NOTE: This was my most popular podcast of 2025, racking up almost 80,000 views on YouTube. I recommend checking it out in full in preparation for 2026.
Carl Teichrib, a Christian author and researcher, comes on the show to discuss his impactful book, Game of Gods: The Temple of Man in the Age of Re-Enchantment.
Carl shares his insights on the rise of progressive spirituality, its roots in historical movements, and how it shapes contemporary culture. The conversation highlights the transformative experiences at events like Burning Man, where participants often seek deeper meaning through communal rituals that blur the lines between various spiritual traditions.
Teichrib argues that these trends reveal a fundamental shift away from a Judeo-Christian worldview towards a more pluralistic and mystical approach to spirituality.
In the face of these threats, Carl strongly emphasizes the need for Christians to reclaim their narrative and engage with the broader cultural conversation, offering a compelling vision for the future of faith in a postmodern world.
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TAKEAWAYS
Carl's book offers a detailed analysis of the New Age movement and its dangers.
The podcast discusses the intersection of spirituality and politics seen at events like Burning Man.
Transhumanism is a growing ideology that influences modern technology and social policies.
The concept of 'oneness' is central to many contemporary spiritual practices and movements.
Christians are encouraged to engage with the culture thoughtfully and with biblical truth.
Teichrib emphasizes the importance of understanding cultural shifts.
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INTRO MONOLOGUE:
My guest this week is Carl Teichrib, and he’s the author of the outstanding book “Game of Gods: The Temple of Man in the Age of Re-enchantment.”
Many of you know my story of wandering through the New Age, before coming to Christ. Think of that like a first person adventure, one guy on the road figuring it out on his own.
Now, think of Carl’s book as the view of that world from orbit. Carl has been observing the various spheres of progressive spirituality for decades. And he’s put in the legwork to read the primary source materials and attend conferences and gatherings firsthand in cities around the world, including the Burning Man festival, which we’ll get to.
As a result, Carl has put together a remarkably detailed map of the terrain I was wandering through. If you’ve ever used Google Earth to look at your city, your neighborhood, and then zoom in on your house or even your backyard, that is exactly the feeling I had while reading Carl’s book. He helped me understand things that I saw at the time that didn’t make sense, and validated other things which I knew were real, but couldn’t get anyone else to see. He also helped me understand the broader context of how and why I got seduced by the pied piper of the New Age world, including going to college at Stanford at precisely the moment I did.
And at the end of the book, the story he weaves even intersected with my life personally, as Carl discussed the Southern California desert rave scene, including the Los Angeles DJ crew known as Moontribe, whose parties I attended. It’s like pinpointed my on-ramp to the New Age way back in summer 2001. It was a real “you are here” moment. We’ve exchanged some pretty amazing voice notes with each other about that one.
So reading Carl’s book for me was one of my favorite experiences of 2024, not just for the personal aspects of it, but also because he lays out the new age threat in a clearer way than I’ve heard anyone else do. It took him 4 years to write the book, with his family making countless sacrifices along the way to make that possible. But that act of service has provided a map for the terrain that I think you all need to know.
And that brings us to the Burning Man festival. Many of you know MY story meeting Christ there in 2015, which led me here today. But what you might not know is that Burning Man is not just a crazy pagan festival in the desert. It’s also a socio-political, cultural, and economic crossroads where the future direction of tech and the counterculture meet to plan the future.
That was never my world, but I was aware of it. And Carl attends the festival annually to observe those trends and also personally preach the gospel to the lost. Now, my Spirit Dream friends mounted an organized underground evangelical campaign for 15 years. Instead, this is more like one man, braving a fallen environment as an anthropological researcher, to help us see the future direction of American culture. And lemme tell ya something, it ain’t Christian. At least not yet.
And that is why Carl’s book matters. The push for psychedelics like ayahuasca, the discussions of “trauma healing,” and even the obsession with mystical topics like UFOs are not new. These trends have been around for decades as part of a coordinated plan to bring the doctrine of Oneness to the world. That multigenerational effort is what Carl has documented with thousands of footnotes and a massive bibliography. In other words, he knows his stuff.
To use another analogy, Carl is a war historian, then I was there on the battlefield and I can tell you, what he describes in Game of Gods is how it was. Praise God I survived and I hope our conversation blesses you and others.
And please welcome this week’s guest on the podcast. The author of the outstanding book “Game of Gods: The Temple of Man in the Age of Re-Enchantment”, Carl Teichrib.
