The Drift

The Drift

Share this post

The Drift
The Drift
Mentioned this week: Richard Dawkins, Mill City Museum, the Twelve Tribes, and more
Copy link
Facebook
Email
Notes
More
User's avatar
Discover more from The Drift
The Drift is a magazine of culture and politics.
Over 20,000 subscribers
Already have an account? Sign in

Mentioned this week: Richard Dawkins, Mill City Museum, the Twelve Tribes, and more

Five extremely abbreviated reviews

The Drift's avatar
The Drift
Apr 22, 2025
4

Share this post

The Drift
The Drift
Mentioned this week: Richard Dawkins, Mill City Museum, the Twelve Tribes, and more
Copy link
Facebook
Email
Notes
More
2
Share

Pope Francis died yesterday at the age of 88. The first Latin American pontiff was, among other things, fond of a joke, particularly those involving popes. He wrote as much in an opinion piece for the New York Times, published just a few months before his death, in which he told some of his favorites. One of them was an extended riff involving a speeding pope and a traffic cop, which we can only assume he read first in Gabriel Smith’s 2022 Drift short story “The Complete.”

The late pope’s exquisite sense of comic timing perhaps explains why he chose to leave this vale of tears mere hours after being visited by JD Vance. “Irony is a medicine, not only to lift and brighten others, but also ourselves,” Francis wrote. We agree. In this week’s Mentioned, you’ll find sede vacante, a fervent congregation, ominous warnings about mauled limbs, a groovy wall mural, and Rotting Christ.

Sign up for our mailing list to receive the latest from The Drift.


Conclave

FILM

The words sede vacante, announcing the death of the sitting pope, launch the recondite system by which cardinals elect pontiffs — a squalid ordeal, per Edward Berger’s feature. Through dialogue peppered with abstruse phrases like in pectore and abyssus abyssum, the film underscores the cardinals’ effete remoteness, and the persistence of Latin in the Western Rite. The ensuing plot points feel rote and unmotivated: a love child, bribery, a terrorist attack, reactionary cardinals, Ralph Fiennes’s quasi-Washingtonian reluctance to serve. Commonwealth viewers will leave baffled by the lengths these clergy members will go to avoid the most radical outcome: an English pope.

Peter Huhne

The Genetic Book of the Dead

SCRIPTURE

Richard Dawkins’s fandom has come to resemble a kind of religion — the very thing he claims to abhor. His latest release is about how genetic material can be close-read “as a book.” On what he says will be his last speaking tour, the evolutionary biologist, militant atheist, and habitual Islamophobe toured North America like a visiting megachurch pastor. At the Newark stop, there was scripture (references to his many texts), psalms (koanic repetition of Dawkinisms), and a fervent congregation (several audience members dressed as the guru himself, in his signature Hawaiian shirts). Perhaps he’s returning to the Anglicanism of his youth. Lately, Dawkins told the Cato Institute, he’s started identifying as a “cultural Christian.”

Sam Schotland

Mill City Museum

GRAIN

Minneapolis is no longer the flour capital of the world, but its riverfront is still littered with tubular grain silos and washed-up relics of the mills that once dominated the city. One of these, the Washburn “A” Mill, is now a museum. It burned down in 1991, but the mill’s walls and foundations are displayed like the remains of excavated Roman ruins. Museum visitors follow the journey of a wheat kernel in great detail while sampling freshly made biscuits from a “Baking Lab” operated by a modern-day Betty Crocker look-alike. Slick wood-and-glass paneling sits alongside ominous warnings about mauled limbs and flour-dust explosions: industrial chic distilled to its essence. It’s not a big place, but there’s plenty to sift through.

Pradeep Niroula

The Yellow Deli

RESTAURANT

Conveniently located in eleven states, as well as Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Spain, the U.K., and Japan, this folksy favorite is owned and operated by the Twelve Tribes, a Christian fundamentalist sect whose track record of alleged child abuse, labor exploitation, and racism has led some (like the Southern Poverty Law Center) to call it a cult. Vibe-wise, imagine if the Grateful Dead took a trip to Middle Earth: the Boulder, Colorado outpost features a groovy wall mural depicting Tribe members flying in a winged rainbow van, as well as rough-hewn wooden furniture and medieval folk instrumentals playing in the background. The platonic ideal of a deli: piping hot breakfast sandwiches, homemade cream cheese pie, and a chance to find, per the FAQ page, “new friends, a new job, a new hairstyle, a new address, and most importantly, a new Master, who will direct every aspect of your life.”

Liam Archacki

Pro Xristou

ALBUM

Hellenic metal band Rotting Christ — spawned in the era of Tipper Gore, video nasties, and satanic panics — was once known for its schlocky aesthetic. Multiple audience members left its 1993 Fuck Christ Tour in ambulances. But almost forty years in, the group has fed on the strengths of its earlier work, metabolizing grind and gore into a hypnotic, almost hymnal record of pulsing drums and cinematic thrash riffs. The band deserves more accolades, but perhaps it’s fitting that the founders’ biggest honor to date was getting a prehistoric marine species named after them. The ophiuroids, their discoverers explained, “lived in a dark, toxic environment in the depths of an ancient ocean, dwelling on the remains of their dead predecessors.”

Joel Glover
Advertisement

The Drift is supported by its readers. Your subscription or donation will help us continue to pay our writers and artists and grow our magazine. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so donations are tax-deductible.

Subscribe to The Drift

Launched 3 months ago
The Drift is a magazine of culture and politics.
Anna's avatar
Max Norman's avatar
Erik Baker's avatar
4 Likes∙
2 Restacks
4

Share this post

The Drift
The Drift
Mentioned this week: Richard Dawkins, Mill City Museum, the Twelve Tribes, and more
Copy link
Facebook
Email
Notes
More
2
Share

Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Close reading ChatGPT's "metafiction"
Pastiche in the age of automation
Mar 28 • 
Max Norman
52

Share this post

The Drift
The Drift
Close reading ChatGPT's "metafiction"
Copy link
Facebook
Email
Notes
More
10
The first five years of The Drift – and the next five
An anniversary, plus a new home for our newsletter
Mar 25 • 
The Drift
81

Share this post

The Drift
The Drift
The first five years of The Drift – and the next five
Copy link
Facebook
Email
Notes
More
3
Ask an editor
All your pitching questions, answered
Apr 10 • 
The Drift
34

Share this post

The Drift
The Drift
Ask an editor
Copy link
Facebook
Email
Notes
More
27

Ready for more?

© 2025 The New (New) Masses Foundation
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start writingGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture

Share

Copy link
Facebook
Email
Notes
More

Create your profile

User's avatar

Only paid subscribers can comment on this post

Already a paid subscriber? Sign in

Check your email

For your security, we need to re-authenticate you.

Click the link we sent to , or click here to sign in.