Conspirituality

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.

Head to factormeals.com/conspirituality50 and use code conspirituality50 to get 50% off your first month plus 20% off your next month!

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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

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Dr. Taslim Alani-Verjee joined us last January for a Brief on Jordan Peterson’s professional status as a shitposting registered psychologist. She returned for Episode 141 on whether it makes sense that the Canadian Medical Assistance in Dying act is fuelling conspiracy theories about state neglect. 

Today she returns, as a psychologist and as a practicing Muslim, to discuss with Matthew how it feels to see her community drawn into culture war territory over sex ed and gender issues. Matthew also asks about her clinical practice with Muslim and Jewish clients in the shadow of the current Israel-Gaza war. This episode was recorded in November, but the themes are as current as ever.

Show Notes

Dr. Taslim Alani-Verjee 

Brief: Is Jordan Peterson Really a Licensed Psychologist? — Conspirituality

141: Does Canada Want Suffering Citizens to Die? (w/Taslim Alani-Verjee)  

Hate on Display at the 1 Million March 4 Children Rally in Calgary

Cross-country rallies against 'gender ideology' in schools meet with counter-protests

Statement by MAC on Statements by Canadian Leaders and School Boards on Recent Protests

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Nothing will stop Republicans from lining up behind Trump. But the left? It's in crisis. Fragmented. Perhaps in times of great flux fascists reflexively double-down while progressives slide into a cloud of self-doubt. There, strange bedfellows are sometimes found in the dark.

To help us understand this territory—what it is and how to navigate it—we're joined by journalist, professor, and documentarian, Jeff Sharlet. His books, The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War and The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power are field guides for understanding modern America.

Show Notes

Losing the Plot: The “Leftists” Who Turn Right

The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War

The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power

The Family on Netflix

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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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The online pseudoscience clearing house, Human Garage, treats fascia as a cure-all to nearly every disease imaginable. Yet as today's guest, David Lesondak, Senior Structural Integrator and Fascia Specialist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Center for Integrative Medicine and author of the bestselling Fascia: What It Is and Why It Matters, tells Derek, they begin with a little bit of truth before going full Quantum nonsense.

David breaks down fascia this week: what it is, how it functions in the body, and why fascia pseudoscience is so dangerous.

Show Notes

David Lesondak's website

The Tissue That Connects Our Muscles May Be a Key to Better Health

Harvard scientists closer to solving centuries-old heart mystery

Human Garage: Manifesting Through Fascia

Human Garage: Anti-Gravity - Full Spinal Decompression

Human Garage: Autoimmune Diseases

Human Garage: Erectile Dysfunction

Human Garage: Anal Sphincter Release

Human Garage: Ileocecal Valve

Human Garage: Trauma Stored in Fascia

Human Garage: Trauma Release Maneuver

Human Garage: Fascia Work Cures Hives

Human Garage: Fascia Facial Release for Acne

Human Garage: Heart is a Vortex

Human Garage: Movement Instead of Medicine

Human Garage: Faith Healing

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What happens when white knights role-play at saving all the children? What impacts do they have on the actual realities faced by trafficked children and adults? And how does their propaganda—rolled out in blockbuster trauma porn events like Sound of Freedom—stigmatize and endanger adult sex workers, especially those who are already marginalized? Esme Providence Brown returns as our correspondent to run it down.

Brown retired from professional sex work in 2021 after twenty-year career in Manhattan. She first joined us on Episode 169 to talk about the strange overlaps between sex work and the neo-tantra yoga movement. In this richly-researched report and discussion with Matthew, she examines the history of and present-day ramifications of anti-trafficking movements—projects that often scapegoat women who are secretly desired but publicly hated.

“Everybody wants to save the children,” Brown says, “but very few people want to step into the tangled web of what this actually means or the history of how ‘salvation’ movements - hobbled by grandiosity, white knighthood, and patriarchal ignorance—have incurred collateral damage while failing in their ultimate mission of liberation.” 

Show notes for this one are extensive, and won’t fit into most pod apps. You can find them here.

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Rightwing activist Chris Rufo recently led the charge in helping oust Claudine Gay from the Harvard presidency. While the charge is plagiarism—a charge Gay herself acknowledged—the reason for Rufo’s intense focus on her has little to do with academic pedigree.

Rufo, a former vegetarian yogi, is leading the right-wing charge against DEI trainings, LGBTQ+ rights, and any mention of critical race theory. Rolling off his "victory" of Gay's resignation, he's published a blog post that he hopes will become the guiding manifesto for the "New Right." As Derek breaks down, this means returning America back to 1776 in many ways.

Show Notes 

The New Right Activism

How We Squeezed Harvard to Push Claudine Gay Out

Claudine Gay: my part in her downfall

Bill Ackman’s wife is accused of plagiarizing part of her dissertation

Contracts Between Hungarian Nonprofit and Christopher Rufo, Others, Raise Foreign Agent Concerns

The Plagiarism War Has Begun

A lesson in persuasion — Loretta Ross

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On January 6, 2021 Del Bigtree took the stage at the MAGA Health Freedom Rally a few blocks away from where Donald Trump had just instigated a riot. He joked about how the former president was a hard act to follow. 

But he dug deep and persevered by stringing together key dog whistles of Trumpian disinformation and resentment: public health officials are corrupt, COVID is a scam, and the election was probably stolen.

Such performances have gotten Bigtree’s Highwire show nuked by YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. But they’ve also made him wealthy, and with his new appointment as RFK Jr’s new Director of Communications, his political star is now rising.

Matthew runs down what we know about Bigtree, and what he thinks this appointment will bring.  

Show Notes

An Important Message To The Medical Freedom Community from Del Bigtree 

RFK Jr. hires top anti-vaccine activist as campaign communications director 

The Disinformation Dozen — Center for Countering Digital Hate | CCDH 

Brief: RFK's Health Propaganda Roundtable — Conspirituality 

Brief: RFK Jr Loses New Age Support Over Israel — Conspirituality 

Pandemic Profiteers — Center for Countering Digital Hate | CCDH 

Tracy Beanz - The HighWire 

How three conspiracy theorists took 'Q' and sparked Qanon 

Anti-Vaxxer Del Bigtree’s Unhinged Quest for Unvaccinated Blood Leads Him to Mexico

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Last year, the Heritage Foundation published a 920-page document that lays out the conservative organization’s road map for the next Republican president’s first four months in office, which could very well be Donald Trump. Project 2025 rests on four pillars devoted to the implementation of the unitary executive theory—basically, all levers of the American government bowing down to the executive branch. If this sounds like a roadmap to authoritarianism, that’s because it is.

With 54 conservative and religious organizations signing on and over 450 contributors, as well as untold millions in dark money, Heritage is leading the charge with this anti-abortion, anti-LBGTQ+, anti-DEI, anti-civil liberties game plan. To date, they’ve interviewed thousands of prospective candidates for the next administration, with the goal of hiring tens of thousands of subservient bureaucrats ready to implement this Christian Nationalistic plan.

Today we break down what the document says and how it could rapidly erode American democracy. And if that sounds like hyperbole, it isn’t.

Show Notes

Project 2025

The Power Worshippers | Katherine Stewart

Behind the Curtain — Scoop: The Trump job applications revealed

The Conservative Plan to Take Over the Country (you need to know about this)

The '3.5% rule': How a small minority can change the world

Dr. Kevin Roberts | Catholic Citizens Annual Banquet

Living a Life of Catholic Integrity in a Hostile World | Roger Severino

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Friend of the pod and Straight White American Jesus host Brad Onishi returns to pick up with Matthew where they left off in their discussion of post-religious spirituality. They discuss what happens after disenchantment, the spirituality of boredom, and why, as we hurtle into the coming chaos of 2024, it’s good to keep an eye out for new allies in unlikely places. 

This is Part Two of two-part conversation. Look for Part One in your pod feeds, dated December 30. 

Show Notes

Brad Onishi 

Straight White American Jesus 

Axis Mundi Media

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Friend of the pod and Straight White American Jesus host Brad Onishi joins Matthew for a New Year’s discussion of post-religious spirituality. Onishi fills out the details on a nascent identity that many of you might resonate with: the “secular person of faith.” They talk about the false choice of Max Weber’s fork in the road: that either we commit to the sciences or languish in the churches. They discuss Jeffery Kosky’s idea of “disenchantment with disenchantment.” And they try to figure out what Thomas Altizer was going on about when he proposed a “Christian Atheism.”

This is Part One of two-part conversation. Part Two drops Monday, New Year’s Day, on Patreon. 

Show Notes

Brad Onishi 

Straight White American Jesus 

Axis Mundi Media

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Life coaching is big business. The life coaching industry was worth $1.5 billion in 2022 and is considered one of the fastest growing industries in America. The International Coaching Federation reported more than 26,000 coaches in North America in 2020. Yet those numbers are hard to qualify given that you don’t need certifications or training to become a life coach or, as we explore today, coaching of most any sort. Life coaches, business coaches, fertility coaches, “quantum” coaches: every industry has an increasing number of people who want to tell you how to do your job effectively, magically, or quantumally.

Who really benefits from this supposed gold rush of “MULTI 6 FIGURE BUSINESS COACH”, “Multi 8 fig biz mentor”, and “high ticket biz coach helping women scale to 20-30k months”? And has the dilution of the term "coach" damaged credentialed coaches with decades of experience?

Mallory DeMille returns to talk about the coaches who coach coaches industry: marketing tactics, parallels to multilevel marketing, and the glut in the coaching industry.

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The joys of Xmas, the wonder of parenting, the complexities of family, the distinctions between religions and cults, and the compassionate dignity of locating the sacred in our mortal humanity. Julian offers an atheist reflection on the holidays that is equal parts heartwarming, thought-provoking, and (perhaps) inspiring.

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COP28, the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, recently took place in the UAE. The controversial conference included 2,500 fossil fuel industry lobbyists and featured billionaires flying into Dubai on private jet. Yet, as Maya Lilly—a film, television, and digital media producer who focuses on activist documentary storytelling—tells Derek, it's one of the few places that so many nations and world leaders meet to discuss climate change. And, she says, the financial incentives exist to make even the richest men salivate. Governments just need the political will, and citizens need to vote more climate-forward legislators into office.

Show Notes

Maya Lilly’s Curated Climate Reading List

Earth on verge of five catastrophic climate tipping points, scientists warn

Right-wing media use COP28 to dismiss climate-related deaths

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In this annual meditation and reflection, the trio consider the past year's significant happenings in conspirituality, discuss their biggest influences, identify 2024's most pressing challenges, and offer what gives them each hope as we transition into 2024.

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In November, the comedian Matt Rife released his first Netflix special, "Natural Selection." Early in the show he made a joke about domestic violence that many people took offense to. Since then, he’s clapped back at a number of people on social media (including a six-year-old boy), published a fake apology that linked to helmets for people with disabilities, and has been praised by many right-wing pundits, including the focus of today’s bonus episode, Jordan Peterson.

Derek looks at the escalation and rhetoric that’s occurred since the special, arguing that the real misogynistic thinking has taken place since the special first aired.

Note: Derek states that biologist EO Wilson is famous for popularizing the term "alpha male." This was actually primatologist Frans de Waal.

Show Notes

Bunny Hedaya claps back at Matt Rife

Should you rely on first instincts when answering a multiple choice exam?

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Amy Carlson’s metallic blue body was covered in glitter, wrapped in a sleeping bag, and draped in Christmas lights when police found her on the night of April 16, 2021. The 45-year-old leader of the “Love Has Won” cult weighed just 75 pounds; her eyes had been removed. 

Carlson, known as “Mother God,” proselytized along with her followers by livestreaming around the clock, preaching a QAnon-themed spirituality that they monetized by selling colloidal silver and New Age tchotchkes. When her body was found, it was discovered that her inner circle had prepared for Carlson to be picked up by galactic starships from their Crestone, CO compound. 

Julian and Matthew discuss HBO’s new docu-series, “Love Has Won: The Mother God Cult,” directed by Hannah Olson. They meditate on religious freedom, spiritual tragedy, and the ethics of big-budget cult documentary filmmaking.

Show Notes

Denver Post article with Rick Ross comments

Vulture Interview with Hannah Olson

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Measles was declared eliminated in the US in 2000. Fast forward to 2019 and the nation experienced the largest number of cases since 1992. Globally, there were 207,000 measles deaths that year, a 50% increase since 2016.

The anti-vax boom time was still to come. Andrew Wakefield, Del Bigtree, and RFK Jr. massively increased their exposure and salaries during Covid via pseudoscientific fear-mongering and promiscuous political alliances.

Scott Kennedy’s new documentary, Shot in the Arm, details the deadly impact of these anti-vax kingpins, as well as the tireless counter-efforts of scientists, medical workers, and science educators like Peter Hotez, Paul Offit, Karen Enrst, and Blimi Marcus. Scott joins Derek and Julian to discuss the past and future of the anti-vax movement.

Show Notes

Shot in the Arm

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Matthew follows up on his interview with Mike Lewis about Bishop Strickland with thoughts about:

1) Building a bridge with progressive elements of a religion that claims 1.36 billion people globally, as it goes through another surge of paranoia and reactionary radicalization, and

2) Building a bridge into a personal past

Show Notes

Vatican II: It's about that 'fresh air' | National Catholic Reporter 

The Smoke of Satan on the Silver Screen: The Catholic Horror Film, Vatican II, and the Revival of Demonology | Journal for the Academic Study of Religion 

More sexual assault survivors connected to Michigan-based religious groups surface 

Inside the People of Praise, the Tight-Knit Faith Community of Amy Coney Barrett - The New York Times 

And Scales Fell From His Eyes | PDF | Protestantism | Catholic Church 

Pope Michael – WRSP 

‘The most conspiratorial demographic’: white evangelicals and the QAnon connection - The Conversationalist 

Evangelicals are looking for answers online. They’re finding QAnon instead. | MIT Technology Review 

QAnon Conspiracies Sway Faith Groups, Including 1 in 4 White Evangelicals | News & Reporting | Christianity Today 

New poll: QAnon embraced by 11 percent of white Catholics and 15 percent of all Americans | America Magazine

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Why did Trump kick-off his 2024 presidential campaign in Waco, Texas? Who were the Branch Davidians, anyway?

Julian unpacks the incendiary streams of far-right anti-government militia history and religious apocalypticism that our former president is tapping into as he faces legal jeopardy. It all goes back almost 300 years to the original Great Awakening that QAnon and New Age channelers tried to remix in 2020.

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Conspiracy Theory Catholicism is back, bringing together Satanic Panickers, anti-vaxxers, tradwives who think (or at least say) birth control is an abomination, and survivalist prayer bros who string bullets into rosaries. This motley bunch agree on one thing: Pope Francis is just too damn woke.

The movement has many leaders, but only one man has been dubbed “America’s Bishop”: Joseph Edward Strickland, the now-former Bishop of Tyler, East Texas. “Former,” because on November 11, the Pope of Woke canceled him from his post. 

Our guest today, Mike Lewis of the Catholic news and opinion website, wherepeteris.com, walks us through this strange tale, detailing how Strickland courted his own demise by going batshit on Twitter during the pandemic, suggesting Francis is a heretic, calling Joe Biden evil, and railing against abortion-derived vaccines.

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Show Notes

Mel Gibson: The man without a pope - Where Peter Is 

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

Many Americans — including most Republicans — believe the pope should stay out of U.S. affairs | YouGov

Searching for Answers: Why Was Bishop Joseph Strickland Removed?  

QAnon Conspiracies Sway Faith Groups, Including 1 in 4 White Evangelicals | News & Reporting | Christianity Today 

New poll: QAnon embraced by 11 percent of white Catholics and 15 percent of all Americans | America Magazine  

Just one-third of U.S. Catholics agree with their church that Eucharist is body, blood of Christ 

Many Americans believe in the supernatural, UFOs | Ipsos 

Pope Francis’ unexpected friendship with a group of trans women | America Magazine 

The making of Bishop Strickland - Where Peter Is 

Strickland's Adventurous Online Legacy - Mike Lewis Extra 

Bishop Strickland's "Letter from a Friend" 

Podcast: Fr. James Martin on Pope Francis and accompaniment - Where Peter Is 

‘Medical Freedom’ Activists Take Aim at New Target: Childhood Vaccine Mandates

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What if every important world event, regardless of how tragic or distant, is really part of a secret plan that only a handful of contrarian podcast pals can decipher? Julian breaks down bizarre clips from recent Dark Horse livestreams, and wonders about the connection between conspiracy theorizing and an increasingly self-important disconnection from reality. Stick around for an expert cameo from psychology professor, Matt Browne, of Decoding the Gurus.

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Soulmates gone wrong. High-pressure sexual orientation and gender conversion in an MLM coaching cult. Journalist and producer Alice Hines discusses the “master Christ” young couple at the center of Twin Flames Universe and the alarming story that unfolds in the documentary based on her Vanity Fair expose. 

Show Notes

Inside the All-Consuming World of Twin Flames

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What is it like to get red-pilled, find a fragile community of peers, and then come out on the other side? 

What are the personal, social, and political wounds that make conspiracy theories feel like medicine—or a drug? What is the difference between debunking theories and healing wounds?

Today the trio discusses excerpts of an interview Matthew recorded with Stephanie Kemmerer, a former conspiracy theorist and now public educator. Stephanie is part of a newly formed non-profit called The American Information Integrity Alliance and co-facilitator of the support group DOUBT: Discussing Our Unusual Beliefs Together. 

Kemmerer’s journey tells us a lot about how people fall into the rabbit hole, how they can claw their way back out. But she also suggests that the rabbit hole is really a hole in the culture, and that there’s plenty we can do to fill it in.

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Show Notes

American Information Integrity Alliance

D.O.U.B.T. (Discussing Our Unusual Beliefs Together) 

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In 2021, the anti-vax dating site, Unjected, appeared on the scene. Between Unjected's conservative marketing campaigns, which leans conspiratorial and bigoted, and its partnership with supplements company, The Wellness Company, Derek breaks down why this appears to be the emergence of anti-vax lifestyle brands—a trend he believes is only going to grow in the coming years.

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Show Notes

Anti-vax dating site exposed data for 3,500 users through ‘debug mode’ bug

Maui emergency services head, who met criticism for not using sirens during wildfire, resigns

In deadly Maui fires, many had no warning and no way out. Those who dodged a barricade survived

Exclusive Interview: The founder of Unjected, a dating site for the unvaxxed, talks about why it's still growing after getting kicked off the App Store

MAGA Influencers Are Sold on This Grifty Wellness Company

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Derek interviewed journalist and researcher, Arthur Holland Michel, after the publication of Michel's 2019 book, Eyes in the Sky: The Secret Rise of Gorgon Stare and How It Will Watch Us All. When reading Naomi Klein's book, Doppelganger, Derek was struck by Klein's insight that the Right has picked up issues the Left has abandoned—such as surveillance technology. And he recalled this interview with Michel, who reports on some of the scariest surveillance tech in history.

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Show Notes

The surveillance technology that will watch us all, all the time

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Round two on Iman Gadzhi, the 23-year-old self-proclaimed marketing millionaire who makes conspiracy theory videos to sell business coaching packages. (Listen to EP 180 for background.)

This week, Julian and Matthew discuss Gadzhi's seemingly plagiarized rhetoric that invites preteen boys from Boston to Belarus to drop out of school. Manosphere types are drawn to fascist values like moths to the flame, yet when they get too close, they have to reckon with authoritarianism, and try to rebel against it.

Julian discusses Gadzhi's deceptive social-media-based marketing in the context of election-disrupting technologies. Matthew then exposes the cruelty at the heart of Gadzhi's coaching scheme, as the YouTuber imagines disciplining his future sons with violence.

Show Notes

Join THE RESCUE today (Gadzhi content)

The Great Reset - Iman Gadzhi

Iman Gadzhi LIED to You - He is The Puppet Master 

Iman gadzhi is pulling his second fear mongering scam and coffee should talk about it

THE IMPACT OF SCIENCE ON SOCIETY

The country school of to-morrow

Context: "People yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hand"

Education or Indoctrination? The Violent Origins of Public School Systems in an Era of State-Building

Webarchive: Foster Gamble quoting Gates

Thrive - Viral Video

The Revisionists Revived: The Libertarian Historiography of Education 

The Origins of the American Public Education System: Horace Mann & the Prussian Model of Obedience

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Matthew reconsiders past criticisms of Marianne Williamson’s theology and candidacy in light of her principled call for a ceasefire as casualties in Gaza rise. 

At a moment of global crisis, Williamson is distinguishing herself from the vast majority of her Democratic colleagues—including Bernie Sanders—by calling urgently for a ceasefire as the casualties in Gaza rise.

Biden Democrats are struggling to utter the word “ceasefire.” Rashida Tlaib and the Squad are now targeted for primary challenges funded by AIPAC. Will it fall to a New Age pacifist—long derided as “the crystal lady”—to challenge the geopolitical status quo? Is Williamson's proposed “Department of Peace” really that naive at this point, now that Mike Johnson, as House Speaker, holds the Evangelical view that war in the Holy Land is a sign of Jesus's return?

Show Notes

Israel & Hamas: Ceasefire — Marianne Williamson 

148: Marianne Williamson and Asshole Jesus — Conspirituality 

Special Report: Marianne Williamson’s Ex- Staffers Speak Out — Conspirituality 

Brief: Marianne Williamson’s Spiritual Therapy Schtick — Conspirituality

MW Facebook prayer for Israel and Palestine 

Gaza: UN experts call on international community to prevent genocide against the Palestinian people | OHCHR 

Lack of clean drinking water for 95% of people in Gaza threatens health crisis | Global development | The Guardian 

Leo Varadkar calls for ‘humanitarian ceasefire’ in Israel-Hamas conflict | Business Post 

Kinew pledges to search landfill, but says federal role wasn't part of conversation with Trudeau 

Press Briefing by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan | The White House 

Netanyahu faces rising anger from within Israel after Hamas attack - CBS News 

The Presidential Candidates on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict | Council on Foreign Relations 

Williamson: Israel and Hamas an Eye for an Eye 

What Palestinians Really Think of Hamas | Foreign Affairs 

House votes to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib over her Israel-Hamas rhetoric in a stunning rebuke 

Original Party Platform of the Likud Party 

AIPAC vs. progressives: Israel’s war in Gaza has set the stage for a huge primary battle in 2024

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RKF Jr., who has campaigned as the peace candidate who will draw down the US military empire, has recently called Israel America’s “aircraft carrier” in the Middle East. When challenged to call for a ceasefire as the casualties rise in Gaza, the self-proclaimed protector of children said, “nobody likes children dying,” but then compared Israel’s efforts against Hamas to Alliance efforts against the Nazis.

On Gaza and Israel, RFK Jr is sounding unlike the end-the-forever wars, bring-our-troops-home candidate that many of his followers in the alternative health, anti-vax, and New Age spiritual communities thought they were supporting.

Now he’s paying the price.

Lifelong pacifist Dennis Kucinich quit the Kennedy24 campaign nine days after Israel began its retaliation for the Hamas attacks. RFK Jr.’s Director of Messaging, Charles Eisenstein, is speaking out against his boss’s one-sided stance. And alternative health and anti-vax mogul Sayer Ji has withdrawn his endorsement in a newsletter sent out to 300K subscribers.

Matthew reports on the developments and poses the questions: What is it about Gaza that suddenly makes the mainstream media reports credible to conspiritualists—as opposed to the news from Ukraine, or about COVID? And if RFK Jr. loses the support of the natural health pacifist who first backed him, who is he left to stand with?

UPDATE: Since recording, Bernie Sanders has in fact followed the lead of Williamson and others in issuing a call for an end to the bombardment of Gaza.

Show Notes

Dennis Kucinich Leaves Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Presidential Campaign - The New York Times.

Dennis Kucinich ceasefire petition

Kennedy Condemns Terrorist Attacks Against Israel | Kennedy24

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Declares Independent Candidacy | C-SPAN.org

RFK Jr Confronted by Pro-Palestine Heckler Calling for Ceasefire at Portland Event [VIDEO] - The Maine Wire

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

"In my name, I want no vengeance." - Charles Eisenstein

Why I Withdraw My Endorsement of RFK Jr. and Affirm the Urgent Cause for Peace In Palestine & Israel Sayer Ji

Disinformation Dozen Star Sayer Ji Now Exploiting Black Lives Matter | by Matthew Remski

Harvard Should Suspend Students Over Antisemitic Content: Bill Ackman - Bloomberg

Columbia University suspends student groups Students for Justice in Palestine & Jewish Voice for Peace for allegedly violating school policies - CBS New York

Poll: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. takes eye-popping 22 percent against Biden, Trump, - POLITICO

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Iman Gadzhi is a rising YouTube superstar. A high school dropout and supposed self-made multimillionaire, the 23 year-old marketing guru started his YouTube channel at age 15 with weightlifting videos. He has since built a following of 3.7 million. His life and career path is symbiotic with the platform, mirroring, monetizing, and accelerating every self-help and get-rich trend that blows through through the algorithms. 

At some point during COVID, he caught the conspiracy theory bug, and turned his channel into a red pill factory, pumping out such volumes of aggressively paranoid content that YouTube money bros started comparing him to Andrew Tate. 

Now, Gadzhi is reaching more aggressively into the brains of pre-teen boys around the world with a morbid fantasy about the origins of public education, and how it dooms them all into woke slavery. But it’s not just a conspiracy theory. It’s a highly-structured marketing campaign pitching his online sales coaching scheme as a substitute for high school.

Show Notes

Join THE RESCUE today. #fyp #viral | iman gadzhi | TikTok —Gadzhi content

Rebels stage new invasion of Dagestan | The Independent 

Dagestan: Mob storms Russian airport in search of Jews - BBC News

Iman Gadzhi Talks About His Stepdad 

Independent School Fees — Southbank International

Entrepreneur Pushes for More Inclusive Education in Developing Countries — Forbes

3 Books Changed My Life—Gadzhi content

What Are the 48 Laws of Power? The Complete List | Shortform Books 

The Half-Century in Bullshit: On Peter Bogdanovich’s “Paper Moon” and Robert Greene’s “The 48 Laws of Power”  

Atomic Habits — If Books Could Kill

Corona Virus: SMMA in Crisis—Gadzhi content

Vaccine Regret Counselling | Life Coaching in London, UK 

The Covid Crisis of 2021 - Richard Harris & Iman Gadzhi Unveil the Shocking Truth 

Iman Gadzhi Opens Up About Why He Agrees With Andrew Tate & His Unique View On Women!!

5 Habits Keeping MEN Weak—Gadzhi content

A wife like that—Gadzhi content

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You’ve heard the names of our Deep State swamp creatures. But the details of their career histories, criminal indictments, and intersecting political activities paint a startling picture.

Alt-right rabble-rouser and pseudo-intellectual, Steve Bannon, was part of the team that salvaged Trump’s floundering 2016 campaign. Like Roger Stone and Mike Flynn, he was in the war room at the Willard Hotel around January 6, 2020—having told his podcast audience that “all hell is going to break loose.”

What happened between those dates is quite a tale. With Trump’s 2024 candidacy looming, Steve Bannon remains poised to bring his nasty visions to life.

*Correction: During this bonus, Julian mistakenly says Trump called it “The Movement.” He meant to say that Bannon did.

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What happens when psychedelic therapy is introduced into a society in which both the set and setting is capitalism? Derek navigates the hope and hype of psychedelics in a for-profit healthcare system with two leading researchers, Neşe Devenot, PhD and Brian Pace, PhD.

Show Notes

Beyond the psychedelic hype: Exploring the persistence of the neoliberal paradigm

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Close your eyes and imagine exiting your front door. Within moments, everything necessary for your life is a few blocks away, except perhaps your job. Groceries, coffee, toiletries, your bank—if you’re still a physical bank-type person—auto shop, all within walking distance. You never have to commute too far to live your life.

Sounds like quite a dystopian hellscape, doesn’t it? 

Believe it or not, that’s yet another conspiracy theory that emerged earlier this year, because the ability to access things you need is apparently a Deep State plot. Derek is joined by “The War on Cars” co-host, Doug Gordon, to discuss how this conspiracy started and why smart urban planning is a boon for society. First, we discuss Jane Jacobs, the Scranton, Pennsylvania-born journalist and theorist who brought her civic activism to Toronto in 1968, with Matthew coloring in how her legacy has fared during the rise of the Ford family.

Corrections: In his unbridled enthusiasm for the topic and the memories it churned up, Matthew messed up THREE things—the Escalade is a Cadillac, not a Ford, “Downtown” was sung by Petula Clark, not Peggy Lee, and Bill Davis was a Progressive Conservative Premier, not a Liberal! Apologies.

Show Notes

The Woman Who Saved New York City from Superhighway Hell | Vanity Fair 

‘The streets belong to the people’: Why a premier killed the Spadina Expressway | TVO Today 

​Ford family is building a political dynasty 

​​Video shows Councillor Doug Ford handing out $20 bills at TCHC building 

Where the Spadina Expressway Didn't Stop | The Local

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Derek spent nearly a month trying to get a flu shot. During the same period, he has yet to secure an updated Covid booster. There are many problems with anti-vax propaganda. But there are also serious issues with America’s for-profit healthcare system. Derek shares his last few months navigating it, first with his wife’s breast cancer screenings (and the unexpected costs dumped on them) and then with a shot the CDC wants everyone to receive, apparently without understanding just how challenging that can be.

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Julian Brave NoiseCat is a writer and film doc maker, and a member of the Canim Lake Band, Tsq'escen. In May of 2022 he posted this Twitter thread. Matthew wanted to learn more:

I'm struck by the similarity of right-wing conspiracy theories to actual policies towards Indigenous peoples. 

• 'replacement theory' - Manifest Destiny 
• QAnon (mass institutionalized child abuse) - boarding and residential schools 
• 'plandemic' - smallpox, alcohol, bioterrorism

It's all so Freudian. The fear that it will happen to them stems from an implicit admission that they did it to others.

As though the Black, Brown and Indigenous downtrodden are just as hateful as they are and are going to turn around and do to them what they did to us.

Show Notes

Julian’s website

Mary Simon Is Leading Indigenous Peoples to New Heights

Who’s Your People?

The Past and Future of Native California

Place Determines Who We Are

The Census Powwow

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5 am. Day 4 of executive plant medicine retreat. The venture capital tech bro sits on a metaverse mountaintop, immersed in deep meditation. He hears a hum—a vibration from the great beyond. A mantra rises up like kundalini gas bubbles just in front of his spine: techno-capital machine.

Today we dissect Marc Andreessen’s anarcho-capitalist attempt at a Silicon Valley religious doctrine, The Techno-Optimist Manifesto.

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Show Notes

The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

The Ben & Marc Show: The Techno-Optimist Manifesto

What the Techno-Billionaire Missed About Techno-Optimism

When was the last time Marc Andreessen talked to a poor person?

The Futurist Manifesto

Marc Andreessen Is the Buyer of Serge Azria’s Malibu Home

The Billionaire’s Dilemma

The Summer of NIMBY in Silicon Valley’s Poshest Town

37.9 million Americans are living in poverty, according to the U.S. Census. But the problem could be far worse.

Why American wages haven’t grown despite increases in productivity

Post-pandemic poverty is rising in America’s suburbs

The Federal Reserve says Taylor Swift's Eras Tour boosted the economy. One market research firm estimates she could add $5 billion

The Surprising Poverty Levels Across the U.S.

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Matthew’s essay about the transient, disorganized, purificatory pleasure of RFK Jr's campaign for his wellness/yoga/biohacker demographic. 

A workshop breakthrough is not a strategy. The pleasure of deconstruction is not a theory of change.

With reference to Vincent Bevins’s brilliant new book: If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution.

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Bari Weiss recently held a "debate" about the failure of the sexual revolution. Expensive tickets to the Theater at the Ace Hotel in downtown LA allowed you to see Grimes and Sarah Haider talk about motherhood, porn, and woke culture with Anna Khachiyan and Louise Perry. And the results were...rather boring, says journalist Michelle Lhooq.

Derek gets the lowdown from Lhooq, who wonders how the New Right captured the cool factor of the American counterculture—and how the Left gets it back.

Show Notes

The Grimes / Red Scare debate was a right-wing psy-op

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How did Indra Devi turn the sari into a wellness guru lewk? What bold statement were the TV designers making when they dressed Richard Hittleman and his yoga models back in the 1960s? Did Lululemon founder Chip Wilson invent the category of “yoga pants” so that yoga instructors could correctly assess posture, or so that creeps could create NSFW subreddits, or so that the culture war would have yet another reason to police the bodies of girls and women?

Journalist Beau Brink (see ep 143: “Trans Reality, Trans Possibility) is back—this time as our aesthetics correspondent—to school Matthew in yoga, gender, fashion, the historical relationship between the onesie and fatphobia, the price of cotton in China, and what it means to take your clothing, your identity, and your privacy seriously. May the best Yoga Drag Queen win!

(Correction: Beau meant to reference Sam Levinson, not Sam Levine. Apologies.)

Show Notes

Brief: Marianne Williamson’s Spiritual Therapy Schtick — Conspirituality

Google Ngrams: "peperomia"

Google Trends: “peperomia”

Google Trends: “minimalism”

Google Trends: “maximalism”

Google Ngrams: “athleisure”

Kyle Chayka, “The Oppressive Gospel of ‘Minimalism’”

Rosemary Feitelberg, “Politicians and Fashion Designers Increasingly Team Up to Benefit Both Sides”

Louis René Beres, “Aesthetics and politics: Donald Trump’s idea of art and beauty”

Clare Kane, “No, You Don't Need Lululemon — Here's What "Yoga Clothes" Really Look Like”

Michelle Goldberg, The Goddess Pose

Nehmat Kaur, “The Sari Has Never Been About a 'Hindu' Identity”

Adriana Aboy, “Indra Devi’s Legacy”

Hilary McQuilkin and Kimberly Atkins Stohr, “The complicated history of women's fitness”

Caroline Hamilton, “Dancewear Through the Decades: 100 Years of Studio Fashion, From the Chiton to the Leotard”

Maren Hunsberger, “Why Do More People Prefer to Practice Yoga at Home Versus the Studio?”

“Lululemon founder Chip Wilson says pants 'don't work' for some bodies”

“Yoga Clothing Market to reach USD 70,291.0 Million by 2030, emerging at a CAGR of 7.8%”

“List of yoga pants subreddits,” Reddit, 2020

“r/girlsinyogapants stats,” Subreddit Stats

Stephen MacDonald, Fred Gale, and James Hansen, “Cotton Policy in China”

Margaret Talbot, “Abercrombie’s Legal Defeat—and Its Cultural Failure”

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Get full access to all of our episodes and listen ad-free on Patreon.

Today’s profile by Julian is of a man who connects the dots between the gun-nut fifth column in American law enforcement, local school board and city council anti-woke mania, and grassroots Christian Nationalist/QAnon crossover.

Like our other swamp creatures, his involvement in the chicanery around the last two elections make him a clear and present danger to democracy. With him, our poker hand improves to three of a kind, because like Roger Stone and Paul Manafort, he was also indicted by the Mueller Probe—and in his case, pled guilty—only to be granted a full presidential pardon by Donald Trump.

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Arizona’s recent increase in “sovereign citizen filings” connects to a New Age spiritual center called the Ultimate Light Mission. Julian talks to investigative reporter Isaac Stone Simonelli.

Show Notes

Sedona's wellness to radicalization pipeline

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Women journalists spend years meticulously investigating, corroborating and fact-checking allegations that Russell Brand is a serial sex offender. The result? A 6600-word masterpiece of survivor-centered concision, battle-tested by a legion of editors and lawyers.

But the manosphere responds! With logorrheic defenses, conspiracy theories, and rationalizations. Peak posting through it.

We look at choice man-stan statements from Charles Eisenstein (RFK Jr’s Director of Messaging), and psychonaut Daniel Pinchbeck. We also look at a pre-allegations interview Brand did with meditation guru Jack Kornfield to learn more about how Brand has ingratiated himself to wellness entrepreneurs flattered by his attention. 

Show Notes

BBC and police begin inquiries as Russell Brand faces more claims 

‘Jimmy Savile police unit’ helps Met with Russell Brand investigation 

Russell Brand quizzed by cops 9 YEARS ago over claims he sexually assaulted masseuse and treated her 'like a prostitute'

On Mobs, Cults, and Russell Brand - Charles Eisenstein 

Brand and Circuses - Daniel Pinchbeck’s Newsletter 

Open Letter to Russell Brand — Daniel Pinchbeck's Newsletter

A Cultural Crucible - Daniel Pinchbeck’s Newsletter  

Alyssa Milano on the #MeToo movement: 'We're not going to stand for it any more'

Writer blames ‘predatory’ ways on women | Page Six  

#6 - Abusing Power: Taking Predatory Daniel Pinchbeck At His Word  

We Refuse to Endorse Daniel Pinchbeck as a Credible Voice in the Psychedelic Movement  

Community, Transparency and Accountability—Dr. Ann Gleig in conversation with Egyoku Nakao Roshi & Tenku Ruff Roshi  

Jack Kornfield (Morality, Spirituality & AI) - Stay Free with Russell Brand

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Four members of the Florida-based Grenon family were recently sentenced to between 5 and 12 years of prison for selling bleach. The problem? They claimed that bleach, known as Miracle Mineral Solution, cured Covid-19—as well as cancer, autism, AIDS, erectile dysfunction, and over 90% of the world's ailments. The elder Grenon, Mark, had founded the Genesis II Church of Health & Healing alongside of MMS's founder, Jim Humble, who left the church in 2017.

How did the Grenons profit from industrial-strength bleach for 13 years before finally being convicted? And why are so many people sprinkling bleach crystals in their morning glass of water to "detoxify?" Derek investigates.

Show Notes

Family Sentenced for Selling Bleach as ‘Miracle’ Covid-19 Cure

Drinking bleach can be deadly but lots of Americans are falling for fake bleach ‘cures’

Fringe 'Church' Founder on MMS: It's No Cure

Genesis 2 Church FDA Warning Letter

Jim Humble

MMS Testimonials

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On October 9, RFK Jr. brought his three-podcast-bros-in-a-trench-coat campaign to Philadelphia. On a dias across from Independence Hall, he announced his anticipated departure from the Democratic party and his new status as an independent candidate. Matthew and Julian profile his conspirituality credentials, his diagonalist politics, and his incoherent positions:

He attacks public health officials, or corporations—it’s all the same. He can pretend to care about health while making fatphobic and ableist comments. He can rail against the capture of federal regulatory agencies while proclaiming himself a staunch free market capitalist. He can pretend to help advance the lives of Black people by telling them that vaccines are a racist plot against them. He can earnestly identify with and fight in court for dispossessed tribes on American soil, while doubling down on morbid power imbalances abroad.

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Show Notes

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announces independent run for president, ending Democratic primary challenge to Biden

164: The Two Faces of Robert Francis Kennedy Jr. 

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

Brief: RFK's Health Propaganda Roundtable

Brief: RFK Jr., The Anti-Vax Candidate

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

Kennedy Condemns Terrorist Attacks Against Israel 

Tribal Council | lowerbrulesiouxtribe 

Special Report: Stealing Indigenous Voices in Australia (w/Tyson Yunkaporta) 

Robert Kennedy’s Indian Commitment 

Deep Commitment

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Quinn Slobodian teaches Modern German History at Wellesley and William Callison teaches Political Theory and Human Geography at Uppsala. We first came across their work via Naomi Klein’s examination of the clusterf&cked politics that dominate the movements we cover. We dug out their paper, and they had us at this:

"At the extreme end, diagonal movements share a conviction that all power is conspiracy."

There no clear left-right polarity in conspirituality. And Horseshoe Theory won’t cut it. We’re in the age of Diagonalism, and things are very, very weird. 

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Show Notes

Coronapolitics from the Reichstag to the Capitol - Boston Review

William Callison

Quinn Slobodian

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Our main character this week is the six-degrees of authoritarians—more like one or two degrees, in fact. He’s made millions playing footsie with most of the blood-thirsty kleptocrats of the last half-century. He embodies the corrupt and anti-democratic deep state history of Donald Trump’s inner circle, reaching back through the decades and across the globe.

Julian’s colorful storytelling series seeks to contextualize the Trump era and where we find ourselves now, based on the swamp creatures who worked for, enabled, and to some extent groomed him for the role.

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On October 14, Australians will vote in a referendum on a simple question: should Indigenous peoples be invited to form an advisory council—a Voice—to Parliament? 

It seemed like a shoe-in “Yes”—before the issue was FUBARed by a coalition of antivax, anti lockdown, Q-adjacent white sovereign citizens who believe that they are the true victims of colonization. 

Professor Tyson Yunkaporta of Apalech clan joins Matthew to discuss the complexities of this history—including how some vulnerable Indigenous folks have been lured into supporting the “No” vote and providing cover for libertarian and white supremacist agendas.

Yunkaporta is the founder of the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin University in Melbourne AUS, author of Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World (2019) and released just this past week: Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking. He’s also the host of the excellent free range podcast The Other Others. 

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Show Notes

Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin University

Referendum 202

Conspiracy theories are derailing the Yes vote w/ Tyson Yunkaporta 

Voice pamphlets: false claims and conspiracy theories distributed across Australia | Indigenous voice to parliament

How a soap opera star pushed a conspiracy theory linking the Voice to Parliament to a UN takeover 

Key voice battleground South Australia is ‘leaning to no’, campaign volunteers say | Indigenous voice to parliament

View The Statement - Uluru Statement from the Heart 

Aboriginal Tent Embassy — 'the guys who woke up Australia' — marks its 50th anniversary

So-Called Sovereign Settlers: Settler Conspirituality and Nativism in the Australian Anti-Vax Movement

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We love our scicomm episodes, because they really dig into the material heart of the conflicts this project tries to understand. What is this information chaos tearing apart public health? How do you push back against it? What does “follow the science” mean to the average voter? And how do we push back against influencers who exploit the difficulties of science and the reasonable fear that erupts when a virus is on the loose? 

One answer is that we produce the best content we can, and our guests today, Drs Andrea Love and Jessica Steier have the chops. Like us, they started the popular “Unbiased Science” podcast during the pandemic in the midst of a tsunami of confusion. Only they come at it from within the sciences: Andrea is an immunologist and biologist who specializes in infectious diseases immunology, cancer immunology, and autoimmunity, while Jessica is a public health scientist who has designed and led multiple COVID-19 related research and science communication projects. This week, they tell Derek why the new COVID boosters are important, discuss the challenges of science communication in an age of misinformation, and confirm that colloidal silver and essential oils are not, in fact, immune boosters.

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On September 19, Matt Christman was hospitalized with, in the words of his colleagues on the podcast Chapo Trap House: “a sudden, severe medical emergency that will require a significant period of recovery.” His wife was scheduled to deliver their first child a few days later. Baby arrived in good health. Christman is as of this moment still hospitalized, but making some progress.

Matthew reflects on the hard left passions and despondent ecstasies of a beloved and sometimes hated dirtbag charismatic—and sends him peace and love in the silence, wherever it leads.

Show Notes

Forward Left: An Interview with Matt Christman of Chapo Trap House - CounterPunch.org

CushVlogs - YouTube  

The Chapo Dilemma – Souciant

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Deep Cut pulls from our bonus episode archive to unearth previous ideas that remain relevant today.

What the hell happened between the Dalai Lama and that Indian boy? The internet served up a raft of painfully inflammatory takes, so I took a month to talk with Tibetologists and review the literature on sexual abuse in Tibetan Buddhist contexts.

This is a deep, tangled dive. Content warnings apply.

Chapters:

1. Why cover this, and why now?
2. Summary
3. The Clip
4. Virality
5. Two Orientalisms
6. Outrages and Pilled Mindset
7. What do Tibetans and their allies say?
8. Kazi Adi Shakti, Thi Nguyen, Becca Williams

Deep Cut Intro Music

Single Origins — Pete Kuzma

Show Notes

Stop Sensationalizing the Dalai Lama's Innocent Interactions | A Tibetan's Perspective

Yin Sun

རྒྱ་གར་མཐོ་སློབ་ཀྱི་བྱིས་པ་ཞིག་གིས་མཇལ་ཁ་ཞུས་པ།

Cardi B on Twitter: This world is full of predators.

The Dalai Lama is clearly pedo inclined. He wrote a statement (in third person) after we posted the clip below.

https://twitter.com/MIAuniverse/status/1645530569042956289

MIA on vaccines, vindication and her visions of Jesus: ‘People fear me for some reason’

Himalayan Community comes out with massive outpour of support for HH the Dalai Lama

https://thewalrus.ca/survivors-of-an-international-buddhist-cult-share-their-stories/

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

‘Abuse of Power’ (1999) | open buddhism

Confessions of Kalu Rinpoche

‘Not The Tibetan Way’: The Dalai Lama’s Realpolitik Concerning Abusive Teachers | open buddhism

Independent: Sexual Abuse Allegations in Tibetan Buddhism

Mind & Life Institute statement on the Dalai Lama

Mongolian child named by Dalai Lama as reincarnation of Buddhism's third most important leader | Daily Mail Online

China: Dalai Lama furore reignites Tibet 'slave' controversy - BBC News

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq4hDfaLe6d/

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq_1L77vl2L/

Attune to the Body Cues of the Boy in the Dalai Lama Incident + Open Offer for Counseling to the Boy

https://twitter.com/LizCrokin/status/1645971419447148545

Tibetans Say the Dalai Lama’s ‘Suck My Tongue’ Viral Video Is Being Misinterpreted

Brother Lobsang commentary 

“Eat my Tongue” explanation 

Giaco Orofino commentary 

HH Dalai Lama Archetype of Radical Innocence with Robert Thurman : On The Recent Viral Video

Kazi Adi Shakti's essay 

Holopoiesis

MORAL OUTRAGE PORN C. Thi Nguyen and Bekka Williams

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The market for psychedelics is projected to grow from $2 billion in 2020 to $10.75 billion by 2027—a growth rate that could outpace the legal US cannabis market. Many high-profile investors and celebrities are entering the space, often under the pretense of funding breakthrough mental health interventions.

But…is that the real concern? Microdosing to help depression, anxiety, addiction, or suicidal ideation are all laudable goals. But is that what’s really happening in the psychedelics space?

Derek is joined by Psymposia co-founder, editor, and producer, Brian Normand; medicine, society, and culture research fellow, Neşe Devenot, PhD; and managing editor and harm reduction advocate, David Nickles. This far-reaching discussion about the history and future of psychedelics touches upon numerous aspects of this burgeoning industry.

Show Notes

Psymposia

Church of Psilomethoxin, Part 1: Sacramental Skepticism. Is the Church in Denial?

Right-Wing Psychedelia: Case Studies in Cultural Plasticity and Political Pluripotency

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We’ve spent the last three-and-a-half years criticizing a range of wellness ideas, charismatic charlatans, abusive self-styled gurus, and conspiracy theories. We’ve also discussed our own beliefs and highlighted many people and ideas that we believe are getting it right.

Derek has never really explored what motivates him on a physical and mental level despite having spent many years doing so inside of gyms and studios. This is no motivational speech, but rather an exploration of a motivational mindset, weighed against how some popular influencers position the concept. Derek uses his recent experience summiting Mt St Helens to frame the conversation.

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In light of the recent allegations, Matthew offers a backgrounder on what we’ve learned about Brand through conspirituality and cultic studies and from his opportunistic relationships to wellness, self-help, and Kundalini Yoga. Ending with a focus on how his yoga world LARPing became a launch pad for his success as a spirituality-coded conspiracy theorist in the age of COVID.

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Show Notes

Conspirituality 97: Brand Awareness 

Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse

Russell Brand - In Plain Sight (Dispatches) [couchtripper] - video Dailymotion 

BBC and police begin inquiries as Russell Brand faces more claims

Russell Brand: BBC resists calls to release complaints filed against presenter

Russell Brand's Charismatic Bullshit - by Derek Beres 

Russell Brand helps the homeless with his yoga teacher... and his new tantric tattoos | Daily Mail Online 

Yogi Bhajan Turned an L.A. Yoga Studio into a Juggernaut, and Left Two Generations of Followers Reeling from Alleged Abuse 

Conspirituality 36: Guru Jagat's Pandemic Brandwash

Conspirituality 37: Guru Jagat Cultjacks Kundalini Yoga 

Conspirituality 64: Remembering Guru Jagat

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Who could be a better guide through the fever dream of modern anti-semitism—the socialism of fools—than a scrappy young scion of the House of Rothschild? How has Mike, this mysterious insider—visible on CNN but a seeming ghost in real life—used his inheritance and connections to score book deals with the Fake News Media? Will he redeem his family name?

Just joking! Author and friend of the pod Mike Rothschild is no relation to the banking family that has lived rent-free in the minds of antisemites and conspiracy theorists for over two centuries now. He is the author of 2021’s The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything. His new book out less that two years later, is ​​Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories. Mike joins us now from his summer palace in the South of France, um, actually his home office in Los Angeles to discuss the very stupid but dangerous groundswell of Jew hatred now filling our feeds.

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Show Notes

Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories

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When we deconstruct harmful ideas and beliefs—from antivax positions to reactionary social views—we will inevitably be seen or felt as attacking the relationships that people form through those views. That’s a big problem in a lonely world, and there will be blowback. What to do?

Matthew steps off the debunkery hamster wheel, and remembers an old piece of yoga advice. 

Show Notes

The Religious Case Against Belief by James P. Carse

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Burning Man 2023 will forever be burned in memory with two images: a group of climate activists blocking the single road into Black Rock City and the sea of mud that a climate change-induced hurricane turned the playa into. The jigsaw puzzle is pretty complete. Will Burners see it?

Tommy Diacono is a five-time Burner. He also helped organize the protest. He joins two-time Burner Derek for a discussion about why his crew blocked the roads, the importance of rituals, and the importance of knowing when rituals need to end.

Show Notes

FULL VIDEO: Climate Protesters Shut Down BURNING MAN, Rangers Ram Through Blockade

Tommy Diacono on Instagram

Burn it all down — Derek Beres

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Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World is a polymathic work that serves up new political heuristics with the firepower we’ve come to expect from the coiner of “disaster capitalism.” A Dante-spiral through our circles of cultural hell, it’s also a memoir of demoralization, self-evaluation, and persistent hope.

If this sounds overly ambitious or grandiose—that’s a fair suspicion in this age of galaxy-brained pundits who want to write *that book about everything.* In less humble, less feminist hands, a project like this could feel like a vanity vehicle for an author’s unbearably brilliant mind.

But that doesn’t happen here, because Klein’s intersectional discipline—which despite many flights of fancy, she never abandons—serves the values of economic, racial, and climate justice, and she does it by always citing her sources and elevating the voices of the marginalized.

Derek, Julian, and Matthew discuss briefly before Klein joins Matthew to discuss her way into and out of this bizarre and demoralizing land.

Show Notes

Doppelganger — Naomi Klein

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The Forrest Gump dandy of right-wing dirty tricks is in the news again. Strategizing from the Willard Hotel as January 6 unfolded; protected by a coterie of now convicted Oathkeepers; captured on video dictating Trump’s fake electors scheme for an email. These are just a few of the things Roger Stone has done. 

Stone may be the swampiest of Deep State operatives our politics has seen. Julian gives a colorful breakdown of this longtime Trump ally who's been involved in every anti-democratic scheme, from Watergate to Bush’s 2000 steal to 2016’s Russian interference—raking in millions from the “torturer’s lobby” along the way. Stone has always slithered away from accountability, but maybe this time he’ll pay the price.

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Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World is an exuberant, polymathic effort, in which Klein develops several new political heuristics that pack the punch we’ve come to expect from the originator of “disaster capitalism.” Reading it is like getting walloped by a novel political theory virus— or a potent vaccine for the times. It’s also a Dante-esque spiral down through our endless circles of historical and cultural hell.

Klein’s core subject is the “Mirror World” we now battle in: a place where our digital avatars occlude our bodies, where morbid fantasies blot out fact-checked histories, where the fool’s gold of influencers outshines the daily work of researchers. It’s a place where antimaskers steal the “I can’t breathe” cry of George Floyd, and antivax influencers pretend they are being led to the gas chambers. It’s a place where selfish demagogues appropriate and mimic the poetry of social justice, but only for a select few. It’s where MAGA movement architect Steve Bannon LARPs as a therapist for the common man.

Doppelganger has landed like a Rosetta Stone for divining the incoherent politics of the figures we’ve covered all these years—and the cultural and moral vacuums they fill. But most surprisingly—and we think our listenership will be grateful for this—this rich memoir of demoralization and self-evaluation also offers a deep undercurrent of persistent hope. 

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Show Notes

Doppelganger

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Do you ever feel like American society is caught in limbo? The bardo-realm between two election cycles. The dial-up static between invasive social media and quarantine isolation. Stacking sandbags against the deluge of conspiracies and disinformation as we await the slow-motion countermeasures of science and the justice system.

The disruptions of Trump, COVID, QAnon, conspirituality, and January 6 all still frame our everyday lives, even as we attempt a return to a normalcy that was always tenuous at best. Whatever happens over the next few months, the oven of 2024 looks preheated for chaos—yet, one by one, the treasonous conspiracy-mongering liars who peaked in 2020 are being forced to deal with cold legal consequences.

Our guest today is award-winning journalist and author David Neiwert, whose book The Age of Insurrection explains how we got here—and points a way forward.

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Claiming your First Amendment rights are being violated is a sure way to have the spotlight shone on you. It's also an effective way to shut down criticism of whatever you're selling. From the 1940s-60s, supplements manufacturers used the free speech gambit to keep regulators away from their products, resulting in a 1969 Supreme Court case. Derek looks at the 20th century evolution of medical regulations, and how companies are still using a similar argument to dissuade consumers from looking too deeply into what's inside the bottle.

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Show Notes

Dietary Supplements: A Framework for Evaluating Safety

United States v Kordel

Some Implications of the Kordel Decision

163: The Huberman Paradox

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One piece of connective tissue between the right and wellness influencers we cover is their liberal use of the language of Civl Rights to describe their completely incomparable grievances. Derek covers a few recent examples, centered around one particularly troublesome analogy by a tech-bro entrepreneur using slavery as an analogy for his hustle.

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Several months ago, we received an email from Esme Providence Brown (a pseudonym, and we’ll discuss why she’s using it off the top of the interview). Esme asked if we would like to discuss the strange and taboo overlaps between yoga, wellness, neo-tantra, and sex work. I wrote back immediately to say yes. 

Esme has worked as a professional dominatrix and kink provider for the past twenty years. In 2012, she began teaching yoga and investigating the intersection of sex work and spirituality through her practice and writing. She lives and works in NYC, and is now doing academic work in textiles. Matthew spoke to her while she was on a research trip to Indonesia. 

We think you’ll all learn a ton from this conversation about transparent vs. non-transparent labour practices, performative intimacy, the gendered inequalities of wellness work, and how Neo-Tantrics who use handguns in their foreplay made their presence known at the January 6th insurrection.

In honor of Labor Day: Workers of the world unite. 

Sign up today at butcherbox.com/CONSPIRITUALITY and use code CONSPIRITUALITY to get two 100% grass-fed filet mignons and two wild-caught lobster tails for FREE in your first box plus $20 off your first order.

Show Notes

Former sex workers, now academics and published authors:

Melissa Febos

Chris Belcher

Catlynn Ladd

Sex Worker Decriminalization Resources:

The Oldest Profession (Podcast & Organization)

Amnesty International Statement on Sex Work

ACLU Statement on Sex Work

US Department of Health & Human Services Report on Human Trafficking

Sex Workers Want Rights Not Rescue

The White Slavery Panic

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They fell into a rabbit hole. 

Matthew examines the blindspots thrown up by this common and unexamined phrase:

— The assumption that we all know what the rabbit hole is.

— The assumption that right up to the edge of the rabbit hole, the world makes sense.

— The assumption that everyone who avoided falling (or being pushed) in is simply more rational, balanced, and normal.

All of these assumptions can obscure the insanities of the dominant culture.

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The anti-vaxxers have a new Bible: an anonymously published (and RFK Jr.-connected) 500+ page tome, Turtles All the Way Down. Julian talks with pediatrician and pediatric cardiologist, Dr. Frank Han of ScienceBasedMedicine.org, who is in the midst of a 10-part “grand debunk” of this 2022 compendium of pseudoscience scare-mongering.

Show Notes

Frank Han’s Grand Debunk

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Charismatic influence thrives in online spaces, regardless of spiritual overtones. Matt Browne and Chris Kavanagh of Decoding the Gurus have traced a path parallel to our own; examining the popular figures they call "secular gurus."

They join us for a lively panel discussion on the overlaps and differences regarding conspiritualists, as well as their patented "Gurometer'' method of decoding and ranking contrarian influencers.

As scholars of psychology, anthropology, and religion, we also asked them to finally resolve the enduring argument between Matthew and Julian about the power of sacred beliefs to shape political worldviews and motivate actions in the world.

8/21: Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and manage your money the easy way by going to rocketmoney.com/conspirtuality

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Trump promised to “drain the swamp.” But his campaign attracted a carnival of corrupt influence peddlers and conspiracy mongerers. He pretended to be in a holy war against the “deep state” but his administration was defined by cronyism and long-time amoral operatives who groomed him to enable their own enrichment.

Now he’s finally, hopefully, being held to account—but who were those swamp creatures who slithered around his ankles and whispered in his ears? In this new Bonus series, Julian tells the intersecting stories behind the news of the 7 years that culminate in Trump’s latest slew of criminal indictments.

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Deep Cut pulls from our bonus episode archive to unearth previous ideas that remain relevant today.

News from Alabama: after a 23-year ban on yoga in schools, generated by a Republican moral panic, Governor Kay Ivey signs a bill that lets kids do yoga again, but with some restrictions:

"All instruction in yoga shall be limited exclusively to poses, exercises, and stretching techniques. All poses shall be limited exclusively to sitting, standing, reclining, twisting, and balancing. All poses, exercises, and stretching techniques shall have exclusively English descriptive names. Chanting, mantras, mudras, use of mandalas, induction of hypnotic states, guided imagery, and namaste greetings shall be expressly prohibited."

Those who promote yoga as universal goodwill welcome this Indian art form being made more accessible for children in a State with terrible educational markers. Hindu nationalists, on the other hand, might be outraged at a secularized version of yoga, stripped not only of references to Hinduism but of signs of any type of Indian spirituality. And a lot of white yoga progressives will look at this policy—mostly from the urban North— and worry about authenticity and appropriation.

How will the children feel?

In considering who wins and loses with this new development, Matthew reviews recent U.S. yoga-war history: battles between the Hindu American Foundation and Yoga Journal, the rise of Christian non-yoga-yoga "Praise Moves", and Encinitas Union School District got sued for allegedly violating the Establishment Clause by contracting devotees of Pattabhi Jois to teach the kids yoga.

It's not a stretch to see an overlap between this theme and the medical-moral panic over vaccines. In both cases, the focus is on the imagined corruption of children, whether by poison, politics, or inner quiet.

Go to HelloFresh.com/50conspirituality and use code 50conspirituality for 50% off plus free shipping.

Deep Cut Intro Music

Single Origins — Pete Kuzma

Show Notes

Alabama lifts three-decade-old ban on yoga in public schools—with a catch.

New study ranks Alabama as 43rd for student achievement, grade of D+

12 Reasons Why Yoga is NOT Good for Christians

Hindu Group Stirs Debate in Fight for Soul of Yoga

Hindu American Foundation: Hindu Roots of Yoga

Shukla's letter: Is Hindu a bad word?

Explained: The Hindu American Foundation’s defamation case against Hindus for Human Rights founders

Audrey Truschke's tweet

Over 300 Writers, Academics and Scholars Repudiate HAF's Attempt to Silence Hindus for Human Rights — Hindus for Human Rights

Detroit's Satanic Statue Has A Political Point to Make

Encinitas school yoga lawsuit stretches on

Yoga-for-Trophy-Wives Fitness Fad That’s Alienating Discipline Devotees

Next Article Yoga's Culture of Sexual Abuse: Nine Women Tell Their Stories

Candy Gunther Brown amicus brief for the plaintiffs, against the yoga programme

Mark Singleton amicus brief for the defendants, for the yoga programme

Chris Chapple amicus brief for the defendants, for the yoga programme

Yoga Alliance amicus brief for the defendants, for the yoga programme

Sedlock v. Baird -  Brown’s summary

SEDLOCK v. Yes! Yoga for Encinitas Students, Intervener and Respondent

Yes! Yoga for Encinitas Students filing

The World's Most Influential Yoga Teacher is a Homophobic Right-Wing Activist

Translation of the Dattātreyayogaśāstra, the earliest text to teach haṭhayoga

Barkataki: How to Decolonize Your Yoga Practice

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Dr. Bradley Onishi, is the author of Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism - And What Comes Next. He is the co-host of the excellent Straight White American Jesus podcast. His work has appeared in the New York Times, NBC News, Politico, Rolling Stone, Huffpost, and many other outlets. 

Bradley got personally drawn into evangelical Christianity as a teenager—and from a secular family—and had the strange experience of burying his part-Japanese heritage in a white coded, Christian Nationalist identity. It took him years of scholarship to see how this political ideology had been baked into the religious indoctrination. Now he’s a religious studies scholar, doing work in the world from that perspective. And his struggles with all of this stuff have brought his empathy and his humility up to the surface in really profound ways. 

Bradley has a lot of family history in Maui, and on his behalf and for people there who have just survived a catastrophic fire and now must bury their dead and rebuild, we would like to encourage you to consider donating to the Maui Mutual Aid Fund. 

Show Notes

Straight White American Jesus

Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism--and What Comes Next

Go to HelloFresh.com/50conspirituality and use code 50conspirituality for 50% off plus free shipping.

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Are you ready to live your best life ever? Because if you’re not always on volume 10, eating the purest foods and shouting your truth at every turn, you’re certainly doing life wrong. 

Derek looks at the ever-growing anxiety marketed as optimal health in wellness spaces, wondering when will enough be…enough?

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Following up on our review and coverage of Satan Wants You, Matthew talks with Canadian filmmakers Sean Horlor and Steve Adams about how they excavated the origin story of the Satanic Panic movement.

Show Notes

151: Satan Wants You Watch Party (Spoilers)

Satan Wants You

Conspirituality: UNLOCKED: Swan Song Series 4 | Michelle Remembers: Context & History

Conspirituality: UNLOCKED: Swan Song Series 5 | Michelle Remembers: Themes & Framing

Conspirituality - UNLOCKED: Michelle Remembers: Literal Symbols

Conspirituality - UNLOCKED: The Courage to Heal Pt. 1

Conspirituality - UNLOCKED: The Courage to Heal Pt. 2

The Smoke of Satan on the Silver Screen: The Catholic Horror Film, Vatican II, and the Revival of Demonology

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In 2017, 4chan user "Q" started LARPing as a Deep State insider with predictions about Hillary Clinton and the pedophile cabal. 10 months later, the online antifascist world assembled its emergency podcast response team: three dubiously-credentialed shitposters( two using pseudonyms themselves) dedicated to covering “the best conspiracy theories of the post-truth era. Exploring online fever swamps and tripping over deranged historical facts that make conspiracy theories sound sane.”

The digital soldiers of QAnonAnonymous Podcast subjected themselves to the most cursed content the internet has to offer. But the real world they traveled through was just as smelly. They went to live QAnon protests, parades, and conferences. They conducted the first interviews with the QAnon Shaman. They attended ball-slapping workshops to raise their testosterone for the Great Awakening. They caught COVID many, many times, all for the cause. And now, as their reward, they get to see their favorite redpilled celebrity, and Mel Gibson's favorite Jesus, Jim Caviezel, star in the fake-u-mentary, "Sound of Freedom."

It’s been a long road to Hollywood for our guests Travis View and Jake Rockatansky, but this is their red-carpet moment where we get to ask them: How did they like working on this show?

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Notes from Matthew in response to a great question from a listener:

How do you keep from hating these people? The blasé unimaginative crackpots like Aubrey Marcus, the gaslighting meanderings of RFK Jr., the hordes of ignorant, ignorant, ignorant (trying to keep from saying st*pid) jackasses that follow in their wake, so desperately certain of their completely subjective fever dreams?

It’s not easy, but there are some ways of avoiding hatred and disgust, and it’s important to lean into them.

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Seven ex-staffers who worked on Marianne Williamson’s campaign have written an open letter describing her campaign as an “exercise in deception.”

Matthew analyzes the open letter, and contextualizes its allegations within Williamson’s worldview and history. 

Show Notes

EXCLUSIVE: Seven Ex-Marianne Williamson Staffers Say Stop Supporting Her 

148: Marianne Williamson and Asshole Jesus — Conspirituality

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GT Dave's kombucha origin story is the stuff of legend—at least how he frames it. But when the LA Times broke the story of a judge awarding workers nearly half a million dollars in back and overtime pay, citing GT's abuse of employees and contradictory evidence, a different story unfolds.

Derek looks at this kombucha company's origins, unrealistic health claims, and the many troubles its endured over the decades, and how GT's response aligns with the conspiritualist playbook.

Show Notes

L.A.’s kombucha empire exploited workers for years

Meet the King of Kombucha

What Science Says About the Potential Health Benefits of Kombucha

The Disinformation Dozen

Toxic Twitter

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Tobias Rose-Stockwell is a media researcher, writer, designer, and author of the new book, Outrage Machine: How Tech Amplifies Discontent, Disrupts Democracy—And What We Can Do About It. The book deals with tough questions about who we are as individuals and a society, reminding us that we all help shape our surroundings by what we pay attention to, how we understand and process the information we ingest, and perhaps most importantly, what we do with it.

Tobias joins Derek for an in-depth conversation about the history of news and the future of media literacy.

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Altered states exist on a spectrum, from enhancing human flourishing to perpetuating dangerous delusions. Daniel Pinchbeck’s recent comments on our book inspire Julian’s journey into psychedelics, the 2012 prophecy, the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, and the brain typologies that underlie visionary religious experience. Tune in for practical advice and guidelines about drugs, awareness practice, cults, and staying sane.

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Deep Cut pulls from our bonus episode archive to unearth previous ideas that remain relevant today.

Survivor shame over what has been lost, and how one has been complicit.

Apologist shame: turned inside out and externalized as aggression.

Popular shaming, which tries to deflect attention from how close to home cultic dynamics really are.

In the cult landscape, shame is a common denominator. In this contemplation, Matthew unpacks various aspects, with help from the writing of cult theorists and recovery counselors Alexandra Stein, Daniel Shaw, and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi.

Deep Cut Intro Music

Single Origins — Pete Kuzma

Show Notes

Primo Levi: The Drowned and the Saved

The Relational System of the Traumatizing Narcissist — Shaw

Rachel Bernstein's “One More Thing” at the end of Betrayal and Power w/ Nitai Joseph, former Hare Krishna — S4E5.

All of Rachel Bernstein’s IndoctriNation podcast.

What’s Behind the Blowback You’ll Get When You Engage Cult Members

"Deception, Dependence, Dread of Leaving" — Langone

"I Got Mine-ism"

Selected Bibliography:

Ainsworth, Mary D. Salter. Patterns of Attachment: a Psychological Study of the Strange Situation. Routledge, 2015.

Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. Penguin Classics, 2017.

Freyd, Jennifer J. Betrayal Trauma: the Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse. Harvard University Press, 1998.

Freyd, Jennifer J., and Pamela Birrell. Blind to Betrayal: Why We Fool Ourselves We Arent Being Fooled. Wiley, 2013.

Hassan, Steven. Combating Cult Mind Control: the #1 Best-Selling Guide to Protection, Rescue, and Recovery from Destructive Cults. Freedom of Mind Press, 2016.

Kramer, Joel, and Diana Alstad. The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power. North Atlantic Books/Frog, 1993.

Lalich, Janja, and Madeleine Landau. Tobias. Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships. Bay Tree Pub., 2006.

Lalich, Janja. Escaping Utopia: Growing up in a Cult, Getting out, and Starting Over. Routledge, 2018.

Langone, Michael D. Recovery from Cults: Help for Victims of Psychological and Spiritual Abuse. W.W. Norton, 1995.

Lifton, Robert Jay. Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: a Study of “Brainwashing” in China.W.W. Norton, 1961.

Miller, Alice, et al. For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2002.

Oakes, Len. Prophetic Charisma: the Psychology of Revolutionary Religious Personalities. Syracuse University Press, 1997.

Shaw, Daniel. Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2014.

Stein, Alexandra. Terror, Love and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017.

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We’ve been tracking Bobby’s misinformation, contradictions, and cursed networks for three years. And now he’s having his moment, and it’s anyone’s guess how far he’ll run. But why is he so appealing on the presidential stage? Why is he polling at 20%, with his favorability in double digits against Biden? 

It’s not just that his endless rhetoric appeals to libertarians on the right and paranoiacs on the left. It’s that he casts a charismatic spell that echoes, exacerbates, and amplifies some of the deepest conflicts in the American psyche—between tradition and rebellion, nostalgia and grievance, idealism and paranoia.

Bobby, you see, is never quite who he seems to be. In one moment he’s the prodigal prince of Camelot, seen through a sepia lens. In the next he’s a tortured and braying conspiracy theorist, lit by the blue light of countless screens.

Show Notes

RFK Jr. says COVID may have been 'ethnically targeted' to spare Jews 

A Kennedy and His Mentor Part Ways Over River Group - The New York Times 

Robert F Kennedy Jr says he has ‘conversations with dead people’ | Democrats | The Guardian 

Transcript for Robert F. Kennedy Jr: CIA, Power, Corruption, War, Freedom, and Meaning | Lex Fridman Podcast #388

Beware: we ignore Robert F Kennedy Jr’s candidacy at our peril | Naomi Klein | The Guardian 

Most People Believe In JFK Conspiracy Theories | FiveThirtyEight

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Derek unpacks what’s really going on in conspiritualist messages about the "climate change narrative" and how they use an assault of varying degrees of credible information to conflate issues, some of which they then monetize.

Then, he looks at how messages go horribly astray when the full context is missing—something quite common in social media, and which upcoming main episode guest, Tobias Rose-Stockwell, calls “context creep.”

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A granular—let’s say quantum-sized—look at how RFK Jr.’s wealthiest and most influential New Age supporters are thinking about his candidacy. Aubrey Marcus and Charles Eisenstein disclosed it all on a two-hour podcast released on June 21, providing a nearly-perfect encapsulation of every theme of our beat. Their performance shows how dedicated conspiritualists keep the faith as they graduate out of the group-encounter retreat economy and into the mainstream political arena.

Show Notes

The Future Of The World Depends On Us w/ Charles Eisenstein 

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Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman has become one of the most popular science podcasters in the world. His regular two- to four-hour episodes feature a dizzying assault of information on topics like physical and mental fitness, psychedelics, hair loss, brain optimization, and a host of other topics, sometimes with expert guests, while at other times he goes solo. And many of these episodes are super informative and inspirational. 

And yet, at times it seems like Huberman is sacrificing quality for quantity. This week, we look at three instances in which Andrew Huberman appears to be speaking outside of his lane, or perhaps overhyping supplements for his own benefit, and we want to know what else is being sacrificed along the way. McGill Office for Science and Society science communicator, Jonathan Jarry, joins the discussion.

Show Notes

Andrew Huberman Has Supplements on the Brain

How Podcaster Andrew Huberman Got America to Care About Science

The Real-Life Diet of Andrew Huberman, Who Switches to Red Party Lights After Dark

The Huberman Effect

NEUROSCIENTIST: This Habit Makes You UGLY | Andrew Huberman

Paul Ingraham critique of Huberman

“Evidence-Based Medicine” vs Science-Based Medicine

Dave Asprey’s Use of PED’s

New York Times review of Tim Ferris’s book 4-Hour Body

Michelle Wong’s query about sunscreen crossing blood-brain barrier

Neuroscientist Asaf Weisman’s opinion on Huberman

Sports Scientist Matt Stranberg opinion on Huberman

“Health Nerd” Gideon Meyer-Katz on misrepresented “cold-plunge” paper

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Bobby provokes a “disorganized attachment” response in would-be followers.This is the emotional vortex that begins to churn when a charismatic leader draws followers into a vision of the world as irrevocably broken, poisoned, dangerous, full of lies and betrayal. But he doesn’t just scare them. Somehow, he also promises an island of salvation in their sea of doom. This is Bobby’s pattern. 

It’s clear that his misinformation on everything from supposed vaccine danger to the supposed totalitarianism of COVID mitigations is not a description of the world so much as a ghoulish parody of it. As the creator of that vision, in which solutions seem so out of reach, he stands alone as the wizard who can repair it. 

Show Notes

Joe Rogan's worst misinformation yet, with RFK Jr.—Dr. Dan Wilson

bad_stats Rogan debunk Twitter thread 

How Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Distorted Vaccine Science - Scientific American (coverage of the 2005 article) 

RFK Jr.'s reign of error: Correcting the record about yet another false claim he just made | CNN Politics—Tapper  

Just Another RFK Jr. Lie. I Know, Because It’s About Me. | The Nation—Joan Walsh 

My Conversation with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - by Paul Offit 

Robert Kennedy Jr. Full, Controversial Speech at "Defeat the Mandates"

Stein, A. 2017. Terror, Love and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems. Routledge. 2017.

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Nazis loved yoga. Rudolf Steiner set the stage for COVID denialism. Modern social justice warriors have a fondness for Hindu nationalism. Antivax activists are stuck in 19th century Gothic novels. Yoga, as the religion of neoliberalism, has actively depoliticized large swaths of the white middle class, making yoga moms vulnerable to fascism. Who’s responsible for these outrages? Conspiritualists? Who are they and what’s their evil plan? 

No, our book is not a conspiracy theory. There’s no one piloting this plane. And yet, the patterns we’ve tracked on this podcast and in our book at times suggest something organized and coherent. Do we take this too far? At point does the intricacy of our research mimic the paranoia of what we’re researching? This week, we take a look.

Our Recent Op-Eds:

New age wellness takes a reactionary turn (The Boston Globe)

The Conspirituality of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Time)

Opinion: Danielle Smith’s alternative health proclamations are key to her populist messaging (The Globe and Mail)

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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.

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On June 26, presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy, Jr hosted a "health policy roundtable" on Rumble. His guests included Joe Mercola, Sherri Tenpenny, Mikki Willis, and a host of other anti-vax luminaries. Very little policy was discussed, though RFK put forward plenty of ideas about executive orders, including blackballing scientists and researchers behind FDA-approved drugs and censoring scientific journals. Derek breaks down some of the more egregious moments.

Show Notes

Health Policy Roundtable on Rumble

Joe Rogan's worst misinformation yet, with RFK Jr.

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Matthew narrates the first three sections of the audiobook, Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat.

More information on our book here.

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Derek discusses the new Conspirituality book with filmmaker and podcaster Mike Hull at Powell's Books on June 26, 2023.

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Friend of the pod and historian of American fitness culture, Natalia Petrzela, joins Matthew to shed light on a new development in RFK Jr’s campaign to disrupt the Democratic Party: his recent workout campaign videos from the barbell patio of Gold’s Gym in Venice beach. 

Topics include the iconic status of Gold’s, why Bobby Muscles is in Wranglers rather than lycra, how he’s both drawing on and distorting the Kennedy fitness legacy, body mastery as the ultimate American frontier, political pissing contests, the ableist “sweatwashing” of complex health policy problems, the body-shaming of soft, flabby, unpatriotic liberals, and how the whole scene—pumped by biohackers and tech bros—has some alarming political echoes. 

Show Notes

Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession

Matthew’s Twitter thread on Bobby Muscles echoing body fascism.

"Go, you chicken fat, go!" — Meredith Wilson

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Chaos in Russia! Wagner’s pagan neo-Nazis. Is conspirituality unique to a failing American empire in the internet age? Does it require Californian New Age spirituality, with conspiracy theories that weave around alternative medicine, for-profit pharma with no social safety net, and the reactionary politics of White Christian Nationalism?

This week, Julian explores a different version of Conspirituality. This form translates QAnon for a European audience and calls for a return to the golden age of the Russian empire, but also to an ancient pre-Christian Slavic identity united across borders in pagan faith.

Show Notes

The Everyday Religious Life in Wagner PMC, via Observatoire

Candance Rondeaux on Wagner, Pan-Slavism, al-Qaeda

Jan Zabka’s piece on QAnon in Czech/Slovakia, Prophets of Freedom and Doom

Sofia Cherici’s piece on QAnon’s cross-cultural evolution, Translating QAnon

Marlene Laurelle on the Rodnoverie Movement

Fake News sites centered in Veles, Macedonia had Russian and American ties

A Photographer and an Artist Walk into a Fake News Factory from Coda Story

Original Book of Veles forgery

Main interstitial music: Bus Ride to Gulu — Pete Kuzma

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Today in our Listeners’ Stories installment, Lynn Short joins her partner Justin to discuss how they met, grew up in, and grew out of a branch of “Gnosis,” a theosophical cult founded in the 1950s by Samael Aun Weor in Columbia.

Weor was a classic old-school spiritual pervert, with 60-plus (likely ghostwritten) books to his name, and a passion for meddling in his followers’ sex lives.

Lynn and Justin describe what it was like to wake up to each other again—and to normal lives—after 17 years of practicing non-orgasmic sex and missionary work. A unique and hopeful look into a relationship that survived coercive influence—a bond that didn’t become a trauma bond.

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“It’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong," wrote Richard Feynman. But does curiosity end where awareness cuts off? Derek explores the positive and negative sides of the spiritual search, especially in light of the burgeoning eco-spiritual movement.

Show Notes

I’m “spiritual but not religious.” Here’s what that means for a physicist

How to hold onto a sense of wonder 

‘Big Earth energy’: A new era of nature spirituality is here

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To celebrate book launch month, we started a little “takeaway” series two weeks ago. First, Derek led us through “Science and Sensibility,” in which he shared some really good practices for science literacy, along with examples of how conspirituality maximizes social stress and struggling medical systems to exploit wellness consumers.

Last week, Julian addressed the aching questions asked by those in love with the positive gifts of contemplative practice, but who now see the cognitive fallacies and naive psychology at play in many spiritual communities.

This week, Matthew sets pseudoscience and spiritual bypassing into the social context of cultic relationships, reviewing some of the tortured dynamics we monitored during COVID, laying out a few cult-resistant hygiene rules, some pointers on avoiding stigmatization, and asking tough questions about where the whole cult discourse thing is going in this parasocial era.

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The exiled cult leader, the MAGA mastermind, the Chinese con-artist billionaire, and the CCP. Insatiable dragons, all. Each claims to be at war with evil, as their fiery propaganda melts the minds of far-right media consumers. Julian connects the dots on these overlapping stories of life in the “Dharma-ending times.”

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We've spent three years tracking the slide from online wellness influencer to red-pilled conspiracy promoter, from yoga and breath work teacher to anti-vax ivermectin slinger, from vegan raw chocolate aficionado to anti-immigrant, transphobic, election denial. Turns out, the roots of this phenomenon run deep.

Along the way we've gotten a lot of praise, plenty of pushback, and a slew of sincere and heartbroken questions about what may be left for those in love with the positive gifts of contemplative practice and community, who now see the pitfalls we've pointed out. We speak to these today.

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From Ron DeSantis's anti-woke presidential campaign to Bari Weiss's FAIR war on woke, the concept of "wokeness" has become an ideal devil in right-wing and right-leaning politics—even if (or especially because) no one can really define it. But as Derek discusses, a recent deep dive into FAIR shows, anti-woke crusaders are suffering from internal conflicts and coming up with troubling non-solutions, while monetizing their platforms along the way.

Show Notes

Is it possible to be both moderate and anti-woke?

Morning Joe: June 5, 2023

Daily Wire host defends book bans

Journalist or Heretic? | Bari Weiss | EP 175

Plandemic 3 Red Carpet moment

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How can we protect ourselves and our children from online hate and misinformation? Julian interviews Imran Ahmed about the latest work the Center for Countering Digital Hate has done on TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook ads for state-sponsored antisemitic propaganda from Iran.

Show Notes

Parents Guide to TikTok

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