41 Shit, Will has too

Ben

This was a good palette cleanser episode after the Seeking Derangements episode.

Peter Flynn

Meadow Soprano would be railing against Mamdani like this in 2026.

Doug Cartel

It's very funny that he tries to argue against raising wages because *the system is so complex!* When Marx literally said the complexity of the economy means that you CANT predict that raising wages will hurt workers because it could be offset by some shit happening way down the chain of operations

Sam Norton

Lol I saw a copy of Communion by JD in my local Little Free Library

DJT

hilarious episode. great guest

Eric Johnson

Love you guys, and hate aligning with JD, but I have long been grossed out by the way old men lick ice cream cones. Once you notice, you’ll realize it’s an epidemic. Something must be done.

Stephen

Catholicism cum Warhammer 40k

Richard Cochnar

Modern Italian stereotype = swilling Dunkin’ Donuts sugar milk in the Jersey suburbs and telling your cousins for the 50th time about the BEYOOTYFUL Airbnb you stayed in when you visited Miami.

Andrew

JD was clearly saying that Biden looks like he’s eating pussy- not sucking dick. And he is right.

William Hubel

Yeah my ancestors were proud New England immigrants from England and they never complained or nothin but they trying to erase us

Aedan

Felix rewatching Game of Thrones lol?

Mattc83

This is such a great episode. JD Vance is the real life physical manifestation of the Tim Heidecker for DA character.

Jes

Skinny Joeys cheesesteak are mid af tbh. Also fuck a seeded roll

Jeff Hendricks

“I Can’t believe what they’re having Joe do out there.” JD: “oh I know, totally, it’s sooo filthy”

Eamon Short

Yeah, he's been referencing the historical lore as well of late. Last week he mentioned The Way of the Ninepenny Kings

Eamon Short

Like JD has any idea what eating pussy looks like. He looks away when he puts it in, and he sure as hell doesn't put his mouth near it

Eamon Short

For sure, he has some culturally influenced, Christian-adjacent weird psychological complex.

Eamon Short

*about not nuking Ivy League Institutions and genociding all it's products.

Discount Cagliostro

As long as we're doing political ethnic determinism for "Italians," Mussolini didn't kill all the Communists in Italy it literally had the biggest Communist party in the West in the 70s

Galen

Communion: The Road to Dumbass-cus

Zach H.

I stopped rimming my ice cream cone for this.

bill tulast

I don't post here often, but I wanted to let Chapo know that this was one of my fav eps in a long time. John is an awesome guest, I hope you bring him back on again, felt very much like a throwback to with the boys. Great stuff!

Mark Schneider

I was brought here by fate, as I received my August issue of Harper's 2 weeks early, this morning started on an excellent article (which I did not expect) viz the US branch of the Catholic Church under Pope Leo XIV pushing back heavily against Trumpism and collusion with any forms of State Violence and Power, crushing of immigrants, etc. That was never on my bingo card!! The future Pope a Peruvian citizen who did his ministry there at the height of Liberation Theology. Here's my take as an Ex-Catholic, I ran away from the shit, screaming, at age 17 and never looked back. But in the early 80s in New Orleans I got very friendly with some Lefty, Liberation-style Catholics, anti-War movement. Ended up in Nicaragua 4 years after the Revolution, volunteer picked coffee for nearly 3 months with other Internationalistas and members of the Central Sandinista de Trabajadores (Sandinista Workers' Movement.) My mom was Spanish (thankfully) & my white dad was Irish-German, grew up in poverty, his parents were Campesinos on stolen Indian Land in South Dakota . . . The piece noted in passing that J.D. Vance's "spiritual adviser" was/is Rod Dreher!!! Ding ding ding!! I immediately focused on Chapo. Pretty much all Organized Religion is Bad Religion, but the Catholics temporarily on the Right Side of History, at least not as pathetic as AOC who bawled about all the children in Prison under the Trump I Regime, shut her mouth as soon as Brain-Bleed Bidet took over the Child-killing Gulag . . . Anyway, I think one good point the Harper's piece made is that JD is trying to reunite Catholicism with Fascism (think the Vatican ratlines that sent Yaroslave Hunka, a Waffen S.S. Murderer and Rapist to Canada, where a couple years back he got 2 standing ovations in the Canadian Parliament for "fighting against the Russians" between 1943-45) . . . JD a futile, ridiculous figure, the comments already made about his resemblance to Wormtongue fit well. No Chance Vance is somewhat smarter than his fellow Trump bootlickers like Hegseth, but overall very stupid. Some would note "You can't serve God and Mammon both," its obvious where JD's loyalties lie. Oh, & I endorse the boys' take that JD killed Pope Francis, pure Evil meets weak Good, weakened Good dies from the contact.

Dale Gribble

Philly correspondent,Skinny Joeys cheese steaks are actually pretty good.

Smallog

JD- “I think God was talking to me when that glass fell off the shelf at the hotel bar” damn bitch I wish it worked

Jon D.

Just want to say that John is audibly brilliant, clearly can write, and was a great guest. Glazing because it's true.

AKorgar

You want Stavvy to do to Chapo what they did to 2 Bears, 1 Cave, huh?

DJ B.

Talks way too fast tho

Hall wingfield

Very high chance that Donald Trump personally blames JD Vance for getting the woke American pope in office

Hall wingfield

There's nothing more insufferable than grown adults censoring their cusses. They want the social cachet of swearing without actually doing so. Absolute coward behavior, very quick character test IMO

K H

Hinduism is a good bit older and with more traditions than Christianity and Catholicism if that's JDs thing.

Paul Nakis

What is the ending song?