Conspirituality

“You don’t get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, start a religion.” With those words, prolific sci-fi pulp fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard prophesied the course of his life’s work. 

The 1950s saw the emergence of UFO- and alien channeling-based spiritual groups, as postmodern religious syncretism transformed supposedly ancient angels and demons into benevolent and/or terrifying aliens. No iteration of this fantasy has been more financially fruitful, culturally impactful, controversial, or bizarre than Hubbard’s brainchild: Scientology.

In the latest episode of Roots of Conspirituality, Julian digs into the fascinating backstory of this prolific author, revered as prophetic by thousands, pursued as a fraud by the IRS for decades, described as a cult leader by church escapees, and called an abusive madman by his ex-wives. Allegedly…

The religion is a complex blend of self-help psychology, elaborate pseudoscience, high-demand paranoia, and alien mythology that, at its height, commanded 100,000 members—and is still valued at roughly $2 billion.

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Given how much shit the zone is being flooded with right now, you might have missed Donald Trump screaming about the supposed mistreatment of white South Africans recently. Last week, he said “certain classes of people” were being treated “very badly.” The trigger was a bill signed by South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, a former anti-Apartheid activist, trade union leader, and successful businessman—three qualities Trump doesn’t really understand.

Like the Trump administration, we have our own South African on staff—and he’s legitimately employed here! Julian grew up under apartheid and left the country due to it. Derek chats with him about what life was like growing up there, and he explains the confusion that Trump is injecting into the body politic.

Show Notes

Trump vs. South Africa

South African president signs controversial land seizure law

No Proof Elon Musk's Grandparents Belonged to Nazi Party

Errol Musk Talks About Elon’s Maternal Grandparents

Understanding What the 2025 Expropriation Act Means

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As of recording time, RFK Jr has not yet been confirmed to the HHS Secretary position by the Senate. That might change by publication date. But if we were setting odds on this confirmation, we’d say put your money on Bobby.

So, WTF. Bobby Brainworms will be in charge of US public health, and its influence around the world. Our years of reporting on him have been defeated by the influencer noise of the MAHA Mamas. But we. Will. Carry. On.

Julian reviews the misinfo docket. Derek runs down the bureaucratic implications. And Matthew speculates on just how perfect someone like RFK Jr would be as the domestic health figurehead of a fascist movement, if, you know, that were ever to be possible.

Show Notes

Some Cancers Rising Amongst Younger people

Increased Lung Cancer from the 1960s to 80s.

Lung Cancer Rates Today

Smoking Suppresses Appetite and Results in Lower BMI for Some

64% of Adults in UK Overweight

65% of Australians Overweight

Diabetes Was 1.8% in the US in 1960

11.6% of US Population Has Diabetes

Risk of Alzheimer’s Doubles Every 5 Years After 65

30% of Smokers are Overweight or Obese

A recent study did NOT show vaccines cause autism, but RFK Jr. keeps pushing the lie.

“A New Academic Publishing Model”: Right-Wing Dark Money Group Launches Fringe Medical Journal

Judge Orders White House to Unblock Funding for NIH, Others

RFK Jr.'s financial disclosures reveal millions in both debt and income as he awaits HHS confirmation

Racial ‘Sterility’ and ‘Hyperfecundity’ in Fascist Italy. Biological Politics of Sex and Reproduction in 

History of fascism, reproductive rights offers lessons for today

Are tyrants good for your health? 

When the leader is ill—or addicted to cocaine, meth, steroids, or hormones

Five Pseudosciences That Fueled the Nazis

‘Hitler Was Centre of Our Lives’: Confessions of Nazi Criminals’ Wives | History | Nuremberg. Casus pacis 

Theodor Morell: Hitler’s Particularly Odious Physician 

Public Health Under the Third Reich

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Derek meditates on a recent conversation about the left-right divide between Ezra Klein and James Pogue.

Show Notes

MAGA’s Big Tech Divide: Ezra Klein Show

Going Back to Cincinnati — James Pogue

Inside the New Right, Where Peter Thiel Is Placing His Biggest Bets — James Pogue

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In the spring of 2017, Jordan Peterson first went viral by writing this in Canada’s National Post: 

I will never use words I hate, like the trendy and artificially constructed words “zhe” and “zher.” These words are at the vanguard of a post-modern, radical leftist ideology that I detest, and which is, in my professional opinion, frighteningly similar to the Marxist doctrines that killed at least 100 million people in the 20th century.

Remember that horseshit, or things like it? Did you guffaw because he was obviously absurd? Did you try to reason with his stans online? Did you see him as a crank influencer, or a dangerous political figure? 

Did you hope his ideas would be beaten down in the marketplace of ideas? Or did you seek him out at a public event and shout him down with a bullhorn?

Today, word salad like this is everywhere—including in Project 2025, now driving the Trump admin. 

Matthew visits the antifascist woodshed to investigate the liberal manners, free speech naivety, and lack of community alliances that dissuaded him from grabbing the mic during a Peterson Q&A in 2017 and shouting: 

“Your ideas are fascist and you should STFU. You are endangering trans people with your bullshit. Why do you care about how they experience their bodies, you whining pervert? Why are you inciting hatred against young people who want a better world?”

Because… look where we are now.

Show Notes

Read the Memo Pausing Federal Grants and Loans - The New York Times 

President George H.W. Bush on political correctness (1991)

The History of Political Correctness—Lind

The Pitfalls of Liberalism — Kwame Ture

The Forgotten History of the World's First Trans Clinic | Scientific American 

Jordan Peterson: The right to be politically incorrect | National Post 

Bill C-16, An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code (gender identity or expression) 

Jordan Peterson is trying to make sense of the world — including his own strange journey

Postmodern Neo-Marxism — Jordan Peterson’s Shadow  

Doug Ford met Jordan Peterson, appointment calendar reveals | CBC News 

Why are the Proud Boys so violent? Ask Gavin McInnes — SPLC  

Jordan Peterson revealed he once earned $400,000 a month

Antifa by Mark Bray

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Edward Snowden is largely only a public name thanks to Glenn Greenwald’s reporting, for which he was one of the contributors to a Pulitzer Prize-winning series for The Guardian in 2014. For a while, Matt Taibbi was considered the heir to Hunter Thompson when his gonzo journalism tore open the 2008 financial crisis and gave the public the term “vampire squids.” 

Yet in more recent years, both men have swerved right: Glenn became a darling on Fox News and Taibbi was recruited by Elon Musk as one of the Twitter Files “journalists.” How did that happen? We’re joined by journalist Eoin Higgins, whose new book, Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left, dives into the career arcs of both Greenwald and Taibbi, and how they confuse and distort right-left alignments.

Show Notes

Sharath Jois, Heir to Founder of Ashtanga Yoga, Dies at 53 - The New York Times

Sharath’s Statement on Pattabhi Jois’s Assaults: Context, Links, Notes – Matthew Remski 

Surviving Modern Yoga - North Atlantic Books 

Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left

Eoin Higgins Morning Brew | Bluesky

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Part 2 of Matthew’s sit down with sex-work veteran and social justice advocate Esme Providence Brown to discuss New Age / wellness antifeminist, Kelly Brogan, and how her craven politics bolster the permission structure for Trumpian misogyny.

They track her political and aesthetic journey from labcoat wearer to wellness pole dancer to BDSM cosplayer—a spiral through deepening layers of appropriation, disavowal of responsibility, and cringe-tastic ideas. Esme concludes with some deep insights on what it means for artisanal BDSM to be stripped of its political and consent-culture context, and who Brogan’s “feminism is a psy-op” argument really serves.

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When asked if he thought Mark Zuckerberg’s effective ending of fact checking was in response to threats that he would “put him in jail for a very long time,” Trump replied, “Probably. Yeah, probably.” A week later, TikTok voluntarily disabled their app for users, then put up an announcement saying that Trump was going to bring them back. 

Julian talks to digital disinformation expert Renee Diresta about the massive Big Tech realignment with MAGA, which now means Meta, X, and TikTok may become more like TruthSocial. If fact checking is biased, content moderation is censorship, and combating foreign propaganda is anti-free speech, where does that leave us now?

Show Notes

If you Give A Mouse a Cookie: Renee Diresta

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What the ever loving fuck. That’s our intro today.

But we do have a structure. Julian’s going to review the Executive Order chaos, including the pardoning and deputizing of fascist street gangs. Derek’s going to explain what the ever loving fuck it means for health agencies to turn off access to health data. And I’ll look at two Xtian responses to fascism: one hypocritical and one poetic… but maybe toothless.

Show Notes

Freed Capitol riot ringleaders regroup - and vow 'retribution'

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Full episode available here.

The alien from Venus in George King’s head said: “Prepare yourself. You are to be the voice of interplanetary parliament.” It’s 1952 and the Englishman has been meditating deeply. Eight days later, a famous yogi from India materializes to explain what’s going on.

These experiences became the basis for the Aetherius Society—an organization that still has 35 chapters around the planet today. They claim the world’s governments are covering up their communication with a spiritually enlightened galactic federation, so as to maintain control over humanity.

If that sounds like 2020 red-pilled Instagram grift, you’re right! Everything old is new again.

Julian’s series, The Roots of Conspirituality, a history of new age conspiracism, is now conveniently organized under the “Collections” tab at the top of our Patreon page. Each episode is self-contained—but listen from the start if you want to trace the journey from the 1840’s “burned over region” of the American North East to today!

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On Jan 10, the Oregon Nurses Association launched the largest healthcare strike in Oregon state history. Some 5k frontline caregivers from 8 Providence hospitals and 6 clinics have been holding the line in freezing temperatures as they fight for basic rights that their employer—a Catholic nonprofit healthcare system whose C Suite members make millions of dollars every year—refuses to give them.

Derek discusses why such strikes, and unions in general, are so important as the new administration takes office. He breaks down some of Providence’s past legal problems, discusses his own experience as a Providence patient, and talks to some of the nurses on the strike line.

Show Notes

Dr Jennifer Lincoln

Oregon Nurses Association

Resources for striking healthcare professionals

It's Time for Providence to Put Patients Before Profits 

Providence, striking Oregon health workers remain apart on key issues

They Were Entitled to Free Care. Hospitals Hounded Them to Pay.

Hospital System to Refund Poor Patients Who Were Entitled to Free Care

Wealthiest Hospitals Got Billions in Bailout for Struggling Health Providers

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One of the top podcasts in the world—even beating out Rogan for a few hours—is popularizing a well-meaning intervention for non-speaking autistic people. Unfortunately, that intervention happens to be a proven failure, and may set autistic and disability rights discourse back by decades. 

Filmmaker Ky Dicken’s The Telepathy Tapes podcast delves into the world of Facilitated Communication, in which non-speaking people are believed to miraculously gain access to complex written language after lives of silence. According to Dickson, non-speaking people can also gather in transdimensional spaces and channel spiritual knowledge.

But there’s a problem. Every controlled test shows that the messages produced through letterboards and iPads are coming from the facilitators—not the non-speaking persons.

In this episode, Matthew interviews experts in pseudoscience and autism, including Janyce Boynton, a former (now dissident) practitioner of Facilitated Communication who explains how seductive and promising it was to practice, but how it ultimately steals agency and dignity from the autistic client.

And... this is also a story about parents dealing with crushing levels of unpaid and invisible labour. They are already doing miraculous work. A fantasy is no replacement for true support and recognition.

Show Notes

Podcast About 'Telepathic' Autistic Children Briefly Knocks Joe Rogan Out Of No. 1 Spot  

Ky Dickens Director | Filmmaker 

Facilitated Communication—what harm it can do: Confessions of a former facilitator

MD25438 - Powell, Diane Hennacy, MD - OR License Verification - 01/12/2025 11:07:47 AM 

The Telepathy Tapes: Separating Science From Pseudoscience In Autism Communication 

Stolen Voices: Facilitated Communication Devalues Autism | Psychology Today Canada

Multiple method validation study of facilitated communication: II. Individual differences and subgroup results - PubMed  

The Telepathy Tapes Prove We All Want to Believe

"The Telepathy Tapes" is Taking America by Storm. But it Has its Roots in Old Autism Controversies. 

Mixed Messages: Validity and Ethics of Facilitated Communication | Disability Studies Quarterly 

Is There Science Behind That? Facilitated Communication 

Controlled Studies — Facilitated Communication

Served people with severe communication impairments — Obit for Rosemary Crossley

More Doubts over Disability ‘Miracle’ 

Katharine Beals

Jonathan Jarry MSc - Science Communicator  

FCisNotScience - YouTube — Janyce Boynton’s awesome YouTube channel

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The seventh installment of Matthew’s Five Big Questions Posed to an Extremely Thoughtful Person. 

Sam Adler-Bell is a journalist, political theorist, and co-host of one of Matthew’s favourite podcasts, Know Your Enemy—a show about the American right. They discuss the normalization of genocide, the stark comforts of Freud and Janet Malcolm, the relief of DW Winnicott, how we can’t avoid playing the role of our own mothers, and also good advice from his dad, a labour lawyer who knows something about long, uncertain, but always worthwhile battles for the common good. 

Show Notes

Sam Adler-Bell

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Twitter Files journalist Alex Berenson recently published two articles claiming that Moderna covered up a child's death from a Moderna Covid booster trial—and the FDA is complicit. Children’s Health Defense then hosted him on their TV program to learn more about this outrageous scandal.

Do Berenson's claims hold up? All Derek did was click on the links in his own article to discover the "truth." He looks at this phenomenon through the lens of the 2020 book, Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World.

Show Notes

Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World

Alex Berenson’s article

Children’s Health Defense interview

The Lancet study on Covid vaccination in children

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We know Bryan Johnson gobbles 100 pills a day. He pumps his son’s plasma through his veins. He does light therapy on his junk and wants to live forever. But do we understand how Johnson’s fascinations reflect his Mormon heritage? No. No we don’t. 

That’s why we called our very own Salt Lake City expert, Blair Hodges, host of the Relationscapes podcast. 

Blair joins Matthew to discuss Johnson’s transhumanism, which has roots in the LDS but has also led him away from it. They cover the spirituality of his money, whether he’s trying to become a living god, and how his home gym has some distinctive Mormon temple elements. Also: is Bryan really as polite as he seems, or is he hiding

Blair has degrees in journalism, religious studies, and disability studies from the University of Utah and Georgetown University. He directed communications for the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Studies at Brigham Young University before moving to the nonprofit sector. He has served as communications director for Volunteers of America, Utah and RMHC of the Intermountain Area. He’s currently working on a research project on the history of intellectual disabilities in Mormon thought.

Show Notes

Relationscapes—Blair Hodges

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In January, 2023, Bloomberg published an article about how tech entrepreneur turned longevity stan, Bryan Johnson, spends $2 million a year in an attempt to live forever—or at least until age 200, as the goalposts shift. Then a Netflix documentary, Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever, dropped on January 1, taking a deep dive into Johnson’s quest and complex personal life. A strange thing happened along the way: Johnson felt much more personable and relatable than ever before to many viewers. Given the Bloomberg journalist is one of the producers, is this the latest propaganda piece by a supplements-pushing huckster, or is Johnson tapping into something much older and deeper about the human condition?

Show Notes

How to Be 18 Years Old Again for Only $2 Million a Year

Politico piece on Mayor Karen Bass and LA Fires

Anna Merlan on LA Fire conspiracies

Ally Carter Diddy-List Fire Conspiracy Theory Shared by Former Bush Official

Nutritionist Reviews The Blueprint Supplements

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A one-time drop of Derek's new podcast, Clarity Lab, the official podcast of Siris Health, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit building a free educational platform and curating social media channels that feature experts presenting health and science in a clear, compelling manner.

Celery juice. Coffee enemas. Ozone therapy. The list of pseudoscientific cancer "treatments" is endless. Yet they all risk pushing people in vulnerable positions toward untenable "cures."

Dr Andrea Love joins Derek Beres to discuss the dangers of cancer misinformation, as well as why the field of cancer research is so complex—and rewarding.

Dr Andrea Love is an immunologist and microbiologist, as well as subject-matter expert in infectious disease immunology, cancer immunology, and autoimmunity. She writes the Immunologic newsletter.

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Matthew sits down with sex-work veteran and social justice advocate Esme Providence Brown for the first of two chinwags about our famous New Age / wellness antifeminist, Kelly Brogan, and how her craven politics bolster the permission structure for Trumpian misogyny.

They track her political and aesthetic journey from labcoat-wearer to wellness pole dancer to BDSM cosplayer—a spiral through deepening layers of appropriation, disavowal of responsibility, and cringe-tastic ideas.

This is only Part One!

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UCSF epidemiology and biostatistics professor Vinay Prasad's star rose when he compared the US response to Covid-19 to the beginnings of the Third Reich in October, 2021. Though a less famous contrarian than others in the MAHA sphere, the hematologist-oncologist has honed his social media trolling over the past few years, always ready for a fight, evidence be damned.

Derek and Julian look at two recent videos that signal Prasad might be angling for a position in a potential RFK Jr-run HHS—and all the misinformation he continues to spread.

Show Notes

BMJ's Systematic Review on Quarantine Measures

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Like it or not, 2025 is here. What happens in post-truth America when formerly fringe conspiracy theorists, religious extremists, pseudoscience-peddlers, and wannabe authoritarians become a government—now weaponized against their personal enemies, both foreign and domestic? Should political analysis take a page from academics who study professional wrestling?

We each offer our views on what's ahead.

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George van Tassel was the original UFO contactee. He claimed to have been visited by aliens from Venus in 1953, which led to him hosting thousands of people at the annual Interplanetary Spacecraft Convention for almost 20 years. He channeled “Ashtar, ”a figure still popular in “Galactic Federation” conspiritualist circles today, and spent 25 years building a time machine based on telepathic communications with aliens. 

Julian unpacks the wild story of van Tassel’s airstrip, the Mojave Desert’s Giant Rock, and how the FBI may have been involved in his mysterious death and subsequent disappearance of his cellular rejuvenation equipment.

This is part of a series of free-standing episodes that excavates the history of pseudoscience and conspiracism beneath contemporary New Age spirituality.

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Journalist and author Josie Reisman says we can’t understand the Trump era without understanding his life-long pro-wrestling fandom, and his bonds with one of his closest friends, WWE tycoon Vince McMahon. 

Reisman argues that McMahon’s invention of “neokayfabe,” in which storylines and real life are purposefully and artfully confused, blurs the distinction between fact and fiction. It makes consumers, followers, and voters complicit in creating a spectacle of cruelty. 

It’s the kind of argument that once seen, can’t be unseen. It helps explain the contradictory and performative politics of Trump—and how, under his leadership, the administrative state may not be destroyed by fascism directly, but by a theatre of cynicism and catharsis that will allow the latent fascism of the American Empire to explode. 

Show Notes

Welcome to Neokayfabe 

Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America — Abraham Josephine Riesman // Writer

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British entrepreneur and investor Steven Bartlett launched his podcast, Diary of a CEO, in 2017. He quickly found an audience in the tech world, which gave him access to a wide range of celebrities and businesspeople from various domains. By 2024, the podcast became one of the top 5 in the world, netting Bartlett and his team a reported $25M this year alone.

Yet as Bartlett’s star rose, his guest list began becoming more and more suspect. Pertinent to our beat, contrarian wellness influencers and philosophers appeared, spreading Covid conspiracies and health misinformation. In his role as curious everyman, Bartlett rarely challenged their narratives, sometimes playing along with their conspiratorial hot takes to an audience in the millions.

We look at a few conspiritualist crossovers this week, and discuss what it really takes to become a top 5 podcaster—and the information and integrity that’s sacrificed along the way.

Show Notes

The Canonization of St. Luigi

Sacred Heart of Luigi hanging up at Vito's Pizza 

Extremist “Saints Culture”

Catholic ethicists condemn ‘indifference to suffering’ shown by those celebrating Luigi Mangione

41% of young voters say UnitedHealthcare CEO killing "acceptable" 

69% Blame CEO Murder on US Healthcare System 

Mainstreaming of Violent Accelerationism

December Wave 2 2024 AmeriSpeak Omnibus | NORC at the University of Chicago  

Steven Bartlett sharing harmful health misinformation in Diary of CEO podcast

What the Most Famous Book About Trauma Gets Wrong

Teal Swan Collection—Patreon

Bessel van der Kolk: Role in the Satanic Panic

He Built a Wellness Empire While Adventuring With Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Only 7% of American Adults Have Good Cardiometabolic Health

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Happy New Year’s Eve!

The sixth installment of Matthew’s Five Big Questions Posed to an Extremely Thoughtful Person. 

Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than 20 books on feminism, western and indigenous history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering  and walking, hope and disaster.

Show Notes

Rebecca Solnit

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Ozempic might be all the rage among people who want to lose weight, but wellness influencers and MAHA acolytes are raging against the antidiabetic medication. Derek investigates recent statements by RFK Jr and Calley Means and holds up their claims to the data we can all see online.

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We've been highly critical of The Free Press in the past, but a recent memoir-article about grappling with a familial history of polio by Jana Kozlowski stood out. Derek and Julian take no issue with the piece, which was an emotional plea to understand the ravages of polio and the efficacy of vaccines. The comment section is another thing.

Show Notes

Polio Ravaged My Family. Forget Its Horror at Your Peril.

The First Five Errors in the Moth in the Iron Lung Book

The First Five Errors in Dissolving Illusions by Suzanne Humphries

Amazon Won’t Take a Stand in War Over Anti-Vaxxer Book

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A special Patreon bonus unlocked episode as we enjoy the holidays with our families and friends.

Matthew got The Question on the morning after the election. At that moment, he came up with nothing but a hug. But then he chewed on it for days, and came up with eleven things to consider. 

So here are some notes for possible conversations with tweens about anxiety, bullies, fascism, friends, mutual aid, and love.

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“If you grow up with it, religion is real until you realize it is also imagined. And after a period of disenchantment or even depression that associates imagination with lies, you might then sense that the imagined part was also real, but because it’s imagined, you know you can change it.”

Matthew reflects on how Santa becomes more real in the home after the kids know he’s just a story, but a story of unbridled love and causeless generosity they can now participate in telling.

Happy holidays, everyone!

Show Notes

A Christmas Carol: Dedicated to Scrooge, And His Art Collection—McKenzie Wark

Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America — Abraham Josephine Riesman

Welcome to Neokayfabe—Jodie Reisman 

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Jeffery Tucker is the founder of the MAGA thinktank Brownstone Institute. In 2020, Brownstone published The Great Barrington Declaration, with lead author Jay Bhattacharya—now the nominee for head of the NIH. 

Jeffrey’s daughter, Julia, joins Matthew to discuss her dad’s rise through the punditocracy, through decades of fringe libertarian publishing, working for Ron Paul, boosting anarcho-capitalism and crypto, writing for the Epoch Times, and asking such daring questions as: “What’s so wrong about child labour?”

Show Notes

Patreon: Post-Catholic Music (w/Julia Tucker)

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The murder of United HealthCare CEO Brian Thompson has set off shockwaves across America. This week we look at the story’s online impact, people mythologizing the alleged killer, its intersection with conspirituality, and the healthcare system in America writ large.

Show Notes

Jen Gunter on insurance denial for her premature babies' oxygen needs 

Exclusive: Luigi's Manifesto - Ken Klippenstein 

Savings: Quarter of Americans Have Few, One in 10 Have None | Statista 

The Burden of Medical Debt in the United States

View of U.S. Healthcare Quality Declines to 24-Year Low

MDVIP/Ipsos poll shows Americans are struggling with the healthcare system

UnitedHealthcare CEO gunned down in Manhattan sold company stocks just before DOJ probe made public | The Independent 

Conservatives Face Backlash From Followers Over UnitedHealthcare Murder - Newsweek 

Before fatal subway chokehold, Jordan Neely was on NYC’s list of homeless individuals with dire needs | CNN 

Kaiser Study on Health Insurance Satisfaction

NIH Debunks Myth that 60% of Bankruptcies are Medical in Nature

Luigi Mangione’s Anger Wasn’t Neatly Ideological 

Gallup Poll on Health Care Satisfaction

Ipsos Poll on Health Care Satisfaction

Mental Illness is 13.5 times More Likely In Lone Wolf Shooters 

Narcissism, Fame Seeking and Mass Shootings

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The fifth installment of Matthew's Five Big Questions Posed to an Extremely Thoughtful Person. 

Dr. Annie Kelly joined us in Episode 61 to lay out her research on the manosphere-to-conspirituality pipeline. Today she joins me to discuss the trouble and joy of balancing extremism research with stories of hope and solidarity.

Show Notes

Annie Kelly  

Vaccine: The Human Story - YouTube

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Extremely online, bearded, Millennial pastors in tailored suits want to repeal women’s suffrage, criminalize gays, and Make America Christian Again. These “TheoBros” even have a guy on the inside: JD Vance. Trump’s Dept of Defense nominee, Pete Hegseth, attends an affiliated church. 

Julian tracks their genealogy and ugly ideas, as well as their parallel reactionary theocratic visions wreaking havoc elsewhere in the world today. Stay tuned for conversational reflections and wholesome holiday wishes at the end!

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Journalist Talia Lavin joins Derek to discuss her recent book, Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America. 

Show Notes

Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America

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As we ride out the aftershocks of the election and prepare for Trump 2.0, it’s as if nothing is bolted down. Trump’s cabinet appointments signal a disregard for competence or temperament as he seems to prioritize fervent deep state conspiracism and anti-woke aggression in his choices. The chattering classes (both legacy and new media) are on the front lines of having to adapt in real time. 

What to do? Double down on anti-fascist resistance, turn the disinformation detection devices up to 11, chart a course for sanguine neutrality, normalize the chaos as the world burns, or maybe give this rag-tag group of billionaire outsiders a chance to move fast and break things—in the hope that some of it was not working anyway? 

We look at three different modes of damage control currently ripping through American discourse.

Show Notes

There’s a conspiracy theory that the CIA invented the term ‘conspiracy theory’ – here’s why

87: The Aubrey Marcus Spectacle

107: An Open Letter to Aubrey Marcus

214: Aubrey Marcus is Totally Not a Cult Leader

Winning the Fight for Reproductive Rights in Mexico - Open Society Foundations  

Madres de Plaza de Mayo | Learning for Justice 

Adweek article on Rogan and MeidasTouch

Kash Patel QAnon Appearances

Kash Patel Seal Team 6 Endangerment

So Marianne Williamson Really is the Peace Candidate—Patreon 

“You Feel Like You Are Subhuman”: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza | Amnesty International USA 

NLG and Other Legal Groups Send Letter to ICC Urging an Investigation into Potential War Crimes Committed by Israel and US in Gaza under “Operation Protective Edge”

Russell Tribunal on Palestine, 2014  

Friday 17 November: Twenty thousand Palestinians believed to be killed in Israel’s genocide of Gaza 

Campus Protests Led to More Than 3,100 Arrests, but Many Charges Have Been Dropped 

Harris campaign rejects claim vice president thinks there is a genocide in Gaza 

A Study Reveals CNN and MSNBC’s Glaring Gaza Double Standard | The Nation 

Morning Joe: Dems’ Favorite Show, Blatant Pro-Israel Propaganda 

The Intercept: Israel-Palestine Coverage 

US MSM downplays Amnesty report 

TIME on Iranian Foreign Influence Methods

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Researchers in California recently warned that just one mutation in H5N1, the bird flu virus, could make the disease transmissible between humans. While the virus was first identified in 1959 (and became globally significant in 1996), they’re also concerned that increasingly damaging effects of climate change could make us more susceptible to such viruses. The same week, California-based raw milk manufacturer, Raw Farm, was forced to recall its products due to third-party testers discovering it contained H5N1.

Derek looks at these converging trends—the wellness-driven fervor over the safety and health benefits of raw milk and the chances of another pandemic—with an investigation into why this matters from a public health perspective. Along the way, he’ll define the three often-confused forms of health in public discourse—individual, population, and public health—and why influencers often confuse them.

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Exvangelical author Tia Levings joins Matthew to discuss her harrowing memoir of indoctrination, abuse, recovery, and advocacy, The Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy. It’s a wild GenX journey that tells us a lot about the logic of evangelical support for Trumpism, and how those caught within it can see their way clear the gender terror, rape culture, and fantasies of retribution. 

Show Notes

Tia Levings 

This season, Patreon is checking some big things off your wish list

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If you’ve spent one minute on social media in the last few months, you’ve probably heard that seed oils are extremely toxic, food dyes are the reason for rising obesity rates—oh wait, that’s glyphosate—and vaccines are still causing autism. Nevermind the fact that the supposedly criminal preservative, thimerosal, was removed from almost all vaccinations in 2001. Clinical research is irrelevant in MAHA, RFK Jr’s Make America Healthy Again MAGA ripoff.

Wellness acolytes have found a champion in Kennedy, who’s going to immediately end chronic diseases and reduce obesity rates by…checks notes…making sure every American has a gym membership. We’ve covered Bobby a lot on this podcast, so today our fearless correspondent, Mallory DeMille, returns to investigate one very vocal and very relieved cohort, the MAHA Mamas. They just know Kennedy is going to truly save the children, science be damned.

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An essay from Matthew on how MAGA religiosity obscures the religious nature of liberalism, and how both obscure the underlying religion of capitalism. 

Inspired by Walter Benjamin, who in 1921 wrote:

One can behold in capitalism a religion, that is to say, capitalism essentially serves to satisfy the same worries, anguish, and disquiet formerly answered by so-called religion. Capitalism is a pure religious cult, perhaps the most extreme there ever was. Within it everything only has meaning in direct relation to the cult: it knows no special dogma, no theology.

Show Notes

Mutual Aid Hub 

Martin Luther King Jr: Dialectics, Materialism, and the Black Radical Critique of Racial Capitalism with Andrew J. Douglas and Jared A. Loggins 

230: How Did We Get Here?

Walter Benjamin, "Capitalism as Religion [Fragment 74]," 

Max Weber and Walter Benjamin

Without Dream or Mercy 

Has Capitalism Become Our Religion?

On the Concept of History - Walter Benjamin 

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The Free Press founder, Bari Weiss, recently hosted Peter Thiel on her podcast. While The FP markets itself as as a return to independent and non-partisan real journalism, Julian and Derek point out that's not the case at all—especially when the organization's $15M in funding comes from rightwing and libertarian VCs. Will Weiss factcheck Thiel's misinformation in real-time, as a "non-partisan" outlet should?

Show Notes

Lapdogs Of The "Counter-Elite" Authoritarians

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Since the election, Democratic voter disbelief and despair has alternated between grief and rage. We watched some erstwhile vociferous critics of Trump in the legacy media, like Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, kiss the ring and bend the knee, while others adopted a contorted posture of seeming legitimization, like NPR hosting Leonard Leo for a nice long sit-down interview. 

Meanwhile, the big egos of MAGA 2.0 seem to rise like Soviet propaganda banners over the American landscape. Trump has named his cabinet picks at lightning speed. His list includes a pro-wrestling executive, a Hare Krishna cult member, a tech billionaire, an anti-vax conspiracy peddler, a FOX News host with far-right tattoos, an alt-med snake oil salesman, two sex offenders, a COVID-contrarian doctor—and, contrary to his claiming to know nothing about it during the election, prominent Project 2025 authors. 

What most high profile nominations all have in common is being completely unqualified for the job. Maybe that’s the point. We look at the cabinet picks that intersect with our beat, as pseudoscience conspiracism now completes its journey from the social fringes to deciding White House policies—and all the consequences that entails.

Show Notes

Conspirituality’s Project 2025 coverage

Everything You Need to Know About Donald Trump’s FDA Pick

No, Medical Errors Are Not the Third Leading Cause of Death

Dr. Oz Shilled for an Alternative to Medicare

Trump picks former Florida Rep. Weldon to lead CDC

13 things everyone should know about Pete Hegseth 

Trump reportedly plans to kick trans troops out of the military within days of inauguration

Transgender Military Service in the United States

Did RFK Jr. eat McDonald’s in that viral pic aboard Trump’s plane? Here’s the answer 

Part One: Vince McMahon, History's Greatest Monster - Behind the Bastards

C-03-CV-24-004019 — John Does suit against WWE, trigger warning. 

Case 3:24-cv-00090 Document 1 Filed 01/25/24 — Janel Grant suit, trigger warning. 

152: Tulsi Gabbard’s Krishna Consciousness (w/Nitai Joseph)

Tulsi Gabbard's ties to the Science of Identity Foundation, a controversial religious sect that some call an abusive 'cult'

Tulsi Gabbard Had a Very Strange Childhood

What Does Tulsi Gabbard Believe?

Tulsi Gabbard’s ties to secretive cult may explain her perplexing political journey

Islamophobic World View of Tulsi Gabbard's Guru Revealed in Unearthed Recordings – Can she Still Run for President?

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Matthew here with the fourth installment of Five Big Questions Posed to an Extremely Thoughtful Person. 

Rob Schenck joined me in Episode 199 to discuss his deradicalization from the Evangelical anti-abortion movement. Today he joins me to discuss some things he’s learned about hope, faith, resilience and building community in hard times.

Show Notes

Costly Grace - Rob Schenck 

199: Inside Anti-Abortion Christian Nationalism (w/Rob Schenck)

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The climate denialist who exposed the so-called “censorship industrial complex” returns, this time at another congressional hearing. Michael Shellenberger has come to blow the whistle on Big Government’s UFO cover-up. 

Nancy Mace, Lauren Boebert, and Anna Paulina Luna alternate between showing off their knowledge of fantastical History Channel “documentaries” and playing bad cop interrogators.

Reverse-engineered UFO’s! Recovered alien “biologics!” Interdimensional beings! Organic machines that defy the laws of physics! 

Shellenberger and his fellow “witnesses” provide precisely zero evidence for any of these earth-shattering claims.

Welcome to the Government Oversight and Accountability Committee circus.

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AG1 built a billion-dollar brand in large part by tapping into the fitness and wellness podcast and YouTube markets. Recently, AG1’s founder, Chris Ashenden, resigned after a decades-old real estate scam in his native New Zealand came to light. While Chris has mentioned it in passing, he’s always claimed to have paid full reparations for his crime—and it was a crime.

Turns out that he hasn’t paid it all, as uncovered by New Zealand journalists Jonathan Milne and Mike Wesley-Smith. They join Derek to discuss their year-and-a-half long investigation that resulted in a billionaire founder leaving one of the most well-known supplements brands in the world. They also talk about why journalism still matters in a world seemingly run by billionaires. 

Show Notes

AG1 founder Chris Ashenden resigns amid scrutiny of NZ criminal history

DELVE: Powder Keg podcast on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeart

Trump sues for billions from media he says is biased against him

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Josemaria Escriva founded Opus Dei, an ultra-conservative, high-demand, secretive Catholic organization in Madrid, Spain, after receiving a supposed vision from God in 1928. His small inner circle initially initiated university students into strict obedience, celibacy, medieval practices of self-flagellation, and deceptive recruitment techniques to convert their friends. 

Operating outside of the mainstream church, Opus Dei rose to prominence under Spain's authoritarian dictator, Francisco Franco. Escriva was eventually canonized as a saint while the group amassed enormous wealth and influence around the world. 

Today, their reactionary religious and political mission has established a foothold in Washington DC through the Catholic Information Center—the tabernacle closest to the White House.Bill Barr, Leonard Leo, and Project 2025 mastermind, Kevin Roberts, all visit for spiritual guidance. Meanwhile, scandals and lawsuits involving child sex abuse, money laundering, and human trafficking plague Opus Dei's reputation. Gareth Gore joins us to discuss his controversial new book on the past and present of this secretive organization, Opus.

Show Notes

Pew Research Center: America’s News Influencers

How Opus Dei Converted DC

Gareth Gore Author page for his book, Opus

Opus Dei Paid $900K to Settle Sexual Misconduct Claim

Argentine Prosecutors Accuse Opus Dei of Human Trafficking

Maria del Carmen Tapia Book Summary on Opus Dei

Financial Times on Opus 

Biblical omen uncovered in aftermath of Hurricane Helene | Daily Mail Online

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A personal journey through health describing what led Derek to focus on health, science, and healthcare as a career and, eventually, this podcast.

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The post-election online chaos has a lot in common with what can go wrong in online survivor groups. Matthew tracks how opportunities for connection and solidarity can crater into gravity wells of recrimination, trauma-dumping, moral outrage porn, and the rise of new influence hierarchies. Not just because of differences in politics and values and temperament—but because of inequality and privilege. 

A meditation on the difference between building a boat to sail in vs. a boat in a bottle, on considering the second arrow, and on when to log the fuck off. 

Show Notes

Mutual Aid Hub

MORAL OUTRAGE PORN C. Thi Nguyen and Bekka Williams

The Second Arrow — Sutta Central  

Log the Fuck Off with Amber Frost, Matt Christman, & Ben Fong

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Once upon a time, there was a golden age. A time when the news media was fair and balanced, unbiased and honest. But we've lost all that to the corrupting influence of big money, political correctness, and woke censorship. Blame the radical left.

Not to worry: the online charisma of heterodox new media figures like Bari Weiss and her plucky, centrist, truth-telling little start-up, The Free Press, has come to Make Journalism Great Again.

Yet their supposed heterodoxy is neither neutral nor journalistically rigorous. It's pure culture war contrarian sensationalism that wastes little ink critiquing the rise of right-wing authoritarianism.

We trace these tangled threads by listening in to the supposedly non-partisan The Free Press election night livestream, which giddily praised Trump for being the consummate bullshitter that will take an ax to Democratic institutions.

Show Notes

The evolution of France’s left and right politics, from the 1789 French Revolution to this year's election 

What to Know About the Origins of ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ in Politics, From the French Revolution to the 2020 Presidential Race 

Our American Zion 

When a Terrorist Comes to Your Hometown

Columbia's Own Middle East War

Bari Weiss’s Unasked Questions

TFP latest round of funding

Thiel/Lonsdale and UATX funding

UATX huge cash injection after pro-palestine protests

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Matthew got The Question on the morning after the election. At that moment, he came up with nothing but a hug. But then he chewed on it for days, and came up with eleven things to consider. 

So here are some notes for possible conversations with tweens about anxiety, bullies, fascism, friends, mutual aid, and love.

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Derek discusses Tucker Carlson advocating for corporal punishment as a way to discipline children in his appearance at the Turning Points USA MAGA rally.

This is an unlock from a recent Patreon bonus, with a new intro from Matthew.

Show Notes

Stephen Colbert: Tucker Carlson’s Weird Daddy Issues

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Rapid-response electoral punditry is not our lane. So, while we gather our feelings and thoughts, Matthew hosts novelist Sheila Heti for a discussion of her encounter with A Course in Miracles, and what she discovered when she investigated its origin story for Harper’s Magazine.

Was Helen Schucman, the book’s “scribe”, mentally ill? Was she unduly influenced by her boss at Columbia Medical School, William Thetford, who once worked for the CIA’s MKUltra programme, and with whom she was clearly in love, even though he was gay? Were they dropping acid on assignment from Langley? Why was the initial dictation of the book so radically altered by its first editors? Why did Helen Schucman curse A Course in Miracles so soon after publication? Why did she keep writing trite poems to Jesus before dying in bitterness?

Heti was the ideal gumshoe for this project, because as a novelist all-too-familiar with internal voices and the feeling of “channeling,” she was able to feel her way into Helen’s life. Matthew asks her what she found.

Show Notes

The New Age Bible — Sheila Heti 

Sheila Heti — website

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Having lived under Apartheid in South Africa, voted in the UK, and now staring down this terrifying US election, Julian reflects on the political differences between the three countries.

Stay tuned for some hopeful poetry at the end.

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Recently, “holistic veterinarian” Marcie Fallek, whose latest book, “Little Miracles Everywhere: My Unorthodox Path to Holistic Veterinary Medicine," is the #1 bestseller on Amazon in the Alternative Holistic Medicine category, appeared on Children's Health Defense's daily morning show.

During “Pet Vaccines and Holistic Vet Care" she spreads the same sort of vaccine misinformation and fear-mongering that RFK Jr's nonprofit has become infamous for. All of which made Derek realize that yes, they're actually coming for our pets.

Show Notes

Why Your Vet Bill Is So High

Private Equity Is Killing Your Pets

Nearly 70% of veterinarians have lost a colleague or peer to suicide, study finds

The acute suicide crisis among veterinarians: 'You're always going to be failing somebody'

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With days left before the most consequential US election in our lifetime, we reflect on the last 4.5 years of this podcast while expressing our hopes–and our own reporting goals—for the future.

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Matthew here with the third installment of Five Big Questions Posed to an Extremely Thoughtful Person. 

Michelle Cassandra Johnson was an early guest on our show and helped us lay the groundwork for understanding the reality and impacts of racism in the worlds of wellness and new spirituality.

She’s an author, activist, and racial equity trainer. Her latest book, A Space For Us: A Guide For Leading Black, Indigenous, and People of Color Affinity Groups, was published by Beacon Press in August 2023. She lives in North Carolina with her sweet dog, Jasper, and her honeybees.

Show Notes

Michelle Cassandra Johnson

Conspirituality 40: White Supremacy: Grift and Gravity (w/Michelle Cassandra Johnson & Daniel Lombroso) 

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Derek discusses Tucker Carlson advocating for corporal punishment as a way to discipline children in his appearance at the Turning Points USA MAGA rally.

Show Notes

Stephen Colbert: Tucker Carlson’s Weird Daddy Issues

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Billionaire legal activist Leonard Leo has had a role in placing all six conservative justices on the SCOTUS, and so therefore is in large part responsible for the overturning of Roe V Wade. But his right-wing activism isn’t even close to over, as he recently stated during a rare interview with The Daily Wire. Derek and Julian discuss Leo’s dark vision for the future.

Show Notes

Swamp Creatures 6: Leonard Leo, Judicial Kingmaker

Inside Leonard Leo’s Plan For Conservatives To ‘Crush Liberal Dominance’

We Don’t Talk About Leonard: The Man Behind the Right’s Supreme Court Supermajority

Leonard Leo’s Extremely Revealing Letter to a Dark-Money Group

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On Oct 4, Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine, economics, and health research policy at Stanford, held a symposium at his university. Titled “Pandemic Policy: Planning the Future, Assessing the Past,” it was marketed as an open-minded series of panel discussions involving a range of experts to debate and discuss the efficacy of Covid mitigation techniques.

In reality, it was a collection of mostly anti-vax and definitely anti-lockdown contrarians that tried in vain to bait people like Dr Peter Hotez to attend in order to give the event an air of legitimacy. Held on the anniversary of the “Covid is bad for business” doctrine, The Great Barrington Declaration, the day presented an opportunity to air supposed “censorship” grievances and demands that the public should have a say in the science of future pandemics.

The rub: most everyone involved is invested in the economics of public health, not the science, though those lines were freely and falsely blurred throughout the day. Considering Stanford’s new president, economist Jonathan Levin, gave the opening remarks, the Covid contrarians took one more step into the mainstream with their business-first, science-whatever attitudes.

Show Notes

Pro-COVID UK Charity With Anti-Vax Ties Behind Controversial Stanford Health Policy Conference

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick says a failing economy is worse than coronavirus 

Dr. Vinay Prasad: “Public Health’s (Mis)Truth Problem”

Can Stanford Tell Fact from Fiction?

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As the world watches, Israel and Iran are squaring off for a potential war. Meanwhile, a Texas evangelical preacher, who runs the biggest Christian Zionist group in the world, is cheering on the coming apocalypse—as predicted in his 2005 book, Jerusalem Countdown. John Hagee even flew to DC to persuade Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, to jam through another military aid package.

Julian examines the real-world significance of conflicting religious prophecies focused on one particular piece of real estate in East Jerusalem as the “shoreline of eternity”—the portal into God’s Kingdom.

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Trump’s Town Hall DJ love-in stumped a lot of folks. From the conspirituality angle, however, there’s something familiar about this improvised ritual. Because the world we cover is strewn with the wreckage of charismatic patriarchs who bleed their followers dry in the closed-loop system of cultic dynamics. 

When leaders like Trump get to the end of the line, all that’s left is pure affect. They have exhausted themselves in the efforts of self-aggrandizement. They have nothing left to say because they’ve said it a 1000 times. They’re all out of stories. They might even be bored of their own bullshit. Underslept or dysregulated by chaotic schedules, they may not be sure where they are. They’re beset by enemies, ill and in cognitive decline, but can’t admit it. And when they start to feel overwhelmed by their followers' pathetic—in their view—neediness, they will reach for any help they can get in maintaining their emotional dominance. 

What October 14 showed us is that in these moments, Trump’s go-to resource is canned music, and, without his own iPad at the ready, a DJ handler who can spin the tracks and support his reverie of relief and control. 

Show Notes

Trump holds town hall in Pennsylvania suburbs with focus on economy 

How Media Outlets Covered Trump’s Musical Town Hall

Donald Trump is DJing weekly at Mar-a-Lago, plays Broadway songs and Celine Dion from his iPad, report says

DJ T: How Trump controls the music at Mar-a-Lago  

Twitter thread 

152: Tulsi Gabbard’s Krishna Consciousness (w/Nitai Joseph)

PLAYING FOR OSHO 1989 Introduction – Chinmaya Dunster 

Patted Down by India’s Hugging Saint 

The Soft Nationalism of Amma, India’s Hugging Saint

37: Guru Jagat Cultjacks Kundalini Yoga (w/Philip Deslippe & Stacie Stukin)

Letter to Sogyal Rinpoche from current and ex-Rigpa members details abuse allegations 

Trump's bizarre music session reignites questions about his mental acuity 

Brief: Trump’s Impending Ego Implosion (w/ Daniel Shaw)

Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation

Sex abuse allegations surround L.A. Buddhist teacher

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People will reach for anything to relieve the stress of climate anxiety. 

There’s outright denial: this can’t be happening. It doesn’t fit in with my understanding of the world. The science must be wrong. During Milton, Catturd wonders why the wind speed keeps changing on the weather reports. They must be making it up. Or the guy in Galveston, TX, posting that he can’t see any hurricane from his Gulf view.

When denial is impractical, there’s political displacement: our enemies are responsible. They’re seeding the clouds, they’re spewing the chemtrails. The Democrats are sparking tornadoes with invisible drones over swing states. They’re using radio waves to steer the hurricane’s eye. They’re clearing land for lithium mining so they can take our gas hog pickups away.

But when the storm surge is just too high to attribute to Jewish space lasers, there’s also good old spiritual displacement: God is punishing our enemies for their sins. We didn’t stop all their abortions and anal sex, and now we are caught in the crossfire of God’s just vengeance. 

Today we look at the distortions and disruptions, the fallacies and fables—and not all of them from the right—that keep people locked in climate paralysis.

Show Notes

Food Babe misinformation carousel

Wigington v. MacMartin, 2:21-cv-02355-KJM-DMC 

Record Hot Water Is Fueling Hurricane Milton 

Hurricane Milton: what causes such intense storms? 

What Big Oil knew about climate change, in its own words 

Early oil industry knowledge of CO2 and global warming | Nature Climate Change

Exxon Confirmed Global Warming Consensus in 1982 with In-House Climate Models 

No obituary for Earth: Scientists fight climate doom talk 

Guy McPherson and Near Term Human Extinction - The Mike Nowak Show with Peggy Malecki 

Arctic News: It’s time to pursue hospice, by Guy McPherson 

Statement on Guy McPherson - Eugene 

The faulty science, doomism, and flawed conclusions of Deep Adaptation - 

Ecological Grief as a Response to Environmental Change: A Mental Health Risk or Functional Response? - PMC 

The faulty science, doomism, and flawed conclusions of 'Deep Adaptation' | openDemocracy

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Matthew fields excellent questions about his new book from colleagues Ann Gleig and Michelle C. Johnson. 

NAB Show Notes

This event includes discussions on sensitive topics related to abuse; sexual assault; high-demand tactics; racism; gender-based violence; and systems of dominance, patriarchy, and oppression. We know that these topics may be distressing or triggering to some attendees, and we invite you to take care when listening, and to tend to your needs if you feel activated, overwhelmed, or emotionally impacted. We're so grateful you're here, and we thank you for coming. We also want to thank survivors of sexual violence and abuse in yoga, wellness, Buddhist communities, and beyond, whose stories, voices, and feedback have been invaluable to the work each of us continues to do in service of healing our communities from the harm of sexual violence.

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Born in 1831, Helena "Madame" Blavatsky pioneered the New Age grift. The Russian aristocrat plagiarized her books while claiming to be channeling the “Masters of Ancient Wisdom” to tell a dodgy heroic back-story. She founded the Theosophical Society in New York, claimed to have learned a secret Tibetan language, and laid the foundation for alien channelers and Woo-Anon. She also inspired the Nazis.

In the latest episode from a series on the pseudoscience New Age roots of today’s conspirituality phenomenon, Julian pins Blavatsky on the cork-board map.

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On September 29, a predicted one million people were going to show up for the Rescue the Republic event in Washington DC. Founded by the libertarian party chair, the Defeat the Mandates founder, and “professor in exile,” Bret Weinstein, about 1,500 mostly MAGA acolytes showed up. Yet the event represents something a long time building in America: the strange and at times uncomfortable merging of wellness and right-wing politics via MAHA and MAGA.

Sure, RFK Jr was there, but today we’re going to look at a few figures we haven’t covered in a while, or at all. As can be expected in conspiracy land, the C-list celebrities brought some of the most outlandish, and most dangerous, ideas along with them.

Show Notes

Orange Shirt Day | The Canadian Encyclopedia 

National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and the History of Residential Schools - Foundry

Phyllis’ Story - Orange Shirt Society 

More Than Anything Else, the Rally to Rescue the Republic Was Awkward

Are food dyes used in the US banned in other countries? No, not really.

IDF Ordered Hannibal Directive on October 7 to Prevent Hamas Taking Soldiers Captive - Israel News - Haaretz.com 

Have no childhood vaccines ever been tested using double-blind placebo controlled trials?

​​Vincent van Gogh's "Sunflowers" paintings vandalized hours after activists sentenced for similar incident - CBS News

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With MAHA taking over stages nationwide, we’re experiencing a deluge of wellness influence and contrarians screaming about systemic issues with food, medicine, and government. Yet the solutions they offer never actually address public health. 

Ironically, the same trend has been occurring in investment-driven medicine, where both government and private sector money is flowing into individualized medicine at the expense of public health. 

Derek dives into this sordid affair, concluding with six steps experts agree would actually do something about the state of our health.

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Finally: a dedicated, concise report on RFK Jr’s sordid history with women, with all the sources.

Why? 

Because now one of the allegations involves a criminal act. 

And because it’s becoming clearer that the emotional manipulation he allegedly deploys in his personal life—many sources say that “love-bombing” is his technique—rhymes so closely with his political day-to-day that it’s hard to find the lines between stumping, white knighting, seducing, and screwing.

Correction: The RFK Jr clip “I’m not a church boy” ran on Breaking Points, not Majority Report.



Show Notes

The real victims of Olivia Nuzzi’s affair with RFK Jr are other female journalists | Moira Donegan | The Guardian 

Exclusive: Multiple Women Claiming Romantic Relationships With RFK Jr. Threaten His Standing in Trump Orbit 

RFK Jr.’s Family Doesn’t Want Him to Run. Even They May Not Know His Darkest Secrets. | Vanity Fair 

Damning Report Reveals RFK Jr.’s History of Alleged Sexual Assault | The New Republic

RFK Jr. Was a Compulsive Womanizer, and Yes, We Should Care | The New Republic 

43 suspected mistresses found in RFK Jr.’s phone 

Former babysitter for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. accuses him of sexual assault in Vanity Fair profile 

Woman who accused RFK Jr of sexual assault says he apologized by text | Reuters  

Keith Edwards — “I’m not a church boy.”

Massachusetts Sexual Assault Laws

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Texts Apology to Woman Who Says He Sexually Assaulted Her 

A Timeline of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Controversies 

The Last Days of Mary Kennedy: 'She Is Angry and Depressed, but She Is Not Ill' (Exclusive) 

AA meetings in the White House? Kennedy, a recovering addict, says it's just one of changes he'd make

RFK Jr. Wants to Send People Addicted to Antidepressants to Government “Wellness Farms” – Mother Jones  

Brief: The New Age Origin Story of RFK Jr’s Campaign — Conspirituality

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Cleanse the soil! Purify the blood! Save the children! Make America Healthy Again!

On Sept 23, Jordan Peterson, RFK Jr., rising alt-health stars Casey and Calley Means, and many other nutrition non-experts gathered for a live streamed event they called the American Health and Nutrition Roundtable, hosted by Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.

Their subtitle, A Second Opinion, was an apt description for the alternative fact-filled diatribes that ensued. The soil has been poisoned, everyone is fat and sick, the entire medical industry is corrupted by Big Pharma, and Big Food is enacting a genocide on the American people via metabolic dysfunction. COVID skepticism and anti-vax messaging lurked just beneath the surface.

The speakers painted a terrifying picture and then presented themselves as benevolent common-sense saviors. At the climax of her speech, Casey Means, fresh from her career-boosting Tucker Carlson appearance, took a deep breath before declaring that this is all actually a spiritual crisis.

Show Notes

Killers of the Flower Moon: The real history behind diabetes and Native Americans. 

Special Report: QAnon Fantasies Look Like Colonial Realities (w/Julian Brave NoiseCat) — Conspirituality

Palestinians pampered”— Robert Kennedy Jr

CDC Sociodemographic Data on American chronic disease

Commonwealth Fund: Portrait of the Failing US Healthcare System

Mikhaila Fuller | Yeah, I get botox. From the latest Q&A, link in bio. | Instagram

Mikhaila Peterson’s life at the molten core of the culture wars - New Statesman  

NPR on International Journal of Obesity Study

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Matthew here with the second installment of Five Big Questions Posed to an Extremely Thoughtful Person. 

Does Natalie Wynn need an introduction? Or do we simply know that every frame of every Contrapoints essay is a gorgeous still life, a love letter to the unknown viewer thirsty for smarts and queerness and justice?

Often, top-tier artfulness will wind up concealing the artist. But despite the rigors of curation and the introversion Wynn ‘fesses up to in this interview, she also communicates welcome and generosity, and it was an honor to hear her speak personally about these Big Things.. 

BTW: here are the five questions. You can think about them too.

• What terrifies you most in these times?
• What is the most meaningful and supportive idea or story you return to for reliable wisdom and relief?
• What is the greatest obstacle you face in forming community relationships, and how do you work to overcome it?
• If you were responsible for comforting and guiding a child terrified of climate catastrophe, how would you do it? What would you say? 
• If your wisest ancestor came in a dream to offer you one piece of advice about living in difficult times, what would it be?

Show Notes

ContraPoints - YouTube

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An essay from Matthew exploring the problem of authenticity which plagues every investigation we do on the spiritual influencer beat. 

There are queasy questions we’re always contending with when we’re listening to the preaching of Charles Eisenstein, Kelly Brogan, Zach Bush, or RFK Jr: 

Has this person really committed to the spirituality they are presenting? Or is spirituality instrumental to them? Do they have experience to share, or programs to sell?

It’s hard if not impossible to find the line between these things, especially in the society of the spectacle, especially when we’re talking about influencers we don’t personally know. But it's an important consideration because assumptions made in one direction or another taint the entire discourse. 

Maybe, we’re talking about the difference between unearned faith and earned faith.

Show Notes

Zero at the Bone: Wiman

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On Monday, Senator Ron Johnson sponsored a congressional panel entitled "American Health and Nutrition: A Second Opinion." Unfortunately no actual health or nutrition experts were invited. Instead, the four-and-a-half hour event featured speakers like Robert F Kennedy Jr, Jordan Peterson, Jillian Michaels, Vani Hari (Food Babe), and a host of other influencers and contrarians. Derek investigates all the science that wasn't told—and all the products and services that were sold.

Note: Derek meant to compare aluminum fear-mongering with thimerasol (organomercury) but instead conflated them. Both are safe at the level used in vaccines as adjuvants, though most thimerasol was removed due to public outcries and an abundance of caution. Links added to Show Notes.

Show Notes

Mandela Barnes Says Sen. Ron Johnson 'Bought and Paid for' by Big Pharma

The Congressional "American Health and Nutrition Roundtable" was an egregious display of anti-science disinformation

MEDIA ADVISORY: Sen. Johnson to Lead Roundtable Discussion: “American Health and Nutrition: A Second Opinion”

Thimerosal and Vaccines

Adjuvants and Vaccines

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Tens of people will be flocking to Washington DC this Sunday as Rumble comes to life during Rescue the Republic, a one-day event featuring RFK Jr, Russell Brand, Jordan Peterson, Bret Weinstein, Tulsi Gabbard—it’s quite an impressive roster of anti-vax luminaries and right-wing contrarians gathering under the pretense of what is effectively a glorified Donald Trump rally.

And that’s not hyperbole, given that Trump is seated next to Elon Musk on the marketing materials, which is a graphic retelling of George Washington crossing the Delaware River. While this event is already infected with tons of conspirituality, one late addition caught our attention: Human Garage. This fascia-release-cures-everything organization had to flee California for Canada due to legal troubles, yet their star continues to rise as they embark on their “Transforming Trauma” world tour. And nothing says “healing” more than spreading pseudoscientific wellness jargon and hawking turmeric supplements at a Trump event.

Show Notes

Apostolic Journey to Singapore: Interreligious Meeting with Young People in the Catholic Junior College (13 September 2024) | Francis 

Lord by Thy Holy Cross 

Pope: War in Gaza is too much! No steps taken for peace - Vatican News

Physio Reacts: Episode 1 - Human Garage (Part 1 of ?)

Physio Reacts: Episode 2 - Human Garage (Part 2)

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The British occultists took the thin and sickly but beautiful boy away from his family. Groomed him for 20 years to become the savior of humanity. Trained him between 1909-29 to be a serene guru and charming English aristocrat. He looked good in a double-breasted suit and had fabulous hair. Huge amounts of money flowed into the organization they built around him.

But Krishnamurti became a man the day he shocked them all. Julian’s latest chapter of his historical series wraps up Helena Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society—one of the crucial 19th century roots of New Age metaphysics, and the phenomenon we call conspirituality.

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“God talks to human beings through many vectors. But nowhere with such detail, and grace and joy, as through creation. When we destroy nature, we diminish our capacity to sense the divine.”

With this April 2023 tweet, RFK Jr inaugurated his presidential campaign, which has now folded into a daily ritual of Trump bootlicking.

Now, Bobby is telling Tucker Carlson and the world that climate change cannot be solved through commitment to the “carbon orthodoxy.”

“It’s not about quantifying stuff,” he says. “That's what the devil does. But the reason we're preserving these things is because we love our children.”

What does this mean?

Matthew tracks the sources and implications of Kennedy’s broken climate discourse—rooted in St. Francis of Assisi, appealing to gentleman farmers and homeschoolers, allergic to the scientific abstractions that give us a truly global picture, and always committed to the free market. 

Show Notes

RFK Jr: Teaming up With Trump, Pavel Durov’s Arrest, CIA, and the Fall of the Democrat Party 

Birdwatching with Jonathan Franzen: 'Climate change isn't the only danger to birds' 

Special Interview: Nostalgia for the Superego (w/Sam Binkley) — Conspirituality 

Laudato si' (24 May 2015) | Francis 

Brian Swimme: The Cosmos Watching Itself (E35)

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There’s been a question gnawing at fans of Charles Eisenstein: what does he really feel about RFK Jr’s pivot to Trump? The always aspiring poet-philosopher was hired as a messaging advisor to Bobby, after all. We’ve spotted little fragments of Eisenstein’s exceptionally long essays sneaking their way into Bobby’s speeches. There was some influence, for sure, even after Charles went on multiple Costa Rican sabbaticals right in the middle of campaign season and apparently cut his consulting rate down from $21k per month, perhaps out of the goodness of the heart he knows is possible. And yet, for weeks after Bobby jumped the shark, Charles remained silent.

Until now, that is. With the publication of his recent 6,711-word essay, “Shades of Many Colors,” Eisenstein finally breaks his silence and lands firmly on the side of…well, we’re not quite sure. But one thing that’s emerged is Charles’s penchant for not crediting the source of some of his galaxy-brained ideas. Today, we’ll look at some of what Charles says in his latest opus, and try to figure out what exactly he’s saying.

Show Notes

mRNA vaccine spike protein differs from viral version

The effect of SARS-CoV-2 variant on respiratory features and mortality

SARS-CoV-2 Infections in mRNA Vaccinated Individuals are Biased for Viruses Encoding Spike E484K and Associated with Reduced Infectious Virus Loads that Correlate with Respiratory Antiviral IgG levels.

Autoimmune and Autoinflammatory Connective Tissue Disorders Following COVID-19

Risk of autoimmune diseases following COVID-19 and the potential protective effect from vaccination: a population-based cohort study

The Lancet: Most comprehensive study to date provides evidence on natural immunity protection by COVID-19 variant and how protection fades over time

Conspirituality 1: Coronation for Whom? 

Brief: The New Age Origin Story of RFK Jr’s Campaign — Conspirituality

86: Charles Eisenstein, New Age Q — Conspirituality  

Disavowing Disinformation - North Atlantic Books 

Inside the Last Weeks of RFK Jr.’s Campaign

Charles Eisenstein - What is the Next Story? - Scientific and Medical Network

Brian Swimme: The Cosmos Watching Itself (E35)

​Charles Eisenstein Whitewashes Trump, Caricatures & Demonizes Democrats in Post Decrying Caricatures & Demonization (Part 1)

Charles Eisenstein Endorses Trump, but Thinks You're Not Clever Enough to Notice (Part 2) 

Cardiac Events Following Mpox Vaccine

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"Biohacking expert" Kayla Barnes recently published a 31-minute video about her morning routine, filled with EMF-blocking shields, grounding protocols, and 40 different daily supplements. Good if you can afford it, but then she sells questionable protocols at her Cleveland, Ohio-based clinic, Lyv Wellness, despite having no clinical training. Derek watches what she says, then watches what she sells.

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Tucker Carlson is the Steve Bannon of Joe Rogans. Tucker surpasses Rogan’s massive reach at times, but his curated guest list drives a deliberate agenda: normalizing neo-fascist political discourse. He does it all with an affable, friendly, just-asking-questions, I’m-not-as-smart-as-my-guests attitude that may disguise what he’s doing—like interviewing a Holocaust-denier Nazi apologist, or framing modern-day dictatorships as admirable, or promoting the anti-semitic Great Replacement Theory, or globe-trotting to flatteringly interviewing brutal enemies of democracy like Viktor Orban or Vladimir Putin.

In the wake of recent controversy about WWII revisionism on Carlson’s show, Julian breaks down the accelerationist contours of Tucker’s far-right influence and agenda. Being fired from FOX News and going “independent” has only made it worse.

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In 2022, Tucker Carlson produced a documentary called “The End of Men,” his contribution to the so-called “masculinity crisis.” That’s when testicle tanning hit the mainstream, which one astute observer dubbed “bromeopathic therapy.”

Turns out the former Fox News host isn’t done dabbling in conspirituality. This year, he’s platformed the QAnon Shaman, Jacob Chansley; lyme disease conspiracist, Kris Newby; the “other” Naomi, Naomi Wolf; brother-sister optimizers, Casey and Calley Means; and he’s currently on a 16-city tour with the likes of Russell Brand and Alex Jones. He’s also partly responsible for helping usher RFK Jr into Donald Trump’s camp.

While the former CNN and MSNBC host turned far right provocateur isn’t leading wellness retreats (yet), he’s certainly being shared by an increasing number of wellness influencers, and we want to know why.

Show Notes

DOJ Accuses Russia of Sprawling Election Interference Campaign

Homeland Violence and Diaspora Insecurity: An Analysis of Israel and American Jewry | Politics and Religion | Cambridge Core 

Safety through Solidarity by Shane Burley, Ben Lorber

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Here’s the first installment of a regular timeline cleanser featuring interviews with folks reflecting on hope, faith, resilience and building community in hard times. 

You know—all the things that conspirituality itself can’t offer.

These are short, personal visits in which Matthew asks each guest the same five questions about their life wisdom—at least as it’s coming together in this moment.

To start this series, Matthew hearkens back to the roots of Conspirituality Podcast in the yoga world with guest Jivana Heyman. Jivana is the founder and director of Accessible Yoga, an organization dedicated to increasing access to the yoga teachings and supporting yoga teachers. He’s the author of Accessible Yoga: Poses and Practices for Every Body; Yoga Revolution: Building a Practice of Courage & Compassion; and The Teacher's Guide to Accessible Yoga: Best Practices for Sharing Yoga with Every Body. 

BTW: here are the five questions. You can think about them too.

• What terrifies you most in these times?
• What is the most meaningful and supportive idea or story you return to for reliable wisdom and relief?
• What is the greatest obstacle you face in forming community relationships, and how do you work to overcome it?
• If you were responsible for comforting and guiding a child terrified of climate catastrophe, how would you do it? What would you say? 
• If your wisest ancestor came in a dream to offer you one piece of advice about living in difficult times, what would it be?

Show Notes

jivanaheyman.com

9: Ableism in Conspiracy Theories (w/Jivana Heyman) — Conspirituality

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What does it mean to spill ink on dispelling conspiracy theories about non-existent children being murdered, while actual children are being murdered? At what point does the labour of debunking right wing wackjobs also do the shadow-work of supporting the liberal-center orthodoxy?

Matthew looks at how with QAnon, the liberal-center press criticized irrational responses to imaginary traumas, with a great sense of urgency. But on Gaza, they criticize rational responses to actual traumas, and imply that protesters are asking for too much, too fast. 

What happens downstream of denials, minimizations, and contradictions? What are the social and mental health implications of moral injury? Are these not some of the same social conditions that generate conspiracism?

Content warning: discussion of children, genocide

Show Notes

Is Israel Committing Genocide in Gaza? New Report from BU School of Law’s International Human Rights Clinic Lays Out Case 

Rights expert finds ‘reasonable grounds’ genocide is being committed in Gaza | UN News 

Dems Gave the 'Uncommitted Movement' Space to Talk About Gaza — Just Not on TV

First-Ever DNC Panel on Palestinian Rights: We Need to “Restore the Soul of the Democratic Party”  

“Stop Arming Israel”: Meet the DNC Delegates Who Unfurled Banner During Biden Speech 

201: Librarians Are Not Groomers (w/Heath Umbreit) — Conspirituality 

What I Saw Was “Unfathomable”: Doctor Who Worked in Gaza Speaks Out Against U.S. Arming of Israel 

Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential - The Lancet 

Clearing Gaza of almost 40m tonnes of war rubble will take years, says UN 

Israel Has Killed 2,100 Babies Under 2 Years Old in Gaza, Rights Group Says | Truthout 

NYU barricades benches 

College Administrators Spent Summer Break Dreaming Up Ways to Squash Gaza Protests 

The Black Mark on the Democrats’ Big Party | The New Republic 

Amnesty International Warns of U.S. Complicity in War Crimes in Gaza 

Christian Wiman | Yale Divinity School

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Calley Means is the cofounder of TrueMed, a company that helps businesses qualify products and services like supplements and ice baths for HSA and FSA money. Casey Means is the founder of Levels, a continuous glucose monitor subscription service aimed at the biohacking community. The brother and sister recently appeared on Tucker Carlson's podcast to rage against seed oils, as well as the food and pharma industries' focus on profits over people.

Derek dug into their business models, finding them guilty of the same "crimes" they accuse others of.

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RFK Jr has dropped out of the presidential race and thrown his weight behind Trump. In our 10th episode on the man in the last year-and-a-half, we look at the potential dangers of this unholy alliance, and what it means for America.

Show notes are extensive, visit patreon.com/conspirituality or conspirituality.net for more.

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Born in 1831, Helena “Madame” Blavatsky pioneered the New Age grift. The Russian aristocrat plagiarized her books while claiming to be channeling the “Masters of Ancient Wisdom” to tell a dodgy heroic back-story. She founded the Theosophical Society in New York, claimed to have learned a secret Tibetan language, and laid the foundation for alien channelers and Woo-Anon. She also inspired the Nazis.

In this debut episode from a series on the pseudoscience New Age roots of today’s conspirituality phenomenon, Julian pins Blavatsky on the cork-board map.

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Dems are laughing about Donny Dentures or #TrumpisDone, but the reality inside his head, and Mar a Lago, will be very grim, and there will be a lot of collateral damage.

Mental health titans like Robert Lifton have reached the consensus that Trump has been mentally ill for a long time. They’ve diagnosed him with “narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, paranoid personality disorder, delusional disorder, malignant narcissist,” and so on.

Such patients meet predictable ends when the wheels fall off. In the cult world (where Lifton has been so influential), there are bangs (Jim Jones) and there are whimpers (Keith Raniere). What might it look like for Trump?

No one is more qualified to discuss the possibilities with Matthew than Daniel Shaw, LCSW, a psychotherapist trained in psychoanalysis as well as in trauma-informed psychotherapies. He is in private practice in New York City and in Nyack, New York; and Faculty and Supervisor at The National Institute for the Psychotherapies in New York. He is the author of Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation, published by Routledge in 2014, and nominated for the prestigious Gradiva Award. His book Traumatic Narcissism and Recovery: Leaving the Prison of Shame and Fear was published in 2021. He is known for his work with cult trauma survivors and with clients who have experienced narcissistic abuse.

Show Notes

Daniel Shaw, LCSW

Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation

Traumatic Narcissism and Recovery: Leaving the Prison of Shame and Fear

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In one survey, 82% of young people aged 18-25 searched the internet for mental health advice. Another survey of university students found that 44% report using the internet to learn about sadness, anxiety, or confusion. Regardless of what mental health experts advise, people of all age groups are turning to the internet and social media for help.

What are the potential risks and rewards of using these platforms to try to communicate credible mental health science? And what happens when you’re endlessly trolled for being a “Big Pharma shill,” even when you don’t have prescriptive powers and only offer talk therapy in your clinical practice?

Clinical psychologist Jonathan Stea joins us to discuss these difficult questions. His new book, Mind the Science: Saving Your Mental Health from the Wellness Industry, is a field guide that responds to some of the intense challenges earnest seekers face when trying to navigate waters filled with supplements-slinging sharks who believe they can diagnose mental health conditions with zero training.

Show Notes

AI-generated video of Trump on ayahuasca 

Mind the Science: Saving Your Mental Health from the Wellness Industry

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Peter McCullough recently shared a ton of misinformation about mpox while speaking to Drew Pinsky; both men work for The Wellness Company, a supplements company that weaponizes anti-vax misinformation to sell products. Mikki Willis uses the Hero's Journey as a guide to dealing with mpox—and falsely represents Joseph Campbell's work. Russell Brand and Bret Weinstein claim mpox is a government psyop and nothing more.

Derek looks at the conspiritualist fervor bubbling up around what's turning out to be another dangerous virus by men who do everything but point to sound public health measures.

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ProPublica recently got a hold of 25 Project 2025 training videos—over 14 hours worth of content revealing the policies the Heritage Foundation would like to see implemented if Donald Trump regains the White House. Derek and Julian break down one of the most egregious.

Show Notes

Inside Project 2025’s Secret Training Videos

Undercover in Project 2025

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Did you hear that Taylor Swift is supporting Donald Trump for president? That’s right: last week, the former president shared photos of fans rocking “Swifties for Trump” t-shirts on Truth Social. Trump seemed pleased, replying to his online following of 24 billion people: “I accept.”

Yet something seemed off. Just like photos of Trump surrounded by seven-fingered Black Americans smiling on city stoops, these Swiftie endorsement photos were AI generated. As it turns out, AI is playing a more insidious and dangerous role in this year’s election—and in the conspiracy theory industry—than ever. The line between fact and fiction has long been blurred, but we’re entering a new reality where distinguishing between those two might prove impossible.

This week, we look at the stakes of the first AI-generated election in America—and wonder how much worse it can get, even in three short months.

Show Notes

Trump Promotes A.I. Images to Falsely Suggest Taylor Swift Endorsed Him

Christian Nationalists Are Opening Private Schools. Taxpayers Are Funding Them.

Fake Photos, Real Harm: AOC and the Fight Against AI Porn

Propaganda, foreign interference, and generative AI

AI Poses Risks to Both Authoritarian and Democratic Politics

Election disinformation takes a big leap with AI being used to deceive worldwide

B'Tselem report summary: "Welcome to Hell: The Israeli Prison System as Network of Torture Camps", August 2024

B'Tselem report: "Welcome to Hell: The Israeli Prison System as Network of Torture Camps", August 2024

Detention and alleged ill-treatment of detainees from Gaza during Israel-Hamas War 

U.S. decries reported sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners after graphic video aired on Israeli TV 

US approves sale to Israel of $20 billion weapons package | Reuters 

A record share of US electricity comes from zero-carbon sources - but more work is needed 

China could exceed renewables generation target of 33% by 2025 | S&P Global Commodity Insights 

Israeli Government Pays $2M for AI Influence Campaign

Israel-Funded Disinfo Campaign Targets US Lawmakers

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A short break-the-fourth-wall reflection from Matthew on his new regular series for our main feed, starting in September. 

The Conspirituality Relief Project will provide regular timeline-cleanser interviews in which super interesting guests reflect on hope, faith, resilience, and building community in hard times. 

You know, all of the things that conspirituality itself promises to do, but can’t, or won’t.

Every guest gets thirty minutes, and the same five questions:

1. What terrifies you most in these times?
2. What is the most meaningful and supportive idea or story you return to for reliable wisdom and relief?
3. What is the greatest obstacle you face in forming community relationships, and how do you work to overcome it?
4. If you were responsible for comforting and guiding a child terrified of climate catastrophe, how would you do it? What would you say? 
5. If your wisest ancestor came in a dream to offer you one piece of advice about living in difficult times, what would it be?

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An unexpectedly cheerful followup to “JD Vance Taps into Parental Rage.” The alt titles today could be: “Tim Walz Taps into Parental Goals,” or “Disarming the Disinfo of the Right is Great, But Have You Tried Dad Jokes?” 

Across social media, liberal millennial women are tagging Tim Walz as the return of the dad they lost to Fox News. Matthew digs into that graveyard with a survey of the tools that we’ve used to examine the nature and function of patriarchal bullshit as it dominates conspirituality, cults, and QAnon. The result is a stroll through a Madame Tussaud’s display of fragile and toxic influencer fathers, from Jordan Peterson to Jim Watkins to RFK Jr to Donald Trump. 

Tim Walz not only doesn’t do any of the things these guys do—he might be rooting around in his special tool drawer now to find just the thing it’ll take to fix what they’ve done.

Note: this is not a blind love-fest or blanket endorsement of as-yet vague policies. But there is something powerful going on with Walz’s new-old modeling of Big Dad Energy. 

Show Notes

A Balanced Assessment of Tim Walz’s Record from the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy | lvgaldieri 

Tim Walz’s green resume has an oily stain 

Minnesota activists criticize Tim Walz for refusing to meet with Palestinians – Mondoweiss 

Donald Trump Likens His Schooling to Military Service in Book - The New York Times 

Tim Walz was my teacher in high school. Here's what I've carried with me about him all these years later.

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Eight years ago, they called us cucks, libtards, and globalists. We were corrupted by cultural Marxism, teaching our kids to hate themselves. Four years ago they gloated over drinking liberal tears. They called us sheeple, groomers, vampires, pedos. We made up a pandemic so that we could brew up a kill shot, and force it on everyone after making ourselves soy-boy sick. We were exposing our kids to trans strippers in the library and showing them how to use buttplugs in kindergarten. When our children were sufficiently deranged and submissive, we drained them of adrenochrome and mutilated their privates.

JD Vance’s ONE JOB was to turn this bullying into policy, and encode it in the pages of Project 2025. Peter Thiel sent him forth to blend every shitpost into a radioactive slurry to power a cybertruck convoy carrying the titans of New Right capitalism into Washington. 

He tried. He really did. 

But then came the stories about him. That he fucked a couch. He wrote about it in his book, someone said. Someone else said he was getting off on dolphin porn. The lies spread, with glee and schadenfreude. And he folded. Like a foldaway. 

Suddenly, all the green drained out of million shriveling Pepes and made the world verdant with hope. And from the middle of a cornfield football grid, Tim Walz manifests with his Big Dad grin and said, "Let’s roll up our sleeves and beat these creepy weirdos.”

Today we’ll talk about fighting conspiracy theories that started as jokes with jokes that defuse conspiracy theories. About what it takes to commandeer the attention economy, and how much of our souls we spend to do it. About the difference between meme wars and policy debates, and how far the Big Dad Energy vibes can take us.

Show Notes

RFK Jr.'s incredible disappearing campaign 

Was J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy Really a True Story? All About the VP Candidate's Controversial Memoir 

Walz on Morning Joe

The author of the viral joke post about JD Vance having sex with a couch breaks his silence 

162 lies and distortions in a news conference. NPR fact checks former President Trump

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Tech billionaire Peter Thiel claims “freedom and democracy are incompatible.” Mentor and $15M donor behind JD Vance’s political career, Peter Thiel also has an influence: Mencius Moldbug, computer programmer and lead philosopher of the “Dark Enlightenment,” or “neoreactionary” movement. 

Moldburg says, “if Americans want their government to change, they’re going to have to get over their dictator phobia.” Erstwhile pen-name of Curtis Yarvin, “Moldburg” is openly anti-democratic, advocating for one-party city-states ruled by CEO-kings. His takes on race, slavery, and the Nazis are equally alarming. 

Vance has also publicly praised and cited his work, and Thiel gave $1.1 million to Yarvin’s tech start-up. Julian digs into the toxic pseudo-intellectual philosophy behind the next wave of MAGA authoritarianism.

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Ziklag’s ultra-wealthy network of Christian donors is spending nearly $12M to mobilize Republican voters in order to secure a Trump victory this November. ProPublica found that their plan involves purging 1M+ people from the voter rolls in key swing states. Unsurprisingly, this is yet another Christian nationalist group with ties to Project 2025.

Here’s the thing: Ziklag is classified as a 501c3 charity organization, which means they’re breaking longstanding rules of nonprofit governance. Will they be held accountable and lose their status? Derek and Julian discuss.

Show Notes

Inside Ziklag, the Secret Organization of Wealthy Christians Trying to Sway the Election and Change the Country

Ziklag Exposed: Secretive Christian Nationalist Network Tries to Purge Voters in Battleground States

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You’re an eight year-old girl. The purity culture of your evangelical church, ruled by men but policed by women, has you worried that the spaghetti straps on your summer top might be sinful. You learn from the women around you how to defer, serve, please, keep your voice girl-like forever, and use it to both signal obedience but also piously request relief from sexual aggression. 

You’re a seven year-old boy. The holy laws of gender in your church dictate that when you’re the only male present at Bible study, you must lead the room full of women in reading and prayer. You must perform manliness in your boy’s body, assuming an anxious leadership role you did not earn. If you don’t puff yourself up, you’re a sissy—one of the girls alongside you learning the tones of the Fundie Baby Voice.

These are parts of the stories of Julia Postema and Jeremiah Gibson, the co-hosts of the podcast Sexvangelicals: The Sex Education the Church Didn't Want You to Have. They are Boston-based licensed psychotherapists and certified sex therapists. They specialize in helping couples with negative religious backgrounds discover sexuality that works for their partnership. Julian and I sat down with them to learn about how their clients recover from purity culture, and sometimes in the process run smack into its mirror world: the tantric workshop land of divine masculine and feminine stereotypes plus fascinations with semen retention.

Show Notes

Sexvangelicals: Podcast | Website | Instagram | Substack

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Scroll through masculinity influencer social media feeds and you're constantly told there's a "crisis of meaning." But is that really true? Has a shared meaning ever reflected the totality of any population?

Derek turns this idea over in his head by looking at the mythology of the hero's journey. But first, he provides some inspirational messages from the White Dudes for Harris call last week, where perhaps a new and empowering sense of masculinity is taking hold.

Show Notes

White Dudes for Harris

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The “childless cat lady” thing is as ridiculous as JD Vance is. But it’s not stupid. It’s tapping into something powerful, because it’s shameful.

Vance’s fantasy that childless cat ladies are miserable in their lives is another case of every accusation being a projection.

In actuality, he’s speaking to that swath of parents out there in general—and particularly on the right—who are actually miserable in their lives, regretting their choices, wondering why God saddled them with 4-5-6 kids in a country that does so little to support families.

But it’s illegal to say any of this. Children are gifts from God, right? They have to disown it and pretend that their families are perfect and perfectly fulfilling.

An editorial-style Brief from Matthew, who’s been parenting as a stepdad and biodad for long enough to know that parents and the childless absolutely need each other.

Show Notes

Full text of "GHETTO DIARY - ENGLISH - JANUSZ KORCZAK"

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If something real occurs in this timeline, but no conspiracy theorist is there to FUBAR it, does it actually happen?

An old man, weakened by COVID, picks up an old-timey phone handset on a Delaware Saturday to tell a childless cat lady that the reins of destiny are now in her hands.

A staffer clicks “post” at 1:46pm, and X lights up with something real… that throws an instant shadow of insanity.

Biden is too sick to have posted, they say. He’s dead, they say. He has staged or suffered a coup. And Kamala Harris? A DEI bimbo flashing esoteric Marxist hand signals. The DNC is fraudulently transferring the campaign war chest. They couldn’t kill Trump so now they’re playing dirty with the nomination. Biden’s brother is stepping in, Biden’s body double is 8 inches too tall. Dudes who made too much “Let’s Go Brandon” merch are launching lawsuits and crying in their beer.

We run down the most cursed Kamala conspiracy theories, how they distort the real questions about her, how being a childless cat lady is her superpower, and whether the ghouls that dream them up really matter.

Show Notes

Vivian Wilson on Threads: There’s a lot of stuff I need to debunk

Elon Musk's transgender daughter, in first interview, says he berated her for being queer as a child

J.D. Vance’s Hatred of Cat Ladies Is Weirder and More Dangerous Than You Think

J.D. Vance Really Is the Key to Understanding the American Right

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This is the second episode in “Conspirituality and the Imaginary Children,” an occasional series on how children, as symbols (but not persons with their own internal lives) are at the center of conspirituality anxiety and discourse. 

The title is taken from a pamphlet published by Ralph Drollinger, a former professional basketball player from San Diego who founded a 501c3 called Capitol Ministries in 1996 to facilitate prayer meetings and study guides for congresspeople in Washington, and state legislators in more than 40 states. 

Drollinger’s crowning achievement was to initiate a weekly Bible study group in the White House during the Trump administration. The 60-90 minutes were regularly attended by ten Trump cabinet members. 

Like many evangelicals, Drollinger argues that spanking children is mandated by the Bible But he also goes a Trumpian extra mile—explicitly connecting the virtue of child assault in the home to the state’s monopoly on violence. Matthew walks through what this looks like and how Drollinger justifies it through narrow and dishonest readings of scripture.

Show Notes

God's Word on Spanking [text] 

God’s Word on Spanking [youtube] 

194: The Power Worshippers (w/Katherine Stewart) — Conspirituality 

How the Trump Cabinet’s Bible Teacher Became a Shadow Diplomat - The New York Times 

White House Bible Study Led by Pastor Who Is Anti-Gay, Anti-Women and Anti-Catholic - Newsweek 

Is God Judging America Today? by Ralph Drollinger 

Ralph Drollinger | GLAAD 

Exclusive Interview with Ralph Drollinger: Meet the preacher who teaches the Bible to the US Cabinet - WELT 

Capitol Ministries 2023 revenue 

Jordan B. Peterson’s Support of Corporal Punishment for Children: A Critique - Mad In America 

Shepherding a Child's Heart — Tripp 

Shepherding a Child's Heart (a short critique) — DonOwsley.com 

Ministry Versus Political Activism by Ralph Drollinger 

Text of the Spencer Spanking Plan 

Misused Scripture: Jeremiah 17:9. 

HEBREW WORD STUDY – Deceitful and Wicked אנשׁ עכב | Chaim Bentorah

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A tale of two tweets: Dark Horse podcast cohost and “conspiracy hypothesizer” Bret Weinstein took to Twitter twice this month, first dropping a video claiming that RFK Jr becoming Donald Trump’s running mate would make them “assassination proof,” then later floating the idea that an AI Joe Biden really phoned into Kamala Harris’s first conference as the presumptive presidential nominee. Or…is Biden even alive?

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Just two days after surviving an assassination attempt, Donald Trump announced JD Vance as his VP pick. Vance has made a dramatic U-turn from calling Trump a "reprehensible idiot" and "America's Hitler" in 2016. But who is this 39 year old, really—who after less than two years of on-the-job experience, is now almost a heartbeat away from leading the free world?

Well, not unlike other right-wing populists in Europe and at home, Vance has an idiosyncratic political affinity for JRR Tolkien. We might even call him America’s conspiracy hobbit at this point, fresh from the Appalachian Shire but inexorably drawn by the burning crypto rings of Silicon Valley to eventually land at the feet of Sauron to meet his fate. 

But to answer this question and examine where JD Vance fits into the conspirituality landscape, we’ll be breaking down a speech recently released by ProPublica. It’s from an intimate invitation-only conservative event hosted in 2021 by a group called the Teneo Network. Behind closed doors, Vance encouraged his audience to get away from that weird feeling in their chests when listening to the unique truths of conspiracy theorists. Like, Alex Jones sees the world more clearly than MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. The right also apparently needs more oligarchs. Oh, and the literal Devil is at work in the world around us.

Show Notes

J.D. Vance Speaks at a Private Teneo Network Event, Sept. 2021

Inside the “Private and Confidential” Conservative Group That Promises to “Crush Liberal Dominance”

How Lord of the Rings Shaped JD Vance’s Politics

The Influences on JD Vance’s Political Philosophy

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Project 2025's plan for workers is clear: crush unions, eliminate minority protections, curtail reproductive health care benefits, and make the workplace biblical again.

Derek and Julian unpack the details of another insane chapter from Project 2025's 920-page manifesto that describes their vision for the reduced rights of the working class. According to their own statements, a Trump presidency would set these and other disastrous plans in motion from day one.

Show Notes

Conspirituality 187: Project 2025: An Authoritarian Conspiracy

Project 2025's Disdain for Public Education

The GOP Thinks Food Stamps Are the Real Problem

The GOP Takeover of Media

The Plan to Dismantle Health Care

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We cover conspiracy theories, spiritual abuse, and religious and right-wing extremism. We cover showmen and charismatics suffering from King Victim Complex. Last week we had to study a goddam assassination attempt. 

But sometimes we get to peek into the worlds that younger people are making within our cursed digital environments, and we realize they might be laughing at some of the problems that fill us olds with despair right out of existence. 

Gaming journalist and Master of Divinity Riley MacLeod joins Matthew to talk about whether the hit indie game Cult of the Lamb might be all the inoculation against cultic dynamics that generation Alpha ever needs. 

Show Notes

Riley MacLeod - Aftermath

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Two landmark Supreme Court decisions—the Trump immunity case and the overturning of the Chevron doctrine—represent the legal institutionalization of the core values of conspirituality: self-sovereignty, natural immunity or divine protection, and “doing your own research.” 

The attempted assassination on the former president forged the essence of these two rulings into a stunning still life of Trump’s image for those who love him and those he’s appointed to serve him. 

Julian and Matthew wade into the flood, and what might happen at ground zero of conspiracy theory formation—this time veering left as well as right.

Show Notes

Former classmate of Trump rally gunman says he was ‘bullied almost every day’ 

The FBI Identifies Suspected Gunman in Trump Rally Shooting: What to Know - The New York Times

FBI identifies Thomas Crooks of Bethel Park as the suspect in Trump assassination attempt

FBI probing motives, background of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the Western Pa. gunman behind Donald Trump assassination attempt 

A shooting range, a gun store, and a ladder purchase: Tracking the Trump rally gunman's movements leading up to his attack 

Trump rewrites Republican convention speech to focus on unity not Biden - Washington Examiner  

Vance shooting response: https://x.com/JDVance1/status/1812280973628965109 

Musk shooting response: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1812256998588662068 

Rubio shooting response: https://x.com/marcorubio/status/1812256529296613657 

Boebert shooting response: https://x.com/KyleClark/status/1812316469016846373 

Brief: The Theatre of Trump (w/Hank Willenbrink) — Conspirituality  

23-939 Trump v. United States (07/01/2024)

Clarence Thomas Raised Another Issue: Was Jack Smith Legally Appointed? - The New York Times 

22-451 Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (06/28/2024)

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Project 2025's approach to environmental issues is pretty straightforward: deny climate science, dismantle the EPA, clear a path that prioritizes corporate profits, and let the world burn.

Derek and Julian unpack the details on the chilling chapter from Project 2025's 920-page manifesto that outlines their plans for the Environmental Protection Agency. According to their own statements, a Trump presidency would set these and other disastrous plans in motion from day one.

Show Notes

Conspirituality 187: Project 2025: An Authoritarian Conspiracy

Project 2025's Disdain for Public Education

The GOP Thinks Food Stamps Are the Real Problem

The GOP Takeover of Media

The Plan to Dismantle Health Care

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While speaking on Steve Bannon’s podcast, The War Room, Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts recently stated, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless—if the left allows it to be.” 

Roberts is the mastermind behind Project 2025, Heritage’s 920-page “presidential transition” agenda that seeks to implement authoritarian power in America. The text combines the anti-regulatory stance of libertarianism, laissez faire capitalism on steroids as espoused by conservatives, and the heinous and anti-democratic religious dogma of Christian nationalists, and it’s finally receiving a lot of attention.

Derek and Julian look beyond the “bloodless” comment to hear what else Roberts and crew have in store for America should Donald Trump regain the presidency. As you might imagine, it has nothing to do with democracy.

Show Notes

Taraji P Henson Calls Out Project 2025 at BET Awards

‘Complete and utter B.S.’: Trump DEFINITELY knows his own team authoring Project 2025

Kevin Roberts on The War Room

Conspirituality 187: Project 2025: An Authoritarian Conspiracy

Project 2025's Disdain for Public Education

The GOP Thinks Food Stamps Are the Real Problem

The GOP Takeover of Media

The Plan to Dismantle Health Care

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Today we’re looking at a lavish infomercial put out by New Age oligarch and RFK Jr superfan Aubrey Marcus, in which he tries to show the world that his very expensive encounter group, Fit For Service, is definitely not a cult. And at how Matthew got quoted in the opening montage as though he endorsed FFS as an “anti-cult.” He hasn’t.

Marcus might be protesting too much. Because no one with any credibility has actually called FFS a cult, and they couldn’t, because no one has done the investigative work that would take. In a lot of ways, that question is beside the point. It’s not the ‘70s anymore. If you have 604K YouTube subscribers, and millions in the bank from oil money and supplement sales, you don’t need to coerce anyone into staying on your ashram compound and working on your spiritual ideas for free. You too can have an unlimited supply of well-heeled seekers cycling through your coaching encounter group.

So the real questions are: what is it really worth, and what does it really serve?

Show Notes

87: The Aubrey Marcus Spectacle

Brief: The New Age Origin Story of RFK Jr’s Campaign

107: An Open Letter to Aubrey Marcu

86: Charles Eisenstein, New Age Q

Why Kyle Kingsbury Quit The UFC 

Myths That Make Us | Godsey Montana Summit talk  

The music festival that wants to know your deepest secrets

[Annihilation] Can someone explain the shimmer from the movie scientifically?

Dharma Artist Collective—Godsey’s online community  

The Poet Queen

'I Was 13 When Marc Gafni's Abuse Began'

Former Rabbi Accused of Improper Sexual Conduct Now Rising Star in U.S. Spiritual Movement

Gafni Faces Fallout From New Age Community

Marc Gafni Named In Latest Sexual Abuse Lawsuit Against Yeshiva University 

Popular New Age author Marc Gafni molested 13-year-old girl in 1980, lawsuit says 

Sara Kabakov lawsuit docket 

Aaron Rogers in Marc Gafni’s library

Has Aaron Rodgers been learning Torah at his offseason retreat?

My Dad Died: The Blessings Of The Father Pt 1 w/ Dr. Marc Gafni

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Back in 2011, Ward and Voas wrote that conspirituality was a mainly-online movement, and they were right about that. They didn’t do fieldwork at events. They didn’t attend trainings and rituals. They combed the internet for evidence of what they were looking for. 

They found strange and anxious spiritual themes. But they also found evidence of what the internet does in all of its speed and dissociation, in its invitation to seize attention through contrarianism and amplify jagged anxieties and glittering pieties. 

In finding conspirituality, they may have proven that you can’t do religion on the internet. And maybe, that’s part of why conspirituality exists. 

Religious impulses are ancient and primal, centering communities as campfires do. But they also throw off sparks of narcissism and extremism, which the algorithms must capture to drive engagement. 

Show Notes

MMMEATTT — “A newsletter about things that can’t exist on the internet” by Beau Brink

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The stress of influencing in the New Age / alt-med world is rough. You have to pretend to know everything, from vaccine science to the origins of autism, to how feminism has desecrated the sanctity of motherhood. It’s not surprising that a growing number of the conspirituality influencers we know and love are all tuckered out, and now choosing to let Jesus take the wheel. 

Freebirth mogul Yolande Norris Clark now joins the growing ranks of converts from conspirituality to Orthodox Christianity. How will she square her politics of the divine feminine with a hyper-patriarchal tradition? Or is it really such a stretch? 

Show Notes

"Giving Birth in Yogaland"

She wanted a 'freebirth' with no doctors. Online groups convinced her it would be OK.

From Costa Rica, Yolande Norris-Clark Free-Births COVID News About “Hellscape” of Canada

Free-Birther Yolande Norris-Clark Promotes “The Secret Covenant”

COVID-Denialist: “Rona Is as Real as You Want it To Be”Argentino on Pastel Q — Twitter

Pastel QAnon

The Women Making Conspiracy Theories Beautiful 

The Instagram aesthetic that made QAnon mainstream

The Conspiracy Theory to Rule Them All

'Pastel QAnon' Is Infiltrating the Natural Parenting Community 

First appearance of "The Secret Covenant" online 

Secret Covenant: Freedom-Force (2004) 

Secret Covenant boosted on a QAnon channel, 2020 

PolitiFact | John D. Rockefeller did not write a ‘secret covenant’ about world domination Transphobia in the Midwifery Community

Yolande Norris-Clark: Transgenderism, Feminism & C0Vid (Content warning: transphobic creator) 

Orthodox Christian churches are drawing in far-right American converts

Matthew Heimbach excommunicated 

Justin Trudeau & The Misuse Of Words

Giving Birth in the Church

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Can yoga bring hostages home? No. Can yoga stop a genocide? Also no. But this won’t stop earnest practitioners from instrumentalizing practice for both purposes. 

For supporters of Israel, practice is dedicated to the protection of land, the return of hostages, and to uphold the spiritual valor of soldiers. Among supporters of Palestine and a ceasefire, yoga practice and community is an organizing principle for decrying genocide, building mutual aid, and resisting global colonialism. Both factions cite the Bhagavad Gita.

Does yoga support nationalistic violence and body fascism? Isn’t that where its modern origins lie? Or does it have deeper, intersectional roots in universal liberation? 

The interpretive war, articulated and inflamed online, only accelerates the material war. 

But there is a third space we examine today: the gap between how spiritual aspirations appear and are praised or condemned in the world of the spectacle, and how they play out in the flesh.

Show Notes

Tel Aviv Yoga Event 

About : Israeli hostages taken by Hamas  

We Are Still Standing handstand event

Carmel Gat | Yoga in captivity

Taken captive: Carmel Gat, seen doing yoga with hostage children

Initial Twitter posting of Alfie's yoga class in Gaza 

Reserve combat engineer practices yoga with soldiers in a house in Gaza

IG post | criticism of Yoga Journal cover

In Israel, Chanting 'Om' Between Missiles

What does Israel's rescue of 4 captives, and the killing of 274 Palestinians, mean for truce talks?

AP: Calculating death numbers in Gaza 

Sarah Martin Little Rock yoga benefit event

Rasha Madkour fundraiser for The Longhorn Muslim Alumni Network

UK yoga event for the Palestine Children's Relief Fund

Hot Yoga Glasgow yogathon for the International Rescue Committee

A look inside the growing Pro-Palestine student solidarity encampment at UCSB

Pro-Palestinian Demonstrators At USC Join Camp-In Movement On Heels Of Valedictorian Controversy

Sheena Sood's Yoga for Palestine series at Bhakti Yoga Movement in Portland

50. Sellouts & Zealots (w/Sheena Sood)

Samson's Foxes insignia

Reserve combat engineer practices yoga with soldiers in a house in Gaza 

The Dangerous History Behind Netanyahu’s Amalek Rhetoric

Dark Mirror: A Torah View of Revenge, and its Reflection in Israeli Media During Operation Iron Swords

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What does it really mean to be a prophet, found a religion, and persuade millions of people that god speaks directly to you? 

And what does this god tell you? How to live morally. What kinds of sex are forbidden. How to avoid death and live forever. When the end of the world is coming, and which messiah will bring it.

In this latest installment on the history of the intersection of spirituality and pseudoscience, Julian looks at the story of a prophet named Ellen G. White and what she may have in common with historical figures as diverse as Gopi Krishna, Dostoevsky, and Joan of Arc.

Show Notes

Christian Experiences and Teachings of Ellen G White

Phantoms in the Brain

Sam Kean: Heaven is for Neuroscience

Neuroscience for the soul

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Last month, Russell Brand visited Jordan Peterson's podcast for “The Evolution of Theology.” Which, given these two figures, had to focus on topics like the unreligious impulsivity of gay people and why slaves should “just not be slaves.” Derek and Julian discuss.

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On June 14, Reuters published an article about the US Military’s clandestine program to discredit China’s Sinovac vaccine during the early days of Covid-19. Turns out the Pentagon hired an outside agency to purposefully spread FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) about the Chinese inoculation program by flooding social media with anti-vax propaganda. It was a smack in the face for anyone—including us—who’s been calling for sound public health measures over the last four years. And it very likely killed people in Southeast Asia.

This week, we look at the harrowing reporting that revealed a shameful, interventionary program that began under the Trump administration and persisted at least a few months into the Biden presidency. We’ll also review the very few conspiritualists that have even covered the story—somewhat surprising, given that a good ol’ government conspiracy is their bread and butter. But what happens when anti-vaxxers are confronted with a government-led anti-vax program, enacted by the same military that some of them, like RFK Jr, want to drastically reduce? Let’s find out.

Show Notes

Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic (Reuters)

Pentagon Ran Secret Anti-Vax Campaign in Philippines, While Censoring Americans Who Criticized COVID Shots (Children’s Health Defense) 

Supporting military missions overseas (GDIT “Careers” page)

Companies Profiting from the Gaza Genocide

CONTRACT to GENERAL DYNAMICS INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, INC.

DynPort Vaccine Company

Public Health

Vaccine Diplomacy in the Wake of COVID-19

Pentagon Orders Sweeping Review

Martin Luther King Jr.’s moral stance against Vietnam War offers lessons for the Middle East

Exclusive: Inside the S--tshow That Was the Trump-Biden Transition

The Scam at the Heart of the Mysterious Epoch Times 

End The Forever Wars | Kennedy24 

EXPOSED: Secret Pentagon MISINFO Campaign Spread LIES About COVID Vaccines (The Hill)

DISGUSTING! Glenn Greenwald GOES OFF On Pentagon Anti-Vax Psyop (Breaking Points)

Pentagon Opens Sweeping Review of Clandestine Psychological Operations

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What is the distance between spiritual practice and social action? Derek has weighed this question for decades. This unscripted meditation on the topic uses Aubrey Marcus's new "documentary," Anti-Cult, as a jump-off point. 

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A Deep Cut from January's Patreon.

Control the Court. Overturn Roe. Funnel anonymous donations and shady gifts. Deregulate for Jesus. Roll back the cultural clock. Celebrate. Rinse and Repeat.

Leonard Leo’s libertarian Catholic agenda has made him a preeminent power-broker in right-wing American politics. He’s reshaping society while enjoying the pipeline of cash and influence that connects billionaire GOP mega-donors and the SCOTUS judges he helped install.

Julian tracks how Leo’s Federalist Society used Trump as part of a decades-long systematic takeover of the judicial system that culminated in the current ethics and corruption scandal in the SCOTUS.

Show Notes

ProPublica “Friends of the Court” investigative journalism series

The Guardian Club For Growth GOP Insurectionist Support

Open Secret 2022 Donor List

Dark Money Spending After Citizen’s United

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse “The Front Group Swarms”

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Acclaimed actor Terrence Howard has a new role playing a heroic Galileo-like character on the YouTube and podcast stage, where he fearlessly points out the flaws in mainstream math and science.

Howard's recent appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience gave him three hours to explain how his dreams and spiritual visions, along with his own research and deep study of maverick experts, have revealed unique answers to the deepest unsolved mysteries of physics. Turns out that none of this is new, the actor actually unveiled his discoveries in a surprising lecture at the Oxford Union in 2017.

Today we'll break down these two cosmic events in space-time and discuss what it all means, and whether it's just a bit of fun or something more dangerous.

Show Notes

5 Craziest Moments from Terrence Howard on Rogan

Prophetic Charisma By Len Oakes: A Brief Overview 

Terrence Howard's Dangerous Mind 

Terrence Howard Patents Debunked

Howard Virtual reality Patent Claim

John Keeley and The Etheric Force Machine

Walter Russell Society, now named The University of Science and Philosophy

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Six chapters on approaches to prospirituality, now that we know (or think we know) what the hell conspirtuality is. This is a long episode, but there are evenly-placed breaks for you all to pause on!

Chapter 1: Positions

After 4 years, we’ve come to a natural question at the end of defining the problem of conspirituality. How do we orient ourselves towards possible answers?

Chapter 2: The Prospirituality Challenge

If you’re clear on how spirituality—including beliefs in the supernatural—can be medicine, you can be clearer on where it becomes poison.

Chapter 3: I did not expect to be friends with Joseph Baker

I never thought I would be friends with a student of A Course in Miracles: maybe my judgments about its inevitably bad impacts are misplaced. Also: it’s not a good idea to dismiss anyone on the basis of religious belief if you don’t know how that belief actually operates, and you won’t unless you talk to them. 

Chapter 4: Buddhist Tolerance, Buddhist Repair

Conspirituality is right at home within high-demand groups or cults. Paranoid and controlling social structures feed on paranoid and dissociative emotions and ideas. For members and observers alike, it can become difficult to tell whether the content of the religious group is intrinsic to its cruelty, or whether these can be separated. Surprisingly, some high-demand groups can foster reforms from within, with members reframing the very concepts that had been weaponized against them to liberate themselves. In that sense, the doctrines and beliefs can be part of the problem, but also part of the solution. 

Chapter 5: Eve Sedgwick

Cynicism about religion is an occupational hazard of this beat. It’s also popular. At times it’s worth questioning the critical economy focused more on deconstruction than on generating ideas and solidarity. 

Chapter 6: The Trouble and Joy of Belief and Silence

“You will know them by their fruits. Do we gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles?”

Matthew 7:16

Show Notes

Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People

Survivors of an International Buddhist Cult Share Their Stories

Paranoid Reading, Reparative Reading

Baylor Religion Survey: 3 graphs

On the Relation Between Religiosity and the Endorsement of Conspiracy Theories: The Role of Political Orientation

Anxious attachment and belief in conspiracy theories

There are higher levels of conspiracy beliefs in more corrupt countries

The impact of economic inequality on conspiracy beliefs

To trust or not to trust in the thrall of the COVID-19 pandemic: Conspiracy endorsement and the role of adverse childhood experiences, epistemic trust, and personality functioning

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Terrence Howard recently made waves (again) when appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast to discuss “Terryology,” a language of logic which he claims proves one times one equals two. Since he announced his theory in 2015 (and published it on Twitter in 2017), he’s been repeatedly criticized. In this latest round, that criticism is coming from Eric Weinstein, who appeared on physicist Brian Keating’s podcast to discuss Howard’s math. As usual with Weinstein, the conversation went in a million directions. Derek and Julian discuss.

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Are you ready to “live beyond 180? That’s the tagline of the 10th Annual Biohacking Conference, which went down in Dallas two weeks ago. The brainchild of Dave Asprey, the conference focused on numerous “hacks” to help you live not only longer, but better and longer. This has been a decades-long goal of Asprey, who you might know as the founder of Bulletproof Coffee—you know, despite mountains of clinical evidence stating otherwise, this tech entrepreneur is certain that melting a stick of butter in your coffee every morning is the key to longevity.

Was the key, that is. Dave is now behind the supposed “mold-free” coffee company, Danger Coffee, alongside a whole bunch of other sciencey gimmicks, like his “Wasabi Method,” which was launched at the conference. The key to longevity, it seems, is knowing that your sales funnel always depends on there being another key. That’s the vibe our returning correspondent, Mallory DeMille, got when reviewing the many reels and videos that surfaced from the conference rooms at the Fairmont Hotel.

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QAnon’s “Great Awakening,” influencers claiming to channel spirits or aliens, prophecies of a glorious Christian apocalypse—all aspects of the modern phenomenon that we call “conspirituality.” A sign of our crazy times?!

Not quite. The roots of this passionate delusion can be traced to an eventful time in American history: the mid-1800’s. In this episode of his pseudoscience series, Julian covers the relationship between famous Spiritualists who talked to the dead on stage, the emerging science of parapsychology, early formulations of New Age beliefs, and the passionate Christian revivalism centered in New York State’s “burned-over district.” 

Show Notes

Doomsday Prophecy and Spiritual Porn (earlier episode on 19th century Great Awakening)

Hearing Voices, Seeing Colors, & Fighting Phantoms (earlier episode on temporal lobe epilepsy)

New Yorker: Why Did So Many Victorians Try To Talk To The Dead 

PBS: William Miller and The Second Great Awakening

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It’s all just a show, and sometimes that makes it all the more real. Playwright and theater scholar Hank Willenbrink joins Matthew to look at the spectacle of Trump through the lens of performance studies. 

From his childhood listening to Norman Vincent Peale, to his lifelong fascination with Broadway, to his TV celebrity, to the tableau vivants of evangelicals gathered round him to sanctify his holy mission, Trump hits his marks so well he doesn’t even need to remember his lines. Now he has a new role to play: the framed felon. 

Show Notes

Performing for the Don: Theaters of Faith in the Trump Era

About Me – Hank Willenbrink 

Bread and Puppet Theater — Glover, VT

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We talked to Renee Diresta, when she in the middle of a life-changing crisis. Elon Musk’s hand-picked "journalists" were testifying in front of Congress as part of the “Twitter Files.” Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger sounded the alarm about a supposedly vast conspiracy between think tanks, big tech companies, and government intelligence agencies to censor the free speech of conservative Americans. They referred to that conspiracy as the “Censorship Industry Complex," identifying its leader as a shadowy former CIA intern named Renee Diresta.

The reality is that Diresta was involved in a 2020 academic project called the Election Integrity Partnership, which studied then gave reports on viral social media content steeped in misinformation. She joins us to discuss her new book, Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality.

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Nicole Shanahan, RFK Jr's VP pick, has recently started her own podcast. Dilbert creator Scott Adams joined. The conversation quickly turned into a conspiracy free-for-all, starting with DEI, then swerving into fertility, vaccines, transgender people, EMFs, and much more. Derek responds.

Show Notes

Inside the fringe worldview of RFK Jr.’s VP pick

A Running Mate’s History: $1 Billion, Cocaine, a Fling With Elon Musk

Back to the People: Reframing Our Brains on Food, Debt, and DEI (full episode)

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When young TikTok dance stars joined 7M Films, they got access to big production budgets, luxurious locations, and exciting career opportunities. There was a problem, however. Their boss, Robert Shinn, was a self-styled Christian pastor who placed increasing pressure on their time and finances, demanded unquestioning devotion, and isolated them from the outside world. (Julian covered the story of a family trying to regain contact with their daughter, Miranda Derrick, who had disappeared into Shinn’s Shekinah Church for Conspirituality 105: TikTok, Cults & Conspiracies.)

A new Netflix docuseries picks up where we left off. Julian talks to the series director, Derek Doneen, to discuss “Dancing for the Devil.”

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Every year, the Environmental Working Group, a Washington, DC-based lobbying group, publishes its “Dirty Dozen” report, which supposedly informs consumers about the 12 “dirtiest” fruits and vegetables. The report is repeated verbatim by major media outlets, which routinely demonize strawberries, blueberries, and other conventionally-grown produce. But does their science hold up?

Not according to the majority of scientists and researchers. Over the decades, the EWG has slammed some pesticides but not others, ignored data on dosages, and even wondered out loud if all that mercury in vaccines might just be causing autism. They also routinely ignore potentially hazardous organic chemicals, while selling “verified” labels for skin care products and sunscreens.

Today Derek is going to walk me, the non-science journalist, through the work of the EWG before he talks to biomedical scientist Dr Andrea Love and cosmetic chemist Dr Michelle Wong about the group’s questionable methodologies and fear-mongering tactics.

Show Notes

Environmental Working Group and the Dirty Dozen

The Environmental Working Group’s “Dirty Dozen” list is a danger to public health put out by an organic industry funded activist group

Influence Watch: Environmental Working Group

Dietary Exposure to Pesticide Residues from Commodities Alleged to Contain the Highest Contamination Levels

Ken Cook: The Story of The Environmental Working Group 

What Biden’s oil record means for the industry’s future

Alleged ‘deal’ offer from Trump to big oil could save industry $110bn, study finds

10 years after Flint's lead water crisis began, a lack of urgency stalls 'proper justice'

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In this Listener Stories episode, Matthew sits down with Jude Mills, an old friend from the yoga world, to hear her story about growing up in an anti-theist home in hyper-sectarian Scotland, but feeling the inexorable call of religion. So started a long journey toward her vocation as a hospice chaplain at the height of COVID. 

They discuss the needs of the dying, regardless of beliefs, and how losing dignity to institutional abuse does not necessarily mean losing faith. In discussing how some former believers feel excluded from community life, Jude says something remarkable: “Everyone has a right to a sacramental life.”

Jude has a Master’s degree in Public Theology and research interests which include: podcasting as a medium for theological reflection and enquiry; narratives of spiritual and religious abuse and harm and issues of disabled, neurodivergent and LGBTQ+ inclusivity in church contexts. Her podcast 'Fkd Up By Faith' will be the research subject for her PhD. 

Show Notes

Jude's website

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There’s been a growing acceptance of religious belief from the previously religious-averse, especially in the Covid contrarian space. This comes in the wake of a number of recent high-profile conversions, most notably Russell Brand getting baptized. Why are the skeptical suddenly finding faith? 

Derek and Julian discuss their atheism in the context of these recent changes of heart—including Brand’s recent appearance on Bret Weinstein’s Dark Horse podcast. They share how their own skepticism has evolved and informs their work, debating on what value religion and, specifically, a belief in a god, holds for spiritual practices today.

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Philosopher Thi Nguyen first visited us 150 episodes ago (!!) to discuss how social media gamification exploded online conspiracy theories and audience capture drags content producers toward the seductions of premature clarity—and the ecstasy of fascism. 

Nguyen returns to discuss “value capture”: how simplified and portable metrics in institutions, technology, and media landscapes erode our moral capacities as we pursue goals we never signed up for. (We even consider this influence on podcasting!)

Throughout, we also talk about the heart of Nguyen’s book, Games: Agency as Art, in which he explores the liberatory nature of games that offer the pleasures of striving and absorption. We wonder whether—if we valued and understood play for its own sake—we might not need to gamify the world. 

Show Notes

Games: Agency as Art 

Games and the Art of Agency (Philosophical Review) (2020 APA Article Prize; selected for Philosopher Annual‘s “10 Best Philosophy Articles of 2019”)

Value Capture (JESP)

Trust as an Unquestioning Attitude (OSE)

Transparency is Surveillance (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research) (short summary)

Hostile Epistemology (keynote for the 2022 NASSP.)

Autonomy and Aesthetic Engagement (Mind) (audio)

Art as a Shelter from Science (Aristotelian Society Supplementary)

The Arts of Action (Philosopher’s Imprint)

Moral Outrage Porn with Bekka Williams (Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy) (selected for Philosopher Annual‘s “10 Best Philosophy Articles of 2020”)

How Twitter Gamifies Communication (Applied Epistemology, OUP) (And a shortened version for students, with suggested classroom exercises.)

Echo Chambers and Epistemic Bubbles (Episteme)

The Seductions of Clarity (RIPS)

Cultural Appropriation and the Intimacy of Groups, with Matt Strohl (Philosophical Studies)

Trust and Antitrust — Annette Baier

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Russell Brand has accepted Jesus into his heart and been baptized in the spirit. But does his conversion to Christianity make sense along the New Age rebel to right-wing, conspiracy-theorist radicalization pipeline? Is Brand seeking absolution for his sins, or recognizing that most of his audience are Christians “oppressed” by authoritarian libs? 

Julian explores how the “enlightened outsider” uses pseudoscience to justify spiritual beliefs that are actually connective tissue between conspiracism, New Age metaphysics, and faux Christian victimhood.

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Two weeks ago, several university administrators asked militarized police units to smash pro-Palestinian encampment protests on quads and in occupied buildings. It happened at places like Columbia and CUNY, and the University of Texas in Austin where our guest today, Dr. Peniel Joseph, teaches on the history of the Black Power movement. 

In the midst of the news cycle frenzy, an old phrase began popping up in discussions of who the protestors were and whether the police actions were justified. Authorities said (and media figureheads repeated uncritically) that protestors were infiltrated and influenced by “outside agitators.”

It’s a phrase with a long history to it. Joining Matthew to unpack it is Dr. Peniel Joseph, a historian of the Civil Rights era, during which time the trope reached peak exposure, when it was lobbed at Martin Luther King Jr., as he sat in Birmingham Jail.

Show Notes

Peniel E. Joseph

NYPD Chief of Patrol on the “unknown entity”

Thursday's Headlines: NYPD Discovers Chained Bike Locks Edition

Nearly all Gaza campus protests in the US have been peaceful, study finds 

Unmasking The 'Outside Agitator'

Debunking the “Outside Agitator” Trope amid pro-Palestinian campus protests

Cost of repairing occupation damage at Portland State library estimated at $750K

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Matthew is in the guest seat today! Why? Because in 2019—just months before the pandemic and this podcast kicked off—he published a book titled Practice and All is Coming: Abuse, Cult Dynamics and Healing in Yoga and Beyond. It focused on survivor stories of assault and abuse within the cultic mechanisms of Pattabhi Jois' Ashtanga Yoga community. The book also proposed a path into co-creating safer yoga communities via enhanced critical thinking, self-and-other-care, student empowerment, and community resilience. 

In many ways, this book holds the keys to how one-third of the team has tackled the conspirituality era. Derek and Julian interview their colleague about it all on the occasion of the release of a second edition, now titled: Surviving Modern Yoga: Cult Dynamics, Charismatic Leaders, and What Survivors Can Teach Us (North Atlantic Books).

Show Notes

Surviving Modern Yoga by Matthew Remski | PenguinRandomHouse.com

Yoga’s Culture of Sexual Abuse: Nine Women Tell Their Stories | The Walrus

Survivors of an International Buddhist Cult Share Their Stories | The Walrus

How a #MeToo Facebook Post Toppled a Yoga Icon | by Matthew Remski | GEN

Shielded for Decades, A Yoga Leader's Alleged Sexual Abuse Finally Comes Under Fire

How to Respond to Sexual Abuse Within a Yoga or Spiritual Community—Jubilee Cooke, Karen Rain 

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In 2020, former NY Times journalist Isabel Wilkerson published Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. The book tells a compelling story: that the root of our social divisions is the invented hierarchical structure of castes, not, as we often assume in America, race. Race, she writes, is only another manifestation of caste.

While it’s certainly an important topic here in America, Wilkerson shows, by investigating the longstanding caste system in India, the social divisions in Nazi Germany, and America’s founding and expansion through chattel slavery, that caste is a universal phenomenon.

Derek discusses his thoughts on this powerful and important book.

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Dr Sarah Ballantyne forged a career in science communication and health education advocating for autoimmune solutions in food and the paleo diet. In 2014, she began questioning her approach. Shortly after, she realized she was spreading nutrition misinformation and has dedicated her career to correcting those errors.

Derek talks to Sarah about the dangers of diet and nutrition misinformation, dealing with obesity and eating disorders, and the challenges of talking about food in public. Her new book is Nutrivore: The Radical New Science for Getting the Nutrients You Need From the Food You Eat.

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We have a real treat today for listeners who love all forms of movement, especially yoga and strength training.

Derek and Julian talk to Movement Logic hosts, Laurel Beversdorf and Sarah Court, who navigate the curvilinear path of creating irreverent yet high quality science-based movement content that sets teachers and students free from dogma and fear-mongering. Our two podcasts intersect by looking into fallen gurus, pseudoscience health claims, dodgy alignment dogmas, and cults of personality susceptible to the dangers of conspiracism. And this week we’re diving into a recent Movement Logic episode on back pain specialist, Stuart McGill.

Yet, as this conversation shows, all hope is not lost, and all physical culture is not a pipeline into body fascism, or worse—multi-level marketing. There are still intelligent and grounded educators who share the love of movement, infused with the logic and humility of science.

Laurel Beversdorf is an international yoga educator, a certified kettlebell specialist, and a strength coach. Sarah Court is a Doctor of Physical Therapy, movement mentor, and yoga teacher trainer.

Show Notes

Movement Logic

Episode 62: Make McGill Make Sense

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In the first full episode of this ongoing series, Matthew looks at the anti-abortion arcs of two men: Rob Schenck and Frank Pavone.

Both leaders invested the images and remains of the unborn with passionate but imaginary desires that obscured from them how much harm they were causing. 

One of them exited that highway, but the other is still burning it up.

Includes the story of Kermit Gosnell, and how his Philadelphia abortion abattoir exemplified a political and moral disaster worthy of Naomi Klein. An obvious, organized crime, something that everyone could see but some tried to paper over, aided and abetted by the dominant order and progressive hypocrisy. Something that becomes the focal point of reasonable rage, but then leads to twisted conclusions. 

Content warning: abortion details.

Full Show Notes available on Patreon.

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The late historian of religion James Carse (1932-2020) made a radical proposal in his 2012 book, The Religious Case Against Belief. He argued that beliefs, far from being central to or definitive of religion, are actually antithetical to religious community. 

A religion’s historical longevity, he argued, depends on its ability to absorb and neutralize beliefs—epistemological dead ends built on willful ignorance. 

“The challenge to religion,” Carse says, “is not its opponents from without, but its believers from within, and the real enemy of religion is belief itself.”

What does this mean for a project like Conspirituality and other projects of disillusionment carried out in the shadow of New Atheism and other modern skeptical movements?

Blair Hodges of the Fireside and Family Proclamations podcasts joins Matthew to discuss a potential casualty of the battle against religious extremism: a nuanced understanding of religion itself.

Show Notes

The Religious Case Against Belief by James P. Carse

Fireside with Blair Hodges

Family Proclamations w/ Blair Hodges  

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Robert F Kennedy, Jr isn’t backing down. You can’t get away from his voice or his endless content stream. He’s banked on tech world oligarch anti-vax mom, Nicole Shanahan, to nail down the VP slot. His Children’s Health Defense charity is casting doubt on whether polio was even a virus. And he keeps claiming he’s not against vaccines himself, but his messaging around it tells a different story.

It’s been a few months since we’ve checked up on Chaos Kennedy, so it’s high time we did: to look at polling, rhetoric, and charismatic technique.

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"Human Biologist" and life coach Gary Brecka's star rose after biohacking UFC President Dana White's health. Yet Derek has a few questions this week: Is someone with a degree from a chiropractic college qualified to talk about seed oils, GMOs, depression, tinnitus, fluoride, detoxifying through water fasts, and diet plans? Is it concerning that his 10X Health System cofounder is a fervent Scientologist? And what happens when you actually read the science Brecka is linking to?

Show Notes

Worst U.S. cities for air pollution ranked in new American Lung Association report

GMO Foods: How Genetically Modified Foods Sabotage Your Health | Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka

Are children and pregnant women risking their health by eating “GMO” foods? The American Association of Pediatrics controversially says ‘yes’. The real question: Is the AAP endangering the food vulnerable?

Organic foods are not healthier...or pesticide free.

A Comprehensive Review of Health-Benefiting Components in Rapeseed Oil

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A Deep Cut from our Patreon archive (July 2023)

What do we mean when we say that we believe something? When the QAnon Shaman got dressed on the morning of January 6, he put on his red, white, and blue face paint, his postmodern quasi-Native American horned fur hat, and grabbed the spear to which he had attached an American flag. In performance mode, this cosplay persona had already garnered him a taste of the attention that would soon increase exponentially as he became the most recognizable figure of the Capitol Riot.

In today’s Bonus, Julian argues that his costume, as well as his ritual actions on that day were also an expression of a political worldview, run through with deeply held spiritual beliefs about the world and his role in it. The history of political religion, propagandistic conspiracies, and progressive spiritual convictions may show that—far from being trivial—belief is at the heart of the American, and perhaps the human, story.

Intro music: Single Origins—Luz Cafe

Interstitial: Silent Song—Eccodek (EarthRise SoundSystem Remix)

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Neal Brennan has upped the artistic ante in stand-up comedy. In Netflix specials like "3 Mics and Blocks" he’s explored loneliness, isolation, and the mental health fallout of growing up the youngest of 10 in a Catholic family with an extremely unwell father. In the process he’s made some of the great mysteries of family pain and inner turmoil more tolerable.

And—he’s a fan of our podcast, because in his search for relief, he’s tripped through the land of psychedelics, where conspirituality can sour the active ingredients.

Neal joins us today to talk about his weird journey through the plant medicine scene, to wonder whether emotional and spiritual healing makes him funnier, and to answer our questions about how today’s comics are dealing—or not—with their supersized role as political pundits.

His new special is called Crazy Good.

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Tensions between Israel and Iran escalated as supernaturally-charged conspiracy theories about the solar eclipse flooded the internet. And so Julian searched for answers about the mysterious “red heifer.” What is so special about a red cow? Might its discovery and ensuing journey from Texas to Jerusalem have played a role in the October 7 attacks? Why are zealots from all three Abrahamic religions so focused on one piece of holy real estate? Could apocalyptic prophecies actually be self-fulfilling, even when the metaphysics are make-believe?

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Matthew is joined by Theo Wildcroft and Harriet McAtee, co-editors of The Yoga Teacher's Survival Guide: Social Justice, Science, Politics, and Power (Singing Dragon Publications), a volume of essays from 16 yoga world contributors.

Three yoga culture critic nerds get into the weeds of how wellness workers and yoga teachers survive and navigate a post-pandemic world that exists at the crossroads of:

• capitalism and spirituality
• medicine and religion
• modern therapeutics and precolonial philosophy and caregiving
• gigwork and care work

Theo is a yoga scholar. Harriet has been training yoga teachers for seven years in a little school in Oxford, UK.

Show Notes

The Yoga Teacher's Survival Guide | Singing Dragon - US 

Theo Wildcroft 

Harriet McAtee

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“Cult expert” Steve Hassan has been publicly concerned with the complex sociology of trans youth since 2020. We track that interest back to his communications with gender critical activists in 2017, who reached out to him because they believed that his cult theory could shed light on what they believed were nefarious aspects of the trans awareness movement. In the spirit of helpfulness, but without any chops in the subject, he stepped up to the plate and started swinging.

Regardless of how earnest or paranoid his concern is, his access to this landscape has been bought with his intellectual legacy, and been filtered through networks that question trans identity altogether. His most inflammatory (but also silly) claim is that many young people are being hypnotized by online pornography and influenced by social media groups to the extent they inexorably choose medical transition. We investigate and analyze this unfortunate skid into the culture war mud.

Hassan has stated at length his opposition to the “cancel culture” he believes is directed at Rowling and himself. This episode is not that. It’s a sober evaluation of legacy, disciplinary overreach, and what better public intellectual engagement would look like.

Show Notes

Full show notes posted to our website and Patreon.

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Following up on our Long COVID episode with Tara Haelle, Matthew will be expanding the Listener Stories portfolio with stories from listeners about navigating Long COVID. Why? Because there’s nothing like a mysterious disease, denied by some, stigmatized by others, and politicized by multiple interests, that will bring a person closer to the appeal of alt-med conspirituality.

Matthew Stillman is our guest today. Author, documentary filmmaker, and lifelong New Yorker, Stillman grew up in an eccentric family of spiritualism and alternative medicine, but which also fostered a healthy respect for evidence-based medicine. So what happens when experts at Mt. Sinai Center for Post-COVID care reach the end of their capacity to help him with not one but two strains of Long COVID? Red light therapy! Chinese herbs! And a bracing contemplation of what it means to explore the tension between hope and knowledge.

Show Notes

Matthew Stillman

The major genetic risk factor for severe COVID-19 is inherited from Neanderthals | Nature

How Genes from Neanderthals Predispose People to Severe COVID-19 | The Scientist Magazine

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Matthew is joined by historian Neil J. Young, co-host of the excellent Past Present Podcast, to talk about his new book: Coming Out Republican: a History of the Gay Right.

Young’s riveting storytelling shows how, beginning in the aftermath of WWII, many American gay men—born into socially conservative and religious families from which they had struggled to individuate—hitched the wagon of their political hopes to a Republican party they believed would champion their privacy and individual civil rights. 

Ground zero for their fiercely libertarian clubs and action committees was San Francisco, where a culture of rugged entrepreneurship fostered the slogan “Keep the government out of our bedrooms, and out of our wallets.” It was an individualist politics that looked to Civil Rights and women’s rights movements for inspiration, but not allyship. 

In time that same GOP would lead a culture war against everything queer—paradoxically led by closeted gay politicians who, with deeply conflicted motives, legislated against their fellows. But even as the tide turned, many gay Republicans kept their shoulders to the unforgiving wheel of respectability politics.

Young illuminates the flashes of bravery and self-reliance in these men’s stories, but also shows what happens when a marginalized group seeks acceptance and political power—instead of liberation—within a culture built on exclusion.

Neil writes for WaPo, the Atlantic, CNN, the Los Angeles Times, Vox, Politico, Slate, and the New York Times. 

Show Notes

Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right, Young

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When Moms For Liberty attacks libraries with demands to ban books about MLK Jr and age-appropriate sex education, and claims that librarians are grooming their children into the trans agenda, they’re enacting the worst forms of neo-fascist bullying. But they’re also paradoxically defending a troubled American legacy against a librarian culture attempting to course-correct towards greater inclusion.

To discuss this problem, Matthew talks to Heath Umbreit, a reference librarian who works at a public library in the northeastern U.S. Mis- and disinformation has been a professional and personal interest of theirs for several years; Heath's study of the phenomenon focuses on a critical examination of popular narratives about disinformation, the concept of epistemic supremacy, and the ways in which information and disinformation intersect with systemic power differentials in American society.

Show Notes

Derek gives the Keynote Address at the 2023 Oregon Library Association's Annual Conference

Library Bill of Rights | Advocacy, Legislation & Issues 

Students, authors fight censorship in PA schools 

Kuo & Marwick, "Critical Disinformation Studies"

Morales & Williams, "Moving Toward Transformative Librarianship: Naming and Identifying Epistemic Supremacy"

danah boyd, "You Think You Want Media Literacy... Do You?"

PEN America, 2023 Banned Books Update: Banned in the USA

Kelly Jensen, Trauma, Book Bans, and Libraries: A Resource Guide for Library Workers, Library Supporters, and Beyond

Kristen Browde, Who's Making News for Sex Crimes Involving Children?

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Project 2025 is the libertarian conservative Heritage Foundation’s systematic governance plan for the next Republican president. The 920-page plan aims to implement the "unitary executive theory," which would give all of the power of the US government to the executive branch—Donald Trump, if he wins in November. 

Derek and Julian read the chapter on the Department of Education, which focuses on unlocking public funds for Christian schools while banning any discussion on DEI, CRT, or gender theory.

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A common sentiment in wellness spaces is that people turn to alt-med practices due to the exorbitant costs of American healthcare. While the latter is certainly true, Derek and Julian discuss why a lot of products and services in wellness land is really just another form of extractive capitalism.

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This week we take stock of the full entrenchment of the Mirror World, where conspirituality influencers bask in the rays of confident delusion. After a little stage-setting on the heterodox mediasphere, we open with a snapshot of conspirituality Valhalla as we listen in on Joe Rogan and Chris Rufo talking about unhoused people as though they are children who haven’t been given good boundaries. 

Then we’ll look at four instances in which the spectacle brokers meet reality. What happens when Chaya Raichik gets bodied by Taylor Lorenz? What happens when the Moms for Liberty have to explain themselves on 60 minutes? What happens when Destiny rejects Jordan Peterson’s bullshit? And what happens when the mack daddy of it all, Alex Jones, gets confronted by Sandy Hook parents, face to face? Does reality break through?

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Project 2025 is the libertarian conservative Heritage Foundation’s systematic governance plan for the next Republican president. The 920-page plan aims to implement the "unitary executive theory," which would give all of the power of the US government to the executive branch—Donald Trump, if he wins in November.

This week, Derek and Julian investigate the chapter on the Department of Agriculture, which aims to strip funding for food stamps and welfare programs and further deregulate Big Ag. And if you think the author is part of a climate change denial think tank, you'd be correct.

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The death of Mahsa Jina Amini at the hands of the Islamic Republic’s “morality police” in September 2022 lit a fuse on a fervent global protest movement. Jina’s crime was wearing an “improper” headscarf in public. The slogan, “Woman, Life, Freedom,” which first emerged in the fight for Kurdish equality, was used by thousands of brave, defiant women in Iran (along with male supporters), who called for an end to oppression, discrimination, tyranny, and dictatorship.

Eighteen months later, the Iranian government has increased video surveillance and morality police patrols, imposed even harsher penalties for female disobedience, and leaned even further into brutal torture methods and daily executions. Meanwhile, Ali Khamenei’s administration floods the population with propaganda and conspiracy theories.

Julian talks to Iranian human rights activist and former BBC World Service reporter, Negin Shiraghaei, about the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, which she says remains active and unstoppable.

Show Notes

Iran one year after Woman, Life, Freedom

Iran: Alarming Surge in Executions

Khamenei Refuses US Help, Citing COVID Conspiracy Theory

Iran’s Supreme Leader Calls Gender Equality a Zionist Plot

Iranian Singer Sentenced to 3 years in Jail  for Mahsa Amini Protest Anthem

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In response to Kerry Howley’s meticulous reporting on the deceptions of Andrew Huberman in New York Magazine, Huberstans around the world are braying that the man’s private life has nothing to do with his virtue as a science communicator.

Not so, we argue in this brief. Deception in one mirrors deception in the other, and there is no private life for the influencer who wants to influence your private life.

Beyond shilling for Athletic Greens and saying that sunscreen winds up in your brain, Huberman opines on relationships, sex, and addiction issues as if he is an expert—instead of (an alleged) hot mess.

Pseudoscience and pseudotherapy are parallel harms—both using manipulative jargon to convince consumers or women respectively that the influencer is well-researched and using best practices to be of service.

So we advise all Huberstans to view their hero… holistically.

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Reverend Rob Schenck spent 30 years on the front lines of the Evangelical war against Roe V. Wade. He blockaded abortion clinics, screamed at women in crisis, used fetal remains as political props, and helped wage a covert war of moneyed influence over federal officials to end abortion access.

Now, in a return to his deeper religious commitments, he is repenting his past. In an interview with Matthew, he discusses his blissful conversion experience as a teenager rooted in what he believed was a radical social justice movement. And he describes what he now sees: an anti-abortion movement helping to galvanize the Christian Nationalism poised to wreak havoc on American politics, and what we can do to push back against its aggression.

Show Notes

Fresh Air for July 11, 2018: An Evangelical Minister's Change Of Heart On Abortion

Former Anti-Abortion Leader Alleges Another Supreme Court Breach

Former Anti-Abortion Lobbyist Rev Robert Schenck Statement on "Operation Higher Court"

Robert "Rob" L. Schenck

About - Truth Revealed — Rob Schenck’s blog

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In this series of audio essays, Matthew will examine how children as symbols—but not persons with their own internal lives—are at the center of conspirituality anxiety and discourse. 

There are two types of imaginary child in conspirituality. One is an object of dread. The other is an idol of aspiration.

In the realm of dread we have fetuses murdered by late term abortion, children who are trafficked, made autistic by vaccines, sexualized by pornography in elementary school, or mutilated by trans activist doctors. 

In the realm of idols we have newborn babies sliding like dolphins into warm birthing tubs after a mere hour of ecstatic, medically-unassisted home births. We have little girls in prairie dresses or first communion veils who must be protected from library drag queens or woke grade school teachers. We have starseeds and indigo children who carry prophecies from the great beyond. 

We often reflect on the problem of authority on this podcast. Who are our leaders, and what gives them power? Why do conspiracists default to God to corroborate fantasies? What gap in cultural fatherhood is Jordan Peterson trying to fill? 

With this series, Matthew looks in the other direction: what does the conspirituality crowd do with its own authority? How do misgivings, regrets and shame in relation to children get inflated and projected into moral panics?

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Former monk turned spiritual influencer to the stars, Jay Shetty, has amassed 15 million followers on Instagram. He’s interviewed Michelle Obama, Kim Kardashian, and Kobe Bryant on his popular podcast. Shetty has received accolades from Gwenyth Paltrow and Ellen Degeneres. He even officiated J Lo and Ben Affleck’s wedding.

Yet when LA-based writer John McDermott was assigned to cover Shetty for Esquire, something seemed…off. When he started pulling at some threads, Esquire pulled out of the feature. Fortunately, The Guardian agreed to publish McDermott’s investigative reporting, in which he found little of Shetty’s origin story holds up to scrutiny. 

John joins Derek and Matthew to discuss.

Show Notes

Uncovering the higher truth of Jay Shetty

‘Very few have balls’: How American news lost its nerve

Jay Shetty Is Full Of SH*T!

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Does God have a recipe? That’s the first line of the blurb of Holy Food: How Cults, Communes, and Religious Movements Influenced What We Eat: An American History by independent food historian, Christina Ward. Ward’s survey of American religious groups and cults through the foods they grow, source, and prepare leads into an in-depth discussion about cults and high-demand groups that use food, and food restrictions, as a method for control. 

That’s not all she tells Derek—they also discuss the ritual of sharing a meal. Matthew and Julian offer their own reflections on food in high-demand settings before Christina joins to discuss her excellent book.

Show Notes

Holy Food

Christina Ward

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Dolphins, drugs, new age music. Isolation tanks as a portal into other dimensions. True love and fake aliens. Julian shares a personal love story from the nineties that intersects with the work of prolific scientist, inventor, and psychonaut, John C. Lilly. 

The belief that we can contact extraterrestrial civilizations, which are waiting to usher humanity into a golden age of light and love, is now a hugely profitable and popular commodity. Apparently these extraterrestrials also want to help us vanquish the forces of Deep State darkness. This is evidenced by the QAnon-and-alien-disclosure-style of programming on Gaia’s spiritual subscription platform (which brings in roughly $80 million annually).

Yet: Gaia is currently embroiled in a legal battle with a former host who claims that his stories about secret space programs and eight-foot tall “blue avian” aliens are actually part of his trademarked creative IP. When it comes down to dollars, he admits it’s all make-believe. Has he really ever dropped acid in a flotation tank though?!

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Masculinity, in all its wounded and preening anxiety, is the perennial currency of American populism.

America’s foremost public historian on fitness and education, Natalia Petrzela, returns to the pod to discuss her recent study, with Ilyse Hogue, of the appeal RFK Jr. has with young men, and what progressives can learn from it. 

Show Notes

Bio – Natalia Petrzela 

RFK Jr. has a distinct appeal when it comes to young male voters — Petrzela and Hogue

Robert F. Kennedy Jr | "My Plan To Heal Addiction" | News Nation 

Prior coverage of RFK Jr.

Brief: RFK Jr Flirts with Body Fascism (w/Natalia Petrzela) — Conspirituality

164: The Two Faces of Robert Francis Kennedy Jr. — Conspirituality

Brief: The New Age Origin Story of RFK Jr’s Campaign — Conspirituality

Brief: RFK Jr’s New Director of Propaganda — Conspirituality

Special Report: RFK Jr.’s Independence Day — Conspirituality

Brief: RFK's Health Propaganda Roundtable — Conspirituality

Brief: RFK Jr., The Anti-Vax Candidate — Conspirituality     

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The “healer” mutters prayers, flutters his hands over the patient’s belly, then rubs his fingers close to her navel. A stream of what looks like blood shoots out from between his fingers. After a few more finger wiggles, he appears to pull several bloody cocktail shrimp out of an invisible incision. The patient is healed. Of something.

Welcome to “psychic surgery.”

Documentarian of the uncanny, Brad Abrahams, takes our correspondent seat this week to explain how Shirley MacLaine, Burt Lancaster, Andy Kaufman, Charlie Mingus, and tens of thousands of Americans got drawn into the morbid healing craze that kicked off in the 1970s, and which may have seen its last hurrah with the imprisonment of Brazil’s John of God.

Centuries of colonization in Brazil and the Philippines, Brad explains, made conventional medical care basically unavailable for anyone poor or outside of major cities. This left a void for traditional and alternative healing to fill as the only real options, as well as provide a connection to a cultural identity that had been systematically repressed. And of course, charlatans rode the wave.

Brad brings his characteristic curiosity, empathy, and cultural competence, holding the door open for us to imagine why this abject form of medical and spiritual fraud speaks so deeply to so many.

Show Notes

Brad Abrahams

Love And Saucers — Brad Abrahams  

Do you see what I see? | Short Doc about Controversial Conspiracy Theorist Artist David Dees — Brad Abrahams 

72: John of Fraud (w/Lisa Braun Dubbels & Mirna Wabi-Sabi) — Conspirituality

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At what point do you tune someone out and no longer consider them worth considering? Is their entire catalog of thought defined by one encounter you don’t like? Multiple encounters? If you disagree with someone on one point, do you write them off entirely, or can you consider other points of agreement? What if your initial encounter with a thinker is disagreeable? What if you really like someone and then find them increasingly disagreeable over time? Have they really changed that much? Or have you? And would you know it if you did?

Derek meditates on these questions while working through his own process of consideration. Most importantly, he lands on one certainty: racists, bigots, transphobes, and misogynists need to be stamped out.

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Being a chaos agent is exhausting. The internet never ends. It’s so abstract, groundless. At some point, all of your content seems stale and redundant. All the conspiracy theories, outrage farming, and dietary supplements seem boring; your manic salesmanship starts to feel hollow. Maybe you’re also wondering about whether you’ve sold your soul, or who you may have hurt along the way.

What will you turn to? Who will help you? What will your ultimate piece of content be? From time out of mind, there’s only ever been one answer: GOD. Russell Brand, Joe Rogan, and Andrew Huberman have all recently made such confessions of faith. Derek and Matthew discuss.

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For 22 years, astrologers, channelers, and UFO enthusiasts have run booths next to crystal healers, purveyors of esoteric books and pseudoscience products, and paranormal enthusiasts at Los Angeles’s Airport Hilton. More recently, this event—the Conscious Life Expo—has increasingly featured speakers spouting red-pilled conspiracy theories about COVID, vaccines, and the Satanic alien reptilian cabal coming for your children.

To get an insider’s view, Julian donned his gray baseball camp and grabbed his recorder to do his own research on the latest iteration of conference room conspirituality.

Show Notes

Introduction to CymaTones cymatic sound therapy 

Activate your Pineal Gland: An introduction to your third eye and exercises to awaken the higher mind: Ruehlig, Bianca 

Shawn Buckley, Trucker Lawyer  

Ottawa's use of Emergencies Act against convoy protests was unreasonable, violated Charter, court rules

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This is a newly favorite mantra that RFK Jr is using on the presidential stump. 

The subtext, uttered in the shadow of a pandemic that this guy did what he could to minimize and bypass, carries a lot of American spiritual—or maybe pseudospiritual—baggage. 

Digging into what he means and what his demographic hears when he says “There are worse things than dying,” can tell us a lot about the status of Death, Grief and Belief in the American psyche—and even global capitalism—in this volatile time.

This episode is a recording of a talk Matthew gave at the 2024 Symposium on Death and Bereavement Studies in January, organized online by Terri Daniel of Portland, OR.

Show Notes

2024 Symposium - Death, Grief, and Belief

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Brad Onishi of Straight White American Jesus sits down with Matthew to analyze the debut of “America’s Bishop,” Joseph Strickland, on the CPAC stage, where he blessed MAGA Christian Nationalism with his purple finery and endless torrent of anti-choice bafflegab. 

Strickland—removed as Archbishop of Tyler, Texas in November by the ultra-woke Pope Francis—has hit the influencer circuit to firm up the sometimes-precarious Evangelical-Catholic alliance on the backs of women. His aw-shucks “humility” and East Texas drawl offers this reactionary movement genteel cover for its aggressive fever dreams. He is, as Onishi puts it, the Catholic Ned Flanders who conspires with Mr. Burns at night.

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Show Notes

Brad Onishi 

Conspirituality 183: Woke Pope Cancels America's Bishop w/Mike Lewis 

Weekly Roundup: Embryos are People Now? — Straight White American Jesus 

Nazis mingle openly at CPAC, spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories and finding allies 

Bishop Strickland at CPAC — LIfesite News (redpill site warning!)

The making of Bishop Strickland - Where Peter Is 

Strickland's Adventurous Online Legacy - Mike Lewis Extra 

Bishop Strickland's "Letter from a Friend" 

Twitter photo: Strickland with Fournier and Pavone

Catholic Priest Uses Aborted Fetus On Altar In Appeal For Donald Trump (Trigger warning. Image blurred, but still, JFC.) 

Fr. Frank Pavone uses aborted fetus in message for Election Day | National Catholic Reporter

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In the early days of the pandemic, most of the cultural focus was on the necessity of quarantine measures and the distinction between mild and severe COVID infections. Yet by May 2020, some were experiencing the phenomenon of long COVID. Now understood as a post-acute infection syndrome, patients suffering from it have endured mockery, stigmatization, and accusations of lying. Nonetheless, support and patient advocacy groups have led the way, first in demanding medical and social recognition, and now in consulting with receptive researchers on diagnosis and treatment.

We’re joined by science journalist Tara Haelle, whose work has appeared in Scientific American, NY Times, Washington Post, and more. She’s also the Infectious Disease Core Topic Leader at the Association of Health Journalists. Her work covering the pandemic, vaccines, and the Long COVID connection, which combines reporting on the latest science as well as writing from patients and patient advocates, has been indispensable in understanding this spectrum of diseases.

Show Notes

Possible contender for a Long COVID blood test 

RECOVER trial for Long COVID Treatments

New Yorker on the Yale LISTEN Study

LISTEN Study website

50% average lower prevalence in vaccinated people.

Tara Haelle’s Long COVID Connection project.

Opinion | Ed Yong: Reporting on Long Covid Taught Me to Be a Better Journalist - The New York Times

Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time | Disability Studies Quarterly 

COVERING LONG COVID | Lygia Navarro 

The Sick Times

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After going undercover at the Conscious Life Expo, Julian examines the weird synchronicities between himself and his mirror-world doppelganger, the eccentric Rhodesian conspiritualist, Sacha Stone. Close in age and born in the same African country, both white men got involved in New Age spirituality as aspiring rock musicians in their twenties. How then did their paths diverge so radically, even as they converged in Los Angeles?

Stone invokes a fantastical millenia-long cosmic holy war, claims the pyramids were charging stations for UFOs, and praises Vladamir Putin. Julian gives a brief real world history of the British Empire, South African Apartheid, and the legendary Zulu and Ndbele nations—and wonders, how much of Sacha’s macabre preoccupations are just white guilt?

Stay tuned for a cameo from Julian’s Dad.

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A contrarian doctor “just asking questions.” Super reasonable. Certainly not anti-vax, just a regular guy who grievance-mongers about quarantine measures and mocks people afraid of long Covid. Vinay Prasad cuts a different type of figure on the conspiracy-influencer stage. He fits right in with his pal, the charismatic guru-esque Dr. Zubin Damania, and might just pop up in your YouTube feed alongside Andrew Huberman and Peter Attia.

Prasad demands unrealistic randomized controlled trial data for everything on his podcast, including protecting ICU patients from Covid via visiting restrictions. Who’s volunteering for that control group?!

Julian sits down with returning guest, Dr. Jonathan Howard, the author of We Want Them Infected. They talk about Prasad (among others) who play a sensationalist science-distortion role in the digital economy and their connections to libertarian think tanks like AIER (architects of the Great Barrington Declaration) and Brownstone Institute—who’s founder, Jeffrey Tucker, wants to repeal laws around child labor and underage smoking.

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January 6, 2021. MAGA hats, tactical gear, American flags, poles turned into clubs. Another flag appears: white, with a blue corner square containing a red Latin cross. Another that proclaims “Jesus is King.”

If you’re agnostic or atheist, you might get that old familiar feeling. Horror at the irrational devotion, nausea at the toxic masculine violence that justifies itself as holy. 

But what if you recognize that Protestant flag from your own church sanctuary? What if you recognize in that mob people from your church choir? Will you wonder how their faith was replaced by conspiracy theories, and how their Jesus turned into Trump? 

That’s the question posed by “God & Country,” a new documentary by Dan Partland and produced by Rob Reiner, based on the book The Power Worshippers by Katherine Stewart. Stewart is an investigative reporter and author who has covered religious liberty, politics, policy, and education for over a decade. Her journalism appears in the NY Times, NBC, the New Republic, and the New York Review of Books. She joins us today to discuss the dangers of growing Christian Nationalism in America.

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The Cleveland Clinic's website states that leaky gut is a "hypothetical condition." Yet Cleveland Clinic physician, Mark Hyman, claims that leaky gut is at the foundation of autism, depression, cancer, diabetes, and much, much more—and has solutions to sell you.

Derek investigates the manipulative and contradictory world of functional medicine.

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An anti-vax, COVID-grievance, climate-science denying, communism panic-generating film by Mikki Willis just won “Best Documentary Feature” at the Santa Monica International Film Festival. 

Julian attended the festival in order to track how Willis’s latest paranoid pseudomentary, “Plandemic 3: The Great Awakening,” was platformed at this annual fete held in affluent Santa Monica alongside two other conspiracy films: “Shot Dead” and “We Will Not Be Silenced.” These three films include a who’s-who of conspiritualists: David Icke, JP Sears, Alex Jones, Joe Rogan, Brian Rose, Peter McCullough, and newer “medical whistle-blowers.”

This is the on-the-ground story about how a 30-year-old normie independent film festival got red-pilled into platforming such dangerous misinformation.

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When she’s not talking to her angel guides, Christiane Northrup says that taking Vitamin D is better than the HPV vaccine for preventing cervical cancer. When Kelly Brogan isn’t denying germ theory, she’s telling thousands of women in her online programmes to stop taking not only their SSRIs, but also birth control and Tylenol. When Naomi Wolf isn’t explaining to Steve Bannon where women’s liberation went wrong, she’s worried that vaccinated women are poisoning non-vaccinated women just by walking past them.

The train of messianic women wellness influencers rumbles on and on. But their pseudoscience claims and twisted forms of spiritualized feminism meet a brick wall in the work and advocacy of our guest today, Dr. Jen Gunter. Hailing from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Dr. Gunter is an OB/GYN who has been offering actual women’s health information through a solidly feminist lens for decades as the author of several books, including 2019’s The Vagina Bible, 2021’s The Menopause Manifesto, and her newest book, which dropped just 3 weeks ago: Blood: The science, medicine, and mythology of menstruation.

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Selling enemas to replace psych meds, or treat cancer, or cure autism is some dangerous shit.

But Matthew has a tingling sense that the wellness enema craze promises more than false health benefits. Perhaps the coffee might be an artisanal distraction from a more existential promise: a ritual of cleansing and muscular control for a world that feels filthy, guilty, and in absolute chaos. A way of returning to a crucially innocent time when you learned to hold it all in, then given permission to let it all out, and then lovingly cleaned up when you did.

Today, Instagram gives us permission to show it to the world: look at what I made! Look at how fresh and pure I am! Look at how I am polishing my innermost self. Look at this magic of making the invisible visible.

Welcome to your 50-minute analysis session to process Mallory’s brilliant reporting on Thursday: a tour through a labyrinth of dirt, control, differentiation, exhibitionism, shame—and possibly reclamation and integration.

Chapters:

1. How to Read an Enema
2. Managing Filth with Freud
3. Winnicott’s the Best
4. The Abject
5. Political Shit
6. Dear Kyah

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Show Notes

Conspirituality 192: Coffee is Your Friend, Not Your Enema

Paranoid Reading, Reparative Reading — Sedgwick

Know Your Enemy: UNLOCKED: Freud and Politics (w/ Pat Blanchfield) on Apple Podcasts

Freud, "Character and Anal Eroticism" | PDF

THE SEMINAR OF JACQUES LACAN BOOK X ANXIETY 1962 - 1963

The child, the family, and the outside world : Winnicott, D. W. (Donald Woods), 1896-1971 : Internet Archive

Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.

Pro-Trump rioters smeared poop in US Capitol hallways during belligerent attack

Are Anti-Vaxers Really Pooping Themselves Because of Ivermectin?

What Donald Trump Actually Smells Like, According to Ex-GOP Congressman

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Wellness influencers are quite capable of inventing and spreading health misinformation. When it comes to culture war issues, however, they're incapable of generating original thoughts. So it shouldn't surprise anyone that they simply parrot talking points created by the likes of Chris Rufo and Bari Weiss, especially when it comes to their uninformed critiques of DEI and CRT efforts.

Author, lawyer, and social impact consultant Dax-Devlon Ross takes Derek on a journey through the life of a DEI facilitator—and corrects the bias and misinformation pundits like Rufo and Weiss spread as gospel.

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This episode has been brewing for some time. This week we ask: which hole is coffee really supposed to go in? Because, in the contrarian and conspiratorial wellness world, a growing number of influencers advocate for your morning java to go where the sun doesn't shine. If that's not alarming enough, they claim coffee enemas will treat autism, cancer, parasites, and much more.

Mallory DeMille is here to finally flush out this nonsense.

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Project 2025 is the libertarian conservative Heritage Foundation’s systematic governance plan for the next Republican president. The 920-page plan aims to implement the "unitary executive theory," which would give all of the power of the US government to the executive branch. This week, Derek and Julian investigate the chapter on US media agencies and the GOP's plan to create a true state-sponsored media beholden exclusively to the president.

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From the Supreme Court to Project 2025, reactionary Catholics are on the frontlines of this year’s war on democracy. Many of them bend the knee to an Italian redpilled Vatican diplomat: Cardinal Carlo Maria Viganò. 

Who is this guy, and who let him onto the internet?

In 2018, Viganò rebranded Pizzagate for Catholics, by accusing Pope Francis and his progressive allies of supporting “homosexual networks, which are now widespread in many dioceses, seminaries, religious orders,” and “act under the concealment of secrecy and lies with the power of octopus tentacles, and strangle innocent victims and priestly vocations.” 

Viganò went on to pen an open letter to Trump—in the style of one spiritual leader to another—in which he spoke of the great war between the “children of light and the children of darkness.” His 19th century flair, boosted by Trump himself, was such a hit it got featured in a Qdrop, got echoed by Mike Flynn, and won him an invite into the world of Steve Bannon. 

Catholic political commentator Dr. David Lafferty has been following Viganò for years. He walks Matthew through how the Cardinal Catholicized MAGA fever dreams to discredit the progressive administration of Pope Francis—going so far as to wish death upon him—while inspiring a generation of TradCath crusaders.

Show Notes

Puccini meets Watergate in 'Vatileaks' scandal

Former ambassador Vigano accuses Vatican of covering up McCarrick scandal for years

The Man Who Took On Pope Francis: The Story Behind the Viganò Letter

The (Growing) List of Catholic Prelates and Other Notable Catholics Supporting Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. : r/Catholicism 

‘It Is Not a Closet. It Is a Cage.’ Gay Catholic Priests Speak Out

Open Letter to President Donald Trump from the Carlo Maria Vigano, Archbishop of Ulpiana

Vigano's most pilled tweet  

Viganò, QAnon, and the 'Deep Church' explained

Another Viganò Wake-Up Call

“An infamous betrayal of the mission of the Church”: Interview with Archbishop Viganò - Crisis Magazine (CW: Steve Bannon BS ahead)

Americans, including Catholics, continue to have favorable views of Pope Francis — Pew Research 

The Silence of Sodom: Homosexuality in Modern Catholicism, Jordan

Decadence and Catholicism — Hanson

The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010

John Jay Report: On Not Blaming Homosexual Priests

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The internet has changed not only how we communicate with each other, but how we understand the world. All technologies reorient how we navigate the world. This one just feels, at times, so disorienting—especially if you are, like the three of us today, extremely online. 

That’s the title of Washington Post columnist Taylor Lorenz’s recent book. Taylor has been covering internet culture since starting in social media for the Daily Mail in 2011, which led to positions as a technology reporter for Business Insider, the Daily Beast, and the NY Times. In her insightful book, she details the history of internet culture, and she joins us today to discuss reporting in an age of conspiracy theories and online trolling, the challenges of covering long Covid in an age of overwhelming health misinformation, and what it’s like to be extremely online. 

Show Notes

Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet

Taylor Lorenz on YouTube

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Project 2025 is the libertarian conservative Heritage Foundation’s systematic governance plan for the next Republican president. The 920-page plan aims to implement the "unitary executive theory," which would give all of the power of the US government to the executive branch. This week, Derek and Julian break down the dystopic chapter on the Department of Health and Human Services, written by the anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+ Catholic nationalist, Roger Severino.

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Do people radicalized into conspiracism or cults ever admit their errors? When the prophecy fails and evidence shows they were wrong, do they come clean or double-down? 

Julian checks in on some of the legacy conspiritualists profiled in our book—Russell Brand, Dr. Christiane Northrup, Mikki Willis, JP Sears, and Lorie Ladd—to see what their online messaging around Christmas and the New Year tells us. 

These figures drove the anti-vax, Covid denial, QAnon virality, and rightward political trend in conspirituality during 2020-21. We’ll find out if they’ve seen the error of their ways in the aftermath of the 5th dimensional Great Awakening that never happened.

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Science evolves, often through fits and starts. Yet for most of medical history, there’s been one consistent theme: most science has been conducted on male bodies. And this has created a range of problems for women.

Thankfully, says Cat Bohannon, that’s changing. As more women and BIPOC are entering the STEM fields, we’re undergoing a renaissance in our understanding of a more inclusive and expansive science. On today’s episode, the author of Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution tells Derek how much science has gotten wrong by focusing exclusively on male bodies—and what we’re now doing right.

Show Notes

Cat Bohannon

Epidemic Podcast | Tony Fauci: from one pandemic to another

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Julia Tucker is a professional church organist in Savannah, Georgia. She grew up homeschooled in a TradCath home presided over by a father who is now a minor celebrity on the reactionary right. In this Listener Story, she discusses her long strange trip out of Catholic revanchism, the unexpected freedoms of homeschooling, sneaking around in sacristries, why she believes that figures like Bishop Strickland and the Catholics heading up Project 2025 are more ominous and effective than Evangelical leaders, how music began to displace religion for her, and why she’ll continue playing the organ in church. 

Show Notes

Julia Tucker, Organist 

Julia Tucker, Recital