Olivia: Alright Jackson, I'm going to say the title of a book, and I want your gut reaction, roasting one-liner. Ready? Jackson: Ready. Olivia: How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World. Jackson: Sounds like my Twitter feed wrote a history book. Olivia: (Laughs) You know, that’s not far off. It’s a perfect description for the world this book dissects. We're diving into How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions by Francis Wheen. Jackson: Francis Wheen. The name sounds familiar. Olivia: He’s the perfect person to write this. He's a renowned British journalist, a famous skeptic, and for years was the deputy editor of Private Eye, a magazine legendary for its biting political satire. So he's basically a professional debunker of nonsense. Jackson: A professional debunker. I love that. It’s a job title we desperately need more of. So where does this story of global 'mumbo-jumbo' even begin? It feels like it’s been with us forever. Olivia: Wheen argues it had a very specific, explosive starting point. He pinpoints one year as the moment the world took a sharp turn away from reason. 1979. Jackson: 1979? I’m thinking disco, the last gasps of the 70s. What was so world-changing about that year?

Olivia: Well, Wheen opens with this brilliant, counterintuitive parallel. In two very different parts of the world, two messianic figures rose to power, both promising to rescue their nations by rejecting the modern world and returning to a mythical, purer past. Jackson: Okay, I’m intrigued. Who are we talking about? Olivia: In Iran, you have the return of Ayatollah Khomeini. After years in exile, he comes back to Tehran, and the country is gripped by what Wheen calls a "millennial frenzy." Millions flood the streets. When a reporter asks Khomeini on the plane what he feels after all this time, he gives this chillingly stoic, one-word answer: "Hichi." Nothing. Jackson: Nothing? After 14 years of exile and returning to a revolution in his name? That’s intense. It’s not the emotional, triumphant speech you’d expect. Olivia: Exactly. It’s the response of a man who believes he is merely an instrument of divine will. He’s not there for personal feelings; he’s there to enact a holy mission. He immediately starts denouncing things like music and cinema as un-Islamic. It’s a complete rejection of secular modernity. Jackson: Okay, so that’s one side of the coin. A religious revolution. Who’s the other messiah? Olivia: At the very same time, Britain is collapsing in on itself. It’s the infamous "Winter of Discontent." The country is paralyzed by strikes. Lorry-drivers, gravediggers, garbage collectors—everyone. The government is helpless. The Prime Minister, James Callaghan, returns from a sunny summit and famously downplays the whole thing, which the tabloids spin into the headline: "CRISIS? WHAT CRISIS?" Jackson: Oh, that’s a political death sentence. You can’t be that out of touch. Olivia: It was. And into that chaos steps Margaret Thatcher. She wins the election and, on the steps of 10 Downing Street, she doesn't give a standard political speech. She recites a prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi: "Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith." Jackson: Wow. That is… surprisingly spiritual language for a politician. So Wheen is drawing a line between Khomeini's divine mission and Thatcher's moral crusade? Olivia: Precisely. He argues that both were fundamentally anti-Enlightenment movements. They weren't offering rational, evidence-based policies. They were offering salvation. They were selling a feeling, a belief system, a return to old-time values. Khomeini offered a return to a 7th-century caliphate, and Thatcher offered a return to "Victorian values." Both were powerful, irrational narratives that promised to cleanse a fallen world. Jackson: That’s a fascinating, if provocative, comparison. It reframes them not just as political figures, but as leaders of faith-based movements. Olivia: And this, for Wheen, opens the floodgates for what he calls "voodoo economics." Ronald Reagan gets elected shortly after, championing "supply-side economics," the idea that cutting taxes for the rich will magically make everyone better off. Jackson: The infamous "trickle-down" theory. Olivia: The very same. It was an article of faith, not economics. And the results were disastrous. Wheen points to the Savings & Loan crisis, where deregulation—another article of faith—led to rampant fraud and a taxpayer bailout that cost over a trillion dollars. It was a system running on pure belief, with people like Ivan Boesky, the Wall Street arbitrageur, literally giving speeches saying, "Greed is good." Jackson: He actually said that? I thought that was just Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street. Olivia: He said it in a commencement address at a business school! The movie just quoted him. This was the new gospel: the market as an infallible god, and greed as a virtue. Any evidence to the contrary was just a lack of faith. Jackson: So the politicians and economists effectively lost their minds and started a new religion. But what about the academics? The intellectuals? Weren't they supposed to be the guardians of reason, pushing back against all this?

Olivia: That’s the most ironic and, frankly, terrifying part of Wheen’s argument. He says that while politicians were peddling voodoo, the intellectuals were busy proving that "reality" didn't exist in the first place. Jackson: Hold on, that sounds like academic gobbledygook. Can you give me a real-world example of what that even means? Olivia: (Laughs) It does, and Wheen has a lot of fun with it. He’s talking about the rise of post-modernism and deconstructionism, particularly in American and French universities. In the simplest terms, it’s the idea that there is no objective truth. There are only "texts" or "narratives" or "discourses." My truth, your truth, a scientist's truth, a shaman's truth—they're all just different stories, and none is more valid than another. Jackson: Okay, but that sounds philosophical. How does that actually cause problems? Olivia: It causes huge problems when you can no longer say that, for example, a scientific fact is more real than a conspiracy theory. Wheen’s prime example is the legendary Sokal Hoax. Jackson: I think I’ve heard of this. Remind me. Olivia: Alan Sokal was a physics professor at NYU. He was also a man of the left, and he was horrified that his political allies in academia were embracing this kind of thinking, which he saw as a complete surrender of reason. So he decided to run an experiment. He wrote a completely nonsensical academic paper. Jackson: What was it called? Olivia: "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity." Jackson: (Laughs) That is a masterclass in buzzwords. It means absolutely nothing. Olivia: Nothing. It was filled with gibberish. It argued that gravity was a social construct. It had quotes from famous post-modern thinkers and was packed with complex-sounding but ultimately meaningless scientific and mathematical jargon. He submitted it to a top-tier, peer-reviewed cultural studies journal called Social Text. Jackson: And they published it. Olivia: They published it. They ran it in a special "Science Wars" issue without sending it to a single physicist for review. They thought it was a brilliant contribution. A few weeks later, Sokal revealed the whole thing was a hoax in another magazine. The fallout was immense. Jackson: You're kidding me. They published pure gibberish because it sounded smart and flattered their worldview? That's both hilarious and terrifying. Olivia: It’s the perfect illustration of Wheen’s point. The intellectual gatekeepers had abandoned their posts. They were so committed to the idea that all truth is relative that they couldn't spot an obvious parody. They were more interested in a text being "interesting" than it being, you know, true. Jackson: This connects to so much of what we see today. If the experts can't tell truth from nonsense, what hope do the rest of us have in an age of social media and AI-generated content? Olivia: Exactly. Wheen also points to the grand, sweeping theories that became popular around the same time, like Francis Fukuyama’s "The End of History," which claimed liberal democracy was the final stage of human evolution, or Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations," which divided the world into simplistic cultural blocs destined for conflict. Both were huge, simplistic, and ultimately wrong, but they were treated as profound truths because they offered a simple story in a complicated world. Jackson: It’s like everyone, from the politicians to the professors, was desperate for a simple fairy tale to believe in, and the facts were just an inconvenience. Olivia: That's the perfect summary. And that "anything goes" attitude, that preference for a good story over a hard fact, didn't stay in the halls of power or academia. It trickled down and flooded our entire culture.

Jackson: Okay, so how did this manifest in everyday life? Give me the juicy stuff. Olivia: Oh, the juicy stuff is jaw-dropping. Wheen argues that once reason is off the table, superstition rushes in to fill the void. And his prime example is the White House in the 1980s. It was revealed after his presidency that Ronald Reagan's schedule—everything from press conferences to international treaty signings—was dictated by Nancy Reagan's personal astrologer in San Francisco. Jackson: Wait, what? You mean, the timing of the signing of a nuclear arms treaty with the Soviet Union might have been determined by whether Mercury was in retrograde? Olivia: That is literally what happened. The First Lady's astrologer, Joan Quigley, would be consulted on virtually every major decision to ensure the planets were in a "favorable alignment." When this came out in a tell-all book by a former chief of staff, the White House didn't even really deny it. Jackson: That’s not just a quirky personal belief; that's superstition potentially influencing global policy! That's staggering. Olivia: And it wasn't just in the US. Wheen points to Cherie Blair, wife of the British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was deep into New Age practices. She had a "lifestyle guru" who introduced her to dowsers and healers. She wore a "magic pendant" called a BioElectric Shield to ward off negative energy. She even had a feng shui consultant rearrange the furniture at 10 Downing Street for better energy flow. Jackson: A magic pendant in the Prime Minister's residence. You can't make this stuff up. It sounds like the plot of a comedy. Olivia: It does! And this cultural shift created a massive market for what Wheen calls "old snake-oil, new bottles." The self-help industry exploded. Gurus like Tony Robbins and Stephen Covey became multimillionaires by repackaging common sense as profound wisdom. It was all about feeling good, not necessarily thinking clearly. Jackson: And this all culminates in the public's reaction to major events, right? I'm thinking of the chapter on Princess Diana. Olivia: Yes, the death of Princess Diana in 1997 is Wheen's ultimate case study in the triumph of sentimentality over reason. He describes the wave of public grief as a form of mass hysteria, fueled by the media. The public demanded emotional performances from the Royal Family, judging them not on their actions but on their ability to display the "correct" feelings. Jackson: I remember that. The pressure on the Queen to come out and show she was sad. Olivia: Exactly. It became a national psychodrama where feeling was everything. Reason, perspective, and proportion were completely lost in this tidal wave of emotion. For Wheen, it was the ultimate expression of a culture that had decided to feel its way through the world, rather than think its way through.

Jackson: So when you put it all together—the political messiahs, the reality-denying academics, the White House astrologer—what is Wheen’s final diagnosis? What's the big takeaway from this global tour of mumbo-jumbo? Olivia: His core argument is that this isn't just a collection of random, weird anecdotes. It's a coherent and dangerous trend: a full-scale retreat from the Enlightenment project. The Enlightenment gave us the tools of reason, scientific empiricism, and critical thought. It taught us to question authority, to rely on evidence, and to be skeptical of grand, unprovable claims. Jackson: The motto of the Enlightenment was "Sapere Aude," right? "Dare to Know." Olivia: Exactly. And Wheen argues that for the last few decades, our culture has been screaming the opposite: "Dare to Believe." Dare to feel. Dare to embrace the comforting narrative, the simple solution, the magical thinking. He believes that when we abandon the tools of reason, we leave ourselves completely vulnerable to demagogues, charlatans, and our own worst, most irrational impulses. Jackson: The book has a pretty polarizing reception, doesn't it? Some critics praise his wit and call it essential reading, while others say his thesis is a bit flimsy, that he's just stringing together funny stories he doesn't like. Olivia: That's true, and it's a fair point. It is more of a polemic than a rigorous academic history. But I think that's the point. Wheen is using his sharpest weapon—satire—to fight back against the absurdity he sees. He’s not trying to write a dry, neutral analysis. He's sounding an alarm, in the most entertaining and biting way he can. Jackson: It really makes you wonder what 'mumbo-jumbo' we're all buying into right now without even realizing it. Olivia: That's the perfect question to end on. What do you all think? What's the biggest piece of mumbo-jumbo that has conquered our world today? Is it in wellness culture, in political discourse, in the way we use technology? Let us know your thoughts on our social channels; we'd love to hear them. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.